Paul and Jesus

Years later, at the University of Chicago, I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on Paul, and my first book, Things Unutterable, dealt with Paul’s mystical experiences and his unique message set in the context of the Hellenistic religions of his time.³ Over the span of my academic career I have taught a course simply titled “Paul”—and I half-jokingly tell the students the first day that Paul is one of those people for whom a last name is not necessary, much like Elvis or Madonna. From my perspective, my class on Paul is the best of a half-dozen I regularly teach. I am sure the course is quite different today from when I first taught it, but each time I have begun the course I have introduced it with what I intend to be a startling assertion: Paul is the most influential person in human history, and realize it or not, he has shaped practically all we think about everything. I have in mind, of course, the West in particular, but since Christian culture has had such a global spread, I think my somewhat extravagant language about “human history” can be justified. As we will see in this book, the foundations of Western civilization—from our assumptions about reality to our societal and personal ethics—rest in a singular way upon the heavenly visions and apparitions of the apostle Paul. We are all cultural heirs of Paul, with the well-established doctrines and traditions of mainstream Christianity deeply entrenched in our culture. In contrast, Jesus as a historical figure, that is, a Jewish Messiah of his own time who sought to see the kingdom of God established on earth, has been largely lost to our culture.⁴

Visit any church service, whether Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Greek Orthodox, and it is Paul, and Paul’s vision of Jesus, that are central—in the theological language of the hymns, the words of the creeds, the content of the sermons, the invocation and benediction, and of course, the rituals of baptism and the Holy Communion or Mass. Whether birth, baptism, confirmation, marriage, or death, it is predominantly Paul who is invoked to express meaning and significance.

The fundamental doctrinal tenets of Christianity, namely that Christ is God “born in the flesh,” that his sacrificial death atones for the sins of humankind, and that his resurrection from the dead guarantees eternal life to all who believe, can be traced back to Paul, not Jesus.⁵ Indeed, the spiritual union with Christ through baptism, as well as the “communion” with his body and blood through the sacred meal of bread and wine, also traces back to Paul. This is the Christianity familiar to us, the Christianity of the creeds and confessions that separated it from Judaism and put it on the road to becoming a new religion.

There is a late pseudonymous document in the New Testament known as 2 Peter that offers the cautionary warning that the letters of “our beloved brother Paul” contain “things hard to understand” (3:16), indicating that struggling with Paul was an experience we moderns share with the ancients.* Paul has often elicited passionately dichotomous reactions from his more engaged readers. He is loved and hated, praised and blamed, depending on one’s evaluation of the validity of his claims about himself and his teachings, as well as one’s view of orthodox Christianity. For many others, including many of my students, his writings are initially opaque, dense, and irrelevant to the modern world.

My challenge as a teacher, and now here as a writer, is to open up the fascinating world of the life, mission, and message of Paul in a way that makes clear what we all owe to Paul, and what is at stake. I write for Christian believers as well as those of any religion, or no religion, who want to understand the deeper roots of our culture. Readers, whether familiar with Paul or not, should expect to be captivated, challenged, and surprised by the portrait of Paul that emerges. This is not the pious apostle of well-worn ecclesiastical tradition, Sunday school piety, or arcane theological discussions. What you will encounter here is Paul afresh, as he emerges in his own words, with his own voice, drawn exclusively from his earliest authentic letters. These are then set in the context of a critical reading of the New Testament and other ancient texts, some of which have come to light only in the last one hundred years.

The last week of May 2010, I traveled to Rome to carry out my final piece of research for this book. That trip in some ways was a culmination of my lifelong study of Paul. But for me the trip involved much more than research. It was very much a personal pilgrimage. My purpose was to visit the newly discovered tomb of Paul at the Basilica San Paolo, or St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, one of the four major papal basilicas and the second largest, next to St. Peter’s.⁶