St Paul is the central figure in a fascinating new podcast by Archbishop Mark Coleridge. The Birth of the Church: why the loser won is a seven-part series exploring the earliest days of Catholicism.

Episode 1 – Getting to know St Paul – is available here:

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• Episode 1: Getting to know St Paul - Transcript

  Episode 1: Getting to know St Paul - Transcript

  Author: Archdiocese of Brisbane

  
  So welcome to this first of the podcasts on Saint Paul. I suppose if I was going to give a title to these podcasts, it would be something like the Birth of the Church, because I’m not just talking about Saint Paul, I am talking about him. And what a fascinating character he is. Endlessly fascinating. But if we examine the figure and the story of Saint Paul, in fact, we’re taken into the equally fascinating story of the birth of the church. In other words, it’s an exploration of our DNA as the church.

  All of us in some way have Saint Paul in our DNA, we mightn’t know it. But you can’t be a Christian without having Saint Paul in your DNA. And so, in that sense, the question I’m asking is, who do you think you are? And another way of asking the same question from a different angle is, well, who do you think Saint Paul is? And a lot of people get him wrong, it seems to me. He’s much misunderstood for all kinds of reasons that we will look at through these podcasts. But whatever else you say about the man we know as Saint Paul; he is certainly one of the most influential, indeed, fateful figures in the whole of human history. For that reason alone, he’s fascinating.

  So, we are looking at one of the most decisive figures in the whole run of human history. Because he emerges at a time that really was a change of era. In a way that he himself couldn’t have understood. But looking back, we can see it more clearly. And he was raised up, we say, in faith by God, precisely to minister, to act in that change of era in a way that would change the world forever.

  So influential is he in fact, there are those who claim that it was Paul and not Jesus who was the real founder of Christianity. Now let’s look at the claim, because it’s not a claim just to be dismissed as absurd, on the contrary. I understand the logic of the claim that he was the founder of Christianity. There are those who say Jesus founded nothing. Well, institutionally, that may be true. But what seems to me certain is that the figure of Jesus of Nazareth called into being the movement that became the church and remains the church to this day.

  But Paul, if he wasn’t the founder of Christianity, that title has to go to Jesus, surely. If he wasn’t the founder, then what was he? Given how decisive a figure he is. The best way to think of him, perhaps, is that he was, as it were, the midwife of the church. By that I mean the church born from the womb of the synagogue, the womb of Judaism.

  Paul is in many ways the midwife in that process. Consider, Christianity begins in rural Palestine. Jesus is a country boy. And he begins on the country roads of rural Palestine. Calling into being a movement of wandering preachers of what Jesus called the Kingdom of God. And depending upon local support bases, wherever they went. But Jesus did not found residential communities.

  Eventually, Christianity moves from being a wandering movement in rural Palestine. Out into the Mediterranean world. Where it takes root in the great urban centres, the cities of the Mediterranean world. And in that process of moving from rural Palestine, out into the urban world of the Mediterranean. There is no question that Paul is the key figure. He’s not the only figure by any means. But he is the key figure in that crucial transition from a movement in rural Palestine to communities, settled, residential in the great urban centres of the Mediterranean. Which is why we have Paul’s letters to Ephesus, to Rome, to Corinth, and so on. These were the great cities of the Mediterranean world. So, a rural phenomenon becomes an urban phenomenon. A Palestinian phenomenon becomes something that, as it were, enters the whole world via the Mediterranean.

  So, in that sense, you could say that Paul is the midwife. And if he’s the founder of anything, I guess it’s the founder of European Christianity. And when you think of the influence of European Christianity on the subsequent history of the world. You see why he has to be judged among the most influential figures in the whole of human history.

  Because you see, when Paul, as we shall see. When he crosses from what we know as Turkey, what was called in the time of Paul, Asia Minor. When he crosses from there from Troy, which is on the Turkish coast, as we would call it. Crosses the Dardanelles, a very, very thin strip of water and enters Europe. Leaves behind Asia Minor and enters Europe. Greece, as we would call it.

  This is one of the great threshold moments in the Christian story. Because at that point when he sets foot on European soil. He goes to Philippi, first of all. When he does that, you see really the birth of European Christianity. It’s a bit more complex than that. Because you have the unusual case of Rome. Paul was not the founder of the church in Rome. That’s certain. In fact, we don’t really know who founded the church in Rome. It certainly was founded very early. And there is some thought that they were Christians from Rome or Jewish people from Rome who went to Jerusalem on pilgrimage at the time of the first Pentecost. And there they encountered Christianity for the first time and returned to Rome from their pilgrimage as Jewish Christians.

