Paul the Apostle

Paul (born Saul of Tarsus; AD), commonly known as Paul the Apostle or Saint Paul, was a Christian apostle who spread the teachings of Jesus in the first-century AD. For his contributions towards the New Testament, he is generally regarded as one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age, and he also founded several Christian communities in Asia Minor and Europe from the mid-40s to the mid-50s AD. According to Acts, Paul lived as a Pharisee and participated in the persecution of early disciples of Jesus before his conversion. On his way to arrest Christians in Damascus, Paul saw a bright light, heard Christ speak, was blinded, and later healed by Ananias. After these events, Paul was baptized, beginning immediately to proclaim that Jesus of Nazareth was the Jewish messiah and the Son of God. He made three missionary journeys to spread the Christian message to non-Jewish communities.

Fourteen of the 27 books in the New Testament have traditionally been attributed to Paul. Seven of the Pauline epistles are undisputed by scholars as being authentic. Of the other six, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus are generally considered pseudepigraphical, while Colossians and 2 Thessalonians are debated. Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews is almost universally rejected by scholars. The other six are believed by some scholars to have come from followers writing in his name, using material from Paul's surviving letters and letters written by him that no longer survive.

In pronouncing an end within the church to the divisions which are common in the world around it, he concludes by highlighting the fact that "there were New Testament women who taught and had authority in the early churches, that this teaching and authority was sanctioned by Paul, and that Paul himself offers a theological paradigm within which overcoming the subjugation of women is an anticipated outcome".

Classicist Evelyn Stagg and theologian Frank Stagg believe that Paul was attempting to "Christianize" the societal household or domestic codes that significantly oppressed women and empowered men as the head of the household. The Staggs present a serious study of what has been termed the New Testament domestic code, also known as the Haustafel. The two main passages that explain these "household duties" are Paul's letters to the Ephesians and to the Colossians. An underlying Household Code is also reflected in four additional Pauline letters and 1 Peter: 1 Timothy 2:1ff, 8ff; 3:1ff, 8ff; 5:17ff; 6:1f; Titus 2:1–10 and 1 Peter. Biblical scholars have typically treated the Haustafel in Ephesians as a resource in the debate over the role of women in ministry and in the home. Margaret MacDonald argues that the Haustafel, particularly as it appears in Ephesians, was aimed at "reducing the tension between community members and outsiders".

E. P. Sanders has labeled Paul's remark in 1 Corinthians about women not making any sound during worship as "Paul's intemperate outburst that women should be silent in the churches". Women, in fact, played a very significant part in Paul's missionary endeavors:

He became a partner in ministry with the couple Priscilla and Aquila who are specifically named seven times in the New Testament—always by their couple name and never individually. Of the seven times they are named in the New Testament, Priscilla's name appears first in five of those instances, suggesting to some scholars that she was the head of the family unit. They lived, worked, and traveled with the Apostle Paul, becoming his honored, much-loved friends and coworkers in Jesus. In Romans 16:3–4, thought to have been written in 56 or 57, Paul sends his greetings to Priscilla and Aquila and proclaims that both of them "risked their necks" to save Paul's life.
Chloe was an important member of the church in Corinth.
Phoebe was a "deacon" and a "benefactor" of Paul and others.
Romans 16 names eight other women active in the Christian movement, including Junia ("prominent among the apostles"), Mary ("who has worked very hard among you"), and Julia.
Women were frequently among the major supporters of the new Christian movement.

Beth Allison Barr believes that Paul's beliefs on women were progressive for the time period. Barr notes that medieval theologians rarely quoted him to support their patriarchal views and that Pope John Paul II believed that using these passages to support the inferiority of women would be akin to justifying slavery, due to the historical context of the household codes. Wives, like slaves, were considered to be under male authority in Roman law. Barr believes that Paul's intended message was to counter these ideals: he addresses women first and places Jesus as the ultimate authority that everyone was meant to submit to. She also notes that Paul did not believe that women were "deformed men" like his Roman contemporaries and used maternal language most frequently, often using such metaphors to describe himself as a woman. Barr believes that Roman authorities thought that early Christians were "gender deviants" precisely because they did not enforce the household codes as intended. She also believes that Paul was quoting Cicero when saying that women should be silent, before going on to counter this reasoning, and that this is more obvious when the verses are read aloud.

