The World of Saint Paul

---

Fortunately, after his death one of his followers collected some of the letters, edited them very slightly, and published them. They constitute one of history's most remarkable personal contributions to religious thought and practice. Paul's writings emphasized the crucifixion , Christ's resurrection and the Parousia or second coming of Christ. Sanders finds three major emphases in Paul's writings: Sanders concludes that Paul's writings reveal what he calls the essence of the Christian message:.

Seven of the 13 letters that bear Paul's name — Romans , 1 Corinthians , 2 Corinthians , Galatians , Philippians , 1 Thessalonians and Philemon — were until recently almost universally accepted as being entirely authentic dictated by Paul himself. Four of the letters Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are widely considered pseudepigraphical , while the authorship of the other two is subject to debate. According to their theories, these disputed letters may have come from followers writing in Paul's name, often using material from his surviving letters. These scribes also may have had access to letters written by Paul that no longer survive.

The authenticity of Colossians has been questioned on the grounds that it contains an otherwise unparalleled description among his writings of Jesus as "the image of the invisible God", a Christology found elsewhere only in John's gospel. Internal evidence shows close connection with Philippians.

Ephesians is a letter that is very similar to Colossians, but is almost entirely lacking in personal reminiscences. Its style is unique. Finally, according to R. Brown , it exalts the Church in a way suggestive of a second generation of Christians, "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets" now past. The defenders of its Pauline authorship argue that it was intended to be read by a number of different churches and that it marks the final stage of the development of Paul's thinking.

It has been said, too, that the moral portion of the Epistle, consisting of the last two chapters, has the closest affinity with similar portions of other Epistles, while the whole admirably fits in with the known details of Paul's life, and throws considerable light upon them. Paul wrote down much of the theology of atonement. His death was an expiation as well as a propitiation , and by Christ's blood peace is made between God and man. Some scholars see Paul or Saul as completely in line with 1st-century Judaism a Pharisee and student of Gamaliel as presented by Acts , [] others see him as opposed to 1st-century Judaism see Marcionism , while the majority see him as somewhere in between these two extremes, opposed to "Ritual Laws" for example the circumcision controversy in early Christianity but in full agreement on " Divine Law ".

These views of Paul are paralleled by the views of Biblical law in Christianity. Tabor for the Huffington Post []. Paul's theology of the gospel accelerated the separation of the messianic sect of Christians from Judaism, a development contrary to Paul's own intent.

He wrote that faith in Christ was alone decisive in salvation for Jews and Gentiles alike, making the schism between the followers of Christ and mainstream Jews inevitable and permanent. He argued that Gentile converts did not need to become Jews , get circumcised, follow Jewish dietary restrictions, or otherwise observe Mosaic laws to be saved.

Wright , [] the Anglican Bishop of Durham, notes a difference in emphasis between Galatians and Romans, the latter being much more positive about the continuing covenant between God and his ancient people than the former. Wright also contends that performing Christian works is not insignificant but rather proof of having attained the redemption of Jesus Christ by grace free gift received by faith.

According to Bart Ehrman , Paul believed that Jesus would return within his lifetime. Paul's teaching about the end of the world is expressed most clearly in his letters to the Christians at Thessalonica. He assures them that the dead will rise first and be followed by those left alive. Fuller Seminary theologian J. Daniel Kirk [] finds evidence in Paul's letters of a much more inclusive view of women. He writes that Romans 16 is a tremendously important witness to the important role of women in the early church.

Paul praises Phoebe for her work as a deaconess and Junia who is described by Paul in Scripture as being respected among the Apostles. He does not believe it to be a general prohibition on any woman speaking in worship settings since in 1 Corinthians Paul affirms the right responsibility of women to prophesy. Biblical prophecy is more than "fore-telling": Thus, to speak prophetically was to speak boldly against every form of moral, ethical, political, economic, and religious disenfranchisement observed in a culture that was intent on building its own pyramid of values vis-a-vis God's established system of truth and ethics.

