Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination

by Ben C Blackwell

  Indeed, this hope of a future resurrection is the foundation for a present apocalyptic ethic. In fact, the only theme more prominent than the resurrection of the flesh in the entire narrative is the call to renounce the passions of the flesh, as the emphasis on chastity and fasting throughout make clear. Yet, these topics are not unrelated. For example, the narrator summarizes Paul’s message in the Thecla section in this manner: Paul gave “the word of God concerning continence and resurrection” (3.5). In the subsequent rendition of the beatitudes, Paul preaches, “blessed are the bodies of virgins . . . for the word of the Father shall be for them a work of salvation in the day of his Son” (3.6). The eschatological return of Christ leads women (and men) to reevaluate the world’s sexual standards. And yet, the commands are just as pointed to those who are married: “Blessed are they who have wives as if they did not, for they shall be heirs to God” (3.5). This draws directly from 1 Cor. 7:29, where one of the Pauline letters also advocates for an apocalyptically informed ethic. This encratic preaching sets up the following narrative where, in obedience to Paul and disobedience to her parents, Thecla’s refusal of her betrothed destabilizes familial and wider social structures, as evidenced by the involvement of the magistrates.[25] An eschatological perspective is thus the basis for this reevaluation of traditional values which undergird the culture. Indeed, those in opposition to Paul describe his basic message as this: “There is no resurrection for you, except that you remain chaste and do not defile the flesh, but keep it pure” (3.12). The reiteration of eschatological aspirations—the hope of “resurrection,” of “salvation in the day of [God’s] Son,” and of inheritance (“they shall be heirs of God”)—repeatedly serves to ground this reevaluation of social values and the resulting ethic of renunciation.

  Just as the positive ends of discipleship motivate obedience, negative outcomes of rebellion are the basis for turning away from disobedience. In Paul’s later sermons and speeches, he recounts the impending judgment on those who do not follow Christ (e.g., 9.13; 10.6.37–38). Not only is there eschatological punishment for disobedience, Paul advocates detachment due to the ephemeral nature of this world. Speaking to the wife of a governor, Paul reminds her that the things of this life—gold, riches, clothing, beauty, great cities, even the world itself—will ultimately wear away, but God alone remains and those in his family (9.17). Though framed with a different argument, the perspective is the same: when viewed in the light of eschatological hopes, Christians must detach themselves from traditional objects of value—whether sexual pleasure and social stability through children, or wealth that secures a comfortable lifestyle. Rather, they must invest in abiding goods, grounded in the one who abides eternally.

  In addition to a willingness to renounce family and wealth, APaul equally presents a willingness to suffer for obedience to Christ. Paul and others suffer, not only due to their willingness to count eschatological goods of greater value than temporal ones, but also due to popular (and even political) rejection of the gospel (APaul 2, 9, 11, 12, 14). As noted earlier, a prominent theme is that God protects in the midst of the experiences of suffering (APaul 3–4, 11) and, in the end, through resurrection (APaul 3, 10). Thecla, for example, is condemned to die twice by political authorities for her devotion to continence (3.18–22; 4.1–38). As God saves her from the second punishment, she has the opportunity to testify about her motivation for persevering: God “alone is the goal of salvation and the foundation of the immortal life. To the storm-tossed, he is a refuge; to the oppressed, relief; to the despairing, shelter; in a word, whoever does not believe in him shall not live but die forever” (4.12). The eschatological telos of life or death, resulting respectively from salvation from God or rejection of God, is the basis for her willingness to reevaluate the ephemeral suffering in this world.

  A leitmotif in the narrative is that family members and civic leaders—Roman magistrates and even the Emperor himself—will often respond to this radical obedience with hostility, even deadly opposition. Accordingly, we will conclude where the Acts of Paul concludes, the topic of politics.

