Quotes about Paul

Paul doesn't call followers of Jesus "Christians." He calls them "in Christ." That isn't the easiest thing to understand, let alone explain, but it suggests an intimacy with Jesus that defies words. That intimacy also includes—somehow—suffering.

If there is any cure for thinking of the Bible as a once-told-forever-binding source of information about God and his people, Paul is it. For

Paul is "our guy," and we Protestants continue to expect from him clear direction about what to believe and what to do. And Paul certainly seems to oblige. He has that alluring black-and-white, decisive, uncompromising "just do what I say" quality that some of us just can't get enough of. It's almost as if Paul's letters have become the Protestant version of the Law.

Paul would agree, to a certain extent. He did not think that Jesus was the founder of a new religion, rather the concluding, surprise chapter to Israel's story.

Sticking to the Bible at every turn, like it's an owner's manual or book of instruction, as the way to know God misses what Paul and the rest of the New Testament writers show us again and again: the words on the page of the Bible don't drive the story, Jesus does. Jesus is bigger than the Bible. For

We should feel free to see a tension in Paul's thinking, a paradox as I mentioned earlier: what God has done in Jesus is deeply connected to Israel's story while at the same time breaking out of the confines of that story. As soon as we try to resolve that paradox in Paul we will misunderstand him.

Zehr, Paul M. Biblical Criticism in the Life of the Church. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 1986.

To see what Paul sees, Christians today are summoned to join Paul: the reality of Jesus demands that the Old Testament be read not by the book, but against the grain.

N. T. Wright's Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision or What Paul Really Said.

Paul transforms a tribal story, of kings, land, and the purity of one group of people, into a global story of God's grace and peace to all nations. As famously confusing as Paul's letters are, if we keep this in mind, a lot of what Paul says will make more sense—such as the following.

When the brothers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.

Then Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked directly at Elymas