Doesn’t it feel like the church often gives Paul a little more credit than he deserves? Like, sometimes it feels like Paul is the 2nd Member of the Trinity …
The Father.
Paul.
The Bible.
The Holy Spirit.
The Son.
It’s like Jesus is somewhere near the bottom because although Jesus came and taught stuff and died on the cross, Paul and the rest of the Bible tells us what Jesus really meant.
And on top of that we have Paul saying all sorts of horrible things about women, homosexuality, and really weird things about the end of the world. Not only all of that, but his letters are sometimes all over the place. Like, have you ever sat down and read Romans? If you read it out loud it sounds like the thoughts of a raving madman who sat down at a keyboard to type out an email that was filled with all sorts of emotions.
Sigh.
In seminary Paul and his letter to the Romans was the epitome of Christian Theology, but now that I’m in the midst of my own deconstruction and faith evolution … I can barely stand to even think about Romans, Paul, and all the things.
The thing that Eric said that really struck me was that the letters we attribute to Paul … most of them likely weren’t written by Paul. In the book he talks about the letters to Timothy and how scholars don’t think he wrote them because they talk about a structure of the church that wasn’t around at the time Paul was living. And so what happened was that students of Paul’s work likely wrote these letters in his name in order to make whatever point they were trying to make … not so much to deceive, but to hammer home an idea or teaching that they thought Paul would have been on board with.
That sort of lessens the sting of Paul for me a bit.
I also think it’s important to remember that Paul was a person just like you and me, right? We often think that because his name is attached to half of the New Testament that he’s some sort of untouchable and god-like theologian who dare not be questioned.
BUT.
He was wrong about some stuff. Like, it’s pretty evident that he thought the “Second Coming” was going to happen during his lifetime and that lit a fire under his preaching and created a sense of urgency to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles. Buuuut. It’s almost 2,000 years later and the Second Coming that he predicted clearly hasn’t happened yet.
Paul was wrong. The guy who met Jesus face to face on the Road to Damascus was wrong about Jesus’ return.
And if he was wrong about something as big as that, I think it’s safe to say he was probably wrong about some other stuff too … and so if I read something that Paul said and it doesn’t line up too well with my own experience of the risen Christ who is in me and all around me and in you and all around you, then I have no issue with rethinking it or tossing it out completely.
It’s a radical way to read the Bible, I realize, but after having spent years loosening the reigns of “inerrancy” and all that stuff, I think it honors the Scriptures even more so because rather than looking at it as a Divine book that can never be questioned, we see it for what really is - the description of generations of people (just like you and me) trying to figure out how to walk and live life with an invisible God.
Anyways, go pick up Eric’s book - you won’t be sorry.
✌️
Glenn
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