Paul's Writings Underpin Western Thought

[Angrboda]

I don't have anything to say about the main question here, other than that I think it would take more substantial scholarship on the question than the usual facile apologetic that is offered for such things, as well as counting the positives that a Christian like Paul may have contributed to Western Civilization, one also has to keep in mind that Christianity also contributed the strain of thought which led to the extermination of six million Jews in World War II. One has to look at both the upside as well as the downside of any such hypothetical contributions, as well as making the previously mentioned distinction as to whether the thinker was more an effect of already present cultural effects, rather than its originator, and especially whether the ideas represented were truly original with, and a consequence of, the activity of Paul.

Regardless, I found the following interesting, even though it doesn't exactly respond to the central question.

Paul’s Historical Importance

A number of years ago, maybe 20 years ago now, there a survey was taken of college professors in a variety of fields—history, political science, philosophy, classics—in which they asked these professors who, in their opinion, was the most important person in the history of Western civilization. Now, if I were to ask that question of my class at Chapel Hill, the answer would come back, Jesus was the most important person in the history of Western civilization; and, in fact, I think a case could be made that Jesus was the most important person. As it turns out, though, in this particular survey, Jesus came in tied for fifth. He tied with the apostle Paul for fifth place. The most important person in the survey, to the surprise of my students, was Alexander the Great. The logic was that Alexander the Great was the one who spread Greek culture throughout the Mediterranean world. Without Greek culture, our form of civilization wouldn’t exist. The Romans eventually conquered basically the same region that Alexander the Great had conquered. They continued to perpetuate Greek customs and culture and religion and language, so that this became the culture of the Mediterranean world that was inherited after the Roman Empire, down into the Middle Ages, down to today; so that on this logic, Alexander the Great was the most significant figure in the history of Western civilization because without him, Jesus would not have been able to make the impact that he did.

In any event, in this survey it’s interesting that Paul and Jesus tied for fifth. Why would they tie? In the opinion of the scholars who were being surveyed, they tied because without Paul, the religion that Jesus promoted would not have become what we call Christianity. According to this opinion, Jesus was a Jewish prophet and teacher who didn’t start out to found a new religion. They said that Jesus preached about the God of the Jews, and he taught about the Hebrew Bible, and the law of Moses, and how people could best follow the law. They viewed it that Jesus was a Jew promoting a form of Judaism. Paul, however, changed the religion of Jesus, so that it was no longer the religion of Jesus, but it was the religion about Jesus.

The Historic Importance of Saint Paul