Reading Paul with Michael Gorman 3

To Spread the Gospel

As an apostle it was Paul’s mission to spread the good news of Jesus and to establish communities which were obedient to God through conformity to Jesus in the power of the Spirit; through his visits and letters these communities were strengthened. Paul greatly cared for these communities in a variety of ways during and after the time he founded them.

Paul was a traveling preacher and he did this with companions. He also worked as a tent-maker which helped to support his traveling and preaching ministry. Paul allowed a community to participate in the work of God through financial support, but only after the community was established.

Paul was a strategic evangelist; he brought the gospel to large urban centers and to the Jewish community in different cities. After his work in the Jewish community he moved on to gentiles which made up the majority of his converts.

The communities that Paul established were called “assemblies”. Those who gathered together constituted God’s new family. Paul saw himself as their spiritual father and exercised his parental authority over them. “Today we would call a person like Paul a ‘pastor’ (meaning ‘shepherd’), and his or her letters ‘pastoral letters’.

Paul’s ministry, however, wasn’t all success. He often suffered persecution in various forms; Paul, however, wore this as a badge of honor as it associated him with the crucified Messiah. He didn’t suffer because he enjoyed it; rather, he suffered because he was radically faithful to Jesus, the crucified Lord. Ironically, cross-shaped suffering could lead to the spread of the gospel. “…What confirmed an apostolic call for Paul was not merely the claim of a divine encounter and commission…but above all conformity to Christ in his faithfulness, love, and (consequently) suffering…It authenticated him and authorized him to speak with the authority of God, whether in person or by letter.”

Paul wrote letters that are directed to his original hearers and to us. They need to be read by us as “documents of spiritual formation.” We also need to keep in mind that these are first-century letters and we must read them as such. Paul writes in a fairly standard format: Salutation, thanksgiving, body, closing exhortations, and greetings/benedictions. Paul, however, “Christianizes” this standard way of writing.

Gorman goes on to give a concise summary and a helpful chart of the themes of each of Paul's letters. I will not summarize them here as the are already quite short. My suggestion would be to buy this book. It is a great tool to have on the bookshelf.

Reflection:

It's amazing to see the work that God did in Paul's life. He went from a persecutor to one who's life work was to travel and establish communities who were faithful to Lord Jesus; he suffered for the sake of Christ. Today we often think of great leaders as those who preach amazing sermons and have huge churches. Paul, however, didn't measure his greatest by his accomplishments but by his suffering with the Messiah. I love how Gorman says it, "he wore it as a badge of honor." I fear suffering for the sake of Christ yet I need to change my thinking to be like Paul. To suffer like Christ is to suffer with Christ.

The Gospel Command

Although one might disagree with some of the things N.T. Wright says in the first sentence, the main point is something we can all learn from. The gospel is primarily an announcement, a command from the world's true Lord.

"The 'good news' is not, first and foremost, about something that can happen to us. What happens to us through the 'gospel' is indeed dramatic and exciting: God's good news will catch us up and transform our lives and our hopes like nothing else. But the 'good news' which Paul announces is primarily good news about something that has happened, events through which the world is now a different place. It is about what God has done in Jesus, the Messiah, Israel's true king, the world's true Lord...The gospel isn't like an advertisement for a product we might or might not want to buy, depending on how we felt at the time. It is more like a command from an authority we would be foolish to resist. Caesar's messengers didn't go round the world saying 'Caesar is lord, so if you feel you need to have a Roman-empire kind of experience, you might want to submit to him.' The challenge of Paul's gospel is that someone very different to Caesar, exercising a very different kind of power, is the world's true lord." (Paul for Everyone: Romans Part 1 pp.4-5)

Reading Paul with Michael Gorman 2

Grace and Apostleship

We do not know very much about the apostle Paul before his conversion; we do know that he was a Pharisee, "proud of his heritage and his zeal for the Law of God". This zeal caused him to seek the destruction of the church which he saw as a perversion of Judaism. It seemed that this movement did not seek to keep the law as was evident from its open welcome to Gentiles. There are two mains reasons why Paul sought the destruction of the church: 1) they were preaching a crucified Messiah, which means that he was cursed; and 2) their openness towards Gentiles.