There were women prophets in the highly patriarchal times throughout the Old Testament. These women include Miriam, Aaron and Moses' sister, [Exod The prophetess Noadiah was among those who tried to intimidate Nehemiah. Kirk's third example of a more inclusive view is Galatians 3: There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

In pronouncing an end within the church to the divisions which are common in the world around it, he concludes by highlighting the fact that "there were New Testament women who taught and had authority in the early churches, that this teaching and authority was sanctioned by Paul, and that Paul himself offers a theological paradigm within which overcoming the subjugation of women is an anticipated outcome". Classicist Evelyn Stagg and theologian Frank Stagg believe that Paul was attempting to "Christianize" the societal household or domestic codes that significantly oppressed women and empowered men as the head of the household.

The Staggs present a serious study of what has been termed the New Testament domestic code , also known as the Haustafel. An underlying Household Code is also reflected in four additional Pauline letters and 1 Peter: Biblical scholars have typically treated the Haustafel in Ephesians as a resource in the debate over the role of women in ministry and in the home.

Margaret MacDonald argues that the Haustafel , particularly as it appears in Ephesians, was aimed at "reducing the tension between community members and outsiders". Most Christian traditions [] [] [] say Paul clearly portrays homosexuality as sinful in two specific locations: Another passage addresses the topic more obliquely: Since the nineteenth century, however, most scholars have concluded that 1 Timothy , along with 2 Timothy and Titus , are not original to Paul, but rather an unknown Christian writing in Paul's name some time in the late-first-to-mid-2nd century.

BBC - Religions - Christianity: Paul

Paul's influence on Christian thinking arguably has been more significant than any other New Testament author. In the East, church fathers attributed the element of election in Romans 9 to divine foreknowledge. Augustine's foundational work on the gospel as a gift grace , on morality as life in the Spirit, on predestination, and on original sin all derives from Paul, especially Romans.

In his commentary The Epistle to the Romans Ger. In addition to the many questions about the true origins of some of Paul's teachings posed by historical figures as noted above, some modern theologians also hold that the teachings of Paul differ markedly from those of Jesus as found in the Gospels.

Tabor for the Huffington post []. Price , in his book The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul , says "the Pauline epistles reveal themselves to the discerning reader to have exactly the same sort of limitation as the Gospels do: As in the Eastern tradition in general, Western humanists interpret the reference to election in Romans 9 as reflecting divine foreknowledge. By reason of jealousy and strife Paul by his example pointed out the prize of patient endurance.

After that he had been seven times in bonds, had been driven into exile, had been stoned, had preached in the East and in the West, he won the noble renown which was the reward of his faith, having taught righteousness unto the whole world and having reached the farthest bounds of the West; and when he had borne his testimony before the rulers, so he departed from the world and went unto the holy place, having been found a notable pattern of patient endurance.

Commenting on this passage, Raymond Brown writes that while it "does not explicitly say" that Paul was martyred in Rome, "such a martyrdom is the most reasonable interpretation". According to one tradition, the church of San Paolo alle Tre Fontane marks the place of Paul's execution. A Roman Catholic liturgical solemnity of Peter and Paul , celebrated on June 29, commemorates his martyrdom , and reflects a tradition preserved by Eusebius that Peter and Paul were martyred at the same time. Paul can still celebrate their patron on June The apocryphal Acts of Paul and the apocryphal Acts of Peter suggest that Paul survived Rome and traveled further west.

Some think that Paul could have revisited Greece and Asia Minor after his trip to Spain, and might then have been arrested in Troas, and taken to Rome and executed. Bede , in his Ecclesiastical History , writes that Pope Vitalian in gave Paul's relics including a cross made from his prison chains from the crypts of Lucina to King Oswy of Northumbria , northern Britain.

Paul is considered the patron saint of London. Muslims have long believed that Paul purposefully corrupted the original revealed teachings of Jesus, [] [] [] through the introduction of such elements as paganism , [] the making of Christianity into a theology of the cross , [] and introducing original sin and the need for redemption. Sayf ibn Umar claimed that certain rabbis persuaded Paul to deliberately misguide early Christians by introducing what Ibn Hazm viewed as objectionable doctrines into Christianity.

Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas wrote that Paul misrepresented the message of Jesus, [] and Rashid Rida accused Paul of introducing shirk polytheism into Christianity. In Sunni Muslim polemics, Paul plays the same role of deliberately corrupting the early teachings of Jesus as a later Jew, Abdullah ibn Saba' , would play in seeking to destroy the message of Islam from within by introducing proto-Shi'ite beliefs.

Jewish interest in Paul is a recent phenomenon. Before the positive historical reevaluations of Jesus by some Jewish thinkers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he had hardly featured in the popular Jewish imagination and little had been written about him by the religious leaders and scholars. Arguably, he is absent from the Talmud and rabbinical literature, although he makes an appearance in some variants of the medieval polemic Toledot Yeshu as a spy for the rabbis.

However, with Jesus no longer regarded as the paradigm of gentile Christianity, Paul's position became more important in Jewish historical reconstructions of their religion's relationship with Christianity. He has featured as the key to building barriers e. Heinrich Graetz and Martin Buber or bridges e. Isaac Mayer Wise and Claude G. Montefiore in interfaith relations, [] as part of an intra-Jewish debate about what constitutes Jewish authenticity e. Joseph Klausner and Hans Joachim Schoeps , [] and on occasion as a dialogical partner e.

Rubenstein and Daniel Boyarin.

Scholarly surveys of Jewish interest in Paul include those by Hagner , [] Meissner , [] and Langton , British Jewish scholar Hyam Maccoby contended that the Paul as described in the book of Acts and the view of Paul gleaned from his own writings are very different people. Some difficulties have been noted in the account of his life.

Paul as described in the Book of Acts is much more interested in factual history, less in theology; ideas such as justification by faith are absent as are references to the Spirit, according to Maccoby. He also pointed out that there are no references to John the Baptist in the Pauline Epistles , although Paul mentions him several times in the book of Acts.

Others have objected that the language of the speeches is too Lukan in style to reflect anyone else's words. Moreover, George Shillington writes that the author of Acts most likely created the speeches accordingly and they bear his literary and theological marks. Baur considers the Acts of the Apostles were late and unreliable.

This debate has continued ever since, with Adolf Deissmann — and Richard Reitzenstein — emphasising Paul's Greek inheritance and Albert Schweitzer stressing his dependence on Judaism. In the second and possibly late first century, Gnosticism was a competing religious tradition to Christianity which shared some elements of theology.

Elaine Pagels , professor of religion at Princeton University and an authority on Gnosticism, declined to judge in her book The Gnostic Paul whether Paul was actually a Gnostic. Instead, she concentrated on how the Gnostics interpreted Paul's letters and how evidence from gnostic sources may challenge the assumption that Paul wrote his letters to combat "gnostic opponents" and to repudiate their statement that they possess secret wisdom. According to Timo Eskola, early Christian theology and discourse was influenced by the Jewish Merkabah tradition.

Conversely, Timothy Churchill has argued that Paul's Damascus road encounter does not fit the pattern of Merkabah. Among the critics of Paul the Apostle was Thomas Jefferson , a Deist , who wrote that Paul was the "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.

SERVICE SCHEDULE

Powell argues that Paul, in his epistles, made use of many of the ideas of the Greek philosopher Plato , sometimes even using the same metaphors and language. The New Testament offers little if any information about the physical appearance of Paul, but several descriptions can be found in apocryphal texts.

In the Acts of Paul [] he is described as "A man of small stature, with a bald head and crooked legs, in a good state of body, with eyebrows meeting and nose somewhat hooked". In The History of the Contending of Saint Paul his countenance is actually described as "ruddy with the ruddiness of the skin of the pomegranate". Lucian , in his Philopatris , describes Paul as "corpore erat parvo he was small , contracto contracted , incurvo crooked , tricubitali of three cubits , or four feet six ".