Views on homosexuality

Most Christian traditions and 1 Corinthians 6:9–10. Another passage, 1 Timothy 1:8–11, addresses the topic more obliquely. Since the 19th century, however, most scholars have concluded that 1 Timothy (along with 2 Timothy and Titus) is not original to Paul, but rather an unknown Christian writing in Paul's name some time in the late-1st to mid-2nd century.

Influence

thumb|upright=1|A 1606 statue of St. Paul by [[Gregorio Fernández]]

Paul's influence on Christian thinking arguably has been more significant than any other New Testament author. Paul declared that "Christ is the end of the law", exalted the Christian church as the body of Christ, and depicted the world outside the Church as under judgment. Paul's writings include the earliest reference to the "Lord's Supper", a rite traditionally identified as the Christian communion or Eucharist. In the East, church fathers attributed the element of election in Romans 9 to divine foreknowledge. The themes of predestination found in Western Christianity do not appear in Eastern theology.

Pauline Christianity

Paul had a strong influence on early Christianity. Hurtado notes that Paul regarded his own Christological views and those of his predecessors and that of the Jerusalem Church as essentially similar. According to Hurtado, this "work[s] against the claims by some scholars that Pauline Christianity represents a sharp departure from the religiousness of Judean 'Jesus movements'."

Marcion

Marcionism, regarded as heresy by contemporary mainstream Christianity, was an Early Christian dualist belief system that originated in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope at Rome around the year 144. Marcion asserted that Paul was the only apostle who had rightly understood the new message of salvation as delivered by Christ.

Marcion believed Jesus was the savior sent by God, and Paul the Apostle was his chief apostle, but he rejected the Hebrew Bible and the God of Israel. Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all-forgiving God of the New Testament.

Augustine

In his account of his conversion experience, Augustine of Hippo gave his life to Christ after reading Romans 13. Augustine's foundational work on the gospel as a gift (grace), on morality as life in the Spirit, on predestination, and on original sin all derives from Paul, especially Romans.

Reformation

In his account of his conversion Martin Luther wrote about righteousness in Romans 1 praising Romans as the perfect gospel, in which the Reformation was birthed. Martin Luther's interpretation of Paul's writings influenced Luther's doctrine of sola fide.

John Calvin

John Calvin said the Book of Romans opens to anyone an understanding of the whole Scripture.

Modern theology

In his commentary The Epistle to the Romans (; particularly in the thoroughly re-written second edition of 1922), Karl Barth argued that the God who is revealed in the cross of Jesus challenges and overthrows any attempt to ally God with human cultures, achievements, or possessions.

In addition to the many questions about the true origins of some of Paul's teachings posed by historical figures as noted above, some modern theologians also hold that the teachings of Paul differ markedly from those of Jesus as found in the Gospels. Barrie Wilson states that Paul differs from Jesus in terms of the origin of his message, his teachings and his practices. Some have even gone so far as to claim that, due to these apparent differences in teachings, that Paul was no less than the "second founder" of Christianity (Jesus being its first).

As in the Eastern tradition in general, Western humanists interpret the reference to election in Romans 9 as reflecting divine foreknowledge.

Views on Paul

In Judaism

thumb|upright=1|A statue of Paul holding a scroll, symbolising the [[Scriptures, and a sword, symbolising his martyrdom]]

Jewish interest in Paul is a recent phenomenon. Before the positive historical reevaluations of Jesus by some Jewish thinkers in the 18th and 19th centuries, he had hardly featured in the popular Jewish imagination, and little had been written about him by the religious leaders and scholars. Arguably, he is absent from the Talmud and rabbinical literature, although he makes an appearance in some variants of the medieval polemic Toledot Yeshu (as a particularly effective spy for the rabbis). The Karaite scholar Jacob Qirqisani also believed that Paul created Christianity by introducing the doctrine of Trinitarianism.

