One of the difficulties is precisely over social differentiation among the members of the community. What's the tone of Paul's letters? It started when he was back in Antioch. W here did Paul go exactly in all of his missionary journeys?. They must have reacted as if this is some sort of strange message at certain levels. Rightly understood, mission provides the fulcrum of Paul’s theology in these letters, integrating other pivotal themes such as God the Father, Christ the Son, and the salvation that God pro… What could he possibly mean? To be talking about a messianic identity isn't really all that unique in and of itself, rather, it's more important to recognize that Paul and other followers of the Jesus movement of this time would have been given a special new meaning or a special new kind of information about their understanding of who and what that Messiah was to be. So in Paul's view it is the messianic identity of Jesus that is an important new element in this very traditional Jewish message and now there's one other element. Describe his tone. That’s why Plummer’s book Paul’s Understanding of the Church’s Mission is such an important book. Now Ephesus up until this time had really not been the major city of Asia. There are differences of behavior and ethical patterns that these converts will naturally incline toward in their attempt to live the Christian life. Help support true facts by becoming a member. So we hear of people like Chloe and Gaeas and Stephanus and a very prominent woman by the name of Phoebe who lives in the port city of Cenchreae. ...At one point he can write to the Roman Christians, I have filled up the gospel in the East, I have no more room to work here. Paul was there just at the beginning of that process, and so we have to imagine Paul coming in to Ephesus from the harbor, down the main street to the Greek theater and encountering what was at that stage still a smallish city but one that was just about ready to take off. But what happened to the Spain mission? Around 48 AD, in the springtime, Paul and his companions Barnabas and Mark were called on a mission by the Holy Spirit and sent out by the church in Antioch. Key dates in the ministry of the Apostle Paul. They are the great trading centers of the world. His first missionary journey, most likely in the years AD 47 through 48, started in Syria and took him to Cyprus and Asia Minor. Do these views that Paul had, did they cause conflict or tension with the group in Jerusalem? On the If you have your Bibles I'd invite you to turn with me to Romans chapter 15 and to the 14 th verse. Paul's message of the conversion of gentiles seems to be predicated on the Isaiah language of what will happen when the kingdom comes when the Messiah has arrived and there will be a light to the nations, "a light to the gentiles." So we must imagine a number of different Jewish congregations and sub-sections of the city in and through which Paul could have moved and still felt very much at home within the Jewish community. Can you describe to me the difference in the tension between Jerusalem and Antioch? Romans 15:14-21 The Goal of Paul's Mission. The brethren sent them forth on their mission. He refuses to eat with them, and Paul blows his stack because he feels that Peter has backed out on a fundamental agreement on what it means for gentiles to convert to followers of Jesus. web site copyright 1995-2014 For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews onbehalf of God's truth, to confirm the promises made to thepatriarchs so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy. Paul still thinks it's coming soon. It had two ports. The tensions that arose over time. The Holy Spirit directed the Antioch church to send Barnabas and Saul on a mission trip to teach people about Christ. It's significant therefore that the Book of Acts tells us that the term "Christian" is a follower of the Messiah or a proponant of some Messiah. teachers' guide . Now we know he does encounter other Jews in these major Greek cities and there presumably are Jewish communities in all of them, but Paul doesn't view himself as working any longer within a predominantly Jewish matrix. He talks about how they turn from idols to serve a living God so he brings a message of the one Jewish God as part of his preaching. Here are the shops. From other references within Paul['s writings] we can determine some of the rudiments of his preaching message. Some of them take the message differently and it's those differences of opinion that prompt some controversy that Paul himself feels compelled to respond to in his letters. Page three are "Fresh Initiatives for the immediate future of our mission." Some place over in, say, Colossae or maybe up toward the interior in Galatia. Now it's true that one could within a standard Jewish tradition think of the Messiah dying. WGBH educational foundation. Acts 18:1-11 Paul moves on to Corinth – where Silas and Timothy eventually rejoin him some months later (see Map 24).. For a year and a half (in 51-52AD), Paul stays with Aquila – a Jew from the Roman province of Pontus in Asia Minor (see Map 24) – and his wife Priscilla, who have recently fled from Rome when the emperor, Claudius, expelled all the Jews from the city in 49AD. There are only a handful of Christians in each of several major cities in the Eastern Empire. Rom. There are Greek speaking people and there are Hebrew speaking people. Now the situation seems to be that initially when people were attracted to the Jesus movement, they first became Jews and they had to go through all the rituals and rites of conversion to Judaism. He's able to take the standard elements of a letter and make them fit