Paul
Page 26
This must mean—this can only mean—that when Paul goes to a dinner with Jewish friends (or when he invites them to share his own meal), they will eat kosher food, and he will do the same. But it must mean—it can only mean—that when Paul goes to dinner with non-Jewish friends, he will eat whatever they put in front of him.39 What would then make the difference is “conscience”—not Paul’s, but that of anyone else who might be offended, who might be led back into idolatry.
This must have been a much harder path to tread than that sketched in the apostolic letter issued after the Jerusalem Conference. There, simple abstinence from all relevant foods was enjoined. But Paul has seen that this is not only unnecessary; it violates the foundational principles of Jewish belief itself. His own pragmatic solution must have seemed not just paradoxical, but perverse to some. Think, for instance, of a Jewish family in Corinth who had shared a meal with Paul and watched him keep all the Jewish customs, only to find out that the same week he had dined with a Gentile family and eaten what they were eating. One might imagine a certain surprise in the other direction too, though the Gentile family would most likely just shrug their shoulders and see no harm in it. But, once again, what Paul is doing in writing this letter is teaching the Corinthians to think as Messiah people; he is building on the foundation of Israel’s scriptures, interpreting them afresh in the light of the crucified and risen Messiah himself.
So the letter moves toward its powerful conclusion. Chapter 11 deals with problems at the family meal, the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist. Chapter 12 addresses the question of unity in the fellowship and the way in which the spirit gives to each member of “the Messiah’s body” different gifts to be used for the benefit of all. Chapter 14 applies this to the corporate worship of the church. And chapter 13, nested in between 12 and 14 like the soft middle movement of a powerful symphony, is Paul’s exquisite poem about love, agapē. Here too he is not just teaching them “ethics”; he is teaching them to think eschatologically:
We know, you see, in part;
We prophesy in part; but, with perfection,
The partial is abolished. As a child
I spoke, and thought, and reasoned like a child;
When I grew up, I threw off childish ways.
For at the moment all that we can see
Are puzzling reflections in a mirror;
Then, face to face. I know in part, for now;
But then I’ll know completely, through and through,
Even as I’m completely known. So, now,
Faith, hope and love remain, these three; and, of them
Love is the greatest.40
Love is not just a duty. Paul’s point is that love is the believer’s destiny. It is the reality that belongs to God’s future, glimpsed in the present like a puzzling reflection, but waiting there in full reality for the face-to-face future. And the point is that this future has come forward into the present time in the events involving Jesus and in the power of the spirit. That is why love matters for Paul—more even than “faith,” which many have seen as his central theme. Love is the present virtue in which believers anticipate, and practice, the life of the ultimate age to come.
That is why the final theological chapter in the letter, chapter 15, dealing with the resurrection of the body, comes where it does. It is not a detached discussion tacked onto the end of the letter dealing with a distinct topic unrelated to what has gone before. It is the center of everything. “If the Messiah wasn’t raised,” he declares, “your faith is pointless, and you are still in your sins.”41 Unless this is at the heart of who they are, he says (here is his own regular anxiety, now framed as a challenge to the Corinthians), their faith is in vain, “for nothing.” But it isn’t: the resurrection of Jesus means that a new world has opened up, so that, “in the Lord . . . the work you’re doing will not be worthless.”42 The resurrection is the ultimate answer to the nagging question of whether one’s life and work have been “in vain.”
With this, we uncover the roots of Paul’s entire public career. The chapter on resurrection is not simply the underlying reasoning behind the whole letter. It is basic to everything Paul believed. It is the reason he became an apostle in the first place. The Messiah’s resurrection has constituted him as the world’s true Lord, as already the world’s rightful ruler, and “He has to go on ruling, you see, until ‘he has put all his enemies under his feet.’”43 Victory has already been won over the dark powers of sin and death that have crippled the world and, with it, the humans who were supposed to be God’s image-bearers in the world. This victory will at last be completed when death itself is destroyed. For Paul, learning to be a Messiah person—learning to live within the great biblical story now culminating in Jesus and the spirit—was all about having the mind and heart, the imagination and understanding transformed, so that it made sense to live in this already/not-yet world.