  There’s no doubt that Roman Christianity starts in the synagogue. And the Roman Church for a very long time and in some ways still, had about it a very Jewish Christian character. So, Paul did not found the Church of Rome, neither did Peter. And Rome, of course, was nothing if not influential in later European Christian history. But if we bracket Rome in that sense, we can still say that once Paul sets foot upon European soil and begins his mission there, the great spread of Christianity throughout Europe begins. And again, given the influence of European Christianity upon the history of the world and upon our lives, we’re all the product of it. It’s hard to overestimate the importance of the figure of Saint Paul.

  What Paul does in the end is he gives to Christianity its institutional profile. And that’s again why some would claim that he is the founder of Christianity. But he is the key figure in the move from these wandering preachers in rural Palestine to communities. And for Paul, his mission was all about establishing communities, small communities, and he’s one credential in the end in the face of much criticism. And he copped it throughout his apostolic life. In the face of all the criticism, the one credential Paul could produce, really, were the communities that he called the Body of Christ.

  I mean, this kind of language that Paul comes up with to describe these small communities is extraordinary. And we’re still unpacking the power and the depth and the richness of that image. These were small and often troubled communities scattered around the Mediterranean basin. And yet Paul calls them the body of Christ. If you want to meet Jesus, you’ve got to do it within this community. So, for that radical gearing of Christianity to community, which we take for granted. That is very largely the work of Saint Paul.

  For us Christ is community. We can’t imagine the Church as anything other than a community of faith filled with the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. So, in large part that kind of imagining, that assumption about the church. Is the work of Saint Paul. So hugely influential. One of the decisive figures, not only in the history of the church, but in our life as believers. But in the course of human history as well.

  Now, from the question of, ‘what was Paul?’ We turn then to the question of, ‘who was he?’ Because one of the mysterious things about Paul is he’s so hugely present in his letters. But in many ways, his story is full of gaps. There’s an enigmatic quality about him. He’s so present and yet he’s elusive in another sense. A bit like Shakespeare in Shakespeare’s great plays. Shakespeare is hugely present in the texts. But when you try and tie him down as a man, as an historical figure, he becomes quite elusive. Now, Paul’s not as elusive as Shakespeare, I think. But there are many gaps in his story.

  Because keep in mind his letters, which are our prime evidence, in reconstructing or telling the story of Paul. But his letters were only a part of his story. When there were troubles in his community. The letters were a kind of a last resort.

  Paul’s first option, if there were troubles in his community. Was to go personally, or with some of his closest coworkers. If he himself couldn’t go. He might send one or some of his coworkers. That was a second option.

  But if he or his coworkers couldn’t go, he would send a letter. So, a letter was a kind of a last resort. Or sometimes he would send one of his coworkers with a letter from Paul. So, you can’t think of the letters as telling the whole story of Paul. They were never intended to do that. They’re not autobiographical in any sense at all. Although, there’s any amount of autobiographical data within them. The other source for the telling of the story of Saint Paul, as we shall see, is the Acts of the Apostles.

  Now, again, the question of the relationship between the letters and Acts is a complex one. The Acts were written significantly later than any of the letters of Saint Paul. The first of the letters of Saint Paul is probably written in about 49, we think. And that is the first letter to the Thessalonians, the earliest text, in fact, in the whole of the New Testament. So, 49 and in years following, Paul dies. Almost certainly in the Neronic persecutions under the emperor Nero in the mid-sixties.

  Now Acts as written towards the end of the first century, almost certainly by Saint Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke. Now they tell the same story, the story of Paul’s apostolic mission. But they tell it in different ways. The letters and Acts. Sometimes they are hard to reconcile. But very often they’re not hard to reconcile. Luke seems to present himself in the Acts of the Apostles as one who travelled with Paul. That, as far as I can see, seems unlikely. But he was certainly within the Pauline stream of Christianity. Now, this is important to understand.

  As you read the New Testament now you can see that there were various streams of early Christianity. And what the New Testament does is create a tapestry of these various streams of Christianity. You have the Johannine stream looking back to the Apostle John. The Gospel and the letters and the Book of Revelation. You have the Pauline stream of early Christianity. The letters with their various levels, and we shall explore the various levels of the Pauline tradition. You have the Petrine tradition which seems to look back to the Gospel of Mark and onto the letters of Peter. But Luke is very much in the Pauline stream.

  And if I said before that the title of these podcasts was to be ‘The Birth of the Church’. The subtitle that I would give is ‘Why the Loser Won’. Because you see, to many people for much of his life until he had his head chopped off. Saint Paul would have seemed a bad loser. And we’ll see why that’s so.

