It is worthy of note that there were striking similarities between this Christianity and Islam. Above all in Christology: in the faith of the original community Jesus was the new Moses, the Son of God as ‘testified’ by the adoptive act of baptism. This Christology, which corresponds completely to that of the Qur’an, was considered by the Pauline Church, together with obedience to the ‘Jewish’ law, as characteristic of the Ebionite heresy. These similarities discovered by research are ambiguous, of course. The scholar inclined towards Church dogma, who cannot see Islam as anything but a mixture of Arab paganism, Judaism and Christianity, finds them evidence that Muhammad was ‘bred’ (Schlatter) on the Judeo-Christian tradition, that he had borrowed his creedal ideas from Judeo-Christian thought. On the other hand, the Baha’i, oriented towards the doctrine of cyclically recurring revelation and convinced of the mission of Islam, finds these results of research—in the light of the unity of religions—extremely instructive, because they are a sufficient explanation for the discrepancy between orthodox Church doctrine and the doctrine of the post-Biblical religions, and because they show where the original truth was preserved: not in the pagan Christian Greater Church base on Paul, but in the Jewish Christianity contemptuously branded as ‘Ebionism’. On this point, Islam, according to the divine plan for salvation, was among other things the authoritative new confirmation of the creedal truths preserved in Nazarene Christianity but lost to the Greater Church. (241)
The syncretism which started in Paul’s doctrine (‘I have become all things to all men’) and grew on the soil of irrationality (credo quia absurdum), reached its full elaboration in the time of the Church Fathers and became perpetuated in the hybrid dogma of Nicaea, in which—as pointed out by the Jewish thinker Salomon Ludwig Steinheim— ‘with an amazing intellectual force but also with an almost terrifying stubbornness’, components of Jewish and pagan doctrine ‘were shaken together and combined to form a homogeneous mixture’. (242) The whole of Church history thereafter was, as Steinheim rightly observes, dependent on and decided by the conflict, continuing beneath the unity formula, between elements of the revelation and of paganism. ‘The Church took Paul as its spiritual guide, thereby becoming involved down the centuries in conflicts and schisms, enmity, persecution and bloodshed, as Christians wrestled with the implications and interpretation of Pauline doctrines.’ (243)
The centerpiece then, of Christian creedal doctrine, that of Redemption, is something of which—in the judgment of the theologian E. Grimm (244) --- Jesus himself knew nothing; and it goes back to Paul. This is even admitted by some Catholics: ‘Christianity today mostly means Paul.’ (245) And Wilhelm Nestle stated—as noted also by Sabet—‘Christianity is the religion founded by Paul who replaces the Gospel of Jesus by a gospel about Jesus.’ (246) So also Schonfield: ‘Paul produced an amalgamation of ideas which, however unintentionally, did give rise to a new religion.’ (247)
Jesus conferred authority on Peter, (248) Paul usurped it. The so-called ‘throne of Peter’ is in fact the throne of Paul. (249) And except for the fact that the Papacy claims Matthew 16:18 for itself, what part does the Prince of the Apostles play in Christianity today? He is the janitor at the gates of Heaven, the subject of many jokes. No one makes jokes about Paul! And who is Jesus?— the babe in the cradle and the Redeemer on the Cross! These two images, which come to the Christian’s mind when he thinks of Jesus, show the subordinate part played for him by Jesus’s preaching, teaching and ethics. Another sign demonstrating the deviation of the Christian religion from its Palestinian origins is that Rome, the metropolis of the pagan world at the time, became the seat of the Church; the languages of the pagans, Greek and Latin became the languages of the Church; pagan Roman law became the basis of Church law.
The ‘message of Jesus’ with which conservative theologians confront the Baha’is is not the teaching of Jesus but the message of Paul, ‘the preaching of the Cross’, as he called his Gospel. (250) And if they say that the basic questions of our existence are only grasped in their true depth in ‘the preaching of the Cross’, I reply with Steinbeim who said: ‘It may be a good philosophical idea, a thoughtful myth, a comfortable emotional religion—that I can accept. Only don’t let it be called the teaching and revelation of Christ, but a decline from it—its opposite, in fact. It leads to the gods . . . of Olympus, not to Him who revealed Himself to Moses at Sinai, of whom Christ and the apostles taught the pagans’, (251) nor—I will complete the response—to Him Who speaks in the Quran and Who is proclaimed by Baha’u’llah.
Some may object that I have picked a few results which suit my purpose from the vast amount of recent theological research and have arbitrarily played these cards against the orthodox doctrine. This objection would be a misunderstanding of the situation. The starting-point for my discussion is not a scientific thesis, however formed, but my conviction and faith: if, as Baha’u’llah teaches, all the revealed religions are of divine origin and there is therefore an essential unity between the religions, if the purpose of revelation has always been the same, the education of the human race, (252) then there can be no essential contradictions between the religions on questions about the purpose of their revelations. For God does not contradict Himself.
