The Doctrines of the Pauline Christianity (*)
By Ali Unal
Christianity, as understood and believed by Christians of both Roman Catholic and Protestant persuasions, means the Three Creeds, namely, the Apostles, the Nicene and the Athanasion. The cardinal doctrines of Christianity are (1) the Trinity, (2) the Divinity of Jesus Christ, (3) the divine sonship of Jesus, (4) the Original Sin, and (5) the Atonement.
THE TRINITY:
The doctrine of the Trinity is that there are three separate and distinct Divine Persons in Godhead-God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The Athanasian Creed states:
“There is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal... The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. Yet they are not three Gods, but one God... For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every person by himself to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say there be three Gods, or three Lords.”
This is obviously self-contradictory, let alone that the one who is a father and has a son cannot be God, for God by his very nature must be eternal, but the one who has begotten and been begotten is obviously a created being, not a creator. It is like saying, one plus one plus one is three, yet it is one. If there are three separate and distinct Divine Persons and each is God, then there must be three Gods. The Christian Church recognizes the impossibility of harmonising the belief in three Divine Persons with the oneness of God, and hence declares the doctrine of Trinity to be a mystery, in which a person must have blind faith. This is what the Rev. J. F. De Groot writes in his book Catholic Teaching:
“The Most Holy Trinity is a mystery in the strictest sense of the word. For reason alone cannot prove the existence of a Triune God, Revelation teaches it. And even after the existence of mystery has been revealed to us, it remains impossible for the human intellect to grasp how the Three Persons have but one Divine Nature.” (p: 101)
Strangely enough, Jesus Christ himself never even mentioned the Trinity. He knew or said nothing at all about being three Divine Persons in Godhead. His conception of God was in no way different from that of the earlier Israelite prophets, who always preached the Unity of God and never the Trinity. Jesus merely echoed the earlier prophets when he said:
“Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve.” (Matthew: 4-10)
“The first of all the commandments is, Hear O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord; and that thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” (Mark: 12: 29-30).
The doctrine of the Trinity was coined by the Christians, many years after Jesus. The four Canonical Gospels, written between 70 and 115 C.E. contain no reference to the Trinity. Even Saul, who imported many foreign ideas into Christianity, knew nothing of the Triune God. The New Catholic Encyclopedia (bearing the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur, indicating official approval) admits that the doctrine of the Trinity was unknown to the early Christians and that it was formulated in the fourth century:
“It is difficult, in the second half of the 20 th century to offer a clear, objective, and straightforwad account, and theological elaboration of the mystery of the Trinity. Trinitarian discussion, Roman Catholic as well as other, presents a somewhat unsteady silhouette. Two things have happened. There is the recognition on the part of exegetes and Biblical theologians, including a constantly growing number of Roman Catholics, that one should not speak of Trinitarianism in the New Testament without serious qualification. There is also the closely parallel recognition on the part of historians of dogma and systematic theologians that when one does speak of an unqualified Trinitarianism, one has moved from the period of Christian origins, to, say, the last quadrant of the 4 th century. It was only then that what might be called the definitive Trinitarian dogma ‘one God in three persons’ became thoroughly assimilated into Christian life and thought.” (V. 14, p.295, art. “The Holy Trinity).
A little later the same Encylclopedia says even more emphatically: “The formulation ‘one God in three persons’ was not solidly established into Christian life and its profession of faith, prior to the end of the 4 th century. But it is precisely this formulation that has first claim to the title the Trinitarian dogma. Among the Apostolic Fathers, there had been nothing even remotely approaching such a mentality or perspective’ (V: 14, p. 299).
THE DIVINITY OF JESUS:
The second Christian dogma is that of the Godhood of Jesus. The Athanasian Creed states:
“Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe rightly in the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Christians believe that Jesus Christ is God from all eternity, the Second Person of the Divine Trinity; that nearly two thousand years ago he chose to appear in a human body and was born of the Virgin Mary.
This dogma also has no support of the words of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels. The truth is that Jesus strongly disclaimed Godhood or divinity. Here are his own words:
“Why callest thou me good? There is none good but One, that is, God. (Mark 10:18).
He spoke of God as “My Father and your Father, and my God and your God.” (John, 20-17) These words of Jesus reported in the Bible show that Jesus stood in the same relation to God as any other man. He was a creature of God.
In his agony on Cross according to the Gospels, Jesus cried out:
“Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, “which is being interpreted, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark: 15:34)
Can one imagine these words coming out of the mouth of God. Here we have the cry of a helpless man in agony addressing to his Creator and Lord.
God is the object of our worship. We cannot imagine God praying to any one. Yet about Jesus it is writen in the Gospels:
“And when he had sent the multitude away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray.”
“And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.” (Mark: 1: 35).
