Apostle Paul

Well hello and welcome to the Pastor Talk podcast.
We are thrilled to be in conversation again about
the real people of faith,
a series that we’ve been doing on many of the notable people of
the scriptures and we’ve been looking into their lives to see where we might find connections with
our own lives.
And today we come to a figure in the New Testament who in many ways we couldn’t
conceive of modern Christianity,
of course even Christianity that reaches out beyond Judaism
without thinking of the Apostle Paul.
And he has quite a story that we’ll be able to look at,
but we also recognize just the pivotal place that he plays in the church.
And Clint,
I think as we turn our attention to a person like Paul,
we’re gonna have a hard time even
really scratching the surface of what’s here.
Yeah, this is arguably in some ways,
Michael, the largest character we’ve done.
And by that, I mean not just the amount of material that we
have in the New Testament,
but the scope of his story to begin as an enemy of the church,
to then convert,
to follow Jesus,
to serve as a missionary,
as a pastor, as an overseer, to argue with some of the leaders of the church,
the early church, in the advocacy for Gentiles.
Just the journey that he takes and what we see of it in scripture is very,
very large.
And the scope of his character as described in the Bible is really bigger than we can do justice.
I recently finished a book that was something along the lines of 800 pages on the Apostle Paul,
which is just one of hundreds.
And so we will have to very much try to hit high points today.
Yeah, and it’s important to note here at the start that our understanding of the Apostle Paul,
from the church’s perspective, I mean, the big church’s perspective,
has really grown, changed, morphed throughout the hundreds of years of church history.
And so even to say who is the Apostle Paul is a
little bit to miss the point that we’ve read different parts of his writings more closely
at some times in history than others.
And so even our understanding of Paul,
I think, has grown over the years.
All that said, before we jump into that conversation,
I’ll just welcome those of you who
are joining us on Facebook live as we premiere this today.
We are actually with you.
So if you want to ask questions or put in comments during this time,
we’re very happy to engage.
And if you’re with us in podcast format, of course,
feel free to think of jot down questions as this conversation progresses.
Send us an email.
Let us know.
We would love to have that conversation
sort of on the offline.
But all that said,
probably we have to start not with Paul,
but with Saul.
Yeah, so let’s just try to give an overview of the general flow of the character
Saul slash Paul in the New Testament.
We first meet Saul and we’re told that he’s a Pharisee.
He’s present at the stoning of Stephen.
The text says that he held the coats,
meaning that he gave permission,
implicit or tacit permission,
for this stoning to happen when
Stephen is killed for testifying to Jesus Christ.
We then get a few brief stories about Saul
pursuing the church,
trying to stamp out this,
what he considered heresy of Christianity from Judaism.
And remember,
I think it’s helpful to keep in mind that initially Christianity falls
definitely within the parameters of Judaism.
It is a sect,
a group within Judaism.
It happens at the temples, the synagogues, all of the first converts,
all of the first Christians are Jewish.
And so it’s very much a Jewish movement.
And within Judaism,
Paul is one of a group of people
who decides it doesn’t belong and it needs to be dealt with.
And he does so even violently,
throwing people in prison.
He’ll later admit.
And so when we first meet this character of Saul,
it is nowhere near the person we think of,
but it is an enemy of the church,
one actively working to stomp it out.
Yeah.
And that is the exact thing that’s going to drive him forward towards
this pivotal moment where he encounters Christ.
And I think one thing that is worth noting here
before we turn there is Paul describes himself as being zealous.
And we might not really understand
what that means.
If you just gloss over,
we might think that just means he’s passionate.
But to be zealous in Judaism brings with it its own connotations to be a zealous person means to
really be able to do whatever it takes to preserve and to pass on the faith.
And so for Saul,
the zealous faith of a Pharisee is to not just counter,
not just verbally dispute,
but to physically stamp out Christianity.
If Paul or Saul,
rather, was to continue on on the path
that he was on,
it would be reasonable that he would be one of the greatest enemies of the church, his intellectual ability,
his ability to passionately pursue one path forward
is really unrivaled until Saul gets charges,
he gets papers that are going to allow him
to secure Christians in Damascus.
And he sets out with a team to go essentially round up the
Christian church.
And it’s on that path where he encounters Jesus in his famous conversion moment.
Yeah, and you may know that story.
He’s struck down, he hears a voice,
he sees a light,
he’s then blinded something like scales on his eyes.
He says, “Who is it?” And he says,
“The one you persecute Saul.” At this point or shortly after he becomes primarily known as Paul,
he is assigned to a mentor and a community and he stays with them for quite a while.
