Did Saint Paul actually speak for Christ?

[bibcat]

It’s a given, I suppose, that Saint Paul was guided by the Holy Spirit when writing his epistles. But was it more than that; was Paul actually Christ’s mouthpiece, for lack of a better term. Was Paul merely saying what Christ would have said if he were still on Earth in physical form?

 

[Wesrock]

Saint Paul was teaching the gospel he received, along with the theology. The epistles we have are divinely inspired. So it is Christ’s message in that sense. However, we don’t believe Jesus Christ dictated the epistles to St. Paul, or that the epistles don’t include St. Paul’s own thoughts and concerns, even if he was moved to write by the Holy Spirit. Nor is everything he wrote universal theology, in a sense. A lot of the context of what he wrote was to address the specific concerns of the churches he was writing to, in the context of the culture he lived in. That’s not to say it’s not applicable to us or to today, but we must take into accout context. And of course, some things he wrote were definitely meant more universally and generally.

 

[po18guy]

“He who hears you hears Me” Luke 10:16

“What I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I have done so in the person of Christ” 2 Corinthians 2:10.

What do you think?

 

[CaptainPrudeman]

“I speak for the Traveler. I never said it spoke to me.”

St. Paul taught Christian teachings but it’s impossible to know if it’s exactly what Jesus would have done. We do know, though, that Paul did not preach heresy in the Epistles and that he was able to preach with the blessing of those ordained by Jesus himself.

 

[Hodos]

“I speak for the Traveler. I never said it spoke to me.”

St. Paul taught Christian teachings but it’s impossible to know if it’s exactly what Jesus would have done. We do know, though, that Paul did not preach heresy in the Epistles and that he was able to preach with the blessing of those ordained by Jesus himself.

We know that Paul’s writings were considered scripture by Peter (2 Peter 3:14-16), and that the scriptures are the work of the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). If we believe in the Trinity, then the same Spirit who spoke through Paul is the same Spirit by whom Christ spoke. While we do make distinctions between the persons of the Trinity, they are one and the same God. We can have confidence that what Paul spoke in his epistles were the words of God.