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The First Paul
by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan
Harper One, 2009, 224pp., $24.99
Review summary by Dan Brent
The premise that suggests the title is that, of the thirteen Pauline letters, only seven are written by the real (first) Paul. Three others, Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians, were written later and attempt to “deradicalize” the original Paul. Three others, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, came still later – perhaps fifty years after Paul’s death – and are still more conservative in their theology.
For a Lutheran, Borg says, “the foundational Christian message was ‘justification by grace through faith.’” (p.5) Now he is looking for what other vantage points might add to Paul’s richness and fullness. Crossan is a Catholic. His goal in the book is to “get Paul out of the Reformation world and back into the Roman world.” (p.7)
Together the authors reject the allegation that Paul “transformed the religion of Jesus into a religion about Jesus.” (p.11) “Paul emerges,” they say, “as a faithful apostle of the radical Jesus.” The task for the scripture scholar is to put Paul’s letters back into their context: his faith communities, the early Christian church, the Judaism roots of Jesus, and the Roman Empire in which Christianity emerged. It is the reality of imperial Rome, in fact, that frames the main message of Paul: Jesus is Lord – and Caesar is not! And this radical message reflects a new vision of what life can and should be.
“The radical (first) Paul opposes – and the conservative (second) and reactionary (third) ‘Pauls’ accept – the normalcy of Roman hierarchy in its most obvious expressions.” (p.31) Regarding slavery, for example, Paul’s letter to Philemon makes clear that slavery, for a Christian, is unthinkable. “Philemon must liberate Onesimus freely as a work proceeding intrinsically from faith.” (p.40) The later “Pauls” back off from this position. “Slaves, obey your earthly masters” (Colossians 3) and “Tell slaves to be submissive” (Titus) reflect a very different perspective, more palatable to Roman assumptions about slavery.
For the first Paul, marriage is “always about mutual and reciprocal rights and duties” (p.49) And “equality is taken for granted – female and male are equal in the communal Christian assembly just as in the private Christian family.” (p.51) But from the second “Paul” we get, “The husband is head of the wife” (Ephesians 5). And from the third Paul we get, “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man.” (1 Timothy 2)
The book contains some interesting personal notes on Paul. The authors theorize that Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was an ongoing struggle with malaria, contracted from the mosquito-infested areas around Tarsus. They doubt Luke’s contentions that Paul was a Roman citizen and that the Damascus trip was to arrest Christians on behalf of the High Priest. They reason that his preaching was mostly to the “God-fearing” Gentiles – those who attached themselves to the synagogues and worshiped the God of Israel. They estimate the total number of Christians in 60 AD at about two thousand; so Paul’s “Churches” would have been quite small, perhaps composed of several dozen believers.
“Greco-Roman theology recognized immortal gods – a deus like Zeus or Jupiter – but also human beings who were raised to divine status – a divus like Hercules or Julius Caesar.” (p.101) Augustus was recognized as divi filius – Son of the Divine One or Son of God. “Roman imperial theology had no problem with a human being who was, on the one hand, Son of God and, on the other, God incarnate.” (p.103) Such a deity secured peace by victory in war.
For Paul, then, to preach that Jesus as THE Lord would amount to high treason. But it would clearly communicate to Roman subjects Paul’s concept of the role that God had given to Jesus. But how does Jesus bring peace? He has no army.
He does it by bringing JUSTICE. “There will only be peace on earth, Paul claims, when all members of God’s world-home receive a fair and equitable share of its bounty.” (p.116) This is the insight into the Gospel message of Jesus that prompts Paul to take the positions he did on slavery and gender. There are to be no distinctions, no hierarchy, in God’s kingdom on earth. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female: you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3) It would be anachronistic to suppose that Paul was thinking in terms of democracy, social justice, or human rights. He is thinking rather in terms of family where there is mutual respect, love, and solicitude. “For Paul, the Householder of the earth-home is God and all people are God’s children.”(p.114)
“The death and resurrection of Jesus go together for Paul. Each gives meaning to the other.” (p.129) The theme of his preaching is always Christ crucified. Paul saw Christ’s resurrection as God’s rejection of the peace-by-enslavement rule of Rome. The world – represented then by Rome – accepts as normal “domination systems” that give control to the rich and powerful. But by raising Jesus from the death imposed by the power system, God has rejected the wisdom of this violent approach. So the vocation of the Christian is to live and die in Christ. “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2)
The book turns now to the issue of justification. “Humanity’s universal sin is this: we have accepted violence as civilization’s drug of choice.” (p.166) “When he (Paul) spoke of justification by grace through faith, he was not thinking about how we get to heaven, but about transformation of ourselves and of the world in this life here below.” (p.156) The Romans letter “concerns God’s passionate desire to heal a broken world, to end the normalcy of injustice founded on violence.” (p.158) So “justification by grace through faith means God’s way of making us (and the world) just.” (p.161) Or to put it another way, justification is God trying to make us fair and respectful to each other in this current life. That shows itself in behavior, not just beliefs or words. And the impetus to that behavior – behaving with equal fairness (as God does) – is God’s gift (grace) to us.
The authors describe this as the offer of a “Spirit transplant” which we can reject or accept. Paul calls acceptance faith. And “Faith does not mean theoretical assent to a proposition, but vital commitment to a program.” (p.168) Paul has no appreciation of works not motivated by faith in Jesus. So the observances prescribed by the Law held no efficacy for the Christian, in his mind.
This “Spirit transplant” gives the Christian a new identity which Paul refers to as making us live “in Christ”. He saw communities of believers as being the “body” of Christ. And this integration is about equality and not just unity. He scolds the Corinthians for not respecting this equality at their Eucharistic meals and for bragging about their gifts as making one better than another. Jesus presented this mindset as love. And love, as Paul understood it, “meant standing against the domination systems that ruled their world, and collaborating with the Spirit in the creation of a new way of life. Love is at the heart of justice and justice is the social form of love.” (p.205)
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