From the beginning of the Christian tradition, the Apostles (“emissaries”) of Jesus were central figures. Among those accorded that august title were the three “pillars,” as Paul referred to them (Gal. 2:9), James (the brother of the Lord), Kephas (Peter), and John (the son of Zebedee). Before the end of the first century, two names in particular were esteemed above the rest: Peter and Paul. For this reason, the Christian tradition itself can be called “Petrine-Pauline”; every “ecclesial” offshoot that sprang from the original apostolic stem in the earliest centuries either disappeared as a viable community (for example, the cliquish schools that get lumped together under the label – rightly or wrongly – of “Gnostic”) or eventually merged with the mainstream tradition (this might have been the case with the “Johannine” congregations). The rest claimed, one way or another, to be under the aegis of the expansive Petrine-Pauline tradition and true to its regula fidei. The eventual centrality of Paul, as we know, is rather odd, considering that he had been a latecomer, whose claim to apostleship rankled some in his own time (increasingly so after he became known for his proclamation of Christ to gentiles). He had, after all, once been a bloodthirsty opponent of the new sect. But he had had an encounter with the risen Christ (described three times in the book of Acts: 9:1-19a; 22:1-21; 26:9-23 [1]; see Paul’s claim stressing that this was a revelation of Jesus’ resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:5-11), convincing him that he had been in the wrong and must now reveal to others the very Lord he had formerly reviled. Before the close of that same century, Paul’s letters were being collected and read as Scripture; indeed, we see this attested to in 2 Peter 3:16. Paul himself was martyred circa 64 A.D. Yet second only to Jesus, Paul is the most pivotal figure in church history, his writings constituting about a quarter of the New Testament canon. [2] We cannot understand the mystical theology of the tradition without Paul. So, in this post and the next, I want to touch on Paul – not exhaustively (or exhaustingly), but merely to bring to our attention a handful of aspects of his thought that apply to us still, if we profess to be (orthodox) Christians of any stripe.
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