Paul in The Books Store

A brilliant new biography of Saint Paul, whose interpretations of the life and teachings of Jesus transformed a loosely organized, grassroots peasant movement into the structured religion we know today

Without Paul, there would be no Christianity. His letters to various churches scattered throughout the Roman Empire articulated, for the first time, the beliefs that make up the heart of Christian practice and faith. In this extraordinary biography, Bruce Chilton explains the changing images of Paul, from the early Church period when he was regarded as the premiere apostle who separated Christianity from Judaism to more recent liberal evaluations, which paint him as an antifeminist, homophobic figure more dedicated to doctrine than to spiritual freedom. By illuminating Paul’s thoughts and contributions within the context of his time, Chilton restores him to his place as the founding architect of the Church and one of the most important figures in Western history.

Rabbi Paul is at once a compelling, highly readable biography and a window on how Jesus’ message was transformed into a religion embraced by millions around the world. Drawing on Paul’s own writings as well as historical and scholarly documents about his life and times, Chilton portrays an all-too-human saint who helped to create both the most beautiful and the most troublesome aspects of the Church. He shows that Paul sought to specify the correct approach to such central concerns as sexuality, obedience, faith, conscience, and spirit, to define religion as an institution, and to clarify the nature of the religious personality—issues that Christians still struggle with today.

Prominent and successful Portland, Oregon, businessman Nick Bunick never considered himself a particularly religious person. But he knew in his heart that he had experienced something extraordinary in a past life. Anxious to share it, but convinced that his story would seem unbelievable to most people, he kept it to himself. Then, two years ago, angels intervened.

Immediately after the Gospels, the New Testament takes up the history of the early Christian Church, describing the works of the twelve disciples, and introducing Paul, the man whose influence on the history of Christianity is beyond calculation. Teacher, preacher, conciliator, diplomat, theologian, rule giver, consoler, and martyr, his life and writings became foundations for Christianity. Paul inspired a vast, serious, and intelligent literature that seeks to recapture his meaning, his thinking, and his purpose.

In his letters to early Christian communities, Paul gave much practical advice about organization and orthodoxy. These treated the early Christian communities as something more than a group of people who believed in the same faith: they were people bound together by a common spirit unknown before. The significance of that common spirit occupied the greatest of Christian theologians from Athanasius and Augustine through Luther and Calvin.

In The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle Albert Schweitzer goes against Luther and the Protestant tradition to look at what Paul actually writes in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians: an emphasis upon the personal experience of the believer with the divine. Paul's mysticism was not like the mysticism elsewhere described as a soul being at one with God. In the mysticism he felt and encouraged, there is no loss of self but an enriching of it; no erasure of time or place but a comprehension of how time and place fit within the eternal. Schweitzer writes that Paul's mysticism is especially profound, liberating, and precise. Typical of Schweitzer, he introduces readers to his point of view at once, then describes in detail how he came to it, its scholarly antecedents, what its implications are, what objections have been raised, and why all of this matters. To students of the New Testament, this book opens up Paul by presenting him as offering an entirely new kind of mysticism, necessarily and exclusively Christian.

"There is at least one other point that Albert Schweitzer scores here... The hard-won recognition that divine authority and human freedom ultimately cannot be in conflict must never be taken for granted, and the irony that the thought of Paul has repeatedly been invoked to undo that recognition truly does make this insight one of 'the permanent elements.'" -- from the Introduction

This picture contradicts the common impression of Paul as an abstract theologian, someone who wrestled with deep theological doctrine while hovering six feet above everyday reality. But in fact, it was the philosophers of Paul's day--and even some of Paul's Christian opponents--who traded heavily in abstractions, one-way rhetoric and top-down hierarchies while depreciating the currency of everyday reality. By contrast, Paul the tentmaker was a conversationalist of God's Good News, a storyteller of Jesus Christ, an apostle who walked the avenues and back alleys of everyday reality. His passion was for communities of grace and conversation where the new reality of Christ was explored and embodied within the daily messiness of life.

Reframing Paul unveils this Paul in his original context and invites us to engage him in new terms. Courageously it draws Paul into vital conversation with contemporary evangelicalism. This is a book for those who wonder why people leave churches for alternative spiritual paths--and who may even be tempted to do so themselves. More than anything, it's for those who wonder what's gone wrong and want to learn from Paul how the church can be an attractive community of transforming grace and conversation.

"If you are concerned about the way the Bible is sometimes taught today, and sense that something is not quite right with some parts of evangelicalism, this is the book for you! Carefully researched and penetratingly argued, Mark Strom brings Paul, his culture and the contemporary church into dynamic and unsettling conversation. He shows that too much that goes on among conservative Christians reflects the attitudes and practices of the culture of Paul's day rather than of Paul himself." Robert Banks, director and dean, Macquarie Christian Studies Institute, Sydney, Australia

"In Reframing Paul, Mark Strom brings Paul's writings back in touch with life as he intended. In doing so, Strom challenges much contemporary theology and church life. Interpreters of Paul and those interested in the future of the evangelical church need to read this important and engaging book." Tremper Longman III, Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies, Westmont College

"Mark Strom's presentation of Paul is a service to anyone interested in the New Testament, for it clarifies Paul's message by putting it into its setting and gives one readable access to Paul's world. His critique of the evangelical church is challenging . . . . Important reading for those interested in understanding Paul and must reading for those thinking about how to do church in our contemporary world." Peter H. Davids, theological educator, Innsbruck, Austria

Among the many intriguing issues generated by the historical Paul, his New Testament letters, and early church history is the question, what happened to Paul after Paul? Whether we think in terms of the reception of Paul's theology, or the ongoing legacy of Paul, or early Christian reinterpretation of his letters, the questions persist: what did the early church do with Paul's memory? How did it reshape his theology? And what role did his letters come to play in the life of the church?

The focus of the present discussion is in the early decades and centuries of Christianity, a time when the memory and legacy of Paul came to serve varied and often competing interests in the emerging church. It was a time when Paul's reputation and importance to the church were being reinforced and when his epistles were gaining the authority that would ensure their place in the sacred library of Christianity. It was also the time when the Jesus movement forged itself into Christianity, a process in which Paul played a pivotal role and eventually also became an object of revision and transformation himself. What is virtually indisputable in this process is that Paul, during his lifetime and after, played a critical role in making Christianity what it was to become.