FINDING BIBLE TRUTH - PAUL

LIFE AND TIMES

Paul, to be properly understood must be fitted correctly into the historical scene. It is likely that he was born around 10 AD in the large and prosperous Greek-speaking city of Tarsus of Jewish parents. His father may have been reasonably prosperous since he seems to have been able to buy Roman citizenship. At some stage he attended a rabbinical school in Jerusalem and joined the sect of the Pharisees. In Acts we see him first when present at the stoning of Stephen in perhaps 32 AD, where he may well have played a greater part than just as an observer.

It seems reasonable to think that he may have been in Jerusalem, perhaps at the rabbinical school, at the time of Christ's crucifixion.

Paul spent some time in Jerusalem arresting Christians on behalf of the Sanhedrin and then set off for Damascus to continue the persecution, but on the way experienced his conversion. Here we have a disagreement between Luke, who says that Paul instantly became a fully welcome member of the Church, going to preach at the Synagogue only days after his sight was restored, then heading for Jerusalem, whereas Paul himself says that he went straightaway to Arabia, and did not meet any of the Apostles in Jerusalem for three years. It was probably during this visit that he came to the conclusion that there was no place for him among those he had earlier persecuted and that his mission should be to the Gentiles. At this time some of the Apostles, led perhaps by James, were opposed to any attempt to carry the ministry to the Gentiles (Acts 11).

He appears in Damascus some time after AD 36 (where he was arrested and escaped by being let down in a basket (2 Cor 11:32-33). Then to Tarsus where he seems to have been based for the best part of a decade, re-entering Acts circa 45 in Antioch. In this period it is reasonable to assume that he was moving around teaching and preaching in Asia Minor.

(In 40 AD Caligula intended to set up a giant statue of himself in the Temple, and to dedicate the Temple to himself. This is highly reminiscent of the sacrilege of Antiochus Epiphanes in 168 BC. Caligula died before his orders could be carried out, but the intention stirred up great unrest in Palestine.)

Paul's first missionary journey runs from 47-49, a tour of the cities of Asia Minor, preaching mainly in synagogues to their Jewish residents, but also to non-Jews, but meeting much opposition.

(In 49 Claudius expelled Jews - not just Christian Jews - from Rome).

Around this time arguments over whether Gentile converts should be circumsized blew up into a major dispute and the meeting in Rome, sometimes called "The Council of Jerusalem" was held. Paul's win here successfully averted a danger that Hellenistic Christianity would dissolve into a welter of cults.

Still around 49 AD Paul started his second missionary journey, initially through Asia Minor again, but then going to Macedonia, turning from Asia to Europe. In 50 he is in Athens and then goes on to Corinth, where he was probably based for two years, then to Ephesus where he may have been imprisoned for two years following the silversmith riots. His release would have been in 54/55. Many of his letters may have been written in this period.

(AD 54. Nero becomes emperor. Initially welcomed as a cultured liberal.)

After further visits to Corinth he sets off for his last visit to Jerusalem in 57 where he is imprisoned by Felix until sent off to Rome in 59 or 60. In 62, and in Rome, the recorded history ends.

(AD 62 James, the brother of Christ, stoned to death.)
(AD 64 Rome burns, Nero, looking for a group to blame, starts to persecute Christians.)
(AD 70 Jerusalem sacked.)

PAUL THE INDIVIDUAL.

In an apochryphal work written around 160 AD and containing the purported memory of eyewitnesses it is written:

"And he saw Paul coming, a man of little stature, thin-haired upon the head, crooked in the legs, of good state of body, with eyebrows joining, and nose somewhat hooked, full of grace: for sometimes he appeared like a man, and sometimes he had the face of an angel."

It is impossible to say whether or not this is a real description of Paul, but it is certainly a real picture of a man.

Paul was very much a man of his time, reflecting the assumptions of his day. Women were clearly inferior, slavery was just a fact of life. He accepted the common view of the Old Testament as literal truth, the attribution of the Torah to Moses, and the vital importance to Jews of Mosaic Law. It seems the height of folly to try to claim eternal literal truth for his culturally conditioned and time-limited words. Paul's words are not the words of God, they are the words of Paul.

Paul comes over as a man of passion, full of passion for his mission and his beliefs. At the same time he displays an underlying negativity, doubts as to his fitness for the task, and even guilt and shame at his own weakness. In his letters he comes over as a very different man from the rather polite rather bland Paul of Luke. He was wholly unconcerned over whom he upset, whether they were Jewish or civil authorities, or Jewish followers of the Way.

It seems unlikely that Jesus envisaged founding a new religion - Christianity - but rather to reform Judaism. He limited his activities to rural and exclusively Jewish regions, and repeatedly indicated that his mission was only to the lost sheep of Israel. Paul expanded this vision to include the known world, but again, I believe, with no intent that he was going to found a new organised religion.

