Join the Enter the Bible podcast with hosts Katie Langston and Kathryn Schifferdecker as they sit down with Luther Seminary Professor of New Testament Matthew L. Skinner to tackle the question: Was Paul the real founder of Christianity?
Explore how Paul’s writings shaped the early church, his focus on the cross and resurrection, and his revolutionary views on community, gender, and the gospel. Discover the cosmic scope of his theology and how Jesus profoundly influenced his mission. This conversation will challenge your perspective and deepen your understanding of Paul’s role in Christianity.
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Watch this video on YouTube at https://youtu.be/0aLzkZ7oYtM.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the enter. The Bible podcast, where you can get answers or at least reflections on everything you wanted to know about the Bible but were afraid to ask. I'm Katie Langston and.
I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker, and today we have as our guest, Professor Matt Skinner, who is our colleague and friend here at Luther Seminary. Matt is a professor of New Testament here at Luther Seminary and the author of several really fine books, the latest being on the Gospel of Matthew. It's called Matthew: The Gospel of Promised Blessings. So check that out. Thank you for joining us, Matt.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Good to have you. So the question that we invited you to address, uh, came from a listener. And as usual, listeners, if you have a question that you would like us to address on this podcast, just go to enter the Bible.org and enter your question there. And we try to address as many of them as we can. So the short version of this question is, was Paul the real founder of Christianity? The original question was, how can we reconcile the differences between Jesus's teachings and Paul's theology, considering that Paul often focuses on different aspects of Jesus's message? So, uh, how would you how would you begin to respond to that question? Matt?
Well, first you have to define what we mean by Christianity. So that's that's a tricky thing. I'm not sure there is a Christianity in the first century as much as that's what emerges once the church and the synagogue start to go their separate ways and become pretty much entrenched in their second ways by around just for a round number of the year. 150. So, uh, so there's that. Right. What's Paul is alive and teaching and preaching and writing letters during a time when the Christian Church is still within Judaism and is starting to find success in bringing in people who are not Jews or Gentiles into the fellowship. And that creates some tension simply because people aren't sure exactly how to live together. What kinds of laws need to be kept? What is okay to eat? With whom do you spend your time? What kind of occupations do you pursue those types of things? So Paul is trying to help churches that are engaged in expanding and also in living into really some new. I don't want to call it a social experiment, but it's kind of like that. There's some real social pressures that Paul is helping people navigate with theological reasons. By looking back to his understanding of Jesus and the cross and resurrection in particular, to give a kind of theological foundation for how life should be lived in a Christian community.
I often hear this, um, like from some of my friends who are maybe more, say, skeptical or agnostic or something like that, where they kind of say like, you know, Jesus brought this pure teaching of justice and peace. And then Paul came along and made up a bunch of rules about, like, how women should wear their hair. And, you know, he Paul, meaning he meaning Paul is kind of the one that made the church the way that it is. And that's why, you know, women are mistreated in the church and and why, you know, he's not a faithful or accurate interpreter of Jesus. How might you kind of respond to what Jesus means for Paul and why he interprets him and the cross in the resurrection, the way he does?
Yeah, there's a lot of questions embedded in that one, I think so. One thing is, absolutely, Paul is focused on the cross and resurrection of Jesus as the primary event or primary place where God has broken in, reordered the world fulfilled promises all the way back to Abraham and Sarah, and now unleashed the Holy Spirit on the world. Paul does not say things like, hey, my favorite parable is this. And wasn't it cool when Jesus healed those people? I mean, Paul either doesn't know or in the very few letters that we have from him simply doesn't get into the stuff of Jesus's life. Paul does acknowledge that Jesus was born of a woman, recognizes him as a human being, also says that he was born under the law, recognizes Jesus as Jewish. So I mean, there's stuff there, but he doesn't dwell on, like the incarnation the way that Luke's gospel does and John's gospel does. I think in part that's because for Paul, the thing that has utterly upended his life was an encounter with the resurrected Jesus. And that is the thing that blew Paul's mind, that caused Paul to rethink a lot of understandings about the Messiah, maybe even understandings about the law and how God's going to operate in the world. And Paul is utterly convinced that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, is indwelling Gentiles, that he knows in these Christian communities just as truly as that spirit is indwelling Jews. And for Paul, that creates a significant crisis, not necessarily a problem, but a moment of recognition. God is dwelling equally with people who are living in obedience to Torah and people who are not living in obedience to Torah. It doesn't mean they're terrible people. It just means simply the men that might not be circumcised. They might not be following dietary regulations, they might not be keeping certain Jewish festivals and so on and so forth. Do you know what I mean? And so that experienced reality of the Spirit's presence is what makes Paul so fixated on that moment. Because for Paul, that's all tied in to this, this larger phenomenon, this larger event of crucifixion and resurrection.
