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| David O’Connell |
Are the Words of Paul and the Words of Jesus Equally Important?
Were we baptised in the name of Paul? Did Paul die for us?
Would Paul, who called himself a bondservant of Jesus Christ, be horrified to find that his words were given equal weight with his Master’s?
Or in some circles, greater. For the words of Jesus cause little controversy. They are just death to obey.
But all our bitter theological disputes, today and through the centuries—whether women and gays today, or disputes over infant baptism, justification by faith alone etc.–are over the words of Paul, never the words of Jesus.
When there is a conflict between the words of Paul and the spirit of Jesus, what should we do?
* * *
Paul says, I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. (1 Tim 2:12).
He speaks about women in harsh, misogynistic, almost contemptuous terms. Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? But if anyone ignores this, they will themselves be ignored. (1 Cor 14 34-38).
But Jesus’s ministry was an inclusive one. After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, 2 and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; 3 Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means. (Luke 8 1-3)
We always see Jesus take the side of women. “Leave her alone,” said Jesus as the woman impulsively spent a fortune in anointing his feet. “Why are you bothering her? Wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her” (Matt 26:13). He takes the part of the woman who has led a sinful life (Luke 7:50). He finds a way to save the woman caught in adultery (John 8). And tells the outcast woman at the well the way to be permanently spirit-filled (John 4 13-14).
Jesus does not rebuke Martha who gently reproached him, “Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Mary received more thorough commendation than any of the disciples, “Mary has taken the better part.”
Women stood by him at the cross, buried him. And after his resurrection, he appears first to women, before he appears to his beloved disciples.
Can you imagine Jesus speaking in the harsh dismissive tone of 1 Cor 14 34-38? Me neither. I believe he would wince.
* * *
Jesus is silent on homosexuality. How would he have treated homosexuals? We do not know, but can make an educated guess based on the way he treated other folk whom the religious people of his day considered outcasts–tax collectors, prostitutes, sinners, the woman caught in adultery, the woman at the well, or embezzlers like Zaccheus.
So this issue which is splitting denominations was never mentioned by Jesus, but largely by Paul!
* * *
Was every word that Paul wrote in his letters personally dictated by the Spirit of God? Could there have been occasional errors in the transmission? Could he have been certain that he was discerning the mind and will of God—and simply have been wrong—as every human before and after him was?
While he was mostly in step with the Spirit, was he capable of interjecting his own opinion, prejudices, anger, harshness, and misogyny into his letters, just as no matter how much we have prayed, human personality, prejudices and preconceptions creep into our blogs, books and sermons?
Were his instructions to women to cover their heads in church dictated by God? We now read it as a directive to first century women. As we should read his directives that women do not speak or teach or lead in church.
He split with Barnabas rather than give Mark a second chance. Later in his life, Mark became invaluable to him.
Could he not have been wrong about other things?
* * *
I believe that Paul’s letters were inspired by God. But I do not believe that every syllable Paul wrote was personally dictated by God. For instance, did the Holy Spirit, for instance, dictate, Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. Phil 3:2 Or “I wish those troublemakers would castrate themselves.” Gal 5:12.
When there are contradictions between harsh Pauline statements, and the gentleness of Jesus, isn’t it wise to go with the spirit and practice of Jesus, rather than the letter of Paul’s letters?
* * *
Paul had an intense experience of Christ on the road to Damascus. He spent fourteen years in the desert getting to know him better. He had visions and revelations. He knew the love of Christ deeply, and discovered joy in appalling circumstances, for instance in the Mamertine dungeon. I have the deepest respect for Paul, and love for almost all his writings.
But Paul was a human being. He was not God. Jesus was.
It is when we take his words addressed to first century churches as normative for twenty-first century churches–his instruction to slave to submit to their masters; to women to submit to their husbands in “everything;” to cover their heads in church; to be silent; to not teach or have authority over men–that we get ourselves in a tangle.
For these are letters addressed to particular first century churches, not normative for all Christians for all time.
* * *
People say, “How do you know which directives were addressed to the Ephesians and which to women of all time?”
People say, “Oh, will you pick and choose what to believe?”
People say, “Beware of the slippery slope.”
But Jesus says, “Do not be afraid.”
I trust the Holy Spirit who led me to love and revere Christ and Scripture will enable me to read it accurately
And if—after sincere prayer and diligent study–I get it wrong? Well, intellectual error is not an unforgiveable sin.
There was grace for the Prodigal Son, and there will be grace for the stupid daughter.
As there will be grace for the Women who Dare to Speak in Church.
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Thanks, LA. What a brilliant comment. Thank you so much for sharing it. This camel certainly hunts.
I agree!! Words like Submit are so loaded in English, and have negative emotional connotations, but perhaps hypotasso, or whatever in Greek, had a slightly different meaning and emotional connotations.
Loved your distinctions between believing in divine inspiration, and a literal reading of Scripture!
Anita,
Please allow me to post my version of inerrancy that I wrote in a different blog when faced with that same dilemma:
I think that inerrancy for me is that the Bible is correct, IF read in the correct context. Please accept these as just my humble opinions and what I believe and not meant at all to offend in any way those that believe in a more literal interpretation of the Bible.