The focus of all his teaching is the Crucifixion, the sacrifice of Christ with its aim of reconciling man and God, to bring man back to God. So dominant is this that I incline to a view that the Crucifixion scene, at which he may even have been present, preyed on his mind from the very start, and more than anything else was responsible for his total acceptance of the experience on the road to Damascus.

One of the most fundamental of all his beliefs was the belief that the world would come to an end in a very short time, with the re-apearance of Christ (1 Thess 5:1). He was not writing for a Church 2000 years in the future, but for people who would experience the return of Christ in their own lifetime. In haste he travelled to spread the Word as far as he could in the little time remaining. Much of the detail of his teaching, on marriage, on relations between believers and non-believers, on the simple ordinary things of living, on works, are clearly aimed at holding things together until the end, not recipes for future generations. The idea of a formal Church with its hierarchies, and rules and rigid doctrines would have been anathema to him. As a Jew he saw the world in the light of his Jewish upbringing. While he accepted being frozen out of the Jerusalem milieu, his message always recognises a dominent place for Jewry, although not for Judaism, as he struggled for the reform of Jewish beliefs and customs at the same time as he preached to the Gentiles. Being wholly opposed to inflicting the basic tenets of Judaism on non-Jews - the Law, circumcision, Jewish isolationism, it is hardly any wonder that the whole period of his mission is continually beset with accounts of conflicts both with orthodox Judaism and with the modified Judaism of the Way.

Paul must be seen as a committed revolutionary, committed to overturning the rule of the Law of the Torah, committed to removing the distinction before God of Jew and Gentile, opposing circumcision as the mark of that difference, opposing all pointless man-made rules. Compare Pauls's vision of what it means to be "in Christ" with the bland text in James' letter:

"1:27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world".

Paul believed that human beings were the temples of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit flows through us and Christ lives in us. In order to find the mind of Christ you have only to look in your own heart., not to consult a work of historical reference, even one so important as the Bible. At the same time he saw the human race without Christ as unworthy, whose failure to be good and wise was demonstrated continuously throughout the world, unable to save or justify itself without Christ.

It will be appreciated that no Gospels had yet been written, and the only knowledge of what Christ said or did lay in the memories of those members of the Way in Palestine. Apart from his early brief visit to Jerusalem Paul had little or no access to these, and did not seem to consider it important - his own vision was sufficient. It is inevitable therefore that some of his ideas and teaching do not accord with those of Christ himself, and that this has affected Church theologies.

PAUL'S LETTERS

Of the 21 letters only 7 are commonly accepted as certainly from Paul, and as having been written in the twenty or thirty years after the Crucifixion. A necessary preface to study of Paul's Epistles is to get an idea as to which of those traditionally attributed were in fact written by him.

Considered genuine: Romans, Corinthians 1 and 2, Galatians.
Generally accepted: Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon.
Doubtful: 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus.
Attributed to a later follower of Paul: Colossians (some think it written by Peter), Ephesians.
Not accepted by the Western Churches: Hebrews.
Spurious 2 Thessalonians.

It is impossible in this short study to look at the letters in detail - whole shelves of books have been published on Romans alone. A brief look at Romans, 1 Corinthians, Philippians, 1 Thess, and 1 Timothy, with a short note on Hebrews may serve..

ROMANS..

Paul felt that he needed to develop and teach a complete theology, and in his letter to the Romans he sets this out. He bases it on the understanding of God as love, of Christ as the Son of God, of Christ's self-sacrifice on the Cross, and on his own deep knowledge of the Old Testament. An apparent lack of knowledge of the detail of the teaching of Christ does not seem to have been important to him. He concentrates on the estrangement of man from God through sin and sees Christ's purpose as the reconciliation of Man and God. At the back of his mind throughout is the belief that only a short time - within the current generation - remains before Christ's return. Many of the ideas in Romans appear in earlier letters, but there is also much that is new. The background is the recent accession of Nero to rule Rome, a Nero who in his early years, under the guidance of Seneca, was seen as a good man, returning to the legal forms and freedoms of an earlier Rome..