So is Paul writing a kind of systematic theology or what? What is his? So he's writing letters, obviously. Right. He's writing a we call them epistles to various churches. Um, because what I hear, I've heard similar kinds of statements or similar kinds of criticism, criticisms of of Paul. Right. Like, he's kind of, uh, codifying Christianity's is taking what Jesus taught and trying to make a hierarchical system. But but he's he's addressing like real concerns. Right, Matt. And real questions that early Christian communities have. Can you talk about that?
Yeah.
Let me say two things. One is I've heard this too, right. There's a kind of romantic view of Jesus that he's a simple man with a simple movement that's all about love and all about acceptance. And then Paul is an educated man, higher class, who's less interested in love and more interested in power and creates an institution. And I think that's a very unfortunate caricature of a number of things. I think Paul is just as focused on love as Jesus. I think there's more evidence to show an egalitarian impulse in Paul's ministry than there is in Jesus's ministry. If we're just talking about men and women, for example. But that's that's another podcast, perhaps, but I don't think Paul is is building a theology the way we think about that today. I wouldn't call him a systematic theologian. I'm not so sure it's even accurate to say we can reconstruct Paul's theology. I would rather talk about Paul as a theology user. In other words, Paul is thinking theologically. Paul is asking questions about how should we live based on the cross and resurrection of Jesus. What have we learned about God through the cross and resurrection of Jesus? And how should we imprint that now in our lives together? So, Paul, like you said, he's he's writing letters to real communities with real people, in real places, with real leaders and real followers and real vulnerabilities and real opportunities. And some of these communities make him crazy, and he's frustrated, and some of them he's deeply in love with. And there's mutual regard, and it's a real joy to read. Just like church life is. And Paul, these are communities that have no they don't have an owner's manual. They have no sense of what is the church supposed to do when somebody dies, when a leader dies, what's the church supposed to do when somebody is being a bully and is pushing people around and is acting in ways where he. In first Corinthians chapter five, there's a great example of this. Somebody who's perhaps taking advantage of people or refusing to be accountable for his behavior. Right. What do we what do we do? Do we throw people out? Do we admonish them? Does everybody get to do whatever they want? How do we organize worship? Some people think they've got great ideas. Other people like it more quiet. And so Paul is trying to think theologically about what's the best way to live into these new realities. And so sometimes he'll say things like, uh, don't eat all the good food before the poor people show up. You might do that when you're meeting with your woodworkers guild, but don't do that when it's the Lord's Supper. This is an aspect of the culture that does not square with Christian community. Sometimes he says things about about about women and about marriage and other questions like that that make it sound like he's creating rules arbitrarily. Yeah. And those are places, I think, where Paul is very much a person of his culture. And that's not to excuse him. It's just to say that Paul has not perhaps thought through, just as I have not certainly thought through and been able to break out of my own cultural constraints just how freeing the gospel of Jesus Christ is for everybody. Mm. Does that make sense? I mean, it's.
A lot of what.
Paul says makes sense when you read the other literature of the period. It might still be shocking to us today because we have different norms, different understandings of what it means to be human and what what's proper in society.
Right.
But yeah, Paul, like Jesus, is living within a culture with certain basic understandings about what's changeable and what's not.
