INNER CIRCLE: The Problem with Paul

Certainly, we can point to passages like Romans 13 where Paul seems to suggest that Christians should not rock the boat, pay their taxes, and learn to think of the Roman Empire as “God’s servant,” but there are several problems with this theory.

First, if Paul was Rome’s attempt to turn Christians around to support the Roman Empire, it failed for the first 300 years or so. Every single one of the early Church Fathers from the First Century and into the reign of Constantine resisted Roman rule, and many went to their deaths refusing to pledge allegiance to Caesar or the Empire.

Secondly, if there was a conspiracy to hijack the Christian movement and shift it away from the focus on Jesus, this also failed because Paul’s letters were written prior to any of the Gospels found in the New Testament. So, even if Paul was a Roman agent of chaos, his letters failed to move anyone away from the words or teachings of Jesus – at least in those early centuries of the Christian movement – as evidenced by the writings of the Church Fathers, who all appealed to the teachings of Christ when it came to resisting the Empire.

Now, I will say that later theologians did use the writings of Paul to subvert the teachings of Jesus in ways that shifted the focus away from the “Way” of Jesus – love, forgiveness, mercy, compassion, etc. – and deeper into the theology of atonement, sin management, guilt, shame, and submission to the Empire.

This is not to suggest that Paul wasn’t confused about some things when it came to Jesus. I think a strong case can be made that, at least earlier in his ministry, Paul was still grappling with questions of theology that Jesus really never addressed. Perhaps this is because Paul was “a Pharisee of Pharisees” who had a lot of theological baggage to unpack when it came to defining – and later redefining – who Jesus was and what his message was all about.

This also brings up something else about Paul that we should admit: He was a human being just like you and me. That means he could be wrong about some things. It also means he could change his mind about things over time and revise his understanding based on a variety of factors. Like we all do.

Missing Context

We should also admit that Paul didn’t think he was writing Scripture when he sat down to answer a question from believers in Corinth, or Galatia, or Thessalonica. He might have been horrified to know that, a few hundred years later, his letters to these scattered churches would be elevated to the same level as Genesis, Exodus, and Isaiah in the hearts and minds of believers who couldn’t read Greek and who didn’t understand the context of the teachings. Many of Paul’s letters are responses to letters written to him by those churches. We don’t have those letters, so we don’t have the full context of the conversation. We can only hear one side and not the other. We also don’t realize that, often, Paul will quote back to the churches something they wrote to him in their letter before he responds to the statement. Those portions of Paul’s letters are not Paul’s words, but without the original letters, we cannot always guess which sections are Paul’s thoughts and which sections are his quotations of their letters.

See the problem?

It gets worse. Because sometimes Paul uses an argumentation device called “Prosopopeia” (as he does in his letter to the Romans) wherein he writes as if he is in a debate with an imaginary opponent and then refutes those arguments later in the text. If we don’t realize he’s doing this, and if we don’t know which sections are written in the voice of the imaginary opponent, then we will mistakenly attribute ideas to Paul that he most certainly would not have agreed with.

But, that’s not all.

Missing Words

Several of Paul’s letters have been poorly translated for us into English. Sometimes these translations leave out words or change the meaning of the words to fit specific doctrinal beliefs. Some examples are the word “exomologeo” in the epistle to the Philippians which means “to gladly confess.” Yet, translators have left out the “gladly” in order to advance the narrative that when “every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord…” the confession would be made as if through gritted teeth rather than through tears of joy or celebration. Why change that? Because the implication that every single person will one day joyfully confess that Jesus is Lord suggests that perhaps everyone will be saved in the end. Especially when compared to another verse written by Paul in Romans which says, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)  Since the idea of Universal Reconciliation isn’t acceptable to Christians who believe in Eternal Conscious Torment, the word “gladly” had to be scrubbed from our English Translations in order to preserve the notion that only the righteous will be saved while all the rest of those “sinners” in the world will suffer eternal damnation.

There are other examples, but you get the point. Getting to the root of Paul’s teachings can be challenging because our English Translations of his writings have been manipulated in several cases to obscure the true meaning of his words.

Mistaken Identity

The other problem with Paul is that some of the letters in the New Testament that are attributed to him were not written by him. This is called “Pseudepigrapha.”

The textbook definition of Pseudepigrapha is:

“Spurious or pseudonymous writings ascribed to various biblical patriarchs and prophets but composed within approximately 200 years of the birth of Jesus Christ.”

