Paul

• founded Christianity

92:6.18The Chris­tian re­li­gion is the re­li­gion about the life and teach­ings of Christ based upon the the­ol­ogy of Ju­daism, mod­i­fied fur­ther through the as­sim­i­la­tion of cer­tain Zoroas­trian teach­ings and Greek phi­los­o­phy, and for­mu­lated pri­mar­ily by three in­di­vid­u­als: Philo, Pe­ter, and Paul. It has passed through many phases of evo­lu­tion since the time of Paul and has be­come so thor­oughly Oc­ci­den­tal­ized that many non-Eu­ro­pean peo­ples very nat­u­rally look upon Chris­tian­ity as a strange rev­e­la­tion of a strange God and for strangers.

• founded Christianity

121:7.6And so a dif­fer­ent peo­ple were called upon to carry an ad­vanc­ing the­ol­ogy to the world, a sys­tem of teach­ing em­body­ing the phi­los­o­phy of the Greeks, the law of the Ro­mans, the moral­ity of the He­brews, and the gospel of per­son­al­ity sanc­tity and spir­i­tual lib­erty for­mu­lated by Paul and based on the teach­ings of Je­sus.

121:7.7Paul’s cult of Chris­tian­ity ex­hib­ited its moral­ity as a Jew­ish birth­mark. The Jews viewed his­tory as the prov­i­dence of God—Yah­weh at work. The Greeks brought to the new teach­ing clearer con­cepts of the eter­nal life. Paul’s doc­trines were in­flu­enced in the­ol­ogy and phi­los­o­phy not only by Je­sus’ teach­ings but also by Plato and Philo. In ethics he was in­spired not only by Christ but also by the Sto­ics.

121:7.8The gospel of Je­sus, as it was em­bod­ied in Paul’s cult of An­ti­och Chris­tian­ity, be­came blended with the fol­low­ing teach­ings:

• founded Christianity

128:3.6And this was the same Stephen who sub­se­quently be­came a be­liever in the teach­ings of Je­sus, and whose bold­ness in preach­ing this early gospel re­sulted in his be­ing stoned to death by irate Jews. Some of Stephen’s ex­traor­di­nary bold­ness in pro­claim­ing his view of the new gospel was the di­rect re­sult of this ear­lier in­ter­view with Je­sus. But Stephen never even faintly sur­mised that the Galilean he had talked with some fif­teen years pre­vi­ously was the very same per­son whom he later pro­claimed the world’s Sav­ior, and for whom he was so soon to die, thus be­com­ing the first mar­tyr of the newly evolv­ing Chris­tian faith. When Stephen yielded up his life as the price of his at­tack upon the Jew­ish tem­ple and its tra­di­tional prac­tices, there stood by one named Saul, a cit­i­zen of Tar­sus. And when Saul saw how this Greek could die for his faith, there were aroused in his heart those emo­tions which even­tu­ally led him to es­pouse the cause for which Stephen died; later on he be­came the ag­gres­sive and in­domitable Paul, the philoso­pher, if not the sole founder, of the Chris­tian re­li­gion.

• founded Christianity

132:0.72. The talk in Je­ru­sa­lem with Stephen, whose death led to the win­ning of Saul of Tar­sus.

• did most to establish kingdom

139:2.9In fol­low­ing Je­sus, lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively, he was ei­ther lead­ing the pro­ces­sion or else trail­ing be­hind—“fol­low­ing afar off.” But he was the out­stand­ing preacher of the twelve; he did more than any other one man, aside from Paul, to es­tab­lish the king­dom and send its mes­sen­gers to the four cor­ners of the earth in one gen­er­a­tion.

• founded Christianity

170:5.3But the great step which marked the trans­plan­ta­tion of the teach­ings of Je­sus from a Jew­ish to a gen­tile soil was taken when the Mes­siah of the king­dom be­came the Re­deemer of the church, a re­li­gious and so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion grow­ing out of the ac­tiv­i­ties of Paul and his suc­ces­sors and based on the teach­ings of Je­sus as they were sup­ple­mented by the ideas of Philo and the Per­sian doc­trines of good and evil.

170:5.4The ideas and ide­als of Je­sus, em­bod­ied in the teach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom, nearly failed of re­al­iza­tion as his fol­low­ers pro­gres­sively dis­torted his pro­nounce­ments. The Mas­ter’s con­cept of the king­dom was no­tably mod­i­fied by two great ten­den­cies:

170:5.51. The Jew­ish be­liev­ers per­sisted in re­gard­ing him as the Mes­siah. They be­lieved that Je­sus would very soon re­turn ac­tu­ally to es­tab­lish the world-wide and more or less ma­te­rial king­dom.

170:5.62. The gen­tile Chris­tians be­gan very early to ac­cept the doc­trines of Paul, which led in­creas­ingly to the gen­eral be­lief that Je­sus was the Re­deemer of the chil­dren of the church, the new and in­sti­tu­tional suc­ces­sor of the ear­lier con­cept of the purely spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the king­dom.

170:5.7The church, as a so­cial out­growth of the king­dom, would have been wholly nat­u­ral and even de­sir­able. The evil of the church was not its ex­is­tence, but rather that it al­most com­pletely sup­planted the Je­sus con­cept of the king­dom. Paul’s in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized church be­came a vir­tual sub­sti­tute for the king­dom of heaven which Je­sus had pro­claimed.

• built one of most progressive societies ever

170:5.16Je­sus’ ideal con­cept largely failed, but upon the foun­da­tion of the Mas­ter’s per­sonal life and teach­ings, sup­ple­mented by the Greek and Per­sian con­cepts of eter­nal life and aug­mented by Philo’s doc­trine of the tem­po­ral con­trasted with the spir­i­tual, Paul went forth to build up one of the most pro­gres­sive hu­man so­ci­eties which has ever ex­isted on Uran­tia.

170:5.17The con­cept of Je­sus is still alive in the ad­vanced re­li­gions of the world. Paul’s Chris­tian church is the so­cial­ized and hu­man­ized shadow of what Je­sus in­tended the king­dom of heaven to be—and what it most cer­tainly will yet be­come. Paul and his suc­ces­sors partly trans­ferred the is­sues of eter­nal life from the in­di­vid­ual to the church. Christ thus be­came the head of the church rather than the el­der brother of each in­di­vid­ual be­liever in the Fa­ther’s fam­ily of the king­dom. Paul and his con­tem­po­raries ap­plied all of Je­sus’ spir­i­tual im­pli­ca­tions re­gard­ing him­self and the in­di­vid­ual be­liever to the church as a group of be­liev­ers; and in do­ing this, they struck a death­blow to Je­sus’ con­cept of the di­vine king­dom in the heart of the in­di­vid­ual be­liever.

