There, he went three days without eating or drinking. Helped by a local disciple of Christ named Ananias, he recovered his sight and was baptized. The chronology of Paul’s life in the following years has many gaps and inconsistences, but it is believed that he spent the next two or three years in “Arabia,” the parched region east of Jordan and southeast of Damascus, preaching Christ to the Gentiles. Unlike the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, many of whom had known Christ, Paul had almost certainly never met him; whereas they cultivated memories of his life, Paul fastened on the circumstances of his death. (His letters contain only a few references to the real-life Jesus.) For Paul, the crucifixion was a redemptive act carried out on behalf of all mankind. Christ, he believed, was not simply the Messiah of the Jews—a political leader come to save the people of Israel—but the Son of God, who, through his atoning death, had come to rescue humanity from its selfishness and sin and deliver it to salvation. Paul was further convinced that Christ’s Second Coming was imminent—a conviction that lent urgency to his preaching, since only those who accepted Christ as Lord would be saved.
When Paul preached Christ to the Gentiles, however, there immediately arose the matter of the Jewish law. Was obeying it mandatory even for those who were not Jewish? Paul believed not. Since salvation could come only through faith in Christ, adherence to the Mosaic code was unnecessary.
The members of the Jerusalem church remained attached to that code, however. Because of these differences, Paul decided to go to Jerusalem to give an account of his work. He spent fifteen days with Peter. Of the other apostles he saw only James—an indication, perhaps, of the discontent his preaching was causing. The meeting went off without incident, however, and Paul returned to Syria and Cilicia to resume his ministry.
While in Tarsus, he was visited by Barnabas, a Jewish Christian whom the Jerusalem church had sent to Syria to report on the proselytizing of Greeks in the region. Barnabas brought Paul to Antioch, the great Syrian metropolis, and together they proclaimed the new gospel among the Gentiles. It was in Antioch that the followers of Christ were first called Christians.
This period lasted perhaps fourteen years, and little is known about it. At some point, though, Paul and Barnabas, eager to spread their message, embarked on a great missionary tour. In all, Paul would make three such journeys, preaching his new gospel in communities stretching in a grand arc from the Levant across Asia Minor to Macedonia and Greece down to the Peloponnesus. Following the Roman road system, he trudged up to twenty miles a day, joining crowds of officials, merchants, artisans, athletes, letter carriers, runaway slaves, and itinerant philosophers; by some estimates, he covered nearly ten thousand miles in all. Throughout, he showed remarkable stamina and fortitude, which he described in a famous passage:
Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked.
For the sake of Christ, he wrote, “I have suffered the loss of all things.”
Paul’s endurance seems all the more remarkable in light of his many infirmities. He was frail of body and halting in speech. In the popular image that has come down to us, he was stooped, balding, bearded, and bowlegged. He suffered from what he called a thorn in the flesh, sent by Satan to torment him and keep him from becoming “too elated.” (Paul never said what the thorn was; speculation has centered on epilepsy, malaria, headaches, stammering, and eye problems.) Regarding his personality, Paul in his letters comes across as abrasive, contentious, boastful, and bullying, yet he also suffered debilitating bouts of doubt and self-loathing. “Wretched man that I am!” he moaned in one letter, lamenting his inability to understand his own actions. “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”
On his initial journey, which lasted two years, Paul (accompanied by Barnabas) went first to Cyprus, then sailed from there to Asia Minor. Landing at Perga on the Mediterranean coast, they headed north through the immense, fir-covered Taurus Mountains into Anatolia, which had many vibrant towns and a well-educated populace. They met with a mixed reception. Most Jews, on hearing Paul proclaim Christ the Lord whom God had raised from the dead, reacted with fury. In Lystra, a group of them stoned him and dragged him to the edge of town, leaving him for dead. The Gentiles were more receptive. In a world afflicted by war, hunger, disease, and madness, they felt drawn to the idea of a transcendent redeemer who, sacrificing himself for them, made salvation possible.
But questions about the Jewish law kept intruding, with circumcision the main flash point. In Roman times, this procedure was performed with a metal knife used to cut away the outer part of the foreskin. In addition to causing considerable pain, it carried a high risk of infection. Paul adamantly opposed requiring Gentiles to undergo it. The Jerusalem church, however, remained committed to circumcision, as to the Jewish law in general.
After their return to Antioch, Paul and Barnabas, hoping to resolve the matter, went to Jerusalem. They brought with them Titus, an uncircumcised Gentile, as a sort of test case. This time Paul met with all of the Jerusalem leaders in a gathering that would become known as the apostolic assembly or council—a critical moment in the development of the early Church. Paul laid before them the work he had done with the Gentiles. A group of “false believers” (as Paul called them) opposed him, but the “pillars” of the Church—James, Peter, and the apostle John—rose to his defense. In the end, Titus was not forced to undergo circumcision—a victory for Paul—and the Jerusalem leaders gave him and Barnabas “the right hand of fellowship.” From then on, Paul wrote, it was agreed “that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised,” i.e., the Jews. Paul agreed to collect money on his travels for the poor in Jerusalem.