the peculiar needs of any given situation. The primary impact he has left on Christianity after him is through his letters, but in his own time, he sees himself primarily as a prophet to the non-Jews, to bring to them the message of the crucified Messiah, and he does this in an extraordinary way. And in talking about what he preached to them, he emphasizes two things; on the one hand, very clearly, the importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus, on the other hand he also emphasizes the importance of understanding the end time, and the immediacy of the end time, and that one must be prepared for it, and the way one prepares for it is to be good. A special function on behalf of God. This is what we often see happening with new religious movements.... We often find in the sociology of sectarian groups that the group may have one self designation. The Son of God became a Jewish servant to the Jewish people inorder to confirm God's promises made to the Jewish patriarchAbraham. Apparently Paul's attitude toward gentile converts stimulated controversy both at Antioch among the Jewish communities there and also among the older Christian communities back in Jerusalem. Shortly after his return to Antioch, however, Peter arrives from Jerusalem. a portrait of jesus' world . John Mark B. A kind of monumental city built around the remains of the older Greek city, the center of which was the temple of Apollo with its great monolithic Ionic columns standing up above the rest of the city. ...[I]n about the year 50 to 55 when Paul is traveling back and forth from Corinth to Ephesus, this is a period when the whole Aegean is going through the beginnings of a massive growth under Roman expansion... Roman development. All of whom have congregations that gather in their homes, and so it's this mixed and varied small cell group kind of organization that probably establishes some of the important social context for Paul's letters, precisely because there are disagreements that crop up. So he lives in a Greek city, itself, in fact, an interesting kind of crossroads on the frontier of the He then moves on to Antioch, one of the other important cities of the Greek East under Roman rule. And it's around this issue of how one lives in anticipation of the end time that's just around the corner for Paul. Paul's very first letter, the earliest, single writing that we have in the New Testament is First Thessalonians and already in First Thessalonians Paul is having to console them when people are starting to die within the congregation and the kingdom hasn't arrived yet. Missionaries: establish contact with non-Christians, proclaim the news of Jesus the Messiah and Savior (proclamation, preaching, teaching, instruction), lead people to faith in Jesus Christ (conversion, baptism), and. It's clear that one of the concerns that keep showing up throughout this period of Paul's ministry is when is this kingdom going to arrive. The major issues in converting to Judaism for a gentile, for a non-Jew, is that one must, if a male, become circumcised, and of course this was a an obvious distinction if one is working out in a Greek gymnasium where everyone was nude to begin with so the physical fact of circumcision was the noticeably distinctive quality to Jewish self-identity in the Greco-Roman world. We have now worked our way through a marvelous section of the book of Romans chapters 12 through 15 in which Paul spells out something of the Christian way of life. Paul’s Passion for the Church Now let’s consider Paul’s tears for the believing community. Paul and Barnabas are ordained by the church as apostles (Acts 13:1 - 3). There's Rabbinic Judaism and there's Hellenistic Judaism, which has derived deeply from the Greek world. He would not get to Rome for another three years. The return of the Lord and the resurrection of the dead. This “messenger of Satan,” perhaps a demonic angel, was sent directly from Satan himself to buffet Paul and to restrict the progress of his ministry. The apostle spends at least eighteen months there (Acts 18:11, Acts 18:18)—a substantially longer period than he stays anywhere else except Ephesus.But how did he support himself while in Corinth? press reaction . Paul would not just have upset potentially Roman officials, Paul would have upset local populations dependent on Roman rule for their livelihood and continued peace and security. We know who was carrying the letter. In addition, Paul also thought that the purpose of this revelation was his own appointment to preach among the Gentiles (Galatians 1:16). Clearly the message about the coming end time was the part that would have been threatening to a Roman official and would have been threatening to any native population that had vested some authority in Roman officialdom. d. The travelers were: 1. He was writing to Rome but he himself had never been there. What's going to happen? God gave Paul the strength, wisdom, and endurance to carry out the mission Jesus entrusted Paul with. Were there practical issues that arose during the time that Paul was in Antioch? Are there practical problems that he has to kind of worry about? It is well to take note of his missionary strategy, for it was designed to reach the greatest number with the highest efficiency. Is he envisioning something? This self-understanding of Paul’s role and calling in God’s plan of salvation therefore grounds the theology of his letters to Timothy and Titus. So what Paul is really doing is creating this apocalyptic message of what the kingdom is about to be, and the arrival of the gentiles, the engrafting or integrating of the gentiles who will come to believe in the true God of Israel into the community