Cheryl Schatz

Okay, back to the comments on questions from post #12

The question is what did Paul mean by the 12. I agree it is possible he meant the 11, but it is also possible he meant the 12 at the time of his writing 1 Cor and the way the whole church understood the term, that is, to include Matthias.

It is clear in scripture that “the twelve” was at times used as the name of the group. This is the way Paul uses it in 1 Cor 15 because it is clear that he is giving the order of the appearances of Jesus to the legal witnesses (again women were not considered legal witnesses so they are not included). As an ordering list, it is impossible for “the twelve” in 1 Cor. 15:5 to be anything other than the name of the group since there is scriptural evidence that Thomas was not there when Jesus first appeared to “the twelve”.

So the question is whether Matthias saw Jesus, my assumption is he was certainly one of the 500, being a disciple from the beginning. The question is what did Paul mean by the 12. I agree it is possible he meant the 11, but it is also possible he meant the 12 at the time of his writing 1 Cor and the way the whole church understood the term, that is, to include Matthias.

I think it we can agree that Matthias had to have seen the resurrected Christ. He was certainly one of the 500 and the apostles could not have picked him as a candidate to be a witness of the resurrection if he had not seen the resurrected Christ.

Even is Matthias was present with the other 10 when Jesus first showed up (and I do not believe there is any evidence that he was there), that would still make them only eleven. This means that Paul uses the term “the twelve” as a term of the name of the group and not the number that were present.

In any case, it is clear (to me) that Paul when he wrote 1 Cor did not consider himself one of the 12.

This is the reason we are having this discussion. I do believe that Paul was fighting for his authority as a true apostle one of the ones who was an apostle of Jesus Christ picked to be a witness to the resurrection. He gives all the claims necessary to being one of the twelve witnesses and I happen to believe that this is what he claimed and why Paul’s apostleship is the only one ever challenged in scripture.

3. Paul is making his special claims to counter the false super-apostles. He wants the Corinthians to make the right decision.
   The Bible says believers will do GREATER things.
   I do not see Paul as a secondary apostle, he is my hero, but that does not mean he is one of the 12.

We can also agree on this one thing – Paul is also my hero! I too do not believe that Paul was a secondary apostle. However this is also where we have a problem. Only the twelve apostles had a special authority from Jesus to lay the foundation of the church. No other apostle had authority. Paul claimed to have authority. Paul also claimed to have great revelations and his writing in the NT can be compared to the influence of Moses on the OT. So having no other apostle claiming to have authority we would have the three groups listed this way:
1. The twelve apostles
2. Paul
3. All the other secondary apostles

This would put Paul in a class by himself. If we broke the groups down not by the kind of apostle they were but the authority they had we would have only two groups:

1. The twelve apostles of Jesus Christ + Paul
2. All the other secondary apostles

The fact is that Paul’s authority matched the authority of the other twelve. Paul then appears to fit the model of the twelve and either he is in a class by himself with the exact same authority as the other twelve or he is a true apostle of Jesus Christ picked by Jesus as the twelfth witness of his resurrection. I believe there are only two groups of apostles and Paul was part of the twelve. The facts just don’t make sense to me any other way.

I think if I am not mistaken, that I have finished answering your points. One last point that I would like to make is the importance of the vacancy of Judas’ calling that was left open for at least 43 days. Jesus apparently did not see any problem in having the “position” filled immediately since he did nothing about appointing a replacement for Judas while he was here in his resurrected body.

“The twelve” also did not have any sense of urgency to take an authority upon themselves to appoint a replacement while Jesus was here in his resurrected body.

Jesus told them to wait for the Holy Spirit’s power. For some reason before they were given the indwelling Holy Spirit with power to fulfill their mission, they decided that the scriptures should be fulfilled now. I see no scriptural injunction in the OT for a group of men to make the decision to fulfill scripture when Jesus himself didn’t take it upon himself to fulfill the scriptures at that time. Would things have been different if they would have just left things alone? I believe they would have. I take my belief from what happened to Abraham. God had given him a promise but God seemed to be slow to fulfill that promise. Abraham and Sarah took the authority to fulfill the scriptures for themselves. The result of humans making the decision to take authority over something that God alone has authority over caused great trouble in the world because Ishmael was born from Abraham’s actions. Yet God didn’t stop Abraham from acting out his plan nor did he say that Abraham sinned in trying to fulfill the prophesy. What God did say was that he would bless Ishmael as Abraham asked, but Ishmael would represent man’s way while Isaac would represent God’s way.

I believe that we have in the NT another example of the same thing. The disciples acted as Abraham acted. They were acting in faith but they used human means to accomplish what only God was meant to accomplish. God also did not berate them for their actions just as he did not berate Abraham for following his wife’s urging to procreate a child by Sarah’s Egyptian maid.

But God also made a clear distinction between what man has accomplished and what God brings about in that he called Isaac Abraham’s only son.

Gen 22:2 He said, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.”

Just as Abraham’s decision to procreate a child by natural means without the work of the Holy Spirit caused a persecution of the Spirit-born son, so too I believe that Paul, the apostle who was “born of the Spirit” (i.e. as an apostle), like a child born out of time much later than all the other apostles who were witness to the resurrection, Paul found himself greatly troubled by having to prove himself a true apostle because of the “fleshly born” apostle who came about by the actions of the apostles. Yes, they too acted in faith, but they acted in a fleshly way. They too did not wait for the work of the Holy Spirit just as Abraham did not wait. In Paul’s case as in Isaac’s case the fleshly born “son” brought trouble for the Spirit-born “son”. I believe that there is every indication that Paul was the twelfth apostle and if the apostles had not already picked Matthias by lot, I believe that Paul would have been readily accepted as the twelfth apostle because of his testimony, his miracles and his great revelations.

I think I have pretty much laid out my argument and why I believe as I do. For the many who find this post and who are interested enough to read through all the arguments, I just ask you to consider whether the 11 apostles were just as capable of stepping ahead of God as Abraham did. Abraham was a great man of faith yet his preempting God was a sign that he still had clay feet. All I ask is for you to consider whether the eleven disciples also had clay feet even though they operated with great faith. Did they preempt the Holy Spirit’s work by choosing a replacement for Judas by taking an authority for themselves that wasn’t theirs just as Abraham did? Why do you think that the method of choosing a replacement is a documented OT method but was not a practiced NT church method because it was never again used once the Holy Spirit came upon the church? Is it possible that in Matthias we have a NT example of Abraham’s lack of waiting? Abraham still acted in faith but the resulting child was not sanctioned by the Holy Spirit and Abraham’s actions could not make his offspring to be the one ordained by God.

The last question I always ask is to give this the “so what?” test. What difference does it make? I believe the difference is whether we accept Paul’s authority or not as a foundational apostle whom the church was built upon. Was the church built upon Paul as well as the other apostles of Jesus Christ? There are some who will not listen to Paul and will only read the gospels. They say that Paul was wrong and that he was a woman hater and influenced by his Pharisaical upbringing. Some even today are willing to ignore Paul’s words and they do not believe that Paul had authority to set the foundation of the church. I disagree with them. I believe that Paul had that authority and that it was given him by Jesus Christ himself. I also believe that Paul’s testimony about the resurrection is the clearest witness of the gospel 1 Cor. 15:1-4. Without Paul’s authority to set a doctrinal basis for the church there would be much missing from God’s word.

Was Paul the twelfth apostle? I sincerely believe that he was.