By lifting the requirement of circumcision and other legal strictures, Paul opened the way to a vastly increased audience. New tensions arose, however. Peter, while visiting Antioch, took meals with some Gentile Christians. The Jewish dietary laws forbade such fellowship, and Peter’s action was taken as a signal that Jewish Christians need not follow them. But he came under intense criticism from a group aligned with James, and, quickly changing course, he gave up eating with Gentiles. Furious, Paul accused Peter of hypocrisy and broke with the Jerusalem church. From then on, he and the communities he founded would be on their own.
And there would be many of them. On his second missionary journey, begun around the autumn of 49, Paul (accompanied by Silas) traveled from Antioch to Tarsus, then, turning north, passed through the Taurus Mountains into Anatolia. After visiting the communities of converts he had made on his earlier journey, Paul continued on to Galatia, a Roman province in central Asia Minor, where he won over more Gentiles. Traveling westward across Anatolia, he and Silas reached the town of Troas on the northwestern coast of Asia Minor. Joined by Luke, they took a coastal boat across the mouth of the Dardanelles to the Aegean island of Samothrace and from there continued on to Neapolis on the coast of Macedonia.
Paul’s arrival in this hillside town was a pivotal event in the history of the West—the moment when the new Christian gospel first arrived in Europe, a continent it would eventually capture. Proceeding to Philippi nine miles away, Paul baptized a cloth merchant named Lydia, making her the first Christian convert in Europe. After Paul performed an exorcism on a half-witted girl who was credited with the gift of divination, he was denounced by her guardian, then dragged into the marketplace and attacked by a mob. He was flogged, then thrown into prison along with Silas. Both, however, managed to escape.
Proceeding south to the larger town of Thessalonica, Paul on three successive Sabbaths preached his gospel in a
local synagogue, winning over a number of Gentiles and some Jews, but a mob stirred up by his teachings forced him to leave, and he moved on to Athens. Here, in the intellectual capital of the empire, he preached about the crucifixion, the final days, and the resurrection, but he encountered much scorn and so hurried on to Corinth.
Located on the narrow neck of land that connects the Greek mainland to the Peloponnesus, with ports to both the east (serving the Aegean Sea) and the west (serving the Ionian), Corinth was known for its rowdiness, with a district of taverns, brothels, and gaming halls that catered to visiting merchants and sailors. It also had many entrepreneurs and artisans who had come from around the empire in search of a better life. Paul quickly won over Aquila and Priscilla, a Jewish Christian couple who had left Rome as part of a general expulsion ordered by Claudius, and with their help he cultivated Corinth’s parvenus. He would remain for eighteen months, working as a tent maker by day and preaching and performing baptisms by night.
Once Corinth’s converts seemed able to stand on their own, Paul sailed for Asia Minor and from there made his way back to Antioch. Now in his fifties, he could have been expected to relax after all the hardship and hostility he had faced, but he could think only of all the lands that had yet to be evangelized. Ephesus in particular beckoned. A great Hellenistic port and administrative center on the western coast of Asia Minor, it sat in one of the most densely populated regions of the Roman Empire, and Paul left for it (probably in the summer of 53) on his third great missionary journey. After passing through Galatia to check on the converts he had made there, he arrived in Ephesus (located about fifty miles south of modern-day Izmir, Turkey). For three months he preached in a local synagogue, but after several members of the congregation turned against him, he moved with his disciples to a nearby lecture hall. As word of his message about the crucified Christ spread, Paul made many converts in nearby towns, and, even more than Palestine, western Asia Minor would serve as the seedbed of Christianity.
But Ephesus was home to the giant temple of Artemis, and the local silversmiths and shopkeepers who sold charms and figurines there felt threatened by Paul’s presence. He was thrown into prison. During the several months he remained there, he received disturbing reports from Galatia. The region had been visited by rival missionaries who had convinced a number of his Gentile converts that their salvation depended on the acceptance of not only Christ as Savior but also circumcision and the Jewish law in general. Incensed, Paul sent the Galatians an angry epistle. “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of God and are turning to a different gospel,” he declared. If anyone proclaimed to them a gospel contrary to the one he had preached, “let that one be accursed!” He went on to describe his gospel with blunt fury:
We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.
Justification was the process by which a person became just, or righteous, in God’s eyes, thus becoming worthy of salvation. Works of the law were the ordinances and commandments of the Torah. Such works, Paul insisted, had no value in attaining salvation; only faith in Christ mattered. All who relied on the works of the law were “under a curse.” The law had served as a source of discipline prior to the coming of Christ, but now that he had arrived, it was no longer necessary, “for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.”