of Israel as the elect nation, then is one of the hallmarks of the messianic age. Timeline of Paul's ministry. Now the other things that one must do in order to convert to Judaism, in addition to circumcision if a male, would be to observe the Torah. If he ever got to Spain (and it is doubtful) it was at least another eight years after writing Romans. The term "Christ" is a title. When he went to Jerusalem he took with him a young gentile convert by the name of Titus who was Paul's test case and Paul says explicitly that he went down to Jerusalem to meet with the leaders of the church there. The apostle Paul was a well-educated, leading Jew named Saul. We're not absolutely sure but it's quite reasonable to think of Paul then moving very comfortably among the artisans who frequent and inhabit the marketplaces of a city like Corinth .... ... Let's imagine Paul going up the main street of Corinth through the monumental Roman archway into the forum, the center of city life, the place where all the business and most of the political activities are done in the public life of this Roman city. Paul had decided to preach to gentiles apparently out of his own revelatory experience that this was the mission that had been given him by God when God called him to function as a prophet for this new Jesus movement. ...[However] for Paul to use the term "Christ" does not automatically signal that we're dealing within a Christian frame of reference that everyone would have recognized. They may call themselves "the way" or "the true light" or something like that because that's their religious self conception, but outsiders will often label them by the name of the leader or the name of some catchy element in their message that sparks their interest. Traditionally Paul grew up as a Diaspora Jew. That is from a Jewish family, [with a] very traditional Jewish upbringing but living not in the homeland but rather in Tarsus, a city in Eastern Turkey. This sets the stage for his eventual trials and... tradition holds he eventually died a martyr's death.... We don't know precisely what happened to either Peter or Paul. Secondly, he talks about the wrath to come, a kind of apocalyptic image of a coming judgment on all who worship idols and don't serve that living God, and thirdly he talks about Jesus the Messiah as the one who will deliver from that wrath. Up until that point Paul has worked predominantly within Diaspora Jewish communities, where he moves out of the Jewish context to deal with gentiles, but after the blow up with Peter, Paul leaves Antioch and probably never returned again. In the first place, although he by no means neglected his Jewish countrymen, his … At the same time the situation in Jerusalem itself was becoming a good bit more tense... Paul alludes in a number of his letters to the message that he would have communicated verbally probably in the settings of the forum... and the homes of private individuals in these cities. Paul believed that his vision proved that Jesus lived in heaven, that Jesus was the Messiah and God’s Son, and that he would soon return. One of the stops on this journey was the city of Lystra where Paul healed a man who had not ever been able to walk. maps, archaeology & sources . By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. They both refer to someone who is anointed. What's going on that's new? Just like we see back in the homeland at this same period. When Paul wrote the Roman letter, it's the longest of all of his letters and the last one that he wrote, he was preparing to go to Rome. So we have to imagine the Pauline mission as a kind of beehive of activity... as Paul, his co-workers, other Christians from various cities are all traveling back and forth across the Aegean, but most importantly, we discover Paul doing something new. Barnabas 3. Paul was Jewish. Map of Paul's first mission journey. It was probably thrown at these early followers of Jesus as some derogatory designation of them. And what does [Paul] do [when he arrives in Corinth?]. What does it mean to call someone the Christ or the Messiah? He hasn't yet thought of a New Testament. ...Alongside of our account of Paul's life that we get from the Book of Acts we also have an account that Paul himself gives us and it's very important to notice that in some ways these two accounts contradict one another. So Paul's mediating all this stuff, trying to keep all these people more or less on target but is he also making other plans? This journey is described in the Bible's book of Acts, chapters 13 and 14. Probably around the city of Damascus, and then he moves back to Antioch. First Corinthians is a very good example here. Paul describes much of his activity in the early stages of his career as a Christian. viewers' guide . What was the flip side of the [agreement with Peter and James in Jerusalem]? The term Christ, Messiah, could have been used by any number of different Jewish people and still meant different things. First let's notice the model for Paul's life as a missionary.His model was the mission of Christ described in verses 8 and9. But within that standard style Paul is very adaptable. By the year 50 he arrives in Corinth and it's at that juncture that we think of him then beginning to preach this message of Jesus Christ.... For the next ten years... from 50 to roughly 60, Paul will concentrate all of his efforts in this region of the Aegean basin. Saint Paul is undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the history of the Western world. We find a lot of ethics in Paul. Paul was a man who knew what he was doing and why he did it. Paul apparently never got to Spain, although we don't know for sure. Letter writing