  Apocalypse Against Empire

  Throughout the narrative the main characters are imprisoned and punished by civic authorities for their faith (APaul 3–4, 6, 9, 10, 14).[26] In the earlier sections of APaul, civic opposition primarily arises due to Paul’s message of continence, whereas in Paul’s Martyrdom (APaul 14) Nero’s anger is provoked because of the decidedly political and martial language: 1) Christ is the “king” (βασιλεύς) who will destroy all other “kingdoms” (βασιλεῖαι), and 2) believers are “soldiers” (στρατιῶται) who serve in his army. Having addressed the social ramifications of continence above, we will focus here on the issue of Christ’s kingdom.

  The root βασιλε- occurs 13 times in chapter 14, showing its distinct importance. All the main Christian characters in the story affirm Jesus Christ as “King”—Patroclus (14.2), Barsabas Justus, Urion, Festus (14.2), and Paul (14.3, 4). In particular, Jesus is described as “the King of the Ages” (ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν αἰώνων, 14.2) and “the great king” (ὁ μέγας βασιλεύς). In the interchange between Nero and his slave Patroclus, Nero asks if Jesus “will destroy all [other] kingdoms” (14.2). Patroclus responds affirmatively: “He alone shall be forever [τῶν αἰώνων], and there shall be no kingdom which shall escape him.” A significant part of this kingdom is God’s action to judge the world through Christ. Paul tells Nero that “in one day he [Christ] will destroy the world with fire” (14.3) and that the “Lord Christ Jesus . . . is coming to judge the world” (14.4). God’s kingdom will be established by purifying the world by fire, and those who are the members of the kingdom will be saved through resurrection.

  This eschatological and heavenly kingdom challenges not only Rome’s identity, but also the work of the evil one, whose role in the Martyrdom is clear (14.2–3). Paul does not actively subvert the political structure of the empire. Yet, the Christian ethic and devotion to an alternate kingdom is viewed as subversive by civic authorities, which is why Paul and his companions are repeatedly arrested and punished. To halt the perceived insurrection in Rome, Paul is beheaded (14.4–5), and yet, the narrator shows that Paul triumphs over death because he reappears to Nero and proclaims, “I am not dead, but alive in my God” (14.6). The local and ephemeral empire of Nero is shown to be a mere passing shadow in light of the universal and eternal kingdom of Christ. Christians thus grounded their ethic of sociopolitical identity in Christ and his kingdom, with the result that they embodied his narrative rather than a Roman one.[27]

  With these apocalyptic themes in mind, we can now assess the image of Pauline theology presented here.

  Preliminary Conclusions

  After considering these apocalyptic elements—divine and spiritual agency, resurrection hope and apocalyptic ethics, and politics—we have a basis to present a categorization of this text. In distinction to the Apocalypse, the Actsof Paul presents a higher degree of continuity with the OT and Judaism, particularly with the description of the Spirit’s work in prophecy, which would correspond to a prospective interpretive strategy. However, the primary image presented here is one of renunciation of the things of this world in light of the eschatological reevaluation of the world’s goods. Christians are not actively trying to dismantle the social, economic, and political structures, but their non-participation or radically re-oriented participation in these structures presents a real critique and subversion of those systems. At the same time, by highlighting the resurrection of the flesh, the creational order is not fully rejected. Accordingly, the text has prospective and retrospective elements, but the strong eschatological critique presents more of a retrospective point of view. That is, it reinterprets what has come before in light of the Christ-event, rather than vice versa. In this case, it is not so much Judaism that is reevaluated, but cultural norms. This retrospective approach is nuanced, in that it maintains continuity with key OT elements such as a p
hysical creation and the work of the Spirit in the prophets.[28]

  Now that we have assessed the Apocalypse of Paul and the Acts of Paul separately, we can now draw together our conclusions on the question of Paul and apocalyptic from the lens of second-century texts.

  Ancient and Contemporary Views on the Apocalyptic Paul

  With these two second-century texts, we see that the debate about how to understand Paul as an apocalyptic theologian is not new; it dates back to the earliest reception of his letters as they conveyed the nature of God’s action in the world to resolve the problem of evil. Both of these texts represent attempts to understand Paul and to communicate their own theology in light of Paul’s life. Neither merely parrots Paul or simply “got Paul right” (or wrong); in fact, none would be able to do that because interpretive contexts constantly change. Koschorke is therefore correct when he states, “Denn der Streit dürfte je länger je mehr nicht darum gegangen sein, ob Paulus, sondern welcher Paulus Gültigkeit beanspruchen könne.”[29] With this diversity in mind, we can evaluate and compare the way early readers of Paul utilized his memory and how this can help contemporary discussions of Paul as an apocalyptic theologian.