• carried Christian message to gentiles

195:0.1The re­sults of Pe­ter’s preach­ing on the day of Pen­te­cost were such as to de­cide the fu­ture poli­cies, and to de­ter­mine the plans, of the ma­jor­ity of the apos­tles in their ef­forts to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom. Pe­ter was the real founder of the Chris­tian church; Paul car­ried the Chris­tian mes­sage to the gen­tiles, and the Greek be­liev­ers car­ried it to the whole Ro­man Em­pire.

• founded Christianity

195:0.18Many of the great truths taught by Je­sus were al­most lost in these early com­pro­mises, but they yet slum­ber in this re­li­gion of pa­ganized Chris­tian­ity, which was in turn the Pauline ver­sion of the life and teach­ings of the Son of Man. And Chris­tian­ity, even be­fore it was pa­ganized, was first thor­oughly Hel­le­nized. Chris­tian­ity owes much, very much, to the Greeks. It was a Greek, from Egypt, who so bravely stood up at Nicaea and so fear­lessly chal­lenged this as­sem­bly that it dared not so ob­scure the con­cept of the na­ture of Je­sus that the real truth of his be­stowal might have been in dan­ger of be­ing lost to the world. This Greek’s name was Athana­sius, and but for the elo­quence and the logic of this be­liever, the per­sua­sions of Ar­ius would have tri­umphed.

• founded Christianity

196:2.6Je­sus founded the re­li­gion of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in do­ing the will of God and serv­ing the hu­man broth­er­hood; Paul founded a re­li­gion in which the glo­ri­fied Je­sus be­came the ob­ject of wor­ship and the broth­er­hood con­sisted of fel­low be­liev­ers in the di­vine Christ. In the be­stowal of Je­sus these two con­cepts were po­ten­tial in his di­vine-hu­man life, and it is in­deed a pity that his fol­low­ers failed to cre­ate a uni­fied re­li­gion which might have given proper rec­og­ni­tion to both the hu­man and the di­vine na­tures of the Mas­ter as they were in­sep­a­ra­bly bound up in his earth life and so glo­ri­ously set forth in the orig­i­nal gospel of the king­dom.

• founded religion of faith, hope, charity

196:3.19The He­brews had a re­li­gion of moral sub­lim­ity; the Greeks evolved a re­li­gion of beauty; Paul and his con­fer­ees founded a re­li­gion of faith, hope, and char­ity. Je­sus re­vealed and ex­em­pli­fied a re­li­gion of love: se­cu­rity in the Fa­ther’s love, with joy and sat­is­fac­tion con­se­quent upon shar­ing this love in the ser­vice of the hu­man broth­er­hood.

• Luke became follower in A.D. 47

121:8.83. The Gospel by Luke. Luke, the physi­cian of An­ti­och in Pi­sidia, was a gen­tile con­vert of Paul, and he wrote quite a dif­fer­ent story of the Mas­ter’s life. He be­gan to fol­low Paul and learn of the life and teach­ings of Je­sus in A.D. 47. Luke pre­serves much of the “grace of the Lord Je­sus Christ” in his rec­ord as he gath­ered up these facts from Paul and oth­ers. Luke pre­sents the Mas­ter as “the friend of pub­li­cans and sin­ners.” He did not for­mu­late his many notes into the Gospel un­til af­ter Paul’s death. Luke wrote in the year 82 in Achaia. He planned three books deal­ing with the his­tory of Christ and Chris­tian­ity but died in A.D. 90 just be­fore he fin­ished the sec­ond of these works, the “Acts of the Apos­tles.”

121:8.9As ma­te­rial for the com­pi­la­tion of his Gospel, Luke first de­pended upon the story of Je­sus’ life as Paul had re­lated it to him. Luke’s Gospel is, there­fore, in some ways the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Paul. But Luke had other sources of in­for­ma­tion. He not only in­ter­viewed scores of eye­wit­nesses to the nu­mer­ous episodes of Je­sus’ life which he re­cords, but he also had with him a copy of Mark’s Gospel, that is, the first four fifths, Isador’s nar­ra­tive, and a brief rec­ord made in the year A.D. 78 at An­ti­och by a be­liever named Cedes. Luke also had a mu­ti­lated and much-edited copy of some notes pur­ported to have been made by the Apos­tle An­drew.

• sent Titus to Crete

130:5.1The trav­el­ers had but one pur­pose in go­ing to Crete, and that was to play, to walk about over the is­land, and to climb the moun­tains. The Cre­tans of that time did not en­joy an en­vi­able rep­u­ta­tion among the sur­round­ing peo­ples. Nev­er­the­less, Je­sus and Ga­nid won many souls to higher lev­els of think­ing and liv­ing and thus laid the foun­da­tion for the quick re­cep­tion of the later gospel teach­ings when the first preach­ers from Je­ru­sa­lem ar­rived. Je­sus loved these Cre­tans, not­with­stand­ing the harsh words which Paul later spoke con­cern­ing them when he sub­se­quently sent Ti­tus to the is­land to re­or­ga­nize their churches.

• Angamon great friend of

132:1.1It was with Ang­a­mon, the leader of the Sto­ics, that Je­sus had an all-night talk early dur­ing his so­journ in Rome. This man sub­se­quently be­came a great friend of Paul and proved to be one of the strong sup­port­ers of the Chris­tian church at Rome. In sub­stance, and re­stated in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy, Je­sus taught Ang­a­mon:

• spent winter with son of Jeramy in Nicopolis

133:2.5They spent sev­eral days at Nicopo­lis, the city which Au­gus­tus had founded some fifty years be­fore as the “city of vic­tory” in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the bat­tle of Ac­tium, this site be­ing the land whereon he camped with his army be­fore the bat­tle. They lodged in the home of one Jer­amy, a Greek pros­e­lyte of the Jew­ish faith, whom they had met on ship­board. The Apos­tle Paul spent all win­ter with the son of Jer­amy in the same house in the course of his third mis­sion­ary jour­ney. From Nicopo­lis they sailed on the same boat for Corinth, the cap­i­tal of the Ro­man prov­ince of Achaia.

