According to Doherty,
Early Christian writers like Paul are constantly referring to the message they carry as the "gospel of God." They also talk of the work of God, the saving actions of God, the call of God . . . . If these apostles were preaching a message about an historical Jesus who had himself taught about God and his own relationship to him, surely they would style it the "gospel of Jesus."
Ted's initial response -- "the expectation of certain wording may not be warranted"—is not quite brimming with confidence. He claims to have found "roughly 80" references by Paul to the gospel, and says "he calls it the 'gospel of God' only 6 times." But Doherty's point is not how often Paul calls it the "gospel of God." His point is that Paul never calls it the "gospel of Jesus."
Ted attempts to argue from the gospels and Acts that this is to be expected. We cannot base our expectations for Paul, though, on what Christians were saying a couple of generations later. Paul might possibly have influenced the gospel writers, but they could not have influenced him. Nor can they, without assuming the historicist conclusion, be offered as evidence for how Christians in general were referring to the gospel in Paul's time. If Paul believed that Jesus had preached a gospel during his earthly ministry, our most reasonable expectation is that he would have called it Jesus' gospel.
According to Ted, "Paul's reference to the gospel aren't out of line with the references in the synoptics themselves, other than his occasional reference to the gospel as being from himself." And what in the world could have possessed Paul to claim that the gospel was from himself, if he was actually under the impression that true source of the gospel was Jesus of Nazareth, aka God Almighty dwelling among men? That would have been beyond chutzpah. Ted tries to suggest that Paul's gospel was in fact not Jesus' gospel: "His [Paul's] is a message of salvation to Gentiles. Jesus' message very possibly didn't address Paul's main focus on how the kingdom of God was unfolding for the Gentiles." So, Paul believed that God had come to earth with a message but left something out? Maybe one of the things Jesus told him, in that vision on the road to Damascus, was, "Oh, by the way, there was something I forgot to mention while I was here in the flesh. I didn't die just for the Jews. It was to save the whole world. Be sure and let everyone know that, will you?"
Ted then changes the subject, or at least goes off on a
tangent, by noting that some of Jesus' teachings do appear in Paul's writings.
Perhaps this is an attempt to argue that Paul's gospel incorporates Jesus'
gospel even if Paul doesn't call it Jesus' gospel. Now, it is not disputed that
a few of Paul's teachings are very like teachings that the gospel authors
attribute to Jesus. But here is how Ted puts it: "Even if Paul doesn't quote
Jesus, his writings contain many "echos" of teachings found in the gospels,
possibly known already to his readers." But an echo can only come after the
original. If anybody is doing any echoing, the gospel authors are echoing Paul,
not vice versa. If there was a real Jesus, then Paul either did not know that
Jesus said those things, which is improbable, or else he thought it appropriate
to ignore or disguise their provenance, which is also improbable.
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This page last updated on March 29, 2020.