St. Paul: The Apostle We Love to Hate

 

St. Paul: The Apostle We Love to Hate by Karen Armstrong

So a couple of things right away: After finishing this book, I never understood the title.  Who exactly “hates” the Apostle Paul?  The author never really tells us. Maybe we’re supposed to come to our own conclusions, but I still never got it.  Next thing: Karen Armstrong is not a Christian. Wikipedia says she is a “Christian Mystic” (whatever that is). I only mention this because whenever you have a non-Christian writing books about the Bible, Jesus, or the Christian church, you’re bound to ruffle some feathers.  I’m not trying to dissuade Christians from reading this, but you need to be o.k. with the fact that some of your core beliefs will not be in alignment with the author’s.

In many ways, this book is essentially the story of Paul after his Damascus conversion when he was formerly known as ‘Saul’.  Most of what we know about Paul comes explicitly from his epistles as well as what Luke tells us in the book of Acts.  Careful reading of many of Paul’s epistles is that he often begins and/or ends them by referencing key people in his ministry or that he knows well.  I’m guessing most of us really don’t know much about these individuals, and when we study these books of the Bible, we tend to barely glance at these sections before we get to the meat of the teachings.  So Dr. Armstrong is, in a way, filling in these gaps for many of us.  She’s telling her readers everything they might not know about Paul outside of his writings, and in this area she succeeds.

A lot of reoccurring themes are included here.  We read quite often that Paul was expecting that Jesus would return to Earth very soon, and to ‘prepare for the kingdom’, he wasn’t necessarily preaching repentance, but rather instructing the people how they were to live Christ-like lives.  Time and time again we read about how Paul stressed egalitarianism amongst the followers.  We also read about how he was in conflict with many of the “rival” Jewish sects who weren’t necessarily in agreement with many of his messages.  We must remember that the term “Christian” had not yet been coined. These were people who still identified as Jewish, yet they were clinging to Jesus as their messiah.

It needs to also be noted that Dr. Armstrong claims that many of the epistles that are credited as being authored by Paul, were not in fact written by him.  She states that Ephesians, Colossians, and the pastoral epistles were “added a century or so later” to add harmony with what was commonly accepted by the culture at the time.  This, Armstrong maintains, is where we get some of the more controversial writings of Paul, such as “Wives submit to your husbands….” etc.  Maybe this is why some “hate” Paul?  Not sure.

In fact, the last chapter of this book (there are only about five) talks about the effects of Paul’s ministry after he died (Armstrong claims we really don’t know HOW he died), and this chapter seemed to warrant its own book.  This is mainly where she talks about how many of the modern-day Christian beliefs about Paul, might not be 100% accurate.   I’m not sure some of the devout would be converted by these assertions, but I do wish she would have expanded more.

She also touches on styles of writing and oration of the times. One thing she maintains is that we must always take what the Bible authors tell us in context.  Just because Paul might be saying something to the Philippians in Philippi, doesn’t necessarily mean that readers thousands of years later are expected to follow the same explicit instructions.  She also talks about how speakers were expected to add a very dramatic flair to their teachings.  They simply weren’t expected to get behind a pulpit and preach.  They were expected to “put on a show” so to speak, with a lot of emotions thrown into the words.  This, she alleges, means that some of the most passionate/angry sayings that we come across weren’t necessarily intended to be quite so extraordinary when we actually read the written text.

For Christians who believe the Bible is the infallible word of God, I don’t think they should look at this book as a threat to their core beliefs.  One can walk away after reading this book without feeling that their views have been shaken or even challenged.  Again, the author is not an atheist who believes all of this was “made up”, she just tends to disagree with some of the widely held conclusions.  I really enjoyed the book as it gave me a much better perspective of who Paul was, where he came from, and what is motivations for spreading the gospel were.

I never have, nor do now, “hate” Paul.  In fact, I would love to sit next to him on a cross-country flight if such a thing were actually possible. I’m sure I would learn an awful lot.