galatians-a-d-48

If These Seven Letters Were All We Had: The Christian Faith Would Still Stand

/ Jason Conrad / Leave a comment

Imagine that every Gospel manuscript disappeared. Acts was lost. The disputed letters of Paul vanished. Hebrews, James, Peter, John, Jude, and Revelation were gone. No creed, council, catechism, or theological work survived.

Imagine even that the complete manuscripts of Israel’s Scriptures were no longer available to us.

Only seven documents remained:

  • Galatians
  • First Thessalonians
  • First Corinthians
  • Second Corinthians
  • Romans
  • Philippians
  • Philemon

What would we lose?

We would lose the continuous story of Jesus’ life. We would no longer have his parables, miracles, exorcisms, birth stories, baptism, temptation, Sermon on the Mount, journey through Galilee, trial before Pilate, or the accounts of women discovering the empty tomb.

We would lose an enormous amount of history, teaching, poetry, prophecy, and spiritual wisdom.

But we would not lose Christianity.

Within these seven letters, we would still possess enough to identify the God Christians worship, the Jesus they confess, the gospel they proclaim, the salvation they receive, the Spirit who transforms them, the practices that gather them, the moral life expected of them, and the future for which they hope.

We would still know how to become Christian, how to worship as Christians, how to live as Christians, how to form Christian communities, and how to die with Christian hope.

The seven letters do not contain everything Christians can know. They contain everything necessary to identify Christianity’s essential structure.

They are not the whole library, but the faith remains alive within them.

Sufficient Does Not Mean Exhaustive

When I say that the seven letters contain all the Christianity we need, I do not mean that every question has been answered.

Paul does not provide a continuous biography of Jesus. He does not give us a complete system of church government. He does not explain every detail of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, heaven, hell, marriage, leadership, spiritual gifts, or the relationship between divine grace and human freedom.

He does not supply the later language of the Nicene Creed or the theological definitions produced at Chalcedon. He does not address many moral questions created by modern medicine, technology, economics, or warfare.

The seven letters are also occasional correspondence. Paul is writing to communities he has already taught. He answers questions, settles disputes, corrects behavior, and reminds people of things they previously received.

He says to the Corinthians:

“I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly to the traditions just as I delivered them to you.”

First Corinthians 11:2

The letters therefore assume earlier teaching and relationships that are not fully preserved.

Nevertheless, enough remains to reconstruct the load-bearing structure of the faith. A house contains more than its foundation and supporting walls, but without those structures it ceases to be a house. The seven letters preserve the parts without which Christianity would cease to be Christianity.

We Would Know the One God Christians Worship

The seven letters do not introduce a new deity called “the Christian God.”

Paul proclaims the God of Israel as the one God of Jews and Gentiles, the Creator of all things, the Judge of humanity, and the Father who raised Jesus from the dead.

Paul writes:

“Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not also the God of Gentiles? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one.”

Romans 3:29-30

He tells the Corinthians:

“We know that an idol is nothing in the world and that there is no God except one. Even if there are so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords,’ for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things come and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we exist.”

First Corinthians 8:4-6

From the seven letters alone, we would know that Christians are not worshiping one regional deity among many. They confess one Creator from whom everything comes and one Lord through whom everything exists.

We would know that this God judges evil, keeps his promises, shows mercy, raises the dead, adopts people as his children, gives his Spirit, and intends to liberate creation from death.

Christianity would still begin with the God of Abraham, the God of Israel, and the Creator of the world.

We Would Know Who Jesus Was

The seven letters do not give us a biography of Jesus, but they do not present him as an undefined heavenly spirit.

Paul identifies Jesus as a real Jewish human being.

“God’s gospel concerns his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was appointed Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Romans 1:3-4

Paul also writes:

“When the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law so that we might receive adoption.”

Galatians 4:4-5

From these passages, we would know that Jesus was born as a human being, born Jewish, born under the law, and descended from David. We would know that he had a brother named James whom Paul personally met:

“I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother.”

Galatians 1:19

We would know that Jesus had followers during his life, that some of those followers traveled with believing wives, and that leaders named Cephas, James, and John were known within the earliest movement.

Paul also preserves teachings attributed directly to Jesus. When discussing divorce, he distinguishes the Lord’s command from his own pastoral judgment:

“To the married I give this command, not I but the Lord: a wife should not separate from her husband. If she does separate, she should remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband, and a husband should not divorce his wife.”

First Corinthians 7:10-11

Paul also knows that Jesus taught that those who proclaim the gospel may receive support:

“In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.”

First Corinthians 9:14

The seven letters give us only fragments of Jesus’ earthly teaching. Yet those fragments are enough to show that Paul did not know Jesus merely as an idea produced by his own imagination.

We Would Know About Jesus’ Final Meal

Even without the Gospels, we would know that Jesus gathered his followers for a meal on the night he was betrayed.