  And yet, when you open the New Testament now, or when you walk into the atrium of Saint Paul’s Basilica in Rome where Paul lies buried. There you see the heroic statue. It’s like Cecil B. DeMille presents Saint Paul. Got the sword in the hand and it’s a huge statue and it’s inscribed with. Hail teacher of the nations, hail, doctor of truth. So, this is a winner through and through and through. So, it seems. But in his own time and to many people, perhaps most people, he would have seemed a loser.

  So, Luke is one of the reasons why Paul eventually emerges as a winner. Because clearly in the Acts of the Apostles, Paul is telling the story of the birth of the early church through the eyes of Saint Paul, as it were. And the narrator of Acts presents himself as someone who travelled with Paul, even saying, we did this, we went there.

  So, Paul appears in the Acts of the Apostles as a winner. When in his own time, to many, he would have seemed a loser. So, the subtitle of the podcast, for what it’s worth is ‘Why the Loser Won’. Why someone who seemed in his own time to have lost out in fact, is so triumphantly a winner in the story told later in the New Testament and throughout the scope of Christian history.

  So, who was he? Let’s start at the start. He was a Jew. About that there is no doubt. But a Jew who was born in and grew up in, largely grew up in what’s called the diaspora. Now the word diaspora is a Greek word that means scattering. And Paul was born in Tarsus. Now, Tarsus these days is in southern Turkey over as Turkey moves further east towards Syria and Lebanon. So, on the coast. And a city that was renowned chiefly for as an educational centre. So, it was a cultural and educational centre.

  Paul was also, Paul by the way, would have been bilingual, bicultural and so on. He certainly, the Greek he writes in his letters, is among the best Greek in the New Testament. So, he would have grown up being bicultural, bilingual. Having in his bones not only the faith and culture of Judaism. But also all that came with what’s called Hellenistic culture. The culture of the Greek, Greco-Roman world that was dominant throughout Asia Minor, what we know as Turkey through these years.

  So, he was culturally and ethnically a very complex character. And that emerges in the letters. And it’s one of the reasons why he became such a perfect choice to be the apostle to the Gentiles. He had the Jewish thing in his bones, but he could speak the language and he understood the culture, he was a product of the culture of the Hellenistic world.

  His name was Sha’ûl in Hebrew, Saul. But Saul would, as a Semitic name, would have been unusual in the Hellenistic world that Paul knew when growing up in Tarsus. So, he possibly would have used from a very early age the very common Roman name of Paulus. Which relates in fact to the Latin word for small. Whether he was small, we’re not sure.

  We do have some sense of what he looked like. There are very early depictions of him in the iconography of a rather thin faced, balding man with dark hair and a pointy beard and eyes rather close together. That representation of Paul is so consistent and so early, it probably does record some memory of what he actually looked like. Make of that what you will.

  So that my sense is that the name Paul wasn’t some kind of name he took once he became a Christian later in his life. He was like, there are some children here in Australia who might bear an unusual name. Perhaps the name in Italian comes to mind, Salvatore. A beautiful Italian name, but difficult in English. So that many who bore the name Salvatore and still do are known in fact as Sam. That’s cause Sam’s easy for an English speaking mouth. Or that you’ll find a Vietnamese boy who might be known as Jimmy. Why again? Because English speakers used to and perhaps still do find difficult some of the Vietnamese names. So, something simpler is chosen for ease of communication. My guess is that that was the case with Saul. That he took the name, or used the name Paul when he was out there in the streets and in the market square.

  Now we know for sure that he wasn’t from a poor family. People sometimes say that Christianity was born among the poor. Now, that’s not quite true. The origins of our faith, in fact, are more complex than that. There were the poor and the marginalised who saw in the gospel of Jesus Christ a huge liberation in a world that was ruthlessly stratified. Where you were born into one place in society, and that’s where you stayed.

  So, that the poor were drawn to Christianity in what was a brutally stratified world is certain. But it’s equally certain that others who were not poor were part of the early days of Christianity. I mean, consider even the apostles themselves. Sometimes people say they were poor fishermen. Now, in their own culture and in their own time, they would have looked more like middle class business people than poor fishermen.

  Was Jesus himself from a poor background? Often, again, that’s assumed. But his level of education suggests that perhaps he wasn’t from a dirt-poor background. But certainly, with Paul, his level of education suggests he was anything but poor in his background. Quite apart from his education. Just by the way, you are dealing with an extraordinary intellect, an amazing mind.

  And as I’ve come to know Saint Paul better over the years and I have to say one of the great experiences of my life has been really coming to know Saint Paul. Beyond all the stereotypes and misperceptions. But when you come to know him more, you see how extraordinarily powerful and creative his mind was. He was grappling with a lot of these big questions of faith for the first time.