One of the things that we sometimes miss in Paul’s story is the timeframe of it.
We tend to read the books
that hit the high points and we often miss that it was not uncommon for Paul to stay a year,
two years, three years in certain locations.
And he tells us later that he’s a tentmaker,
a person who works in fabric,
and he would have probably supported himself by signing on wherever he lived
with people who did that work.
And he would have helped them as kind of not an apprentice,
but essentially as an assistant.
And he likely funds his own ministry early on.
And as he develops,
he begins to learn and see more and more in the faith and he begins to teach.
And one of the
things that makes Paul uniquely suited to this is that he really is an expert in what we call the
Old Testament.
He knows the Scriptures.
As a Pharisee, he’s dedicated to the law.
He understands the stories.
He knows the commandments.
And he begins in an ability unique to someone like him
to see the connections between the Messiah and the promise of the Messiah and the coming and resurrection of Christ.
And this knowledge fueled with his experience,
his personal experience of
Christ on the Damascus Road,
it creates in him this unique fusion of abilities as he’s able
to converse not only with Jews,
but increasingly with those outside of Judaism. Clint, I would point people to Acts chapter 13,
starting verse 13 here.
If you want to get
a scriptural snapshot of what you’re describing, this is it.
Because Paul goes to the synagogue
and he speaks to both the Jews and to the God-worshipping Gentiles in that group.
And if you read what happens in that passage,
Paul does exactly that.
He starts with what we call the
Old Testament Scriptures.
The early church would have called them their scriptures.
And he starts there and he tells this large story of faith.
And if you read this section,
you’re going to find a
lot of the names of people we’ve already covered in this Real People of Faith series.
Because Paul turns and looks and finds in these Real People of Faith connections to not just God’s story for the
people of Israel, but really this transforming story for the entire world.
And this is where the
Christian message really starts to be distinguished from that Jewish message,
that the Gentiles are
folded into this larger family.
And as Paul states this case,
we begin to see a church leader who’s
integrating things that no one conceived of as being integrated in this way. Right.
And this sets Paul apart from all of his peers.
You have Peter and the other disciples.
You have James, who are working in Jerusalem to build a church.
And it has not occurred to them
that they might go outside the bounds of Judaism.
There was a tradition that Gentiles could convert
to Judaism, but they did so as kind of second class citizens.
And so when Paul brings this
conviction that he now sees that the promise of God,
that the desire of God is to go outside of
the Israelite family and welcome in these other groups,
these Gentiles, these outsiders,
this puts him not only outside of the common practice,
but it puts him at odds
with some of the early teachers.
And he gets called on the carpet.
He has to go and he meets
with the council and he argues with them,
or I should say he presents his argument to them,
that God shows no favoritism.
And Peter begins to soften on the idea the council
is initially suspect both of Paul and his message,
but then they begin to warm to this idea.
He begins to win them over with the help of God’s spirit and with the help of
their discernment that God is doing something unprecedented, unimaginable,
that God wants not only Jews to come to faith in Jesus Christ,
but all people.
And this probably more than anything, Michael,
becomes what Paul is known for.
It’s not that Paul ever gives up
preaching to any group of people.
And it’s not that he becomes uninterested in the Jews or anyone else.
But as we, as we encounter Paul in this story,
his driving mission is to those that are
outside of that initial circle.
That’s right, Clint.
And I would also point out that there’s
really so many different layers to Paul that we learned from different places.
And we’ve, we really thus far stuck in the book of Acts,
what, what acts tells us about Paul’s life.
And what’s significant about acts is telling is that really you kind of have book one,
book two.
You have book one, this early church,
Peter,
the early disciples,
the early, early church.
Then you have this middle stuff.
Saul converts to Paul.
Paul goes through this period of really training, learning, reflection.
And then through his ministry,
this time in Antioch,
he gets sent to
the council at Jerusalem.
It very quickly,
Paul makes it in the book of Acts to having conversation
with the highest leadership of this young Christian church.
And then the book of Acts
shifts gears really quickly.
And we start seeing Paul who travels the known world in many different
trips.
And, and his trips get traced out as the church begins to expand beyond Jerusalem
to the entire known world ending up in Rome.
And it’s, it’s this passage of not leadership,
because we know that Peter and James continue to lead,
but we see this focus shift over to Paul
in the book of Acts.
And then it’s sort of within that context that we see these other pastoral
letters written, which I think they,
as our conversation will progress today,
even give us other advantages of Paul’s life in ministry.