The difficulties that he had when addressing a mixed audience of Jews and Gentiles are apparent in Romans. He has to convince Gentiles who have never heard of the God of the Jews that they have sinned against him and are subject to [spiritual] death. He has to convince Jews brought up to believe that righteousness consists of keeping the Law [of Moses] that keeping the Law is not enough, and that they too are subject to death. In order to justify a basic thesis that all men are sinful he has to show that even if they had somehow been able to avoid sin themselves the sin of Adam would have sentenced them anyway . He has to offer the Jews some reason why they had been required to keep the Law, in spite of its ineffectiveness, while Gentiles were exempt from the Law. Having declared the absolute equality before God of Jew and Gentile he has to show why in some ways God had favored the Jews. He has to satisfy all that only by accepting Christ can their sin be washed away so that they may hope that by God's Grace they can be granted [spiritual] life. Since this seems a little hard on those who died before Christ, or without having had a chance to accept Him, he maintains that God through Grace can forgive and grant life to anyone he chooses, regardless of their beliefs or deeds. Inevitably contradictions appear.

Some of his more important conclusions are:.

All men must have known of the true God and what was required of them just by seeing what he had created..

The Law was given to the Jews to help to make clear what was sinful. However keeping the Law, for the past as well as for the living, was not sufficient in itself. For those who accept Christ the Law is dead..

Accepting Christ meant that any past Sin was washed away, but did not guarantee redemption. .

Redemption is entirely through Faith, leading to acceptance by God's Grace. Deeds are a bonus but not a deciding factor. There are no binding rules, God is entirely free to redeem anyone he chooses, no matter how ignorant, or ungodly or sinful..

Death and Sin entered the world through Adam, and were negated by Christ's death on the cross. .

1 CORINTHIANS .

The letters to the Corinthians are good examples of the difficulties Paul had in maintaining the pastoral care of his congregations. In 1 Corinthians the problems are sectarianism and sexual morality, while advice is also given on a wide range of topics such as marriage, food rules, head coverings in Church and the conduct of Church meetings. The verses at 11:23-5 are most important in that they formally institute the sacrament of the Eucharist. Finally he tries to give answers to the mystery of resurrection, making it clear that it is not the old earthly body that is resurrected, but that a new spiritual body is created..

1 Corinthians was probably written in Ephesus, before his imprisonment there..

GALATIANS.

Seems to be in response to a challenge to his teaching by Jewish Christians from Jerusalem who still want Gentile and Jewish converts to hold the Law, and circumcision, and all the rules that Paul has rejected. It is a rehearsal of many of the ideas that were to be developed fully in Romans. In the most passionate of his letters he reaffirms his teaching and condemns those who oppose it..

THESSALONIANS .

In 1 Thess Paul turns to Christ's second coming, with predictions that support Gospel accounts, but are scarcely compatable with Revelation. It also contains in 4:16-17 the ideas that have resulted in the idea of the "Rapture", that all those "in Christ" are swept up to Heaven apparently without any need for judgement..

2 Thess is generally considered to be a much later work, not by Paul, and linked to Revelation by its tone and its talk of "the lawless one". It may have been written in an attempt to explain why Christ's second coming had been delayed past all expectations. Talk of "flaming fire", "vengeance", and "everlasting destruction", as here, seem quite out of character for Paul.

1 TIMOTHY.

Paul's authorship of the pastoral letters to Timothy and Titus is doubted partly because of the different usage of expressions such as "faith", the introduction of new phrases not seen elsewhere, such as "God our Saviour", the strong words against the position of women, contrary to his own accceptance of active women supporters, talk of Bishops and organisations - surely an anachronism in his lifetime and partly because they show a Paul, who elsewhere was dedicated to the exclusion for non-Jews of Mosaic Law, apparently endorsing a new law to replace it. They look more like the work of a Church whose hopes of an early return of Christ had failed, preparing itself for a long future..

DOCTRINES

CHRIST DIED TO CANCEL THE SIN OF ADAM.

It is suggested in the article "The Gospels" that the evidence from Christ's teaching is wholly insufficient to support this, (and in that on Inerrancy that the story of Adam and Eve should not be accepted as a literal account of an actual event). You may like to consider whether without Paul's clear and unequivocal support for the idea it would ever have become an important part of Christian doctrine, and how significant it may be when set against Paul's wider view that Christ's primary purpose was the reconciliation of man with God. In Hebrews the writer (not Paul) makes the specific and completely unsupported claim that Christ died as a sacrifice in the Jewish tradition that sins could be wiped out, or atoned for, by blood sacrifice, and that Christ came to earth specifically to provide this blood sacrifice.

ORIGINAL SIN WAS THE RESULT OF ADAM'S TRANSGRESSION.

The idea that the all-pervasive presence of Sin in the world was the result of Adam's transgression seems mainly due to Paul's need to convince all his readers that everyone is sinful and must turn to Christ. It has no clear Gospel support. Jewish belief does not include the inheritance of Sin by all mankind from Adam.

REDEMPTION THROUGH FAITH ALONE.