• lived in Corinth with Justus, Aquila, Priscilla

133:3.5Je­sus and Ga­nid were of­ten guests in an­other Jew­ish home, that of Jus­tus, a de­vout mer­chant, who lived along­side the syn­a­gogue. And many times, sub­se­quently, when the Apos­tle Paul so­journed in this home, did he lis­ten to the re­count­ing of these vis­its with the In­dian lad and his Jew­ish tu­tor, while both Paul and Jus­tus won­dered what­ever be­came of such a wise and bril­liant He­brew teacher.

• Gaius was a supporter in Corinth

133:3.11Sev­eral times in the home of Cris­pus, Je­sus and Ga­nid met one Gaius, who sub­se­quently be­came a loyal sup­porter of Paul. Dur­ing these two months in Corinth they held in­ti­mate con­ver­sa­tions with scores of worth-while in­di­vid­u­als, and as a re­sult of all these ap­par­ently ca­sual con­tacts more than half of the in­di­vid­u­als so af­fected be­came mem­bers of the sub­se­quent Chris­tian com­mu­nity.

• lived in Corinth with Justus, Aquila, Priscilla

133:3.12When Paul first went to Corinth, he had not in­tended to make a pro­longed visit. But he did not know how well the Jew­ish tu­tor had pre­pared the way for his labors. And fur­ther, he dis­cov­ered that great in­ter­est had al­ready been aroused by Aquila and Priscilla, Aquila be­ing one of the Cyn­ics with whom Je­sus had come in con­tact when in Rome. This cou­ple were Jew­ish refugees from Rome, and they quickly em­braced Paul’s teach­ings. He lived with them and worked with them, for they were also tent­mak­ers. It was be­cause of these cir­cum­stances that Paul pro­longed his stay in Corinth.

• worked with Peter

139:2.7Pe­ter was the first of Je­sus’ apos­tles to come for­ward to de­fend the work of Philip among the Samar­i­tans and Paul among the gen­tiles; yet later on at An­ti­och he re­versed him­self when con­fronted by ridi­cul­ing Ju­daiz­ers, tem­porar­ily with­draw­ing from the gen­tiles only to bring down upon his head the fear­less de­nun­ci­a­tion of Paul.

• worked with Peter

139:2.11Af­ter leav­ing Je­ru­sa­lem and be­fore Paul be­came the lead­ing spirit among the gen­tile Chris­tian churches, Pe­ter trav­eled ex­ten­sively, vis­it­ing all the churches from Baby­lon to Corinth. He even vis­ited and min­is­tered to many of the churches which had been raised up by Paul. Al­though Pe­ter and Paul dif­fered much in tem­per­a­ment and ed­u­ca­tion, even in the­ol­ogy, they worked to­gether har­mo­niously for the up­build­ing of the churches dur­ing their later years.

• estranged from Abner

166:5.4It was the ap­par­ent mis­for­tune of Ab­ner to be at vari­ance with all of the lead­ers of the early Chris­tian church. He fell out with Pe­ter and James (Je­sus’ brother) over ques­tions of ad­min­is­tra­tion and the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Je­ru­sa­lem church; he parted com­pany with Paul over dif­fer­ences of phi­los­o­phy and the­ol­ogy. Ab­ner was more Baby­lo­nian than Hel­lenic in his phi­los­o­phy, and he stub­bornly re­sisted all at­tempts of Paul to re­make the teach­ings of Je­sus so as to pre­sent less that was ob­jec­tion­able, first to the Jews, then to the Greco-Ro­man be­liev­ers in the mys­ter­ies.

166:5.5Thus was Ab­ner com­pelled to live a life of iso­la­tion. He was head of a church which was with­out stand­ing at Je­ru­sa­lem. He had dared to defy James the Lord’s brother, who was sub­se­quently sup­ported by Pe­ter. Such con­duct ef­fec­tively sep­a­rated him from all his for­mer as­so­ciates. Then he dared to with­stand Paul. Al­though he was wholly sym­pa­thetic with Paul in his mis­sion to the gen­tiles, and though he sup­ported him in his con­tentions with the church at Je­ru­sa­lem, he bit­terly op­posed the ver­sion of Je­sus’ teach­ings which Paul elected to preach. In his last years Ab­ner de­nounced Paul as the “clever cor­rupter of the life teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, the Son of the liv­ing God.”

47:10.3Paul also had a view of the as­cen­dant-cit­i­zen corps of per­fect­ing mor­tals on Je­ru­sem, for he wrote: “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the liv­ing God, the heav­enly Je­ru­sa­lem, and to an in­nu­mer­able com­pany of an­gels, to the grand as­sem­bly of Mi­chael, and to the spir­its of just men be­ing made per­fect.”

48:1.7Paul learned of the ex­is­tence of the mor­ontia worlds and of the re­al­ity of mor­ontia ma­te­ri­als, for he wrote, “They have in heaven a bet­ter and more en­dur­ing sub­stance.” And these mor­ontia ma­te­ri­als are real, lit­eral, even as in “the city which has foun­da­tions, whose builder and maker is God.” And each of these mar­velous spheres is “a bet­ter coun­try, that is, a heav­enly one.”

48:6.23You should con­sider the state­ment about “heaven” and the “heaven of heav­ens.” The heaven con­ceived by most of your proph­ets was the first of the man­sion worlds of the lo­cal sys­tem. When the apos­tle spoke of be­ing “caught up to the third heaven,” he re­ferred to that ex­pe­ri­ence in which his Ad­juster was de­tached dur­ing sleep and in this un­usual state made a pro­jec­tion to the third of the seven man­sion worlds. Some of your wise men saw the vi­sion of the greater heaven, “the heaven of heav­ens,” of which the sev­en­fold man­sion world ex­pe­ri­ence was but the first; the sec­ond be­ing Je­ru­sem; the third, Eden­tia and its satel­lites; the fourth, Sal­ving­ton and the sur­round­ing ed­u­ca­tional spheres; the fifth, Uversa; the sixth, Ha­vona; and the sev­enth, Par­a­dise.

