Were Doctrines Influenced by the Apostles’ Fallen Nature?
Question 1004
This is one of those questions that really matters because if the answer is yes, then we have a serious problem with the authority and reliability of Scripture itself. When Peter, Paul, John and the others sat down to write Scripture, did their sinful nature corrupt or distort the doctrines they were teaching? Did Paul’s background as a Pharisee twist his theology? Did Peter’s tendency to be impulsive affect what he wrote? It’s a fair question because we know these men were far from perfect.
The Heart of the Question
What we’re really asking is whether the apostles’ fallen nature influenced the doctrines we have today. Peter denied Jesus three times. Paul persecuted Christians before his conversion. John and James wanted to call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan village. Thomas doubted. These were real men with real flaws, real personalities, real cultural backgrounds, and yes, a real fallen nature that they were still battling with.
What Scripture Says About Itself
Let’s start where we should always start, with what the Bible itself claims. Paul writes to Timothy and says something absolutely foundational: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
Notice what Paul says here. All Scripture is θεόπνευστος (theopneustos), which literally means “God-breathed.” This isn’t just divine approval or inspiration in the sense of getting motivated. This is God breathing out His Word through human instruments. The origin is God Himself.
Peter, writing about prophecy but with a principle that extends to all Scripture, puts it like this: “knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21).
That phrase “carried along” is φερόμενοι (pheromenoi) in the Greek. It’s the same word used for a ship being carried along by the wind. The human authors weren’t passive robots, but they weren’t the ones determining the direction either. The Holy Spirit was guiding and carrying the process to ensure that what was written was exactly what God intended.
Jesus’s Promise to the Apostles
Before we go further, we need to remember what Jesus specifically promised to His apostles. This is crucial because it shows us that God made special provision for the writing of the New Testament.
Jesus said, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). He also promised, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come” (John 16:13).
Think about what Jesus is saying here. The Holy Spirit would teach them all things, bring Jesus’s words to their remembrance, and guide them into all truth. This isn’t a general promise to all believers. This was a specific promise to the apostles who would be writing the New Testament. Jesus knew they would need supernatural help to accurately record and explain His teaching, and He promised that help.
Paul himself understood that what he was writing wasn’t just his opinion but came with divine authority: “And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual” (1 Corinthians 2:13).
Writing to the Galatians, Paul is adamant: “For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:11-12). His gospel didn’t come from his Pharisaical background, his education under Gamaliel, or his own thinking. It came by direct revelation from Jesus Himself.
The Human Element in Scripture
Now here’s where we need to be careful and clear. The fact that Scripture is God-breathed doesn’t mean the human authors were just mindless dictation machines. Their personalities, vocabularies, backgrounds, and styles clearly come through in what they wrote.
You can tell the difference between John’s writing and Paul’s writing. Luke writes like a historian and doctor. Peter writes with the bluntness of a fisherman. Paul’s rabbinical training shows through in his argumentation. John’s simple but profound style reflects his contemplative nature.
God didn’t erase their personalities. He used them. He prepared them. He sovereignly worked in their lives, their education, their experiences, so that when the time came for them to write Scripture, they were the right instruments for the job. Paul’s Pharisaical training meant he could argue with Jews effectively and explain how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament. Luke’s medical and historical training meant he could investigate and record events accurately. John’s years of intimacy with Jesus gave him deep insight into Jesus’s character and teaching.
So yes, the human authors’ backgrounds and personalities show through in Scripture. But no, their sinful nature did not corrupt the doctrines they taught.
The Crucial Distinction
Here’s the distinction we must make: there’s a difference between the apostles’ personal failings and their doctrinal teaching in Scripture.
When Peter denied Jesus, that was his sin. When Peter later behaved hypocritically in Galatia by withdrawing from eating with Gentiles when the Jewish Christians showed up, that was his sin, and Paul publicly rebuked him for it (Galatians 2:11-14). But when Peter wrote 1 and 2 Peter, he was writing under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit, and his personal failings did not corrupt what he wrote.
Think about it this way. We have a record in Acts 15 and Galatians 2 of the Jerusalem Council and the confrontation between Paul and Peter. We know Peter struggled with the issue of Jewish-Gentile relations. But did that struggle corrupt his doctrine? No! In fact, Peter wrote in his second letter: “And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” (2 Peter 3:15-16).
Peter here acknowledges Paul’s writings as Scripture, even though Paul had publicly rebuked him! Peter’s personal failure didn’t blind him to the truth Paul was teaching. The Holy Spirit kept him from letting his ego or his failure distort the truth.
What About Cultural Influence?
Some people today argue that Paul’s teaching, especially about women or slavery, was just reflecting his cultural background or the prejudices of his time. Let’s be clear about this. Yes, Paul wrote to specific situations in specific cultures. Yes, he addressed issues relevant to his context. But the Holy Spirit ensured that the principles he laid down were God’s eternal truth, not just cultural preferences.
