Peter, Paul, and circumcision.

In the New testament, Jesus names Peter as his successor to the leadership of his Church. Peter thus becomes the person who has the authority to settle disputes after Jesus's death. Not merely authority, but if you believe that Jesus was the Christ, then Peter has divine authority.

Jesus was a Jew, and all his followers in his lifetime were Jews, including all the Disciples and the Apostles. Jesus lived as a Jew, observing Jewish law. He even stated that he was not here to change the law.

Immediately after his death, however, there arose a dispute over whether one had to be a Jew in order to be a Christian. There were Jews, including Peter, who said Yes to that question: before a person could be baptized as a Christian, they had to be a Jew, and if they were not already a Jew they had to convert to Judaism and obey all the Jewish religious laws. This meant that an adult man, or a boy, who was not already circumcised, had to get circumcised in order to become a Christian.

Paul, who was more savvy as an organizer and evangelist than Peter, understood that he would get few if any converts among non-Jews if they had to get circumcised, no matter how great their faith. A man who can face a hungry lion without fear will quail at the thought of allowing his penis to be sliced with a sharp knife! So Paul took the position that a Gentile could become a Christian without first becoming a Jew. He was very successful.

Eventually, the growing church had to come to grips with the question. Peter argued the affirmative while Paul argued the negative, and the church sided with Paul.

But Peter was the church leader, personally appointed by Jesus himself, and if you believe that Jesus was the Christ, then Peter was appointed by god.

Thus, in siding with Paul (the effective organizer) rather than Peter (god's own appointed leader of the church) the Christian Church renounced its own god and became a heretic church virtually at its very inception. The act of rejecting its rightful leader might explain why it has gone so wrong throughout its entire history.

 

The composition of the post is my own. Any time I quote someone else I put it in quotes or a quote box and cite the author.

I am listening to a Teaching Company course on the history of the Catholic Church. The disagreement between Peter and Paul, and within the early Christian community generally, over the question of conversion (must one be a Jew before becoming a Christian?) was mentioned. Of course, it is general knowledge that the Ebionites were Christians who continued to practice the Jewish religion, believed you had to be a Jew before you could be a Christian, and believed that Jesus was not god, but was adopted by god at his baptism. Their view was rejected by the Pauline Christians and others.

What I had not known previously, and which inspired my post, was that Peter, who was appointed by Jesus to be his successor, believed that one had to be a Jew in order to be a Christian, and this included the need to be circumcised.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the Ebionites, were the Marcionites, who believed that Jesus was not a man at all, but a pure spirit pretending to be a man. They believed there were two gods: the god of the Old Testament created the material world, but the material world was evil; while the god of the New Testament created spirit; and that by pretending to be a man, and pretending to be crucified, Jesus tricked the evil creator of the world into releasing mankind from the burden of original sin. You can learn of these and much more in the Teaching Company course on Lost Christianities.

The Teaching Company

The History of the Catholic Church

Lost Christianities

 

Jesus says to Peter, "Thou art Peter [rock] and upon this rock I found my church." This is widely interpreted by Christians to mean that Peter was Jesus's chosen successor. On the other hand, we only have Paul's word that the holy spirit descended upon him. But Paul was a mover and shaker, with the savvy to create a cult of personality around the dead preacher, and he wrested control of the nascent church away from Peter.

 

Let's see, just a few that come to mind: The Gnostic Gospels, of which there are several, the Proto-Gospel of Peter (probably not written by the Disciple Peter, but definitely an early Christian writing) the numerous writings of the Ebionites and of Marcion and his followers... I probably would not use as many "many"s as Rene, but there are a number of early Christian writings that did not make it into the New testament canon because they expressed theologies rejected by the dominant faction.

See the Lost Christianities course cited above for some fascinating history of the first few centuries of Christianity. The variety of beliefs about god and Jesus was very wide. Eventually Pauline teachings won out, and everyone else was burned at the stake. More Christians were killed by other Christians than were killed by the Romans.

As for Jesus still being the leader of the Church, that's kind of awkward, since he is not here to settle disputes. And if ten people pray to him for an answer, they'll get ten different answers.

Circumcision is an issue only because it might have been the biggest obstacle to the conversion of gentiles to Judaism. The root issue is whether you can be a Christian without first being a Jew. Jesus did not speak of it, but he was not in the business of converting anyone. He was preaching an apocalyptic vision of the imminent end of the world, and a recipe for salvation. He was a Jew and he preached to Jews. All his followers and disciples were Jews.

Christianity is an invention of Paul, who threw out much of what Jesus taught and replaced it with a cult of personality, now called Christianity. Jesus taught that you had to do certain things to be saved: Love your neighbor as yourself, repent your sins, give your wealth to the poor, etc., all of them actions and lifestyle choices. Paul taught that none of that mattered, but that instead what you had to do was believe that Jesus was god. No actions, just belief.

Pauline Christianity was the first religion in the world to place importance on belief. Greek and Roman paganism, by contrast, required that you practice certain rituals. Belief had nothing to do with it. Nowadays "works vs. faith" is a big controversy among Christians, with Protestants leaning more toward faith, and Evangelical Protestants insisting on faith alone; while Catholics place more emphasis on works.

But the point of my post was that Peter (Jesus's hand-picked leader of the Church) said that you must become a Jew before you can be a Christian, while Paul (who persecuted Christians before he decided to jump the fence) said you did not. And the Church mutinied against Peter and sided with Paul.