Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

PAUL

(Gk. Paúlos)

Athena temple on the acropolis at Lindos, Rhodes, overlooking St. Paul’s Bay
(Phoenix Data Systems, Neal and Joel Bierling)

Except for Jesus, no one influenced the development of early Christianity more than Paul. He was the foremost apologist for the gentile mission, and the most eloquent defender of the centrality of Jewish traditions, Scriptures, deity, and morality for his predominantly gentile churches. That 13 of the 27 books of the NT are attributed to Paul gives eloquent testimony to the importance he had for the early Jesus movement. That legacy remained to inspire such theological titans as Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley, and to profoundly influence the intellectual history of the West.

Sources

The seven letters which came from Paul’s hand (1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans) serve as the primary sources for our knowledge about the apostle; Acts, though secondary, is nevertheless useful when judiciously used. The disputed letters (2 Thessalonians, Colossians, and Ephesians) merit consideration, and the pseudepigraphic letters (1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Hebrews) and later apocryphal literature assist with the history of Pauline interpretation.

“Pre-Christian” Period

Paul was born, lived, and died a Jew. He writes that he was of the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised on the eighth day, was blameless before the law, followed the Pharisaic interpretation (Phil. 3:5-6), and was zealously observant of the ancestral traditions (Gal. 1:14). He was probably born in Tarsus (Acts 22:3), a thriving, cosmopolitan, urban gateway to the eastern Mediterranean, a vibrant intellectual center, and a transportation hub of strategic importance. There Paul learned his first language, Greek, was taught a trade, and received his schooling. This background and Gal. 1:22 contradict the view of Acts 22:3 that Paul was brought to Jerusalem at an early age to sit at the feet of the great teacher Gamaliel (26:4). Whatever its source, no one disputes that Paul was a learned man and creative thinker. The length and complexity of his letters, the sophistication of his arguments, his knowledge of the LXX, his familiarity with Jewish law and traditions, and his persuasive skills used to found churches and hold them together all suggest that Paul was an educated man. Unfortunately, we know very little about the exact nature of his formal schooling.

In addition, Paul benefitted from a rich informal education. The urban setting in which he grew up acquainted him with important literary and rhetorical skills. He owed his use of the diatribe (Rom. 6:1, 15; 7:7; 11:1) and his knowledge of the law of nature (2:14-15) to Stoicism, and his anthropology and views of celibacy, conscience, and self-control were influenced by Hellenistic popular religion. His style of argumentation reflects a selective appropriation of Hellenistic rhetoric. By contrast, his apocalypticism, his spiritualization of the sacrificial cult (Rom. 12:1), his monotheism, and moral convictions came from Jewish sources, and his knowledge of Jesus’ passion, death, resurrection, teaching, and the sacramental cult came from the messianists. His letters reveal how this fertile mind absorbed, synthesized, and interpreted these traditions for his churches.

His learning, however, hardly presupposes high status or Roman citizenship. Given the rarity of Roman citizenship in the East, Paul’s silence about it even though threatened with execution (2 Cor. 1:8-9), and the theological importance of Paul’s citizenship to Luke (Acts 22:22-29), it is unlikely that Paul was a Roman citizen. Instead, he was probably a member of a políteuma or Jewish community accorded relative political autonomy and given the freedom to govern itself by Jewish law and institutions. Instead of high class origins, his training as a leatherworker or tentmaker probably came from his artisan father; he would later use that skill to support himself in his mission to the Gentiles (Acts 18:3; 1 Thess. 2:9; 1 Cor. 9:6-18).

Though haunted by the painful memory of his persecution of Christians, Paul nowhere tells us where he waged the persecution, what the nature of the persecution was, who its victims were, or what inspired it. Did the proclamation of the kingdom of God make Jews already nervous about Roman reprisals eager to squelch this messianism? Did a law-free gospel invite reprisals from those who saw their identity threatened? Was it a hostile response to deviant convictions, or to criticism of the temple cult? We cannot answer these questions with certainty. In any case, Paul’s dramatic about-face, he tells us, came in response to an epiphany of the risen Christ (Gal. 1:16-17) which turned the adversary into an apostle of Christ.