This was not the easiest place to live, but it was certainly one of the most exhilarating. The Messiah has already been raised; all the Messiah’s people will be raised at his “royal arrival.”44 Christian living, loving, praying, celebrating, suffering, and not least the apostolic ministries that have nothing to do with social prestige or clever rhetoric—all this makes the sense it makes within this eschatological framework. That is the main thing Paul wants to tell the Corinthians. Sitting there in Ephesus, watching the gospel go to work in homes and shops, confronting the powers of the world and seeing magicians burn their books, Paul can sound confident. This is the future, and it works. What they do in the present, within God’s new world, is not in vain.
The closing greetings give notice of a new project (though Paul indicates that he has already broached the subject to the churches in Galatia, presumably on the journey described briefly in Acts 18:23). He had realized just how poor the Jerusalem church had become, and he had imagined to himself what an impact it would have if the churches of which Jerusalem had been so suspicious—those communities that were allowing Gentiles into full membership without circumcision—were to band together and send real and lasting financial help. This would take some organizing. But Paul clearly saw it as a sign and means of the unity of the Messiah’s people, which, with every passing day, had become more important to him. So he made his plans. He intended to travel through northern Greece and then to spend a good period of time with the Corinthians. It all made sense.
Until it all fell apart.
We do not know exactly when it was that Paul made the extra visit described in 2 Corinthians 2:1 (“I settled it in my mind,” he says there, “that I wouldn’t make you another sad visit”). He stayed in Ephesus for around two and a half years, probably from 53 to 56, and this visit would have been early on in that time, after the writing of 1 Corinthians itself. Nor do we know what precisely happened on that occasion. He had in any case changed his mind, at some point, from the plans he had sketched in 1 Corinthians 16:5–7, where he had been intending to go from Ephesus to northern Greece and then down to Corinth before moving on once more. Then, later, he had had a different idea; he would sail across to Corinth from Ephesus and then go north to Macedonia, before returning from Macedonia to Corinth again and having them send him on his way to Jerusalem.45 But when he got to Corinth something happened. We do not know what.
Some have speculated that one or more members or leaders in the church opposed Paul to his face, perhaps with insults and mockery. Others have suggested that there were financial irregularities in connection with the early stages of the projected collection, and that when Paul confronted the offenders, they denied it all. There may well have been other problems as well, perhaps moral failures or lapses in the church that Paul tried to put right and was rebuffed. (The references to an offender who has “caused sadness” in 2 Corinthians 2:7–8 might refer to the incestuous man of 1 Corinthians 5, but the two pictures do not quite fit, and there is every reason to suppose that this was not the only case of immorality or other inappropriate behavior in the church.) Some in Corint
h seem to have declared that he was unreliable, making different plans every other day like a fool who can’t make his mind up.46
Paul, finding that his normal exercise of power seemed to have deserted him, was shocked and dismayed. Why could he not simply confront the problem and the problem people, as he had done with the magician in Paphos or the slave girl in Philippi? What had happened to the power, the power of which he had boasted in 1 Corinthians 4? He abandoned his plan to go on to Macedonia. He went back to Ephesus with his tail between his legs. We imagine him on the return voyage across the Aegean, pacing the deck, staring at the islands, asking himself, asking God, asking the Lord whom he loved, where it had all gone wrong. What had happened to the power? What was the point of having his name up in lights in Ephesus if his own people in Corinth were turning against him?
Returning to Ephesus was not going to be easy either. Paul was now in a very different frame of mind, dazed and upset by the way his beloved Corinthians had treated him. He wrote them a “painful letter,” which, like the first letter referred to in 1 Corinthians 5, we do not possess. He gave it to Titus, sent him off, and awaited developments.
