This question came to me through our "Uncommon Lectionary" exercise:
Why is Paul's theology given such prominence as compared to the gospels? Shouldn't the experience of those who were with Jesus in his lifetime take prominence over Paul, who only knew Christ after the resurrection?
Which inspires me to ask a couple of questions in response: Is Paul's theology given prominence? And, do the gospels pre-date Paul?
The second question is an easier answer so I will address that first. When Eugene Wehrli taught Introduction to New Testament at Eden Seminary in 1987, he began with 1 Thessalonians, because that is, according to people smarter than me (and maybe even smarter than Dr. Wehrli), the earliest book in the New Testament. Dr. Wehrli organized the syllabus chronologically, so we began with the Pauline letters, then the gospel according to Mark, then Matthew, Luke-Acts, then I think we went to the pastoral epistles, the gospel of John, and the Revelation.
As far as we can tell, Paul died before the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. That seems to be the event that inspired the compilation of the gospels, from the oral tradition, the collective memory of Christians and perhaps from some written collections of the sayings of Jesus. Apparently, the first Christians were expecting Jesus' imminent return at the end of the age in their lifetimes. As they got older, they realized they might need to write something down if they wanted to share the stories of Jesus with future generations.
Is Paul's theology given prominence in the New Testament? Paul is pretty prominent, and his prominence is well-deserved. He built a global church (well, an empire-wide church anyway) without a written gospel to leave behind, without a leadership pipeline, without an army of administrators to aid him, without any support and with occasional hindrance from headquarters in Jerusalem. Take a look at how much of the New Testament is attributed to Paul. It's significant.
In church history, Paul's popularity waxes and wains, I suppose. Martin Luther was wild about Paul, so was John Calvin. John Wesley, not so much. Paul wrote some things I wish he hadn't, or I wish no one had bothered to preserve. He didn't set out to write the bible, remember. He had a bible already, it was the same bible that Jews read and study today in synagogues all over the world. Had he known that people would be reading out bits of his letters in worship 2000 years later, would he have written things differently? I like to think so. Who knows?
For all his faults, he gave us some pretty good material. "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol." That's good. "Now we see as in a mirror, dimly, then we will see face to face." That's brilliant. That's much more poetic than "love your neighbor as yourself," and "judge not, lest you be judged." Same thing, really, just said a different way.
So, does that answer your question?