Paul is the only source of this idea. In Matt 25:35-46 Christ emphasises works not faith. In Revelation judgement is by works not faith. In James 2:20 faith without works is said to be dead. Nevertheless in 2Cor 5:10 Paul says that men will be judged for their deeds, adding further to the confusion over the relative importance of faith and works. Paul's main aim was probably to destroy any idea that salvation could be bought by good works..

INHERENT KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.

Again only Paul's idea. No Gospel support. In fact Paul seems to contradict himself when he says in Romans 10:14: "And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?".

SALVATION.

Paul appears to contradict the unequivocal statement by Christ in John 14:6: "No man comes to the Father but by me" which clearly excludes anyone who has never known of Him. Paul's claim that everyone has an inherent knowledge of God can scarcely be interpreted as including an inherent knowledge of Christ's life, teaching, and sacrifice..

BAPTISM.

Paul sees baptism as creating a connection between Christ and the individual, but offers no support for the idea that it in itself washes away sins. He speaks of baptism by John as 'the baptism of repentance' by which people were prepared for Christ's coming and distinguishes this from baptism in Christ. Paul himself only rarely baptised..

LAW.

He seems to contradict Christ when he says that the rule of the Law has ended for all who believe. (Romans 6:14, 7:6, 10.4) However by 'Law' he does not mean the ten commandments, but of compliance with the whole literal set of rules by which the Jews lived and expected to gain salvation, whereas Christ is speaking primarily of the spirit of the law. However Paul's use of the word can vary from verse to verse, leading to somewhat obscure and confusion generating passages such as Romans 7:13-25, where he is discussing the conflict between bodily temptation and the mind's resistance to temptation..

FUTURE CONDUCT.

Paul's instructions as to how a convert to Christ should behave are limited to avoiding conflict or offence to other Christians, and keeping free from further sin. Other than this he makes no rules and it is be expected that he would regard the detailed laws and doctrines of some of today's Churches in the same way as he regarded the Hebrew Law. He does not require deliberate good works, or proselytising. He does not require the wealthy to give away their wealth, but does expect charity and mutual help..

RESURRECTION.

Paul distinguishes between the natural body and the resurrected spiritual body. While implying that the spiritual body is not of flesh and blood his words may not be clear enough to allow a certain conclusion that it is pure uncorporeal spirit..

THE STATUS OF WOMEN.

What Paul said should be distinguished from what is said in the letters which are most probably not of his authorship. Both in Church and in the home women must always be subservient to their husbands. They may not teach or speak in Church (contradicted elsewhere when he says that they must cover their heads if they prophesy in Church). If they want instruction in spiritual matters they may only obtain it through their husbands. The relationship of wife to husband is as the relationship of the husband to the Church. (1 Cor 14:34, Eph 5:22-24 and elsewhere). Man is the glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. This doctrine may accord with the spirit of the time but seems unlikely to be in accord with the spirit of Christ, who made no similar pronouncements..

CIVIL AUTHORITY.

In Romans 13:1-7 Paul makes a strong plea for the support of all civil authority. A little strange in view of a perception by the early Church in the Gospels and in Revelation that all earthly governments are controlled by the Devil. This latter idea must have been a later development, perhaps resulting from Nero's persecutions..

ESCHATOLOGY.

1 Thess 4 & 5. In general supports the Gospels, and gives no support to the later ideas in Revelations. 2 Thess 1-12 Seems to be explaining a delay in Christ's second coming by saying that a 'man of sin, the son of perdition' must first appear, (perhaps to help identify the unrighteous), and must first be unmasked. This letter is considered to be spurious. Paul teaches that the end is so near that men should not marry, and that the married should behave as though they were not married. Fortunately for Christianity this advice has not been followed!.

TOLERANCE.

Romans Ch 14 is a plea for tolerance, to avoid judgement or dispute over another's views. Each must make up his own mind, but is then personally responsible to God for his conclusions. Although directed specifically to local quarrelling over what foods may be eaten, Paul makes clear the wider implications..

THE RAPTURE.

Without 1 Thess 4:16-17 the notion of 'The Rapture' could scarcely have arisen. Matt 24:40-41 is sometimes quoted but lends little or no support. It is far from clear whether Paul himself would agree with the way his words have been used. .

SUMMARY.

Paul's doctrine became the doctrine of the early Church. In a number of respects it contradicts Christ's teaching, in others it distorts it. In yet others, he is introducing ideas of his own, or perhaps ideas formed within the congregations he visited, which have no discernable backing in either Gospels or the Old Testament, and ideas based solely on the mores of his time. Some of his teaching depends heavily on his belief in the immediacy of Christ's return and cannot be applied to our present reality. Christianity's debt to Paul is beyond measure, but it it seems high time that any contradictions, distortions, and unfounded ideas were identified and either accepted or expunged..

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