132:0.10Many were the times in the years so soon to fol­low that Pe­ter, Paul, and the other Chris­tian teach­ers in Rome heard about this scribe of Da­mas­cus who had pre­ceded them, and who had so ob­vi­ously (and as they sup­posed un­wit­tingly) pre­pared the way for their com­ing with the new gospel. Though Paul never re­ally sur­mised the iden­tity of this scribe of Da­mas­cus, he did, a short time be­fore his death, be­cause of the sim­i­lar­ity of per­sonal de­scrip­tions, reach the con­clu­sion that the “tent­maker of An­ti­och” was also the “scribe of Da­mas­cus.” On one oc­ca­sion, while preach­ing in Rome, Si­mon Pe­ter, on lis­ten­ing to a de­scrip­tion of the Da­mas­cus scribe, sur­mised that this in­di­vid­ual might have been Je­sus but quickly dis­missed the idea, know­ing full well (so he thought) that the Mas­ter had never been in Rome.

121:2.5Each Jew­ish syn­a­gogue tol­er­ated a fringe of gen­tile be­liev­ers, “de­vout” or “God-fear­ing” men, and it was among this fringe of pros­e­lytes that Paul made the bulk of his early con­verts to Chris­tian­ity. Even the tem­ple at Je­ru­sa­lem pos­sessed its or­nate court of the gen­tiles. There was very close con­nec­tion be­tween the cul­ture, com­merce, and wor­ship of Je­ru­sa­lem and An­ti­och. In An­ti­och Paul’s dis­ci­ples were first called “Chris­tians.”

195:0.61. Or­ga­ni­za­tion. Paul was a great or­ga­nizer and his suc­ces­sors kept up the pace he set.

92:5.135. The first cen­tury af­ter Christ. As a re­li­gious teacher, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth started out with the cult which had been es­tab­lished by John the Bap­tist and pro­gressed as far as he could away from fasts and forms. Aside from Je­sus, Paul of Tar­sus and Philo of Alexan­dria were the great­est teach­ers of this era. Their con­cepts of re­li­gion have played a dom­i­nant part in the evo­lu­tion of that faith which bears the name of Christ.

108:6.3The Mys­tery Mon­i­tors are un­doubt­edly the be­stowal of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, the re­flec­tion of the im­age of God abroad in the uni­verse. A great teacher once ad­mon­ished men that they should be re­newed in the spirit of their minds; that they be­come new men who, like God, are cre­ated in righ­teous­ness and in the com­ple­tion of truth. The Ad­juster is the mark of di­vin­ity, the pres­ence of God. The “im­age of God” does not re­fer to phys­i­cal like­ness nor to the cir­cum­scribed lim­i­ta­tions of ma­te­rial crea­ture en­dow­ment but rather to the gift of the spirit pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in the su­per­nal be­stowal of the Thought Ad­justers upon the hum­ble crea­tures of the uni­verses.

121:6.4Philo was a great teacher; not since Moses had there lived a man who ex­erted such a pro­found in­flu­ence on the eth­i­cal and re­li­gious thought of the Oc­ci­den­tal world. In the mat­ter of the com­bi­na­tion of the bet­ter el­e­ments in con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous sys­tems of eth­i­cal and re­li­gious teach­ings, there have been seven out­stand­ing hu­man teach­ers: Sethard, Moses, Zoroaster, Lao-tse, Bud­dha, Philo, and Paul.

121:1.2This en­tire com­bi­na­tion of world in­flu­ences is well il­lus­trated by the ac­tiv­i­ties of Paul, who, be­ing in re­li­gious cul­ture a He­brew of the He­brews, pro­claimed the gospel of a Jew­ish Mes­siah in the Greek tongue, while he him­self was a Ro­man cit­i­zen.

130:2.5Anaxand was might­ily moved by Je­sus’ words. Pres­ently he told his su­pe­rior what Je­sus had said, and that night they both sought Je­sus’ ad­vice as to the wel­fare of their souls. And later on, af­ter the Chris­tian mes­sage had been pro­claimed in Cae­sarea, both of these men, one a Greek and the other a Ro­man, be­lieved Philip’s preach­ing and be­came promi­nent mem­bers of the church which he founded. Later this young Greek was ap­pointed the stew­ard of a Ro­man cen­tu­rion, Cor­nelius, who be­came a be­liever through Pe­ter’s min­istry. Anaxand con­tin­ued to min­is­ter light to those who sat in dark­ness un­til the days of Paul’s im­pris­on­ment at Cae­sarea, when he per­ished, by ac­ci­dent, in the great slaugh­ter of twenty thou­sand Jews while he min­is­tered to the suf­fer­ing and dy­ing.

98:7.96. The per­sonal view­point of Paul of Tar­sus. And it should be re­corded that Mith­ra­ism was the dom­i­nant re­li­gion of Tar­sus dur­ing his ado­les­cence. Paul lit­tle dreamed that his well-in­ten­tioned let­ters to his con­verts would some­day be re­garded by still later Chris­tians as the “word of God.” Such well-mean­ing teach­ers must not be held ac­count­able for the use made of their writ­ings by later-day suc­ces­sors.

• Corinth

133:3.2While Ga­nid stud­ied fam­ily life, Je­sus was teach­ing Cris­pus the bet­ter ways of re­li­gious liv­ing. Je­sus held more than twenty ses­sions with this for­ward-look­ing Jew; and it is not sur­pris­ing, years af­ter­ward, when Paul was preach­ing in this very syn­a­gogue, and when the Jews had re­jected his mes­sage and had voted to for­bid his fur­ther preach­ing in the syn­a­gogue, and when he then went to the gen­tiles, that Cris­pus with his en­tire fam­ily em­braced the new re­li­gion, and that he be­came one of the chief sup­ports of the Chris­tian church which Paul sub­se­quently or­ga­nized at Corinth.

133:3.3Dur­ing the eigh­teen months Paul preached in Corinth, be­ing later joined by Silas and Tim­o­thy, he met many oth­ers who had been taught by the “Jew­ish tu­tor of the son of an In­dian mer­chant.”

• Ephesus

133:6.3Of all the large cities they vis­ited on this tour of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean, they here ac­com­plished the least of value to the sub­se­quent work of the Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies. Chris­tian­ity se­cured its start in Eph­esus largely through the ef­forts of Paul, who resided here more than two years, mak­ing tents for a liv­ing and con­duct­ing lec­tures on re­li­gion and phi­los­o­phy each night in the main au­di­ence cham­ber of the school of Tyran­nus.

