ON READING SAINT PAUL'S LETTERS

Some general points

As the Acts of the Apostles tell us very little about the personality of Paul, we are only able to know him from his letters. How different he was in real life from the letter-writer, we cannot tell. Probably not very much. In
2 Corinthians 10:10 he quotes the criticism that some make that 'his letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech is contemptible.'

Perhaps he quotes this criticism tongue in cheek because he knows that they are well aware how untrue and unfair it is. A person without natural, physical and personality attraction, or ability to speak in public, would surely not have been able to bring to the Lord the vast numbers of pagans that Paul was able by God's grace to harvest unto the Lord.

Not systematic theology

Paul is primarily a pastor, writing pastoral letters to communities which he had in many cases founded, because he was concerned for their spiritual welfare. He is certainly a theologian, but a practical theologian, whose theology is constructed on the cusp of practical, pastoral needs. In Romans 1 - 8 he tries to lay things out systematically, but in general Paul does not attempt to present a systematic theology like the later work of, for example, St Thomas Aquinas or Karl Barth. It is a mistake to treat Paul's writings as a compendium of systematic theology.

Writing-style

All of Paul's letters are dictated, not handwritten by himself. This has several practical consequences. When you dictate, you don't labour over words, racking your brain until you hit upon the exact right word. You don't keep rereading what you have written, and strike out words or sentences you are not happy with.

When Paul dictates, it sounds sometimes as if he is thinking aloud. He will appear to contradict himself sometimes. At times he is conversing aloud with his reader, actively involving you in the mental process, arguing with you, convincing you of the correctness of the position he is putting forward. He even states aloud for you objections or questions that you might have on what he has been saying:

'are we to sin, so that grace may abound the more?'
'can we sin as we like, since we are no longer under the Law?'
'is the Law sin, if it causes sin?'
'is God unjust for choosing Jacob and rejecting Esau?' Etc.

When Paul warms to a subject, he can have so many thoughts in his mind, and such a lot of conviction to share, that he just gushes on in a torrent of words. His scribes would have needed to be very patient! At the end of Romans (16:22), a certain Tertius identifies himself as the scribe of the letter, and sends his greetings. The other scribes he uses are not identified, and it is possible that his co-authors did the writing for him: Sosthenes for
1 Corinthians; Timothy for 2 Corinthians and Philippians; Silvanus and Timothy for 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

Chester Beatty Papyrus (P46) c. AD 200 - Letter to the Romans
Earliest manuscript containing St Paul's letters
 

Words and their meanings

A problem with the understanding of St Paul is that he is not a precise writer in the use of words. In this he contrasts with the Fourth Evangelist, who frequently uses the same word with the same meaning or set of meanings, so that one is able to establish its theological meaning. But Paul, to the confusion of his readers, will use the same word with quite different meanings, even sometimes within the same paragraph.

Justification

'To make righteous' or 'to justify' is a key term in Romans and Galatians. It is the same word in Greek, though we use various words in English translation. Often Paul uses the term in its theological sense, of the human's new status before God - 'justified', 'made righteous' by grace on God's side, and the response of faith on man's side, and certainly not by 'works', by anything that man has done (Romans 3:21-26; 5:1,9).

At other times, Paul uses 'justification' in the forensic sense, of man as acquitted before God's court, pronounced innocent, not guilty by the judge, freed from condemnation, acquitted (Romans 5:16; 8:33-34). At other times he uses these terms to denote moral righteousness, human moral behaviour (Romans 5:18, 21; 6:13). There are thus three distinct meanings of 'righteousness' and 'justification' in Paul, and he can switch from one to another quite quickly.

Law

This is another term which Paul uses in different ways. Often by 'law' he refers to the Torah, the Old Testament written law. At other times, the 'law of God' means the general moral law, which all humans can perceive, which we might call 'the natural law'. At other times, 'law' refers to what generally happens, what happens 'as a rule' (eg Romans 7:20).

Even where Paul is clearly talking about 'the law' as the Old Testament law, he can appear to contradict himself. He states that the law was responsible for multiplying transgressions, since, before the law came, in the period from Adam to Moses, humans did not know what sin was. But when the law came, it was clear to man what sin was, since it was now codified, catalogued. The law therefore appears to be the instrument of sin. And yet St Paul strongly asserts that the law is by no means sin; on the contrary, it is 'holy and just and good' (Romans 7:12). It can all appear to be very contradictory, and Paul unfortunately does not supply his readers with a glossary of his theological terms and their possible meanings.

