Church Maintenance Paul’s westward drive was countered by a consider-
able retarding force, namely, the ongoing “daily pressure because of [his]
anxiety for all [his] churches” (2 Cor. 11:28; on the determinative role played
by these “two opposed currents” at work in Paul’s missionary compulsions,
see Bornkamm 1971, 57). No hit-and-run evangelist, Paul evidently felt that
ensuring the ongoing viability and loyalty of his congregations was part of
his apostolic responsibility. This had obvious effects on his travels (see, e.g.,
2 Cor. 1:15–17; 2:1–2), and probably had the side effect, as well, of opening
up new areas of work (cf. 2 Cor. 2:12).
Personal Factors Everything mentioned to this point had a personal dimen-
sion, of course. But, in addition, we can note several instances where Paul’s
choice of territory was influenced by factors of a more purely personal
nature. In Galatians 4:13–15, he refers in passing to a physical ailment that
somehow created the occasion for his preaching to the Galatians. In addi-
tion, there is presumably some connection between his lengthy time in
Cilicia (and Syria; Gal. 1:21–2:1) and Paul’s reported origins in Tarsus (Acts
9:11; 21:39; 22:3). Finally—a point to be developed further in the next sec-
tion—there are good reasons to believe that it was his first brush with
mortality (2 Cor. 1:8–11) that spurred Paul on to the west.
This catalogue is not exhaustive. Undoubtedly there were additional fac-
tors at work in determining the territorial dimensions of Paul’s mission
(e.g., the presence of Jewish communities). But this is sufficient to illus-
trate the degree to which the actual shape of Paul’s mission was deter-
mined by very mundane realities.
Between the Vision and the Realities
My thesis is that the geographical shape of Paul’s missionary activity is to be
seen as emerging between two poles: his grand vision of a mission among all
the nations to the end of the earth, and the gritty realities impinging on an
itinerant Christian missionary in the first century CERoman world. It remains
to say something about the nature of the interplay between the two.
On the one hand, it is not possible to see the actual shape of the mis-
sion simply as the outworking of a coherent strategy arising from the vision.
The vision that occasionally can be glimpsed, especially in Paul’s need to
present the evangelization of the east as complete (Rom. 15:19, 23) and in
his drive toward Spain, is much too grand in scope (grandiose, even) for
anyone to think realistically of fulfilling it, especially with the expectation
of Christ’s imminent parousiaas a component part. Further, the length of
time spent in Syria and Cilicia suggests that there was no westward terri-
torial imperative from the outset (Bornkamm 1971, 49).