Paul reminds the Corinthians of a tradition he had already delivered to them:

“I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you: on the night when the Lord Jesus was betrayed, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper, he took the cup and said, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me.’ Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

First Corinthians 11:23-26

This passage gives us a remembered event, words attributed to Jesus, an interpretation of his approaching death, and a practice repeated by Christian communities.

We would know that Jesus anticipated his death, connected it with a covenant, commanded his followers to remember him through bread and wine, and expected the practice to continue until his return.

Without a Gospel, Christians would still possess the Lord’s Supper.

We Would Know the Central Gospel

The heart of Christianity would remain unmistakable.

Paul tells the Corinthians that the message he delivered was not something he had recently invented. He had received it and passed it on:

“I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. After that he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared also to me.”

First Corinthians 15:3-8

From this one passage, we would know that:

  • Jesus died.
  • His death was interpreted as being for sins.
  • He was buried.
  • God raised him.
  • His resurrection fulfilled Israel’s Scriptures.
  • He appeared to Cephas.
  • He appeared to the Twelve.
  • He appeared to a large gathering.
  • He appeared to James.
  • He appeared to the apostles.
  • Paul claimed that Jesus appeared to him personally.
  • This proclamation existed before Paul delivered it to Corinth.

We would not possess the Gospel stories about the women discovering the empty tomb. Paul does not narrate that event. We would still possess burial, resurrection, named appearances, and Paul’s firsthand claim that he saw the risen Jesus.

We would also know that the resurrection was not understood as the survival of Jesus’ memory or the continued existence of his disembodied spirit. Paul argues for the transformation and resurrection of the body:

“Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have died. Since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a human being. As all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”

First Corinthians 15:20-22

Paul’s gospel is not simply that Jesus continued to exist somewhere after death. It is that God defeated death by raising him and that his resurrection began what God intends to do for those who belong to him.

Without the Gospels, the Christian gospel would remain.

We Would Know That Jesus Is Lord

The seven letters do more than describe Jesus as a dead teacher whom God restored to life. They place him at the center of Christian worship.

Paul addresses Christians as people who call upon Jesus:

“To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be saints, together with everyone everywhere who calls upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

First Corinthians 1:2

Calling upon the Lord was biblical language for worshiping and seeking help from God. Paul now describes Christians everywhere as people who call upon Jesus.

Philippians preserves an even more elevated confession:

“Though he existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to use for his own advantage. Instead, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant and becoming human. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted him and gave him the name above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Philippians 2:6-11

Christians confess Jesus as Lord, pray in his name, belong to him, imitate him, gather around his table, and await his return.

The seven letters do not give us the later technical language of one divine essence and three persons. They do give us the reality that later Christians attempted to describe with that language: the one God is Father, Jesus is confessed as Lord, and the Holy Spirit is experienced as God’s active presence within his people.

We Would Know Why Humanity Needs Salvation

The seven letters describe humanity as trapped beneath sin, idolatry, injustice, corruption, and death.

Paul refuses to divide the world into innocent insiders and guilty outsiders:

“There is no distinction, because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

Romans 3:22-24

The human problem is not merely ignorance. People know enough about goodness to condemn evil in others while practicing evil themselves. They serve created things rather than the Creator. Sin distorts desire, damages relationships, enslaves the will, and ends in death.

Christianity would therefore remain more than a program for self-improvement.

Humanity cannot educate, discipline, legislate, or argue itself out of death. God must act.

We Would Know How God Saves

Paul describes salvation through several images.

He speaks of justification, in which God places sinners in the right through grace. He speaks of redemption, in which people are liberated from slavery. He speaks of reconciliation, in which enemies are restored to God. He speaks of adoption, in which people become God’s children. He speaks of participation in Christ, in which believers share in his death and resurrection.

Paul writes:

“While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Rarely will someone die for a righteous person, though perhaps someone might dare to die for a good person. But God demonstrates his love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Romans 5:6-8

He tells the Corinthians:

“If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. The old has passed away, and the new has come. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.”

Second Corinthians 5:17-19

Paul does not reduce Christ’s work to a single theory. Christ dies for sinners, bears the curse, reconciles enemies, defeats death, inaugurates new creation, and joins believers to himself.

Salvation is received through faith rather than earned as human achievement:

“We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. We have believed in Christ Jesus so that we might be justified through faith in Christ and not by works of the law.”

Galatians 2:16

Yet Paul never treats faith as permission to remain unchanged:

“In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision accomplishes anything. What matters is faith working through love.”

Galatians 5:6

Without Romans, Galatians, and Second Corinthians, later Christians would debate salvation differently. With these letters, Christianity’s essential announcement remains clear: salvation is God’s gift in Christ, received through faith, creating a new life expressed through love.

We Would Know How Someone Enters Christ

The seven letters assume that people respond to the gospel through faith, confession, repentance, reception of the Spirit, and baptism.

Paul writes:

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Romans 10:9

He describes baptism as participation in Christ’s death and resurrection:

“Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried with him through baptism into death so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we also might walk in newness of life.”

