The pull of the gospels.(Letter to the Editor)

SIR: I thank David H. Lewis ("Escaping the Gravitational Pull of the Gospels", May 2005) for being the cause of my scurrying to my New Testament (with some doubts hitherto not felt for some considerable time; as I am, I hope, a practising Christian for the past sixty-two years, currently aged eighty).

My current reading of Romans and Corinthians does not, to me, support Mr Lewis's contention that contradictions exist between the letters of St Paul and the Gospel accounts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, because Paul repeatedly refers to the crucifixion and resurrection and the redemptive value thereof. It appears to me that the said Gospel details were, at the time Paul wrote his letters, known to Christians by oral transmission and, consequently, did not need a reference in Paul's letters, which purport to contain instructions to believers on the manner in which they were to conduct their lives.

If the Christians to whom St Paul addressed his letters (and, indeed, today's Christians) did not believe the "signs and wonders" reported in the gospel stories, why on earth would they be Christians?

The puzzling aspect of the article which gives rise to this letter is: If the basis of Christianity is a lie, why and how has it given rise, over the last two millennia, to so many charities (hospitals, hospices, sanctuaries) and martyrdoms, and to all the learned treatises set out in the article?

Ted Hayhoe, Briar Hill, Vic.

SIR: Surely no contemporary student of the New Testament is unaware that scriptures attributed to Paul were written before the synoptic gospels named after Mark, Matthew and Luke--and well before the writings variously attributed to "John".

As for the "gravitational pull" that David Lewis talks about, Jesuit Pierre Teilhard described Paul as "that most cosmic of sacred writers". He also said that the scriptures attributed to Paul and John "burst the synoptics' ceiling". Mark, Matthew and Luke focused mostly on "the Christ of history", spanning roughly thirty-three years. Paul and John focused rather on "the history of Christ". That extends from before the beginning--15 billion years ago?--to beyond the end of time. Does that make Christ too old? How old is God? Augustine described God as "Beauty so ancient and so new".