Apostleship

From the beginning critics questioned the authenticity of Paul’s apostleship. Unlike Peter, James, and John, he had never seen Jesus in the flesh; he had never been instructed by the “pillar” apostles, and he had been a vicious enemy of the early Church (Gal. 1:23). Recognizing this, Jewish-Christian apostles attacked both the legitimacy of Paul’s apostleship and the integrity of his gospel. Paul responded to these attacks with autobiographical information (Gal. 1–2), creative exegesis of the key texts of his adversaries (Gal. 3), and appeals to the cross of Christ (3:10-14). In an autobiographical remark reminiscent of the prophetic call of Jeremiah and Isaiah, he claimed to have been set aside by God from his mother’s womb (Gal. 1:15; Jer. 1:5; Isa. 49:1-6). He shifted the locus of his authority from the teaching of the earthly Jesus to the revelation of the risen Christ (Gal. 1:12, 16). He recited a chronology of sparse contacts with the Jerusalem “pillars” — “after three years” and “after fourteen years” (1:18; 2:1) — to support his claim of independence from the Jerusalem “pillars” (2:9-10). Three times in the letter (Gal. 1:7-9; 4:16-18; 6:12-13) Paul turned on his opponents, confronting them directly, pronouncing a divine curse on them, belittling them, and denouncing them. The apostle, however, went beyond denunciation by seeking to persuade his converts of the legitimacy of his gospel and apostleship by reminding them of tender moments between them (Gal. 4:12-20), and of their baptismal experience (3:26-29).

2 Corinthians reports that Jewish-Christian charismatic apostles armed with testimonials from other congregations enjoyed some success in undermining confidence in Paul’s apostleship. These rivals used his fragile physique and unskilled speech (2 Cor. 10:10; 11:6), his physical affliction and uncharismatic appearance (12:7), and his financial independence (vv. 15-16) and unwillingness to boast of charismatic prowess to question his apostleship. Paul appeals to his suffering and weaknesses as authenticating signs of his apostleship (2 Cor. 11:21-29; 12:7-10; 6:4-10), and with appeals to autobiography (12:1-10), to a catalogue of sufferings (6:3-10; 11:22-29), and God’s raising of Christ from the dead, Paul defended himself by showing how God’s strength is manifested in weakness.

For 25 years after his death an awkward silence about Paul hovered over the early Christian landscape. Then in Luke’s Acts Paul emerges as an important figure, and nothing seems able to stop the march of his gospel westward. Soon afterward, pseudepigraphical letters began to appear that offered interpretations and defenses of Paul’s theology.

Letter Writer

Given the cost of writing materials, the low literacy rate, and the absence of a delivery network for private correspondence, the survival of thousands of papyrus letters from the Hellenistic period is astonishing. Diplomacy, trade, and travel fostered letter writing both official and unofficial, and the increasing use of letters by the imperial court and by the wealthy who could afford couriers or slaves to deliver them contributed to their growing popularity. A thriving business sprang up to support letter writing. Handbooks on letter writing appeared. Scribes served government agencies, wealthy households, and the illiterate poor. Under the influence of Hellenistic rhetoric the letter became an artistic form with a high level of aesthetic expression. Paul drew on this rich, venerable, and pervasive epistolary tradition to pen his letters. These letters were not private but public events written to exhort, instruct, remind, and console churches. They were not theological treatises, but real letters dealing with real situations. Even Romans, Paul’s most theological letter, reveals the apostle’s defense against false charges and malicious rumors (Rom. 3:8) and deals with factionalism in the church (ch. 14). In time these letters were collected, copied, circulated, and even imitated to strengthen other churches as well.

These letters had multiple functions. They served as a substitute for the presence of the apostle until his coming. They provided a means for exhortation and advice (1 Thess. 5:23; 1 Cor. 1:8; Phil. 2:15). They offered consolation (2 Cor. 1:3-7), provided a vehicle for responding to critics (esp. in Galatians and 2 Corinthians), and presented a means for relating the gospel to everyday concerns.

While the form of Paul’s letters resembles that of the traditional Hellenistic letter, Paul bent the form to his ends. In Romans he expanded the salutation to include an affirmation to counter the charge that his gospel was an outrageous novelty. In Galatians he substituted an expression of astonishment for the typical thanksgiving to rebuke his addressees (Gal. 1:6). In 1 Thessalonians he expanded the closing to exhort the disheartened to readiness for the coming of Christ (1 Thess. 5:23-24). These modifications for stereotypical epistolary forms offer valuable clues to his purposes.

