DID PAUL INVENT CHRISTIANITY?

There are two questions we must address right from the start. First, what do I mean by the phrase “Christian Theology”? Second, what do I mean when I propose that Paul ‘invented’ it?
To the first: I am talking here primarily about an activity; a vocation, a task, an exercise – not, in other words, about the content of a dogmatic syllabus. I am arguing here, as in Paul and the Faithfulness of God, that Paul engaged in, reflected upon, and did his best to inculcate in his hearers, an activity which, he believed, was vital for the health and witness of the church. What he wanted was that all followers of Jesus would, in principle, be learning to think in a new way.
This is of course at the heart of what some today refer to with the word ‘apocalyptic’. Paul believed that in Jesus, Israel’s Messiah, and supremely in his death and resurrection, Israel’s God had unveiled his new creation; that Jesus’ followers were called to be part of that new creation; and that meant thinking in a new way. The content of that thought mattered vitally, but learning to think in the new way mattered above all. And, for Paul, this vocation and activity which I loosely call ‘Christian Theology’ was loadbearing: without it, the church would not be, could not be, what it was called to be.
What was this new way? For Paul, it was a matter of learning to live within Israel’s scriptures and the overall story which they told – the story which, Paul believed, had reached its telos in Jesus and had now exploded into new life. It was a matter of learning to pray in the Jewish way now reworked around Jesus and the Spirit. It was a matter of learning to live intentionally in the new ways which, already indicated in scripture, were now made available to the large company of Jews and non-Jews alike who found themselves grasped by the gospel.