James I know you are correct when you say say Paul preached a different gospel. But you still do not understand that Paul preached a gnostic spiritual Christ that had nothing to do with Jesus the man.
Here is an excerpt from Massey that may help you to understand:
We know that Paul and the other Apostles did not preach the same gospel; and it is my present purpose to show that they did not set forth or celebrate the same Christ. My thesis is, that Paul was
not a supporter of the system known as Historical Christianity, which was founded on a belief in the Christ carnalised; an assumption that the Christ had been made flesh; but that he was its unceasing
and deadly opponent during his lifetime; and that after his death his writings were tampered with, interpolated, and re-indoctrinated by his old enemies, the forgers and falsifiers, who first began to weave the web of the Papacy in Rome. In this way there was added a fourth
pillar or corner-stone to the original three in Jerusalem, which was turned into the chief support of the whole structure; the firmest foundation of the fallacious faith.
The supreme feat, performed in secret by the managers of the Mysteries in Rome, was this conversion of the Epistles of Paul into the main support of Historic Christianity! It was the very pivot on which the total imposture turned! In his lifetime he had fought tooth and nail, with tongue and pen, against the men who founded the faith of the Christ made flesh, and damned eternally all disbelievers; and after his death they reared the Church of the Sarkolatræ above his tomb,
and for eighteen centuries have, with a forged warrant, claimed him
as being the first and foremost among the founders. They cleverly dammed the course of the natural river that flowed forth from its own
independent source in the Epistles of Paul, and turned its waters into their own artificial canal, so that Paul's living force should be made to float the bark of Peter. Nevertheless, those who care to look
closely will see that the two waters, like those of the river Rhone, will not mingle in one colour! And it appears to me that, whether Paul was mad or not in this life, such nefarious treatment of his writings was bad enough to drive him frantic in the next, and make him insane there until the wrong is righted.
It is the universal assumption that Paul, the persecutor of the early Christians, was converted by a vision of the risen Jesus, who proved his historic nature and identity by appearing to Paul in person.
So it is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. The account, however, is entirely opposed to that which is given by Paul himself in his Epistle to the Galatians. He tells how the change occurred, which
has been called his conversion. It was by revelation of the Christ within, but not by an objective vision of a personal Jesus, who demonstrated in spirit world the reality and identity of an historic
Jesus of Nazareth, who had lately lived on earth. Such a version as that is rigorously impossible, according to Paul's own words. His account of the matter is totally antipodal. He received his commission to preach the Christ, as he declares, "when it was the good pleasure of God to reveal his Son in me," and therefore not by an apparition of Jesus of Nazareth outside of him! His Christ within was not the
Corpus of Christian belief, but the Christ of the Gnosis. He heard no voice external to himself, which could be converted into the audible voice of an historic Jesus; and nothing can be more instructive to
begin with, than a comparative study of these two versions, for showing how the matter has been manipulated, and the facts perverted, for the purpose of establishing or supporting an orthodox history.
What he did hear when caught up in the spirit he tells us was unspeakable; words which it is not lawful for a man to utter! He makes no mention of a Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, Jesus of Nazareth is unknown to Paul! His name never once appears in the Epistles; and the significance of the fact in favour of the present view can hardly be exaggerated. So, Jesus of Nazareth does not appear in the Gospel of Marcion; or, as it was represented by some of the Christian Fathers,
Marcion had removed the name of Jesus of Nazareth from his particular Gospel--being so virulent a heretic! Here we find Paul in agreement with Marcion, the Gnostic rejecter of Jesus of Nazareth, and
of historic Christianity. Moreover, Paul was the only apostle of the true Christ who was recognised by Marcion. Now, as Marcion had rejected the human nature of the Christ, and left the sect which
ultimately became the church of historic Christianity, it is impossible that he could have adopted or upheld the Gospel of Paul as it has come down to us in our version of the Epistles. Hence, Irenæus
complains that Marcion dismembered the Epistles of Paul, and removed those passages from the prophetical writings which had been quoted to teach us that they announced beforehand the coming of the Lord! That is, Marcion, the man who knew, recognised his fellow-Gnostic in Paul, but rejected the literalisations and the spurious doctrines which had been surreptitiously interpolated by the founders, who were the forgers, of Historic Christianity. Further, with regard to the Marcionites, Irenæus says they allege that Paul alone, of all the Christian teachers, knew the truth; and that to him the Mystery was manifested by revelation. They spoke as Gnostics of a Gnostic. At the same time, as Irenæus tells us, the Gnostics, of whom Marcion was one, charged the other Apostles with hypocrisy, because they "framed their doctrine according to the capacity of their hearers, fabling blind things for the blind according to their blindness; for the dull, according to their dulness; for those in error, according to their errors."
Clement Alexander asserts that Paul, before going to Rome, stated that he would bring to the Brethren (not the true Gospel history, but) the Gnosis, or Gnostic communication, the tradition of the hidden mysteries, as the fulness of the blessings of Christ, which Clement says were revealed by the Son of God, the "teacher who trains the Gnostic by mysteries," i.e., by revelations made in the state of trance. He was going there as a Gnostic, and therefore as the natural opponent of Historic Christianity. |
