Paul I Never Mind Teaching You the Same Thing Over and Over Again

Paul's Mission and Letters

Conveying the 'good news' of Jesus Christ to non-Jews, Paul'south messages to his fledgling congregations reveal their internal tension and conflict.

Wayne A. Meeks:

Woolsey Professor of Biblical Studies Yale University

WHO WAS PAUL?

The Apostle Paul is, adjacent to Jesus, clearly the almost intriguing figure of the 1st century of Christianity, and far better known than Jesus because he wrote all of those messages that we have [as] main sources.... There are many amazing things most him. For example, in modern scholarship, we have tended to divide various categories. In that location are gentiles, and there are Jews. There are Greek speaking people and there are Hebrew speaking people. There's Palestinian Judaism, which includes apocalypticism. In that location's Rabbinic Judaism and in that location's Hellenistic Judaism, which has derived deeply from the Greek world. Paul seems to fall into several of these categories, therefore misreckoning our modern divisions. So he'southward an intriguing and puzzling character in some respects.

The primary impact he has left on Christianity afterward him is through his letters, but in his own time, he sees himself primarily equally a prophet to the non-Jews, to bring to them the message of the crucified Messiah, and he does this in an extraordinary mode. He is a person who is somehow a metropolis person, and he sees that the cities are the fundamental to the rapid spread of this new message. ...At ane point he can write to the Roman Christians, I have filled upward the gospel in the East, I take no more room to work hither. What could he possibly mean? There are only a handful of Christians in each of several major cities in the Eastern Empire. What does he mean, that he has filled up all of the Eastern Empire with the gospel? But we wait at those places and we see [that] each of them is on a major Roman road or it is at a major seaport. They are the great trading centers of the earth. They are the middle of migrations of people and he sees this earth, from a Roman point of view, which is an urban signal of view, that the surrounding country is centered in that city and the spread of Christianity depends upon getting it to those major centers....

L. Michael White:

Professor of Classics and Manager of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin

PAUL IN CORINTH

Mike, take u.s.a. back in time to Corinth early fifties and describe the scene. What's happening? What'south going on that's new?

The city of Corinth in about the year 50 would have been the burgeoning capital of a Roman province in the Greek East. ... A groovy center. It had two ports. One on the Aegean side and 1 on the Adriatic side so that it served as one of the major crossroads for Roman shipping throughout the Mediterranean. And so when Paul arrived in Corinth in the year 50, he would have come up the slopes to the center of the urban center and seen the rise of a slap-up Roman splendor. A kind of monumental metropolis congenital around the remains of the older Greek metropolis, the center of which was the temple of Apollo with its swell monolithic Ionic columns standing up above the rest of the urban center.

And what does [Paul] do [when he arrives in Corinth?]

Then when Paul gets in that location he must have gone among the merchants and the artisans who would take been the key figures in the economic growth of the city, precisely considering Corinth was an important trade eye spanning the Eastern and the Western half of the Mediterranean. ...The city of Corinth is a humming cosmopolitan place with people from all over the Mediterranean world in that location, and so when nosotros run into Paul in Corinth he's really another one of these travelers and tradesman. Traditionally at least Paul is a tent maker. He'south somehow involved in the tent making or leather working manufacture. We've often viewed Paul as some sort of handworker. He may be actually from the upper artisan class. His family may have owned the business back in Tarsus. Nosotros're not absolutely sure but it's quite reasonable to think of Paul and so moving very comfortably among the artisans who frequent and inhabit the marketplaces of a city like Corinth ....

... Permit'southward imagine Paul going up the main street of Corinth through the monumental Roman archway into the forum, the center of city life, the identify where all the business and near of the political activities are washed in the public life of this Roman city. Here are the shops. Here are the offices of the city magistrates, and nosotros're standing literally in the shadow of the groovy temple of Apollo. Information technology's among these artisans, among the shopkeepers, among the hurry of activity of a Greek urban center that we must imagine Paul kickoff to talk almost his message of Jesus and and so when we hear Paul say "I've determined to know nothing among you merely Jesus Christ, Jesus the Messiah and him crucified," that must have struck an interesting chord amongst these cosmopolitan Greeks who would take inhabited Corinth at that time.

