Paul and Religion

Last updated on: February 18, 2014 at 6:12 am by Scot McKnight

Paul and Religion 2014-02-18T06:12:09-06:00 Scot McKnight

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

So many today love to contrast Jesus (and therefore themselves) with “religion” and “religion” is always bad and institutional and ritualistic while Jesus (and probably Paul, too) was not … but that means those who do this will be surprised when they read chp 13 of Wright’s massive study of Paul. One of the more innovative, if not controversial, dimensions of N.T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God, is that he contends Paul formed a “religion.” But he has to clear the ground first, so here goes:

The question was posed in terms of the standard protestant assumption, strengthened through the theology of Karl Barth: ‘religion’ was something humans did to try to gain favour with God, whereas‘revelation’ was what happened when God, as an act of free grace, chose to unveil his love or his purposes to humans.2 Seen from this point of view, Christianity was not a ‘religion’ at all, since it was about divine grace rather than human effort, and the question was whether the Old Testament shared this character, or whether it had to be seen as the Jewish version of the human effort to please God, or even to know him.

It would be interesting to map this discussion onto the larger German debates of the twentieth century: for instance, Deissmann’s insistence that Paul himself was an archetypal homo religiosus against Käsemann’s insis- tence that it was precisely against homo religiosus that Paul’s ultimate polemic was directed. That remains a task for another time. The particular insight came with the response by Professor James Barr, who had recently moved to Oxford from Manchester. He pointed out that in England the word ‘religion’ carried few if any of the negative connotations presupposed in the German title of the paper. In England, ‘religion’ meant, more or less, ‘what some people do on Sunday mornings’, with a penumbra of assump- tions about ethical standards and personal piety (perhaps with a dash of what might be called ‘mysticism’). People might not wish to join in, but neither they nor the worshippers perceived ‘religion’ as a bad or dangerous thing (unless the mysticism got out of hand).

Times have changed, of course. We have more recently had Richard Dawkins and his ilk telling us that ‘religions’ are bad both for their practi- tioners and for society as a whole; a kind of turbo-charged and politicized version of the continental protestant position.3 There has also grown up in some evangelical, fundamentalist and similar circles a sense that ‘religion’ is what happens in boring mainline churches while they themselves are enjoy- ing something quite different: a living relationship with God, perhaps, rather than an outward form. Those, too, are issues to be addressed elsewhere, but they locate the subject of the present chapter in relation to the varied uses of the word in contemporary thought, with a warning against importing into a historical study the assumptions and prejudices of a much later age (1320-1321).

This is all the more complicated in that several works which have discussed Paul in terms of‘religion’ have not made this distinction clear. Locating the study of early Christianity within university and college ‘Departments of Religion’ has had a massive, if mostly hidden, impact on the way in which the subject is perceived, carrying the implication that we all know what ‘religion’ is –and that, for instance, it has little or nothing to do with politics or ‘real life’. When the traditional subject-matter of early Christianity is put into the box we now call ‘religion’, various things hap- pen (1321).

Wright turns to how EP Sanders’ grand and influential project on Paul (creating the new perspective) had an 18th Century understanding of religion, making Paul too Protestant and too soteriological, and at the same time not Christian enough … and then he peers in through the window at Ashton’s important and recent work… and then to Gerd Theissen’s “semiotic cathedral” image…

But once we understand 1st Century Roman world, “religion” is different. How so? What did it look like?

We saw in chapter 4 that, according to Cicero at least, the religion of the Roman world was divided up principally into (a) ritual (especially sacrifice, but also the various festivals according to the various sacred calendars), (b) the taking of auguries and (c) the searching of sacred books such as the Sibylline Oracles (1330).

And here Paul becomes someone with a “religion” or at least his churches sure looked like other religions. Baptism as entrance into the Exodus, sacrifice as a living act (Romans 6; 12) and Christ as Passover sacrifice, the breaking of bread as a rite, prayer, discerning the way … these are recognizable elements of Roman religio. Here’s his summary from p. 1352-1353:

The point is now made and can be summed up briefly. When we look at Paul’s worldview (Part II) and theology (Part III) in the light of the world of ‘religion’ we studied in chapter 4, we see both radical dissimilarity and perhaps surprising similarity. The differences are obvious, and would have been obvious to Paul’s communities and their neighbours. Not only did the Christians not join in with the pagan religious customs, they did not have their own version (as did the Jews) of the most central‘religious’ activity, namely animal sacrifice. But Paul was not shy about using the language and thought-forms of the religio of his day in relation to the activities which, as we saw, formed central elements of his praxis. Once we back off from the debates of the last two centuries in which the word‘religion’ in its modern sense has played such a key role, often being muddled up with protestant fears about ‘works-righteousness’, and locate Paul instead within his own world, there is nothing to lose and everything to gain by recognizing that he, his communities and their neighbours would have seen the central praxis of the early Christians as itself a form of religio. All the marks are there.

Above all, we have noticed that the things which Paul’s communities most characteristically did as part of their worship were seen by Paul, just as Jewish and pagan religio was seen by those who took part in it, as underlining and strengthening the unity of the community in question. Pagan religio bound together the polis and the gods in a single family. Paul believed in the One God, One lord of his revised Jewish monotheism, with the one spirit being poured out on all who shared this faith; and the‘religious’ things he and his communities did, especially baptism and eucharist, constituted a similar binding together of the community both in itself and within the life of this single divinity. This was not, of course, a subtle attempt by Paul or his communities to put the One God in their debt, as anxious theologians have sometimes imagined. Part of what Paul believed about this One God was that, in Jesus, he had put the whole world in his debt, completely and for ever. That is why one of Paul’s central motifs is gratitude. It is also why he seems to have turned the whole notion of debt on its head: the debt of love is the only form he permits.

Paul

Previous Post

February 17, 2014

PKs and the Faith

Next Post

February 18, 2014 The Mighty Mysterious Camel (RJS)

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Acts of the Apostles Adam Advent Anabaptism Angels Anglican Apologetics Atonement Baptism BCP Prayers Bible Biblical Studies Birds Blogging Bloglossary Bonhoeffer Books Calvinism Christianity Church Church History Coffee Colossians Commentary Recs Conversion Creation Creeds Culture Death Ecclesiastes Economics Education Embracing Grace Emergent Emerging Movement Eschatology Essays Ethics Eucharist Evangelicalism Family Fasting Fathers Fellowship of Differents Footsteps Tour Fun and Whimsical Gospel Grace Happiness Heaven Hell Holy Spirit Irenaeus James Jesus Jesus Creed Job Justification Kingdom of God Law Lectures Lent Liberalism Love and Marriage Mabanteneni Manhood Mary Miracles Missio Alliance MissioLife Missional Missional Jesus Movies and Film New Perspective Northern Seminary OneLife Origins Project Orthodox Parables Pastor's Spouse Pastoring and Leading Pastoring and Preaching Patristics Paul Paul-John Tour Pharisees Pietism Political Theology Prayer and Formation Preaching Problems for Faith Psalm 119 Psalms Public Issues Purgatory Religions Resurrection Revelation Romans Rule of JCreed Science and Faith Sermon on the Mount Sports Ten Commandments Theology Third Way Top Ten Lists Translations Uncategorized Universalism University Ministry Way Out Weekly Meanderings Wisdom Women and Ministry Work Worship Writing & Blogging Youth Ministry

Select a Month July 2021 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 0000

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who predicted the fall of Jerusalem?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Jesus Isaiah Daniel Jeremiah