The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (87 page)

INTRODUCTION

O
NE CANNOT MASTER the content of the NT and ignore the apostle Paul. After encountering the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, Saul of Tarsus became the outstanding missionary, theologian, and writer of the early church.
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He was a central figure both in the NT and in the history of Christianity. He wrote 13 letters that comprise almost one-fourth of the NT. Approximately 16 chapters of the book of Acts (13–28) focus on his missionary labors, describing him as the most effective missionary in all of history. Consequently, Paul was the author or subject of nearly one-third of the NT and the most influential interpreter of the teachings of Christ and of the Significance of his life, death, and resurrection. This chapter introduces his message and important current debates about the theology and significance of this great apostle.

FOLLOWER OF JESUS OR FOUNDER OF CHRISTIANITY?

Most readers of the NT automatically assume that Jesus was the founder of Christianity and that Paul was a faithful follower of Jesus who propagated Jesus' teachings throughout the world. However, recent NT scholarship has frequently challenged this traditional view. Some interpreters argue that Paul was the real founder of the Christian movement by introducing so many new ideas and emphases into the Christian faith that he essentially abandoned the original religion of Jesus of Nazareth.
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A Brief History of the Debate

One of the first significant modern scholars to argue for a strong dichotomy between the teachings of Jesus and Paul was F. C. Baur, whose work first appeared in 1845.
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Baur insisted that Paul's teachings display irreconcilable differences with the teachings of the Jerusalem apostles and Palestinian churches that had been influenced by and sought to be faithful to the original teachings of Jesus. Paul consciously departed from the Jesus tradition, especially in his Christology and his view of the validity of the law. Baur's thesis sparked a lively debate. Several scholars in Germany and France argued that significant differences existed between the teachings of Jesus and Paul. Radical scholars began to call for an abandonment of Pauline Christianity and a return to the simple teachings of Jesus.
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At the beginning of the twentieth century, W. Wrede, an influential German NT scholar, argued that Paul's thought was influenced by Jewish apocalyptic messianic expectations rather than by Jesus. Paul was an independent, free-thinking theologian whom Wrede
called “the second founder of Christianity.”
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Wrede argued that Paul saw the life and teachings of Jesus as insignificant. All that mattered for Paul was Jesus' death and resurrection. The risen Christ who appeared to Paul on the Damascus road rather than the earthly Jesus who walked the dusty roads of Galilee was the focus of Paul's teachings. Wrede argued that Paul's teaching had exerted on Christianity “the stronger—not the better—influence,” by which he echoed the earlier slogan of radical critics that called for a return “back from Paul to Jesus.”
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Several years later W. Bousset argued that Paul had been influenced by popular Hellenistic religion to transform Jesus from a Galilean prophet into a cultic god, a notion unprecedented in the teachings of Jesus or the earliest Palestinian community of believers.
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Wrede's theories received a forceful response from both liberal Protestant theologians in Germany and more conservative British and American scholars.
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These scholars argued that Paul did not make many explicit references to Jesus' teachings because he had emphasized Jesus' message in his initial missionary preaching and assumed his readers' familiarity with those teachings. Moreover, the theological differences in the teachings of Jesus and Paul had been grossly exaggerated by the critics. Although Paul's teachings developed those of Jesus, Paul did not contradict Jesus. The developments of Jesus' original teachings by Paul were grounded in a legitimate interpretation of Jesus' message and in no way perverted that message.