  These two texts, the Apocalypse of Paul and the Acts of Paul, give us direct windows into how second-century writers/editors appropriated Paul’s letters and his story through different apocalyptic frameworks. Though they drew on different Pauline material and presented it different ways, both texts portray Paul in an apocalyptic key. For example, they both highlight divine and spiritual agency as well as individual eschatology. They also present retrospective readings, though of different sorts: the Apocalypse’s reading is more strongly critical of a Jewish narrative, whereas the Jewish prophetic narrative in the Acts of Paul is treated positively, to the extent that it is mentioned. However, both consider the new revelation as a means radically to reinterpret the prior—Jewish or cultural—narratives.

  The distinction, however, between the two texts is most evident when we consider how they present the issue of divine agency. With its sole focus on the Spirit, the Apocalypse obviously brackets out a significant aspect of the christological theology of Paul’s letters. Like the letters, the Actsof Paul is more balanced in this regard with a strongly christological focus combined with an emphasis on the agency of the Spirit. Although I prefer the distinction of “better” and “worse” readings rather than “right” and “wrong” readings, the absence of Christ in the Apocalypse narrative undercuts the foundation on which all of Paul’s theology stands. This is an aspect where the Apocalypse clearly got Paul wrong. And I suspect—in line with Paul’s defense of his revealed-from-God, centered-on-Christ gospel—he would say to the writer of the Apocalypse, “If any angel (or Spirit) from heaven should proclaim to you another Gospel [than that of Christ], let him be accursed!”[30] This issue notwithstanding, the Apocalypse of Paul, like the Acts of Paul, is still helpful for highlighting ways of reading and understanding Paul.[31]

  When we bring these perspectives into conversation with our contemporary debate, we see that their frameworks do not always fit our patterns. For instance, the discussion in this volume is centered on two primary paradigms: retrospective and prospective.[32] The Apocalypse has a distinctly retrospective critique of the creator God. On the other hand, the Acts of Paul accepts certain creational values, such as the fleshly body, while also renouncing others like marriage. Even with this nuance, the reading strategy appears to be more retrospective. Of course, Paul’s letters provide additional prospectively oriented fodder not addressed in these texts, which makes the interpretive decisions difficult. Nevertheless, these two witnesses give a glimpse of the variety of ways that Paul’s theology and letters could be appropriated and (re)interpreted in different contexts.[33]

  Our own interpretive contexts have unique influences and give rise to different questions, though some do engage these prior readings in this contemporary debate. In contrast to the narrative of the Acts of Paul, the type of reading the Apocalypse offers will be more familiar to most NT scholars who are more aware of gnosticism, and particularly, Marcionism—a cousin of gnostic thought represented in the Apocalypse. To the extent that they mention it, those in the contemporary Eschatological Invasion group (as described in this volume’s Introduction) explicitly repudiate affinities with Marcionite retrospective readings. The fact that Martyn feels constrained to defend himself against resurrecting a form of Marcionism shows that more than one has seen the similarities between his reading strategy and theirs:[34] The radical newness in Christ has little continuity with what has gone before, what precedes Christ is only from the god of this world, and the law is mediated by (evil?) angels.[35] Martyn rightly defends himself by arguing that the temporal dualism in Paul cannot be confused for the ontological dualism in (some forms of) gnosticism that separates the physical from the spiritual and the creator from the most high God.[36]

  Just as the American, two-party political system does not capture the diversity of contemporary political perspectives, neither does the retrospective and prospective taxonomy simply limit things. The diversity of ways apocalyptic texts employ biblical themes and texts shows they can expound, subvert, and transpose these themes when reframed for a new context. This complex of similarities and differences with Paul should not just be regarded according to a polarity of good or bad projections of Paul. Rather, the reception of his letters and life provides us with an interesting lens on Paul himself that leads us back yet again to the complexities we see in his own letters.

