Apologies for Paul the apologist

Paul asks a lot of questions.  It’s a habit he learned from his teachers - a habit deeply rooted in Jewish religious traditions.  It is a good habit if you are at all curious about the person or plans of God.  There can be no answers without asking questions, and along the way, you may discover that questions are revealing in and of themselves.

Paul’s letters are full of complex internal arguments; constructions that Follow a pattern of “If…then…but…” Most of these arguments show Paul trying to explain his deep conviction to people who do have not shared in his forming experience.  He would lay out the logical steps that cement his convictions.  He has been overwhelmed by grace - he has seen the glory of God revealed in the risen Christ - HE HAS NO DOUBT, but convincing others is hard work…hence the complicated sentences, and long, logical loops.

But we need to remember that for Paul, logic has nothing to do with his convictions.  He has been won over - converted - his mind has been changed.  He’s a believer.  Nothing else matters to him, except helping people understand…

Have you ever tried to explain an experience of deep personal meaning to a friend?  The awesome ‘first sight’ of some distant natural wonder?  The moment you first met your ‘true love’?  Without cell phone pictures or you tube video to support your case, it is an incredibly difficult thing.  Rarely we can find the words that express the emotion well, but to do hat without the emotion overwhelming us is hard, and the response is most often empathy; our friend shares something that made them feel similar…but it’s not quite the same, is it.

Our experience is personal and profound.  It has perhaps altered the way we see ourselves in relation to other people, or to the whole of creation.  Great communicators find ways to encourage empathy as a way of getting people to long for the experience that is being described - and Paul is a great communicator - but there are limits to what he can achieve.  We want more than ‘a good argument’ these days.   We want a multi-sensory experience - we want what Paul had on the road to Damascus; sights and sounds - heart racing, personal encounters.  But all Paul can do is tell us what to look for. 

Scripture cannot - as hard as it tries - duplicate an experience of God.  The gospels can’t put us at the cradle, or the cross.  Paul’s letters don’t put us next to him on the road, at his moment of conversion.  The revelation to John is not the most helpful document for planning for the future - the vivid descriptions of a heavenly city - streets of gold and walls of jasper - are, in the end, just the best way he knew to express an idea.  The place John describes exists in the hopeful imagination of the church, which has a hard time agreeing on the importance, the location and the ultimate meaning of these ancient efforts to bring us understanding of God.

So why write at all?  What’s the point of Paul?  What is the purpose of Scripture? The story does need to be told, on that all of Scripture would agree.  There is something compelling about the divine - something irresistible about an experience of the Holy - that must be shared, even if it can’t be completely understood.  The Scriptures we have been given remind us how difficult it can be to answer a call from God.  The stories of those who have tried confirm for us that it is complicated to live in the knowledge and presence of a living, loving God whose impulse is for our collective good.  In the process of hearing (and living) that out, we have turned it into an us against them struggle - ‘us’ being those who agree on certain aspects of life in God’s care, and ‘them’ being those who don’t agree - who can’t understand - who haven’t accepted our version of the story…

Paul’s contribution to the canon of Scripture is - necessarily - an apologetic approach.  He was, after all, one of ‘them’ who is suddenly revealed as ‘one of us’.  He needs to explain himself.  And while it is Jesus we are called to follow, it is Paul who teaches us the art of Christian persuasion.  It doesn’t seem to matter that Paul didn’t want to teach us rhetoric or logic - he only wanted to excite us about the possibilities of living in a time where God reigned, and Jesus was his regal representative, free from the bonds of death.  Paul had experienced a phenomenal thing; he had seen Jesus.  He knew first-hand the power of God’s persuasion, and he did everything in his power to convey his sense of awe to us.  He argues from the opposite, he ‘exhorts’, he pleads and cajoles.  He tells us who he was and who he is becoming.  He rails against the divisions he sees in the family of faith.  And he knows that nothing he says is liable to convince us, so in the end all he can say is “I know this to be true…” 

Paul’s faith is not easily explained, but it is deeply and firmly held.  It is rooted in his experience of Jesus which has confirmed (in him) his understanding of God.  That faith is a gift and a mystery - and Paul’s words have given us a way to understand and explain our own experiences…

But of course, it’s not about Paul - and it’s not about ‘confirming Scripture’ – this faith we share – these stories of struggle and salvation we have - are about opening a door for the next experience of God’s grace; the next encounter with the risen Christ.  Scripture moves us to a place where we can make sense of our own journey, and opens us to the wonderful opportunity to say for ourselves “I know this too be true.”