  He had the huge resource of his own Jewish scriptures and his knowledge of them. But he was grappling with all kinds of new questions in new and imaginative ways. And this, again, is important for us in our own time. Because again, we have the huge resource of our scriptures and our tradition. But we have to grapple with the great questions that we haven’t encountered before in a new way and use that great resource in very bold and imaginative ways. And Paul has an extraordinary capacity to do just that. So, he is an amazingly powerful and creative mind, apart from anything else. But also highly educated, and the two go hand in hand.

  Exactly where his education took place is hard to know, and I’ll come to that in just a moment. But the other thing that suggests that he wasn’t from a poor background. Is the fact that he is a Roman citizen. And this will become very important at one point of his story. That he was a Roman citizen, almost certainly because his parents were. Even though Jewish. And usually for outsiders like Jews to become Roman citizens, the simplest way was to buy it. So that suggests that Paul’s family was not poor. And Paul himself then inherited Roman citizenship from his family.

  So, we have someone who may not have been among the rich and powerful. But was certainly among the well-educated. Not from a poor background and already a Roman citizen with all the rights and privileges that that entailed. And it was highly prized in this world at this time.

  To return to the question of his education, it seems and here again, I’m surmising, trying to fill the gaps in a way that something a little more than guesswork. But what is certain is that Paul, at some stage, fairly early in life, probably. Moves from Tarsus to Jerusalem. Now, why would he have gone from Tarsus to Jerusalem to live, not just to go on pilgrimage?

  The answer was for the sake of his religious education, and this was not uncommon. That reasonably well-off families would send gifted young boys, it must be said, to Jerusalem to study, to pursue, let’s call them rabbinic studies, religious studies. And would entrust the child not only to a teacher. But also perhaps to friends or family who were based in Jerusalem.

  So, it’s possible that Paul went at a fairly early age. And remember, this was a world in which children grew up more quickly than they do now. That at puberty you were considered to be an adult. There was no such thing as teenage. So, at a fairly early age, even as a child, Paul could well have been sent by his family to study in Jerusalem. He’s certainly there when he enters the New Testament, we know that. But may well have been there for quite some time before that.

  Given that he was in Jerusalem not just for five minutes, but for some years. The question is, did Paul ever see or hear or meet Jesus? To me, it’s a fascinating question. Because the letters speak of a quality of intimacy with Jesus that’s remarkable. And yet there’s nothing in Paul’s letters that would suggest he ever met Jesus, ever saw him or heard him. In fact, apart from in the letters, all we see about what Jesus did was that he died. Well, there’s no surprise about that. And that he rose from the dead.

  The death and resurrection are there with overwhelming clarity and force. But apart from that, the only thing we know about Jesus’ life and earthly ministry, was that he was born of a woman. Well, again, there’s no surprise about that. So, there’s nothing in the letters, at least, that suggests that Paul actually knew Jesus or met him, saw him or heard him. But at the same time, he encounters Jesus, as we shall see. And comes to this extraordinary sense of intimacy that climaxes in the claim that Christ lives in me. This, again, is remarkable language to which Paul comes to describe his relationship with the risen Christ.

  One of the things that fascinates me most about him as he emerges in the letters is that he’s such a vivid individual. And this in the ancient world was not at all common. Our sense of individuality in the West, which we take for granted, was in no way to be taken for granted in the ancient world. And yet Paul emerges as such a vivid individual and a striking personality in the letters. That sense, he’s a bit like the prophet Jeremiah, who again, very unusually emerges in the book of the Prophet Jeremiah as an extraordinarily vivid individual. And this, again, was utterly untypical of the ancient world.

  So, we are dealing with a striking individual who dictates all these letters. He doesn’t write them. But every now and again, when he’s getting worked up, he grabs the pen or the stylus from the scribe and he says, see with what big letters, I write my own name. So, he’d grab the stylus and he’d actually sign the thing himself with big letters. Just to underline that this was Paul who was speaking.

  In the story that we will trace there are many gaps. The letters I’ve said are only a part. And we will try and fill in the gaps as best we can. Working with the letters and the Acts of the Apostles.

  In the end, it is the story of the birth of Christianity. I underline that again. It is about Paul, but it is about the birth of the church. And that story, if properly told and heard, I think can be an extraordinarily rich and powerful resource for us. Who are asking questions now in this change of era. About what it means to be the church and how do we become in the future, the church that is the church that Jesus wants us to be.

  Many people in Paul’s own time thought that Christianity was simply another Jewish sect. What Paul insists, and this is why he’s right in the end, despite all his critics. Is that this is not just another Jewish sect. It in fact, is a new intervention by God, deeply related to the synagogue. But born from the womb with the umbilical cord well and truly cut.