Portal:Bible/Featured article/January, 2008

St. Paul the Apostle, the "Apostle to the Gentiles" was, together with Saint Peter and James the Just, the most notable of Early Christian missionaries. Unlike the Twelve Apostles, there is no indication that Paul ever met Jesus prior crucifixion. According to Luke's record of the events following Jesus' crucifixion, known as the Acts of the Apostles, his conversion took place as he was travelling the road to Damascus, and experienced a vision of the resurrected Jesus. Paul asserts that he received the Gospel not from man, but by "the revelation of Jesus Christ". Fourteen epistles in the New Testament are traditionally attributed to Paul. These epistles were circulated within the Christian community. They were prominent in the first New Testament canon ever proposed (by Marcion), and they were eventually included in the orthodox Christian canon. They are believed to be the earliest-written books of the New Testament. Paul's influence on Christian thinking arguably has been more significant than any other New Testament author, demonstrably from St. Augustine of Hippo to the controversies between Gottschalk and Hincmar of Reims; between Thomism and Molinism; Martin Luther, John Calvin and the Arminians; to Jansenism and the Jesuit theologians, and even to the German church of the twentieth century through the writings of the scholar Karl Barth, whose commentary on the Letter to the Romans had a political as well as theological impact.

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