Say if someone were to say to you “that dog don’t hunt” to you after you’ve suggested an idea. If you’re not from the Southern US, you may read that as saying “that dog over there doesn’t do hunting well” and not be able to figure out why that person just said that complete non sequitor to you. If you are from the south, then you read that completely differently – it is a colloquial saying meaning “that’s never going to happen”…and you get exactly why they said that to you.
The Bible also has cultural context. If I say “One fish, two fish”…if you’re American between the ages of 5 and 70-ish, you will likely answer “Red fish, blue fish”. That is cultural context. If you were to say the same thing to a Russian or Chinese, they would stare at you blankly (or possibly say “three fish, four fish”) and not understand any context for those words. But we as Americans sometimes can’t imagine anyone not knowing about Dr. Seuss and would be amazed if the other person didn’t respond appropriately.
If we were to be writing the Bible, we would likely fill it with all sorts of colloquial sayings and cultural context that 2000 years from now, people would have to “interpret” in order to understand. I sometimes giggle to think about writing something about the camel getting through the eye of the needle as “that camel don’t hunt” and imagining someone 2000 years from now creating a schism over whether camels really ought not to be taken on hunting expeditions.
For me, it’s not errors as much as having to really read it with an eye for these kinds of cultural slip-ups. While the meaning behind the words is divinely inspired, a human being actually penned the words and we, for all our divine grace, are human after all.
We also must remember that the Bible is TRANSLATED. Not every word in the original Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic has a direct and perfect translation into English. Unless you have a Greek expert in your back pocket (like my daughter is for me), it’s almost impossible to just read it on its face and know what the writer actually intended for us to understand from their words. While translators try to pick the “closest” or “best” word from a variety of possible meanings, the translators themselves are also Not-God and will have to eeny-meeny-miney-moe some things because there is just not always a simple/easy/direct translation.
All these things combined makes the Bible we read today impossible to be inerrant (IMHO) from our English, American cultural, 2000 years in the future point of view without study, interpretation and a lot of discernment. The truth is in the Scriptures and it is without error…period…but gleaning that out of the document is not always just a matter of reading “that dog don’t hunt”. For me, there is so much depth and meaning and culture that has to be sifted through in order to get to the “meat” of the passage.
Ben, LA, Welcome to my blog. LA, what a coincidence!! Ben, I do love Paul's letters–but object to the women and slaves bits-a lot, alas!!
Tanya, thanks so much for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. I am working out my feelings on this, in particular the fact that I find it almost impossible to believe that rude, dismissive sounding, offensive passages like 1 Cor 14 34-38 could have been inspired by God.
I hope whatever conclusion I come to in my wrestling with the version of inerrancy which I have been taught will be productive of joy, comfort, peace and blessing.
Those who believe in inerrancy have an easier time as Christians, I know. I guess I need to explore the Open Evangelical position, since I am moving beyond “the verbal dictation” position.
I just stumbled upon your blog only to discover that you have EXACTLY echoed my words on another blog I follow. I actually wrote “Jesus is God, Paul is not” in my comments. What a kindred spirit!
P.S. Re Paul and the mutilators of the flesh – he was saying, 'those people who add conditions onto the grace of Christ by saying that you have to be circumcised to be a Christian… I wish they would go the whole hog and castrate themselves!' – he has harsh words to say to those who would lead others astray.
Compare Jesus' words:
'If anyone causes one of these little ones – those who believe in me – to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.' Matthew 18:6
For this and other reasons, I think the 'gentle Jesus' / 'harsh Paul' is a false dichotomy.
Hi Anita
I agree with Ben… We need to be very careful. Just because people have used the words of Paul for abuse, does not mean that we can dismiss them so readily or write them off as homophobic or misogynistic. It sounds like that's what you are doing in this post, which is a real shame.
I was also going to reference Mark 7, where Jesus says that what makes someone 'unclean' is what's inside them, and lists 'porneia' as one of those things. The word 'porneia' shoudl be understood as including all the sexual sins listed in Leviticus 18 (prohibiting homosexual sex, adultery etc), which he then contrasts with the food laws which don't make someone unclean. He was overturning the food laws (which is reiterated in Acts with Peter's vision of the unclean foods) but not other laws. Jesus reaffirmed marriage as being exclusively between one man and one woman (even though polygamy was widely accepted) in Matthew 19. He was not afraid to confront the norms of his culture and society – and yet he didn't overturn those laws that prohibit homosexual sex.
I think you've also misrepresented Paul somewhat. I think there's a good case for saying that Paul was actually more inclusive of women and their ministry than Jesus was – not less. Throughout his ministry he talks of women as his co-workers (euodia and syntiche for example); he is full of praise for Priscilla and Aquila, always referring to Priscilla first; praises Junia as outstanding among the apostles; tells Timothy that he owes his Christian understanding entirely to two women (his mother and grandmother). This is remarkable in a context where women were not treated as equals. Paul is actually incredibly feminist.
