Paul the catholic traditionalist
Okay, maybe the title of the post is a slight wind-up. But having come clean on that, I do have a serious point to make. The dominant picture of Paul, particularly among the Churches of the Reformation, is derived from Galatians:
For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:11-12)
Paul, as a charismatically gifted prophet, has no time for human traditions and neither, so the implication goes, should we. We may lack his direct revelation, but we have Scripture in its place, and so we can resolutely oppose all those who claim tradition, and follow instead in the apostle’s footsteps. In its Bultmannian form this goes further and makes Paul entirely uninterested even in the traditions about Jesus: all that matters is the saving Christ-event, and its interpretation existentially revealed from heaven.
One might think that Bultmann and the evangelicals were miles apart, but on this they are remarkably close. “You ask me how I know he lives: he lives within my heart”, never mind five hundred witnesses transmitting the tradition of the resurrection. And so (to continue in full hyperbolic ranting caricature mode for one more sentence 
) the more people talk about “the gospel,” the less likely they are to pay attention to the gospels.
But consider the picture of Paul from 1 Corinthians:
- He appeals to a saying of Jesus for ethical guidance: “To the married I give this command– not I but the Lord– that the wife should not separate from her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:10 NRSV) And, despite all those who assert the readiness of the early Church simply to make up saying of Jesus, we should note how sharply Paul distinguishes his own advice from the sayings tradition.
- He appeals to a saying of Jesus to discuss his own apostolic practice: (possibly to draw some force for it being used against him): “the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14 NRSV). Here he notes that he could insist on his right as the Lord’s command to them to support him, but that he freely offers them his ministry.
- He appeals to church tradition (which is also Jesus’ teaching) to regulate liturgical practice: “For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread … (1 Corinthians 11:23 NRSV) So what he demands of them is rooted in the traditions that are passed on, originating with Jesus, received through the apostles, given to Corinth as part of Paul’s founding of the church there, and fundamental to its life.
- He appeals to church tradition for a basic summary of the faith, and witness to the resurrection: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures … (1 Corinthians 15:3 NRSV) and is actually able to equate this handed on tradition with “the good news that I proclaimed to you” (15:1).
- He appeals to the sensus fidelium: “But if anyone is disposed to be contentious– we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God” (1 Corinthians 11:16 NRSV) Admittedly this appears to be when he has some sense of not making the world’s most coherent argument, and may represent a fall-back position, but it is still one he can make quite readily.
Where in all this is the Paul who rejects the Church’s common traditions? Perhaps it is the polemical sharpness of Galatians that should be read through the lens of the more discursive Corinthians, and not the other way round. Galatians represents Paul’s approach to one very particular and drastic situation. Corinthians shows him working across a range of problems. Nor can we easily speak about a developing view. When it comes to the respective dating of the two letters scholars are divided: either they were written fairly close together in the mid-50s (on a North Galatian hypothesis) or Galatians may be the earlier by some years, with Corinthians representing a more mature and considered view (on a South Galatian hypothesis – to which I incline). But at the very least, it would seem that Paul’s obvious concern for the tradition needs to balance his sense of immediate revelation in the way that we regard him.
October 7th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Thanks for warning us of the windup. But your post here packs a punch that should make protest-ants (and catholics) like Paul and Jesus more.
You do seem to depart here from your earlier comments around Galatians 5:12 and your comments around Paul’s distancing himself from his past personal investment in the “traditions” by using the dirty s-word, skubala.
October 7th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Paul’s dirty s-word is in Philippians, but there it refers to the Pharisaic traditions and ancestral privileges he had previously gloried in, not to the traditions about Jesus, so I don’t see a conflict here.
October 8th, 2007 at 12:54 am
I’m a Protestant, but mostly I agree with the point you’re making here. The passage about Paul receiving his message directly from the Lord is apt to mislead. We might begin with the fact that he was familiar with Christian preaching — e.g., that of Stephen — before his Damascus Road experience. Clearly he knew something about the gospel: he had enough information to conclude that the Way had to be destroyed!
There on Damascus Road, Paul had a direct encounter with the risen Lord. Therefore he did not have to rely on tradition to prove the authenticity of Christ’s resurrection.
But I think Paul means something more than that. Paul had a somewhat idiosyncratic understanding of the Gospel, which he summed up as justification by grace / faith apart from works of the law. It was that distinctive perspective that set him apart as the apostle to the gentiles.
Galatians is specifically about that issue: the Galatians were turning aside from Paul’s distinctive gospel to another gospel. I believe Paul was saying that his particular understanding of the way of salvation came to him in a revelation directly from the risen Lord, not from any human authority. (It’s also clear from Gal. 2 that Paul was in conflict with the Jerusalem authorities at the time of writing, and therefore he felt obliged to argue that their opinion wasn’t the last word on doctrine.)
But this does not mean that Paul was closed to the broader traditions of the church, concerning things such as the eucharist or the Lord’s prohibition of divorce.
Also, I don’t mean to imply that Paul’s message of justification by faith put him permanently offside with the rest of the church. It is clear, however, that initially he faced hostility and even persecution for teaching against circumcision and sabbath days.
There you are — a decidedly Protestant take on the texts you discuss here.
October 9th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
I see Saul the catholic traditionalist who, like Jesus, rejected man-made traditions which went against the word of God (Mark 7:13) and went back to his Bible and the teaching of Jesus, thus becoming a radical Protestant who might have been most at home in the modern Anabaptist tradition.
October 9th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Peter, may I recommend an optician to help you with this sight defect?