How would they accept reacted?

They must have reacted as if this is some sort of strange message at certain levels. What does it mean to call someone the Christ or the Messiah? Information technology must not have been intelligible to a lot of them until some sort of caption could exist given. From other references within Paul['s writings] we tin can decide some of the rudiments of his preaching message. He talks well-nigh how they plow from idols to serve a living God so he brings a message of the 1 Jewish God as part of his preaching. He's a Jewish preacher. Secondly, he talks near the wrath to come up, a kind of apocalyptic image of a coming judgment on all who worship idols and don't serve that living God, and thirdly he talks near Jesus the Messiah every bit the i who will deliver from that wrath. So in Paul's view information technology is the messianic identity of Jesus that is an important new element in this very traditional Jewish bulletin and at present there'southward ane other element. He's taking it to a non-Jewish audience. He'south preaching to gentiles.

Then why is he preaching to gentiles?

Paul had decided to preach to gentiles evidently out of his own revelatory experience that this was the mission that had been given him by God when God called him to role as a prophet for this new Jesus movement.

Just Paul was Jewish, wasn't he?

Paul was Jewish. Paul was a Jewish prophet simply when Paul talks well-nigh himself he describes himself as having been called from the womb to serve and fulfill this mission. Simply that language of being called from the womb is prophetic language drawn directly from the prophet Isaiah and the prophet Jeremiah, so Paul sees himself in direct continuity with this Jewish legacy of the prophetic tradition equally someone called to take a special purpose. A special function on behalf of God.

Do we know annihilation well-nigh Paul'southward upbringing, his background?

Traditionally Paul grew up as a Diaspora Jew. That is from a Jewish family, [with a] very traditional Jewish upbringing simply living not in the homeland just rather in Tarsus, a city in Eastern Turkey. So he lives in a Greek city, itself, in fact, an interesting kind of crossroads on the frontier of the Middle East, and yet he also had a very traditional Jewish teaching. He was himself a Pharisee and trained as a Pharisee so he would have been conversant with the tradition of interpretation of the scriptures and indeed of the prophets themselves. When nosotros hear Paul using prophetic language both as a way of framing his preaching message and also equally a way of describing his ain self-understanding, it is because he was steeped in that prophetic language from his own studies in the Jewish tradition.

PAUL IN ANTIOCH

Why does Paul go to Antioch?

Nosotros ha[ve] the story of Paul'south life in a consummate narrative style given to united states in the Volume of Acts, which details his activities from the time that he was in Jerusalem to the time that he goes to Damascus. At that place [he] has a conversion experience and afterwards comes dorsum to Jerusalem. He then moves on to Antioch, one of the other important cities of the Greek Eastward under Roman rule. In fact it's the capital of Roman Syria. We also know that there was a very large Jewish community in Antioch, and patently when Paul went there it was because he understood it to offer a very important opportunity for him to preach this new bulletin that he had come up to understand every bit a outcome of his own revelatory experience about Jesus.

...Alongside of our account of Paul's life that we get from the Volume of Acts we also accept an account that Paul himself gives us and it'southward very important to notice that in some means these ii accounts contradict 1 another. They're not completely parallel in the way they describe sure events in Paul'southward career. For example in Galatians, when Paul tells u.s. most his early on career, he explicitly says he has little or naught to exercise with Jerusalem early on. But after does he come dorsum to Jerusalem to become more familiar with the leaders of the Jerusalem Christian community. Paul himself spends more than of his time abroad from Jerusalem. Initially in the area of Arabia. Probably effectually the city of Damascus, then he moves back to Antioch. Paul describes much of his activity in the early on stages of his career every bit a Christian. That is after his conversion around the areas of Antioch and Tarsus, his hometown.