This is not a good place for a pastor to be. I was once lecturing in the United States—on 2 Corinthians, as it happens—when I received word that members of the community for which I was responsible were in deep disarray over a moral issue that had arisen in my absence. Even in a world with telephones (this was before the days of e-mail), one cannot even begin to put things right. You simply have to pray and agonize, and pray some more, and be patient in the hope that the spirit will be at work. Anyone who ever supposed that Paul sailed through his apostolic work carrying all before him in a blaze of glory can never have studied 2 Corinthians.
* * *
It was at this point that the enemy struck, and struck hard. I explained earlier why I am convinced that Paul was imprisoned in Ephesus. Some suggest that this occurred at least twice. We know enough about the sort of things that happened to Paul from one place to another to guess what may have landed him in jail. In Philippi it was an exorcism that ruined a business whose owners said that Paul was teaching Jewish customs illegal for Romans, in other words, a spiritual battle with economic consequences framed as a religious problem with political implications. In Thessalonica he was accused of turning the world upside down by saying that there was “another king.” In one place after another, Jewish horror at the message of a crucified Messiah—and, we may suppose, at the teaching that this Messiah was now welcoming non-Jews without circumcision—led to opposition, which was sometimes augmented by local hostility from non-Jews who may have had no special sympathy for the Jewish people, but who saw Paul as a social and cultural threat. Sometimes, in other words, opposition was aroused because pagans saw him as a dangerous kind of Jew; sometimes it was because Jews saw him as flirting dangerously with paganism. The irony, surely not wasted on Paul, did not make it any easier for him when facing violence.
Now, in Ephesus, matters came to a head. The pattern would seem familiar. Though, as we saw, the city boasted fine new premises for the imperial cult, the long-standing local devotion to the goddess Artemis was famous throughout the known world, focused not least on a splendid statue of the goddess that, some claimed, had been sent from heaven, a gift from Zeus himself. This statue was on display in the massive Temple of Artemis, where the all-female cult of the goddess wielded considerable power in the city and beyond. Artemis was a fertility goddess whose many-breasted silver statues were themselves famous. (They still are; the last time I was in Ephesus the local tourist shops were full of them.)
But what the modern tourist sees as a souvenir, the ancient citizen saw as an object of worship. When people placed one of these silver statues in their home, in its own little shrine, they were assured that the goddess was there with them, blessing their family and their fields, their business and their livestock. They prayed to her, greeted her when they went in and out, placed fresh flowers in front of her, and perhaps lit a candle or two. She looked after them. So the local silversmiths’ guild had the same problem with Paul as the slave-owners did in Philippi, only much more so. There, Paul had simply exorcised one slave girl. Here, he was denouncing the great goddess herself, telling people “that gods made with hands are not gods after all.”47 If even the magicians were burning their books, then it wasn’t surprising that the local trade in silver Artemis shrines was in a slump as well.
Here, just as in Thessalonica or Athens, the primary impact of Paul’s message was not “how to be saved,” though that was part of it, nor even “the Messiah died for your sins,” though that remained central. The announcement of a Messiah itself only made sense within the larger picture of the One God; it was an essentially Jewish message confronting a world full of fake gods with the news of a living one.
The silversmiths, led by one Demetrius, stirred up civic pride: “Who does this fellow think he is, coming here to tell us that our great goddess doesn’t exist?” A theological proclamation had produced economic challenges, which were then interpreted as civic insults. The silversmiths started to chant their slogan and soon the whole city took it up: “Great is Ephesian Artemis! Great is Ephesian Artemis!”48 A riot had begun. The crowd rushed into the vast amphitheater, whose magnificent acoustics would amplify the chant. Imagine a huge football crowd, angry at a wrongly awarded penalty, setting up a rhythmic shout that became louder and louder. This is one of Luke’s great set-piece scenes; it would go well in a movie, though we still await the director who will do justice to Paul. It might have been fun if you were one of the crowd, shouting in unison with fifty thousand others, with gestures to match. It wouldn’t have been much fun if you were the person it was all aimed at.
