Corpus-Paul

[Anders Eriksson <aeriks2 AT emory.edu>]

Dear Yonder Gillihan

Thanks for your response. The question whether Paul is a nice guy might
seem like a strange one as you point out. It starts with our contemporary
conceptions of Paul and tries to decide whether those conceptions really
square with who he really was.  We might have perceptions of Paul as a
saint, eternal enemy of woman or archcorrupter of the gospel.  Which one is
most fitting?

A standard stereotype in our culture is that it is good to be a nice guy,
well-mannered, polite etc. One of my points in raising this question is
that I do not believe Paul was a nice guy in that sense.  I think Paul was
very different from most modern day Christian conceptions of him. To fight
as forcefully as he did for the cause of spreading the gospel to the
gentiles I believe he must have been feisty, strongwilled, stubborn.
Probably a person it would have been difficult to get along with, unless
you were on his side of course - and maybe most of us are on his side.

But what about those people who were not on his side?  Many of those were
probably as "good Christians" as Paul himself. What disturbs me a little
when it comes to Paul is the way he treats his conversation partners.

I don't think Paul cared whether people liked him.  He fought a a battle
with words for a cause he believed in.  He claims that his cause was the
same as God's cause.  What was the response of his conversation partners,
who thereby implicitly are defined as not fighting for God's cause?  If we
buy in to Paul's rhetoric we tend to define his "opponents" as heretics and
Paul's judgments on them as justified.  But what if his arguments are just
church politics where one wing of the jewish messianist movement tried to
bolster its credibility by claiming to be on God's side? How critical can
we be of Paul's claim to authority?

You wrote: " Should someone concerned with the task of reconstructing
Christian origins, without committment to contemporary responses to Paul,
engage your question?"  I believe we cannot get away from our contemporary
responses to Paul, and I believe that all of us who try to understand
Paul's letters and Christian origins should engage this question.

Thanks for your input.


Anders Eriksson

Lund University, Sweden
Visiting Scholar Emory University