Now when Paul describes his render to Antioch it's clear that's he working in this mixed Jewish and non-Jewish or gentile population of a major cosmopolitan center. Antioch itself has i of the largest Jewish communities exterior of the Jewish homeland in the Roman period. It'southward been suggested that maybe something like forty thousand people in this Jewish community. So we must imagine a number of unlike Jewish congregations and sub-sections of the city in and through which Paul could have moved and still felt very much at home within the Jewish community. Some of these Jewish congregations probably like Paul, probably like other people in the homeland, also knew this apocalyptic bulletin of a messianic expectation and possibly more than one kind of Messiah. Just like nosotros see back in the homeland at this same period. So expect Paul to be preaching about a Messiah. To be talking about a messianic identity isn't really all that unique in and of itself, rather, it'southward more important to recognize that Paul and other followers of the Jesus movement of this time would take been given a special new meaning or a special new kind of information near their agreement of who and what that Messiah was to be.

A NEW VIEW OF THE MESSIAH

Which was?

In the Jesus motility information technology'due south clear that a new understanding has come to the fore. In fact it's slightly odd from certain perspectives. One doesn't normally expect that a Messiah should dice and however we have this ironic message in Paul that in fact the Messiah is the i who has been crucified. Now it's true that i could inside a standard Jewish tradition call back of the Messiah dying. The deviation is that fifty-fifty when a Messiah should go through some sort of death or suffering that the upshot precipitated past that expiry should exist the coming of the new kingdom.... What we detect in Paul, and indeed amidst almost of the early Christians, is a slightly ironic twist of fate that the decease of the Messiah doesn't immediately inaugurate the new kingdom, and yet that doesn't seem to diminish their sense of apocalyptic expectation. Paul withal thinks it'southward coming soon. He will get through his entire life thinking the kingdom volition come soon but the Messiah had already died.

How does Paul refer to Jesus?

Then when nosotros hear Paul talking virtually the message of Jesus Christ and him crucified, we're offset to get for the get-go fourth dimension in the New Testament the language that volition become the hallmark of all the later Christian tradition. Indeed information technology'due south where we get much of the vocabulary that makes Christianity distinctive. The term "Christ" is a title. It's the Greek translation of the Hebrew discussion Messioc and they mean exactly the same thing. They both refer to someone who is all-powerful. ... It's identifying him as a religious figure in a new fashion.

...[Yet] for Paul to use the term "Christ" does non automatically betoken that we're dealing within a Christian frame of reference that everyone would have recognized. The term Christ, Messiah, could take been used by any number of different Jewish people and even so meant different things. Then simply to hear that term even in the Greek metropolis like Antioch probably wasn't all that unique, and still it had to have sparked some interest. Information technology'south significant therefore that the Book of Acts tells usa that the term "Christian" is a follower of the Messiah or a proponant of some Messiah.

THE TERM "CHRISTIAN"

The term "Christian" was commencement coined in Antioch probably some x maybe even 15 years after the death of Jesus. Now while this term Christian of form becomes the standard terminology for all afterwards Christian traditions, and we think of it in much more lofty and positive terms, at the time that it was coined information technology was probably a slur. It was probably thrown at these early followers of Jesus as some derogatory designation of them. This is what we oft see happening with new religious movements.... We ofttimes observe in the sociology of sectarian groups that the grouping may have one self designation. They may call themselves "the way" or "the true calorie-free" or something like that considering that's their religious self formulation, but outsiders volition often label them past the name of the leader or the proper name of some catchy element in their message that sparks their interest. So when nosotros hear at Antioch that they're called "Christians" we accept to retrieve of that in more than in the vein of them beingness called "Messianists" or "Christies." People who follow a Messiah or just talk nigh the Messiah an awful lot and we're not actually sure who coined the term. Whether information technology'southward other Jews who didn't believe in the Messiah or pagans who heard these Jewish groups talking nigh messianic ideas. It'due south not entirely clear.

