As figures in Christianity go, Paul is…
Problematic
Polarizing
Peculiar
Powerful
Painful
Perplexing
Preposterous
Puzzling
More than anyone, Paul was the most crucial figure in forcing the question: Would the Jesus Movement be a Jewish sect or would it become its own religion? And, if it this movement was not to going to be/become a Jewish sect, then what would be its relationship to Judaism–after all, Jesus was a Jew who never advocated breaking away from Judaism?
Paul, too, was a Jew. He was well-educated–far beyond the likes of former fishermen like Peter or Andrew. Paul was a prolific thinker and writer (and a tentmaker, too, apparently). He sought and obtained for himself the position (in substance if not in title) as “Apostle to the Gentiles” and his God Talk (theo+logy) was and continues to astound. Paul untethered the Jesus Movement from its Jewish moorings, all the while assuring anyone Jewish that this did not equate to disavowing Judaism…quite the opposite, in fact.
Paul wrote, in the earliest of his letters to be preserved in the Bible (the Epistle to the Galatians), the following:
For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus . . . . There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. [KJV]
This is a nifty bit of work here by Paul. The logic runs like this:
- Jesus was a child of God through the line of Abraham.
- The fact is and has always been that the “true” line of Abraham involves lives of faith, and is not constituted by biology or social location or nationality.
- Thus, through faith, you too are part of the same family as Jesus–you also are a child of God through the “line” of Abraham.
The logic is that of an adoption by which the child chooses its family. Then, as with any adoption, once you’re in the family, you inherit its history and you become a forebear of those to come.
The rub in all this is “What about all that time between Abraham and Jesus? You know… the creation of a Jewish people springing from the bloodline of Abraham? That whole Moses and Ten Commandments moment? The establishment of an historical Jewish homeland? The loss of that homeland and the hope for its restoration–the restoration that some hoped Jesus of Nazareth was going to bring about?”
Paul acts audaciously, virtually declaring: “This is my history as much as it’s anyone else’s. And I am choosing to construe it according to my own (post-blindness) lights!”
What do you think–is that culturally appropriate? Is that cultural appropriation? Or maybe something else?