• Antioch

134:7.3At An­ti­och the Son of Man lived for over two months, work­ing, ob­serv­ing, study­ing, vis­it­ing, min­is­ter­ing, and all the while learn­ing how man lives, how he thinks, feels, and re­acts to the en­vi­ron­ment of hu­man ex­is­tence. For three weeks of this pe­riod he worked as a tent­maker. He re­mained longer in An­ti­och than at any other place he vis­ited on this trip. Ten years later, when the Apos­tle Paul was preach­ing in An­ti­och and heard his fol­low­ers speak of the doc­trines of the Da­mas­cus scribe, he lit­tle knew that his pupils had heard the voice, and lis­tened to the teach­ings, of the Mas­ter him­self.

• Athens

195:1.1The Hel­l­eniza­tion of Chris­tian­ity started in earnest on that event­ful day when the Apos­tle Paul stood be­fore the coun­cil of the Are­opa­gus in Athens and told the Athe­ni­ans about “the Un­known God.” There, un­der the shadow of the Acrop­o­lis, this Ro­man cit­i­zen pro­claimed to these Greeks his ver­sion of the new re­li­gion which had taken ori­gin in the Jew­ish land of Gal­i­lee. And there was some­thing strangely alike in Greek phi­los­o­phy and many of the teach­ings of Je­sus. They had a com­mon goal—both aimed at the emer­gence of the in­di­vid­ual. The Greek, at so­cial and po­lit­i­cal emer­gence; Je­sus, at moral and spir­i­tual emer­gence. The Greek taught in­tel­lec­tual lib­er­al­ism lead­ing to po­lit­i­cal free­dom; Je­sus taught spir­i­tual lib­er­al­ism lead­ing to re­li­gious lib­erty. These two ideas put to­gether con­sti­tuted a new and mighty char­ter for hu­man free­dom; they pre­saged man’s so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, and spir­i­tual lib­erty.

100:5.3It should be made clear that pro­fes­sions of loy­alty to the su­preme ide­als—the psy­chic, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual aware­ness of God-con­scious­ness—may be a nat­u­ral and grad­ual growth or may some­times be ex­pe­ri­enced at cer­tain junc­tures, as in a cri­sis. The Apos­tle Paul ex­pe­ri­enced just such a sud­den and spec­tac­u­lar con­ver­sion that event­ful day on the Da­mas­cus road. Gau­tama Sid­dhartha had a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence the night he sat alone and sought to pen­e­trate the mys­tery of fi­nal truth. Many oth­ers have had like ex­pe­ri­ences, and many true be­liev­ers have pro­gressed in the spirit with­out sud­den con­ver­sion.

196:2.1Some day a ref­or­ma­tion in the Chris­tian church may strike deep enough to get back to the unadul­ter­ated re­li­gious teach­ings of Je­sus, the au­thor and fin­isher of our faith. You may preach a re­li­gion about Je­sus, but, per­force, you must live the re­li­gion of Je­sus. In the en­thu­si­asm of Pen­te­cost, Pe­ter un­in­ten­tion­ally in­au­gu­rated a new re­li­gion, the re­li­gion of the risen and glo­ri­fied Christ. The Apos­tle Paul later on trans­formed this new gospel into Chris­tian­ity, a re­li­gion em­body­ing his own the­o­logic views and por­tray­ing his own per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with the Je­sus of the Da­mas­cus road. The gospel of the king­dom is founded on the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of the Je­sus of Gal­i­lee; Chris­tian­ity is founded al­most ex­clu­sively on the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of the Apos­tle Paul. Al­most the whole of the New Tes­ta­ment is de­voted, not to the por­trayal of the sig­nif­i­cant and in­spir­ing re­li­gious life of Je­sus, but to a dis­cus­sion of Paul’s re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence and to a por­trayal of his per­sonal re­li­gious con­vic­tions. The only no­table ex­cep­tions to this state­ment, aside from cer­tain parts of Mat­thew, Mark, and Luke, are the Book of He­brews and the Epis­tle of James. Even Pe­ter, in his writ­ing, only once re­verted to the per­sonal re­li­gious life of his Mas­ter. The New Tes­ta­ment is a su­perb Chris­tian doc­u­ment, but it is only mea­gerly Je­su­so­nian.

• P.’s personal viewpoint influenced Christianity

5:4.14It must there­fore be ev­i­dent that com­pos­ite Chris­tian the­ol­ogy en­coun­ters great dif­fi­culty in at­tain­ing con­sis­tency. This dif­fi­culty is fur­ther ag­gra­vated by the fact that the doc­trines of early Chris­tian­ity were gen­er­ally based on the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of three dif­fer­ent per­sons: Philo of Alexan­dria, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, and Paul of Tar­sus.

• knew status of Lucifer rebellion leaders

53:9.2The archde­ceiver has never been on Uran­tia since the days when he sought to turn back Mi­chael from the pur­pose to com­plete the be­stowal and to es­tab­lish him­self fi­nally and se­curely as the un­qual­i­fied ruler of Neb­a­don. Upon Mi­chael’s be­com­ing the set­tled head of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don, Lu­cifer was taken into cus­tody by the agents of the Uversa An­cients of Days and has since been a pris­oner on satel­lite num­ber one of the Fa­ther’s group of the tran­si­tion spheres of Je­ru­sem. And here the rulers of other worlds and sys­tems be­hold the end of the un­faith­ful Sov­er­eign of Sa­ta­nia. Paul knew of the sta­tus of these re­bel­lious lead­ers fol­low­ing Mi­chael’s be­stowal, for he wrote of Cali­gas­tia’s chiefs as “spir­i­tual hosts of wicked­ness in the heav­enly places.”

• taught atonement doctrine, original sin

63:6.4Very early the An­donic peo­ples formed the habit of re­frain­ing from eat­ing the flesh of the an­i­mal of tribal ven­er­a­tion. Pres­ently, in or­der more suit­ably to im­press the minds of their youths, they evolved a cer­e­mony of rev­er­ence which was car­ried out about the body of one of these ven­er­ated an­i­mals; and still later on, this prim­i­tive per­for­mance de­vel­oped into the more elab­o­rate sac­ri­fi­cial cer­e­monies of their de­scen­dants. And this is the ori­gin of sac­ri­fices as a part of wor­ship. This idea was elab­o­rated by Moses in the He­brew rit­ual and was pre­served, in prin­ci­ple, by the Apos­tle Paul as the doc­trine of atone­ment for sin by “the shed­ding of blood.”

