Paul, St (d. probably AD 62–5), ‘Apostle of the Gentiles’. Born at
Tarsus, the future St Paul, originally ‘Saul’, was a Jew, said by Acts to possess Roman citizenship. He was brought up as a
Pharisee and perhaps studied at
Jerusalem under
Gamaliel (so Acts 22: 3). Coming into contact with the new ‘Way’ of the followers of Jesus, he persecuted the Church. Acts 9: 1–2 represents him as authorized by the High Priest to arrest converts in
Damascus. On the way there he was himself converted.
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OURCES. The account in Acts of Paul's activities has been widely challenged. The primary source for his life and missionary work are the seven letters generally agreed to be authentic: Rom., 1 and 2 Cor., Gal., Phil., 1 Thess., and Philem., all except 1 Thess. and possibly Gal. written within a few years of each other in the mid-50s. Col. and 2 Thess. are doubtful; Eph. is widely thought to stem from a gifted follower; and the
Pastorals are almost certainly later. There is no reliable evidence for his life after the period covered by Acts, beyond early witness to his martyrdom under
Nero. Some sources assume that he visited
Spain, perhaps on the basis of Rom. 15.
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ISSION. Paul's conversion can be dated
c.AD 33. He saw a vision of the risen Lord Jesus (1 Cor. 9: 1) on which he implies that his call and status as an
apostle rested (1 Cor. 15: 8f.). It seems from Gal. 1: 16 that from the outset his mission was to the Gentiles, though a few have questioned this. He went to Arabia, back to Damascus, and three years later to Jerusalem, where he came to know St Peter and St
James, and then on to Syria and Cilicia. The next 14 years include his journey with St
Barnabas from
Antioch to Cyprus, Pamphylia, S. Galatia and back, described in Acts 13–14. They may also (contrary to Acts) include his travels with
Silas and
Timothy through Phrygia and N. Galatia (cf. Acts 16: 6), Troas, and Greece. On his second visit to Jerusalem, the so-called council allowed Paul to continue his Gentile mission on condition that he raised funds for the Jerusalem Church, but some Jewish Christians continued to oppose him.
Around AD 50–52 he spent 18 months in
Corinth; the reference in Acts 18: 12–17 to
Gallio allows this to be dated with some confidence. The next major centre of his activity was
Ephesus, where he remained for 2–3 years. He went to Macedonia and Achaia (probably Corinth) in 56–7 before his final visit to Jerusalem, with representatives of his Gentile congregations, bringing the ‘collection’. The most disruptive issue that Paul faced in this period came from missionaries visiting his congregations and persuading his converts to observe the Jewish law. Gal. provides an angry, but reasoned response. For Paul the vital question was whether the Jerusalem Church would finally accept his law-free Gentile mission. His concern was well founded. However ‘gladly’ (Acts 21: 17) the Church in Jerusalem welcomed Paul and his Gentile party with their gift, it was apparently a proposal of James that led to his arrest. There followed trials before the
Sanhedrin and the Roman governor in
Caesarea and two years’ imprisonment. On appealing to Caesar, Paul was sent to Rome as a prisoner. After shipwreck, he probably arrived in AD 60, and spent two further years under house arrest.
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HEOLOGY. Paul was a phrase-maker, who wrote rhetorically powerful and theologically profound letters. His insistence that Christ rather than the Law was decisive for believers in their relationship to God made the separation of Christianity from main-stream Judaism inevitable. He maintained his earlier beliefs about God and the revelation of God in the Law and the Prophets, but the new factor was what God was doing now. Having sent His Son, God was rescuing Gentiles as well as Jews from the present evil age by transferring them into the age to come. This dawned with the resurrection of the crucified
Messiah and would soon transform the world. The decisive factor in Paul's messianic Judaism was the arrival and identity of the Messiah, ‘Jesus Christ our Lord’, whose death he understood as a sacrifice and whose resurrection was the first-fruits and beginning of the general resurrection inaugurating the new creation. Believers are through Baptism (symbolically) united with Him, incorporated into Him, and so are ‘in Christ’. Those who have been baptized ‘into’ Christ have received the
Holy Spirit, who both sheds the love of God in the believer's heart and bears fruit in love, joy, peace, etc. Paul's picture of human existence outside Christ is negative: the world is under judgement and needs God's liberating intervention. Jews and Gentiles alike are in the same predicament and rescued in the same way—by faith in Christ.
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NFLUENCE. Paul's hope for the ultimate inclusion of Israel was soon lost, but his refusal to submit Gentile converts to
circumcision contributed to the success of the Christian mission outside Jerusalem. The collection of his surviving letters and their inclusion in Christian Scripture gave him a different kind of influence; his rhetoric helped to shape the faith of millions who did not understand his arguments. His polemical contrast between the old and the new ways of salvation exercised a vast influence on St
Augustine's anti-
Pelagian doctrine of
grace, on M.
Luther's doctrine of
justification by faith alone, and J.
Calvin's belief in
predestination. It indirectly supported the modern tendency to make humanity the centre of theology.
A joint feast of S S Peter and Paul is observed in E. and W. on 29 June, in addition to the feast of the
Conversion of St Paul on 25 Jan. in the W. A further commemoration of St Paul on 30 June was dropped from the RC calendar in 1969.