The Torah

Flesh

This is another example of a word with different meanings in Paul. Often 'flesh' has negative connotations. For example, about God sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh (Romans 8:3); living and thinking according to the flesh instead of according to the Spirit (Romans 8:5-6); having minds set on things of the flesh - immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry etc (Galatians 5:16-21). At other times there is nothing negative in his use of the term 'flesh'. Paul lives 'in the flesh' (Galatians 2:20) i.e. in the body; and is given by God 'a thorn in the flesh' (2 Corinthians 12:7); he preaches Jesus as descended from David 'according to the flesh' (Romans 1:3).

Rhetorical, not theological statements?

Paul makes a number of statements that are imprecise theologically, because they were never meant to be pressed theologically; they are expressing conviction rather than theology. For example, his statement in Romans 8:3 that God sent his Son 'in the likeness of sinful flesh'. Presumably he does not mean that Christ was himself sinful just because he came in the flesh. But then if you avoid that error by emphasizing the word 'likeness', they you are wandering into the heresy that would later be called Docetism: the false teaching that the Incarnation and the human body of Christ were not real, but only a likeness, an appearance, an image.

It is especially when Paul is drawing out contrasts, or developing parallelisms, some of which are just rhetorical parallelism, that he can be very loose theologically, and confusing to his reader. For example, in
2 Corinthians 5:21 he states that God made 'into sin' the one 'who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.' It would seem to be unfortunate and unhelpful to say that God made Christ into sin, and it has come about because Paul is making contrasts between 'sin' and 'no sin'.

In Romans 5:18 he states that 'just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all'. He surely does not mean that all people are automatically saved by Christ's act, without any response or action on their part. Elsewhere he emphasizes that salvation is possible only through belief in and obedience and submission to God. In Romans 5:18 he is talking loosely because he is developing the parallelism between Adam and Christ, both of whom performed actions that had far-reaching consequences for humanity.

Some verses back, at Romans 5:10 he says 'if while we were still enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.' If you try to make that statement mean that Christ's death achieves one thing (our reconciliation), and his life another thing (our salvation), then you have an artificial, unhelpful and incomprehensible contrast. This is again Paul the orator employing rhetorical parallelism, rather than Paul the theologian.

Misogynist?

Once giving a talk of the relevance of the New Testament writers to our situation today, it was not very long before one of the audience piped up, 'I don't like that Paul guy. He was so anti-women.' It is not a very fair or just statement. In Paul's genuine letters there are only two passages, both in
1 Corinthians, that can be taken as anti-woman.

At 11:2-16 he states that a man should pray with his head uncovered, while 'a woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head' (v.5). It is interesting, in view of the later passage in 1 Corinthians, that Paul is here quite clear that women prayed and prophesied in the meetings of the church. The arguments he brings forward are rather quaint and time-conditioned and probably meaningless to most people today: that a man's head is uncovered, 'since he is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man' (v.8); and that 'neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man. For this reason a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head ...'. But at least a woman can pray and prophesy in the church, even if current convention dictated her head-dress.

In view of what is allowed to women in Paul's churches, the statement of 14:34-36 is surprising and unexpected: 'As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church ...'.

While there is no manuscript proof, many scholars suspect that 14:34-36 is someone else's addition into an early copy of the text of 1 Corinthians. Besides the contradiction with 11:5, the passage lifts easily out of its present position, with 14:32 and 37 both on the subject of prophesy. In addition, according to Acts 21:9, on their journey to Jerusalem, Paul and his companions stayed at Caesarea with Philip the evangelist and his four daughters who were prophets.

There is a clear put-down of woman in 1 Timothy 2:11-13: 'Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor ...'. In the view of the majority of scholars, the Letters to Timothy and Titus are 'deutero-Pauline'; not from the genuine Paul, but from a later writer from the Pauline churches.

Get the context!

It is sometimes commented by people that it is the readings from St Paul that they find the most difficult to understand in the Sunday Liturgy of the Word. One reason for this is that Paul never intended or designed his letters to be read in small chunks, as well as in different life-contexts to that for which he intended them. His letters would usually have been read either as one piece, or in large chunks.

If a particular Sunday reading from St Paul is difficult, or not very comprehensible, one can make a lot more sense of it by reading the preceding chapter or half-chapter.