UUC: Rev. Christine Brownlie: The Paul We Never Knew

The Christmas season is upon us — just in case you’d escaped the news stories about “Black Friday” and the store decorations that have been on display for weeks now. Despite this evidence to the contrary, we’re told that Jesus is the reason for the season. Yet I seem to be thinking more about a man named Saul, who later took the name of Paul when he converted from Judaism to what we call Christianity. Why? Because most of us would claim that it was Paul who created the version of Jesus’ life and importance that is proclaimed by the Christian Church today.

Paul’s introduced an emphasis on Jesus’ death and resurrection, along with the promise of eternal salvation for those who believed in this story. Most Unitarian Universalists prefer to focus on Jesus’ teachings and the example of his life. We’re offended by Paul’s teachings on sexuality, especially homosexuality. We’re appalled by his demands that slaves should be obedient to their masters and that women should be subject to their husbands. His poetic claim found in the first letter to the Corinthians that “love bears all things” has been used by some as an admonition to wives that they must submit to abusive treatment. I suspect that if we took a survey of Unitarian Universalists and asked for their least favorite Bible character, Paul would win by a very wide margin.

I’d like to suggest that we take another look at this man and his words. Why bother? For starters, Paul is just too important to our modern understanding of who Jesus was and the religion that grew up around him for us to ignore. Another reason is that most Unitarian Universalists, like most Christians, hold misconceptions about this man: who he was, what he said and did, and the kind of religious community that he was trying to establish in a world that was dominated by the power and the culture of the Roman Empire.

We don’t know where or when Paul was born. He tells us that he was an observant, even “zealous” Jew who was trained to be a Pharisee. In the Book of Acts we’re told that he was a Roman citizen from birth and that he had a sister. Scholars tell us that his letters display a fluency in Greek, and that he also spoke Aramaic. It is likely that he was married, and he could have been a widower.

Paul was trained in the Law of the Jewish community, and he became a persecutor of Christians and especially those Jews who were interested in this faith called “The Way.” It’s unlikely that he was involved in executions; more likely he sentenced the apostates to be punished by lashing or other brutal methods for violations of the law. We know that he was feared by those who took up this new faith.

The Book of Acts, and Paul’s own letters, tell us that he had a life-changing experience while traveling near Damascus. He understood this event as an encounter with the risen Christ, and after his recovery he became a “servant of Christ.” He believed that his mission was to travel as far as possible to preach the gospel: the good news of salvation through faith in Jesus’ death and ressurection. He took up the life of a wandering missionary, bringing his new understanding of the ancient promise of a messiah and the Kingdom of God primarily to “God-fearers or pagans who worshiped the God of the Jews.” He was not the only wandering missionary who was trying to form communities of believers; there were others who were engaged in the same work. We know of Paul’s teachings, triumphs, and trials through the Book of Acts and the fourteen letters attributed to him that have become part of the Christian scriptures or the canon. And now we’ve come to one of the problems with what we’ve been taught about Paul

Most modern scholars would put Paul’s name on only half of these letters. The others were written by anonymous authors, who used Paul’s name to give credibility and authority to their word; a common practice of the day. Paul’s authentic letters are the earliest writings in the Christian canon, predating the gospels by almost 50 years. These letters give us a very narrow view of the life and the concerns of these small early Christian communities and the problems they faced in an era and a society that was very different from our own. These letters reveal that Paul was both a man of his time, and also a radical thinker who spoke truth to power and challenged the Roman image of the good society in terms that speak to us today.

I want to start with Paul’s letter to Philemon. This letter, or epistle, is unique from the other letters of Paul, because it was written to an individual and not to a congregation. Paul wrote on behalf of a slave, Onesimus, who had run away from his master, Phliemon and had sought refuge with Paul. Paul had converted both slave and master to Christianity. Onesimus wanted to return to his master, but he feared that he would be severely punished. Paul pleaded with Philemon to receive Onseimus, not as an errant slave, but as a “brother beloved” or, in other words, as an equal. Paul boldly suggested that Philemon might find it in himself to be so forgiving that might choose to liberate his slave and send him back to Paul as a helper. Not once did he mention the slave’s obligation of obedience to his master. Instead he seemed to make excuses for him and reminded Philemon of the debt of gratitude that he owed to Paul, who was the instrument of his conversion. And then Paul pushed his case even further by telling Philemon that he had every confidence that the owner would be the example of faithful obedience and receive his errant slave with mercy and love. Paul implied that between Christians, there is no possibility of one person owning another. Such relationships might exist in Roman society, but not in this new kind of community. This isn’t what we’ve been taught to expect from Paul, is it?