Paul used violence to remedy the situation. He would have seen himself as descending from a line of holy heroes like Phinehas who went to great means to enforce purity among God's people. Paul saw his zeal as the basis for his righteousness before God.

This violent zeal was abandoned by Paul after the Lord Jesus revealed himself to him, the "defining moment of Paul's life". After, although he remained a Jew, he came to believe that the crucified and risen Jesus was the Messiah and, therefore, the Lord of the world. Paul "changed his convictions, conduct, and community.

When Paul encountered the risen Jesus he was called and commissioned as an apostle. He was going to preach the gospel to the Gentiles; formerly he violently persecuted the church for accepting them but he had a new mission now.

"The turn to nonviolence is at the very heart of Paul's conversion, and his gospel." Retaliation was no longer Paul's practice; rather, he "absorbed violence" himself and taught his churches to do the same, as is appropriate for those "converted by and to the love of God". He also critiqued imperial violence in the name of peace and security (see the pax et securitas in 1 Thess 5:3). "A politics of subversion, not intentional but as an inevitable consequence of the gospel, is central to Paul and to those who read his letters as Scripture."

After his conversion Paul saw that Gentiles could be included into God's community without being circumcised. God's great time of salvation, promises by the prophets, had arrived and this meant anyone could come to God through the Spirit. Paul's gospel does not mean inclusion for everyone, however. "All are welcome just as they are to be apprehended by, and fully converted to, Jesus Christ the Lord."

Reflection:

Sometimes when people speak of Paul's conversion they make it sound as if he was converted from an evil religion to a good one. Some say he abandoned legalism for grace. I appreciate Gorman's stress on the fact that it was his encounter with the Messiah that changed him. After this moment he realized that God's promised salvation had arrived bringing to fulfillment all the promises God has made to Israel. Paul stayed firmly planted within Judaism but he believed that, through Jesus, the covenant had reached it's climax and that inclusion into the people of God meant that one had to be in the Messiah. This radically changed Paul. He was, as is rightly said, converted.

I also find Gorman's stress on nonviolence helpful. Paul was a violent persecutor but after his conversion he refused to retaliate and he preached a message of reconciliation to God (first and foremost) and with others. God's community should be marked by meekness, gentleness and peace.

However, I do have some reservations about, what seems to be, Gorman's full blown pacifism. I'm not sure Paul always fits into that category and I don't think we can just write off Romans 13 as evidence for this fact. Although Paul never says in that passage that Christians should be a part of the "governing authorities" he has a very positive view of this authority. It is a necessary, though temporary, measure God has implemented to restrain the effects of the fall. I think it is possible for a Christian to be a part of these authorities because it does not necessarily entail retaliation and violence. Gorman does, however, give us a lot to think about on this important subject. One question that will be on my mind is, "can a Christian be a part of the governing authorities and still live a life of cruciformity?"

See an interesting discussion here at Jesus Creed.

Reading Paul with Michael Gorman 1

Michael J. Gorman is the professor of Sacred Scripture and Dean of the Ecumenical Institute of Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore, Maryland. He has spent much of his career studying, writing about and teaching Paul. He has a unique 'perspective' on Paul and as you read him you will find that he is neither 'old' or 'new' perspective but takes from the best of both worlds. So far I have found his small introduction to Paul to be a very edifying read and here I will offer brief summaries and reflections of his book 'Reading Paul' published by Cascade.

Why Paul?

Why should we read Paul? Some suggest that a great part of the world's problems are bound up in religion. Is not Paul a religious figure? Does that not make him part of the problem? In Gorman's view Paul is not part of the problem and his writings need to be read as Scripture.

Too many people treat Paul as if he has no relevance for today. But if Paul's writings are Scripture then they are part of the Bible, the Christian's "primary authority of..knowledge of God and the primary instrument of God's ongoing address to the Christian community." There is only one people of God and, thus, Christians today are part of the same community to which Paul's writings were written. That isn't to say that there aren't difference between us and them that shouldn't be addressed. But if we stress the differences then we are not reading Paul as he is meant to be read.

