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From: lisa@phs.UUCP (Jeffrey William Gillette)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: In Defense of St. Paul
Message-ID: <1013@phs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 12-Apr-85 23:36:01 EST
Article-I.D.: phs.1013
Posted: Fri Apr 12 23:36:01 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Apr-85 02:10:26 EST
Organization: Duke Physiology
Lines: 77

[]

The battle cry of theologians in the early years of the 20th Century: 
"Away with St. Paul - give us the pure simple words of Jesus!"  And why 
not?  Was Christianity founded by Paul or by Jesus?  Was Jesus a 
theologian?  Did the early church turn the world on its head by the power 
of their university degrees?  And even a cursory look at the words in red 
will show a picture of Jesus as enlightened and tolerant (or do they 
merely show him as ambiguous).  Perhaps Harnack was right: Jesus gave us 
a way to live, and Paul turned it into a religion!

The question, in fact, goes well beyond the 20th Century.  It seems that 
Paul was an embarrassment to the 2nd Century church also.  His most loyal 
adherents were the gnostics (who liked his emphasis on intellect), and 
Marcion (someone has said that Marcion was the only man to understand 
Paul - and he *mis*understood him).  There may be more than a little 
truth in the rumor that, had the pastoral epistles (1,2 Timothy & Titus) 
not shown up and "domesticated" Paul in the eyes of the Great Church, the 
apostle to the gentiles would have drifted off into the same obscurity 
reserved for other sectarian and heretical writings.

BUT, St. Paul's writings did not drift off into obscurity.  At the most 
crucial stages in the history of the church it was to Paul - not to the 
Gospels - that theologians turned to makes sense of Christianity.  What 
is there in these short letters that could command the undivided 
attention of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and the like?  Even at 
the end of the apostolic times, the writer of 2nd Peter calls Paul's 
letters Scripture (graphoi) - the only New Testament writings called 
Scripture by another New Testament author! 

St. Paul wrote eight or ten letters to specific churches, answering 
specific questions with specific advice.  Yet to focus on the specific 
details of Paul's instructions would be to miss completely the apostle's 
true genius.  In fact, Paul is at his weakest when he attempts to give 
specific instructions.  Consider 1 Corinthians: in chapter 11 Paul 
explains how a woman is to act when praying or prophesying in the church, 
yet in chapter 14 he commands that women must be silent in the church!  
In the same letter, Paul informs us that the very laws of nature dictate 
which hair styles are appropriate.  Needless to say, Christian thinkers 
have not turned to these passages in moments of supreme spiritual 
enlightenment. 

The real genius of St. Paul lies in his penetrating insight of human 
existence.  Thus Paul writes of the anguish of the person who desperately 
wants to obey God's laws, yet can't find the power within himself, and of 
the victory made available through the Holy Spirit.  And Paul meditates 
on the "wisdom" of the Cross, and the new life made available to us 
through faith in it.  And, note especially, that this same Paul claimed
that, in Christ there is no freeman or slave, no Jew or Gentile, no male 
or female, but all are equal.  Paul's genius was his intense perception 
of what it means to be human - warts and all; how God has intervened in 
our existence through the life, death, and (most importantly) the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ; and what sort of new existence we can enjoy 
as God's own people. 

By the way, for the benefit of historians, Paul's letters are the 
earliest witnesses to Christianity.  All the authentic Pauline epistles 
were written before 60 AD - 5 years before the earliest Gospel (Mark), 
and at least 30 years before the last Gospel (John).  The words in red 
are not the words that Jesus said.  They are the words the evangelists 
thought he said, the words he might have said, and, sometimes, the words 
he should have said (or so they felt).  I suspect that a good deal of 
history can be gleaned from the pictures of Jesus presented by the 
Gospels, but it is simply not fair to say that Matthew, Mark, Luke and 
John give us history, while Paul gives us theology.  Every book in the 
New Testament is primarily an *interpretation* of God's work through 
Jesus. 

Does Paul speak to you?  It depends on what you want to hear.  But don't 
make the mistake of seeing the trees and missing the forest in the 
apostle's letters.  And don't make the mistake of believing that the 
words in red ink are any different than the words in black ink.


        Jeffrey William Gillette                duke!phs!lisa
          The Divinity School
            Duke University