If religions contradict each other on questions independent of the turn of events on earth and the development of man and society, the contradictions go back to the individual centrifugal developments which all religions have been through, to the erosions of history. The criterion of judgment will always be the most recent revelation of God. For the purification of the past religions is one reason, among others, why whenever it has pleased God, ‘the gates of mercy have been opened’ ‘till the end which has no end’, God Himself reforms, by speaking again to mankind at the end of a cycle of revelation. That is why the revelation of Baha’u’llah is at the same time a judgment on the old religions. It is, as he testifies, ‘the right path’ whereby ‘truth shall be distinguished from error and the wisdom of every command shall be tested’. (253) It separates the thorns and thistles from the grain, the true and authentic from the untrue and false, the pure divine teaching from the human additions and misunderstandings: ‘Verily, the day of ingathering is come, and all things have been separated from each other. He hath stored away that which He chose in the vessels of justice, and cast into fire that which befitteth it.’ (254)
Measured by the standard of Baha’u’llah revelation, the Pauline doctrine of Justification, the doctrine of Original Sin, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the sacramentalisation of the Christian religion, the whole Church plan of salvation — which not only contradicts the Jewish understanding of God (255) but was also strongly repudiated by the revelation of God which succeeded Christianity (256) — these are a deformation of Jesus’s teaching. Some critical theological scholars have confirmed that these deformations in Christianity started very early, in fact with Paul, and that the arch-apostle, without whom Marcion would not have been possible, was the arch-heretic in Christianity—as Tertullian very rightly saw. (257) Years ago, when I became acquainted with the founder of the Christian religion in the faith of the original community through H. J. Schoep’s Theologie und Geschichte des Judenchristentums, (258) the standard work on the subject, I was deeply impressed. Here Jesus was not the only-begotten Son of God come down from Heaven, crucified and resurrected, nor the unique Saviour, but the messenger of God to whom the Quran testifies and who is glorified by Baha’u’llah. (259)
241. On the whole subject, see also Adolf von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. I, p. 331 and vol. II, p. 534 ff.; A. Schlatter, Die Entwicklung des judischen Christentums zum Islam, p. 251 ff.; Schoeps, Theologie and Geschichte des Judenchristentums, pp. 71 and 304 ff.; Leonhard Goppelt, Christentum und Judentum im ersten und zweiten Jahrhundert, p. 175. It becomes very clear in this context how heavily Christian theology is based on Paul, not Jesus. Schlatter writes: ‘We tried to understand what the Christianity was like from which Islam grew. What kind of Christianity is superior to Islam and can therefore help it? It must know Paul. With a Christianity based on the formula ‘Not Paul but Jesus, not the Epistle to the Romans but the Sermon on the Mount’, we cannot help Islam. Legalism is not overcome by legalism. The God of might is eclipsed only by the God of Mercy, and the justice which corrupts us [!] is healed only by the justice of Faith. If Christianity knows Paul, then it partakes of the gift of Jesus redeemed from the weakness of mere dependence on laws . . . Thus it has also risen above the opposition between the historical and the eternal Christ, and so the historical Christ sinks into the past and into oblivion . . .’ (op. cit., p. 236)
242. Die Offenbarung nach dem Lehrbegriff der Synagogue, vol. III, p. 243.
243. Schonfield, op. cit., p. 89.
244. Die Ethik Jesu, p. 180.
245. Go. Ricciotti, Paulus, p. 590.
246. Krisis des Christentums, p. 89.
247. Those Incredible Christians, p. 93.
248. Peter’s station is also confirmed by Bahaullah: God caused ‘the mysteries of wisdom and of utterance to flow out of his mouth’ (Quoted by Shoghi Effendi. The Promised Day is Come, p. 114).
249. ‘The church at Rome built on Pauline foundation’ (Schonfield, op. cit., p. 144).
250. I Corinthians 1:18; 2:2.
251. op. cit., vol II, p. xii ff.
252. ‘The purpose of the one true God in manifesting Himself is to summon all mankind to truthfulness and sincerity, to piety and trustworthiness, to resignation and submissiveness to the Will of God, to forbearance and kindliness, to uprightness and wisdom’ (Gleanings, CXXXVII).
253. Baha’u’llah, Tablet of Ahmad.
254. Baha’u’llah, Tablet to Pope Pius IX, The Proclamation of Baha’u’llah, p. 86. See also Matthew 13:24-9, 40-43.
255. It is understandable that the Jews could never accept Christianity in the completely different from produced by Paul, the form that triumphed in the greater Church.
256. See Qur’an 112; 19:88-94; 2:116; 5:72 et seq.; 4:171-2; 5:116; 3:58.
257. Quoted by Deschner, pp. 116 and 629.
258. Theology and History of Jewish Christianity.
259. ‘Know thou that when the Son of Man yielded up His breath to God, the whole creation wept with a great weeping. By sacrificing Himself, however, a fresh capacity was infused into all created things’ (Quoted by Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day is Come, p. 114). The idea of sacrifice confronts us in every religion, for every messenger of God has ‘offered up His life as a ransom for the redemption of the world’ (Gleanings, CXLVI).