Nicephorus claims that Paul was a little man, crooked, and almost bent like a bow, with a pale countenance, long and wrinkled, and a bald head. Pseudo-Chrysostom echoes Lucian's height of Paul, referring to him as "the man of three cubits". From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Saint Paul disambiguation. Saint Paul by Bartolomeo Montagna. Jesus in Christianity Virgin birth Crucifixion Resurrection. Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles. Conversion of Paul the Apostle. Circumcision controversy in early Christianity.

I Corinthians II Corinthians. I Thessalonians II Thessalonians. Lost epistles Apocalypse of Paul. Coptic Apocalypse of Paul. Corinthians to Paul Acts of Paul. Paul and Thecla Peter and Paul. Apostle Christian Pauline Christianity. Blaise Pascal Nicolas Malebranche. John Henry Newman G. Authorship of the Pauline epistles.

Paul the Apostle and Judaism. Paul redefined the people of Israel, those he calls the "true Israel" and the "true circumcision" as those who had faith in the heavenly Christ, thus excluding those he called "Israel after the flesh" from his new covenant Galatians 6: He also held the view that the Torah given to Moses was valid "until Christ came," so that even Jews are no longer "under the Torah," nor obligated to follow the commandments or mitzvot as given to Moses Galatians Paul the Apostle and women.

Homosexuality in the New Testament. Pauline Christianity and Jesuism. Visit any church service, Roman Catholic , Protestant or Greek Orthodox , and it is the apostle Paul and his ideas that are central — in the hymns , the creeds , the sermons , the invocation and benediction , and of course, the rituals of baptism and the Holy Communion or Mass.

Whether birth, baptism, confirmation, marriage or death, it is predominantly Paul who is evoked to express meaning and significance. Retrieved 12 August Archived from the original on 30 October Retrieved 31 August Introducing the New Testament. For not without reason have the ancients handed it down as Paul's. But who wrote the epistle, in truth, God knows.

Geoffrey Chapman, , chapter The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. That Paul is neither directly nor indirectly the author is now the view of scholars almost without exception. An Introduction to the New Testament. Paul, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Early Church. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. The New Testament as History". His Letters and His Theology: An Introduction to Paul's Epistles. Retrieved 14 Dec This is the only place in the Bible where the reader is told what language Jesus was speaking.

Introduction to the New Testament 2 ed. Retrieved 14 June The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. The Living Thought Of St. The American Journal of Biblical Theology. International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: Jesus, the Rise of Early Christianity: A History of New Testament Times. An Introduction to the Study of Paul. Paul Between Damascus and Antioch: Paul, their motive and origin London , pp. At first, the two are referred to as Barnabas and Paul, in that order.

Later in the same chapter the team is referred to as Paul and his companions. Nor is there any indication in Paul's writings or arguments that he had received the rabbinical training ascribed to him by Christian writers.. The Complete Pulpit Commentary. Apostle of the Free Spirit, F.

Bruce , Paternoster , p. Scott Kellum and Charles Quarles The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: Retrieved 15 June A critical and exegetical commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians. After that he had been seven times in bonds, had been driven into exile, had been stoned, had preached in the East and in the West, he won the noble renown which was the reward of his faith, [5: Where Lightfoot has "had preached" above, the Hoole translation has "having become a herald". See also the endnote 3 by Arthur Cleveland Coxe on the last page of wikisource 1st Clement regarding Paul's preaching in Britain.

In Galatians, he lists three important meetings with Peter, and this was the second on his list. The third meeting took place in Antioch. He does not explicitly state that he did not visit Jerusalem in between this and his first visit. There might or might not have been additional visits before or after this visit, if he ever got to Jerusalem.

Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate". The Fate of the Apostles.

Retrieved 1 June The Apocryphal New Testament. How happy is its church, on which apostles poured forth all their doctrine along with their blood; where Peter endures a passion like his Lord's; where Paul wins his crown in a death like John's[the Baptist]; where the Apostle John was first plunged, unhurt, into boiling oil, and thence remitted to his island-exile. Retrieved 3 June General Audience of 4 February St Paul's martyrdom and heritage.