• found it difficult to consider women as equals

84:5.6The early Chi­nese and the Greeks treated women bet­ter than did most sur­round­ing peo­ples. But the He­brews were ex­ceed­ingly dis­trust­ful of them. In the Oc­ci­dent woman has had a dif­fi­cult climb un­der the Pauline doc­trines which be­came at­tached to Chris­tian­ity, al­though Chris­tian­ity did ad­vance the mores by im­pos­ing more strin­gent sex obli­ga­tions upon man. Woman’s es­tate is lit­tle short of hope­less un­der the pe­cu­liar degra­da­tion which at­taches to her in Mo­hammedanism, and she fares even worse un­der the teach­ings of sev­eral other Ori­en­tal re­li­gions.

• drew spiritual lessons from sprouting grain

85:2.2Early man looked upon sprout­ing grain with dread and su­per­sti­tious awe. The Apos­tle Paul was not the first to draw pro­found spir­i­tual lessons from, and pred­i­cate re­li­gious be­liefs on, the sprout­ing grain.

• incorporated continence cult into Christianity; knew teachings were not part of Jesus’ gospel

89:3.6It was only nat­u­ral that the cult of re­nun­ci­a­tion and hu­mil­i­a­tion should have paid at­ten­tion to sex­ual grat­i­fi­ca­tion. The con­ti­nence cult orig­i­nated as a rit­ual among sol­diers prior to en­gag­ing in bat­tle; in later days it be­came the prac­tice of “saints.” This cult tol­er­ated mar­riage only as an evil lesser than for­ni­ca­tion. Many of the world’s great re­li­gions have been ad­versely in­flu­enced by this an­cient cult, but none more markedly than Chris­tian­ity. The Apos­tle Paul was a devo­tee of this cult, and his per­sonal views are re­flected in the teach­ings which he fas­tened onto Chris­tian the­ol­ogy: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” “I would that all men were even as I my­self.” “I say, there­fore, to the un­mar­ried and wid­ows, it is good for them to abide even as I.” Paul well knew that such teach­ings were not a part of Je­sus’ gospel, and his ac­knowl­edg­ment of this is il­lus­trated by his state­ment, “I speak this by per­mis­sion and not by com­mand­ment.” But this cult led Paul to look down upon women. And the pity of it all is that his per­sonal opin­ions have long in­flu­enced the teach­ings of a great world re­li­gion. If the ad­vice of the tent­maker-teacher were to be lit­er­ally and uni­ver­sally obeyed, then would the hu­man race come to a sud­den and in­glo­ri­ous end. Fur­ther­more, the in­volve­ment of a re­li­gion with the an­cient con­ti­nence cult leads di­rectly to a war against mar­riage and the home, so­ci­ety’s ver­i­ta­ble foun­da­tion and the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion of hu­man prog­ress. And it is not to be won­dered at that all such be­liefs fos­tered the for­ma­tion of celi­bate priest­hoods in the many re­li­gions of var­i­ous peo­ples.

• adapted Jesus’ teachings to render them more acceptable; shrewd compromiser
• ended doctrine of redemption through animal sacrifice

89:9.3The an­cient so­cial broth­er­hoods were based on the rite of blood drink­ing; the early Jew­ish fra­ter­nity was a sac­ri­fi­cial blood af­fair. Paul started out to build a new Chris­tian cult on “the blood of the ev­er­last­ing covenant.” And while he may have un­nec­es­sar­ily en­cum­bered Chris­tian­ity with teach­ings about blood and sac­ri­fice, he did once and for all make an end of the doc­trines of re­demp­tion through hu­man or an­i­mal sac­ri­fices. His the­o­logic com­pro­mises in­di­cate that even rev­e­la­tion must sub­mit to the grad­u­ated con­trol of evo­lu­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Paul, Christ be­came the last and all-suf­fi­cient hu­man sac­ri­fice; the di­vine Judge is now fully and for­ever sat­is­fied.

• declared God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself

98:7.1A Cre­ator Son did not in­car­nate in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh and be­stow him­self upon the hu­man­ity of Uran­tia to rec­on­cile an an­gry God but rather to win all man­kind to the rec­og­ni­tion of the Fa­ther’s love and to the re­al­iza­tion of their son­ship with God. Af­ter all, even the great ad­vo­cate of the atone­ment doc­trine re­al­ized some­thing of this truth, for he de­clared that “God was in Christ rec­on­cil­ing the world to him­self.”

• nothing shall separate us from the love of God

100:6.6One of the most amaz­ing ear­marks of re­li­gious liv­ing is that dy­namic and sub­lime peace, that peace which passes all hu­man un­der­stand­ing, that cos­mic poise which be­to­kens the ab­sence of all doubt and tur­moil. Such lev­els of spir­i­tual sta­bil­ity are im­mune to dis­ap­point­ment. Such re­li­gion­ists are like the Apos­tle Paul, who said: “I am per­suaded that nei­ther death, nor life, nor an­gels, nor prin­ci­pal­i­ties, nor pow­ers, nor things pres­ent, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any­thing else shall be able to sep­a­rate us from the love of God.”

• knew of Trinity; thought Jesus was 2nd Person of the Trinity

104:1.11The first Trin­ity of Chris­tian­ity was pro­claimed at An­ti­och and con­sisted of God, his Word, and his Wis­dom. Paul knew of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity of Fa­ther, Son, and Spirit, but he sel­dom preached about it and made men­tion thereof in only a few of his let­ters to the newly form­ing churches. Even then, as did his fel­low apos­tles, Paul con­fused Je­sus, the Cre­ator Son of the lo­cal uni­verse, with the Sec­ond Per­son of De­ity, the Eter­nal Son of Par­a­dise.

• influenced by Jesus, Plato, Philo, Stoics, Cynics

121:4.32. The Stoic. Sto­icism was the su­pe­rior phi­los­o­phy of the bet­ter classes. The Sto­ics be­lieved that a con­trol­ling Rea­son-Fate dom­i­nated all na­ture. They taught that the soul of man was di­vine; that it was im­pris­oned in the evil body of phys­i­cal na­ture. Man’s soul achieved lib­erty by liv­ing in har­mony with na­ture, with God; thus virtue came to be its own re­ward. Sto­icism as­cended to a sub­lime moral­ity, ide­als never since tran­scended by any purely hu­man sys­tem of phi­los­o­phy. While the Sto­ics pro­fessed to be the “off­spring of God,” they failed to know him and there­fore failed to find him. Sto­icism re­mained a phi­los­o­phy; it never be­came a re­li­gion. Its fol­low­ers sought to at­tune their minds to the har­mony of the Uni­ver­sal Mind, but they failed to en­vis­age them­selves as the chil­dren of a lov­ing Fa­ther. Paul leaned heav­ily to­ward Sto­icism when he wrote, “I have learned in what­so­ever state I am, there­with to be con­tent.”