Chronology

Difficulty besets any attempt to synchronize the chronology of Acts with Paul’s letters. Acts records three missionary journeys which only partially conform to the accounts in Paul’s letters, and Acts reports five Pauline visits to Jerusalem where the letters record only three. Acts 18:12, 14, 17, however, refer to Paul’s arraignment before the Roman proconsul Gallio in Achaea, which most judge to be historical since the reference serves no theological agenda. If so judged, the reference would require Paul’s presence there in 51-52 c.e. during Gallio’s proconsulship. Furthermore, if Acts is correct that Paul was in Corinth for 18 months (Acts 18:11), then his ministry there probably began in 50. From that date one can work backward and forward to approximate a Pauline chronology. Before that date he had founded the churches in Galatia, Thessalonica, and Philippi (ca. 49), and before that mission he had been in Antioch for a time (Gal. 2:11-14). A bit more than 17 years intervened between Paul’s apostolic call (ca. 31) and his Antioch visit (Gal. 1:17-18; 2:1). During those years (31-48) Paul spent three years in Arabia before his first visit to Jerusalem, and 14 years in Syria and Cilicia before his second visit.

After his arraignment before Gallio Paul wrote all of the letters we possess (except for 1 Thessalonians) between 52–58, but their exact order is disputed. A possible arrangement would place the composition of several of these letters during his 27-month stay in Ephesus after his mission to Corinth (53–56; Acts 19:8-10). Although neither Paul’s letters nor Acts refers explicitly to an imprisonment in Ephesus, it is likely that he was in custody there. Paul speaks metaphorically of fighting with beasts at Ephesus (1 Cor. 15:32) and of a great affliction in Asia that left him so “utterly, unbearably crushed” that he despaired of life itself, and felt he was under the sentence of death (2 Cor. 1:8-9). Paul also refers to being in prison many times (2 Cor. 11:23), and an Ephesian imprisonment may be confirmed by the apocryphal Acts of Paul. During such an imprisonment, Paul could have written Philippians and Philemon (ca. 55). During his mission in Ephesus he wrote multiple letters to Corinth and our letter to Galatia. He wrote the fourth Corinthian letter (possibly 2 Cor. 1:1–9:15 minus 6:14–7:1) en route to visit the church there (late in 56), and Romans came as he embarked or was about to embark from Corinth on his trip to Jerusalem with the offering for the “poor among the saints” (57; Rom. 15:25-27). Fearful of the “unbelievers” in Judea (Rom. 15:31), Paul requested the prayers of the Roman church. Thereafter his voice abruptly fell silent. Acts attempts to complete the story by suggesting that Paul’s premonition was tragically realized. He was arrested, brought before the Roman procurator Festus (59), made an appeal based on his “Roman citizenship,” and was taken to Rome for trial. Luke, however, does not tell us how Paul died; if he were beheaded in Rome, as the 3rd-century Acts of Paul suggests (10:5), his execution would have come before the end of 62.

Theologizer

Paul hardly launched his mission with a developed systematic theology which he could lay like a template over every situation. Since he was a pastoral rather than a systematic theologian his theologizing had an ad hoc character, developed for each new situation. Disturbances created by rival missionary apostles, charismatic factions, judaizers, disillusioned believers, and popular religionists provoked Paul’s thinking in varying ways. These points of friction mark the issues Paul deemed worth fighting for, and they offer a window onto Paul’s theologizing in process.