Rome and the Vatican. Rome versus Christianity 30— AD. Ephesians and the Pastorals 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church. Retrieved August 28, Dunn's Manson Memorial Lecture 4. Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend. I Suffer Not a Woman. Baker Book House, Archived from the original on Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Jesus I Have Loved. Woman in the World of Jesus.

On this page

The Function of the Haustafel in Ephesians ". Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. Accessed 14 February Cambridge University Press, HarperCollins Bible Dictionary revised ed. Paul's Coworkers in Christ Jesus. These three letters are widely regarded by scholars as non-Pauline. Westminster John Knox Press.

As always some scholars dissent from the consensus view.

A Brief Look at St. Paul’s Life and Teachings

Paul and the Invention of Christianity Harpercollins, October , p. How Jesus Became Christian. Philip Green, , p. Retrieved August 27, Lightfoot in Lightfoot, Joseph Barber New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity. The Lives of the Saints". Islam and the Malay-Indonesian World: Transmission and Responses illustrated ed. University of Hawaii Press. The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics: Surveying the Evidence for the Truth of Christianity. Terrorism, Islam, and Christian Hope: Reflections on and Resurging Islam.

Wipf and Stock Publishers. Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions: How did the original truth regarding God Allah come to be distorted? Let us pause to consider for a moment what it was that they were saying. God has acted decisively, once for all, by sending his beloved Son to his own people, Israel. This Jesus, whom some acknowledged as Christ, was subjected to an appalling and humiliating death.

Everyone in the Roman Empire knew about crucifixion and the fact that Jesus died in this way was not something one would expect anyone to have been proud of. That God's Anointed One could have been so publicly humiliated seemed outrageous. But for these early Jesus people, the public humiliation was conquered through resurrection, God's vindication of Jesus, and this convinced them that Jesus was not a criminal who had died for his own sins; he had died for the sins of others.

At this stage, it is incorrect to talk about Christianity. These earliest followers of Jesus were devout Jews who continued to offer sacrifice at the Temple and to observe the whole Jewish Law. Essentially, they were a small sect within Judaism. So how would such a sect have been viewed by other Jews who were not members of it? Thankfully, we have a pretty clear answer to this question because one of the most famous converts to the new Messianic sect was a Jew named Paul and before his conversion he was so horrified by the claims of this new movement that, he tells us, he persecuted it violently.

So why did people like Paul persecute Jesus' followers? The problem seems to have focused around the cross. It was simply intolerable to zealous Jews like Paul that God's special envoy could have died a criminal's death. He describes it as a "stumbling block" to Jews 1 Corinthians 1. It was unthinkable that the Messiah could have suffered in this way.

The problem would have been sharply focused for someone like Paul. He was not from Israel but was born in Tarsus, in modern Turkey. Jews like Paul, who lived outside the Jewish homeland, were called diaspora Jews. Since they lived among pagans, they were particularly conscious of how their religion might appear to those around them.

Jews were called to be a light to the nations Isaiah It could hold Judaism up to ridicule. The importance of Paul's conversion, his turn-around from persecuting Jesus to preaching Jesus, cannot be underestimated. Paul himself finds it difficult to describe what had happened and in a fascinating passage in one of his letters he explains this as a resurrection appearance of Jesus 1 Corinthians The Damascus Road experience was both a conversion and a call.

Cookies on the BBC website

It was a conversion away from his previous life as a zealous persecutor of Jesus' followers and it was a call to a new life advancing the cause of the new movement with even more vigour than he had shown before. Now, with boundless energy, Paul preached the gospel of the Christ crucified for the sins of all people far and wide, beginning at Jerusalem and continuing all the way to Rome.

