Paul Behaving Badly (eBook)

Was the Apostle a Racist, Chauvinist Jerk?

E. Randolph Richards, Brandon J. O'Brien (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016 | 1. Auflage
224 Seiten
IVP (Verlag)
978-0-8308-7332-6 (ISBN)

Infos

The apostle Paul was kind of a jerk.He was arrogant and stubborn. He called his opponents derogatory, racist names. He legitimized slavery and silenced women. He was a moralistic, homophobic killjoy who imposed his narrow religious views on others. Or was he?Randolph Richards and Brandon O'Brien explore the complicated persona and teachings of the apostle Paul. Unpacking his personal history and cultural context, they show how Paul both offended Roman perspectives and scandalized Jewish sensibilities. His vision of Christian faith was deeply disturbing to those in his day and remains so in ours.Paul behaved badly, but not just in the ways we might think. Take another look at Paul and see why this 'worst of sinners' dares to say, 'Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.'

E. Randolph Richards (Ph.D., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) is dean of the School of Ministry and professor of biblical studies at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Florida. He is a coauthor of Rediscovering Paul and the author of Paul and First-Century Letter Writing.

Autor

Brandon J. O'Brien (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is assistant professor of Christian theology at Ouachita Baptist University and director of OBU at New Life Church in Conway, Arkansas. He is coauthor, with E. Randolph Richards, of Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes and Paul Behaving Badly, as well as the author of The Strategically Small Church. A senior editor for Leadership Journal, O?Brien has published in Christianity Today, Relevant, and the Out of Ur blog, and has been interviewed by and quoted in USA Today and other national newspapers. E. Randolph Richards (PhD, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) is dean and professor of biblical studies in the School of Ministry at Palm Beach Atlantic University. He is a popular speaker and has authored and coauthored dozens of books and articles, including Paul Behaving Badly, A Little Book for New Bible Scholars, Rediscovering Jesus, Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, Rediscovering Paul, The Story of Israel, and Paul and First-Century Letter Writing. Early on in their ministry he and his wife Stacia were appointed as missionaries to east Indonesia, where he taught for eight years at an Indonesian seminary. Missions remain on the hearts of Randy and Stacia. Randy leads mission trips and conducts missionary training workshops and regularly leads tours of the Holy Land, Turkey, Greece, and Italy. He has served as interim pastor of numerous churches and is currently a teaching pastor. He and Stacia reside in Palm Beach, Florida.

Textauszug

Introduction

THE PROBLEMS
WITH PAUL

The apostle Paul spent a lot of time defending himself in court and evading arrest. He was hauled before the Roman authorities on several occasions for behaving badly—for disrupting temples and fomenting unrest, charges taken very seriously in the first century. Three times (that we know of) Jewish leaders hatched a plot to assassinate Paul for speaking against the temple in Jerusalem or against the law of Moses. On at least one occasion, Jews and Gentiles plotted together to snuff out Paul (Acts 14:1-7). Jews and Gentiles didn’t often see eye to eye, but apparently members of both groups considered the apostle from Tarsus a menace that needed to be silenced. Paul summarizes a few other instances when he faced disciplinary action for his bad behavior:

Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones. . . . I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger . . . from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; . . . and in danger from false believers. (2 Cor 11:24-26)

We might find this record of abuses admirable if we didn’t have the nagging feeling that Paul brought some of it on himself. Sure, the Jewish leaders also plotted to have Jesus executed, but when Jesus appeared before Pilate there was “no basis for a charge against him” (Jn 18:38). It is true the twelve disciples are all said to have died martyrs’ deaths at the hands of Gentiles, but they managed to preach and teach until the end of their lives without being constantly harassed by Jewish officials. In other words, Paul has the dubious distinction among the earliest Christians of irritating everyone at some point—and sometimes everyone all at once. Persecution can be the consequence of faithfulness, but it can also be evidence of orneriness.

I (Brandon) understand where Paul’s opponents were coming from. There was a time while I was in college that I didn’t much care for the apostle Paul. I believed his writings were Scripture, that they were true and divinely inspired, so I didn’t question whether Paul was right about the theology he propounded. But, boy, did he rub me the wrong way. He struck me as arrogant about his superior spirituality. “If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh,” Paul wrote to the Philippians, “I have more.” He considered himself “a Hebrew of Hebrews” and, “as for righteousness based on the law, faultless” (Phil 3:4-5). Want to know how to live the Christian life successfully? “Follow my example” (1 Cor 11:1) and “become like me” (Gal 4:12). Goodness. Aren’t we called “Christ followers” and not “Paul followers”? In the words of Paul, I heard the arrogance of a handful of church leaders I knew, each of them insisting they were “God’s man” and that their opinions were therefore divinely inspired. Disagree with me, I could easily imagine Paul saying, and you’re disagreeing with God.

Paul also had a way of belittling folks that made me bristle. He called the believers in Galatia “foolish” (Gal 3:1). In the same letter he even boasted about confronting a brother publicly: “When Cephas [Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned” (Gal 2:11). And this from a Christian man who commanded another group of believers: “As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Rom 12:18). I found it difficult to harmonize the example of Paul with the example of Jesus. Where Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28), Paul said, “Expel the wicked person from among you!” (1 Cor 5:13). Where Jesus said, “Turn . . . the other cheek” (Mt 5:39), Paul said that if anyone disagreed with him, “Let them be under God’s curse” (Gal 1:8-9).

