I recent came across a claim by Prof. Bart Ehrman that struck me as sufficiently weak that one didn’t need to be a scholar to refute it, just be ;a careful reader of the New Testament.
As part of a recent argument against the Historicity of the Book of Acts on the popular channel Paulogia, Prof. Ehrman claimed that the theologies of Acts and the Pauline Epistles were distinctive and incompatible in two specific ways:
1) “When Paul preaches to nonbelievers in the Book of Acts, he says nothing about the atoning sacrifice of Jesus.”
2) “Paul does not have a doctrine of the cross in the Book of Acts.”
I simply cannot fathom how Prof. Ehrman reaches this conclusion after a serious reading of the Book of Acts. To reach it, Prof. Ehrman has to simply assume that none of what Paul preaches to Jewish audiences is preached to Gentile audiences at all, despite repeated indications to the contrary. To reach this conclusion also has to take an incredibly stilted view of the “doctrine of the cross” as something wholly separate from the resurrection and glorification of Christ.
Let’s look at the Book of Acts together and see if Ehrman’s claims hold up.
Let’s start our brief tour through the Book of Acts in Acts 9. This is the chapter that features the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus. We will not stay long with this story, but I do want to quickly highlight Jesus’s words to Ananias when he describes Paul’s calling and mission”
“But the Lord said to Ananias, ‘Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel.’”
Jesus offers no suggestion here that Paul would preach a different message to the Gentiles and a different one to the people of Israel. Instead, Paul’s message to all would be to “proclaim [his] name.” So from the start of its description of Paul’s mission, the Book of Acts is already setting us up to expect continuity rather than discontinuity in Paul’s message.
Lets go next to Acts 13 which is the first chapter that returns to the story of Paul after several chapters focused elsewhere
This chapter starts with Paul and Barnabas called to go on a missionary journey. After some time in Cyprus they end up in Pisidian Antioch where Paul preaches in the synagogue. Paul emphasizes that the crucifixion of Jesus came as a fulilfment of prophecy and that he was killed and then raised from the dead:
28 Though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have him executed. 29 When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb. 30 But God raised him from the dead,
Paul then strongly preaches the message of forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ and of justification through Christ rather than the law of Jesus.
38 “Therefore, my friends, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. 39 Through him everyone who believes is set free from every sin, a justification you were not able to obtain under the law of Moses.
This is the same message that Paul preaches in Romans and elsewhere. There no discontinuity here and a clear reliance on Christ’s death on the cross and his resurrection as the basis for our justification
A few verses later, Paul after Paul is rejected by the Jews at the synagogue, he and Barnabas declare to them that they are turning to the gentiles instead.:
46 Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly: “We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. 47 For this is what the Lord has commanded us:
“‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles,
that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’”48 When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord; and all who were appointed for eternal life believed.
A couple of things are noteworthy here. Paul refers to what he preached to the Jews as “the word of God” and emphasizes that he had to preach that word to the Jews “first.” This obviously implies that the same message would go to the gentiles second. Paul then refers to himself as one who would be a “light for the Gentiles” and “bring salvation to the ends of the earth.” Paul has just been preaching his message of forgiveness of sins through Christ’s death on the cross to the Jewish audience. And there’s no indication whatsoever that the salvation that Paul is bringing to gentile audiences will proceed on a different basis.
Acts 14 starts with Paul and Barnabas spending “considerable time” preaching in the synagogues to what appears to mixed audiences as the chapter specifically mentions both Jews and Gentiles converting at this time. Their common message is described as “the message of his grace.” (Acts 14:3).
I will not dwell long on the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 except to note that better discusses how the Gentiles heard “the message of the gospel” from his lips and emphasized that “it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved just as they are.” Once again, there isn’t a hint of a two tiered message of salvation.
Acts 16 features one of the clearest examples of the Christ centered message that Paul preached to the Gentiles. When the jailer in Philippi cries out to Paul and Silas asking what he must do to be saved, they respond telling him “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.”
In Acts 17, Paul is against described as preaching in the synagogue a message that it focused on the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Significantly this message (or one synonymous with it) is also preached to God-fearing Greeks who are persuaded and converted:
2 As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said.
Acts 17 also features Paul preaching in Athens. Paul here does emphasize God’s call to all men to repent which is probably where Ehrman gets his thesis that Paul preached repentance rather than the cross. But the overall focus of the message is on how God has raised Christ from the dead and that Christ “will judge the world with justice.” In light of Paul’s overall preaching, Ehrman is in unsteady ground in assuming that Paul’s message was devoid of the cross.
Acts 18 again provides evidence to support the already well established presumption that Paul preached the same message to both Jews and Gentiles Paul begins by preaching and teaching in the synagogue in Corinth each Sabbath “trying to persuade Jews and Greeks.” Does Ehrman really want to suggest that he preached two messages to different audiences while at the synagogue?
The Jews in Corinth then become abusive and Paul shakes his clothes out in protest and declares “[f]rom now on I will go to the Gentiles.” He goes next door to the house of Titius Justus a godfearer/worshiper of God where he keeps preaching and teaching. And this messages converts Crispus the synagogue leader and many others in Corinth who believe and are baptized. Ehrman would have us believe that this was a radically different message that did not focus on the cross of Christ, despite Paul telling the Corinthians Saints the exact opposite in his letter of 1 Corinthians where he emphasizes that when he was among them he “decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” This is simply not credible.
A few chapters later in Acts 20 as Paul begins to turn to Jerusalem he gathers in Miletus with the Elders of Ephesus where he summarizes he journeys and preaching. He again emphasizes the unity of the message that he has preached to both Jews and Greeks “I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.”
In Acts 22 Paul speaks to an angry Jewish crowd in Jerusalem and recounts his conversion and Jesus’s message to him. Once again there is an emphasis on Paul’s witness to all people of the risen Christ. “The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. You will be his witness to all people of what you have seen and heard.” When Paul notes that the people in Jerusalem will be likely to reject him because of his past, Jesus emphasizes to him that he “will send you far away to the Gentiles.” Again, there is no indication of a change of message, quite the contrary.
But Ehrman’s conclusion is perhaps most soundly refuted by Paul’s retelling of his encounter with Jesus to King Aggripa in Acts 26.
“ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. ‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.”
Jesus plainly declares that Paul’s message to ALL that he would be send to would focused on the risen Christ that Paul had seen and would be directed at “turn[ing] them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” All of the key elements of Pauline theology are here: conversion from darkness to light, forgiveness of sins, justification and sanctification by faith in the risen Christ. And this was Paul’s message to ALL that he was sent to.
Paul powerfully summarized this message that he brought to both the Jews and Gentiles at the end of his speech to Aggripa:
But God has helped me to this very day; so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen— that the Messiah would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would bring the message of light to his own people and to the Gentiles.”
Here are the exact elements that Ehrman claims were not preached to the Gentiles, the suffering and death of Messiah for the redemption of both his own people AND the gentiles. If this is the “message of light” that Paul preached to all, then Ehrman’s claim is utterly baseless.
Indeed, from the start of Paul’s story in Acts to the very last words of the book, it is clear that Paul preached the same unified message about the Lord Jesus Christ to both Jew and Gentile. Here is how the Book of Acts ends: “For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance!”
Paul the bold preacher of Jesus Christ preaches the same message of Christ and his kingdom to all who would come to see him and listen. Ehrman’s claims that Paul “says nothing about the atoning sacrifice of Jesus” to nonbelievers and that he “does not have a doctrine of the cross” in Acts are therefore both utterly baseless.