Background

Saint Paul was born in Tarsus in the south-east part of modern Turkey called Cilicia to a Jewish family of the tribe of Benjamin and, important for Paul later in his life, born a Roman citizen. Knowing that he was present as a young man when St. Stephen was killed, and assuming this was circa 34 AD, then one may give a tentative date for his birth circa 10 AD. His Jewish name was Saul although, as was the normal practice for Jews in the Graeco-Roman world, he was also known as Paul. He is known as Saul in Acts until the confrontation with the magician Elymas in Cyprus, after which he is addressed as Paul.

Education

Paul's family seems to have come to Jerusalem when he was a young boy, as he himself describes how he was brought up in the city and that he had a sister who lived there. He was educated as a scribe of the Mosaic Law under the tutelage of the famous Rabbi Gamaliel and became a strict Pharisee. Paul was a tentmaker by trade and he must have learned this profession in parallel with his training in the Law, as was the custom.

Although the account of Saint Stephen's stoning gives the impression that Paul only had an indirect role "the witnesses put their clothes at the feet of a young man, called Saul" it is clear that he was, in fact, a driving force behind the subsequent persecution. This is made clear both in Acts and in the words of Saint Paul himself. It was in pursuit of this persecution, on his way to Damascus, when he received his famous revelation from Jesus that led to his conversion circa 36 AD.

Career

The first two accounts of Saint Paul's conversion in Acts are very similar to Jesus telling Paul that his mission will be explained to him in Damascus. There, it is Ananias who tells Paul he has been called to preach to the gentiles. However, in the third account, Paul describes how Jesus himself gives him his mission to different nations, couched in OT terms incorporating elements from Jeremiah and the first Suffering Servant song. Interestingly it also implies subsequent visions that are to be made to Paul, and this is in accord with what Paul has already described happened to him later on his return to Jerusalem.

It is clear that these visions had a profound effect on Paul. Through them, he would claim to be an apostle, one who had been with Jesus, although he also thought of himself as the least of the apostles. Through the visions, he could claim that he received the Gospel not from any human messenger but through Jesus himself. The subsequent life and teaching of Saint Paul can not be understood properly without constantly bearing in mind the Damascus vision and its stupendous effect on Paul.

After his conversion, Acts gives the impression that Paul immediately preached in Damascus about Jesus as the Son of God, earned the wrath of the Jewish leadership, and had to escape from the city by being let down over the walls in a basket. However, in his own account, Paul makes it clear that after his conversion he spent several years in "Arabia" (the desert region of south Palestine) before returning to Damascus. It is then that the incidents given in Acts occur. After his escape from Damascus, Paul visits Jerusalem where, with the help of Barnabas, he gains the confidence of the Christians there. However, his preaching again led to threats against him by the Hellenist Jewish (the Jewish who originated from outside Palestine but had their own synagogues in Jerusalem) and he is forced to flee to Tarsus. In Paul's own account in Galatians, he states that in Jerusalem he met Cephas (Peter) staying with him for 15 days, and James "the Lord's brother," but no other apostle. Paul is brought back from Tarsus by Barnabas to help him preach at Antioch. He works for a year there before being sent with Barnabas to the Jerusalem Church to bring them financial support during a famine.

On their return to Antioch Paul and Barnabas bring John Mark with them and are sent on a missionary journey. John leaves them to return to Jerusalem. This journey took place circa 46-49 AD. After finishing their journey, Paul and Barnabas are despatched from Antioch to Jerusalem to resolve the all-important conflict over whether gentile converts needed to be circumcised and follow Jewish dietary laws. Soon after, Paul suggests to Barnabas that they revisit the places of their first journey. However, they have a disagreement because Paul does not wish to take John Mark with them, and Paul undertakes his second missionary journey with Silas circa 50-52 AD. This was the most significant of the journeys because Paul, influenced by a dream began to preach in mainland Europe, in Greece. Paul's third journey took place circa 54-58 AD.

Instead of returning to Antioch Paul goes to Jerusalem. There he is rescued from a Jewish mob by the Romans who are concerned that he is a Roman citizen, but they take him before the Sanhedrin. There Paul causes consternation by revealing he is a Pharisee. That night he receives a vision that he is to go to witness in Rome. Following a plot to kill him, Paul is sent to the Roman Governor Felix at Caesarea. After two years of indecision by Felix, Paul exercises his right before the new Governor, Festus, for trial at Rome. After an eventful voyage and shipwreck on Malta, Paul finally arrives at Rome circa 61 AD.

He spent two years in his own lodgings there but says no more about him. Clement of Rome states Paul made a journey west and he may have visited Spain while Timothy implies another journey to the eastern churches where he may have been re-arrested. According to Eusebius, the early Church historian, Paul was executed by Nero in Rome circa 67 AD.

