When I downloaded Mr. Naicker's pdf "Apostles" from Academia, I sent him the following message:
Hello,
I have two criticisms of your paper:
You say of Paul in your pdf page 12:
He did not fulfil the qualifications of Acts 1:21, but the Damascus Road experience was a resurrection appearance (1 Cor. 15:8), and he could claim to have “seen the Lord” (1 Cor. 9:1); he was thus a witness of the resurrection.
I don't understand why you would believe Paul's claim to have "seen" the Lord, as Acts 9 and 22 make clear, Paul was blinded by the light, and nothing in those stories ever expresses or implies that Paul physically saw a risen Christ.
The second criticism is: you admit on the same page that Paul
"...did not fulfil the qualifications of Acts 1:21...."
That is correct, but I don't understand why you felt that Paul's alleged experience on the road to Damascus qualified him anyway. The original apostles in Acts 1:21 made it a criteria of apostolic office that the person in question must have accompanied Jesus "from the beginning".
If you admit Paul didn't fulfill that criteria, then what makes you think his alleged "seeing" the risen Christ on the road to Damascus was a sufficient substitute?
The criterion in Acts 1:21 does not express or imply any exceptions. You either accompanied Jesus and the apostles "since the beginning", or you don't become an apostle, period.
Worse, if you think Paul's "seeing" the risen Christ was a sufficient substitute, then do you say the 500 who saw the risen Christ at the same time (1st Cor. 15:6), means there were 500 "apostles" while Paul was still alive? If their seeing the risen Christ didn't suddenly make them apostles, then why do you make an exception for Paul?
In short, can skeptics be "reasonable" even if not infallible, to insist Paul was a false apostle?