Yeah. And we have told you that we would try to identify when we are reflecting or thinking
beyond the scope of what we learn in scripture.
Paul never really mentions the emotional impact
that the violence against Christians in his earlier life had caused for him.
But it, it must have been something that he carried with him,
that, that, that regret,
that, that knowledge that he was wrong,
that he was actually standing a man who sought his whole life to stand for what
God was doing was actually standing against it.
And I’ve, I’ve wondered, Michael, if that’s not
something of the mixture that fueled Paul with his devotion to reach out to the outsiders,
to go find the lost,
to go and seek out wherever they were.
And as far as they were,
those people who might come to Christ and have a saving knowledge of him,
Paul is a remarkably tenacious character.
He’s a fierce preacher.
He backs down from no one.
He endures pain and suffering because of what he does.
And yet there’s no quit in him.
Yeah.
I think that one way to summarize what I hear you
reflecting on there, Clint, is that Paul embodies what we often think of opposites.
He demands and emphasizes humility to the nth degree.
If you read the book of Philippians,
you cannot walk away from Paul’s writings without recognizing that we are all sinners in need of
grace and that that posture requires that we must be people who seek humility in the world.
And that is not oppositional in Paul to perseverance, to endurance,
to courage, to getting beaten down and stoned and bit by snakes and shipwrecked and you get back up and you keep moving.
Sometimes I think we sloppily think that humility is some version of weakness.
That is not true in Paul at all.
Paul calls Christians to a distinct knowledge of the
fact that we need Christ for salvation.
And yet Paul lives his entire life with this
expressed belief.
His actions reflect his belief that we are called to do everything we can to
advance the gospel wherever we are.
Yeah. So in the 11th chapter of 2 Corinthians,
let me just read some of this list for you.
Paul is talking about some of his hardships.
I have far more imprisonments,
countless floggings, often near death.
Five times I received
the 40 lashes minus one.
Three times I was beaten with rods.
Once I received a stoning.
Three times I was shipwrecked for a night and a day.
I was adrift on sea on frequent journeys.
Danger from rivers,
bandits,
danger from my own people, from Gentiles,
danger in the city,
in the wilderness, at sea, from false brothers, sisters in toil, hardships,
many sleepless nights,
hungry and thirsty, often without food,
cold and naked.
That is not the resume of someone who is overly proud of themselves.
That is a list given by a man who cannot be stopped,
who endures.
I think, and I can’t, maybe you know the details of it Michael,
but there is one story in which
Paul is grabbed and he’s stoned and they think he’s dead and they take him outside of the city
and it says the next day he got up and went back into the city to preach.
I can’t help but see in
Paul a man who just has an iron will to preach the gospel and he will let nothing keep him from doing it.
Now there are other takes on Paul and we’ll talk about some of them, but when I
read that list and when I see those stories,
what I see is a man so convicted that he will let
nothing stand in his way and knows he does so at great personal risk.
Very much so.
He brings not just a conviction though.
He’s not just a person who’s passionate.
We all know someone who’s
passionate, but when you dig a little bit deeper you find that there’s not an incredible amount of
depth to that passion.
I just mean maybe they can’t plumb the depths of the intellect of the
things beneath the surface.
This man is both able to bring an unending amount of energy and
courage and passion to the faith,
but he understands it at a level that hardly anyone,
if no one, would have been able to do at the same time.
He brings a conviction,
a learning,
just a sheer amount of knowledge of the biblical text.
When Paul shows up and he makes an argument for Christianity,
he’s going to be heard.
There’s really no other way.
He’s well spoken,
he knows what he’s talking about,
and quite frankly he’s not going to let you go until you listen.
Yeah, and in some ways he seems like the least likely Christian evangelist,
and in other ways he seems like the perfect choice.
And as we’ve said in this podcast many times,
Michael,
the story of these characters are only reflection of the story of God.
Only God, I think, looks at a man who is persecuting the church and says, “That’s the guy.
I’m going to make him the most famous missionary of the life of the early church,
maybe the most famous missionary of the entire Christian church.
That’s the guy I want,
the very guy that’s trying
to eradicate this new evolution of the faith.” And you know,
Paul is just,
he’s unstoppable.
And
I think no disrespect to James and Peter and those that were living out their faith in other
ways and leading in some vitally important ways for the church’s life.
I don’t know
if Christianity gets out of the first or second century without the tenacity, without the iron
mindedness of Paul, without his intellect, without his theology.