Paul himself makes this claim: “If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 14:37). He’s not saying, “This is just my opinion based on my Jewish background.” He’s saying this is the Lord’s command. To reject what Paul wrote as merely cultural is to reject the authority of Scripture itself.
Now, that doesn’t mean we ignore context or culture when interpreting Scripture. We absolutely must understand the historical and cultural background to properly apply God’s Word. But there’s a massive difference between understanding the context in which something was written and dismissing it as merely a product of that context.
Evidence That It Worked
Here’s something powerful to consider. We can actually see the Holy Spirit’s protection working in real time in the pages of Scripture.
Look at the book of Acts. Luke records Peter’s hypocrisy in Antioch. He records the sharp disagreement between Paul and Barnabas over John Mark. He records the conflict in the Jerusalem church between the Hebrew-speaking and Greek-speaking widows. He doesn’t hide the failures and flaws of the early church leaders.
But when it comes to the doctrinal content of their preaching and teaching, there’s consistency. Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, Paul’s sermon in Acts 13, Stephen’s sermon in Acts 7—they all proclaim the same gospel. They all point to Jesus as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. They all teach salvation by grace through faith.
If their fallen nature was corrupting their doctrine, we’d expect to see doctrinal contradictions and errors popping up all over the place. Instead, we see a unified testimony to Jesus Christ and His gospel.
A Pastoral Word
I think sometimes we worry about this question because we’re rightly concerned about the reliability of Scripture. In our day, the Bible is under attack from every direction. Critics tell us it’s just ancient literature full of errors and outdated ideas. Liberal theologians tell us we can pick and choose what we want to believe. People say Paul was a misogynist or that his teaching was corrupted by his background.
But here’s what we need to hold onto. God is perfectly capable of giving us His Word without error. If God can create the universe from nothing, if He can part the Red Sea, if He can raise Jesus from the dead, then He can certainly ensure that what He wants us to know is accurately recorded in Scripture.
The doctrine of inspiration doesn’t mean the human authors were perfect people. It means that when they wrote Scripture, the Holy Spirit supernaturally worked in and through them to ensure that what they wrote was exactly what God wanted written, free from error in the original manuscripts.
Descriptive Versus Prescriptive
Here’s something that helps clear up confusion. We need to distinguish between what Scripture describes and what it prescribes.
When Scripture describes Peter denying Jesus, it’s not telling us to do the same. When it describes David’s sin with Bathsheba, it’s not approving of adultery. When it describes the failings of the apostles, it’s showing us what happened, not telling us to follow their example.
But when Scripture prescribes doctrine, when it teaches us who God is, who we are, how to be saved, how to live as Christians—that’s God’s authoritative Word to us, protected from error by the Holy Spirit’s work in inspiration.
The apostles’ personal failures that are described in Scripture show us they were real people. But the doctrines they taught prescriptively are God’s truth, not corrupted by their fallen nature.
The Bigger Picture
Think about the whole sweep of Scripture. You have dozens of human authors writing over roughly 1,500 years, from different cultures, in different languages, addressing different situations. They were shepherds, kings, priests, prophets, fishermen, tax collectors, doctors, tentmakers. They came from diverse backgrounds with different personalities and experiences.
Yet Scripture has a unified message. It tells one story—God’s plan of redemption through Jesus. The doctrinal teaching is consistent. The New Testament fulfils and completes the Old Testament. Jesus is the centre of it all.
How could this happen if the fallen nature of the authors was corrupting their teaching? It couldn’t. The only explanation for the unity and consistency of Scripture is that behind all the human authors stands one divine Author, the Holy Spirit, who orchestrated the whole thing.
So, what now?
So to directly answer the question: No, current doctrines were not influenced or corrupted by the fallen nature of the apostles. While the apostles were certainly fallible people with real flaws and struggles, when they wrote Scripture they were guided and protected by the Holy Spirit to ensure that what they wrote was God’s truth without error.
Their personalities, vocabularies, and backgrounds show through in their writing, which shows us God uses real people in real situations. But the Holy Spirit kept their sinful nature from corrupting the doctrinal content of what they wrote.
This is why we can trust Scripture completely. Not because the human authors were perfect—they weren’t. But because God is perfect, and He’s perfectly capable of giving us His Word through imperfect people without that Word being corrupted.
When you read Paul’s letters or Peter’s letters or John’s gospel, you’re not reading fallible human opinion mixed with divine truth and having to sort out which is which. You’re reading God’s Word, inspired by the Holy Spirit, authoritative and trustworthy.
This should give us tremendous confidence. We can build our lives on Scripture. We can stake our eternal destiny on what it teaches. We can trust its promises. We can obey its commands. Because it’s not ultimately Paul’s word or Peter’s word or John’s word. It’s God’s Word to us.
And that makes all the difference.
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17
