Paul and Jesus

Paul applied this principle of living lawfully within the society and accepting things as ordered by God even to the Roman governing authorities: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed and those who resist incur judgment” (Romans 13:1–2). Christians are to pay their taxes, showing respect and honor to those in authority (Romans 13:7). Considering that Paul’s life spans the reigns of Roman emperors of the likes of Caligula and Nero, notorious for their cruelty and ruthlessness, this instruction is really quite remarkable. One might think that Paul’s apocalyptic stance regarding the imminent overthrow of the present evil world, not to mention the Roman military occupation of his homeland, would preclude his referring to the Roman authorities as God’s servants. In Paul’s view the present economic and social configuration of society was a matter of indifference. God orders present circumstances but all is in the process of passing away.

Toward the end of his life, when Paul was imprisoned in Rome in the early 60s A.D., contemplating that he might not live to see the return of Christ, he took a much more practical approach to slavery. It just so happens that the last letter we have from him, only a page or two in length, deals with this very subject. Paul writes from prison in Rome to Philemon, one of his more well-to-do converts, who lived in Asia Minor. Paul had chanced upon a runaway slave, named Onesimus, belonging to Philemon and whom he had converted to Christianity. Roman law required that runaway slaves be sent back to their owners and anyone aiding such a fugitive could be liable for damages. Paul writes from prison that he is sending Onesimus back, and subtly hints, but does not demand, that Philemon free him to serve Paul. He even offers to pay any damages Onesimus might owe. Paul suggests that perhaps Onesimus’s running away was for some greater purpose, so that Philemon could “have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord” (verse 16). Paul still maintains that one’s state of life “in the flesh” is nothing to compare to one’s “freedom” in the Lord—but nonetheless, he sees that being free in the flesh, as well as in the Lord, could have a decided practical advantage.

One might see some inconsistency here in that Paul expects the life of the flesh to go on with respect to slavery, paying taxes, and living in submission to Roman civil rule, while he seems to expect his followers somehow to transcend the flesh with respect to matters of sexuality, marriage, ethnic identity, and vocation. It is obvious that he himself is caught up in the very tensions implied by his “already but not yet” stance regarding the imminent termination of history with the arrival of Christ in the clouds of heaven, and its “delay” as the decade of the 50s passed. What he most wants to see is harmony and good order in his communities, so that within and without, peace can prevail. He is forging new ground in that he is willing to take his followers outside the parameters of Jewish culture, in which matters of life in this world and the world to come were generally balanced in favor of the former. The danger was that his form of “Christianity,” freed from the practicalities of the Torah while attempting to live “as if” this world were already passing away, led to constant confusion and conflict among his followers.

Not the least of these conflicts created by Paul’s teaching about the new world, already here, but not yet fully realized, had to do with the thorny question of ethics. How were those who were united with Christ to live in the present world? Judaism pointed to the revelation of the Torah given by Moses, but Paul had decidedly declared that his followers were no longer subject to that system of law and ethics, being instead “free in Christ.” In the following chapter we will see how Paul’s creation of a new “Torah of Christ” paved the way for a decisive break between him and the Jewish apostles and followers of Jesus who remained firmly rooted in their Jewish heritage.

EIGHT

THE TORAH OF CHRIST

Was Jesus a Jew or a Christian? I often pose this question to my students as we begin my college course called Christian Origins. The course takes a broad overview of the development of earliest Christianity just past the end of the first century. The question is intentionally provocative, posed to get at the heart of the matter. How was it that Jesus the Jew founded a movement that eventually made a clean break with Judaism, casting it aside as obsolete, and went on its way as a separate new religion called Christianity?