So I know you said this, this would be another podcast, but I'm guessing that our listeners are curious about that statement you made about Paul being egalitarian, maybe even more so than Jesus in terms of the view of women. Can you can you give us a little preview of what? That.
Yeah, sure. Well, egalitarian not maybe in the sense that we would measure that today. But you know, Paul, before we start saying, Is Paul a bully or is Paul making rules? Is Paul creating a theology? Let's remember that Paul circulates with a whole bunch of associates. He's part of a group. So almost almost all of the letters that were confident he wrote name coauthors. He almost always names partners in ministry. So Timothy and Silas are two of his close partners. And sometimes the letters have a lot of we language as opposed to I language. So let's remember that he's part of a network. And then part of that network involves women as well as men. So the best place to look is at the end of the book of Romans, chapter 16, where he names, I think it's something like over 25 different individuals or families. A lot of them are women. Some he names as coworkers. He names a woman named Phoebe as a deacon in the Church of Kenya. So this is somebody who's got some kind of a leadership role. Paul appears to have entrusted her to carry the letter to Rome, perhaps to read and interpret the letter in front of the Roman believers. He mentions Junia, a woman who he calls an apostle. Prisca and Aquila are people who show up in a number of letters in the Book of Acts. Prisca's name often first. So she who's a woman in this amongst this married couple? So Paul does not, um, apologize or have to explain. This is why I have women who are part of my larger group, my peer group of evangelists and teachers. It's just assumed that this is normal. Now Jesus has women amongst his followers as well. I don't want to set them against each other necessarily. But he does choose 12 men as disciples, and we know about Joanna and Susanna and Mary Magdalene and some others, but we don't, at least I should say the Gospels don't give us a window that's open far enough to see too clearly what these people are doing, but they're certainly all there. So I would say, like Jesus, Paul as well is not hesitant. It appears to recognize the spiritual authority that resides in women. Now, there's some awful texts that everybody probably has heard of first Corinthians 14, the second or first Timothy chapter two. First Corinthians 11. You know that that we have to talk about as well if we want to go more deeply into this. But there's at least an impulse in Paul and Galatians 328, there's no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female. All of you are one in Christ Jesus. Paul's really good at breaking that, breaking down the Jew Gentile division. He doesn't appear to have put a lot of effort into breaking down the slave free division, and I wish he had done a lot more to try to break down the male female division.
But but he sees he at least sets.
Our theology on a trajectory.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's that's helpful, I think, to that sort of trajectory language that you're saying I don't, you know, I, I think sometimes we can, we can fall into a couple of traps. Like on the one one hand, we look back wistfully at like some point in the past where everything was pure and pristine. And if only we could get back there. Right? And I don't think that's a real thing. And I also don't think it's necessarily a real thing that, you know, um, that things are inevitably marching forward to some, you know, utopian Progress in the future, right? I think it's it's it's sort of it's sort of messy, uh, all the way through, um, time and history, as it were. Um, but I do think you do see a development, like I think it's important, right? That for our faith, we have like, we have the whole Bible. Right? And talking about in the New Testament in particular, we need the stories of Jesus. We need the Gospels. We need to understand his, you know, his ministry and his life. It matters that that that Jesus is the Messiah and not someone else. Right. It matters. You know, I heard, um, Paul Hinlicky once say kind of why it matters so much that it's Jesus. He said, just imagine I've got great news for you. Um, a a ruler has lived and he's died and he's come back from the dead and he's going to rule over, you know, heaven and earth forever. And his name is Adolf Hitler, right? Not to, like, invoke Hitler, but in a, in a it matters that it's Jesus and not some other kind of figure. That is the one who was, who lived and died and was crucified, died, was buried and descended into hell Rose on the third day. Right? So so you have to have that because that's a different kind of message. If if Jesus isn't Jesus, if he lives a different kind of life. Right. Um, so you have to have that. But on the other hand, what Paul helps us do, it seems to me I liked what you were saying. You know, Matt, about putting us on a trajectory theologizing very carefully and deeply about what that means. What are the actual implications of the life, death, and resurrection of this Jesus? Um, in terms of how we're to understand our own identity in him, how we're to understand our neighbors, how we're to live together in Christian communities. You really couldn't have one without the other, I think.
