2nd Epistle to St Paul – Renegotiating Revelation

“The only thing worse than a tyrant is a tyrant who thinks they’re on a mission from God.”  James Talarico

Dear St Paul,

No doubt you’re a happy bunny up there with the Lord. What with the well-deserved crown of righteousness^[1]2Timothy 4:8 on your head even as I write. Your ministry paid off handsomely. I’m sure you know that you’re as celebrated on earth, even as in heaven. There are more people named after you than are named after Apollo. Your name is emblazoned on Cathedrals from London to Brazil, Rome, Greece and places you didn’t know existed. You sowed and the zeal of the Lord brought abundant increase.

And your words! Those wonderful turn of phrases have shaped our imagination and brought such richness to our thoughts, words, worship, culture and prayer lives. “God loves a cheerful giver”,^[2]2Corinthians 9:7”I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”,^[3]Philippians 4:13 “If God is for us, who can be against us?”^[4]Romans 8:31 “For we walk by faith, not by sight”,^[5]2Corinthians 5:7 “For when I am weak, then I am strong”^[6] 2 Corinthians 12:10 and so on.

I know I’m gushing a bit, but who can help it. You fought a good fight, you finished your course, you kept the faith.^[7]2Timothy 4:7 Never has one person given so much to so many – except for the Lord of course. You earned your stripes, literally and literarily.

However, just as those words have and will continue to endure for another millennia, there are some that have not aged quite so well.  In fact, they ran into stormy weather while you were still down here. In your letter to Timothy, you offered a guidance on how the church might deal with the government. You wrote that:

“For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same.”^[8]Romans 13:3

These words have been employed by all manner of rulers – dictators, tyrants, military junta, slave owners – to justify reigns of terror and to keep their fiefdom. They also quote from your letter to Timothy that all scripture is divinely inspired^[9]2Timothy 3:16 to reinforce the statement in Romans 13:3. These rulers and those who speak for them claim that the words of God confirm that they are appointed by God and whosoever they disenfranchise, injure or kill deserve precisely that. The irony was that those words quickly became your Achilles heel.

Allow me to explain.

I’m sure you remember Nero. He was the Roman Emperor that persecuted the early church because the Roman authorities believed Christianity was a superstition and Christians were troublemakers. According to the historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Nero ordered a fire to clear land for his new palace. The fire grew out of control and Rome was destroyed. Nero used Christians as scapegoat to shift blame from himself. In the purge that followed, Christians were torn by dogs, crucified and burned as torches to light up Nero’s garden at night. Nero killed St Peter and yourself, not for any evil that you did, but because it was convenient for him.

If one were to agree with your epistle, one would have to admit that you were evil, and Nero was appointed by God to behead or crucify those who confessed Jesus Christ as Lord. I’m sure that you would reject such conclusion, though that is the plain reading of your text.

A different approach to your statement might be to consider that you were trying to steer the church away from a collision with the Roman authorities. Such a reading would require one to admit that you did not mean it when you wrote that rulers were divine instruments who only ever punished evildoers. However, this approach would call the integrity of your teachings and perhaps the Bible to question. As you wrote, God is not the author of confusion^[10]1Corinthians14:33.

As impolitic as the latter reading might be, it is closer to the harmony of scripture than the plain reading of your letter. Your statement that “…there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God,^[11]Romans 13:1 is in tension with biblical history.

For instance, following the death of King Ahaziah of Judah, his mother Athaliah killed her grandchildren to seize the throne. Are we to believe that she was ordained by God to kill her grandchildren? My answer to that would be a “No”. We know that she was a usurper as many others in biblical history. That’s why God Almighty lamented that:

“They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not…”^[12]Hosea 8:4

That divine lament is in tension with your epistle. Worse, it undermines the claim by most that the Holy Book is univocal – that is, every scripture from Genesis to Revelation is speaking with one voice.

Kindly forgive me for telling folks that they need to renegotiate the spirit of your statement that there’s no power but of God. I believe you would agree that it has to be understood within the context of the period within which you wrote your epistle. My thinking and approach are not heretical. It’s with following the exhortation that Christ gave in scripture. When an expert in the law asked Jesus how he might secure eternal life:

“He said unto him, What is written in the law? How readest thou?^[13]Luke 10:26

It’s not enough to know, memorise and throw scripture about. How one interacts with revelation is as important as receiving revelation.

There’s also the Chinese whisper effect. As you knew too well being an exegete yourself, scripture did not come down from heaven as one complete bound book. They were scrolls that were passed down the ages through much scribal efforts. Overtime, information breaks down through successive transmission, resulting in cognitive biases and distorted interpretation. God Almighty railed against such scribal corruption of the Word through the Prophet Jeremiah:

“How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us,’ when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie?”^[14]Jeremiah 8:8

However, as folks esteem every jot of your epistles as inerrant, divine revelation, my effort amounts to no more than a fool’s errand. To be sure, I do not set out to take anything away from your immense contribution to the work of salvation. Your dogged devotion to the Lord and the cause of heaven is legendary:

Five times you received forty lashes from the Jews. Three times you were beaten with rods. Once you were stoned. Three times you were shipwrecked; for a night and a day you were adrift at sea; you were on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from your own people, danger from gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked.^[15]2 Corinthians 11:24-27

You were inimitable.

I wouldn’t even dare to question your work. I wish there were an epistler of your calibre, an exegete of your pedigree, to teach the Church how to interpret scripture contextually and effectively. The Church and the world would be better edified.

It’s a load of my chest to write this letter. I hope you indulged me by reading it through. I’m not nearly as prodigious in crafting letters as you were. Neither could I do stuff with ancient texts the way you did. Whatever Gamaliel did with you in his yeshiva was top class. You’re so good that others pretended to be you and sent out letters in your name.^[16]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorship_of_the_Pauline_epistles

I must stop here for now. No doubt I’ll be in touch again. Continue your well-earned rest in the bosom of the Lord. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ remain with you.

Amen.