Letter to the Romans

You cannot read 1:18-32 and much doubt Paul's creationism or his convictions that God's power and nature are evident in the world he has made and that polytheism - not even to speak of atheism - is "without excuse."

Nor that he regards homosexuality and lesbianism as horrible depravities worthy of death by God's own decree.

God hates fags, in other words.

In ch 2, it seems Paul writes rather like a works man.

He's not.

At 3:8 he states it as an evil maxim that one may do evil that good may come.

Is this the origin of what Christian ethicists call "the Pauline principle," "Thou shalt not do evil that good may come"?

It plays a role in Thomistic ethics that are really neither deontological nor teleological, connected to the Principle of Double Effect.

For Thomas, the natural law (the moral law) contains only one injunction: Do good; avoid evil.

So one must avoid causing pain, for example.

To cause pain would be to do evil rather than avoid it.

So can one administer a flu shot?

Enter the idea that the injunction concerns only what is intended, either as a means or an end, and not what is merely foreseen.

The pain of the injection is foreseen but not intended, as an end or as a means to something else.

So giving the injection is OK.

3:31 ff, Paul repeats Jesus' message that actual, personal sins are forgiven to those who have faith.

But we are also getting a bit of the idea of substitutionary atonement.

Jesus 4:25 who was handed over for our transgressions and was raised for our justification.

He's firm on this.

3:28 For we consider that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law.  

Later.

Jesus did not say these things in the gospels.

Again, note the apparent literalism regarding Genesis.

5:12,13. Therefore, just as through one person sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all, inasmuch as all sinned -

13 for up to the time of the law, sin was in the world, though sin is not accounted when there is no law.

NRSV, NAB, NIV, or NLT.

Paul introduces so much that we did not see in the gospels. 

Foreknowledge and predestination, for example, at 8:28-30.

Predestination for good or evil, predestination and desert, 9:14-24

How God chooses, says Paul. 

10:9 for if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

That is not what Jesus asked of those whom he said were forgiven or saved.

Arguably, he asked no more than faith that he could really do miracles, raise the dead, cure ailments, and (or?) forgive sins.

Paul's theology is not quite Jesus's theology.