in the canonical gospels, early Acts and the rest of the New Testament, such as the Epistle of James.
Proponents of the perceived Pauline distinctive include Marcion of Sinope, the 2nd century theologian who asserted that Paul was the only apostle who had rightly understood the new message of salvation as delivered by Christ. Opponents of the same era include the Ebionites and Nazarenes, who rejected Paul for teaching against the Law.
The doctrine of ‘saved by faith’ found in the writings of Paul is radically different from that found elsewhere in the New Testament, nonetheless his influence came to predominate.
Paul’s supporters, as a distinct group, had an undue influence on the formation of the canon of scripture, and certain bishops, especially the Bishop of Rome, influenced the debates by which the dogmatic formulations known as the Creeds came to be produced, thus ensuring a Pauline interpretation of the gospel. The thesis is founded on the differences between the views of Paul and the church in Jerusalem revealed in his letters, and also between the picture of Paul in the Acts of the Apostles and his own writings, such that the essential Jewish or Old Testament character of the faith is said to have been lost. It has arguably been given impetus by the growth in importance of Evangelical Christianity, most especially in the United States, which rely very much on certain of Paul’s writings, in particular the Epistle to the Romans.
The theological aspect is the claim that Paul transmuted Jesus the Jewish Messiah into the universal (in a wider meaning “catholic”) Saviour.
Christianity today is based more on the doctrine of Paul than it is on the doctrine of