Source: “Paul: The Pagan’s Apostle”, by Paula Fredriksen, 2017.
This podcast explores Paul's fervent conviction in the imminent arrival of God's Kingdom, a belief that was the "drive-wheel" of the early Christian movement and fueled his mission to the Gentiles. Paul's vision of the risen Christ and the "strange success of the Gentile mission" affirmed his belief that the End Times were near, leading him to advocate for gentiles to abandon pagan gods and commit exclusively to the God of Israel. This revolutionary inclusion of "eschatological gentiles" often led to social disruption and resistance, which Paul viewed as persecution. However, as time progressed and the Kingdom did not materialize, later Christian thinkers, influenced by Middle Platonism, reinterpreted Paul's message, de-ethnicizing God and the concept of the Kingdom, and polarizing Jewish Law and Christian Gospel in ways Paul himself would not have recognized. Ultimately, the podcast argues for a re-evaluation of Paul, seeing him as a deeply committed Jewish visionary, focused on the immediate coming of God's Kingdom and the Davidic messiah.
Topic 1: Paul's Apocalyptic Expectation and the Gentile Mission Paul's entire mission and life were driven by a fervent belief in the imminent arrival of God's Kingdom. His initial encounter with the risen Christ transformed him from a persecutor into a devoted follower. This vision, combined with the "strange success of the Gentile mission"—the turning of nations from pagan gods to Israel's God—constantly reinforced his conviction that the time for God's Kingdom was at hand. Paul tirelessly worked towards the Lord's return, or Parousia, for the remainder of his life. This vivid apocalyptic expectation was the fundamental engine of the early movement, which strongly believed it would be the only generation. It motivated the decision to spread Jesus's message of the coming Kingdom beyond the homeland to Jews in the Diaspora and led to the incorporation of "eschatological gentiles" into their new charismatic assemblies. For Paul, the conversion of gentiles was not just a side effect but a biblically prophesied, yet socially unprecedented, phenomenon that served as living proof of Christ's victory over cosmic forces and the erosion of the power of lower gods. This ongoing success deepened his conviction that the Kingdom was even closer than he had initially believed, perhaps even influenced by the early responses of god-fearers in his original synagogue community.
Topic 2: The Social Consequences of Gentile Inclusion The inclusion of gentiles into the early Christian movement, while seen as a natural extension of its mission to other Jews, came with significant social ramifications. The paramount condition for these gentiles was an exclusive commitment to the God of Israel, which inherently demanded the renunciation of their own traditional gods. This act was deeply disruptive, as it challenged the ancient fabric of relations between gods and their human worshippers, risking divine wrath from the perspective of Roman authorities and pagan populations. Consequently, the apostles' activities faced active resistance from Roman magistrates and irate pagans. Even Diaspora synagogue communities, which were initially a source of god-fearing pagans for the new movement, began to distance themselves from what they perceived as a disruptive gospel message. This socially destabilizing practice of separating a city's pagans from their gods, rather than any imagined infraction of Jewish practice, is explained as the reason for Paul experiencing and administering disciplinary flogging. All the hostility and persecution Paul faced stemmed directly from the apocalyptic movement's success in creating "eschatological gentiles."
Topic 3: Later Reinterpretations and Shifting of Paul's Legacy As time passed and the expected Kingdom did not materialize, the gospel movement, which had already begun to fracture during Paul's lifetime, continued to evolve. Paul's legacy itself underwent significant transformations as later followers, often writing under his name, adapted his message to new contexts. For example, the author of 2 Thessalonians addressed the apparent delay of the Kingdom, providing a list of necessary events that had to occur before the final apocalyptic scenario. The author of Ephesians introduced the concept of a new universal humanity, effectively dissolving the distinction between Israel and the nations—a distinction that the historical Paul had considered central to his theology. Similarly, Colossians presented a theology where cosmic "principalities and powers" were already disarmed and believers were already "raised with Christ," a stark contrast to Paul's more cautious deferral of resurrection to the future. Furthermore, the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) established church organizations, offices, and structures, depicting a community settled within historical time rather than one living on the edge of time, glowing with spiritual gifts.
Topic 4: The De-Judaization of Paul A significant misrepresentation of Paul emerged and gained prominence, particularly evident in the Acts of the Apostles. In Luke's narrative, a rumor circulated in Jerusalem that Paul taught Jews living among gentiles to abandon Moses, including practices like circumcision and ancestral customs. While Luke and Paul himself repudiated this rumor, this "de-Judaized Paul" became the dominant view among many early "continuators" and continues to influence New Testament scholarship to this day. These interpreters often overlook Paul's explicit address to ex-pagan gentiles in his letters, instead insisting that he directed his teachings against circumcision and other Jewish ancestral practices, often referred to as "the works of the Law," as much to Jews as to gentiles. This interpretation further suggested that Paul himself ceased to live according to Jewish custom, believed that Christ had terminated Israel's law, and even viewed the Law as a curse, effectively detaching him from his Jewish identity and heritage.
