times in all his authentic letters? (And two of those appear in the hymn from
Philippians 2:10–11, which presumably he did not write.) In recent centuries,
Christians have largely read him as if he was focused on what it takes for
individuals to “go to heaven” and avoid hell. But Paul never once talks about our
notion of hell! Most people fail to notice that. He would have agreed with Jesus,
I think, that humans are punished by their sins more than for their sins.
Goodness is its own reward, and evil is its own punishment—although the
thought and language of that period led most people to ascribe final causality to
God.
If you look at all Paul’s texts on evil or “the problem,” you see that sin for
Paul was actually a combination of group blindness or corporate illusion, and
the powerlessness of the individual to stand against it (Romans 7:14ff.) along
with systemic evil (Ephesians 6:12 and Colossians 1:16ff.). Evil is not just
individual nastiness. “Our battle is not against human forces, but the
Sovereignties and Powers that originate in the darkness, the spirits of evil in the
air” (Ephesians 6:12). We now see that these systems (corporations, nation-
states, institutions) have a life of their own, and are usually unaccountable to
reason or even law—as much as we try to make them accountable. The ancients
were not naïve about such things.
Paul seems to have believed humans are caught in a double bind, and he was
convinced that only corporate goodness could ever stand up to corporate evil—
thus his emphasis on community building and “church.” This is probably why
Paul is often called the “founder of the church,” and why he expected and
hoped for so much from those first Christian communities. He was the proud
parent of “children” and exemplars, whom he wanted to show off to the pagans.
This admittedly often makes him look didactic and moralistic, which many do
not like. But remember, the greater light you are, the greater shadow you cast.
And Paul is a huge light.
What Paul calls “sin” and personifies as “Adam” or the “old man” (Romans
5:12ff., 1 Corinthians 15:21ff.), many of us today might call the “human
tragedy.” Whatever term you use, Paul believed Christ named the normal
human situation as an entrapment, even a slavery, and, like Jesus, Paul tried to
give us a way out of what he saw as ephemeral, passing, oppressive, and finally
illusory. His vision was not cosmetic but revolutionary, and we miss that if we
make him into a mere moralizer or “church man.”
I would insist that the foundation of Jesus’s social program is what I will call
non-idolatry, or the withdrawing of your enthrallment from all kingdoms