Christianity Response Paper

The most important factor in the success of Christianity was Paul. Paul was a Pharisee Jew who persecuted the Christians until he had a religious experience on the way to Damascus where he heard Jesus’ voice and saw a bright light that temporarily blinded him. From then on Paul pursued a different approach to the Christians. He joined their small community, and then he began to suggest some radical new thinking. Paul began to create small communities around the world of anyone who would follow the teachings of Jesus and live a “perfect” life. Paul argued with other leaders of the Early Christian Church to convince them to let the gentiles that joined these communities not be required to be circumcised. Paul also wrote to these communities and advised them about Jesus’ teachings.

Paul’s actions to bring Jesus to the gentiles was what enabled Christianity to spread. Paul laid the foundation of believers that would multiply over the years till Christianity was the only legal religion. Without his efforts to convert the gentiles and teach them the correct message of Jesus the Early Christians would most likely have disappeared after the first generation that knew Jesus had died. Paul’s evangelizing methods also set a precedent for the church that would continue to try to convert people to Christianity around the world for centuries to come. Lastly, not only did Paul’s insistence that circumcision should be unnecessary increase the number of gentile converts, but it also separated Christianity from Judaism. Had Paul not broken that fundamental rule of Judaism, Christianity might still be a sect of Judaism and would have never have been independent from other Jewish laws.