The reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans appointed for today falls under a subtitle: Results of Justification. It reads ”Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.”
It is important when we reading the letters that we try to seek out a context—what do we think was going on in the various communities? The letters are complex and cannot be read simply like yesterday’s email.
Unfortunately this complex sentence is typical of much of the writing of Paul whose letters were often written in response to questions from the various communities he visited. However, the questions themselves remain a mystery.
Now justification could mean ‘saved’ or ‘forgiven our sins’ or ‘reconciled to God’ or ‘brought to wholeness’. And the question might have been ‘How do we earn God’s favour?’, most likely in response to a question about sacrifices, worship, or doing good deeds. Paul wants to emphasize that God freely gives salvation/reconciliation, if in fact we have faith/trust in God.
As to good works, the letter to James reminds us that ‘faith without works is dead’— that is, if we say we have faith, then we will want to respond with good deeds like feeding the hungry, visiting the lonely, freeing the oppressed etc.
It is not a case that the Letter to the Romans and the Letter to James (author unknown) are in disagreement—they are, in fact, discussing similar things such as how we must be open to God’s grace working in our lives and how a person of faith can respond to such grace.
It is important when we reading the letters that we try to seek out a context—what do we think was going on in the various communities? The letters are complex and cannot be read simply like yesterday’s email.
It is a fact that Christianity from the 4th Century onward mostly revolves around the teachings of Saint Paul. He found himself in situation of being the expert on how to do Christianity when he, himself, had minimal exposure to the teachings of Jesus. Paul would have been influenced by his own previous Jewish religious training. This would explain, for example, his use of the Jewish sacrifice of the lamb as the model for explaining the Roman execution of Jesus as the lamb who died to take on the sins of all mankind. Later on the Gospel writers picked up the same ideas.
Paul used the idea of atonement and bloodshed as salvific, as his exclusive reason for the execution of Jesus; whereas the Gospels point to Jesus’ radical teachings that upset both the Jewish religious establishment and the Roman rulers as the reason for his execution.
Paul wrote his letters before the Gospels were written. He had to think on his feet as he travelled about the Middle East. He was not a philosopher or theologian, but an itinerant preacher/pastor. Because he spent little time in Israel after his ‘conversion’, he did not know Jesus (who was dead by this time) or much of Jesus’s teaching about love, compassion, and the Beatitudes (blessed are the poor, blessed are the peacemakers and so on).
One commentator wrote that Paul did the best he could with what he knew and experienced. He had no idea how his writing would impact the development of Christianity or why the early church would turn his writings into the infallible Word of God for all humankind.
I find it sad that things like the historical creeds adopted their theology from the letter writing of one person. Though the imagery he presented was powerful, it does not set out the whole story. For example, the creeds make no reference to Jesus’s message or teaching about love, compassion, justice and mercy.
Christianity represented by the official theological positions and doctrines of the Church (Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Greek Orthodox) have very little of the teaching of Jesus in them or basis in the Jesus of history (Jim Palmer, Inner Anarchy).
In our time, through research, we can learn to appreciate the contribution of Paul without deifying his writings and recognize that following Jesus neither begins nor ends there.
I found an interesting quote that is, perhaps, pertinent to what I have written. “Before religion made it all about what we believe, Jesus was all about how we love”. (Susan Cottrell, Freedhearts.Org)