Notes on Letters by Paul and Others

• ROMANS
  Pauline theology is what we get when we attempt to systematize what Paul says in his preaching; Paul himself was an apostle, not a theologian. The fullest exposition of Paul's views may well be the long argument which forms the heart of Romans. Its emphasis is on God's grace in making available salvation by faith. Israel has failed tto attain righteousness because it has striven on the basis of works (9.32), but they, too, will be saved in the end. The discounting of works does not really free Christians from moral behavior; they are called to live by love, and "love is the fulfilling of the law" (13.10). Even where they are free, they should not let their behavior be a stumbling block for others (14.13), the example given being in what one eats.
  • Significance of Romans. Probably no letter of Paul's has been as important for modern Protestant theology. At the beginning of the Reformation, Martin Luther wrote: "his letter is truly the most important piece in the New Testament. It is purest Gospel. It is well worth a Christian's while not only to memorize it word for word but also to occupy himself with it daily, as though it were the daily bread of the soul. It is impossible to read or to meditate on this letter too much or too well. The more one deals with it, the more precious it becomes and the better it tastes." Among conservative modern theologians, Karl Barth's early 20th century book on this epistle remains a landmark statement, stressing the Otherness of God, who cannot be accomodated to human cultures and their achievements.

• SOME OTHER PAULINE EPISTLES
  Exactly which epistles should be regarded as definitely by Paul himself is still a matter of debate. Besides Romans and the three discussed below, most lists would include Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philippians.
  • 1 CORINTHIANS
    While Galatians shows Paul responding to a church in danger of being over-subject to the Law, 1 Corinthians shows him speaking to a church over-confident in the Spirit.
    • 15.45-49: Christ and Adam. Expanding the horizon of comparisons from Moses and Abraham to Adam, Paul adds weight to his insistence on the universal mission of the Christ.
  • 2 CORINTHIANS
    Even letters which seem clearly Pauline can have their textual difficulties, as 2 Corinthians illustrates. Some critics think that several different letters have been collected in it; in particular, chapters 10-13 are often singled out as a separate unit. Various sections have been identified as coming from the earlier, painful letter mentioned in 2.3-9 and 7.8.
    -- In this epistle it appears Paul was responding to rivals who had impressed the Corinthians both with their charismatic gifts and with their interpretation of the scriptures. Paul responds by insisting (3) that Christ's coming marks a new and superior covenant with God, written on hearts by the Spirit rather than on tablets.
  • PHILEMON
    . The letter to Philemon is less important for its rather sparse theology than for its practical concern with the question of slavery, where we can see Paul struggling with the implicit conflict between the new kind of community he was preaching and the existing relationships of the world in which he lived. Onesimus was probably either a runaway slave or one who had sought Paul's intercession with his master after offending his master, though other solutions have been postulated.
    • 22: Even More than I Say. Paul's plea on behalf of Onesimus ends with what is often interpreted as a broad hint that Philemon should not merely received Onesimus as a brother but free him, if only so that he can return to helping Paul. Whether or not Colossians is authentically Pauline, it seems to show at least a tradition that Philemon did so.

• TWO PROBABLY NON-PAULINE "PASTORAL" EPISTLES
  Even scholars reluctant to set aside traditional ascriptions to Paul have some qualms about the pastoral epistles--two to Timothy and one to Titus--because they seem to address a much later stage in the development of the early church.
  • 1 TIMOTHY. The list of qualifications for bishops (married only once) identifies this as written in a later stage of development of the early church. Even then, one can't help noting, spiritual depth or experiences are not listed among the requisites, though being well thought of by outsiders is (3.2-7).
    -- The restrictions on the role that women may play (2.11-14) was typical of the emerging orthodoxy of the 2nd century, rather than of the situation found in the authentic letters of Paul (for example, Romans 16.1-7).
    -- Like other questionably Pauline letters, this goes further in an apparent endorsement of slavery (6.1-2) than found in 1 Corinthians 7.21-24 or Philemon.
  • 2 TIMOTHY. The church is now a conservative institution passing on the received faith.

• HEBREWS
  This epistle, really a long homily, does not describe itself as coming from Paul, and its stylistic differences from Paul have been recognized from the beginning, with even the ancient advocates of Pauline authorship suggesting that a Pauline original has been translated by someone else. The ascription to Paul gradually made headway in the Eastern church, and the west eventually accepted it into the canon, with or without the assumption of Pauline authorship--St Jerome remarking, for example, that its exact authorship hardly mattered.
  -- This epistle's portrait of Jesus as the great high priest and sacrificial offering seems to have had little influence at the time, though the church later developed a sacrificial understanding of the Crucifixion and of the Last Supper. Christ is the heavenly ideal, both perfect priest and perfect sacrifice, of which all earthly priesthoods can be only a shadow. The imagery suggests that the author was familiar with the kind of Platonic idealism which had entered Hellenistic Judaism by way of Philo.

• JAMES
  This epistle is quite different from those of the school of Paul, and it has sometimes even been seen as directed against Paul's emphasis on faith rather than works, though that may be going too far. Paul might well have agreed that "faith apart from works is barren" (2.20, though that is not a point he much stresses. Reading the book as anti-Pauline accounts for Martin Luther's rejection of it as a non-apostolic book of straw.
  -- Its focus on ethical issues makes it the closest thing we have to a Christian equivalent to Jewish wisdom literature, and it has sometimes been suggested that it was originally a Jewish document that has been lightly Christianized. That may be excessively speculative, but it is worth noting that relatively little in the letter which takes as its authority the teachings of Jesus. The more usual explanation is that this letter comes from a Jewish-Christian community, probably in Palestine, which claimed the authority of James, the brother of Jesus.