His achievement was a matter of some pride for him:. Luke tells us of three enormous missionary journeys, charting [Paul's] progress from Antioch in Syria and moving westwards through modern day Turkey and Greece and finally back to Jerusalem again. For Paul this was a particularly punishing business. Unlike other early Christian missionaries, Paul earned his own living wherever he went. Luke says that he was a tentmaker Acts Paul's life was remarkable and there is little doubt that it changed the course of Christianity.

He made an impact as apostle, as theologian, and as letter-writer. Paul the apostle had expanded the church far and wide, flinging open the doors to Gentiles, strenuously fighting for his conviction that the gospel was for all people and that no barriers should be put in the way of Gentiles. Paul the theologian was the first to work through many of the intriguing questions that Jesus' life, death and resurrection had thrown up.

And Paul the letter-writer gave us not only some of the profoundest pieces of early Christian theological reflection, but also some of the finest, most poignant writing in history. At the end of the Bible, though, lies not Paul but Revelation, a book that at first sight looks like the black sheep in the New Testament family.

Paul the Apostle

With its fantastic visions of heaven, its gory stories of the future, its impenetrable signs and symbols, many a reader has given up in exasperation in the attempt to fathom out its mysteries. Some Christians have struggled with Revelation; Luther wished it was not in the New Testament at all. Yet at heart, Revelation is a profoundly Christian book.

Its central message is that in spite of any appearance to the contrary, God is still Lord and King over the universe. It is a vision of God's kingdom, his judgement but most importantly his sovereignty over everything. Where there is injustice in the world, this will be rectified. Where there is sin, sickness, disease and the devil, these will be eradicated. John, [its author] is a seer and has been given a revelation of what is going on in heaven. He is able to see God's perspective. And the message he hears there is that after all, God is indeed in control, through Jesus his Son, who has conquered death through his own victory over death.

Paul was born in Tarsu now in the south east of Turkey to a Jewish family. He had a dual identity as lots of Jews did in antiquity. He had a Jewish education, a Jewish way of life and abided by the Law of Moses. But was brought up outside of the homeland and was also at home in Greek culture, fluent in Greek, and had at least some understanding of the Greek or Roman cultural traditions.

He was a Pharisee, one of a group of Jews who policed the boundary of the law and made sure that they and others were faithful to the law of Moses. Paul was an extremely passionate Jew and he often uses the word 'zeal' of himself. One of the most fascinating stories about Paul is his incredible transformation on the Damascus road but one thing that doesn't change in this transformation is his passion.

He just becomes passionate for a different cause. Paul gives us a brief description of what happens after his experience on the Damascus road. He says that he didn't go to Jerusalem immediately but that he went off to Arabia. Arabia would be quite close to the northern part of Damascus, so he could have gone to reflect on what had happened.

When he goes to Jerusalem, it appears that he is accepted and is instructed in the basics of Christianity. He stays with Peter for two weeks and presumably learns a little about Jesus from him.

BUY TICKETS

Paul then disappears for a period and later reemerges in Antioch. Antioch in Syria which was the third biggest city in the Roman empire and becomes the center of the movement to expand this new Christian sect - this sect of Jesus the Nazarene. There are many different accounts of what happened when Paul was called back to Jerusalem. But it seems that there was a very strong movement amongt the followers of Jesus to convert Gentiles [non-Jews] into Jews.

Following Christ was a Jewish movement; he was a Jewish Messiah. But Paul believed that the Gentiles were alive with the new life of forgiveness, acceptance and transformation and that that they didn't need to be circumcised. So he brought this idea to the leaders in Jerusalem and the Jerusalem council agreed that Gentiles could become Christians without becoming Jews first.

• Effective Leadership Management
• Caught by Disorder: Bound States in Random Media (Progress in Mathematical Physics)
• Kitty Raises Hell (Kitty Norville Book 6)
• Whats Wrong with Our Schools: and How We Can Fix Them
• Tales Before Narnia: The Roots of Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction
• Mentoring Students and Young People: A Handbook of Effective Practice
• Julius Caesar: New Critical Essays: 26 (Shakespeare Criticism)