Why Did St. Paul Erase the Human Jesus in Christianity?

By William Coats

For centuries St. Paul' version of the Christian fath and Jesus' central role as savior and Lord has been the central and dominating theological construct. In it Jesus functions as a kind of token assigned various theological roles - Messian, Lord. In all of this Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke is in a sense effaced. There is little attention to his actual status as a Jewish preacher and religious reformer of his time. The actual contexts in which Jesus functioned have been shaped to make him an exalted figure - God with skin on, as it were. I argue that a better reading of the human Jesus keeps him as teacher and healer somewhat at a distance from Paul's Jesus. This does not make Jesus merely a simple teacher of morals. It re-locates him as a preacher who after the resurrection has a status which Mark, Matthew and Luke don't understand and which Paul over-determines.. Only John in his gospel allows for Jesus' humanity and sets out a way that he can be understood as savior.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 6202002816
• ISBN13: 9786202002813
• Release Date: August 2025
• Publisher: Blessed Hope Publishing
• Length: 52 Pages
• Weight: 0.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"