However, with Jesus no longer regarded as the paradigm of gentile Christianity, Paul's position became more important in Jewish historical reconstructions of their religion's relationship with Christianity. He has featured as the key to building barriers (e.g. Heinrich Graetz and Martin Buber) or bridges (e.g. Isaac Mayer Wise and Claude G. Montefiore) in interfaith relations, as part of an intra-Jewish debate about what constitutes Jewish authenticity (e.g. Joseph Klausner and Hans Joachim Schoeps), and on occasion as a dialogical partner (e.g. Richard L. Rubenstein and Daniel Boyarin). Boyarin in particular reads Paul as a 'Jewish thinker', one who 'lived and died convinced he was a Jew living out Judaism.'

He features in an oratorio (by Felix Mendelssohn), a painting (by Ludwig Meidner) and a play (by Franz Werfel), and there have been several novels about Paul (by Shalom Asch and Samuel Sandmel). Jewish philosophers (including Baruch Spinoza, Leo Shestov, and Jacob Taubes) and Jewish psychoanalysts (including Sigmund Freud and Hanns Sachs) have engaged with the apostle as one of the most influential figures in Western thought. Scholarly surveys of Jewish interest in Paul include those by , , , and .

In Gnosticism

In the 2nd (and possibly late 1st) century, Gnosticism was a competing religious tradition to Christianity which shared some elements of theology.

Elaine Pagels concentrated on how the Gnostics interpreted Paul's letters and how evidence from gnostic sources may challenge the assumption that Paul wrote his letters to combat "gnostic opponents" and to repudiate their statement that they possess secret wisdom. In her reading, the Gnostics considered Paul as one of their own.

In Islam

Muslim views of Paul () have ranged from critical to interpretive across history. Early Muslim writers generally depicted him as a figure who altered the original revealed teachings of Jesus, while later scholars developed these assessments into more structured theological and philosophical critiques. According to some perspectives, Paul is said to have introduced foreign elements into Christian doctrine—including pagan influences, the formulation of Christianity as a theology of the cross, and the doctrines of original sin and vicarious redemption—all of which are viewed in Islamic theology as incompatible with the concept of pure monotheism (Tawhid|).

Early period

In early Islamic historiography, Paul is occasionally mentioned in relation to Christian history, though not recognized as a disciple. Ibn Ishaq (d. 767), as cited by al-Tabari and al-Qurtubi, records a narrative in which Paul is sent alongside Peter to Rome, though he clarifies that Paul was not a disciple (ḥawārī) but a later follower. Some tafsīr literature, including works by Al-Baghawi and Ibn Kathir, link Paul to verses such as Surah Ya-Sin 36:14, though these interpretations—derived from Isra'iliyyat traditions—are not universally accepted. Ali ibn Ibrahim al-Qummi (d. 919) listed Paul as a theological opponent of Jesus, grouping him with heretical figures like Marcion and Barzatiq, stating that each prophet had an adversary and that Paul was the one sent against Jesus.

Classical period

In theological critique, al-Qadi Abd al-Jabbar (d. 1025) asserted that Paul altered the Gospel, abolished the Mosaic law, and promoted permissiveness, declaring circumcision and Sabbath observance no longer required and wine permissible. Al-Shahrastani (d. 1153) accused Paul of distorting divine knowledge by mixing it with philosophical speculations, stating he corrupted Peter's message through Greek metaphysics.

In polemical literature, Paul plays a role analogous to that of the later figure Abdullah ibn Saba', who is alleged to have attempted to undermine Islam from within. Scholars such as Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) argued that while Paul succeeded in corrupting Christianity, Ibn Saba' failed in his efforts against Islam. He wrote that Paul "entered the religion of the Christians and corrupted it to mislead them." Sayf ibn Umar (d. ±786–809) claimed that certain rabbis persuaded Paul to deliberately misguide early Christians by introducing what Ibn Hazm (d. 1064) viewed as objectionable doctrines into Christianity. Ibn Hazm repeated Sayf's claims and regarded Paul as the principal figure responsible for introducing theological innovations inconsistent with Islamic monotheism. Ibn Hazm likewise claimed that the Jews even admitted to Paul's subversive role.