This theologizing though situational was, nevertheless, rooted in deep, underlying convictions embedded in the sacred story of Israel. Of primary significance was the supremacy of the one God of Israel, the creator, redeemer, and guarantor of the future. Crucial to the narrative of God’s people were the election and the giving of the law recorded in the Scriptures. In those sacred texts Paul found prescripts of the dawning eschaton, anticipations of the Christ, and authority for his gospel. In addition to these texts and Israel’s sacred story, Paul’s experience of the revelation of the risen Christ offered him added evidence that the new age was breaking in (Gal. 1:12; 1 Cor. 9:1; 15:8) which led to an apocalyptic conclusion. The revelation of Christ meant that, as Paul repeatedly says, God had raised him up (Rom. 4:24; 8:11; 10:9; 1 Cor. 6:14; 15:15; 2 Cor. 4:14; Gal. 1:1; 1 Thess. 1:10) as the firstfruits of the general resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20), and he would soon return to gather his own and judge the world (1 Thess. 4:14). Thus those in Christ were already given a glimpse of their vindication in the world to come. This apocalyptic vision caused Paul to view Scripture, his native Judaism, the temple, the world, natural disasters, and his celibacy and suffering in a radically new way. His sense of the imminent denouement gave his apostleship its urgency, and suffused his letters (e.g., 1 Cor. 7:26; Rom. 14:10-12; 1 Cor. 11:32; Rom. 13:11-14) from the first letter (1 Thess. 4:15) to the last (Rom. 13:12). The feverish intensity of Paul’s expectation dimmed only slightly if at all throughout his apostolic period.

Paul believed Jesus the Christ had brought the world to its final, climactic moment. While Paul recognized the importance of the earthly Jesus (Rom. 1:3; 9:5), he appealed to his teaching less than 10 times in all of the letters. He focuses instead on the suffering, dying, and resurrected Jesus who, he believed, would soon return, but his treatment of the death was highly nuanced. It served as an example for the persecuted (1 Thess. 1:6), as an instance of Christ’s obedience (Phil. 2:8), as a device for the redemption of Gentiles (Gal. 3:13-14), as a sacrifice (Rom. 3:25), as a medium through which the righteousness of God is revealed (Rom. 3:22), and as a vehicle for subverting the Corinthian charismatic hierarchy (1 Cor. 2:1-5). While he clearly recognized Jesus as Messiah (Rom. 9:5), more often he used the name Christ as a proper name referring to him as Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus, Christ, and Jesus Christ our Lord.

Paul fervently believed that the God who had raised the crucified Jesus from the dead had established him as Lord and would send him soon to gather the elect and judge the world. The title “lord,” so highly idiomatic in Hellenistic circles, was richly polysemous. It was a title for respect for the gods and goddesses like Isis, Asclepius, and Chronos, and also ruling authorities like Augustus, Herod, or Agrippa. It expressed deference to anyone of importance in the social or political hierarchy. In the LXX it frequently translated “Yahweh,” but nowhere in the letters did Paul call Jesus “God.” 1 Cor. 11:3 makes clear the line of origin that subordinates Jesus to God. Following early Church tradition (Phil. 2:6-11) Paul often used the title Lord as an ascription of the one whom God raised from the dead, thereby establishing him as Lord over death and the demonic powers.

An important feature of Paul’s messianism was a mystical participation in Christ. Paul regularly addressed his letters to those “in Christ Jesus” or its variants (1 Cor. 1:2; Phil. 1:1; 1 Thess. 1:1). He spoke to his converts in Galatia as those who had been “baptized into Christ,” who had “put on Christ,” and who were all “one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:26-28), and he noted that those who partake of the eucharist participate in the body of Christ (1 Cor. 10:15-17). He spoke synonymously of being “in the Lord” and “in Christ.” This mystical identification was a corporate not an isolated, private experience, and it was always shaped to fit each situation. For example, those grieving over the unexpected death of believers in Thessalonica were reassured that both the living and the dead are “in Christ,” joined in a common bond across the gulf of separation (1 Thess. 4:16-17).

The theologizing we see in the letters developed over the decade of the 50s, and the profundity and practical issues they contained helps explain why these letters became Scripture by the end of the 2nd century.

Bibliography. J. C. Beker, Paul the Apostle (Philadelphia, 1980); N. A. Dahl, Studies in Paul: Theology for the Early Christian Mission (Minneapolis, 1977); D. Georgi, The Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians (Philadelphia, 1986); Theocracy in Paul’s Praxis and Theology (Minneapolis, 1991); J. C. Lentz, Jr., Luke’s Portrait of Paul. SNTSMS 77 (Cambridge, 1993); H. Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 2nd ed. WUNT 29 (Tübingen, 1987); C. J. Roetzel, The Letters of Paul: Conversations in Context, 3rd ed. (Louisville, 1991); E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia, 1983); K. Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays (Philadelphia, 1976).

Calvin J. Roetzel

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

PAUL

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)