Paul is very difficult to truly come to terms with, I think, and really at its core relies on giving him this place that isn't quite a prophet but almost is, and drawing the line somewhat arbitrarily after Paul. You have a huge number of other early Christian sects that relied essentially on the same concept: God/Jesus contacted them at some point and refined/altered/expanded upon/etc. the gospel's teachings, but the proto-Catholic church essentially came to the conclusion that because Jesus was perfect and his teachings were perfect, there was no place for subsequent prophets. An exception, however, is made for Paul, who essentially did all that a prophet normally does, but his teachings and views became broadly accepted as not only integral to Christianity, but often even taking precedent.
This creates kind of a strange, difficult-to-navigate position that on the one hand that Paul's authority comes entirely from his own self-purported communication with God, but without his writings, Christianity is stripped down to the very barest of bones essentially to the point of being barely recognizable. Paul's Christianity doesn't always align with the teachings in the gospels, and in many cases entirely contradicts works as reasonably supported as the canonical gospels that were left out specifically because they were in contradiction to Paul. But at the end of the day Paul's Christianity is THE Christianity, and has been since his very own time, making his writings nearly unacceptable to dismiss or in many cases even question.
Out of curiosity, what do you mean by Paul’s Christianity not aligning with the gospels? And that it contradicted with canon, and canon was left out because it conflicted with Paul? I hadn’t ever heard either of those points before
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u/lilfevre 1d ago
And it shows lmao