Romans 6:3-4

He tells the Galatians:

“All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, because you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Galatians 3:27-28

The seven do not settle every later debate about baptism. They do not tell us the age of every recipient, the precise amount of water used, or how baptism relates chronologically to every other aspect of conversion.

They establish something more basic: baptism belonged to Christianity from its earliest secure documents and signified entrance into Christ, participation in his death and resurrection, and incorporation into a new community.

We Would Know the Holy Spirit

Christianity in the seven letters is not merely a decision to agree with certain doctrines.

God gives the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit pours God’s love into human hearts, assures believers that they are God’s children, intercedes in their weakness, distributes gifts, produces holiness, and transforms people into the image of Christ.

Paul writes:

“Those who are led by the Spirit of God are God’s children. You did not receive a spirit of slavery leading back into fear. You received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are God’s children.”

Romans 8:14-16

The Spirit also produces a recognizable moral life:

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

Galatians 5:22-23

The Father, Son, and Spirit appear together in the life and worship of the community:

“There are different gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different forms of service, but the same Lord. There are different activities, but the same God who works all of them in everyone.”

First Corinthians 12:4-6

Without later creeds, Christians would still know the Father who sends, the Lord Jesus who saves, and the Spirit who indwells and transforms.

We Would Know What the Church Is

The church in Paul’s seven letters is not primarily a building, denomination, government, or cultural institution.

It is an assembly of people called by God, joined to Christ, and made into one body by the Spirit.

“Just as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also is Christ. In one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and we were all given one Spirit to drink.”

First Corinthians 12:12-13

These communities practice baptism and the Lord’s Supper. They pray, sing, prophesy, teach, give, discern, appoint leaders, correct destructive behavior, reconcile offenders, care for the poor, and send workers into new places.

Paul mentions apostles, prophets, teachers, overseers, deacons, and people who labor among the churches. He does not provide a single complete system of church government.

The seven establish the church’s identity more clearly than its later institutional structure. The church is the body of Christ, the temple of God’s Spirit, and a family in which former divisions are being overcome.

Even Philemon, the shortest of the seven, shows how the gospel enters an unequal Roman household. Paul asks Philemon to receive Onesimus:

“No longer as a slave, but more than a slave, as a beloved brother. He is especially dear to me, but even more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.”

Philemon 16

Paul does not issue a complete political program for abolishing Roman slavery. He does something that begins pressing against the institution from within: he places enslaved and free people inside the same family and requires them to recognize one another as brothers.

We Would Know How Christians Are Called to Live

The moral life of the seven letters is not a miscellaneous collection of rules. It is a life reshaped around the cross of Christ and the love of God.

Paul teaches Christians to reject sexual exploitation, greed, idolatry, drunkenness, dishonesty, envy, rage, revenge, and the use of freedom to harm others.

He commands them to forgive, work honestly, remain faithful, support the weak, welcome strangers, share with the poor, honor conscience, bear burdens, pursue peace, and love enemies.

Paul writes:

“Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, but leave room for God’s judgment. If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good.”

Romans 12:14-21

He summarizes Christian morality through love:

“Owe no one anything except to love one another, because the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not covet,’ and any other commandment are summed up in this statement: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law.”

Romans 13:8-10

Paul’s churches did not live this perfectly. First Corinthians proves how chaotic an early Christian community could become. The existence of correction demonstrates that conversion did not instantly remove selfishness, rivalry, lust, pride, or greed.

But the direction of the Christian life remains clear. Grace does not merely forgive the old life. The Spirit begins creating a new one.

We Would Know That Christians Must Care for the Poor

Concern for the poor is not an optional social interest added to Christianity in modern times.

When Paul describes his agreement with James, Cephas, and John concerning his Gentile mission, he remembers one particular request:

“They asked only that we remember the poor, which was the very thing I was eager to do.”

Galatians 2:10

Paul then spends substantial portions of First and Second Corinthians organizing relief for impoverished believers in Jerusalem.

He does not command identical possessions or forced equality. He does insist that abundance carries responsibility:

“I do not mean that others should have relief while you are burdened, but that there should be fairness. At the present time, your abundance should supply their need, so that their abundance may someday supply your need. In this way there will be fairness.”

Second Corinthians 8:13-14

A Christianity reconstructed from the seven letters could never be reduced to private belief, personal prosperity, or escape to heaven.

It would be a community in which faith works through love and resources move toward people who are suffering.

We Would Know How Christians Face Suffering

The seven letters do not give a philosophical explanation for every instance of suffering.

They do not tell us why one child becomes sick, why one family experiences tragedy, or why God allows one prayer to appear unanswered. Paul never claims that Christians will solve every mystery before they can trust Christ.

Instead, he places suffering beneath the cross and resurrection.

“We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces tested character, and tested character produces hope. This hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

Romans 5:3-5

Paul does not speak as someone protected from pain. He describes beatings, imprisonment, hunger, rejection, anxiety, weakness, and the possibility of death.