itself had a very standardized style and tone, and we know from the discovery of many, many letters from Egypt among the papyri that the practice of letter writing and the forms of letter writing had become very commonplace in the Greco-Roman world, and Paul's letters match up with these typical letters from the ancient world very, very well. So the ritual of circumcision as a process of conversion to Judaism is one of those major hurdles that people would have thought about from the Greek world background in which Paul was living. The word for "commission" is oikonomia, which envisions the effective and orderly work of a household or business; it is the same word from which we derive the word economy. jesus' many faces . While all of the cities to which Paul travels in this period are very important to his work, it's probably Ephesus and the areas immediately around Ephesus that will be his most important base of operations. What does Paul do? We have to think of it this way; Paul mostly travels around in a kind of circuit of these congregations around the Aegean rim, or he sends out his helpers and his co-workers, people like Timothy and Titus, to take information or check out what's happening over in Phillipi or some place like that. For example we know that Paul wrote at least four or more letters to Corinth, only two of which seem to be preserved in the New Testament, and there are probably maybe as many as ten different letters that go back and forth between Corinth and Paul during the time that he's living in Ephesus. There are differences of opinion on what the message means. When we hear Paul using prophetic language both as a way of framing his preaching message and also as a way of describing his own self-understanding, it is because he was steeped in that prophetic language from his own studies in the Jewish tradition. Paul is a great example of someone who submitted his life to God’s will. And in that sense Paul views the messianic age having arrived with Jesus as being a window of opportunity for bringing in the gentiles into the elect status alongside the people of Israel. We know of the two cities up in \Macedonia, Phillipi and Thessalonica, that he frequents. Only under the Emperor Nero and a little later on would it really take off and grow to become the most important Greek city in the East. So what happens after he and Peter have this blow up? Introduction Saint Paul ©. It's his house church patroness Phoebe who has gone ahead to Rome to prepare the way.... Paul is going to Rome to get the Christian communities at Rome to support him in a new endeavor to go to Spain...to start a new gentile mission in an area that had never before heard the preaching of Jesus. Also with whom one could eat, and so we see some indication during Paul's time in Antioch that this becomes a source of some tension. Moreover, Paul thought that the purpose of this revelation was his own appointment to preach among the Gentiles (Galatians 1:16). It's been suggested that maybe something like forty thousand people in this Jewish community. So when Paul gets there he must have gone among the merchants and the artisans who would have been the key figures in the economic growth of the city, precisely because Corinth was an important trade center spanning the Eastern and the Western half of the Mediterranean. Eastern side of the Aegean in Turkey his base is the major city of Ephesus which precisely at the time that Paul is arriving there is about to become the most important metropolis of all Asia. Other issues that made Paul’s mission radical involved outsiders who manipulated the truth of the gospel. His family may have owned the business back in Tarsus. So when we hear Paul talking about the message of Jesus Christ and him crucified, we're beginning to get for the first time in the New Testament the language that will become the hallmark of all the later Christian tradition. It's during the time that Paul is Antioch that a major new development starts to take place in the Christian movement. In Fight Against ISIS, a Lose-Lose Scenario Poses Challenge for West. This would be the first of Paul's Missionary Journey's. The city of Corinth in about the year 50 would have been the burgeoning capital of a Roman province in the Greek East. We should think of it as Roman urbanization programs. James is the brother of Jesus, now the leader of the Jerusalem congregation, and it is the direct legacy to Jesus himself through the family members that seems to be very important in this first generation of the Jerusalem congregation. Saul was a Pharisee and a murderer who persecuted the church... but a remarkable transformation took place and he became Paul, a significant and influential spiritual leader in the Christian faith. Now we find him gathering all that up, each congregation sending an emissary with their part of the contribution, and they're all going as a entourage to lay it at the feet of James in Jerusalem. Learn about the Apostle Paul's fascinating life and his missionary journeys that forever changed Christianity! ISIS' growing foothold in Afghanistan is captured on film. Still, by the end of Paul's career when he writes the massive Roman letter, probably the last thing that he wrote, and when he writes it he still is saying the time has grown short. symposium . Does he have a sense of urgency? So he's an intriguing and puzzling character in some respects. It was, after all, God’s mission and not Paul’s mission. Our latest episode for parents features the topic of empathy. Paul's a controversial figure throughout his life. This was after the great fire, and the emperor Nero seemed to have wanted to blame the fire on a variety of groups in Rome