CONTROVERSY: Practice Y'all Have TO BECOME A JEW TO FOLLOW JESUS?

Were there applied bug that arose during the time that Paul was in Antioch? Can you depict to me the difference in the tension betwixt Jerusalem and Antioch? The tensions that arose over time.

It'south during the fourth dimension that Paul is Antioch that a major new evolution starts to accept place in the Christian movement. Because it's at that place that we get-go hear of the expansion of the movement more than to gentiles, to non-Jews. Even though it'south coming out of this predominantly Jewish social context of the synagogue communities of Antioch. Now the state of affairs seems to be that initially when people were attracted to the Jesus movement, they first became Jews and they had to go through all the rituals and rites of conversion to Judaism. But apparently information technology's amidst Paul and some of his shut supporters that they began to recall that it was okay to become a member of the Christian motion without having to go through all of those rites of conversion to Judaism, and that would, in the case of Paul'south career, spark ane of the nearly important controversies of the first generation of the Christian movement. Do yous take to get a Jew in club to be a follower of Jesus as the Messiah?

The major issues in converting to Judaism for a gentile, for a non-Jew, is that one must, if a male, become circumcised, and of course this was a an obvious stardom if one is working out in a Greek gymnasium where anybody was nude to brainstorm with and so the physical fact of circumcision was the noticeably distinctive quality to Jewish cocky-identity in the Greco-Roman globe. So the ritual of circumcision as a process of conversion to Judaism is one of those major hurdles that people would have thought about from the Greek world background in which Paul was living.

Now the other things that 1 must do in order to convert to Judaism, in add-on to circumcision if a male person, would be to detect the Torah. That is, the Jewish law and the dietary and other kinds of purity regulations that would have come from the Torah.

The one other thing to say, though, is that conversion to Judaism was actually much easier for women, and it may really be the simple fact that more women could easily be attracted to Judaism...we know that later on when we run into Paul's churches in the Greek world... in those Greek cities at that place are far more women in them, and it may exist that this is where he had an early following precisely because it was already a hurdle that was easier to bound.

So how did Paul get this idea that it was okay not to do all this stuff? What was his logic?

Paul'due south notion that it was possible for gentiles to enter the congregation of God without some of the rules of Judaism interestingly plenty seems to be a conviction on his part that comes from his ain interpretation of the Jewish scriptures. In fact he gets it by and large from the prophet Isaiah. Paul'southward message of the conversion of gentiles seems to be predicated on the Isaiah language of what will happen when the kingdom comes when the Messiah has arrived and there volition exist a light to the nations, "a light to the gentiles." And in that sense Paul views the messianic historic period having arrived with Jesus as beingness a window of opportunity for bringing in the gentiles into the elect status alongside the people of State of israel. So what Paul is really doing is creating this apocalyptic bulletin of what the kingdom is about to be, and the arrival of the gentiles, the engrafting or integrating of the gentiles who will come to believe in the truthful God of State of israel into the community of Israel as the elect nation, then is i of the hallmarks of the messianic historic period.

TENSION OVER DINING FELLOWSHIP

Do these views that Paul had, did they cause conflict or tension with the grouping in Jerusalem?

Plainly Paul'south attitude toward gentile converts stimulated controversy both at Antioch among the Jewish communities there and also among the older Christian communities back in Jerusalem. There are several issues involved hither. One is the notion of the dietary laws, the eating restrictions that would have obtained for eating certain kinds of food if ane was an observant Jew. Likewise with whom one could eat, and so we run across some indication during Paul's time in Antioch that this becomes a source of some tension. Precisely because in Paul'due south view it's at present possible to integrate these gentiles, people who don't keep the proper food laws, into a dining fellowship with Jews, all of whom are followers of Jesus. And it'due south in that mixed community where fellowship around a common repast and the celebration of the story of Jesus is the eye where Paul brings everyone together, only because it's at a repast information technology also runs headlong into some Jewish sensitivities about what kind of foods you can eat and with whom you tin eat.