He also refuses to let suffering become the final interpreter of reality:

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry the death of Jesus in our body so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”

Second Corinthians 4:8-10

Christianity does not promise that every question will be answered. It announces that suffering and death do not have the final word because God raised Jesus.

We Would Know the Christian Hope

The seven letters end the Christian story not with souls escaping creation but with Christ returning, the dead being raised, and creation being liberated.

Paul comforts grieving believers in Thessalonica:

“We do not want you to be uninformed about those who have died, so that you do not grieve like others who have no hope. Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, in the same way God will bring with Jesus those who have died in him.”

First Thessalonians 4:13-14

He tells the Romans that creation itself awaits freedom:

“Creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself will be liberated from its slavery to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of God’s children.”

Romans 8:20-21

He tells the Corinthians:

“The trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. This perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. Then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’”

First Corinthians 15:52-54

Without Revelation, Christians would still expect Christ’s return, resurrection of the dead, judgment, transformation, victory over death, and liberation of creation.

The map would contain fewer details, but the destination would remain.

We Would Still Have to Read Israel’s Story

Saying that the seven letters contain Christianity’s essential structure does not mean that Christianity can be severed from the Old Testament.

Paul’s gospel is rooted in Israel’s Scriptures.

He says that the gospel was:

“Promised beforehand through God’s prophets in the Holy Scriptures.”

Romans 1:2

He tells the Romans:

“Whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

Romans 15:4

Paul builds his arguments around Adam, Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Moses, the Exodus, the law, the prophets, Israel’s worship, and God’s promises.

Even the resurrection proclamation says that Christ died and was raised “according to the Scriptures.”

If complete Old Testament manuscripts disappeared, the seven letters would still carry large portions of Israel’s story within them. We would know far less, but we would know that Christianity belongs to that story and cannot be understood as worship of a different God.

The seven are therefore sufficient as a historical anchor, but they do not authorize Christians to despise the Scriptures that formed Paul’s world.

We do not need to solve every historical problem in the Old Testament before considering whether God raised Jesus. But if we accept Paul’s gospel, we inherit his conviction that the God who raised Jesus is the God of Israel.

The Seven Give Us a Basis for Christian Unity

Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians disagree about authority, church government, sacraments, saints, Mary, predestination, justification, ministry, tradition, and the interpretation of Scripture.

Those disagreements are not imaginary, and not every difference is unimportant.

Yet before later councils, denominational systems, and theological controversies, the seven letters already give us a recognizable Christian faith:

  • One Creator and God of Jews and Gentiles
  • Jesus Christ, God’s Son and our Lord
  • His real humanity and Jewish identity
  • His death for sins
  • His burial and resurrection
  • His appearances to named witnesses
  • His exaltation and future return
  • Salvation by God’s grace received through faith
  • Baptism into Christ
  • The Lord’s Supper
  • The gift of the Holy Spirit
  • The church as Christ’s body
  • A life of holiness, love, generosity, and care for the poor
  • Resurrection of the dead
  • Final judgment
  • God’s victory over death

This is not a vague lowest common denominator. Paul draws real boundaries. He rejects another gospel, idolatry, exploitation, lovelessness, and denial of the resurrection.

“If Christ has not been raised, your faith is empty and you are still in your sins.”

First Corinthians 15:17

At the same time, Paul refuses to let secondary disputes destroy fellowship.

“Welcome the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions.”

Romans 14:1

He concludes:

“Welcome one another, just as Christ welcomed you, for the glory of God.”

Romans 15:7

The seven give the churches a floor beneath their differences. They tell us what must remain central and how Christians should treat one another when every question has not been settled.

Where these letters speak clearly, Christians should obey. Where they leave questions open, Christians should resist turning later conclusions into weapons against everyone who shares the apostolic center.

The traditions of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christianity may preserve wisdom beyond what these seven letters state explicitly. But none of those traditions should hide the faith that existed before their divisions.

Paul’s question still confronts us:

“Has Christ been divided?”

First Corinthians 1:13

If Christ has not been divided, his people should not behave as though denominational identity is more fundamental than belonging to him.

What This Means for the Skeptic

The skeptic may reject the resurrection. The skeptic may believe Paul sincerely experienced something but misunderstood its cause. The skeptic may regard the gospel as an extraordinary religious interpretation of grief, visions, or psychological transformation.

But the skeptic cannot reasonably dismiss Christianity as a faith that took centuries to acquire its central beliefs.

By the 50s of the first century, and by approximately A.D. 48 if the early dating of Galatians is correct, the Christian movement already possessed its defining structure.

Christians were worshiping Israel’s God, confessing Jesus as Lord, proclaiming his crucifixion and resurrection, baptizing converts, celebrating the Lord’s Supper, claiming the Holy Spirit, caring for the poor, building communities across ethnic lines, and awaiting Christ’s return.

