What was Paul's problem?
Re-imagining
Paul: grumpy patriarch or a new Moses?
Far from being an individualistic, how-to-get-to-heaven scheme, Paul’s
gospel was, primarily, what God had done in Jesus’ death and resurrection to
save both his people Israel and all the nations of the world (cf. Rom. 1.1-5;
Gal. chapters 3-4; Rom. chapters 1-11), as well as being about how those who
had faith in Jesus should share life together.
When it comes to discerning how to live as a church community of both
mercy and holiness, Paul is often seen as something of a problem – dare I say,
some interpret him as being the Jordan B. Peterson of the first century, i.e. a
rather troubled, slightly misogynistic, polarizing character who was always
upset about something and ever ready to berate those whom he perceived as a
threat.[1] This “cranky characterization” of Paul is
perhaps understandable, since Paul is a very transparent correspondent (could
he have imagined that we would be reading his mail 2,000 years later?). In his canonical letters, Paul wears his
heart on his sleeve as he writes to his fledgling Jesus-communities in the
Eastern end of the Roman empire, as well as to the church in Rome itself, of
which he was not the founder. As far as
we know, Paul never wrote an “academic treatise” as a Christian (though his
letter “to the Romans” has often been read that way). His letters are, rather, passionate pastoral
dispatches, often composed under less-than-optimal conditions (from Roman
prisons, for instance).
We do not possess anything resembling Paul’s final word on a given
subject – indeed, we would be completely ignorant of his understanding of, for
example, such a central Christian practice as the Lord’s Supper if it were not
for the fact that the Corinthian church was experiencing difficulties on this
point (among many others), and thus Paul was obliged to address the subject,
albeit in a pastoral, “polemical”, congregation-specific way (cf. 1 Cor.
11.17-34). One particular modern concern
which has landed Paul in trouble with present-day readers is how he addressed
the question of women exercising liturgical leadership in Corinth and Ephesus
(cf. 1 Cor. 14.34-35; 1 Tm. 2.12). Much
ink has been spilled over these few verses, as Paul is read in a context where
his words both resonate quite differently than they did in the first century
and are interpreted as (not) supporting one side of our culture war. Thus, Paul often finds himself being
“subpoenaed” to give testimony on matters that he never intended to address (as
a first-century person).
Perhaps another reason that Paul has been labeled a patriarchal
stick-in-the-mud is that his seemingly harsh pastoral exhortations are often
read against the foil of Jesus’ merciful interactions with “sinners”
accompanied by his cutting rhetoric against the Pharisees – after all, Paul was
a Pharisee before he was a Christian (cf. Phil. 3.4-6). Again, we must situate both Jesus and Paul in
their respective “ministerial” contexts – Jesus’ mission was directed to the
historic people of God (cf. Mt. 15.24), while Paul’s mission targeted the pagan
Gentile world (cf. Gal. 2.7-9). Jesus
ministered among those who (were supposed to have) regulated their moral lives
according to the Mosaic Law and its interpretation/expansion. As we see in the Gospels, Pharisaic “zeal for
the law” (cf. Gal. 1.13-14; Rom. 10.2) caused harm to the most vulnerable (the
chronically ill, e.g. lepers; those whose occupations required them to break
the Law or render themselves ritually unclean, e.g. tax collectors, sex
workers: cf. Mt. 23.1-4). More than
that, Jesus often showed mercy to people who appeared to have willfully sinned
against the Law, without there being any mitigating circumstances, e.g. the
woman caught in adultery (Jn. 8.1-11). Again,
Jesus predominantly exercised his ministry of mercy among a geographically
situated, ethnically homogeneous people whose self-understanding was informed
by the Scriptures and ancient Israelite traditions, i.e. second-temple
Palestinian[2]
Jews.
It must be noted that Jesus’ (and Paul’s) ministry was exercised in a
context where “loyalty to the Law” had taken on added (what we would call) political
dimensions. During the second-temple
period, the Jews were (almost always) under pagan imperial domination, and the
“works of the Law” – i.e. circumcision, sabbath observance and the kosher laws[3] –
not only served as signs of faithfulness to the Mosaic tradition, but also
served to buttress Jewish national identity in the face of Hellenistic pressure
to assimilate to imperial culture (cf. the Maccabean revolt in the 2nd
century B.C.). In this highly-charged
atmosphere, any perceived disloyalty to the Law – even something as
“inconsequential” as carrying your mat on the Sabbath (cf. Jn. 5.1-11) – was
seen to be a sign, not only of impiety, but also of disloyalty to the Jewish
nation. In the first-century context of
Roman occupation, a “lawbreaker” (i.e. a “sinner”) was a traitor to the
national cause. This background helps
colour our understanding of the Pharisees’ “politico-religious” program and
makes Jesus’ attitudes/actions appear that much more controversial (i.e. seditious). It’s a very important point – for Jesus (and
Paul), it was next to impossible to speak/act (publicly) about
“religious/moral” questions without there being immediate “political”
ramifications (sound familiar?).