The person it was all aimed at, Paul himself, was eager to go in and speak to the people (of course!). A surge of adrenaline, after the sad and worrying visit to Corinth, might do him a powerful lot of good. But some of the local magistrates, friendly to Paul, sent word that he shouldn’t risk going to the theater, and in any case his friends refused to let him. (Did they tie him up, as the sailors did with Odysseus? Did they lock him in his own shop? How did he cope with his frustration—he, the speaker, the one who had lectured the graybeards in Athens, the one who had told the magistrates in Philippi what they could do with their get-out-of-jail-free card?) The crowd did manage to grab hold of two of Paul’s friends, the Macedonians Gaius and Aristarchus. They must have thought their last hour had come. Trampling by the mob would perhaps be the kindest fate they might expect.
Then comes the revealing moment that brings the whole problem into sharp focus. The theological challenge, the economic problem, and the wounded civic pride rush together and show, in a flash, the ugly face of ethnic prejudice: “It’s the Jews!” A Jewish group pushes forward a representative, one Alexander; perhaps he is hoping to explain to the crowd that the local Jewish community has nothing to do with this heretic Paul and his friends. If that is the intention, it backfires. The mob realizes that he is a Jew. The whisper goes around. Then the volume of the chant increases once more, going on for two straight hours: “Great is Ephesian Artemis!” It isn’t difficult to imagine that being chanted, even in English, but when we put it back into Greek we can envisage a rhythm being set up: Megalē hē Artemis Ephesiōn! Megalē hē Artemis Ephesiōn! Emphasize every other syllable, starting on the first, and imagine tens of thousands chanting it together, punching the air in time.
We imagine Paul, restrained by his friends, listening to the chant. He would be praying, of course. If you are the sort of person who sings hymns in prison at midnight, you are certainly the sort of person who goes on praying when there’s a deafening riot happening down the road, especially when it’s all your fault. As his surge of excitement ebbs away, he is more drained than before. Has it all been for nothing? Is the message of the One God and his son going to remain forever a small, specialized option for a subgroup of the Jewish people, the followers of Messiah Jesus? Suppose he had
managed to give his friends the slip and get into the theater after all to address the huge crowd. Would he have been able to pull it off? Would he have found words? Would the spirit have given him power? Would he have been able to speak freshly and clearly about Jesus, the true Lord? It hadn’t happened during his recent visit to Corinth. Suppose it didn’t happen here? Suppose it never happened again? And always the nagging question: Has it all been in vain?
Luke does his best to play the whole thing down. Most of the crowd, he says, had no idea why they had all come together in the first place. In any case, the local magistrate, perhaps surprisingly, managed to calm things down. Perhaps after two hours the crowds were ready for a break. As with the other magistrates and local officials who feature in Luke’s account, this one basically says what the writer wants his readers to know, that despite the noisy riot, Paul and his companions had not in fact broken any laws. If they had, people could bring charges against them in the normal way. Luke must have known that it wasn’t as easy as that. The perfect storm of economic disruption, religious challenge, civic pride, and ethnic prejudice could hardly be contained by Roman provincial legislation.
I suspect that Luke highlights the riot, which he can interpret as a lot of fuss about nothing, partly because it would be well known and people might ask about it (“Didn’t I hear that he caused a riot in Ephesus, of all places?”) and partly because it would distract attention from what happened next. This is where the biographer enters a dark tunnel, the tunnel between the cheerful Paul of 1 Corinthians and the crushed, battered Paul of 2 Corinthians; the tunnel between the Paul who believes that Jesus will come back during his lifetime and the Paul who now expects to die in advance of that glorious moment; the black night when, ahead of any actual judicial decision, Paul heard, deep within himself, the sentence of death. We have no idea what precisely occurred. But he got to the point where he despaired of life itself.