There are two main reasons why people are wary to accept the idea that Paul's words are God's words. 1) Some think that if we want to know about Jesus then we should turn to the gospels, not Paul; and 2) Some people find Paul offensive. Paul, however, is not as different from Jesus as is often thought. The subject of preaching for both Jesus and Paul was the Kingdom of God. In some cases Paul may be less offensive and in other cases he might be more offensive than is often thought.

Reflection:

What excites me most about reading this book is that Gorman does not make us choose between Jesus and Paul. In recent debates, emergent and reformed, the two can sometimes, perhaps unknowingly, be pitted against one another. However both believed and were passionate about the fact that God's saving reign had become a reality. God was fulfilling all his saving promises that he has made to Israel and they were both calling people to become a part of the restored people of God. Also, both saw the cross and resurrection as central to God's saving promises. If we get to know Paul then we are getting to know Jesus. We ought to follow him as he followed Christ.

Christianity, Judaism and the Marketplace of Religions

In the book Rediscovering Paul the authors explain why Christianity, although flowing from Judaism, broke away from it's "Jewish moorings".

"It should not surprise us that Judaism could not contain the splinter group whose members were known as Christians. Even though Jewish members of "the way" may have seen their zeal for the gospel as part and parcel of their Jewish heritage, eventually their kinsmen found their message and their ways blasphemous. The temple, the Torah, circumcision, the dietary code, even the sabbath-everything distinctively Jewish was compromised by early Christianity. It is no wonder, then, that the Jesus movement eventually broke away from its Jewish moorings (Paul made sure of that). So,with the influx of Gentile Christians and the steady eroision of Jewish traditions, imagine how hard it was for early Christians to distinguish themselves in the marketplace of religions. Christians had no temple, no sacred space. That must have put them at a disadvantage in attracting devotees. Where does one go to worship the Christian God? What are the holy days of sacrifice? Which animals must be slaughtered for divine purpose? Among pagans it was common for temples to host sacred meals. Christians had sacred meals without temples. Was it possible to have sacred meals in an ordinary house? Christians read Jewish Scripture but did not observe the Jewish law. They had no prayer houses, only house churches. In certain respects, these people had no definable, distinctive features other than the fact that they proclaimed the resurrection of their leader, baptized their novitiates in his name, shared a common table and gathered on the first day of the week to sing, pray, prophesy and occasionaly listen to the reading of letter written by a man whose name was Paul"(pgs. 52-53).

It is amazing that Christianity grew the way it did when one consideres the religious and political climate of the first century. The gospel truly "is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith" (Romans 1:16).

Tullian on the Great Reversal

Tullian quotes C.S. Lewis on the 'reverse of the curse' in this post:

"All of Jesus’ ministry—the words he spoke, the miracles he performed—showed that there was a new order in town: God’s order. When Jesus healed the diseased, raised the dead, and forgave the desperate, he did so to show that with the arrival of God in the flesh came the restoration of the way God intended things to be. New life was given, health was restored; God was reversing the curse of death, disease, and discomfort. The incarnation of Christ began the “great reversal.”

Read the whole thing here.

Dead and Alive in Christ

This past week I have trying to read through Paul's letter to the Colossians in one sitting once per day. I am looking forward to receiving Michael Bird's new commentary on the letter for Christmas so I am preparing myself beforehand.

In chapter 3 Paul uses the image of dying and rising with Christ in order to promote right living in relation to God, each other, and the world. This is a frequent theme outside this letter as well (i.e. Galatians). He tells the Christians to seek things that are above, where Christ is seated. This isn't simply a way of saying, "think nice thoughts about heaven and don't think about the world." It means that the Colossians are to live as new creations in a world that is hostile to God. They are being transformed into the image of their creator and they are to seek the things that promote growth in this direction. This means that they will have to consider certain things to be true. It is tempting for Christians to think that they have two natures battling within and sometimes the bad nature wins and sometimes the good nature wins. This isn't how Paul thinks. He teaches that Christians are already new men and women in Christ. They have been redeemed in Christ as a foretaste of the things to come. Therefore when temptation comes don't say things like, "I can't overcome this unless you do something God!" because God has already done something. He has made us new in Christ and given us his Spirit so that we can, unlike before, be obedient to him.