Christians regularly read Paul’s letters as part of the New Testament. But perhaps we don’t know Paul himself very well. What might we be missing? Frank Thielman, Presbyterian Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, has spent his entire scholarly career writing on the Apostle Paul, including Romans (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament) and Ephesians (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament).
His most recent book, Paul, Apostle of Grace, aims to help not only academics but also pastors and Christians in the pews get to know Paul better. He reflects on these aims in his introduction:
I hope, too, that all readers of this book will come away from it with an understanding of what motivated this remarkable human being. What drove him to endure often treacherous journeys of hundreds of miles to establish like-minded communities around the world as he knew it? What spurred him to recruit a network of coworkers who were willing to help him in this vast project? What kept him at the task even when it landed him in prison? What prompted him to produce a body of lengthy letters to these communities of such depth that millions of people still read them with profit today?
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Nadya Williams: You have been thinking about Paul for a long time now. Could you tell a bit about your overlapping intellectual and theological journey: what are the big questions that have been of interest for you in your reading, thinking, and writing? How does this latest project fit into these?
Frank Thielman: For a long time, I was interested mainly in the texts that early Christians read and the coherence of early Christian thought. That is still an interest, but for the last decade or so I have focused on the daily life of the first Christians. What were the first churches like, and how were they connected to the neighborhoods where Christians lived? How could Paul afford to pay for passage on numerous ships and coastal vessels? What was it like to sail long distances against the wind with no compass? Why and how did Paul work with networks of co-workers?
Although questions like these are interesting in themselves, they intrigue me mainly because trying to answer them is a reminder that God meets people where they are, in their day-to-day lives. Thinking about the daily lives of the first Christians and the practicalities of how they spread the gospel challenges me to get out of the library and into the real world with the good news about Jesus. Most Christians probably don’t need that particular challenge, but I do!
Nadya Williams: This is a really ambitious project--a theological biography of Paul's entire life and ministry. You say at the outset that "Writing a book about Paul's life is like putting together a puzzle of a thousand pieces, but a puzzle whose pieces can fit together in different ways." You ended up telling the story chronologically, which I thought worked well. What were some puzzle pieces (to continue with the analogy) that you thought were particularly important to highlight in the process?
Frank Thielman: Two puzzle pieces that scholars have often arranged differently than the way I positioned them in this book are the Jerusalem Council and the timing of Paul’s death. In Galatians 1–2 Paul describes two trips to Jerusalem after his conversion, the second of which has much in common with Paul’s visit to Jerusalem in Acts 15 for the Jerusalem Council. In Acts, however, that trip is Paul’s third post-conversion visit to Jerusalem. I believe Paul felt free to leave out what in Acts would be his second visit to Jerusalem because it wasn’t important for his purposes in Galatians. This, then, frees us up to position Galatians a bit later in Paul’s ministry (after the Jerusalem Council) and allows us to fill out our picture of the Council with information that Paul himself provides.
Paul’s death is another “puzzle piece” that scholars place in different positions. Does it fit inside the narrative of Acts, or does it go somewhere else in the puzzle? Many scholars place Paul’s death at the end of a theoretical period after the close of Paul’s story in Acts. On this common understanding of Paul, the apostle’s hearing before Nero led to his release from imprisonment and to a period of further ministry before his eventual re-arrest and death in Rome. This theory creates space in Paul’s life for the travels and personal references that he mentions in the Pastoral Epistles but that most scholars cannot plausibly fit into the Acts narrative.
In the book, I make the case that it is unlikely Paul survived his appearance before Nero, and that he probably died at the end of his two years’ detention in Rome (Acts 28:30–31). These are not new positions, but they are only occasionally adopted by those who think that the Pastoral Epistles are authentic Pauline letters. I try to offer a persuasive case in the book, however, that the Pastoral Epistles can fit within the framework of Acts once we understand that Luke felt free to describe time periods in general terms and sometimes left out or did not know details that Paul mentions in his letters.
Nadya Williams: On a related note to the previous question, were there any pieces of the story/puzzle you had to leave out, for reasons of space?
Frank Thielman: I actually love maps and plotting routes. One of my prized possessions is a copy of the huge Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. It was always a good research day when I had to heave it open and figure out how Paul most probably got from point A to point B. Eerdmans was very kind to let me include several maps and did such a good job producing them at a reasonable cost. Ideally, though, I would love to have filled the book with maps and diagrams!
Nadya Williams: Because Paul's writings are now part of inerrant Scripture, so often our focus in reading his letters is on the theological issues he raises and on their applications. This is obviously important, but I particularly enjoyed your interest in this book on understanding Paul as flesh-and-blood too—someone with thoughts and motivations of his own, and likewise someone who had his own quirks, interests, concerns, and so on. Why do you think understanding Paul as a real person is important for Bible readers (and not just for historians)?
Frank Thielman: It is important for us to remember that God works in and through real people with the same kinds of struggles all humans face. It’s reasonably clear that Paul was sick for much of his life as a Christian (2 Cor 1:8–9; 12:7–9; Gal 4:13), that he traveled long, exhausting distances (2 Cor 11:25–27), that he got into legal trouble (2 Cor 12:23–25), and that he experienced high levels of anxiety, about his friends (Phil 2:27) and the churches he planted (2 Cor 12:28–29). One of the most moving passages in his letters is when he observes in 2 Corinthians that God has nevertheless used him, with all his weaknesses, to bring the life-giving good news to others (4:7–12; 12:9–10).
I hope that seeing Paul as a real person will encourage Christians who also struggle with their weaknesses. God can use each of us, whatever our handicaps and challenges, to communicate to others the life-giving good news that through Christ’s work on the cross and the power of the Holy Spirit, God has offered us forgiveness, transformation, and eternal life in his new creation.
Nadya Williams: Research invariably results in surprises even on topics we think we know well. What is something surprising or unexpected that you learned about Paul in the process of writing this book?
Frank Thielman: I was surprised to learn how Jewish Paul remained after he became a Christian. Most of my previous work on Paul had been on the apostle’s letters, but for this book I had to study the portrait of Paul in Acts carefully. In that portrait, Luke presents Paul as a faithful Jewish person throughout his life. For example, Luke tells us that at a turning point in his ministry, Paul cut his hair because of a vow he had taken (Acts 18:18). This seems pretty clearly to be a Nazirite vow (Num 6:1–21). He continued to consider himself a Pharisee, even after he became a Christian (Acts 23:6). He was willing to help four Jewish Christians who were themselves under a Nazirite vow to complete the requirements for their vow (21:22–26).
It is worth thinking hard about how such passages cohere with Paul’s statement in Philippians 3:7 that when he gained Christ, he considered all such things a loss. Perhaps his next sentence where he calls “everything” loss (3:8) shows us what he means. Christ must be pre-eminent, and everything—including Paul’s Judaism—is loss if it does not fall under Christ’s authority. This would not then mean that Paul’s Judaism and everything else had become loss in absolute terms. The loss is relative, and, viewed from the right perspective, he could continue to find value in his Jewishness (Rom 3:1–2; 9:4–5) and in many other things (Phil 4:8).
Nadya Williams: Now that this book is out in the world, what are you working on next?
Frank Thielman: I’ve just finished an article that fills out the argument I make in the book on the historical setting of Paul’s letter to Titus. Lord willing, I’ll turn next to a theological reflection on Ephesians. Beyond that, I’ll just have to trust that the Lord will guide me.