R. Bultmann severely critiqued the responses to Wrede by scholars such as J. G. Machen. Bultmann saw so little historical continuity between Jesus and Paul that he could state, “Jesus' teaching is—to all intents and purposes—irrelevant for Paul.”
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Bultmann noted that Paul rarely alluded to or quoted from the teachings of Jesus and that these quotations and allusions were typically related to ethical rather than theological matters. This lack of reference to Jesus' life and teachings demonstrate that Paul was concerned only with the theological truths established by Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection and the implications of these events for an understanding of Jesus' identity as preexistent Son of God and Lord. However, Bultmann did see a significant theological consistency between the teachings of Jesus and Paul. Both Jesus and Paul attacked Jewish legalism and the sin of self-dependence for salvation. He even noted a material congruity between the Christologies of Jesus and
Paul.
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Bultmann argued that the radical cry of scholars influenced by Wrede, “back from Paul to Jesus,” was nonsense, since one could only discover Jesus through Paul.
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In the last 50 years the subject of the relationship of Paul to Jesus has not received the attention it deserves. J. M. G. Barclay has identified several factors leading to this neglect: (1) a parting of the ways between theology and NT study; (2) a widespread uncertainty about the meaning of the messages of Jesus and Paul; and (3) the general opposition in NT scholarship to attempts to develop a synthesis of the theologies of NT writers and early Christian figures and particularly Jesus and Paul.
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Nevertheless, several scholars have made important contributions to an understanding of the relationship of Pauline thought to Jesus' message. In 1971, D. L. Dungan carefully analyzed Paul's appeal to the sayings of Jesus in 1 Corinthians and suggested that the Corinthians were already familiar with this material.
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This confirmed the view of earlier scholars who responded to Wrede by arguing that references to the teachings of Jesus were prominent in Paul's missionary preaching. Dungan's research encouraged other scholars such as D. Wenham and D. Allison to explore the possible dependency of Paul's eschatological teaching on the eschatological discourses of Jesus.
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M. Thompson carefully defined the sometimes nebulous terms “quotation,” “allusion,” and “echo” to aid in discussions of Pauline dependency on the teachings of Jesus and developed reasonable criteria for identifying each category in Paul's letters.
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In the last two decades of the twentieth century, scholars such as A. J. M. Wedderburn, B. Witherington, V. Furnish, and D. Wenham published important studies of the relationship of Paul to Jesus.
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These works argue for a more extensive dependence of Pauline thought on the teachings of Jesus than has generally been accepted by scholars since Wrede.

Despite the new emphasis in the late twentieth century on the consistency of Paul's teachings with Jesus' teachings, some scholars continue to portray Paul as the true founder of Christianity who perverted or ignored the teachings of Jesus. The most important scholarly defense of this view in recent years was H. Maccoby's book,
The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity
, which was published in 1986. Maccoby revived the old arguments of the history-of-religions school which had its heyday in the early 1900s and argued that Paul invented the myths of Jesus' divinity and sacrificial death under the influence of the Greek mystery religions. He viewed Paul as single-handedly responsible for injecting into Christianity the most offensive elements of the faith such as negative
attitudes toward women and sexuality, anti-Semitism, authoritarian tendencies, and proslavery sentiments.
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Many modern and especially postmodern readers were off ended by perceived elements of Paul's teachings and were reviving the slogan “back from Paul to Jesus.” As Wenham noted:

It is not only scholars who have argued this. Many ordinary Christians, as well as non-Christians, have found Paul extremely difficult, and feel that Christianity would be very much better off without some of the dogmas that he propounds (e.g., the divinity of Jesus and Jesus' death as a blood sacrifice), not to mention his teachings of sex, women, and slaves. They would be quite happy if we could keep Jesus, but quietly lose Paul.
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Evidence for Paul's Lack of Concern for the Teachings and Life of Jesus

The paucity of references to Jesus' earthly life in Paul's letters has convinced many that Paul was unconcerned with the Jesus of history. Thus R. Bultmann appealed to 2 Cor 5 :16, which states, “From now on, then, we do not know anyone in a purely human way. Even if we have known Christ in a purely human way, yet now we no longer know him like that.” Bultmann interpreted the verse as indicating that Paul once had an interest in the historical Jesus but that after his conversion Paul was only concerned with the death and resurrection of Jesus rather than with his life.
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However, as competent subsequent critiques by scholars such as M. J. Harris or N. T. Wright revealed, Bultmann's interpretation of the verse was flawed at two crucial points. First, Bultmann regarded the phrase “according to the flesh” as an adjectival phrase modifying “Christ,” although the preceding sentence clearly identifies the phrase as adverbial, modifying “known.” Second, Bultmann overlooked the clear importance of the historical Jesus in 2 Corinthians 4–5 and particularly in 2 Cor 4:7–15. Hence, in context, the statement means that Paul was