I’m not sure.
I think it takes a man like that.
And there are criticisms of Paul,
and we can talk about them in a moment,
but I think it
takes someone like that to move a cause far enough along that it survives.
And it’s very difficult to
see how God would have managed to maintain and grow the church aside from a person like Paul and his story.
Yeah, and I think it’s worth noting that we have all of these letters written to churches.
They, along with Acts, help inform us as to the really apostolic church leadership
aspect of Paul’s life.
He was very active in the life of congregations,
but we have this really
important segment at the end of Acts.
And you need to know,
it’s not surprising really, that Paul
really creates enemies in the Jewish community.
Of course, he was a Pharisee,
he was in the ranks,
he was persecuting Christians.
And then when Paul does that 180,
and he becomes such a powerful
voice and force for the early Christian church,
he creates enemies in the Jewish religion,
in some of the higher echelons of leadership.
And they plot to kill Paul.
And I think the latter part
of Paul’s life is fascinating,
Clint,
because we see Paul shifting from sort of this itinerant
missionary work to actually engaging with some of Rome’s higher political leadership.
He
abruptly shifts into this sort of period of being imprisoned.
And he appeals to Caesar.
So that means that they’re taking him all the way to Rome so that he can receive a trial at the highest
level of the Roman government.
And as he goes,
Paul is literally evangelizing the entire political structure,
the whole way that he can go.
And he’s finding a hearing in these places.
And I think one of the things that that’s always spoken to me is Paul is a resourceful individual.
And he’s able
to speak to whatever group he’s in.
If you’re Jewish,
he’s going to turn to the Old Testament scriptures.
If you’re a Gentile,
he’s going to point to the unknown gods in the room.
And he’s going to say, hey, I want to talk to you about that unknown god.
I believe that I know who he is.
He’s Jesus Christ.
If he’s in the room with a Roman governor or if he’s in the room with a local king,
Paul’s going to have thought through how is the gospel relevant to you and how can I proclaim
it in the compelling way.
And I think that for me has always been a source of inspiration for me,
because it’s not different gospels.
Paul’s not speaking to differing good news.
It’s always rooted in this central conviction,
this belief, this encounter that Paul has had.
And yet he’s able to find ways to speak it in a way that translates to the life of the person that he’s with.
And that really feels to me like an invitation for all of us as Christians.
Yes,
fascinating to think that Paul moves beyond a niche.
In other words,
pastors, missionaries generally have a type of people they work with,
a sort of archetype of people
who come to their church.
Maybe a missionary says,
I work with these indigenous people or this tribe or that.
Paul works with everybody.
If he’s on the road and meets a beggar,
he’s preaching to them.
When he’s standing before Felix, the governor,
he’s preaching to Felix.
When he’s in the synagogue,
he’s preaching to the Jews.
When he’s out in the community,
he’s preaching to the Gentiles.
Whoever Paul meets,
he sees as an opportunity to introduce them to the truth he understands in Jesus Christ
and really has a universal vision for that gospel.
And again,
that’s a very new development
in the faith and one that becomes foundational in the faith.
In fact,
unfortunately, we see in the
early church the move actually away from Judaism and Jewish people to almost exclusively Gentile
within a couple of generations.
But Paul didn’t intend that.
Paul had this incredibly wide vision
for all people to come to Jesus Christ.
And because he did,
I think it would be very hard
to look at Paul and say that he practices any kind of favoritism or targeting.
If you’re in front of
you’re going to hear about Jesus,
that’s just who he is.
Yeah, you know, Clint, Rachelle and I were talking about a biography she had read the other day.
And one of the things she remarked on is people who have all of these connections and push movements
forward in these powerful ways,
they’re often hard to contain because they’re writing so many things
and they’re engaging in so many different formats.
I think Paul’s a really classic example of that.
We could not possibly even scratch an iota of the surface for all of the books that have been
written and all of the sermons that have been preached and all of the different perspectives.
And I think that in many ways Paul has served as a mirror to the person looking at him.
I think if you’re a pastor,
Paul sounds a lot like a pastor when he’s dealing with the people of a church.
When you’re a missionary,
Paul’s doing missionary work.
It’s easy to connect with him.
When you are a woman, you’re going to find some things that are going to be challenging, if not outright
repulsive in Paul.
And I think maybe that’s a helpful way to frame it is there’s lots of different versions,
perspectives on Paul and maybe each one of them has something to teach us about him.
