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SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT PAUL.

Perhaps no single figure in the history of Christianity has been more responsible for shaping the modern church's theology and beliefs than the Jewish pharisee from Tarsus named Saul—the man we know better today as Paul. The supposed author of thirteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, Paul's writings have achieved the status of Holy Writ no other church father has come close to emulating. His writings far surpass those of John and even Peter, perhaps the best known of Jesus' inner circle. So great is his influence, his words are consistently quoted alongside those of Jesus. I often wonder if Paul himself might not be surprised at the rarified stature he has achieved through his letters. I also wonder if his laundry list wouldn't have been included in the New Testament if it could be authenticated as actually having been penned by the great teacher.

This, at least for me, produces an intriguing question. How could Paul, a man who never met Jesus of Nazareth, much less sat at the man's feet and learned how His Father's Kingdom was to be realized, have surpassed those who did precisely that in authority? It seems remarkable that the bulk of the New Testament, arguably the most important collection of writings in history, was penned by a man who started out as the sworn enemy of the very church he later went on to champion and die for. Why was he believed? What was it that made this man different from the other disciples. We know nothing, for example, of Andrew's writings, or those of Philip and Nathanael. In fact, of the twelve that originally followed Jesus, with the exception of Peter, John and, potentially, Matthew, we have almost nothing of their writings. It makes one wonder why Jesus bothered to call out these twelve at all if a man from outside their group was to one day be given the responsibility of taking the Gospel to the nations. Not that they didn't have their roles and ministries; it's just that compared to Paul, their ministries seem far less significant.

So who was this Paul? What made him so special? Most importantly, was his writings divinely inspired and inerrant, or were they simply his perspective—a perspective shaped by his years as a pharisee—masquerading as unassailable truth? And if the latter, what does that portend for the Christian church?
Clearly, the stakes are astronomical. Without the authority of Holy Scripture behind Paul's words, much of the foundational teachings of historical Christianity must be brought into question. After all, it was Paul who championed salvation through grace and the all sufficiency of Christ's atoning death on the cross. It is Paul from whom we learn most of what it means to be a Christian, and it is Paul who set the moral tone of an entire faith. If all of it is merely his opinion, the church may be forced to reconstruct itself. Without Paul, we must go back to, if not square one, at least back to Jesus as our sole source of authority, and Jesus left much open to various interpretations, as the early centuries of the Christian church demonstrated.

Before any assessment of Paul's teaching can be made, however, it is imperative that the man himself be examined, for it is within the context of one's own biases and world view that we begin to understand why one believes the things they do. No belief structures are produced in a vacuum; they are always driven by an agenda. Paul had a particular and unique perspective on what Christianity meant and that is what determined his theology. He was the apostle to the Gentiles—or so he believed—and that came with certain responsibilities and obligations unique to his counterparts at the time. He was a Jew in a gentile world, and it would be only natural that would shape his beliefs. It is with this in mind we must examine Paul's writings to see how much of what we read is of God, and how much is simply Paul. It's vitally important to understand that the two are not the same.

Paul—or, as he was known at the time—Saul, appears rather suddenly in scripture without preamble or introduction, as the young man guarding the people's coats at the stoning of Stephen the disciple in Acts chapter seven. Even then, he appears to be an obscure character; an observer of the stoning though not a participant. Perhaps even an instigator of the preacher's death, though Luke does not name him as such at the time. It is clear in Acts chapter nine, however, that Saul is soon much more than a disinterested bystander. He is a persecutor of Christians—an inquisitor of the kind that would not be seen until the darkest days of the Spanish Inquisition centuries later. His role in Stephen's death, though not clearly spelled out, was suspicious, especially in light of his later activities. Not one to dirty his own hands, he was willing to blithely stand by and watch Stephen succumb to multiple abrasions and fractures, confident in his own mind that he was having a hand in "God's work" in ridding Jerusalem of the hated Christian sect. To such a mind, steeped as it was in the legal technicalities of the ponderous Mosaic Laws and confident of his own righteousness, Saul must have thought of himself as God's chosen vessel—a man who, like one of the prophets of old, Jehovah would use to destroy the latest challenge to His sovereignty. Only such an attitude could turn a man into a persecutor, as it has done for countless centuries before and since.

Saul's rise to "stardom" was rapid. He quickly built a name for himself among the Jews. To some, he was a feared man intent on driving the members of the fledgling Christian sect underground or out of the city; to others he was God's chosen instrument to maintain the purity of the faith once given to the patriarchs. His capacity to instill fear into the Jewish Christians must have been considerable, for it was only a short time before he had successfully driven the dead Nazarene's followers from the city. So successful was he, in fact, and by now so intoxicated with his own sense of purpose and righteous indignation, he sought permission to seek out the Jewish Christians in Damascus. His campaign of terror, so successfully perpetrated throughout Judea, was going on the road, its remarkable success evidence of its divine edict.