Yeah. Um, and again, Paul is, um, Paul is operating out of I mean, we know his mind is blown because he tell us his mind, his tells us that his mind was blown and and that probably speaks to some of his zeal as well. He's he's he's a zealous person in general. And but he's, he's living in a moment where he's seeing things happen that he never previously could have possibly dreamt were were possible Jews and Gentiles sharing space together, calling one another, siblings in God's blessings, inheritors of all of these blessings. You know, the promise to Abraham, finally fulfilled in terms of all nations will be blessed in you. And Paul sees that happening because God has poured out God's Spirit. So then Paul's got to figure out like, where did this come from? Like, how did this possibly happen? And it's especially when you consider the kind of death Jesus died. You mentioned the life he lived, but that he lived, but the death he died also blows Paul's mind. And so, yeah, read First Corinthians chapter one about the wisdom of the cross and the power of the cross. That's just crazy language for anybody who's ever witnessed a crucifixion in the ancient world. This is about dehumanizing a victim. This is about declaring somebody obscene at every level socially, morally, religiously. And Paul says, no. Somewhere in that moment, the power of God is on display to remake the world. I mean, this is this is a big deal. And do the Gospels tell us that? Not quite. They present us with the horror of the crucifixion. They don't really explain the resurrection. They presented it as good news, but they don't give us too much information. And in some ways, Paul is is moving forward from there and saying, this is what I've seen in my own experience. And he's again, he's theologizing it. It's not true for him. Just because Paul has seen it or experienced it. It's because he's searching scripture. He's talking to other people. He's seeing fruit of the spirit on display in these communities.
So it's kind of the yeah. What does this mean kind of question? Right. In terms of Jesus life, death and resurrection? And how then shall we live?
Yeah.
What does this mean theologically? But also what does this mean in terms of how we live with each other and how we are in relationship? Right. So yeah.
I'd say there's at least three dimensions to that, right? One is what does this mean for how we live? So I like getting my meat down at the Temple of Apollo because they do a really good job preparing it. And now my friends in the church are like, you can't eat meat from there. That's, you know, wandering a foreign deity. So Paul spends a lot of time talking about stuff like this. So the real challenges of how do we live together, that's part of his theologizing. It's also for Paul, this is what roots the church in Judaism, right? This is not a new deity. This is not a new religion. The connection to Abraham is so important for Paul. Jesus Christ is the Messiah sent to the people of Israel, and Gentiles are beneficiaries of that equally, without exception. And then the third thing is what's going to come next. And so Paul's also convinced that he's living in the last days. He's convinced that this is a sign that it's all about to come to an end. Right? This is this is the inception point of the culmination of all things. So that matters to write about how Christians think about the future. I think Paul changes his mind before he dies. In Philippians, it sounds like he's backtracking a little bit, like maybe I'm not going to be here till the very end.
Um.
But that still gets imprinted right on how Christians live, hopefully, and live forward facing.
Yeah.
So I cut you off earlier. Sorry about that.
No, no, I think you addressed it. I was going to ask for, for like for Paul, who is Jesus. And you talked about Messiah and and what is the gospel. Right. What is the good news in Jesus life, death and resurrection?
Yeah.
Uh, those.
Are huge questions.
Jesus. Yeah, No, that's
great, though, for Paul, Jesus's Lord. And for him, that means, um, God appointed, God anointed, if not God himself. But also Caesar is not. So there's a there's a bit.
Of an.