The texts that most scholars agree were not written by Paul include:

• Ephesians
• Colossians
• 2 Thessalonians
• 1 Timothy
• 2 Timothy
• Titus

Scholars are sharply divided on whether or not Colossians and 2 Thessalonians are genuine, but when it comes to Ephesians and the so-called “Pastoral Epistles” – that would be 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus – most critical scholars have no trouble labeling them as pseudepigraphical works.

I know. It’s hard to take. Breathe deep.

By the way, no one knows who wrote either 1 Peter or 2 Peter, but the one thing almost every New Testament scholar agrees on is this: It wasn’t the disciple known as Simon Peter.

So, what are we to do with this information? Do we throw out these letters and excise them from our New Testament? Or, is there another way to respond that helps us make sense of how we should read them?

Here’s what I suggest: Read those disputed texts with one eye towards the teachings of Jesus. If what you read aligns with what Jesus taught, then take it to heart. But, if something doesn’t resonate with the teachings of Christ, then you are free to reject that teaching. By the way, I think we should do this with everything in the Bible. Not just these disputed letters, but the accepted letters of Paul as well as the Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Deuteronomy, etc.

This is what it means to read the Scriptures through the lens of Christ. If we can learn to do this, we will never have to reconcile passages where God commands the slaughter of pregnant women, or the taking of teenage girls as sexual slaves, or the complete genocide of an entire nation. If those passages don’t sound like Jesus, we know that they were not written under the inspiration of Christ.

Interestingly, if we do this when we read some of Paul’s disputed letters – like Ephesians and Colossians for example – we find that much of what is found there resonates entirely with the teachings of Christ. So, whoever wrote it, we can safely receive those teachings with gladness because we know those teachings are inspired.

For example, when we read in Colossians that “we are all one in Christ” (Col. 3:11) we can say “Amen!” and when we read in Ephesians the words that “Christ fills everything in every way,” we can receive those teachings with gladness.

What’s With Paul and Women?

Let’s address the charge that Paul hated women.

Without a doubt, several passages in Paul’s letters have been used to justify the subjugation of women in the church. But, on closer inspection, those “clobber passages” may not actually be saying what we’ve been told they’re saying.

For example, the passage in 1 Corinthians where we read “Women should keep silent in the church. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission as the Law says” (13:34-35), we can not only reject those teachings as they do not align with the way Jesus treated women, we can also reject them on the basis that the Law of Moses does not forbid women to speak, and since Paul was a “Pharisee of Pharisees” he would have known this. If he knew this wasn’t in the Law, then Paul wouldn’t have said this to the church in Corinth. But, someone at the church in Corinth may have written this to Paul in the letter they sent to him. If so, then it would make sense that, in response to that statement, Paul would have written back saying:

“What?! Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? If anyone thinks they are a prophet or otherwise gifted by the Spirit, let them acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command. But if anyone ignores this, they will themselves be ignored. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues.” (vs. 36-40, emphasis mine)

Note that the first exclamation “What?!” is left out of most English Translations. But by adding it back in, Paul’s response to the erroneous notion that the Law forbids women to speak is clear. Then, he urges the church in Corinth to “acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command…”, and what has he just written to them in the preceding pages? The idea that everyone – men and women alike – can prophesy in the church. This means that Paul affirms that women have the right to speak in the church, and to teach alongside the men. This is also why he concludes that section by reminding them that everyone should “be eager to prophesy and (to) not forbid speaking in tongues,” which would also entail women speaking out in the congregation.

Note: For a more complete handling of Paul and Women, please see my book, Jesus Unbound: Liberating the Word of God From the Bible.

Problematic Paul

So, there are many objections from a variety of people when it comes to embracing the Apostle Paul. I don’t believe I have exhausted the topic here, but I do hope that I have made a case for Paul’s fallibility, as well as all the many ways Paul’s teachings have been mistranslated, misunderstood, and misattributed to enforce ideas that he himself would have never agreed to.

Not that Paul had it all right. Not that he didn’t have some residual legalism in his bones, or that he didn’t have some lingering patriarchy in his mind. I’ll concede that he was human, and that he, like all of us, had blind spots and weaknesses galore.

But, so did Martin Luther King, and Gandhi, and Mother Teresa, and Black Elk, and Rumi, and on and on and on. So, if we don’t demand that most of our other sources of wisdom adhere to a standard of perfection, then let’s try to give Paul a little break in those areas. He really does have some wonderful things to teach us; things that point us to our shared divinity and our shared humanity; things that can help us to break our addiction to the “Us vs Them” narrative that is, quite literally, killing us all.

So, as we move forward in this book and begin to look at the good things Paul said about our Oneness with God and with all humanity, let’s try to have grace for some of the places where he didn’t always get it right.

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