Achievements

• Paul's influence as a theologian and thinker throughout the later development of Christianity has been incalculable and all-embracing. He was the first Christian thinker to structure the message of Jesus and his immediate followers into definite doctrines. Paul took the basic facts of Jesus' life and his main formulation of doctrine and molded them into the simple terms of a Semite and Judaic thinker. Using his Hellenistic background and systematic training, Paul translated both facts and doctrine into a broad theological synthesis characterized by a universalism of salvation, an intricate theory of grace, and a central function of Jesus as man and as God. Saint Augustine drew on Paul's doctrines to organize his own thought and thus molded all subsequent Roman Catholic theological development and formulation until the 20th century.
  
  It was on Paul too that such medieval theologians as Saint Albertus Magnus, Saint Anselm, and Saint Thomas Aquinas drew to substantiate and to authenticate their speculations. Paul's writings also provided the 16th-century reformers with their basic ideas. These religious thinkers preferred to return to Paul's text rather than to adhere to the metaphysical speculations that had developed in Christianity throughout 1,500 years.

Religion

Paul was a monotheist who believed that the God of Israel was the only true God. But he also believed that the universe had multiple levels and was filled with spiritual beings. Paul's universe included regions below the earth; "the third heaven" or "Paradise;" and beings he called angels, principalities, rulers, powers, and demons. He also recognized the leader of the forces of evil, whom he called both "Satan" and "the god of this world." He declared in 1 Corinthians 8:5 that "there are many gods and many lords" (though he meant "so-called gods"), and in Romans 6-7 he treated sin as a personified or semipersonified power. Despite all this, Paul believed, at the right time the God of Israel will send his Son to defeat the powers of darkness.

According to Paul, all humans, no matter how hard they try, are enslaved by sin. The strength of sin’s power explains why the traditional Jewish view, that transgression should be followed by repentance and that repentance results in forgiveness, plays a very small role in Paul's letters. In the seven undisputed letters, the word "forgiveness" does not appear, "forgive" appears six times, and "repent" and "repentance" appear only three times. Mere repentance is not enough to permit escape from the overwhelming power of sin. The escape, rather, requires being "buried with" Christ through baptism.

Paul regarded his converts not only as individuals who had been freed from sin but also as organic members of the collective body of Christ. The idea of the body of Christ probably also explains why, in his view, it is difficult to sin so badly as to lose one’s place in the people of God. Only the worst forms of denial of Christ can remove an organic member from the body of Christ.

The body of Christ is also important in Paul's discussions of behavior. A part of the body of Christ, for example, should not be joined to a prostitute. Since those who partake of the Lord's Supper participate in the body and blood of Christ, they cannot also participate in the meat and drink at an idol's table. Besides avoiding the deeds of the flesh, members of the body of Christ receive love as their greatest spiritual gift.

Those who are in Christ will be transformed into a spiritual body like Christ's when he returns, but they are already being "transformed" and "renewed;" the "life of Jesus" is already being made visible in their mortal flesh. Paul thought that membership in the body of Christ really changed people so that they would live accordingly. He thought that his converts were dead to sin and alive to God and that conduct flowed naturally from people, varying according to who they really were. Those who are under sin naturally commit sins - "those who are in the flesh cannot please God" - but those who are in Christ produce "the fruit of the Spirit."

This absolutist ethical view - those in Christ are to be morally perfect; those not in Christ are extremely sinful - was not always true in practice, and Paul was often alarmed and offended when he discovered that the behavior of his converts was not what he expected. It was in this context that he predicted suffering and even death or postmortem punishment for transgressions. Paul's passionate extremism, however, was doubtless often attractive and persuasive. He made people believe that they could really change for the better, and this must often have happened.

Paul believed that the God of Israel was the one true God, who had redeemed the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, given the Israelites the law, and sent his Son to save the entire world.

In the Gospels, Jesus prophesies the coming of "the Son of Man," who will come on the clouds and whose angels will separate the good from the bad. Paul accepted this view, but he believed, probably along with other followers of Jesus, that the enigmatic figure, the Son of Man, was Jesus himself: Jesus, who had been raised to heaven, would return. This view appears in 1 Thessalonians 4, which proclaims that when the Lord (Jesus) returns, the dead in Christ will be raised, and they, with the surviving members of the body of Christ, will greet the Lord in the air.

In the Endtime vision of 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul indicates that he thinks that some people will die before the Lord returns but that many ("we who are alive, who are left") will not have died. In this passage, he does not specify what will be raised, but the implication is corpses. As noted above, this belief was difficult for Paul's pagan converts to accept, and Paul attempted to overcome their reluctance by emphasizing that the resurrection body would be changed into a "spiritual body." A second problem was the delay: Christ did not immediately return, and the idea that believers would have to remain in the ground until he came was troubling. Paul responded to this by stating that the transformation to a Christ-like spiritual body was already beginning. He also, however, seems sometimes to have accepted the Greek view that the soul would be detached from the body at death and go immediately to be with the Lord; at death, believers will be "away from the body and at home with the Lord." He restated this view when imprisonment forced him to think that he himself might die before the Lord returned. Eventually, Christianity would systemize these passages: the soul escapes at death and joins the Lord; when the Lord returns, bodies will be raised and reunited with souls.