Edge to what Paul is saying when he refers to Jesus as Lord. But for what's the good news for Paul? It's cosmic, and a lot of us might have been taught once upon a time that Paul is all about, here's your individual sin. Here's Jesus who forgives it. And I think Paul. Paul talks about sin in the singular as this enslaving force. Paul in his. Again, the letters were pretty confident. He wrote, does not talk about forgiveness as much as he talks about God's making us righteous. This idea of a divine power that that takes us into God's own self. This isn't to say Paul doesn't care about forgiveness, but forgiveness is under a larger umbrella of God's power that acts on our behalf to reclaim us, to set us free from sin, and to bring us into God's own self. So there's a there's a mystical edge to Paul because Paul says things like, I've been crucified with Christ, I've been baptized into Christ. I'm going to share in a resurrection like his. And what he means isn't just I'm going to follow in Christ's pattern. He writes as if his own life has been caught up into Christ himself. What I mean by mystical right? Not not in the sense of escapism, but in the sense of I dwell within God's very self. God's not a deity out there that I hope to connect with from time to time, but I'm caught up in the things that Christ has experienced. I've experienced, and the benefits Christ gives out are part of simply who I am, and that connects me to one another. So I say cosmic. I mean, Paul's got the whole cosmos in view, right? And look at Romans eight for some of this.
Where, yeah.
It's not just individuals who are going to be redeemed, it's the whole world. It's the whole creation.
That's really beautiful. Thank you, Matt, for articulating that. The you you mentioned earlier. I promise this isn't as big a question as who is Jesus and what is the gospel. But, uh, um, that these letters that Paul writes right there, he's addressing real concerns. He's addressing real leaders and followers and, and issues. And sometimes he loves the congregation that he's writing to, and sometimes he they really, you know, making him angry. And I remember teaching with you a number of years ago, and you were talking about the Epistle to the Galatians and how Paul uses these this formula for epistles. Right? Like he's not the only one who's writing epistles in the ancient world. And he kind of skips over a pretty, pretty important part of the epistle in terms of giving thanks for the Galatians. Would you mind saying a bit more about that?
Yeah.
You're supposed to say like I, you know, to the Galatians, I, Paul to the Galatians, grace and peace, and you're supposed to give thanks. You're supposed to say, I thank God all the time. We see that pattern in Paul's letters. We see it in other letters from the ancient world. And Paul skips over the Thanksgiving part and just says.
What in the.
World is wrong with you?
I'm paraphrasing here, right?
He's mad because they appear to have turned away from his teachings and have embraced the teachings of others. And Paul is upset.
And we read that.
Sometimes and think like, what a jerk, what a control freak. Like, he's not their pastor anymore. I mean.
but
We need to remember Paul knows everybody. He's writing to, with the exception of Romans, where he's writing to a community. He appears not to have ever visited before or founded. That doesn't mean you can get away with being rude, but I'm not so sure he's being rude. But we write differently to different kinds of people, and if Paul knows everybody there and they have a relationship, then Paul might feel a little more freedom to just get to the point and to speak his mind. Right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
An argument I have with a stranger is always a little bit more fraught and.
Dangerous.
Than an argument I have with somebody who I trust.
Right.
Where we might argue deeply, but know at the end of the day, this is not going to put our relationship in jeopardy. And we might say it's at least that's how I argue. So, um, just to remember that as well, some of this that, um, these are communities that Paul appears to have invested a lot of time and energy keeping in touch with. Timothy travels around a lot. Silas travels around a lot, and they keep each other informed.
So none of that.
Helps in terms.
Of yeah, no.
No, that's that's good. And and in these letters we haven't talked about ex at all. And that is definitely another episode. But right Paul is is, as you said, traveling around with companions. He's he's motivated to he's zealous for sharing this gospel. Right. Sharing this good news that he's heard to both Jews and Gentiles, though he himself. He himself is a faithful Jew. But what? Like why Gentiles? I guess that would be my question.
Well, I think he probably starts with Gentiles who are already hanging out at the synagogues. So we know this from other texts, that there are Gentiles who are attracted to Judaism in the ancient world. Not all of them. Some are persecuting Jews, but some Gentiles are attracted to Judaism because it's a very old religion. And old things were cool back then as opposed to today. And, um.
