Acts and the Apostle Paul

Paul and the Law of the Spirit

Paul transformed Jesus from the Jewish Messiah to the Universal Christ. His interpretation of Christ's redemption paved the way for the spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, past the religious, geographic, ethnic, and cultural borders of Israel. He traveled throughout the Empire, as far as Rome, to spread the Gospel of Christ.

By the fourth century, Christianity was the official religion of the Empire.

By the sixth century, it was the most powerful institution of the Mediterranean world.

What happened to Paul on the way to Damascus did not involve his total repudiation of his Jewish heritage nor an overwhelming sense of failure as a Jew. Rather, it was from now on Paul's conviction about Christ, crucified and risen, as the Messiah. Hence the means of salvation was not by membership of the community of the Torah but of the new community of Christ. Salvation was by grace through faith in Christ, and initiation into his community was by baptism, though Paul's ‘conversion’ has not always been so interpreted, especially since Martin Luther's very pejorative view of Judaism. He understood Paul to have been struggling to gain salvation through doing the works of the law as had been Luther's own experience as a Catholic monk. Luther believed that Paul, like himself, was transformed by his relying in faith solely upon the grace of God. However, it is shown by recent surveys of Jewish texts that Judaism of the 1st century CE was in fact itself a religion of covenant and response to grace. What Paul rejected in his letters was the ritual requirements distinctive to Judaism and therefore any attempt to impose such dietary and other regulations on his Gentile opponents. It was not a matter of Gospel against Law, or faith in God's grace against reliance on human works. The essence of Paul's liberating discovery on the Damascan road was Christ, not a release from a burden of incompassionate and ungracious legalism, which was a caricature of Judaism. (Oxford Biblical Studies)

Boyarin, Paul: A Radical Jews p. 32

From these convictions stemmed Paul's hostility to the campaign of certain Jewish Christians to insist that obedience to the Law could be combined with faith in Christ. For Paul, those two kinds of justification were incompatible and he could not accept his opponents' demand that his Gentile converts should first accept the requirements of the Jewish Law (by being circumcised and observing the food regulations) before being baptized (Gal. 2: 21). Paul's belief that God had sent Christ to save the world and his conviction that he had been called to proclaim this gospel far and wide made him assert that these events would not have been necessary if the means of salvation were already generally available in Judaism. If his Gentile converts were to accept the Jewish‐Christian proposition, it would be equivalent to renouncing Christ. A precondition of circumcision and Sabbath observance before being admitted into a Christian congregation would spell the end of Paul's mission. (Oxford Biblical Studies)

Why is Paul's rise as Christianity's most influential figure a bit surprising?

Galatians 3: 27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring,[k] heirs according to the promise.

Who might have he come into conflict with?

What is so different about his message from what we've seen in Matthew and Acts?

For Thursday:

Discussion Board

Write a 2-3 paragraphs on how you understand Jesus' and Paul's teachings at the intersection of social equality, race, and political power. In other words, does Jesus seem to advocate for the powerful or the vulnerable? Does Pauline Christianity seem to advocate for an ethnically-based religion or not? Given your answers to these questions, what would you expect Christians to think about topics like racism and social inequality?

Galatians 2

Romans 5-8: Salvation by faith, not law, not genealogy, not ritual, not go works, not body, --

1. Christianity = a spiritual family

2. Christianity = universal, because it transcends the particularities of race, ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic standing.

3. Christianity = dualist--mind/ spirit distinction.

Galatians 3

3 You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! 2 The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? 3 Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? 4 Did you experience so much for nothing?—if it really was for nothing. 5 Well then, does God[a] supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?

6 Just as Abraham “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” 7 so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. 8 And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.” 9 For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.

10 For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law.” 11 Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law; for “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”[b] 12 But the law does not rest on faith; on the contrary, “Whoever does the works of the law[c] will live by them.” 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”— 14 in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

The Promise to Abraham

15 Brothers and sisters,[d] I give an example from daily life: once a person’s will[e] has been ratified, no one adds to it or annuls it. 16 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring;[f] it does not say, “And to offsprings,”[g] as of many; but it says, “And to your offspring,”[h] that is, to one person, who is Christ. 17 My point is this: the law, which came four hundred thirty years later, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise. 18 For if the inheritance comes from the law, it no longer comes from the promise; but God granted it to Abraham through the promise.

Acts 3

Acts 8

How would a 1st-century audience interested in Jesus interpret Peter's healing of the beggar?

What does Peter's statement about it reveal about the concerns of the writer? What message is Peter trying to get across?

Who is Saul? What is he up to?

Acts 9

Read 1-9.

This is the most important event in the history of Christianity

Look at Acts 4-7. Who is the adversary? Who does the persecuting?

Coming of the Holy Spirit

The theme of the Spirit is very important to the early Christians and to Christian theology in general. In Acts 2, the community receives the Spirit of God. Those who speak different languages are heard sharing the same tongue. The coming of the Spirit signifies God's presence in the community and approval of it. Luke is showing the origins of the community's blessing by God and the power God's presence gives it.

Who is the audience? Who are the people addressed?

His purpose in writing again was more than a matter of antiquarian interest, although Acts can be appropriately compared with other Hellenistic historical monographs. The account was intended to imbue Christians of his day with an unshakable confidence in their future through a didactic survey of their past. In carrying out that overarching purpose, it addresses social and theological problems brought about by the church's relationship to its Jewish heritage and its Greco‐Roman cultural and political environment. Luke sought to clarify both how the church was faithful to the God of the Jewish scriptures and how Christianity was not incompatible with civic order and moral probity in cities of the Roman Empire. Luke devotes half of the narrative to Paul, constructing for Christians of a post‐Pauline era an image of this important figure consistent with the stance taken on Jewish and Roman concerns in the book. (Oxford Biblical Studies)

Acts and the Apostle Paul

Race, Sex, and the End of the World in Early Christianity