The divinity of Christ was not first invented at Nicaea. The resurrection was not first narrated by Christians living centuries after Jesus. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper were not medieval additions. Concern for the poor was not a modern political corruption of an originally private faith.

All of these are already present within Christianity’s earliest secure documents.

The skeptic therefore has something definite to evaluate. Christianity cannot be dismissed merely by attacking a later doctrine or pointing to a Gospel contradiction.

The central question remains whether God raised Jesus from the dead.

What This Means for the Christian Who Is Struggling

A Christian may lose confidence in a particular theory of biblical inspiration without losing Christ.

A Christian may discover tensions between the Gospels, questions about authorship, difficulties in the Old Testament, corruption in church history, or weaknesses in a denominational tradition.

Those discoveries can feel like walls collapsing. Sometimes they are only decorations falling away from a foundation that remains firm.

The seven letters provide a place to begin rebuilding.

The struggling Christian can still confess that God is one, Jesus is Lord, Christ died and was raised, salvation is grace, the Spirit is present, love is required, the poor must be remembered, the church is one body, and death will be defeated.

That is not an inferior form of Christianity. It is the apostolic center from which every fuller form of Christianity must grow.

Faith may undergo several conversions during a lifetime. A person may first receive Christianity from family, then experience Christ personally, then face questions that inherited answers can no longer carry.

The next conversion does not require abandoning the faith. It may require returning to its deepest center and discovering why it can still be trusted.

Conclusion: The Faith Remains

If the seven undisputed letters were all we had, we would lose much that Christians rightly treasure.

We would lose the faces, places, parables, and narrative detail supplied by the Gospels. We would lose the breadth of Israel’s Scriptures. We would lose the perspectives of other apostolic voices and the wisdom accumulated through centuries of Christian reflection.

But the Christian faith would remain.

We would still know whom we worship, what God has done in Christ, how salvation is received, how the church is formed, how Christians are called to live, and what hope waits beyond death.

The seven letters preserve Christianity in seed form. A seed is not the whole tree, but the life of the tree is already present within it.

The next question is whether the event at the center of that faith actually happened.

Paul says Jesus appeared to Cephas, James, the apostles, more than five hundred people, and finally to Paul himself. Paul later knew Cephas and James personally.

The Christian believes those experiences were encounters with the risen Jesus. The skeptic believes that at least some of them were sincere experiences produced by another cause.

The disagreement is no longer whether there is an early Christian faith to examine.

The disagreement is whether Jesus was really there.

The Common Ground: Why Christians and Skeptics Should Begin with Paul’s Seven Letters

/ Jason Conrad / Leave a comment

Imagine a Christian and a skeptic sitting down at the same table to discuss whether Jesus rose from the dead.

The Christian places the Bible on the table and says, “This is the Word of God.”

The skeptic immediately responds, “I do not believe that.”

The discussion has ended before the evidence has even been examined. The Christian is asking the skeptic to accept the authority of an entire collection of writings before considering the central event upon which that authority ultimately depends.

We do not need to begin that way.

The Christian and the skeptic do not have to agree about biblical inspiration, inerrancy, Gospel authorship, church tradition, or the Old Testament before beginning an investigation of the resurrection. There is a smaller collection of documents that almost every serious reconstruction of early Christianity must confront.

These are the seven letters of Paul commonly called “undisputed”:

  • Galatians
  • First Thessalonians
  • First Corinthians
  • Second Corinthians
  • Romans
  • Philippians
  • Philemon

The Christian believes these letters belong within inspired Scripture. The skeptic does not have to accept that conclusion. The skeptic only needs to examine whether these are genuine first-century letters associated with Paul and his missionary communities.

That gives us a place to begin together.

Common ground does not mean that we have reached a common conclusion. It means that we have agreed upon the evidence that any conclusion must explain.

Why These Seven Letters?

The New Testament contains thirteen letters bearing Paul’s name. Some scholars accept all thirteen as substantially Pauline. Others question several of them.

The seven undisputed letters are not necessarily the only letters Paul wrote. They are the letters accepted as authentically Pauline across the broadest range of historical scholarship.

Their approximate dates are:

  • Galatians, approximately A.D. 48
  • First Thessalonians, approximately A.D. 50-51
  • First Corinthians, approximately A.D. 53-55
  • Second Corinthians, approximately A.D. 55-56
  • Romans, approximately A.D. 56-57
  • Philippians, sometime during Paul’s imprisonment, probably in the 50s or early 60s
  • Philemon, also written during an imprisonment, probably in the 50s or early 60s

This series follows an early South Galatian chronology and dates Galatians to approximately A.D. 48. Many scholars place Galatians in the middle of the 50s. That disagreement affects the precise chronology, but not the larger conclusion. Galatians was written during Paul’s active missionary life and within the first generation after the death of Jesus.

Calling these letters “undisputed” does not mean that no one has ever challenged them. Some critics have denied that Paul wrote any of them. It also does not mean that every verse or the present arrangement of every letter is beyond question.