Once again: Jesus undertook a campaign of eschatological (i.e.
concerning the kingdom of God) renewal within the historic people of God, while
Paul, for his part, had been given (gave himself?) the task of taking the “good
news” – Jesus is Lord! (i.e. the kingdom is here!) – to the far reaches of the
Roman empire (cf. Rom. 15.15-24). Yes,
Paul did adopt a habit during his travels, in any given city, of preaching to
the local members of the Jewish diaspora first (cf. Ac. 13.44-47; Rom.
1.16). Although some Jews did indeed
convert to the gospel, most of Paul’s success was among the pagan
population. Paul’s mission was to form
communities of women and men who were loyal to Jesus and who were committed to
sharing life together, no longer according to the conventions of Greco-Roman
culture, but according to the “rules” of the ever-advancing kingdom of
God. Here we come up against Paul’s
problem – while Moses had received the 10 Commandments from Yahweh (cf. Ex.
19-20), Jesus had not offered an exact equivalent to his disciples as to how to
regulate their common life in the new world that he was inaugurating (the
closest Jesus came to this was the Sermon on the Mount[4];
cf. Mt. 5-7).
Actually, Moses can help us understand the challenge that Paul
faced. In 2 Cor. 3-4, Paul
compares/contrasts the ministry of Moses with his own – i.e. the ministry of
the old covenant and that of the new.
Paul’s mission resembled that of Moses in many ways – both men were
called to “form” a motley crew – ex-slaves in one case, ex-pagans (who had to
get along with the descendants of Moses) in the other – into the people of God,
i.e. into a countercultural community which would embody genuine humanness for
the sake of the world (cf. Ex. 19.5-6; 2 Cor. 5.14-21; Phil. 2.14-15). Yes, Paul was Jewish (just like Jesus) and he
had “zealously” defended the “orthodox” interpretation of the Law as a
Pharisee; however, as a church-planter, he had to re-think his ethics in light
of the death-and-resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit (cf. Gal.
3.1-5). Both Moses and Paul had to form
the people of God in the aftermath of a crisis – the Exodus from Egypt on the
one hand, and the death-and-resurrection of Jesus, on the other. Both of these traumatic – yet salvific –
events had ushered in a new reality, in which both the prophet and the apostle
had to “figure out” what it meant to be God’s people.
As we have seen, Paul – in his letters – does not give any
once-and-for-all “answers” to the problems he addresses. Rather, Paul invited his readers to “work
things out” based on his in-person teaching, the Scriptures (as far as they
were able to procure them, perhaps from the local synagogue? cf. Ac. 18.1-8)[5], “communal
discernment” (cf. 1 Cor. 5.9-13; 6.1-6; 11.13-16, 27-32) as well as Paul’s
personal example (cf. 1 Cor. 4.16; 11.1; Phil. 3.17; 1 Thess. 1.6; 2 Thess. 3.9).
Paul determined to imitate Jesus’
cruciform life (and death) – and expected his converts to join him – in the
hope of sharing Jesus’ resurrection glory (cf. Phil. 3.10-11; 2.1-13). Paul understood his churches to be outposts
of the in-breaking kingdom of God that was displacing the kingdoms of this
world (cf. Rev. 11.15), or rather, that the Age to Come had explosively
interrupted This Present Age (cf. 1 Cor. 10.11); again, in other words, that
the cosmos was undergoing birth-pangs as God’s new world was birthed (cf. Rom.
8.18-23). Put yet another way: Paul
believed the world to be experiencing what he had experienced on the road to
Damascus (cf. Ac. 9.1-9). Paul new that
to live in light of the victory of God-in-Christ was to embrace the cross – the
place where the “rulers of this Age” had failed to grasp God’s “foolish wisdom”
and had attempted to eliminate the divine threat to their power (cf. 1 Cor. 2.7-8). Paul strove to make his readers understand
that, at the end of the day, their lives no longer belonged to them (!); they
now belonged to Jesus:
“For
the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for
all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so
that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who
died and was raised for them.” (2 Cor. 5.14-15)
[1] This caricature is perhaps truer of certain contemporary
interpreters of Paul, rather than the apostle himself…
[2] I.e. geographically, Jesus’ ministry took place in the land that
the Romans would dub “Palestine” in the early second century.
[3] This interpretation of the “works of the law” is one of the
hallmarks of the “New Perspective on Paul”, initiated by the work of E.P.
Sanders in 1977, and which has since become a diverse spectrum of perspectives
that have as their common denominator a desire to nuance the typical Lutheran
reading of Paul, according to which “the Law” served only a negative purpose in
the divine plan of redemption.
[4] Another mare’s nest of Christian interpretative difficulties…
[5] This passage describes Paul’s initial ministry in Corinth, where he
received hospitality from someone who lived next door to the synagogue, and
where the leader of the synagogue converted to faith in Jesus.
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