Now where we come across this tension coming to a head most conspicuously is later Paul returns from a conference in Jerusalem. When he went to Jerusalem he took with him a young gentile convert by the name of Titus who was Paul's exam case and Paul says explicitly that he went down to Jerusalem to see with the leaders of the church building at that place. ... Peter, one of the leading Apostles from all the gospel stories, and James the brother of Jesus himself.... When Paul goes to see them he takes with him Titus and some of others of the Antioch community who are his supporters in the beginning..., and they go downward to ask the question of "how do we bargain with these gentile converts?" and they manage to get some sort of crude agreement with the Jerusalem leadership. They concur that it's okay for Paul to catechumen these gentiles and yet not to strength them to be circumcised.

Then when Paul goes back to Antioch he seems to think that he'south won a major victory in the agreement of what the Christian will be. Shortly after his return to Antioch, however, Peter arrives from Jerusalem. Initially Peter seems to take been willing to [keep] fellowship with Paul and these gentile converts. He eats with them, only then not besides long thereafter another people from Jerusalem arrive and Peter backs off. He refuses to eat with them, and Paul blows his stack because he feels that Peter has backed out on a fundamental agreement on what it means for gentiles to convert to followers of Jesus. Paul says he confronts Peter to his face and challenges him with hypocrisy.

What was the flip side of the [understanding with Peter and James in Jerusalem]? Did Paul concur to practice anything in return ...?

The other thing that emerged out of the Jerusalem conference was that Paul would go predominantly to a gentile audience and from this signal on in Paul'southward career he is a preacher predominantly to gentiles. He doesn't actually work by and large in Jewish communities any longer. In fact he even says that Peter is the one charged to be the missionary to the Jewish communities. Now as part of this understanding that was reached in Jerusalem, Paul also decides that information technology would be of import to raise funds in support of the poor in Jerusalem. That is, the followers of the Jesus movement who live there and who seem to be beset with some issues every bit a consequence of the famine or other kind of economic distress. And then part of Paul's missionary action for the rest of his career is raising funds to bring back to Jerusalem.

Then what happens after he and Peter accept this blow upwardly? What does Paul exercise?

The blow up in Antioch over eating with gentiles probably is the turning bespeak in Paul'due south career. Up until that point Paul has worked predominantly within Diaspora Jewish communities, where he moves out of the Jewish context to deal with gentiles, just after the accident up with Peter, Paul leaves Antioch and probably never returned over again. And from that betoken on, Paul works nigh exclusively within gentile communities. Now we know he does encounter other Jews in these major Greek cities and at that place presumably are Jewish communities in all of them, only Paul doesn't view himself equally working any longer within a predominantly Jewish matrix.

Read Paul'south account of the altercation at Antioch in his letter of the alphabet to Galatians.

PAUL IN THE AEGEAN Basin

After the blow up with Peter at Antioch, Paul left and went to Western Turkey or Asia Minor and Greece, and that would exist the new center of his missionary activeness for the side by side ten years of his life. The dates are difficult to decipher hither in precise particular but if we call back of the Jerusalem conference in about the twelvemonth 48 past the year 49 or fifty, we know that Paul is up in Northern Greece, Macedonia, in the cities of Phillipi and Thessalonica. By the year 50 he arrives in Corinth and it's at that juncture that we think of him then outset to preach this message of Jesus Christ.... For the adjacent ten years... from 50 to roughly 60, Paul will concentrate all of his efforts in this region of the Aegean basin. That is the region bounded by the Eastern coast of Hellenic republic and the Western coast of Turkey and the island in-between. That volition be his mission eye for the next ten years.

...Now within this circuit of the Aegean bowl Paul basically has two or 3 major cities that serve as his mission bases. Nosotros know of the two cities up in \Macedonia, Phillipi and Thessalonica, that he frequents. He travels to them on several different occasions. Corinth is his base of operations in Southern Greece. On the Eastern side of the Aegean in Turkey his base of operations is the major metropolis of Ephesus which precisely at the time that Paul is arriving in that location is about to become the most important metropolis of all Asia.