121:4.43. The Cynic. Al­though the Cyn­ics traced their phi­los­o­phy to Dio­genes of Athens, they de­rived much of their doc­trine from the rem­nants of the teach­ings of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek. Cyn­i­cism had for­merly been more of a re­li­gion than a phi­los­o­phy. At least the Cyn­ics made their re­li­gio-phi­los­o­phy demo­cratic. In the fields and in the mar­ket places they con­tin­u­ally preached their doc­trine that “man could save him­self if he would.” They preached sim­plic­ity and virtue and urged men to meet death fear­lessly. These wan­der­ing Cynic preach­ers did much to pre­pare the spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry pop­u­lace for the later Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies. Their plan of pop­u­lar preach­ing was much af­ter the pat­tern, and in ac­cor­dance with the style, of Paul’s Epis­tles.

• adapted Jesus’ teachings to render them more acceptable; shrewd compromiser

121:5.13Paul, in an ef­fort to uti­lize the wide­spread ad­her­ence to the bet­ter types of the mys­tery re­li­gions, made cer­tain adap­ta­tions of the teach­ings of Je­sus so as to ren­der them more ac­cept­able to a larger num­ber of prospec­tive con­verts. But even Paul’s com­pro­mise of Je­sus’ teach­ings (Chris­tian­ity) was su­pe­rior to the best in the mys­ter­ies in that:

121:5.141. Paul taught a moral re­demp­tion, an eth­i­cal sal­va­tion. Chris­tian­ity pointed to a new life and pro­claimed a new ideal. Paul for­sook magic rites and cer­e­mo­nial en­chant­ments.

121:5.152. Chris­tian­ity pre­sented a re­li­gion which grap­pled with fi­nal so­lu­tions of the hu­man prob­lem, for it not only of­fered sal­va­tion from sor­row and even from death, but it also prom­ised de­liv­er­ance from sin fol­lowed by the en­dow­ment of a righ­teous char­ac­ter of eter­nal sur­vival qual­i­ties.

121:5.163. The mys­ter­ies were built upon myths. Chris­tian­ity, as Paul preached it, was founded upon a his­toric fact: the be­stowal of Mi­chael, the Son of God, upon man­kind.

• influenced by Jesus, Plato, Philo, Stoics, Cynics

121:6.3Though the Hel­le­nized Jew­ish be­liefs were very lit­tle in­flu­enced by the teach­ings of the Epi­cure­ans, they were very ma­te­ri­ally af­fected by the phi­los­o­phy of Plato and the self-ab­ne­ga­tion doc­trines of the Sto­ics. The great in­road of Sto­icism is ex­em­pli­fied by the Fourth Book of the Mac­cabees; the pen­e­tra­tion of both Pla­tonic phi­los­o­phy and Stoic doc­trines is ex­hib­ited in the Wis­dom of Sol­o­mon. The Hel­le­nized Jews brought to the He­brew scrip­tures such an al­le­gor­i­cal in­ter­pre­ta­tion that they found no dif­fi­culty in con­form­ing He­brew the­ol­ogy with their revered Aris­totelian phi­los­o­phy. But this all led to dis­as­trous con­fu­sion un­til these prob­lems were taken in hand by Philo of Alexan­dria, who pro­ceeded to har­mo­nize and sys­tem­ize Greek phi­los­o­phy and He­brew the­ol­ogy into a com­pact and fairly con­sis­tent sys­tem of re­li­gious be­lief and prac­tice. And it was this later teach­ing of com­bined Greek phi­los­o­phy and He­brew the­ol­ogy that pre­vailed in Pales­tine when Je­sus lived and taught, and which Paul uti­lized as the foun­da­tion on which to build his more ad­vanced and en­light­en­ing cult of Chris­tian­ity.

• knew of Trinity; thought Jesus was 2nd Person of the Trinity
• taught atonement doctrine, original sin

121:6.5Many, but not all, of Philo’s in­con­sis­ten­cies re­sult­ing from an ef­fort to com­bine Greek mys­ti­cal phi­los­o­phy and Ro­man Stoic doc­trines with the le­gal­is­tic the­ol­ogy of the He­brews, Paul rec­og­nized and wisely elim­i­nated from his pre-Chris­tian ba­sic the­ol­ogy. Philo led the way for Paul more fully to re­store the con­cept of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, which had long been dor­mant in Jew­ish the­ol­ogy. In only one mat­ter did Paul fail to keep pace with Philo or to tran­scend the teach­ings of this wealthy and ed­u­cated Jew of Alexan­dria, and that was the doc­trine of the atone­ment; Philo taught de­liv­er­ance from the doc­trine of for­give­ness only by the shed­ding of blood. He also pos­si­bly glimpsed the re­al­ity and pres­ence of the Thought Ad­justers more clearly than did Paul. But Paul’s the­ory of orig­i­nal sin, the doc­trines of hered­i­tary guilt and in­nate evil and re­demp­tion there­from, was par­tially Mith­raic in ori­gin, hav­ing lit­tle in com­mon with He­brew the­ol­ogy, Philo’s phi­los­o­phy, or Je­sus’ teach­ings. Some phases of Paul’s teach­ings re­gard­ing orig­i­nal sin and the atone­ment were orig­i­nal with him­self.

121:7.91. The philo­sophic rea­son­ing of the Greek pros­e­lytes to Ju­daism, in­clud­ing some of their con­cepts of the eter­nal life.

121:7.102. The ap­peal­ing teach­ings of the pre­vail­ing mys­tery cults, es­pe­cially the Mith­raic doc­trines of re­demp­tion, atone­ment, and sal­va­tion by the sac­ri­fice made by some god.

121:7.113. The sturdy moral­ity of the es­tab­lished Jew­ish re­li­gion.

• doctrine of Christ as second Adam

140:8.24Pe­ter grasped the idea that the gospel they were about to pro­claim was re­ally a fresh be­gin­ning for the whole hu­man race. He con­veyed this im­pres­sion sub­se­quently to Paul, who for­mu­lated there­from his doc­trine of Christ as “the sec­ond Adam.”