I know you were saying, 'the Jesus I know would have done xxx and not agreed with xxx'. I think it is tempting to say that, but we need to be careful of seeing through the lenses of our own personality and culture and projecting those onto Jesus. (Jesus talked a LOT about hell and judgement, for example!) The other reason I think we have to take Paul's words seriously – all of them – is because Peter did. (see 2 Peter, as Ben said). Peter was not hesitant in declaring Paul's words to be scripture – and Peter really DID know Jesus and had a very good chance of saying what Jesus would or would not have 'approved of'.
The liberal way of interpreting the Bible has been to presume that anything that we don't like the sound of must not have been inspired, and I hear a bit of that tendency in your analysis. I think this is unwise and unnecessary, since when we examine the texts fairly and in harmony we can see a great unity, though these issues are complex. I'd recommend 'The Gender Agenda' as an exploration of both sides of the women in ministry debate – particualrly as I think Lis Goddard makes an excellent case for egailtarianism!
I'm aware that I'm going quite strong here, but I thnk it is a real shame that so many evangelicals are saying things similar to you in terms of pitting Paul against Jesus. I think there is another way, and rather than the temptation to ignore or dismiss those hard scriptures, I would urge you to wrestle with them, read good commentaries, and books like Lis Goddard's, and come to a greater understanding of how it all fits together. This is what I have sought to do, and I've found it to be most rewarding.
Blessings – your friend, Tanya xx
Peter said that Paul is difficult to understand, but not that he would ever be wrong on any particular point. I just think you have to be careful, because Paul addressed a different audience with different issues. Jesus could condemn “fornication” and his audience would know Lev 18 & 20. Some in Paul's audience would require a more explicit definition of what “fornications” specifically were incompatible with the Gospel.
Anyway, any twisted scripture is appalling & I can't blame you for being sensitive since authority has been abused in so many ways. I'd just be careful about babies and bathwater, because if you're reading Paul and Jesus correctly, they're both in harmony.
Thanks for posting sister!
Thanks so much Carrie and Mary, and welcome to my blog!
DJV, thanks much for sharing your poem with me. What a rich and interesting wordplay on Bound–and then, finally unbound. I liked it 🙂
Thanks, Sandra. I actually like Paul a lot too, and enjoy reading him–but sometimes feel appalled at the hurt and harm caused by fanatical interpretation of some sentences in his letters!
Thanks for this – it hadn't occurred to me that the controversies are over Paul's words rather than Jesus'.
Just one thing though – I used to think that Paul was mysoginistic [especially the bit about women gadding about from house to house], but he does have praise for certain women mentioned at the end of his letters – and some women obviously did some teaching (and so presumably spoke!)
Another thought – Jesus' words tend to be so simple – simple as in clear, not simple as in easy to carry out. Whereas Paul goes in for detailed build up of his arguments and is sometimes difficult to follow. I tend to think his appeal is more to the intellectuals, whereas Jesus addressed the common people. I'm reminded of a comment someone made – Paul had many strengths, punctuation wasn't one of them ('tho I understand that the Greek of that time wasn't punctuated.
very good post
BOUND
Caught up by my schedule,
Your schedule, their schedule,
Can`t do it, won’t do it……..
I`m Bound!
Bound by my limits.
By my mind and by my body.
Bound to the mortgage,
And bound by my homelessness;
Bound by too much work,
Bound by unemployment;
Bound by my emotions,
Bound by my indifference;
Caught, snared, entangled, trapped.
Bound!
Bound to say………..
No!
No more to this and
No more to that;
No more to more and
No more to less.
No more expectations and
No more disappointments;
Bound.
Bound to lose!
Found bound and bought bound,
Freed by truth, let loose.
By compassion, by Blood.
By the Cross, by the grave;
Unbound by the unbounded,
Freedom heaven sent;
Life, Rich, Full Bodied;
Bound to be;
Homeward Bound.
Hi
I feel that all through our walk of Faith we are constantly challenged;
like Jacob we need to wrestle with God in order to push our boundaries and not let go until we are blessed with understanding in order for us to move on.
As human beings the limits of our experiences are bound by our physical and intellectual attributes however we as Christians are invited by our Faith to experience life in all its fullness,to look beyond this world, to be Christ like in our lives;
The passive acceptance of what occurs on earth is not Christian, it is a cold or at best a luke warm faith,not pleasing to God.
Many years ago I came to one of my cross roads in my walk of faith, and I struggled with what I could not completely comprehend, the results of which ended up on paper ; I will forward my poem “Bound”to you as it painted the dilemma of human limits.
Anita-
I really appreciate you writing this well- researched and informative post- it has come in a timely manner and will be of great assistance in a current debate in which I am a participant.
I agree that we must always consider how Jesus would act and He was so very against ” being religious” !
Really appreciated this post Anita. I agree that we elevate the words of Paul above those of Jesus. When we do, we have a harsh standard for both women and homosexuals that has caused incredible division and hurt in our churches. Thank you for this thoughtful post.