If Paul got it wrong, would God be any less God?

Few things piss off some traditionalist Protestants more than suggesting that maybe, just maybe, Paul might not have gotten it quite right about the mechanism of "salvation."  (This assumes for the sake of argument that there is such a thing.)   I'm oversimplifying, but in a nutshell these trads claim that, according to Paul, we can gain entry into heaven only by believing that Jesus' crucifixion bailed us out of the eternal torture that humanity's sin had otherwise earned for all of us.  The problem is that there are are no reliable reports of anyone returning from the dead and confirming that Paul's alleged view was correct.  So in assessing that view, we have to rely on indirect, circumstantial evidence.  Many traditionalists don't want to confront some of that evidence — for example:

• Paul had been a ferocious persecutor of the Jerusalem church, but after his abrupt 180-degree about-face, he claimed, with equal enthusiasm (or fanaticism) to understand Jesus' significance better than those who had actually known and followed the man in life. 
• James, thought to have been Jesus' brother and leader of the Jerusalem church, all but openly mocked Paul's faith-alone position, asking rhetorically, in his eponymous epistle, whether faith was worth anything if it didn't inspire one to help those who needed it. 
• A letter attributed to Peter (whose weak will seems to have led him to be pushed around by Paul on occasion) conceded that much of what his colleague had to say was difficult to understand. 

To many of those whom Kendall Harmon calls "reasserters" of the Faith Once Delivered, none of that matters:  Their understanding of Paul is, literally, Holy Writ. I've seen such folks go ballistic at even a mild suggestion that the mechanism of salvation might be different from what Paul allegedly imagined.

The question I like to pose to these folks is this:  Suppose Paul was wrong — would God be any less God?  Would we have any less reason to acknowledge, admire, and be grateful for what the Creator has done?  Of course not — so why all the anxiety?

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[bls]

Hey, D.C.: How are you all down Houston way?

All in one piece, I hope.....