The Fundamentals - Torrey - LXXX - Chapter 15 (The apologetic value of Paul's epistles)

Required reading
The Fundamentals edited by R. A. Torrey (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read Chapter 15 (The apologetic value of Paul's epistles).

My summary
Today Stobo teaches us about the apologetic value of Paul's epistles to Rome, Galatia and Corinth.

He sums up his argument at the end of the chapter: 'The four great Pauline epistles agree, in the most important details, with the portraiture given us of Jesus in the Gospels. The conception of the person of Christ, as we have already shown, was not natural to Paul. He was a bitter opponent of Christianity. It was not the result of gradually changing convictions regarding the claims of Jesus Christ all the testimony which bears upon the subject implies the contrary. It was not due to extreme mysticism, for Paul's writings impress us as being remarkably sane and logical. No endeavor to account for it upon merely natural grounds is satisfactory, and so we must accept his own statement of the case. The truth of the Messiahship of Jesus was a matter of revelation in the experience of his conversion, and if we accept that, we must necessarily accept all that it involves. The Gospels and Epistles do not contradict, but only supplement this protraiture. They add lines of beauty to the rugged outline painted by Paul, and are inextricably connected with the four great epistles. Accepting these letters as genuine and Paul's explanation of his doctrine as true, we must accept the whole of the New Testament documents as credible, and the portraiture of the Christ as that of a real person Son of man and Son of God, the God-Man. '

What grabbed me
I liked this statement about the significance of radical conversions: 'When a religious crisis comes to a man of Paul's type it possesses deep significance. For him to become a Christian meant everything. It meant to leap into a large cosmopolitan idea of Christianity, its nature and destination. He saw that all was over with Judaism and its legal righteousness, all over with the law itself as a way of salvation ; that salvation must come to man through the grace of God, and that it might come through that channel to all men alike on equal terms, and that therefore the Jewish prerogative was at an end.'

Such an amazing change demonstrates the power of God.

Next week's reading
Read Chapter 16 (Divine efficacy of prayer).

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.