Yeah, and while I think the Christian history records Paul as an evangelist or what we might call a missionary,
I think we should not underestimate Paul’s role in the history of
the faith as a theologian,
particularly in the book of Romans but not exclusively.
Paul sets the groundwork for really what becomes what we would call Presbyterian or Reformed theology
through Augustine and Luther and Calvin.
The ideas that grow to shape our corner of the faith
are all deeply rooted and all concretely anchored in the book of Romans.
The idea of providence,
the idea of sovereignty,
the idea of grace,
the idea of faith,
the idea of works,
all of those things that we kind of take for granted.
Paul’s doing that as first generation theology.
Paul’s not arguing about somebody else’s view like we have ever since his.
Paul is creating a theological
voice for the church and for us it’s gone a particular way but for every branch of the church
Paul has served as the starting point.
We may not agree with one another as to where we’ve taken it
but we would agree that it all begins with much of his writing and that’s not to give him
more credit than he deserves.
I just think it has to be said that the theological life of the church
is impossible to imagine without books like Romans and other moments where Paul turns his
mind to those things.
Yeah and we couldn’t,
I don’t think, end a conversation about Paul as
theologian without really talking about one of the core concerns that Paul has and it’s really
reflected right in the core of Romans here.
Paul’s theological concern is that the church
recognize that Gentiles have been grafted into the good news of God but that doesn’t foreclose on
the Jewish people’s covenant that God graciously gave to them and just take a moment to reflect
on how huge of a problem that is when you sit in Paul’s position.
You have this entire thing,
we know this is the Old Testament but Paul knew it as the scriptures.
You have this entire corpus
of writings of those people whose lives we’ve already talked about in this series who are to
point us to the good news of God and Paul looks at that and says that God made promises to the Jews,
that God covenanted himself,
that he would be faithful even when the Jews were not and so now
Paul stands at this this turning point in history where we see because of the work of the Holy
Spirit that these Gentiles are being brought into the church because of Jesus Christ,
because of his sacrifice,
because of God’s grace and love to them and Paul says what do I do with these two realities?
The covenant that God made to these people and to the grace and love and inclusion
that God is showing to these Gentiles and what you see in Romans is Paul wants to say God is faithful
to his covenant and God is also bigger than that covenant and his ability to engraft these Gentiles
and that ultimately God wants the all to be brought into the story.
What Paul does theologically is to
resolve a conflict that I don’t know of any other New Testament writer who’s either concerned with
it or who’s able to speak to it in such a compelling way and it’s because of Paul’s theological sort
of unified passionate vision his theological work that we have all of this church history that
follows I think you you say it well Clint it’s not just the reform tradition that draws from Paul
there are other branches of the church family that that draw from Paul as well so I think
really the depth of Paul has to be honored as we consider him as a father of the church.
Yeah and as a leader keep in mind that one of the reasons Paul does that one of the
driving forces of Paul trying to clarify theology and and make doctrine accessible is
and this is the part I think that’s hard for us to imagine there there’s a
a chorus of voices who are claiming things about Jesus that doesn’t happen as as if Paul went into
a library and sat down and said okay I need I need to make this clear for the church he’s reacting
to people who are teaching different things that you that are teaching well Jesus is great but you
also need to be circumcised and you need to keep the diet laws and you need to keep Sabbath laws
and as Paul interacts and argues theology is a living process it’s not just a mental exercise
it it creates itself under Paul’s direction in the life of real Christians in the life of churches
who have people showing up and saying no Paul’s wrong about that it’s this way not that way
and as Paul argues and as he prays and as he encourages and as he rebukes and corrects
the way that we think about the faith begins to take shape and and as you say Michael not just us
but the whole breadth of Christianity to my knowledge there is no group of Christians that
says we don’t read the Paul parts of the New Testament everybody is going to deal with Paul
if you follow Jesus Christ and read the scripture yeah there’s no being Christian without in some
way having to deal with Paul and his effect he’s left on the church and I think a large part of
that is not just the depth of theology I all I’ve had professors for whom Paul is a theologian
front and center and that’s very much a mirror of their own experience and faith I think that
you are gonna miss Paul if you don’t recognize Paul’s also a pastor and that comes out in spades
the moment you turn to the book of Corinthians first and second because when you see Paul dealing
with real people’s issues you see that he’s not trapped in words it’s not just vocabulary list
it’s not just trying to tease out nuanced little pieces though there is nuance in his pastoral
work Paul’s also going to make clear compelling and really very sharp critiques of conduct in the
church so much to say you know hey this man has sinned in such a way you need to kick him out you
need to dispel him from the church because of that action that is the work of a pastor as well as a