...[I]north about the yr 50 to 55 when Paul is traveling dorsum and forth from Corinth to Ephesus, this is a flow when the whole Aegean is going through the beginnings of a massive growth under Roman expansion... Roman development. We should call up of information technology every bit Roman urbanization programs. Now Ephesus upward until this time had actually non been the major metropolis of Asia. Only nether the Emperor Nero and a piffling afterwards would it really take off and grow to become the about important Greek urban center in the East. Paul was at that place simply at the beginning of that process, and so we have to imagine Paul coming in to Ephesus from the harbor, down the main street to the Greek theater and encountering what was at that stage withal a smallish city only one that was just near ready to have off. Similar Corinth, Ephesus was a cosmopolitan environment. We accept to imagine traders in that location from Egypt, from the Turkish hinterlands, from Greece, from Italia. In fact the inscriptions and the statues and the art work and the buildings all tell us that this is really a crossroads of culture and religious life throughout the Mediterranean world.

THE PAULINE MISSION -- LETTERS FROM EPHESUS

And then what does Paul exercise when he gets to Ephesus?

While all of the cities to which Paul travels in this period are very important to his work, it'southward probably Ephesus and the areas immediately around Ephesus that will be his most important base of operations. For several years we will see Paul living in and around Ephesus and writing letters back and forth to these other congregations. Nosotros have to call back of it this way; Paul mostly travels around in a kind of circuit of these congregations around the Aegean rim, or he sends out his helpers and his co-workers, people like Timothy and Titus, to take information or check out what's happening over in Phillipi or some place like that. Sometimes mayhap even to become and aid get-go a new congregation. Some place over in, say, Colossae or maybe upward toward the interior in Galatia. And then we have to imagine the Pauline mission every bit a kind of beehive of activity... every bit Paul, his co-workers, other Christians from diverse cities are all traveling back and forth across the Aegean, but most importantly, nosotros discover Paul doing something new. He writes letters as a mechanism for further instructing them in his understanding of the Christian message. Yous see it's Paul who starts the writing of the New Testament by writing letters to these fledgling congregations in the cities of the Greek Due east.

What kinds of letters is he writing? Is he writing scripture?

At present when we say that Paul writes messages nosotros accept to realize that Paul actually doesn't recollect of himself as writing scripture. He hasn't still thought of a New Attestation. It didn't be yet. For Paul the Bible ways the Hebrew Scriptures, or more precisely, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that we phone call the Septuagint. So when Paul quotes scripture he'due south quoting from the Hebrew Bible in its Greek form. When Paul writes letters he's writing everyday, ordinary letters to existent people in real cities trying to deal with the circumstances in which they're living. ...[H]e does desire to deal with theological issues, but Paul isn't writing theological treatises equally much as he'southward giving advice and teaching and encouragement for living.

Is he meeting any conflicts? Are in that location practical issues that he has to kind of worry well-nigh?

The other thing that Paul'due south letters show us is that these fledgling congregations are besides facing enormous difficulties of social adjustment, and then when Paul writes he very often is trying to mediate disputes or settle the social tensions that crop upward precisely considering of the mixture of people that come in to these congregations. For instance we know that Paul wrote at to the lowest degree four or more letters to Corinth, merely 2 of which seem to be preserved in the New Attestation, and there are probably perchance as many as 10 different letters that get back and forth between Corinth and Paul during the time that he'southward living in Ephesus. We also know from the letters that there are at least five or vi unlike congregations of Christians in Corinth, each one located in someone'south home in some unlike suburb of the urban center. And then nosotros hear of people like Chloe and Gaeas and Stephanus and a very prominent adult female by the name of Phoebe who lives in the port city of Cenchreae. All of whom accept congregations that gather in their homes, and then it's this mixed and varied pocket-sized cell grouping kind of arrangement that probably establishes some of the of import social context for Paul's messages, precisely because there are disagreements that ingather up. There are differences of stance on what the message means. In that location are differences of behavior and upstanding patterns that these converts will naturally incline toward in their attempt to live the Christian life. Some of them accept the message differently and information technology's those differences of stance that prompt some controversy that Paul himself feels compelled to respond to in his letters. Offset Corinthians is a very good example hither. Paul says, "I hear in that location are disputes amid y'all," and he proceeds then to talk nearly the difficulties that these disputes create in the life of the Christian communities there.