The fact is that Jesus never claimed to be God, but only a prophet and servant of God. He was a man to whom God had revealed his message for the guidance of other men. To give his own words:
“Jesus said unto them, if ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard from God.” (John, 8:39-40)
The dogma of Incarnation was taken into Christianity, like many other Christian notions, from Paganism. In pre-Christian mythologies we often read of the hero being regarded as a God. The Hindus of India even today worship their ancient heroes, Rama and Krishna, as incarnations of Vishnu, the second person of the Hindu Trinity. And likewise, we witness today in many nations that some heroes are being ideolized and deified after their demise.
THE DIVINE SONSHIP OF JESUS:
The third Christian dogma is that Jesus Christ was Son of God in a special and exclusive sense. This dogma also is not in conformity with the sayings and teachings of Jesus. In the Bible this expression has been used for many earlier prophets. For instance, Israel was called the “Son of God” in Exodus, and in the Psalms the same title was given to David (2:7) A little later in the Bible, Solomon also was called the Son of God (Chronicles, 22:10).
This phrase meant nothing more than nearness to God in love. Jesus himself said that every man who did the will of the Father in Heaven was a son of God. It was devout life and kind and merciful behaviour of God:
“Love your enemies.. that ye may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven.” (Matthew, 5:44, 45).
“Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the sons of God.” (Matthew, 5:9).
These sayings leave no doubt in our minds as to what this phrase meant for Jesus. Moreover, it has not been established that Jesus actually used the words of ‘son’ and ‘father’; because, as mentioned above, the word ‘father’ found its way to the Christian terminology at least a century later, and the four Gospels were written down in the same period. Even if we admit that he used these words, there is no justification for regarding Jesus as the Son of God, in an exclusive or unigue sense. Jesus mostly called himself a “son of man”, but when he referred to himself as a “son of God”, it was no doubt in the same sense in which Adam, Israel, David and Solomon had been called the sons of God before him and in which he himself had spoken of those who had love in their hearts and lived in peace with their fellowmen as “sons of God.”
Jesus was obviously referring to Psalms 82; verses 6 and 7: “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the Most High. But ye shall die like men and fall like one of the princes.” As the Judges and prophets of old were called ‘gods’ only in a metaphorical sense, so Jesus called himself a “Son of God” in the same sense. And, Luke speaks of Jesus as “son of Joseph” while giving his lineage, which goes down as “the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.”
THE ORIGINAL SIN AND BLOOD ATONEMET:
We stated above that the original sin was imported into Christianity by Saul, while James and Jesus himself insisted upon actions and the law. Contrarily to what Jesus taught, the corrupted Christianity declares that by disobeying God’s order not to eat of the forbidden fruit of knowledge, Adam sinned. The sin of Adam is inherited by all the children of Adam; and so all human beings are born sinful. The reguirement of God’s justice is that a price must be paid for every sin. So, Jesus Christ, the son of God, who came from Heaven, shed his holy, sinless blood, suffered indescribable agony, and died to pay the penalty for the sins of men. Accordingly those who have faith in him means to have savethemselves, no matter how sinful they are.
This dogma is clearly unreasonable, for Adam was one of billion of men, who was responsible for his acts like others. Besides, each man is guestioned by human systems and Divine religions concerning his acts and no one cannot be called to account for others’ sins. And, it is clearly expressed in Jesus’s words that all children are innocent and pure, and not born in sin:
“Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily, I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.” (Mark, 10:14, 15)
Like other borrowed Christian beliefs, the doctrine of the Inherited Sin also finds no support in the words of Jesus or of the prophets who had come before him. For instance, it is stated in the Book of Prophet Jeremiah (in Old Testament) that “every one shall die for his own iniguity; every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge.” (The Bible, Jeremiah, 31:29-30)
The doctrine of atonement, together with that of the Original Sin makes the first Person of Godhead into a blood-thirsty tyrant; like ancient Greek’s gods, in order to demonstrate the selfsacrificing love of the second person. Arthur Weigall makes the following significant comment on the doctrine of Atonemet:
“We can no longer accept the appalling theological doctrine that for some mystic reason a propitiatory sacrifice was necessary. It outrages either our conception of God as Almighty or else our conception of Him as All-loving. The famous Dr. Cruden believed that for the purpose of this sacrifice ‘Christ suffered dreadful pains inflicted by God’, and this, of course, is a standpoint which nauseates the modern mind and which may well be termed a hideous doctrine, not unconnected with the sadistic tendencies of primitive human nature. Actually, it is of pagan origin, being, indeed, perhaps, the most obvious relic of heathendom in the Faith.” (The Paganism in our Christiantity)
Not only Jesus but many people have suffered great tortures and tasted agonies since life began on earth. Moreover, if all the sins of others have been pardoned through Jesus’ sacrifice, what is the meaning of calling people to a virtuous sinless life, and how will it be possible to prevent people form committing sins? Jesus himself invites men to keeping commandments:
“Why callest thou me good. There is none good but one, that is, God; but, if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” (Matthew, 19:17).