Filed under: Church, Mission Leadership | Tags: alientation, Christians, Church, conversion, culture, Hellenist, Jewish, Lord, Messiah, mestizaje, Mestizos, oppression, Paul, persecutor, Roman citizen, Saul, Spaniard, Stephen
“Mestizos,” a pejorative term used by the powerful and “pure” Spaniard conquerors, was used to convince the “mixed-breeds” that they were inferior. One of Paul’s Hellenist Jewish parents made him a kind of mixed-breed who likely experienced a severe oppression and “double alienation,” which undermined the “barriers of separation that consolidate self-identity and security.” Saul, “also known as Paul,” was a Roman citizen misfit among the Hellenist Jews in Tarsus. It appears he had to overcompensate to assure his fellow Jews that he was a true believer, which produced the “persecutor” of the Jewish Christians with his consent to the death of Stephen. After his conversion, Saul continued to experience this challenge to his identity. Not only did he have to overcome his past as a persecutor of the Church, his Mestizos identity contributed to his need to continually defend his calling as an apostle.
Saul comes to terms with his Mestizaje, allowing himself to be known as Paul, when he turns in anger to defend a Roman official’s faith in Jesus against the lies of Elymas, a Jewish sorcerer. “You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right!” Paul rebuked, “You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the right ways of the Lord?” (Acts 13:6-10) Paul’s use of his Hellenist name at this juncture, setting aside pride in his Benjamite heritage, represented his commitment to stand against forces restricting the pronouncement of the gospel for every culture. Certainly, this event was as significant as his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. Paul understood the gospel message and set out to implement the purpose of God for all humanity which had been completed through Israel’s Messiah.
Filed under: Bible, Church, Mission Leadership | Tags: Damascus, Hebrew, Jesus, Judaism, Messiah, monotheism, prophetic, Saul, Scriptures, Second Temple, Spirit of Life, Torah
Saul interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures and carefully observed the Torah with increasing zeal. He saw himself as an instrument to bring the fulfillment of Israel’s story. Following the Torah according to Second Temple Judaism meant that God’s people must “mark boundaries of separation” through food laws, circumcision, and the Sabbath. Second Temple Judaism had defined holiness as a relative purity, a relative status before God. Saul’s zeal for the Law, however, should not be interpreted as his attempt to gain personal salvation. Instead, he sought to follow the covenant and increase Israel’s power for deliverance from her captivity through the holiness of God’s people. Therefore Saul determined to put a stop to the emerging community of Jews, members of the Way, who had “thrown open the doors to a new expanded membership,” not based on purity rituals of Second Temple Judaism.
Outside the city of Damascus the sudden appearance of the brightness of God’s holiness had blinded Saul. After falling to the ground, he heard a voice calling his name saying, “Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:3,4) Who could this be other than the One God he sought to honor? “I am Jesus,” came the voice. (Acts 9:5) Saul’s profound and personal encounter with Jesus did not disengage him from Judaism, rather it realigned his wayward zeal with a more complete revelation of the God of Israel. Rather than leaving Jewish monotheism, Saul found the center of Israel’s ancient faith. Having met Jesus, Saul continued to engage in a prophetic critique of Judaism, speaking “to the heart of their tradition.” Israel’s failure is her “relentless pursuit of national, ethnic, and territorial identity.” The “Son of Man” is revealed to Saul as the One who conquered sin and death through the Spirit of Life as Israel’s representative. Therefore, Saul not only found Jesus to be the fulfillment of Israel’s promised deliverance; he understood the purpose of God for all humanity through Israel’s Messiah.
Next post will be about Paul’s Eschatological Vision.