“Undisputed” means that these seven have become the durable critical foundation for reconstructing the historical Paul and the earliest Christian movement.

They are not seven independent witnesses. They come from the same broad Pauline missionary network, and several name co-senders such as Timothy, Silvanus, and Sosthenes. Romans even names Tertius as the person who physically wrote down the letter.

Nevertheless, they provide several different pieces of correspondence addressed to different communities, during different circumstances, over a period of years. Together they allow us to hear Paul’s voice, observe his relationships, follow developing conflicts, and identify traditions that existed before he wrote them down.

These Letters Were Not Protected from Criticism

The seven letters are not important because the church placed them in a glass case where historians were forbidden to touch them. They have spent more than a century and a half under sustained cross-examination.

In 1845, Ferdinand Christian Baur reduced the secure Pauline collection to four letters:

  • Galatians
  • First Corinthians
  • Second Corinthians
  • Romans

Baur called these the four principal letters because he believed they displayed Paul’s personality and historical circumstances so powerfully that their authenticity could not reasonably be denied.

He wrote:

“There has never been the slightest suspicion of inauthenticity cast upon these four letters. They bear the character of Pauline originality so unmistakably that there is no conceivable ground for raising critical doubts about them.”

Ferdinand Christian Baur, Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, vol. 1, pp. 245-246, 1845

Baur was not trying to defend the traditional New Testament. He rejected or questioned most of the letters bearing Paul’s name. He even believed portions of Romans were added later.

Other critics, however, concluded that Baur had cut too deeply. By 1862, Adolf Hilgenfeld explicitly recognized the same seven-letter collection commonly accepted today:

“Besides those four unabridged principal letters, First Thessalonians and the letters to the Philippians and Philemon also have a well-founded claim to recognition as genuine.”

Adolf Hilgenfeld, “The Two Letters to the Thessalonians, According to Their Content and Origin,” Journal for Academic Theology 5, p. 226, 1862

The seven were therefore not created by church authorities trying to protect the Bible. They emerged as critics examined individual letters and concluded that the evidence justified expanding Baur’s four-letter core.

Then the criticism became even more radical.

Bruno Bauer, who should not be confused with Ferdinand Christian Baur, attempted to eliminate every authentic Pauline letter. Later critics known as the Dutch Radicals argued that the letters were second-century literary creations rather than genuine correspondence from Paul.

Willem Christiaan van Manen summarized their conclusion:

“With respect to the canonical Pauline Epistles, the later criticism under consideration has learned to recognise that they are none of them by Paul; neither fourteen, nor thirteen, nor nine or ten, nor seven or eight, nor yet even the four so long ‘universally’ regarded as unassailable.”

Willem Christiaan van Manen, “Paul,” Encyclopaedia Biblica, vol. 3, col. 3627, 1902

The movement of the debate is important.

Church tradition handed scholars thirteen letters bearing Paul’s name. Baur reduced the secure foundation to four. Other critics restored three, producing the seven. Radical critics then tried to reduce the collection to zero.

The attempt to reach zero did not persuade the wider field.

This does not prove the seven authentic by majority vote. It demonstrates that they are not a maximal Christian claim protected from investigation. They are the minimum historical collection that remained after prolonged criticism.

What Have Critics Tried to Explain Away?

The most serious challenges have generally taken four forms.

First, some critics have argued that the letters were created during the second century, perhaps around the time of Marcion.

Second, some have treated them as literary compositions written in Paul’s name rather than real correspondence.

Third, scholars have identified apparent contradictions, abrupt transitions, and possible later additions within the letters.

Fourth, statistical and computer analysis has been used to argue that the writing styles belong to different authors.

Each challenge has contributed something valuable. The letters are more complicated than an older view of Paul sitting alone and writing thirteen finished theological essays might suggest.

But exposing complexity is not the same as disproving authorship.

A successful alternative theory must do more than show that forgery, editing, or later collection was possible. It must explain the surviving evidence better than the conclusion that genuine correspondence from Paul lies behind these letters.

Possibility alone is not an explanation.

The Letters Appear Too Early to Be Second-Century Creations

The claim that Paul’s letters originated in the middle of the second century faces an early piece of evidence from Rome.

First Clement was written from the church of Rome to the church of Corinth. It is commonly dated around A.D. 95, although its exact date remains debated.

The author tells the Corinthians:

“Take up the letter of the blessed apostle Paul. What did he first write to you at the beginning of the gospel? Under the Spirit’s guidance, he wrote to you about himself, Cephas, and Apollos, because even then you had formed factions.”

First Clement 47.1-3, commonly dated c. A.D. 95

The writer is not merely using language that resembles Paul. He explicitly directs the Corinthians to consult an earlier letter from Paul and identifies the controversy recorded in First Corinthians:

“Each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ ‘I belong to Apollos,’ ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’”

First Corinthians 1:12

If the common dating of First Clement is approximately correct, First Corinthians already existed near the end of the first century. It was associated with Paul, known in Rome, and expected to remain available in Corinth.