Modern era

In the modern era, Paul has been the subject of renewed criticism by a range of Muslim scholars. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas argued that Paul was chiefly responsible for distorting the original message of Jesus by introducing foreign philosophical concepts and shifting the focus of the religion away from its Semitic, prophetic origins. Rashid Rida accused Paul of introducing (polytheism) into Christianity. Mohammad Ali Jouhar quoted Adolf von Harnack's critical writings on Paul. Reza Aslan wrote that Paul redefined Jesus into a new theological construct unrecognizable to Judaism: "Christ ... seems almost wholly of his [Paul's] own making."

Ismail al-Faruqi offered one of the most systematic Muslim critiques of Pauline theology. He argued that Paul introduced doctrines absent from Jesus' original teachings, stating that "what Jesus did not furnish, Paul was ready to offer to Christianity," including the ideas of incarnation, crucifixion, and salvation through atonement. He identified Paul's ambiguous formulations as the source of key dogmas such as original sin (peccatism) and vicarious redemption (saviourism), rather than anything traceable to Jesus himself. Al-Faruqi further noted that Pauline theology retained structural ties to Greco-Roman mystery religions, particularly in its use of sacramental and incarnational motifs, which he regarded as incompatible with the Islamic emphasis on divine transcendence.

By contrast, others have offered more charitable or literary appraisals. Shabbir Akhtar, in his study of Paul's epistles, described him as a "prophet manqué"—a man of spiritual ambition who failed to attain true prophethood. Akhtar wrote: "If Muhammad was the last prophet, Paul was the lost prophet. That is the most charitable Islamic verdict on the man Muslims see as the founder of Christianity." Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish journalist and public intellectual, likewise rejects polemical portrayals of Paul as a conspirator and instead offers a more historically grounded evaluation. He writes: "At the end of the day, it seems astonishing how the vision of Paul, a man who had never seen or heard Jesus with his earthly eyes and ears, defined the Christ to the world and built the foundation of the greatest religion that has ever existed." Akyol concludes: "If there can be any informed Islamic critique of Paul, it can be that he parted ways with Judaism too much."

Other views

Other critics of Paul the Apostle include United States president Thomas Jefferson, a Deist who wrote that Paul was the "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus." Christian anarchists, Leo Tolstoy and Ammon Hennacy, as well as German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche held similar views.

Discussions in Bahá'í scholarship have focused on whether Paul changed the original message of Christ or delivered the true gospel, there being proponents of both positions.

References

Notes

Language notes

General notes

Citations

Bibliography

Aulén, Gustaf. Christus Victor (SPCK 1931)

Bruce, F. F.. "Is the Paul of Acts the Real Paul?" Bulletin John Rylands Library 58 (1976) 283–305

Conzelmann, Hans. The Acts of the Apostles – A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles (Augsburg Fortress, 1987)

Dunn, James D. G., Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI), Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2011

Hanson, Anthony T. Studies in Paul's Technique and Theology. Eerdmans, 1974.

Irenaeus, Against Heresies

Kim, Yung Suk. A Theological Introduction to Paul's Letters. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2011.

MacDonald, Dennis Ronald, 1983. The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983.

External links

Lecture on Paul of Tarsus s by Dr. Henry Abramson
Catholic Encyclopedia: Paul of Tarsus
Documentary film on Apostle Paul
Novena to Saint Paul Apostle
Paul's mission and letters From PBS Frontline series on the earliest Christians.
Representations of Saint Paul
"Saint Paul, the Apostle". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2009.
The Apostle and the Poet: Paul and Aratus Dr. Riemer Faber
The Apostle Paul's Shipwreck: An Historical Examination of Acts 27 and 28
Why Paul Went West: The Differences Between the Jewish Diaspora Biblical Archaeology Review
Santiebeati: Saint Paul
Catholic Online: Saint Paul
Footsteps of St. Paul by Christian Tours
Old maps showing the travels of Paul from the Eran Laor Cartographic Collection, National Library of Israel