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.