of abilities he’s a deep thinker he’s a passionate preacher there are times say in the book of
Philippians he is deeply poetic he is profoundly wise he is direct and blunt he can be argumentative
he can be nasty and that whole breadth of traits that whole range of his character
works its way in to his writing and therefore into our faith and into the way that we
think the way we understand the gospel without Paul’s work we would inherit a very very different
understanding and that that God entrusts so much of the direction of where the church will go
to ultimately Paul’s thoughtfulness and Paul’s parsing out of ideas as he also lives out the
faith is remarkable testament and now Paul has some rough edges and we’ll move into those we’ve
been very pro-Paul so far and I think for good reason I have friends I’ve had professors who are
not fans of Paul and there are some things that maybe we can look to and say yeah that’s rough
but I don’t think you can underestimate his contribution Michael I don’t think you can
minimize what Paul has given to those of us who come after him hoping to be faithful to Jesus
I agree completely Clint there’s no major Christian theologian or pastor in the history
of Christianity that has not had to make an appeal to Paul or preach from Paul or wrestle with what
Paul has laid the framework for our faith there’s just no way around that now that being said
Paul’s a person in fact in his writings there’s times where he says things like now this is my
opinion I think you should do this and lots of people struggle with what we should do with that
when it’s in the holy scriptures but I I do think Paul is a human living in a time and in a place
responding to the concerns of that moment and one of the people or groups that are going to
lift out some challenging texts on Paul are going to be women there are feminist theologians who
are going to have very harsh language for some of Paul’s writings and quite frankly it’s been
a source of division in church history for for hundreds of years yeah Paul says some tough things
about the differences between men and women the hierarchy between men and women those are things
that are in the scripture and we have to continue to process what they mean and what they don’t mean
and what they call us to do and be and believe and they are hard to get around if the
in feminism for instance if the major thrust of your theology is to pursue equality and fairness
for women there are going to be moments where it’s going to feel like Paul is not helping with
that cause in fact Paul is directly in the way of it now some of that is not fair to put on Paul’s
shoulders because there’s two thousand years of what people have done with those writings
as well but yes Paul is going to have moments where we wish that he would have said
a softer kinder more things of more equality pertaining to the differences between men and
women and that just is what it is he’s he’s not writing in 21st century America and
that’s very clear as you read his writing yeah there’s going to be things about head coverings
which is a component of worship there’s talk about gossip and some expectations about marriage
there’s this language about how in the ordered creation this is very much a Jewish conception
of creation that that the order in which God did things is a reflection of how that should look in
our family relationships and you know lots of ink has been spilled on this Clint you could find
commentaries and books on every stage of this spectrum both for and against and everywhere
in between but I think what’s important to note here is that Paul’s writings make that kind of
breadth of conversation possible in other words there are people who are are pro-Paul and anti-Paul
who are both going to have real things to talk about in Paul’s writings and and that I think
points us to a part of Paul’s life and ministry that is essential to understand and that is
I really believe that Paul’s gospel is big enough for the spirit of God to transform as time has
gone on the church has come back to this and over and over and over over thousands of years and said
whoa we didn’t realize that was in there I think you know certainly as reformed people we would
point to Luther as someone who turns to Paul’s writing and says wow grace salvation by grace
that we can’t focus on the works that we have to recognize this was God’s gift to us that was in
Paul’s writings all along but we rediscovered it or maybe we discovered it for the first time
and I do think that as we continue along the history of certainly the church scholarship
theology I think we find in Paul passages like where we there is neither slave or free male nor
female we understand that what Paul meant about the hierarchy of marriage is that we are supposed
to reflect the self-giving of even God’s relationship in the trinity and if we are going to reflect that
it doesn’t look like loathing over one another it looks like true partnership now did Paul mean that
specifically probably not but as we look back onto his writings I think there is a lot of breadth
that the spirit of God can work with him yeah and I don’t want to get on thin ice Michael so you
you keep me from it but we have liked the idea that the bible says one thing
about things and speaks with one voice about issues and so as we have seen those things that
Paul says that clearly casting negative light on feminist positions or females in general
we have I think tended to miss the other things Paul has said where he calls women co-workers
in the gospel where he says she labored beside me when he tells the church listen to her and
there are these moments where Paul says different things or we hear different voices in Paul and I
think that matters because most of us as we live on our faith have places where we we clearly have