• did not intend his letters to represent teachings of Jesus

149:2.2The Apos­tle Paul, in his ef­forts to bring the teach­ings of Je­sus to the fa­vor­able no­tice of cer­tain groups in his day, wrote many let­ters of in­struc­tion and ad­mo­ni­tion. Other teach­ers of Je­sus’ gospel did like­wise, but none of them re­al­ized that some of these writ­ings would sub­se­quently be brought to­gether by those who would set them forth as the em­bod­i­ment of the teach­ings of Je­sus. And so, while so-called Chris­tian­ity does con­tain more of the Mas­ter’s gospel than any other re­li­gion, it does also con­tain much that Je­sus did not teach. Aside from the in­cor­po­ra­tion of many teach­ings from the Per­sian mys­ter­ies and much of the Greek phi­los­o­phy into early Chris­tian­ity, two great mis­takes were made:

• found it difficult to consider women as equals

150:1.3It was most as­tound­ing in that day, when women were not even al­lowed on the main floor of the syn­a­gogue (be­ing con­fined to the women’s gallery), to be­hold them be­ing rec­og­nized as au­tho­rized teach­ers of the new gospel of the king­dom. The charge which Je­sus gave these ten women as he set them apart for gospel teach­ing and min­istry was the eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion which set free all women and for all time; no more was man to look upon woman as his spir­i­tual in­fe­rior. This was a de­cided shock to even the twelve apos­tles. Not­with­stand­ing they had many times heard the Mas­ter say that “in the king­dom of heaven there is nei­ther rich nor poor, free nor bond, male nor fe­male, all are equally the sons and daugh­ters of God,” they were lit­er­ally stunned when he pro­posed for­mally to com­mis­sion these ten women as re­li­gious teach­ers and even to per­mit their trav­el­ing about with them. The whole coun­try was stirred up by this pro­ceed­ing, the en­e­mies of Je­sus mak­ing great cap­i­tal out of this move, but ev­ery­where the women be­liev­ers in the good news stood stanchly be­hind their cho­sen sis­ters and voiced no un­cer­tain ap­proval of this tardy ac­knowl­edg­ment of woman’s place in re­li­gious work. And this lib­er­a­tion of women, giv­ing them due rec­og­ni­tion, was prac­ticed by the apos­tles im­me­di­ately af­ter the Mas­ter’s de­par­ture, al­beit they fell back to the olden cus­toms in sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions. Through­out the early days of the Chris­tian church women teach­ers and min­is­ters were called dea­conesses and were ac­corded gen­eral rec­og­ni­tion. But Paul, de­spite the fact that he con­ceded all this in the­ory, never re­ally in­cor­po­rated it into his own at­ti­tude and per­son­ally found it dif­fi­cult to carry out in prac­tice.

• adapted Jesus’ teachings to render them more acceptable; shrewd compromiser

194:0.3These men had been trained and in­structed that the gospel which they should preach was the fa­ther­hood of God and the son­ship of man, but at just this mo­ment of spir­i­tual ec­stasy and per­sonal tri­umph, the best tid­ings, the great­est news, these men could think of was the fact of the risen Mas­ter. And so they went forth, en­dowed with power from on high, preach­ing glad tid­ings to the peo­ple—even sal­va­tion through Je­sus—but they un­in­ten­tion­ally stum­bled into the er­ror of sub­sti­tut­ing some of the facts as­so­ci­ated with the gospel for the gospel mes­sage it­self. Pe­ter un­wit­tingly led off in this mis­take, and oth­ers fol­lowed af­ter him on down to Paul, who cre­ated a new re­li­gion out of the new ver­sion of the good news.

• refused to subject gentiles to Jewish practices

194:3.9The man­i­fes­ta­tions as­so­ci­ated with the be­stowal of the “new teacher,” and the re­cep­tion of the apos­tles’ preach­ing by the men of var­i­ous races and na­tions gath­ered to­gether at Je­ru­sa­lem, in­di­cate the uni­ver­sal­ity of the re­li­gion of Je­sus. The gospel of the king­dom was to be iden­ti­fied with no par­tic­u­lar race, cul­ture, or lan­guage. This day of Pen­te­cost wit­nessed the great ef­fort of the spirit to lib­er­ate the re­li­gion of Je­sus from its in­her­ited Jew­ish fet­ters. Even af­ter this dem­on­stra­tion of pour­ing out the spirit upon all flesh, the apos­tles at first en­deav­ored to im­pose the re­quire­ments of Ju­daism upon their con­verts. Even Paul had trou­ble with his Je­ru­sa­lem breth­ren be­cause he re­fused to sub­ject the gen­tiles to these Jew­ish prac­tices. No re­vealed re­li­gion can spread to all the world when it makes the se­ri­ous mis­take of be­com­ing per­me­ated with some na­tional cul­ture or as­so­ci­ated with es­tab­lished racial, so­cial, or eco­nomic prac­tices.

• adapted Jesus’ teachings to render them more acceptable; shrewd compromiser

195:1.42. Paul and his suc­ces­sors were will­ing but shrewd and saga­cious com­pro­mis­ers; they were keen the­o­logic traders.

195:1.5At the time Paul stood up in Athens preach­ing “Christ and Him Cru­ci­fied,” the Greeks were spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry; they were in­quir­ing, in­ter­ested, and ac­tu­ally look­ing for spir­i­tual truth. Never for­get that at first the Ro­mans fought Chris­tian­ity, while the Greeks em­braced it, and that it was the Greeks who lit­er­ally forced the Ro­mans sub­se­quently to ac­cept this new re­li­gion, as then mod­i­fied, as a part of Greek cul­ture.

• pessimistic view of mankind

196:2.9Je­sus led men to feel at home in the world; he de­liv­ered them from the slav­ery of taboo and taught them that the world was not fun­da­men­tally evil. He did not long to es­cape from his earthly life; he mas­tered a tech­nique of ac­cept­ably do­ing the Fa­ther’s will while in the flesh. He at­tained an ide­al­is­tic re­li­gious life in the very midst of a re­al­is­tic world. Je­sus did not share Paul’s pes­simistic view of hu­mankind. The Mas­ter looked upon men as the sons of God and fore­saw a mag­nif­i­cent and eter­nal fu­ture for those who chose sur­vival. He was not a moral skep­tic; he viewed man pos­i­tively, not neg­a­tively. He saw most men as weak rather than wicked, more dis­traught than de­praved. But no mat­ter what their sta­tus, they were all God’s chil­dren and his breth­ren.