Reading Paul, it was hard to imagine myself as a faithful Christian if he was the model of faithful Christianity. None of that confrontation and bravado is in my constitution. I didn’t denounce Paul, but I sure didn’t like him.

I (Randy) had other problems with Paul. He intimidated me. I wouldn’t admit it, but I just preferred to study John. John seemed simpler. I didn’t find John confusing. I certainly agreed with Peter when he said that Paul’s letters “contain some things that are hard to understand” (2 Pet 3:16). When I entered PhD studies on the New Testament, I avoided taking any courses on Paul for as long as I could because Paul said that we aren’t under the law, but then he used the law to make his point. Understanding Paul was hard.

Matters became more complicated for each of us when, deeper into our theological studies, we discovered that there is no shortage of people who totally reject Paul’s perspective on the Christian life. We thought Paul was arrogant, but others believed he was a misogynist and that his view of women was responsible for generations of gender inequality and the patriarchal subjugation of wives and daughters. We thought he was insensitive, but others considered him a racist and anti-Semite. The charge certainly seemed to stick since Christians have quoted Paul to justify their persecution of Jews and the enslavement of Africans and their descendants in America. We felt he failed to embody the meekness and gentleness of Jesus. Others claimed he had invented Christianity. Jesus went around preaching, “The kingdom of heaven is near.” Paul preached about blood and faith and resurrection. Some learned critics argued Paul’s emphasis on sin and atonement departed radically from Jesus’ simple gospel of peace and forgiveness. Not only that, they claim, but this departure from Jesus’ teaching was no accident. The preeminent Jesus scholar Albert Schweitzer wrote of Paul, “If we had to rely on Paul, we should not know that Jesus taught in parables, had delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and had taught His disciples the ‘Our Father.’ Even where they are specially relevant, Paul passes over the words of the Lord.”1

One critic of Paul’s has argued that Paul reinforces the dominant, middle-class values of Western society, whereas Jesus’ teaching is too radical for most to appreciate:

Unlike Jesus of Nazareth, however, who was a Liberal who built up the weak and the poor, while tearing down the mighty, Paul of Tarsus was a Conservative who did a great deal of putting down the weak: women, slaves, Jews, homosexuals and the poor, while empowering those in power. . . . Paul has proven himself the dream theologian of Conservatives, who for centuries has provided them any number of bible passages to help white, European, male, prosperous, heterosexual “Christians” keep the rest of mankind under their feet.2

It seems to us these charges go too far. Our distaste for Paul’s personality did not pose any real threat to our Christian faith. But is it possible to dismiss all these charges as merely issues of Paul’s personality? After all, he does tell wives to submit to their husbands and slaves to obey their masters (Eph 5–6). That seems anti-woman and pro-slavery. Paul does say the Jews killed Jesus, that “they displease God and are hostile to everyone” (1 Thess 2:15). That certainly seems anti-Semitic. But if you believe, as we do, that Paul’s writings are God-breathed, then acknowledging that Paul thought poorly of women means acknowledging that God thinks poorly of women; admitting Paul was a racist means admitting that God is a racist; believing that Paul and Jesus preached two different gospels implies that God inspired two different gospels. We are not willing to agree to those things.

We are, however, willing to admit that the charges against Paul have merit. We cannot merely harrumph and dismiss charges of immorality, misogyny and racism as trivial. So what we propose to do in the remainder of this book is to put Paul on trial as people have done for two thousand years. Each chapter compiles the common charges against Paul—that he was rude and arrogant, a chauvinist and racist, a prude and a homophobe, a hypocrite and a twister of Scripture. We have collected the evidence and make the case against Paul on all the charges as ardently and honestly as we can. It turns out these charges aren’t empty slander. Then we switch sides. We take the charges seriously by responding reasonably and not being dismissive. Specifically, we mine Paul’s historical and cultural context in an effort to hear what he has to say and interpret what he means in a way that would make sense to his original audience. But this exercise isn’t as straightforward as it may seem.

THE CHALLENGE OF INTERPRETATION

One of the challenges of interpreting Paul is that his writings are what scholars call “occasional writings.” That doesn’t mean that Paul only wrote periodically. It means that when he wrote, it was with a specific audience and situation in mind. His writings were specific to a particular occasion (hence, “occasional”). This wouldn’t necessarily pose a problem for us if we had all the information to reconstruct the occasions for which Paul wrote. If we knew, for example, what questions people had asked him, what crises he was responding to, what books were on his desk when he penned his thoughts, well, the work would be half done for us. Unfortunately, we don’t have access to all that information.

What we have to work with are Paul’s letters compiled in the New Testament. These letters are half a correspondence. In some cases, they are Paul’s responses to letters he...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 13.11.2016
• Verlagsort: Lisle
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik
• Themenwelt: Sonstiges ► Geschenkbücher
• Themenwelt: Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Bibelausgaben / Bibelkommentare
• Themenwelt: Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Kirchengeschichte
• Schlagworte: antigay • antiwoman • Apostle Paul • Biblical Interpretation • chauvinism • cultural issues and religion • hermeneutics • Homophobic • Homosexuality • misogyny • New Testament context • Offensive • Paul • Pauline • Paul in the Bible • Racism • racism in the Bible • Slavery
• ISBN-10: 0-8308-7332-5 / 0830873325
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8308-7332-6 / 9780830873326