Filed under: Bible, Church, Mission Leadership | Tags: community, Damascus, faith, Gameliel, Herod the Great, Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, Judaism, Messiah, Paul, Pharisees, Saul, Stephen
Saul’s self-identity as a member of the “strictest sect” of the Jewish religion has often led to a misinterpretation of Paul, the apostle of Christ Jesus. (Acts 26:5) The Pharisees were a significant social movement of nearly six thousand people at the end of the reign of Herod the Great. These ‘Separate Ones’ proselytized their fellow Jews to the end that a new community of devout followers of God, a sort of priesthood of all Jewish believers, would emerge. Consistent with the messages of John the Baptist and Jesus, many Pharisees sought to reform God’s people.
The Pharisees were not unified in their political and social aspirations, however. While the Pharisees may have all expected an apocalyptic future judgment on all of Israel’s enemies, they were divided, liberal and conservative, with different political and religious emphases. Under the tutorage of Gameliel, Saul originally identified with Hillelites, the liberal Hellenistic Pharisees. Saul evidently had a significant conversion within Pharisaic Judaism, through which he began to identify with Shamaites, the revolutionary Pharisees. This conversion had therefore narrowed Saul’s community of faith to a smaller group of “daggermen.” He was willing to use violence on anyone, even liberal Jewish “traitors”, who would not support the Shamaite’s tri-part myopic agenda for Israel, her people, her land, and her temple. This begins to explain why Saul gave approval of those who killed Stephen. (Acts 8:1, 3)
After six hundred years of captivity, the prophetic promise for Israel’s deliverance was deeply embedded in Saul’s worldview. (Isa. 46:12-13) Contrary to popular opinion, Saul’s identity in Jewish community was not defined by legalism. Instead, it was the belief that Israel was God’s people and that God had a special covenant of grace with them. Saul heard a new spin on the story of Israel’s Messiah when Stephen expounded the Hebrew Scriptures. Stephen’s rendition claimed Israel’s Messiah is Jesus of Nazareth. Then Saul witnessed Stephen looking up saying, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” As he was stoned to death, Stephen said, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” (Acts 7:56, 60)
Probably enraged by Stephen’s claim that he saw the “Son of Man,” the name reserved for Israel, Saul expanded his persecution seeking permission from the high priest to arrest followers of the “Way” in Damascus. (Acts 9:1-2) Though he was devout in his understanding of the grandeur of Jewish monotheism, Israel’s election, and apocalyptic eschatology, Saul’s radical devotion to Torah had diminished his Judaism to a sect with little evidence of grace. He must have been conflicted knowing that Israel was a covenant people who “responded to God’s gracious initiative in terms set forth in the Torah.” Clearly, Saul witnessed the grace of the Spirit of Israel’s Messiah through the testimony and martyrdom of Stephen. Saul’s longing for the abundant grace of God for the community of Israel was not evident in his life, however this early encounter of grace exhibited in Stephen’s final words had implanted a seed of apocalyptic revelation.
The next post will be about Paul’s changing relationship with the Torah and the Law of the Spirit Life.
Filed under: Mission Leadership | Tags: Abraham, community, eschatological, faith, Isaac, Jacob, Jesus, Jewish, Judaism, monotheism, Paul, Road to Damascus, Saul
Saul of Tarsus’ dramatic meeting with the risen Lord Jesus radically completed his appreciation for Jewish monotheism. The change of his name to Paul and the dramatic changes in his ministry orientation have sometimes been interpreted as an abandonment of his zeal for the faith of his fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. However Paul’s scathing criticism of the first century practices of Judaism and his message of inclusion to pagan Greeks and Romans into communities of faith alongside Jews is not his final verdict on Judaism, it is rather his interpretation of the sequel to Israel’s story. After more than a century of Biblical scholarship, which has both “used and abused” Paul, some have begun to reevaluate Paul’s relationship to Judaism. With these new studies, we can now better compare and contrast changes in Paul’s story, his identity before and after his encounter with Jesus. In the next several posts, I will look at the changes and consistencies in Paul’s identity within his faith community, his understanding of the Law, and his eschatological vision, which I believe are all best understood through the singular lens of his personal encounter with Jesus on the Road to Damascus.