Views

Although Paul recognized the possibility that after death he would be punished for minor faults, he regarded himself as living an almost perfect life, and he demanded the same perfection of his converts. Paul wanted them to be "blameless," "innocent," and "without blemish" when the Lord returned. Paul regarded suffering and premature death as punishment for those who sinned but did not believe that punishment of the sinning Christian meant damnation or eternal destruction. He thought that those who believed in Christ became one person with him and that this union was not broken by ordinary transgression. Paul did regard it as possible, however, for people to lose or completely betray their faith in Christ and thus lose membership in his body, which presumably would lead to destruction at the Judgment.

Paul's moral standards coincided with the strictest view of Jewish communities in the Greek-speaking Diaspora (the dispersal of the Jewish from their traditional homeland). Paul, like his Jewish contemporaries the scholar and historian Flavius Josephus and the philosopher Philo Judaeus, completely opposed a long list of sexual practices: prostitution and the use of prostitutes, homosexual activities, sexual relations before marriage, and marriage merely for the sake of gratifying physical desire. However, he urged married partners to continue to have sexual relations except during times set aside for prayer. These ascetic views were not unknown in Greek philosophy, but they were standard in Greek-speaking Jewish communities, and it is probable that Paul acquired them in his youth. Some pagan philosophers, meanwhile, were more inclined than Paul to limit sexual desire and pleasure. For example, the Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus wished to restrict marital sexual relations to the production of offspring.

Some aspects of Jewish sexual ethics were not generally accepted among the Gentiles to whom Paul preached. Sexual behavior, therefore, became a substantial issue between him and his converts, and for that reason, his letters frequently refer to sexual ethics. His other moral views were as simple and straightforward to ancient readers as to modern: no murder, no theft, and so on. To all of these issues, he brought his own expectation of perfection, which his converts often found difficult to satisfy.

Paul's opposition to homosexual activity and divorce were generally in keeping with Jewish sexual ethics. Male homosexual activity is condemned in the Hebrew Bible in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 - teachings that Christianity followed, thanks in part to Paul, even as it disregarded most of the laws of Leviticus. Jesus' prohibition of divorce, along with his view that remarriage after divorce, if the first spouse is still living, is adultery, set him apart from most other Jewish and Gentiles. Paul accepted the prohibition but made an exception in the case of Christians who were married to non-Christians. The consequence has been that, in some forms of Christianity, the only ground for divorce is adultery by the other partner. Until the 20th century, the laws of many state and national governments reflected this view.

Two distinctive aspects of Paul's moral teachings have been very influential in the history of Christianity and thus in the history of the Western world. The first is his preference for total celibacy: "It is well for a man not to touch a woman." This view may have been a personal matter for Paul, and it was an opinion that he did not attempt to enforce on his churches. He was motivated in part by the belief that time was short: it would be good if people devoted themselves entirely to God during the brief interval before the Lord returned. Paul's preference for celibacy, in combination with Jesus' praise of those who do not marry, helped to establish in Western Christianity a two-tiered system of morality that persisted unchallenged until the Protestant Reformation. The top tier consisted of those who were entirely celibate (such as, at different times in the history of the church, monks, nuns, and priests). Married Christians could aspire only to the bottom, inferior tier. Although celibacy was practiced by a small Gentile ascetic movement and by a few small Jewish groups - mainstream Judaism did not promote celibacy, because of the biblical mandate, "Be fruitful and multiply" - it was the passages from Paul and Matthew that made celibacy a major issue in Western and especially Christian history.

Paul's second distinctive and long-lasting admonition concerns obedience to secular rulers. In his letter to the Romans 13:2-7, he asserted that "whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment." In later centuries this passage was used to support the doctrine of the divine right of kings, which maintained that royal power came from God, and gave biblical authority to the church's teaching of submission to rulers, no matter how unjust they were.

Personality

Whole-hearted Paul was an "all-or-nothing" kind of guy. He was never lukewarm. He either zealously persecuted Christianity or he zealously proclaimed it. This was very good quality when he finally focused his energy on serving Christ. He was highly educated and could have done a lot of other things, but gave his life to Christ.

Connections

There is no information about Paul's family life.

References

• The Apostle: The Life of Paul by John Pollock
  1994
• Paul The Apostle: Missionary, Martyr, Theologian by Robert E. Picirilli
  1986