After Pentecost - Peter, Paul and Christianity 

On the day Jesus ascended and the Spirit of Truth was bestowed, Peter went to the Jerusalem temple and preached a powerful sermon about the risen Jesus. After that, Peter traveled extensively, visiting and ministering to many of the churches established by Paul, from Babylon to Corinth.

After Jesus' death, Peter became the generally recognized head of the apostles. Jesus never gave him any such authority, and his fellow apostles never formally elected him to such a position; he naturally assumed it because he was the outstanding preacher of the group.

Peter did more than anyone, aside from Paul, to establish the kingdom and send its messengers to the four corners of the earth in one generation. But, in his enthusiasm, Peter unintentionally established a religion about the risen and glorified Christ. Jesus’ teachings on the fatherhood of God and the fraternity of humanity were all but forgotten. Peter’s intention was good, but his message created a religion about Jesus instead of the religion of Jesus.

Besides his misconceptions about Jesus’ teachings, Peter persisted in trying to convince the Jews that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. Right up to the day of his death, Peter continued to suffer confusion between the concepts of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, Christ as the world’s redeemer, and the Son of Man as the revelation of God, a loving Father of all.

Despite his confusion and misrepresentations, Peter proclaimed the glad tidings of the kingdom with power and glory until his death; and he regarded it a high honor when his captors informed him that he must die as his Master had – on a cross. Peter was crucified in Rome in 67 CE.

It was Paul who introduced Jesus to the Greeks. Standing before his fellows, atop the Acropolis in Athens, Paul proclaimed the new religion which had taken origin in the Jewish land of Galilee. At that time, the Greeks were spiritually hungry; they were inquiring, interested, and looking for spiritual truth. At first, the Romans fought Christianity, but the Greeks embraced it, and it soon became part of Greek culture.

Paul spread his version of Christianity around the Mediterranean, building churches wherever he went. Much of the Bible’s New Testament relates to Paul’s travels and experiences in the creation of the new religion based largely on the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Paul was a great organizer, but he followed Peter’s lead in glorifying Jesus’ crucifixion and survival instead of teaching what Jesus actually taught regarding the fatherhood of God and the family of humanity. In Paul’s New Testament letters (I Corinthians 15:3, Romans 5:12), he provided the foundation for the erroneous doctrine that Jesus’ cruel death was a blood sacrifice that God required to forgive the human race for an “original sin.” The elaboration and adoption of this doctrine by the Christian church is attributed to Saint Augustine, a fourth-century theologian. Paul also left Christianity with the theory that women are men’s spiritual inferiors, contrary to Jesus’ teachings and example.

The content of Peter’s sermon at the Jerusalem temple on the day of Pentecost decided the future policies and plans of most of the apostles in their efforts to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom. Although Peter and Paul differed much in temperament and education, even in theology, for the most part, they worked together harmoniously for the upbuilding of the Christian churches, especially during their later years.

Peter founded Christianity largely within Judaism; Paul established it among his countrymen of Greece, and they carried it to the whole Roman Empire. By the beginning of the second century, the very best of Greco-Roman culture was increasingly turning to this new order of Christian belief, this new concept of the purpose of living and the goal of existence. The triumph of Christianity over the old religions was due largely to Paul’s organization, its resonance with Greek philosophy, its promise of surviving death, its compromise with existing religions, and winning Constantine (a fourth-century Roman emperor) to the new faith.

The spread of the Christian religion was enormously helped by the translation of the Hebrew scriptures, and later the New Testament, into Greek. The Greeks, in contrast with the Jews and others, had always theorized about some sort of survival after death, and since this was the very heart of Jesus’ teaching, it was certain that Christianity would make a strong appeal to them. The Roman embrace of Christianity owes much to the Greeks.

The Romans overtook Greek culture around the time of Jesus. They were dedicated to their ideals of governance but without a religion worthy of the name. Not long after Christianity appeared and the initial persecutions ceased, the Greco-Romans became just as spiritually devoted to an institutional church as they were politically devoted to the state.

The great strength of Christianity came from the way its believers served and even the way they died for their faith during the earlier times of drastic persecution. Throughout the first century, Christianity prepared itself, by faith, struggle, and compromise, to take root and rapidly spread. The second century after Christ was the best time in all the world’s history for a good religion to make progress in the Western world.

The Roman Empire lasted long enough to ensure the survival of Christianity. But the Roman church, being central to society and the ally of politics, was doomed to share in the intellectual and spiritual decline of the European “dark ages.” In a spiritual sense, Christianity went into hibernation. But it did persist on through the long night of Western civilization and was still functioning as a moral influence in the world when the renaissance dawned.

Christianity exhibits a history of having originated out of the unintended transformation of the religion of Jesus into a religion about him. It further presents the history of having experienced Hellenization, paganization, secularization, institutionalization, intellectual deterioration, spiritual decadence, moral hibernation, threatened extinction, later rejuvenation, fragmentation, and more recently, relative rehabilitation. Such an ordeal indicates inherent vitality and the possession of vast recuperative resources.

Christianity is the product of the combined moral genius of the God-knowing people of many ages, and it has truly been one of the greatest powers for good on earth. Jesus was not its founder but the Spirit of Truth he bestowed on the day of Pentecost has fostered it as the best promoter of his lifework on earth.

Two books of the Bible bear Peter’s name. The authorship of fourteen New Testament books is attributed to Paul. According to Biblical scripture, Peter and Paul differed in their understanding and teaching about Jesus. Peter, being Jewish, tended toward the views of Judaism with Jesus’ teachings superimposed. Paul, a Greek, made Christianity more acceptable to his gentile hearers by doing away with many Jewish traditions, such as circumcision of males. These differences caused early Christianity to split away from both Judaism and paganism and become a stand-alone religion.

Biblical Christianity regards Peter and Paul as saints. Peter knew, and was taught by, Jesus who said to him: “I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church" (Matthew 16:18). Paul never met Jesus, but he reportedly had an encounter with Jesus’ spirit on a journey from Jerusalem to Damascus in which he was struck down by a flash of light. The spirit of Jesus then said to him: “Arise, and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do” (Acts 9:6, Acts 22:10).

According to Acts 11:26, “The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.” The Bible’s New Testament carried the Christian message across two thousand years, despite wars, translations, and endless debates about what should or should not be in the Bible. It is the most popular book in the world today, but it was not always so. Not until the printing press was invented did the Bible move out of the hands of priests and into the realm of the commoner. Soon thereafter, Christianity blossomed and split into Catholic and Protestant branches, each with its version of the Bible. Further splits in Catholicism and Protestantism produced an estimated 40,000 sects worldwide as of the beginning of the 21st century.