During the early second century, Polycarp wrote to Christians in Philippi:

“Neither I nor anyone like me can match the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul. When he was among you, in the presence of the people then living, he accurately and firmly taught the word of truth. When he was absent, he wrote letters to you. If you study them carefully, you will be able to build yourselves up in the faith given to you.”

Polycarp, Letter to the Philippians 3.2, early second century

Polycarp remembers Paul as a real teacher who had been physically present in Philippi. He also knows written communications associated with Paul. His use of the plural “letters” may indicate that more than one communication eventually contributed to the Philippian material we possess.

By approximately A.D. 140, Marcion possessed a collection of ten Pauline letters. That collection included all seven letters now considered undisputed.

Marcion’s collection has not survived, so it must be reconstructed from later writers who opposed him. While discussing Philemon, Tertullian wrote:

“Only this letter benefited from being so short: it escaped Marcion’s tampering. Yet since he accepted a letter written to one individual, I wonder why he rejected the two written to Timothy and the one to Titus concerning church order.”

Tertullian, Against Marcion 5.21.1, c. A.D. 207

Tertullian’s accusation that Marcion altered the letters is polemical and should not be treated as neutral history. His testimony nevertheless shows that Marcion’s collection included even the tiny and personal Letter to Philemon.

A substantial collection of recognizable Pauline letters therefore existed by approximately A.D. 140, and individual letters are attested earlier.

A theory placing their creation shortly before Marcion must explain how the letters were produced, collected, edited into different textual forms, distributed across widely separated communities, and accepted by opposing Christian movements within a very short period.

That is not impossible. It is simply less economical than the conclusion that genuine earlier correspondence had already been collected.

The Letters Fit the World of the First Christian Generation

The seven letters consistently inhabit the disputes of the middle of the first century.

Paul argues about circumcision, Jewish and Gentile table fellowship, the law of Moses, participation in Israel’s promises, and the collection of money for poor believers in Jerusalem. He knows leaders called Cephas, James, and John. Jerusalem remains an active center of the movement.

Paul writes:

“After three years, I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him for fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother.”

Galatians 1:18-19

The letters do not pause to introduce Cephas or James. Paul assumes that his readers understand why these people matter.

They also do not naturally address the controversies that became prominent during the middle of the second century. Paul does not discuss developed Gnostic systems, the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt, or the increasingly formal debates over bishops and church offices.

Silence alone cannot prove a date. A later writer could create a story set in an earlier period. But the seven letters repeatedly fit the first-century Jewish and Gentile missionary world without needing to explain that world to their readers.

A second-century origin must therefore do more than suggest that a talented author could imitate the past. It must identify why that author constructed such an extensive network of first-generation disputes while showing comparatively little interest in the controversies of the period in which he was supposedly writing.

The Letters Behave Like Unfinished Correspondence

The seven letters are not smooth biographies of Paul or carefully ordered summaries of Christian doctrine.

They are filled with changing plans, forgotten details, unanswered questions, financial arrangements, personal disagreements, illnesses, requests, accusations, and attempts at reconciliation.

In First Corinthians, Paul begins thanking God that he baptized very few people in Corinth. Then he remembers another household and corrects himself:

“I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so no one can say that you were baptized in my name. I also baptized the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not remember whether I baptized anyone else.”

First Corinthians 1:14-16

The correction does not advance Paul’s argument. It interrupts it. Paul appears to remember another baptism while dictating and adds it before continuing.

Second Corinthians contains defenses of travel plans Paul changed. Philippians discusses the illness and return of Epaphroditus. Philemon asks for a guest room to be prepared because Paul hopes to visit. Romans sends greetings to a long list of named people.

A literary author could invent such details. Fiction has always contained realistic names and circumstances. But the more incidental details a forgery contains, the more historical relationships the theory must invent and coordinate.

The undisputed letters contain not one isolated personal touch but an entire social world extending across Corinth, Galatia, Macedonia, Jerusalem, Ephesus, and Rome.

A later literary theory must explain that world at least as well as the straightforward conclusion that the letters arose from real relationships.

Complicated Transmission Does Not Eliminate Paul

The seven letters did not necessarily reach us in precisely the form in which they first left Paul’s hands.

First Corinthians refers to an earlier letter that has not survived:

“I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.”

First Corinthians 5:9

Second Corinthians refers to another painful letter:

“I wrote to you out of great distress and anguish of heart, with many tears, not to cause you pain, but to let you know the abundant love I have for you.”

Second Corinthians 2:4

These references show that the New Testament preserves only part of Paul’s correspondence with Corinth. Some scholars believe Second Corinthians may combine portions of several authentic Pauline letters. Similar questions have been raised about Philippians and the ending of Romans.

Scholars also debate whether particular passages were added later. First Corinthians 14:34-35 and First Thessalonians 2:13-16 are among the most frequently discussed examples.