  * * *

  A number of good works have treated this topic recently. See, e.g., Michael F. Bird and Joseph R. Dodson, eds., Paul and the Second Century: The Legacy of Paul’s Life, Letters, and Teaching, LNTS 412 (London: T&T Clark, 2011). ↵

  Klaus Koschorke’s conclusions about the reception of Paul in the Nag Hammadi texts apply more widely: “Paulus in den Nag-Hammadi-Texten: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Paulusrezeption im frühen Christentum,” ZTK 78, no. 2 (1981): 177–205, at 200–205. ↵

  See, e.g., my “Two Early Perspectives on Participation in Paul: Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria,” in ‘In Christ’ in Paul: Explorations in Paul's Theology of Union and Participation, eds. Michael J. Thate, et al., WUNT 2/384 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 331–55. The recent work by Benjamin White also helpfully explores this need for more charity for the various interpretations we encounter in reception histories: Remembering Paul: Ancient and Modern Contests over the Image of the Apostle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), esp. 170–81. However, White’s attempt to prove that his definite reading of 1 Corinthians stands against the readings of 3 Corinthians and Irenaeus seems to mitigate the effect of his own methodological plea. ↵

  Adela Yarbro Collins (“The Early Christian Apocalypses,” Semeia 14 [1979]: 61–121) details Christian apocalypses with putative origins in the first three centuries, including ones found in the NT but excluding Gnostic works. Of these works, three are thought to have originated in the second century: the apocryphal Apocalypse of Peter, Shepherd of Hermas, and Ascension of Isaiah 6–11. In the same volume, Francis Fallon (“The Gnostic Apocalypses,” Semeia 14 [1979]: 123–58) explores the rich variety of Gnostic apocalypses that span a wider time frame. ↵

  There may be a literary relationship with a later Latin text, the Visio Pauli, which at times is called the Apocalypse of Paul and which proved influential for Medieval heavenly journey accounts such as that of Dante. I am focusing here just on the earlier gnostic text. ↵

  Among the Nag Hammadi collection, the Apocalypseof Paul is found in Codex V, a fourth-century codex in which other apocalypses are found—the Apocalypse of Adam and two Apocalypses of James. For the critical edition and translation of the text, see “The Apocalypse of Paul: V,2: 17,19–24,9,” in Nag Hammadi Codices: V,2–5 and VI, Coptic Gnostic Library, ed. Douglas M. Parrot (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 50–63. See Michael Williams for a discussion on the arrangement of Codex V in the context of the other codices: “I
nterpreting the Nag Hammadi Library as ‘Collection(s)’ in the History of ‘Gnosticism(s),’” in Les Textes de Nag Hammadi et le Problème de Leur Classification, eds. L. Painchaud and Ann Pasquier (Louvain: Peters, 1995), 3–47, at 32–33. ↵

  We should remember that the Jewish apocalypses that we have access to (e.g., 1 Enoch) are primarily mediated to us through Christian communities and not Jewish ones. That is, whether they contain Christian accretions or not, these Jewish texts were of interest to Christians (even when not to Rabbinic Jews), so they also give us an indirect view on Christian perspectives. ↵

  John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 2–9. ↵

  In his extensive discussion of the Apocalypse, Michael Kaler notes in detail how our text conforms to the wider genre of apocalypses in late antiquity: Flora Tells a Story: The Apocalypse of Paul and Its Contexts, ESCJ 19 (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier, 2008), 98–189. Cf. George MacRae, “The Judgement Scene in the Coptic Apocalypse of Paul,” in Studies on the Testament of Abraham, SBLSCS 6, ed. G. Nickelsburg (Missoula: Scholars, 1976), 285–300, at 285–86; Jean-Marc Rosenstiehl and Michael Kaler, L’Apocalypse de Paul (NH V,2), Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, Section “Textes” 31 (Québec/Louvain: Presses de l’Université/Peeters, 2005), 238–39; Madeleine Scopello, “The Revelation of Paul,” in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures, ed. Marvin Meyer (New York: HarperOne, 2007), 315. ↵