Here, in the second and third chapters of Galatians, Paul was making a definitive break with Judaism, rejecting not just circumcision and the dietary laws but the Torah as a whole as unnecessary for salvation. He was in effect replacing the old covenant between God and Israel with a new covenant in which justification comes through faith in Christ. The law was “a yoke of slavery,” and all who sought to be justified by it had cut themselves off from Christ. As for his rivals, Paul expressed his hope that they “would castrate themselves!”
Being freed from the law did not mean giving in to self-indulgence, Paul warned the Galatians. Rather, they should love one another. “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” That commandment came from Leviticus 19:18; that is, from the same Jewish law that Paul was so adamantly rejecting. Obeying it meant shunning fornication, strife, jealousy, anger, and drunkenness and embracing joy, peace, generosity, gentleness, and self-control. Such acts of love were essential, Paul maintained, but they could not make one just in God’s eyes; only faith in Christ could.
With its bold rejection of the law and its grand proclamation of faith, the Epistle to the Galatians has been called the Magna Carta of Christian liberty. With its insistence that the Five Books of Moses had been superseded by faith in Christ, however, it would drive a shattering wedge between Jews and Christians.
Paul’s dismissal of the law also raised urgent practical concerns. If performing works of the law could not lead to salvation, what would make people behave morally? In fact, Paul soon learned that the converts he had won in Corinth—convinced that their faith was all that mattered—were engaging in all sorts of licentious behavior, including quarreling, drunkenness, bringing lawsuits against one another, and committing sexual acts of a kind found not even among the pagans.
Hurriedly drafting an epistle to the Corinthians, Paul expressed his disgust: “Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.” He expressed his wish that all were like himself, i.e., celibate, but that since this was not possible for most, he added, “it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.” Paul condemned divorce and deemed it “shameful” for women to speak in church. “If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home.” (These statements would later be used to justify a subordinate status for women in the Roman Church.) Paul expanded on the call for love he had directed at the Galatians. “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal,” he wrote, introducing what would become known as his love hymn. “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”
After being freed from prison, Paul—receiving continuing reports of dissolute behavior in Corinth—decided to pay that city another visit. He would spend three months there, exhorting its converts to show their faith in Christ by behaving virtuously. In his spare time, he began planning a new journey, to Spain, where he hoped to open a western front in his evangelization campaign. On the way, he intended to stop in Rome. To introduce himself to its fledgling Christian community, he prepared a letter for them. Given Rome’s importance as the imperial capital, Paul decided to offer a broad overview of his thinking. And so, in this seaport of sailors, merchants, and prostitutes, the wandering tent maker in the year 55 or 57 composed an epistle that, more than any other Christian document, would provide the theological foundation for the new faith—and a lifeline for Martin Luther.
The Epistle to the Romans is not only one of the most important religious documents ever written but also one of the most obscure. That is due, in part, to the harried circumstances in which it was drafted. Paul almost certainly had no intention of composing a formal doctrinal treatise; rather, he dictated the letter in haste, with little revising or polishing. That helps explain its dangling clauses, mixed-up word order, and sudden transitions. At bottom, though, the document’s complexity reflected Paul’s ongoing struggle to balance the competing claims of law and faith, deeds and beliefs.
The difficulties begin at the very outset. After greeting the followers of Christ in Rome and expressing his eagerness to carry the gospel to the
m, Paul at 1:16–17 offers a clear statement of his core principle: God offers salvation “to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek,” for in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed “through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.’” This is the passage mentioned by Luther in his 1545 autobiographical fragment. (The quote is from the Old Testament book of Habakkuk, a minor Hebrew prophet.) Paul goes on to denounce the ungodly and their sins, including covetousness, murder, gossip, and the indulging of “degrading passions.”
In chapter 2, however, Paul—abruptly shifting course—warns that God will repay each according to his deeds. Those who “by patiently doing good” seek glory and honor will be rewarded with “eternal life,” while those “who are self-seeking” and shun truth will receive “wrath and fury.” It is not “the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified.” These passages seem to run directly counter to Paul’s insistence just a few lines earlier that one cannot be justified by doing works of the law. And by the end of the chapter he has returned to his earlier position, chiding those who, relying on the law, boast of their adherence to it and of their relation to God.
The inconsistency in these first two chapters has perplexed scholars down to this day. In chapter 3, however, Paul forcefully and unequivocally restates his position on the primacy of faith: since all have sinned and fallen short, they are made just by the gift of divine grace, through the redemption worked by Christ, “effective through faith.” A person “is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.” In these key verses (3:21–28), Paul describes his views about the redemptive power of faith—and the futility of works—more emphatically than at any other point in his writings.
He goes on to offer an audacious retelling of the history of sin and salvation. Sin, Paul observes in chapter 5, came into the world through the transgression of Adam, and through that sin came death; since all have sinned, death spread to all. As developed by Augustine, this passage would become the scriptural foundation for the doctrine of original sin. While many have died through this one man’s trespass, Paul continues, many more would receive the free gift of grace conferred by God through Christ, leading to eternal life. The catastrophe caused by Adam’s disobedience was thus overcome by the miracle of Christ’s death and resurrection.
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