One of the difficulties is precisely over social differentiation amidst the members of the community. Rich and poor, Jewish and gentile are living side by side and worshipping side past side, and sometimes the tension seems to want to fragment the entire community. Paul has to say it's really the fellowship of the community, the ability to come up together that's the important hallmark of the Christian message, and he has to try to show them the way to go back to that platonic.

What'south the tone of Paul's letters? Depict his tone. Does it change?

When we see Paul'south letters, nosotros realize that he's writing a very ordinary kind of prose letter writing style because it'due south very similar to what we meet in all the standard letters of the ancient world. Letter writing itself had a very standardized style and tone, and we know from the discovery of many, many letters from Egypt amongst the papyri that the practise of letter writing and the forms of letter writing had get very commonplace in the Greco-Roman world, and Paul's letters match upwardly with these typical letters from the ancient earth very, very well. Paul adapted some of the standard stylistic features of letter writing to the particular needs of his own theological concerns and his needs of instruction for these Christian communities. So Paul kind of develops a standard letter course for his way of writing. But within that standard style Paul is very adjustable. He'south able to take the standard elements of a letter and make them fit the peculiar needs of any given state of affairs. If the Corinthian community is suffering from besides much division and strife he turns information technology into a letter of instruction on harmony and unity. In the case of the Thessalonian congregation when they're not sure well-nigh what's going to happen to them he turned it into a letter of alleviation and condolement. In the case of the Galatian community when they seemed to be set to turn their dorsum on Paul entirely and become much more Jewish in their orientation he turns into a scolding parent and blisters them with purple prose about how they cannot turn dorsum on the Gospel of Christ that he had given them. So the letters very sharply intone according to the needs of the situation and the circumstances to which he's writing.

THE KINGDOM IS Even so COMING

Information technology'due south articulate that one of the concerns that keep showing up throughout this menstruation of Paul'due south ministry building is when is this kingdom going to arrive. What's going to happen? How before long? From a fairly early stage we know that almost from the moment that Paul began preaching in the Greek globe that people assumed that the kingdom would have to arrive soon. Paul'due south very offset letter, the earliest, single writing that nosotros have in the New Testament is First Thessalonians and already in Get-go Thessalonians Paul is having to panel them when people are starting to die within the congregation and the kingdom hasn't arrived yet.

Still, by the cease of Paul's career when he writes the massive Roman letter, probably the concluding thing that he wrote, and when he writes it he still is saying the time has grown short. The kingdom is yet near. It appears that Paul never expected to dice earlier the kingdom would arrive and so this apocalyptic message that was the hallmark of the earliest stages of the Jesus movement is still one of its central features prophetic preaching of Paul.

And then Paul's mediating all this stuff, trying to keep all these people more or less on target but is he also making other plans? Is he envisioning something? Does he have a sense of urgency?

Paul'south an interesting instance considering he is then able to alloy a thoroughly Jewish self consciousness and a thoroughly Jewish interpretation of scripture with a great bargain of knowledge of Greek rhetoric and philosophy of standard alphabetic character writing and other aspects of Greek culture. Paul really is a blend of all of those things and it'south precisely that blending that seems to provide a lot of the dynamic quality of his understanding of early Christianity. Now when Paul gets to the cease of his Aegean phase of ministry building he seems also to be facing some problems. We know that later on... by the middle fifties... effectually 55 to 58, other Christians are starting to move in to Paul's territories and starting to argue with his congregations over proper forms of Christian practise and conventionalities.

