Paul's success was a miracle. Perhaps he was a Christ if not the Christ. The prophet Jesus, whether historial or a phantasm, might have been a convenient screen upon whom Paul deliberately projected charisma, providing an objective but mysterious persona for adulation, one difficult to challenge since no longer concretely present.

In any event, one would certainly have to be more than an "excellent administrator and propagandist" to organize the Principle of Freedom, which is absolute Power, as a practical Doctrine of Love. Luther pointed out at great length what a difficult task that must have been for Paul, without whom there would be no Christianity today.

Those who slander Paul do so to cover their hatred for both Judaism and Christianity if not their contempt for faith on the whole, which of course is a general form of self-contempt, for none live without faith. Even those who have faith in nothing have faith in Nothing, perhaps even more faith than those who have faith in something.

Yet imagine the faith required to organize the Christian faith. It is amazing what Paul accomplished given the distances involved and the means of transportion in ancient times, and the ease with which a competitor could come along right behind Paul and persuade his converts that traditional Jewish practices such as circumcision were necessary to Judeo-Christian religion, and therefore reconvert them to admire mere things like penises without foreskins again.

Paul's insistence on the anarchic principle of Christ Liberty rather than dogmatic authoritarianism was certainly wise, since differences of opinion on subsidiary matters can be explained casuistically as a bona fide expression of enduring faith in the transcendent being. What a shamefully violent history was written by the pseudo-Christians who pretended to accept Jesus and even Paul, then murdered each other in the name of Love.

History might have proceeded differently if Paul had been received as the true Son of God, as Paul the Christ. But he succeeded by raising up another.