ideas of a set way of thinking and then we have other ideas that we sort of move in and out of and
I think if we allow Paul that freedom it softens now Paul is never going to be called feminist
Paul is never going to be called you know pro equality but that’s not the whole story of Paul
and I think that matters because if we remember that there are moments Paul says other things
it helps us to see the context and I think it helps us to soften some of the rough edges
of those other scriptures we could say the same thing another area Paul’s been criticized
like much of the new testament Paul acknowledges slavery without ever denouncing it Paul never
says we should not have slaves now the slavery of the new testament and the slavery of our
american history is slightly different but we wish that there were passages where Paul just said
nobody should have oppressive control over another person’s life that would be super helpful as we
try to unpack our own stuff and our own history our own conditions and prejudices of our world
but he didn’t he lived within a time where that was accepted it was common and maybe it didn’t
even occur to him that such a thing could be called into question but it would be nice now
having said that again there are other moments where Paul calls slave masters to grace and
compassion where he calls slaves to pride and to leadership and I think we do a disservice when we
want to paint Paul with a single brush or a single color we miss the complexity we miss the nuance
and I think we miss the balance though it’s not always 50/50 in fact it’s not 50/50 often
but it is there and I think it matters it really strikes me at this moment in the conversation
that if you’re really tracking with us there’s a moment where we shifted from talking about Paul
the person to really how we read scripture and that’s how significant Paul is when you look at
Paul’s contribution to the new testament it was literally Paul’s writings used by American slave
owners to justify owning slaves it was Paul’s writings used by opposing Christians in the
United States to justify the abolition of slavery once you realize the significance of Paul’s
writings you recognize that we’ve shifted beyond just this person to someone who God used to really
create the new testament scriptures at a substantive level we’re now talking almost
beyond that person and I do think that maybe makes it a little harder to personalize
this person like the guy who wrote these things made tense the idea that he walked places and got
cotton shipwrecks and that he preferred some food over other and you know this person is so
significant and not just the thought but the leadership of the advancing church that I do
think it is healthy to pause and say that at his core Paul was a human a beloved child of God
he got stuff right he even was able to be humble enough at times to say this is my opinion it may
not be right and if we can hold Paul loosely we can see what he’s contributed to the advancement
of Christianity and we can also recognize that we should never claim one thing from Paul as an
absolute truth from the sense of recognizing we might later learn that there’s more gospel in
his writing than we even recognized yeah I think again it is very to to God’s credit to the
credit it is very hard to pigeonhole Paul and that gives us the opportunity to have to think
for ourselves and and that creates opportunities to get it wrong you know some of the most
legalistic people that I’ve ever met appeal to Paul who was dismantling the law in favor of grace
as Presbyterians would read it and yet they see in Paul a rule giver a lawmaker a Pharisee
who just wears the label Christian on the other side and becomes a Christian Pharisee
that I think is not fair to Paul I have friends and and people that I’ve encountered who experience
Paul as deeply arrogant because he’s confident because he understands leadership and he
understands it’s his role that he bears responsibility for these fledgling communities
and he attacks those who threaten them and yet this is a man who says of all the apostles I am
least I consider myself last moments of deep humility moments of incredible insight I I think
we we fail we fail to grasp Paul and his importance when we try to to paint him as
a one-dimensional character the the scripture will not allow us to do that if we read the
totality of Paul’s writing and if we try to look back on who he was as a person and person of faith
we will be unable to come up with a flat easy to understand character nor nor should we no and I
would venture the guess that if you’ve been around the church any period of time there’s some of your
favorite bible verses that are exact Pauline statements Paul gives us some of the best
tellings of the gospel in all of the scriptures and I I think as we walk away from this conversation
some may feel like this was a glowing review of Paul there’s going to be others who would listen
and say yeah I don’t think I have quite as pro of a Paul reading as you guys do I’ve heard some
who read those humility passages Clint and say yeah that’s the thing an arrogant guy would do
he’d use humility as a tool to force people to do what he wants them to do and I think
friends as we come to a person like Paul we need to have the same discipline that we’ve applied to
other real people of faith and recognize that Paul always wanted I believe for his writings for his
leadership to point others to Christ in fact he says follow me as I follow Christ I think for him
it was always about helping lead on towards Jesus Christ Lord of all creation and to whatever extent
is possible I think we should look for how does Paul’s life how do his writings how does what he
has left us point us to the current living spirit of Christ who’s a live network in the world and to
