If libraries in your town are anything like libraries in mine, they give more shelf space to secular than to religious subjects. Accordingly, I was surprised to find Fr. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor’s book, Paul: His Story
(Oxford University Press, 2004) displayed among new nonfiction recently.
The “I Got You, Babe” Fallacy
Murphy-O’Connor’s book is a biography, and reading it got me thinking about how misunderstood Paul has been. Because I sometimes think in musical terms, it then occurred to me that some Pauline myths can be summarized in song titles.
Although his purpose was to convey a sense of Paul’s life and mission rather than to defend Christian faith or otherwise engage in apologetics, Murphy-O’Connor gently puts the lie to at least three such fallacies.
Some of the people who denounce “patriarchy” in the Church think Paul condescended to women, because of his famous words to the Ephesians about how wives should be obedient to their husbands. The same people usually forget that Paul does not leave husbands off the hook, and that he praises Eurodia and Synctyche, two women of the church at Philippi, for having “striven side-by-side with me in the Gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life” (Phil 4:2-3).
Murphy-O’Connor observes that the verb Paul used to describe the activity of those women “has given us ‘athlete’ and ‘athletic.’” Contrary to his reputation among disgruntled feminists, Paul took it for granted that, as Christians, women were fully equal to men.
The “My Way” Fallacy
Heard the one about how Jesus preached a gentle Gospel that Paul inadvertently warped with his own hang-ups? Maybe not. Other writers have already put that myth to rest, so it’s not getting what disc jockeys would call “heavy rotation” anymore. But this book does debunk the arguably more popular misconception that Paul was closer in spirit to John Calvin than to Simon Peter.
A Protestant friend advanced this “Paul as a proto-Protestant” argument while talking with me recently. He interprets Romans 5:1 (“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”) as vindicating the “faith alone” view famously championed by sixteenth-century Reformers. My friend also takes Paul’s mid- and late-life disdain for works performed according to Mosaic Law as a blanket condemnation of all works, which of course is not the Catholic view.
In reply to such reasoning, the Church points to verses like Philippians 2:12. The Church also warns that the “proof-texting” approach to scripture usually robs passages of necessary context.
As Peter noted in a letter of his own, Paul’s preaching sometimes confused people (2 Pt 3:13-15). The Thessalonians, for example, reasoned that because belief in Jesus made their salvation certain, they could sin with impunity. Paul was forced to correct that misunderstanding in a follow-up letter that he made a point of assuring his audience was not forged (2 Thes 3:17).
Murphy-O’Connor uses one of the controversies that dogged Paul’s ministry to paint a vivid picture of how he was vexed by his tendency to focus on one point at a time without considering its implications:
“In the circumcision debate, Paul’s one concern was to avoid circumcising his Gentile converts,” he writes. To that end, he preached faith, rather than adherence to Mosaic Law, which famously includes prescriptions that govern the preparation of meals and the interaction between Jews and Gentiles. This permitted Paul’s rivals “to draw the simple and obvious conclusion that social contacts, and particularly table fellowship, between Jewish and Gentile believers were irrelevant.”
The Eucharist we celebrate today would be different had Paul’s critics been right, but as Murphy-O’Connor points out, downplaying the importance of table fellowship as a consequence of placing stress on faith alone was not at all what Paul meant to convey. The Judaizing controversy (symbolized by arguments over circumcision and table fellowship) persisted and finally involved even Peter, who came to visit the church in Antioch about which Paul had given such good reports (Gal 2:1-14). But by then it was too late for Paul to explain that what he really meant to emphasize was the remarkably Catholic idea of “faith working through love,” per Galatians 5:6 and the Letter of James.
The “Dueling Banjos” Fallacy
As the “My Way” paragraphs were meant to imply, you’re more likely to find an automatic teller machine in Middle Earth than to successfully defend the proposition that Paul’s argument with Peter (mentioned above) undercuts the Catholic understanding of papal infallibility. What frustrated Paul was not the Gospel that he and Peter both preached, but Peter’s decision to side with the practice of the struggling Jewish church in Jerusalem rather than the practice of the thriving Gentile church in Antioch.
Peter — the Rock — did what he thought was most necessary, and was rebuked by the man who had studied at his feet for fifteen days after meeting the risen Christ on the road to Damascus years before. In other words, Paul was angry with Peter for making a pastoral choice that he himself would not have made.
We honor both men because in spite of their differences, they preached the same Gospel with one accord. When Paul writes about the Last Supper, for example, he makes clear that he is handing on a tradition that he also received.
Ironically, many of the people who regard Paul as a proto-Protestant prefer empty crosses to Catholic crucifixes and this in spite of the fact that Paul, who met and believed in the risen Jesus, nevertheless preached “Christ and Him crucified.”
Here, too, Murphy-O’Connor taught me a lot, by explaining that the manner in which Jesus died was important to Paul because it revealed the depth of God’s self-sacrificing love for us. “If someone on whom death had no claim had actually died, then that person must have chosen to die,” writes Murphy-O’Connor about Paul’s foundational insight.
Note how well that insight fits with Peter's own experience of Christ's love. Paul did not have the privilege of having spent three years with Jesus, but recognized divine love in Christ's willingness to endure death on a cross for us. Peter grasped the same truth by remembering how Jesus had forgiven his threefold denial by three times telling him after the Resurrection to “feed my sheep” (Jn 12:15-17). In musical terms, although Christ the conductor found them in different places playing different instruments, Peter and Paul played from the same score.
As smarter commentators have said, the relationship between the saints might be described as symphonic. About the odds of finding such insight in a public library, the same commentators are silent. But Murhpy-O'Connor's book is one to which I was called, if only because there is always more to learn about Paul's rightful place in that wonderful orchestra we call the Body of Christ.
[Editor's Note: To get your copy of Paul: His Story click here.]
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Patrick O'Hannigan is a technical writer and self-described “paragraph farmer” in California. His commentary has appeared in New Oxford Review, The American Spectator Online and New Times (San Luis Obispo), among other places.