And it.
Was it had a moral center that was very attractive to a lot of.
People and.
A lot of synagogues, as best we can tell, were willing to let Gentiles participate without necessarily becoming converts. What that means, what participate means, would depend upon where you were. So there are plenty of Gentiles who are out there in these cities where Paul mostly goes, who know some scripture who might believe in the resurrection of the dead from a Jewish point of view, as opposed to like a platonic Greco-Roman point of view, who are interested perhaps in Messiah talk or the prospect of a messiah. And then Paul shows up and he's like, yeah, it's all happened, and it's Jesus. And he preaches to them and welcomes them for baptism, and they receive the Holy Spirit. I mean, that's so it probably starts there, as opposed to, you know, Roman soldiers who are in certain kinds of religious cults or people who are very far off.
From right, from.
Judaism. And so it probably starts there where people have already got an ear, so to speak, for for resurrection language and the promise of a God who's going to raise the dead. That's probably why. And I think also it probably just works. I think Paul probably just started preaching to Gentiles for whatever reason. And lo and behold, they responded. Yeah. And then he's like, well, this is something, you.
Now you know. Now what?
When he sees it, like you said, Matt, he sees it as part of God's promises to Abraham that through Abraham's family, the entire, you know, all the nations would be blessed. And the sort of messianic scriptures in the Old Testament about all the people bowing down, you know, and.
And coming to the mountain of the Lord's.
House. Exactly. And so I think it is a deep part of his expectation as a faithful Jew, that this would happen at some point. Not necessarily Jesus, the Jesus event, but that somehow, some way God was going to claim and gather in, you know, all peoples, Jews and Gentiles alike through. Yeah. Through the Jews. Right. So that's important. Right.
Yeah. Nothing in the New Testament suggests that people are expecting this, right?
No, not not.
This in particular. Yeah.
I mean, even when Jesus says, you know, at the end of Matthew, go, you know, go to all nations. The book of acts has similar things. And in acts nobody bothers to go to Gentiles until God finally drags Peter out of his house.
To take him, to go visit one of.
Them. You know, nobody's like saying this would be a great strategic move for us, or.
This would be a really.
Important way to grow the church or this would. You know what I mean?
This would solve our budget problem. It's not a strategic decision. Yeah.
It just happens. And God shows up and then everybody's like, now what do we do?
And yeah.
Paul's in the midst of that, which of course has just, you know, seismic implications for Christianity throughout history and what we understand the church to be today.
Well thank you. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot more we could talk about, but I think kind of to sum up, like we need Paul and Jesus, right. And Paul sometimes gets a bad rap as like the, the, the bad one who came along and changed the, the loving one. And I think that it's just a lot more complicated and a lot more wonderful than that. Um, in the end. So hopefully.
We should say Paul's.
Writings have been the source of a lot of harm.
And. Sure, sure.
Whether we blame.
Paul or blame people who have used those scriptures is is an open question. But but there's also more to discover in Paul than just those texts. Yeah.
I think yeah, you've you've articulated articulated that in a really beautiful way, Matt. And I know that our listeners are going to feel inspired, as I do, to to revisit Paul. I mean, and more than just, you know, the really beautiful passages like First Corinthians 13. Right. But that that there is a depth and a wonder about Paul that is, is really beautiful and, and the fact that he, as you said, you know, he has experienced an encounter with the living Christ, with the resurrected Christ that is life changing for him, and he can't help but, you know, share that message. Share that good news with the world. So thank you for opening our eyes to that again.
And thank you to those. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, of course. And thanks to those of you who have joined us today on this episode of the Enter the Bible podcast. Um, you can get more conversations and reflections like this on our website at enter the Bible.org. We've got maps, courses, articles, commentaries, videos, all kinds of good stuff over there. Uh, and if you have enjoyed this podcast today, I'd invite you to review us in your favorite podcast app and like and subscribe on YouTube. And of course, the very best compliment you can pay us is to share this podcast with a friend. Until next time.