repudiating (in v. 16b,c) as totally erroneous his sincere yet superficial preconversion estimate of Jesus as a misguided messianic pretender, a crucified heretic, whose followers must be extirpated (Acts 9:1–2; 26:9–11), for he had come to recognize the Nazarene as the divinely appointed Messiah whose death under the divine curse (Gal. 3:13; see Deut. 21:23) in fact brought life (vv. 14–15).
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Although, as has been seen, Bultmann's interpretation of this text has been ably refuted, Bultmann's influence is still seen and felt in those who argue for a sharp dichotomy between the Christ of Paul and the Jesus of history.

Scholars also point to the scarcity of direct quotations of Jesus in Paul's writings. Many scholars see a direct appeal to the teachings of Jesus in Paul's letters only in 1 Cor 7:10 (which refers to the tradition preserved in Matt 5:27,28; 19:3–9; Mark 10:2–12; Luke 16:18) and 1 Cor 9:14 (which refers to the tradition preserved in Matt 10:10; Luke 10:7), that is, only two references in a single letter. That Paul here alluded to the Jesus tradition is difficult to dispute since he introduced the statements as the Lord's command and since his teaching so closely parallels the teaching of Jesus both linguistically and thematically.

Some scholars see even these two clear allusions to Jesus' teachings as evidence for Paul's low estimation of the Jesus tradition since Paul cited these teachings of Jesus rather loosely and seemed to have no concern to preserve the exact words of Jesus. Moreover, in 1 Cor 9:14 Paul cited Jesus' teaching that those who proclaim the gospel should receive financial support for their labors in the context of an explanation as to why he personally refused such support. Thus, the critics charge, Paul practiced the opposite of what Jesus actually commanded!

On the other hand, Paul's references to Jesus' teachings bespeak Paul's recognition of the authoritative nature of Jesus' utterances. Paul's admission in 1 Cor 7:12 and particularly 7:25 (“About virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I do give an opinion as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy”) demonstrates the special authority assigned to Jesus' teachings in the view of Paul and the early church. Similarly, Paul's practice of supporting himself financially did not involve a dismissal of Jesus' teaching as some have suggested. Jesus' words, “The laborer is worthy of his wages” (quoted in 1 Tim 5:18), while showing that the minister deserves support and that beneficiaries of the ministry are obligated to offer that support, fall short of issuing a command that would render Paul's practice disobedient. Paul probably saw the command he referenced in 1 Cor 9:14 as a command to the
beneficiaries
of gospel ministry rather than to the gospel minister himself. Jesus' teachings established Paul's “right” to such support but did not demand that he actually receive it, especially if this had rendered him vulnerable to the charge that his ministry was financially motivated.
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Scholars who see little connection between Paul and Jesus also point to the divergent doctrines of the two teachers. Jesus, for example, affirmed the OT law, but Paul disparaged it. Jesus saw himself as a prophet, but Paul transformed him into a cultic deity to be worshipped. The kingdom of God constituted the central focus of Jesus' preaching, but kingdom language is almost completely absent from Paul's letters. In response, other scholars have pointed out that much of the tension between the teachings of Jesus and those of Paul results from a misinterpretation of Jesus, Paul, or both. Jesus' teachings and
Paul's Damascus road experience defined the contours of Paul's theology. Paul faithfully interpreted Jesus' teachings in order to address the theological and ethical challenges of the churches to which he wrote.

Evidence of Paul's Concern for the Teachings and Life of Jesus

There is significant evidence for Paul's dependence on the teachings of Jesus. First, allusions to Jesus' teachings in Paul's letters are far more extensive and frequent than many scholars have recognized. Identifying actual intentional allusions to Jesus' teachings in Paul's letters can be difficult. However, allusions are likely when (1) Paul used an explicit tradition indicator such as “the Lord commanded” or “word from the Lord”; (2) the suspected allusion contains linguistic or thematic echoes from the Gospels; or (3) a series of several possible allusions appears in a particular context.