Topic 5: The Reconceptualization of God's Identity in Early Christian Theology Around the second century, coinciding with the questioning of Paul's Jewish identity, the identity of God the Father also underwent a significant shift. Educated ex-pagan Christian theologians like Valentinus, Marcion, and Justin Martyr began to reconceptualize the high god, leading to a de-ethnicization of God. Influenced by Middle Platonism, these thinkers converged on the idea that the highest god was radically transcendent, changeless, and without specific ethnic features. This "Father of All" was described as incorruptible, self-existent, simple, homogeneous light, pure benignity, and utterly unknown before the revelation of Christ. To reconcile this perfect, transcendent high god with the imperfections and historical involvement of the material world, Middle Platonism supplied the concept of a "demiurge," a lower, subordinate god who organized the material cosmos. This demiurge functioned as a metaphysical buffer, protecting the high god's immutability and absolute perfection, with any imperfections or evils in the sublunar realm being attributed to this lower god or the raw material he worked with.
Topic 6: Middle Platonism's Influence on Second-Century Theology Middle Platonism played a crucial role in providing the theological framework and criteria for coherent theology for these second-century Christian thinkers. It enabled them to assert that Christ's father was indeed the highest god, while simultaneously defining this paternal deity as a radically transcendent, ethnically featureless entity of philosophical paideia. This philosophical lens allowed for the distinction between the unknowable, perfect, highest God and a "lower god" or "demiurge" who was responsible for the creation of the material world. This distinction was critical for explaining the origin of imperfections and evils in the world without compromising the absolute goodness and transcendence of the supreme deity. It effectively provided the theological underpinnings for the redefinition of God and the subsequent interpretations of Jewish scripture.
Topic 7: Divergent Views on the Relationship between the High God and the God of Jewish Scripture While Valentinus, Marcion, and Justin Martyr agreed on the existence of a transcendent high god and a lower, subordinate demiurge, they diverged significantly on the precise identity of the god of Jewish scripture and his relationship to Christ. For Valentinian Christians, the author of the Law and the god of the Jews was a "middling" deity—neither the perfect God nor the Devil, but the demiurge. Christ, in this view, came to fulfill the good laws of this lower god, destroy the "baser" laws, and decode symbolic ritual mandates whose true meaning pointed back to the high god. Marcion, on the other hand, starkly polarized the high god (all good, unknown before Christ) and the demiurge (the god of Jewish Law and material creation, an opponent of the gospel). He esteemed Paul's letters but believed they were corrupted by "Judaizing" elements, which he edited out to restore their supposed original meaning. For Justin Martyr, the approach was even more daring: he insisted that the demiurgic deity who spoke to Abraham and other figures in Jewish scripture was in fact "the Son of God," Christ himself, before his incarnation. For Justin, the god of the Jews was truly the god of the Christians, and Jewish heroes had known this, though their descendants failed to recognize it. He argued that Christ himself gave the Jews their Law, and therefore all of it pertained symbolically to Christ, meant to be understood spiritually rather than literally.
Topic 8: The Reconceptualization of the Kingdom As the expectation of an immediate, historical end to time faded, the concept of the Kingdom, central to Paul's theology, also underwent a significant redefinition in later gentile churches. For Paul, the Kingdom was an imminent, tangible, and historical reality that his generation would witness. However, for later thinkers like Valentinus and Marcion, the Kingdom was reconceptualized as a "verbal cipher for a spiritual heaven," an upper- and otherworldly realm awaiting the individual soul after death. This was a departure from a historical, earthly manifestation. Justin Martyr, while denouncing the purely spiritual interpretation, still envisioned the Kingdom as a "distant hope of a tempered millenarianism," referring to a thousand-year reign of the saints, raised in the flesh, that would occur eventually at the very end of time. Thus, redemption receded beyond history's immediate horizon, adapting the apocalyptic expectation to a prolonged historical reality.
Topic 9: Misinterpretation of Paul's Rhetoric into Rigid Polarities Paul's complex and often agonistic rhetoric, characterized by contrasting binaries such as Law and gospel, and works and grace, was later simplified and interpreted as rigid, mutually exclusive polarities. His resolute opposition to proselyte circumcision, his anger with apostolic challengers, and his absolute certainty about impending events, once time continued and later gentile churches settled into history, were transformed. What Paul might have understood as nuanced relationships or different aspects of God's plan became stark "either/or" propositions: Law or gospel; works or grace. Paul's later theological proponents often framed his position as a choice between "Judaism or Christianity." The sources emphasize that Paul himself would not have recognized his message in these rigid polarities. He conceived of his mission to pagans as entirely consistent with God's promises to his own people, Israel, and he was unwavering in his belief that he and his assemblies would live to see the realization of those promises.
Topic 10: The Call to Re-evaluate the Historical Paul The sources implicitly and explicitly advocate for a re-evaluation of Paul, urging readers to look beyond the "veils of later ecclesiastical tradition" and popular images of Paul as an ex-Jew or an anti-Jew. Instead, they encourage imagining oneself back into the "full-hearted eschatological conviction" of the movement's founding generation, which truly believed it was history's final generation. By doing so, the "other Paul" can be seen more clearly: Paul as a dynamic, original, and passionately committed visionary from the late Second Temple period. This involves recognizing him as the apostle of the final Davidic messiah, a brilliant student of Jewish law, an expert interpreter of his people's ancient scriptures, a charismatic worker of mighty deeds, a messenger of the Kingdom, and, significantly, the pagans' apostle, whose mission was fully integrated with, rather than antithetical to, his Jewish identity. This perspective aims to restore a more accurate and nuanced understanding of Paul in his original historical and theological context.