These questions matter, but they are questions about transmission and literary unity. They do not automatically prove that an anonymous second-century writer created the entire Pauline world.

If several genuine letters were later joined together, Paul has not disappeared. We may actually possess more fragments of his correspondence than the present number of canonical titles suggests.

A Christian does not need to fear this distinction. The resurrection evidence in First Corinthians 15 and Paul’s relationships with Cephas and James in Galatians do not depend upon every disputed passage being original or every canonical letter being a single untouched document.

Computer Analysis Did Not Produce a Replacement

During the 1960s, computer analysis was used to count Greek words, sentence lengths, and grammatical patterns within Paul’s letters. One famous study concluded that Paul wrote only five letters.

Later statistical studies produced substantially different results. One found no compelling stylistic reason to reject twelve of the thirteen letters bearing Paul’s name.

The problem is not that computers cannot recognize patterns. The problem is that the result changes according to which patterns are measured and which letters are assumed to be genuine at the beginning.

We possess no independently verified sample of Paul’s writing outside the collection. Paul also addressed different subjects, used co-senders, dictated to secretaries, and wrote over a period of years.

Computer analysis has helped scholars identify similarities and differences. It has not supplied an agreed mathematical solution that displaces the seven-letter foundation.

Why Scholarly Agreement Matters, and Why It Is Not Enough

Historical truth is not established by counting votes.

A letter would not become authentic merely because every professor in the world agreed about it. Scholars can inherit assumptions, follow trends, and make mistakes.

Nevertheless, a broad and durable consensus tells us where responsible investigation should begin, especially when that consensus includes scholars with sharply different religious commitments.

Bart Ehrman summarizes the present situation:

“Just about every, not quite every, New Testament scholar on the planet agrees that Paul wrote these seven.”

Bart D. Ehrman, “Pauline Forgeries: 2 Thessalonians as a Test Case,” 2014

The important words are “not quite every.” Exceptions remain, and their arguments should be heard.

But a skeptic cannot dismiss these documents merely by observing that ancient forgery existed or that later editing was possible. The skeptical explanation must account for the evidence at least as well as Pauline authorship does.

The seven are not called undisputed because they escaped criticism. They are called undisputed because, after more than 160 years of direct challenges, they remain the common working foundation.

What the Skeptic Should Concede

Accepting these letters as authentic does not require the skeptic to believe that Paul was inspired.

It does not require believing that Paul was always correct, that every experience he interpreted as divine actually came from God, or that Jesus rose from the dead.

It requires something more limited.

By the middle of the first century, there was a real missionary named Paul writing to real communities. Those communities already worshiped Jesus as Lord, practiced baptism and the Lord’s Supper, claimed experiences of the Holy Spirit, and proclaimed that God had raised Jesus from the dead.

Paul did not invent resurrection belief years later. He tells us that he had once opposed and persecuted the movement before joining it. He says he received an existing resurrection proclamation and later spent time with Cephas and James.

The skeptic may conclude that Paul and the earlier witnesses were mistaken about what they experienced. That explanation remains available.

What is no longer available is the casual claim that the resurrection arose as a legend generations later, after the original participants were gone. The seven letters place resurrection belief, named appearance traditions, and Paul’s contact with the Jerusalem leaders inside the earliest surviving Christian evidence.

The skeptic still has room to disagree. But the skeptic now has something definite to explain.

What the Christian Gains

The Christian does not need to prove everything before believing anything.

We do not need to settle the authorship of every Gospel, defend all thirteen letters attributed to Paul, solve every biblical contradiction, or establish a theory of inerrancy before examining the resurrection.

We can begin with the seven letters accepted across the widest range of scholarship.

Even if someone insisted upon retreating from seven letters to Baur’s original four, the heart of our resurrection evidence would remain untouched.

Galatians would remain. First Corinthians would remain.

Paul’s visit with Cephas and James would remain:

“I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him for fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother.”

Galatians 1:18-19

The resurrection tradition would remain:

“I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.”

First Corinthians 15:3-5

Our investigation is not balanced upon the most disputed edge of the New Testament. It begins within the hardest documentary center.

That does not remove every mystery or answer every objection. It gives the Christian somewhere solid to stand while asking the questions.

Conclusion: The Evidence We Must Explain

The seven letters are not the verdict. They are the evidence admitted for examination.

They do not prove by themselves that Jesus rose from the dead. They establish that the resurrection proclamation arose early, that Paul received it rather than invented it, and that he personally entered the network of people named within that proclamation.

The Christian and the skeptic can therefore place these seven documents on the same table.

The Christian sees them as Scripture. The skeptic may see them only as historical correspondence. Either way, both must reckon with what they contain.

The next question is not yet whether the witnesses were right.

Before we evaluate their testimony, we should ask what kind of faith already existed inside these earliest documents.

If every Gospel, every disputed letter, and every later Christian writing disappeared, how much Christianity would remain within Paul’s seven undisputed letters?

More than many Christians or skeptics realize.