NEWS & VIEWS
Two Perspectives on St. Paul

The National Pastoral Life Center celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary not only with the customary Mass, banquet, and honors for special guests, but also with a symposium celebrating the international Year of St. Paul, all at the Church of St. Paul in Manhattan.

Oscar Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga, sdb, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, spoke of St. Paul as “A Man of Many Cultures,” and Father Robert Schreiter, C.PP.S., of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, spoke on being, like St. Paul, ambassadors of reconciliation for Christ’s sake.

The cardinal portrayed St. Paul as a man comfortable in several languages and with many kinds of people, and so able to preach the good news to Jews and Gentiles alike. Paul’s first language was Greek, the international language of his time and region, but he also knew Hebrew, Aramaic, and possibly Latin. Paul himself wrote that God had especially prepared him for his ministry to the world beyond Israel by allowing him to become, for his time and place, an international man.

Cardinal Rodríguez said that the cultural pluralism of the world today poses challenges to the church, including the growth of ethical and religious relativism. But he said it also opens the door to personal freedom and conscientious religious choice. The atmosphere calls for better religious formation for the laity, so they may “have clear evangelical discernment when confronting the present pluralism.”

Educated in Judaism

Paul was, first and foremost, a Jew, and a Jew deeply devoted to and highly educated in his faith. But he was born in the diaspora, that is, outside the territory of the Holy Land. Jews of the diaspora, the cardinal suggested, may have had to be at least somewhat open to people and cultures that thought and acted differently from them. An example of that was Paul’s name: among Jews he was Saul, presumably in memory of the first king in the history of the Jews, but he also was called Paul as an adaptation to his non-Jewish neighbors.

He was raised in Tarsus, a major city with a predominantly Greek culture. The different schools of philosophical thought that flourished in Tarsus, including the Stoics and the Cynics, influenced the language and teaching of St. Paul, as did the practices of various religions and such realities of the Roman empire as slave markets.

Nevertheless, Paul’s education was thoroughly Jewish. He would have been taught the basics of Judaism first at home by his father. Then there would have been years of study at the local synagogue.

At fifteen, the cardinal said, he probably moved to Jerusalem to continue his studies to “reach the highest academic level in the Jewish world” and become a rabbi.

Under the tutelage of the eminent scholar Gamaliel, Paul learned the laws of Judaism and also the theological truths found in Jewish Scripture and tradition. At some point Paul joined the movement of the Pharisees, a group devoted to scrupulously following not only the laws written in the Scriptures, but also the laws and customs found in oral tradition. Cardinal Rodríguez quoted the letter to the Galatians, in which Paul said, “I was ahead of most other Jews of my age in my practice of the Jewish religion, and was much more devoted to the traditions of our ancestors.” So he was profoundly knowledgeable of about the culture, the faith, and the traditions of the Jewish people. But he also knew and recognized the cultural values of the non-Jews among whom he had lived his life, and this multicultural sensitivity made his unique ministry possible.

Cardinal Rodríguez noted St. Paul’s concern for unity in the church, which "consists of many diverse members who come together in the unity of the Body of Christ" (I Cor. 12.12-27). "There should be no division in the body" (12.25), we are warned, so that generational differences, like those of "ethnicity, race, gender or social class" (Gal. 3:28), must not be allowed to get in the way of the unity we have in Jesus Christ.

“There are different generations, but they are all equally in need of Christ. The church is the place where generational differences are to be transcended, not reinforced; where ephemeral fashions and cultural distinctions are subsumed into an eternal perspective, into a kingdom which ‘endures from generation to generation’” (Daniel 4.34). Only a church that resists being merely of one generation can be “relevant to them all,” the cardinal said.

Reconciliation

Father Schreiter said that there are many stories of reconciliation in the Bible, but St. Paul is the one who writes most explicitly about it. Scholars suggest, he said, that Paul’s own experience of Christ on the road to Damascus was key to his understanding of reconciliation.

Whatever else happened, Paul turned from being a persecutor of Jewish Christians to being a member of their community and accepting the teaching about Jesus that had developed up to that time. It was a life-changing event, an experience of forgiveness of his own sins, a reconciliation based in the fact stated in Romans 5:8, “for while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Rather than judgment, he feels an overwhelming graciousness and forgiveness, not about rules and practices as his Pharisaic background would have taught him, but “an encounter with a living person.” A whole new way of reckoning is being introduced. Reconciliation is not about law or negotiation but about being made utterly new.

“Reconciliation here is clearly God’s work. It is not something we have merited or achieved. It is something graciously bestowed on us...and is now a ministry of reconciliation that has been entrusted by God to us,” Father Schreiter said. Paul preaches this message to both Jews and Gentiles, although in somewhat different ways.

In the contemporary world, Father Schreiter said, the notion of reconciliation “has become increasingly attenuated as it comes to be used more and more.” Often, he said, it amounts to wrongdoers not being held accountable for what they have done, precluding the pursuit of justice.

“All of this diminishes the powerful message of reconciliation as Paul understood it. Reconciliation is about real engagement with real problems, taking them and all who are involved in them seriously.” In civil polarity and international strife, “we need to learn to see paradox.” Our vision of a peaceful future “must have room for our enemies as well as ourselves. We need to come to realize that peace is less a mechanical construction than a creative act,” rarely linear and dealing with sometimes messy human relationships and encounters.

Father Schreiter concluded his talk with discussion of the work of the NPLC in helping to bring about a church that is a community of reconciliation. “If one looks back over the many things that the NPLC has tried to undertake for the sake of the church in the past twenty-five years, we can recognize how it has sought to strengthen the memory and sustain the hope of a community struggling with divisions and conflicts, yet seeking to be something more.”

The two main talks of the symposium were followed by responses from Thomas Beaudoin and Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, both of Fordham, and a lively question and answer period. The symposium was co-sponsored by Fordham University’s School of Religion and Religious Education.