But something quite unexpected happened. Paul had a vision of the very Jesus whose followers he was systematically repressing. Struck blind by this "chance" encounter, the shaken and terrified Saul is led into the city by his companions and left to ponder his fate. Three days of sitting in the dark pondering his own now dismal future—for the life of a blind beggar was all he could look forward to—left him depressed and broken. His stellar rise to the top had come to a crashing conclusion. Worse, he had realized how presumptuous he had been in deciding that Jesus was a phony. He was the phony, it seemed. Not only were his career asperations dashed on the rocks of reality, but his entire world view had been destroyed. If Saul ever contemplated suicide over the course of his life, that was probably the moment.

Remarkably—and ironically, it seems—three days later Paul's sight was miraculously restored by one of the very Christians he was attempting to imprison. Not remarkably, he abruptly changed allegiences and began loudly proclaiming the Lordship of this Jesus of Nazareth. Also not remarkably, he wasn't believed. To some it was a clever trick. To many, it was evidence Saul had left his senses. His detractors were legion—his supporters almost nonexistant. It was only through the greatest bit of luck he was able to escape the city at all, only to spend the next few years wandering the region trying to figure out what to do next.

Saul's task was clear. Jesus had commanded him to be the apostle to the gentiles, and he threw himself into his new role with the same degree of determination and energy he had expended in persecuting the church. Within a few decades his ministry had set the gentile world on fire and Paul had secured himself a place in history unmatched in history—that of the greatest of the apostles.

But what kind of man was Paul? What can we determine about him through a careful examination of his letters and some understanding of human nature? Much, it seems. A studious review of his writings reveal much about this enigmatic character, and give is much to consider when deciding whether Paul is a man we can trust and follow.

The first thing we can surmise it that it seems Paul wasn't a very different kind of man in his later years than he had been in his younger. Less brash to be sure, and considerably more thoughtful and compassionate, he was no less judgmental and intransigent than he had been before. Paul was a black and white thinker who saw the world through very narrow blinders. To him, people were either an ally of or the enemy of Christ. People were either made white by being washed in the blood of the Lamb or were depraved sinners bent on their own sensual path of destruction and wrath. There was, apparently, no in between. Consider this passage from Paul's letter to the Ephesians: "So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the arrogance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more." (Eph. 4:17-19 NIV.)

Clearly, Paul is a man who sees God's wrath as clearly as he sees His love, never for a moment addressing the obvious contradiction between the two. It is with this world view that he pens most of his epistles, and why the wrathful God is alive and well today. Without Paul's assurance of the existance of an angry God, I suspect the traditionally-held view of God might be significantly different. To Paul, God was a wrathful being who would and will destroy mankind except for those who have embraced Christ, maintaining, as he has written, that all humanity ". . . were by nature objects of wrath." (Eph. 2:3 NIV.) He even sees God as the great equalizer when he finds solace in the knowledge that "Alexander the metalworker" will be "repaid" by the Lord for the harm he has caused (2 Tim. 3:14 NIV.) It was the very same attitude Paul maintained against the Christians he had earlier persecuted with such zeal. It is the mindset for a persecutor.

With this in mind then, we can ask ourselves just how did the Damascus road experience change this man? He considered himself God's chosen instrument to restore the purity of the Jewish faith when he set about persecuting the Christians living in Jerusalem, and then later thought of himself as God's chosen instrument to take the Gospel to the gentiles (and only after the Jews had all but rejected him in any case.) Clearly, Paul was the type of person who always considered himself special, a chosen vessel, the guaranteer of eternal truth (despite his later statements to the contrary. His true beliefs belie his writings.) And that is the great problem with the man. Paul is not a man who could be trusted, for he is a man who never changed. The humility of the Divine is often absent from his pen when he writes of the real or imagined sleights against him perpetrated by those for whom God will "punish later." He is just as angry with and determined to do battle against his "enemies" as he was in the beginning, so again we must ask the question of whether it is wise to follow this man too closely. Yes, on occasion his pen could capture the soul of a truly repentant man, and at times his words could sing with beauty, truth, and radiance, but we would be wise to recognize that Paul and his writings are an unavoidably human construct designed to present only a single point-of-view from a man who was the product of his day and age. Take from them what you find of value and disregard the rest, for to invest them with more weight than they should have is dangerous.

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