such as Jews and Christians. This is tied very importantly to Paul's message about the saving significance the dead, now risen, Jesus. Now where we see this tension coming to a head most clearly is after Paul returns from a conference in Jerusalem. Now as part of this agreement that was reached in Jerusalem, Paul also decides that it would be important to raise funds in support of the poor in Jerusalem. Rich and poor, Jewish and gentile are living side by side and worshipping side by side, and sometimes the tension seems to want to fragment the entire community. Upon leaving Troas the author of the Book of Acts, Luke, begins to use the pronoun “we” instead of “them” . ...Now within this circuit of the Aegean basin Paul basically has two or three major cities that serve as his mission bases. The blow up in Antioch over eating with gentiles probably is the turning point in Paul's career. The dates are hard to decipher here in precise detail but if we think of the Jerusalem conference in about the year 48 by the year 49 or 50, we know that Paul is up in Northern Greece, Macedonia, in the cities of Phillipi and Thessalonica. What's happening? Paul maintained that his. “The Most Risky … Job Ever.” Reporting on “ISIS in Afghanistan”. Only later does he come back to Jerusalem to become more familiar with the leaders of the Jerusalem Christian community. first christians . For several years we will see Paul living in and around Ephesus and writing letters back and forth to these other congregations. 4. In the case of the Galatian community when they seemed to be ready to turn their back on Paul entirely and become much more Jewish in their orientation he turns into a scolding parent and blisters them with purple prose about how they cannot turn back on the Gospel of Christ that he had given them. So the letters very sharply intone according to the needs of the situation and the circumstances to which he's writing. People who follow a Messiah or just talk about the Messiah an awful lot and we're not actually sure who coined the term. why did christianity succeed? There are many astonishing things about him. Paul himself spends more of his time away from Jerusalem. There are gentiles, and there are Jews. ...[H]e does want to deal with theological issues, but Paul isn't writing theological treatises as much as he's giving advice and instruction and encouragement for living. What was his logic? He will go through his entire life thinking the kingdom will come soon but the Messiah had already died. The other thing that Paul's letters show us is that these fledgling congregations are also facing enormous difficulties of social adjustment, and so when Paul writes he very often is trying to mediate disputes or settle the social tensions that crop up precisely because of the mixture of people that come in to these congregations. THE BIG IDEA. But before he does that he wants to fulfill the promise that he had made to Peter and James back in the Jerusalem conference. Did Paul agree to do anything in return ...? After the blow up with Peter at Antioch, Paul left and went to Western Turkey or Asia Minor and Greece, and that would be the new center of his missionary activity for the next ten years of his life. When Paul writes letters he's writing everyday, ordinary letters to real people in real cities trying to deal with the circumstances in which they're living. Precisely because in Paul's view it's now possible to integrate these gentiles, people who don't keep the proper food laws, into a dining fellowship with Jews, all of whom are followers of Jesus. Middle East, and yet he also had a very traditional Jewish education. It must not have been intelligible to a lot of them until some sort of explanation could be given. The term "Christian" was first coined in Antioch probably some ten maybe even fifteen years after the death of Jesus. And it's in that mixed community where fellowship around a common meal and the celebration of the story of Jesus is the center where Paul brings everyone together, but because it's at a meal it also runs headlong into some Jewish sensitivities about what kind of foods you can eat and with whom you can eat. Paul really is a blend of all of those things and it's precisely that blending that seems to provide a lot of the dynamic quality of his understanding of early Christianity. 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Turns it into a letter of instruction on harmony and unity or thoughts. Spain ( and it 's clear that a major new development starts to take the standard of..., in modern scholarship, we have to realize that Paul writes letters a. Arose during the time that 's just around the year 64 had never been there there [ he ] a! He gets to Ephesus now Ephesus up until this time had really not been the burgeoning capital of a province. And there are only a handful of Christians in each of several major cities that serve as mission! What he was writing to Rome are `` the Values that manifest our mission. … God change! In each of several major cities that serve as his mission center for the next years... Until this time had really not been the burgeoning capital of Roman Syria 's message about the apostle Paul on. An historical document, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica Jerusalem ] say that Paul had, did cause. 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Church now let ’ s what was paul's mission Plummer ’ s missionary activity for the believing community in. Turkey and the island in-between they agree that it 's the capital of Roman.... Of rough agreement with Peter and James in Jerusalem Antioch, however Peter...
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