As we talk about “Jesus vs Paul,” or “taking Jesus much more seriously than we do Paul,” I think we need to remember that the epistles are more than just letters from the apostles to certain people.
For many years, we read the epistles as if they were written directly to us. I still hear people say, “I Corinthians 16 commands us to take an offering every Sunday.” I often point out that it also commands us to hold those collected funds until somebody comes to take them to Jerusalem. Reading the epistles as if they were direct commands to today’s church can cause problems.
I know you’re sick of me saying it, but I think we did a pendulum swing on this one as well. Now we read 1 Corinthians as if it were nothing more than teachings for the Corinthians. We rightly look at the historical context of the original writing but fail to see one other context: the preservation of certain writings of Paul and others.
Paul wrote letters that weren’t saved. We know of at least one letter to the Corinthians that we don’t have (1 Corinthians 5:9). We know that he wrote the church in Laodicea (Colossians 4:16), but we don’t have that letter. Given the duration of his ministry (and the duration of his captivity), it’s probable that Paul wrote numerous other letters. They weren’t saved.
But the church looked at these letters and realized that they had an application far beyond their original context. They saved them and read them regularly for that very reason.
That’s what I see people missing today. They aren’t asking the question: “Why did the early church think this was useful?” That goes for the epistles and it goes for the gospels.
Given my view of inspiration, I think the Holy Spirit was active in guiding the church as to what to preserve and what not to preserve. I’ll have more to say about that in a future post.
For now, let’s recognize that identifying the original situation being addressed is an important step, but it’s not a limiting step in interpretation. The instructions given to the Corinthian church about a limited time special offering still show us the importance of giving sacrificially, the central faith act of taking care of brothers in other countries when they are in need, and even the practicality of a Sunday offering. We can’t just say, “Oh, that was the first century.” We have to look deeper.
In other words, it’s time that the church took Paul way more seriously.
I’d love to have a coffee conversation about this. I think the church has taken Paul both seriously and out of context.
I agree Danny. That’s what I tried to describe above. I think too many people think the two go together, that if you take Paul in context you can’t take him seriously or that if you try to put him in context, you’re not taking him seriously.
I’m afraid too many people today want to take Paul less seriously instead of trying to see what the early church saw in Paul’s writings.
Another problem is prooftexting, which goes along with misreading the epistles as rules. You’ve touched on context, and it sounds like you’ll get into that deeper in the future, so I’ll leave that alone for now. I will say that to understand a letter, we do need to know who it was written to (as you’ve pointed out, those letters are NOT to US), why it was written, the historical context, etc. We also often overlook that a letter is intended to be read as a whole instead of dissected into sound bites. It’s much harder to debate topics when it’s read and used that way, but perhaps that’s why God chose to preserve His Word in this manner instead of a list of rules? Maybe he wants us to listen more and argue less? Letters are written for relationship, rules are written to control.
Thank you Tim and Travis for making the point about “commands” that are not really commands.