THE Stop OF PAUL'South AEGEAN CAREER

Paul'due south a controversial figure throughout his life. It started when he was back in Antioch. It continues throughout his Aegean ministry, and... the conflicts and controversies that Paul precipitates by virtue of his personality and his preaching actually will follow him throughout his career.

Past around the yr 58 or threescore, though, Paul seems to have felt that he had done as much as he could exercise in the Greek East and was preparing to move on. When Paul wrote the Roman letter, it's the longest of all of his letters and the terminal 1 that he wrote, he was preparing to become to Rome. He was writing to Rome but he himself had never been there. We know who was carrying the letter. It's his firm church patroness Phoebe who has gone alee to Rome to gear up the manner.... Paul is going to Rome to get the Christian communities at Rome to back up him in a new endeavour to go to Spain...to start a new gentile mission in an area that had never before heard the preaching of Jesus. But before he does that he wants to fulfill the promise that he had made to Peter and James dorsum in the Jerusalem conference. For these x years that he's been in the Aegean he'due south had his congregations collecting monies together to have back to Jerusalem. Now nosotros find him gathering all that up, each congregation sending an emissary with their part of the contribution, and they're all going as a entourage to lay information technology at the feet of James in Jerusalem. James is the brother of Jesus, now the leader of the Jerusalem congregation, and information technology is the straight legacy to Jesus himself through the family unit members that seems to be very important in this first generation of the Jerusalem congregation.

Does he brand information technology and what happens?

Paul apparently never got to Espana, although nosotros don't know for sure. What seems to accept happened is when he went back to Jerusalem with the contribution, he was arrested every bit some sort of rabble rouser.... This sets the stage for his eventual trials and... tradition holds he eventually died a martyr's death....

THE PASSING OF THE FIRST GENERATION

We don't know precisely what happened to either Peter or Paul. Tradition holds that they were both martyred in Rome in around the year 64. This was after the great fire, and the emperor Nero seemed to accept wanted to blame the fire on a diversity of groups in Rome such as Jews and Christians. Now what actually happened to Peter and Paul, we tin can never say for sure but by the mid sixties, say betwixt 62 and 64, it does appear that both Peter and Paul accept died. Almost the same time Josephus tells us that James, the brother of Jesus at Jerusalem, has likewise been killed. All in almost the same two or three year flow, so by the mid sixties the original first generation of leadership of the Christian motility has passed away and this is going to prepare the stage for an important shift that will occur inside the next few years.

We besides shouldn't minimize the level of expectation that was going through their minds at that time because ... with the passing of this first generation, the expectation that all of those coming events must exist closer to hand probably was a concern for a lot of people. At the aforementioned fourth dimension the situation in Jerusalem itself was condign a expert bit more than tense...

Holland Lee Hendrix:

President of the Kinesthesia Union Theological Seminary

PAUL'Due south THREATENING Bulletin

Paul alludes in a number of his messages to the bulletin that he would have communicated verbally probably in the settings of the forum... and the homes of private individuals in these cities. And in talking about what he preached to them, he emphasizes 2 things; on the i hand, very clearly, the importance of the decease and resurrection of Jesus, on the other paw he likewise emphasizes the importance of agreement the end fourth dimension, and the immediacy of the terminate time, and that 1 must be prepared for information technology, and the way 1 prepares for information technology is to be good. We observe a lot of ethics in Paul. And it'due south around this issue of how one lives in anticipation of the finish time that's simply around the corner for Paul. This is tied very chiefly to Paul'southward message nigh the saving significance the dead, now risen, Jesus.

Clearly the message about the coming stop time was the part that would accept been threatening to a Roman official and would have been threatening to any native population that had vested some authority in Roman officialdom. And information technology'due south very important to keep that in mind. Paul would not but take upset potentially Roman officials, Paul would have upset local populations dependent on Roman rule for their livelihood and continued peace and security.

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Source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/missions.html