If you are a student of the Christian scriptures, you may recall verses from other letters that seem to require that slaves be obedient to their masters, and you’d be right. These warnings are found in the Epistle to the Colossians and the Ephesians, but most modern scholars consider neither of these letters authentic to Paul. These letters feature what are called “household codes” that model the expectations of Greek and Roman households of the era. These instructions for right relationships in the family were probably included to demonstrate to the outside, non-Christian community that despite the rumors, Christians held their same family values. And even these letters include admonitions to masters to treat their slaves fairly and to remember that both slave and owner have the same master in heaven and “with him there is no partiality.” In other words, in the eyes of God, equality of persons did not depend on their birth or place in life, and that should hold as well within the community of Christians.

What about Paul’s demands that women submit to their husbands and be silent in church? Doesn’t this seem like a second-class status for females?

If we read Paul’s authentic letters carefully, we will come upon numerous accolades for the work and the courage of women. Some were noted for working especially hard, a couple “saved my neck” and one or two were obviously very important in Paul’s organization. One, woman named Thecla,^¹ was so revered that she was included in a fresco along side Paul. Each figure is of equal height and in the same pose, indicating that they were considered to be equally important. Sadly, the eyes in the image of Thecla were etched out and her raised hand and extended index finger were scratched out and burned at some later time. I doubt that Paul would have approved of this vandalism.

There is one well-known admonition to women in the authentic letters, and this is found in I Corinthians. Here we find the infamous requirement that women keep silent in church and should rely on their husbands if they have questions. Many scholars of solid repute see these verses as a later addition to the letter by the same writer or writers who wrote 1 and 2 Timothy and not the words of Paul.

We know that Paul did not approve of sex outside of marriage and he also disapproved of sexual relations within same-sex couples. In the case of same sex couples, this had nothing to do with what we modern people understand as homosexuality. The very concept of sexual orientation was not developed until the late 1800s. Some scholars believe that what Paul was really concerned about was the often brutal, degrading use of young boys and male slaves by Greek and Roman males. It’s probable that he was also opposed to the rituals orgies that women sometimes engaged in as a part of ecstatic worship of certain goddesses. Such behavior was also offensive to the Greek and Roman authorities, who wanted to keep women at home and under the control of their fathers or husbands.

We can find passages in which Paul speaks out against adultery and “fornication” — sexual relations between unmarried men and women. In one letter he scolds a man who is living as a husband with his stepmother. But Paul seems to speak against even conventional marriage in his first letter to the Corinthians.

He gives the community a number of reasons not to marry. Among them are the inevitable problems of married life, the inner conflicts that may arise between pleasing one’s spouse and obligations to God, and the tensions that can arise if one person is following “The Way” and the other is not.

But Paul’s primary concern is that he expects that the world will come to an end very soon — even within his lifetime! He repeats his advice that both men and women are better off remaining as they are — single or married — since everything will soon change as the Kingdom of God is fully realized. But for those who cannot accept this restriction, Paul allows marriage. It is better, he says, to be married than to “burn.”

Jesus often spoke of the Kingdom of God, and the Jewish tradition also held the belief in a Day of the Lord or Day of Days. Some scholars think that Jesus belonged to a sect of Jews that expected an imminent end of the world. Paul is very clear that he anticipates that the end will arrive “like a thief in the night.” Until that time, his work is to make the Kingdom of God on Earth more evident and fully realized. John Dominic Crossen of the Jesus Seminar says that Paul’s vision of the Kingdom of God is in direct opposition to the vision of the rule of the Roman Emperor, Ceasar Augustus. Both men dreamed of a time of peace. Augustus believed that this golden age would come through military victory followed by domination and consolidation. All would come into harmony, the fields would produce boundless grain and other foods, the flocks would be fat and fertile. Human want would be met, but there didn’t seem to be any kind of political or social change involved. As the old blues song laments, “Them that’s got will get, them what’s not will lose.”

Paul’s vision of the Kingdom of God was one of equality, cooperation, and caring for one another. In this society, humility would be joined with a love that was patient and kind. The followers of “The Way” were to hope for the best for all of creation and to believe that such an outcome would evolve — even as difficulties and disappointments had to be endured. The goal, according to Crossen, was not glory, but fair balance and distributive global justice. Paul believed that the coming of God’s Kingdom had already begun with the resurrection of Jesus. The rest was just a matter of time, and that time was at hand.

You and I may not believe in the Kingdom of God or the second coming of Christ, but I would hope that we can hear the truth and the call to justice in Paul’s words taken from his second letter to the Corinthians. He is appealing here to this well-to-do congregation to support the struggling congregation in Jerusalem.

“I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure for you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance an their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. As it is written, ‘The one who had much did not have too much and the one who had little did not have too little.’”

Perhaps this Paul has something to say to us after all, if we are willing to listen.

1 The story of Thecla is told in two apocryphal books, The Acts of Paul and The Acts of Thecla. Many scholars believe that Thecla was a real person and that she held power and authority in Paul’s organization.