whatever extent his writings his life his ministry his travels his leadership to whatever
extent they point us to the present living one then Paul is a giant of the Christian faith
yeah and I guess to answer the criticisms of Paul I consider myself fairly pro Paul
and while I acknowledge there are moments I wish he had lived beyond his time
I would also ask of those who criticize him harshly
how many scars do you bear from imprisonments and beatings and stonings and floggings
because this guy did it day after day after day and he got up and those wounds tore at him and
stuck to his cloak and he marched back to preach again and did he get it all right no but I think
Michael you gotta give a guy like that some credit because without that toughness without that
that willingness to suffer on behalf of the cause we don’t come to understand
much of the faith that we do because of who Paul was I don’t think this is an overstatement
correct me if I’m wrong there’s no Christian post 100 AD that does not stand on the shoulders
of Paul now you might not always like the view and you might wish that the shoulders went in
other direction but we stand on Paul’s shoulders he he is a forebear of the Christian faith and
for all it’s good for it all it’s bad I think I’m neither pro or against Paul I think Paul is
essential and a linchpin and I think if we don’t listen carefully to what Paul has to say we’re
going to miss the gospel especially Clint the expansiveness of the gospel because Paul from my
view he really stands at that break point where the church just suddenly breaks open the walls
and the whole world is now suddenly the subject of God’s love it that is in the old testament
that is in some ways intrinsic to the Jewish faith but not in the way that we perceive it
in the middle of acts and beyond Paul really is that voice and and it’s because of Paul
that I get to be in a church with a whole bunch of other Gentiles trying to follow Jesus Christ
yeah and I don’t want to stretch our time too far Michael but there’s a there is I think often
missed a beautiful fluidity in Paul who can say of some of the great battles of the early church
and if you want to do it on that day go ahead and if you want to do it on that day go ahead
if you want to eat the meat eat the meat or don’t eat the meat but be good to each other while
you’re doing it he can say absolutely he can say vehemently he can say aggressively you do not need
to be circumcised that is a step back you are going back and denying the covenant of Jesus Christ
and the grace that God has given you through his mercy if you allow yourself to be circumcised
and then in another book mentioned
uh Timothy came with me I had him circumcised so it didn’t
ruffle the feathers of all the people we were going to be with that there it is just not
possible to make Paul one thing he is a man with tremendous gifts and talents trying to
navigate not only the gospel as he understands it but the formation of that gospel into living
communities of Jesus Christ and I think that despite his failings he is the paradigm
by which the rest of us come to understand much of what we understand about what it means to be
faithful as pastors as theologians as missionaries as Christians and I can’t imagine the faith without
him we haven’t really done this for other characters so maybe it’s not the right question
but I wonder Clint just very briefly you know if someone would listen to this conversation said
yeah this guy sounds really interesting you know where would you maybe recommend someone pick up a
book or an author who would be a good place to turn to to learn more about Paul yeah I’d probably
start with the book of acts if you haven’t done that I would go through the book of acts
it it may be helpful there are some online resources there even some printed resources that
will help you connect the rest of Paul’s writings with the journeys and the descriptions of the
stories in acts that can be helpful when he’s in Corinth then you’ll read Corinthians when he’s in
Galatia read Galatians that can be helpful other than that I had a New Testament professor
Marty Swords who wrote a pretty good short book on Paul there’s a wonderful book by N.T.
Wright but my fear is that without some seminary stuff people are going to find it
like drinking from a fire hose it’s it’s going to have lots of scholarly stuff in it yeah I’d
recommend if you are interested in N.T.
Wright who’s a real pillar in very contemporary Pauline
theology I would look at it’s called the New Testament commentary for everyone and look at
the book of Romans N.T.
Wright wrote that but he wrote it for essentially anyone you don’t need to
have a theology background to really read that and I think it’s a good summary of his work on Paul
and so you get a little bit of background on Romans which is a central Pauline text and you
also get a sense of N.T.
Wright’s contributions as applies to all things be careful online there’s
just yeah so much stuff out there that’s hard to sort through if you if you’re interested if you
want to follow up come and talk to us we’ve got books we can point you in a good direction I
think there’s just so much out there online that it would be hard if you didn’t know what it
represented who wrote it why they wrote it you could get you could get misdirected pretty quickly
you what else we should do if you’ve enjoyed this conversation you should share it to the
wide internet so that other people can hear it no we’re glad that you’ve been here thank you
we hope that you found something helpful in the conversation let us know we’d love to engage in
conversation with you if you have thoughts questions ideas we look forward to our next
conversation which will premiere right here wherever you’re listening next Wednesday at
9am central standard time thanks so much for being with us everyone thank you all