Was the Apostle Paul a Gnostic?

Was Paul actually a Gnostic? The idea is taken seriously by no one in NT scholarship today; even Elaine Pagels, the Gnostic-promoter premier, declines in her book The Gnostic Paul to say yea or nay to whether Paul was actually a Gnostic, instead concentrating on how the Gnostics interpreted Paul's letters.

For this essay we have chosen to highlight two proponents of the Gnostic Paul (hereafter GP):

We may summarize the case for a Gnostic Paul by referring to the way FG illicitly summarize Col. 1:25-28 with the sentence, "The secret is this: Christ in you!", or that they rework 1 Cor. 2:14 to say, "But the Psychic receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are Pneumatically discerned," and read "Jews" as "psychic Christians" and "Gentiles" as "Pneumatic Christians."

Like the Gnostics of the second century, one can only manufacture a Gnostic Paul by wrenching words from their context and reapplying and filling them with their own meaning.

-JPH