Churches of St. Paul the Apostle

Although Paul may have converted some Jews, his mission was directed toward the Gentiles, who therefore constituted the vast majority of his converts. The letters sometimes explicitly state that Paul’s converts had been polytheists or idolaters: the Thessalonians had “turned to God from idols” (1 Thessalonians 1:9), and at least some of the Corinthians wished to be allowed to continue to participate in idolatrous worship (1 Corinthians 8, 10). (Scholars have referred to Gentile religions in the ancient Mediterranean world as “paganism,” “polytheism,” and “idolatry”; these terms are frequently used interchangeably.) Pagan religion was very tolerant: the gods of foreign traditions were accepted as long as they were added to the gods worshipped locally. Civic loyalty, however, included participation in public worship of the local gods. Jews had the privilege of worshipping only the God of Israel, but everyone else was expected to conform to local customs.

Paul and other missionaries to Gentiles were subject to criticism, abuse, and punishment for drawing people away from pagan cults. Although he showed some flexibility on eating food that had been offered to an idol (1 Corinthians 10:23–30), Paul, a monotheistic Jew, was completely opposed to worship of the idol by eating and drinking in the confines of a pagan temple (1 Corinthians 10:21–22). Thus, his converts had to give up public worship of the local gods. Moreover, since Paul’s converts did not become Jewish, they were, in general opinion, nothing: neither Jew nor pagan. Religiously, they could identify only with one another, and frequently they must have wavered because of their isolation from well-established and popular activities. It was especially difficult for them to refrain from public festivities, since parades, feasts (including free red meat), theatrical performances, and athletic competitions were all connected to pagan religious traditions.

This social isolation of the early converts intensified their need to have rewarding spiritual experiences within the Christian communities, and Paul attempted to respond to this need. Although they had to wait with patience and endure suffering (1 Thessalonians 1:6; 2:14; 3:4), and although salvation from the pains of this life lay in the future (5:6–11), in the present, Paul said, his followers could rejoice in spiritual gifts, such as healing, prophesying, and speaking in tongues (1 Corinthians 12–14). In fact, Paul saw Christians as beginning to be transformed even before the coming resurrection: the new person was beginning to replace the old (2 Corinthians 3:8; 4:16).

Although he placed his converts in a situation that was often uncomfortable, Paul did not ask them to believe many things that would be conceptually difficult. The belief that there was only one true God had a place within pagan philosophy, if not pagan religion, and was intellectually satisfying. By the 1st century, many pagans found Greek mythology lacking in intellectual and moral content, and replacing it with the Hebrew Bible was therefore not especially difficult. The belief that God sent his Son agreed with the widespread view that gods could produce human offspring. The activities of the Holy Spirit in their lives corresponded to the common view that spiritual forces control nature and events.

The teaching of the resurrection of the body, however, was difficult for pagans to embrace, despite the fact that life after death was generally accepted. Pagans who believed in the immortality of the soul maintained that the soul escaped at death; the body, they knew, decayed. To meet this problem, Paul proclaimed that the resurrection body would be a “spiritual body,” not “flesh and blood” (1 Corinthians 15:42–55); see below The return of the Lord and the resurrection of the dead.

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Moral teachings

Although Paul recognized the possibility that after death he would be punished for minor faults (1 Corinthians 4:4), he regarded himself as living an almost perfect life (Philippians 3:6), and he demanded the same perfection of his converts. Paul wanted them to be “blameless,” “innocent,” and “without blemish” when the Lord returned (1 Thessalonians 3:13; 4:3–7; 5:23; Philippians 1:10; 2:15; Romans 16:19). Paul regarded suffering and premature death as punishment for those who sinned (1 Corinthians 5:5; 11:29–32) but did not believe that punishment of the sinning Christian meant damnation or eternal destruction. He thought that those who believed in Christ became one person with him and that this union was not broken by ordinary transgression. Paul did regard it as possible, however, for people to lose or completely betray their faith in Christ and thus lose membership in his body, which presumably would lead to destruction at the Judgment (Romans 11:22; 1 Corinthians 3:16–17; 2 Corinthians 11:13–15).

Paul’s moral standards coincided with the strictest view of Jewish communities in the Greek-speaking Diaspora (the dispersal of the Jews from their traditional homeland). Paul, like his Jewish contemporaries the scholar and historian Flavius Josephus and the philosopher Philo Judaeus, completely opposed a long list of sexual practices: prostitution and the use of prostitutes (1 Corinthians 6:15–20), homosexual activities (1 Corinthians 6:9; Romans 1:26–27), sexual relations before marriage (1 Corinthians 7:8–9), and marriage merely for the sake of gratifying physical desire (1 Thessalonians 4:4–5). However, he urged married partners to continue to have sexual relations except during times set aside for prayer (1 Corinthians 7:3–7). These ascetic views were not unknown in Greek philosophy, but they were standard in Greek-speaking Jewish communities, and it is probable that Paul acquired them in his youth. Some pagan philosophers, meanwhile, were more inclined than Paul to limit sexual desire and pleasure. For example, the Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus (flourished 1st century ce) wished to restrict marital sexual relations to the production of offspring.

Some aspects of Jewish sexual ethics were not generally accepted among the Gentiles to whom Paul preached. Sexual behaviour, therefore, became a substantial issue between him and his converts, and for that reason his letters frequently refer to sexual ethics. His other moral views were as simple and straightforward to ancient readers as to modern: no murder, no theft, and so on. To all of these issues he brought his own expectation of perfection, which his converts often found difficult to satisfy.

Paul’s opposition to homosexual activity (1 Corinthians 6:9; Romans 1:26–27) and divorce were generally in keeping with Jewish sexual ethics. Male homosexual activity is condemned in the Hebrew Bible in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13—teachings that Christianity followed, thanks in part to Paul, even as it disregarded most of the laws of Leviticus. Jesus’ prohibition of divorce, along with his view that remarriage after divorce, if the first spouse is still living, is adultery (Mark 10:2–12; Matthew 19:3–9), set him apart from most other Jews and Gentiles. Paul accepted the prohibition but made an exception in the case of Christians who were married to non-Christians (1 Corinthians 7:10–16). The consequence has been that, in some forms of Christianity, the only ground for divorce is adultery by the other partner. Until the 20th century the laws of many state and national governments reflected this view.

Two distinctive aspects of Paul’s moral teachings have been very influential in the history of Christianity and thus in the history of the Western world. The first is his preference for total celibacy: “It is well for a man not to touch a woman” (1 Corinthians 7:1). This view may have been a personal matter for Paul (7:6–7), and it was an opinion that he did not attempt to enforce on his churches. He was motivated in part by the belief that time was short: it would be good if people devoted themselves entirely to God during the brief interval before the Lord returned (7:29–35). Paul’s preference for celibacy, in combination with Jesus’ praise of those who do not marry (Matthew 19:10–12), helped to establish in Western Christianity a two-tiered system of morality that persisted unchallenged until the Protestant Reformation. The top tier consisted of those who were entirely celibate (such as, at different times in the history of the church, monks, nuns, and priests). Married Christians could aspire only to the bottom, inferior tier. Although celibacy was practiced by a small Gentile ascetic movement and by a few small Jewish groups—mainstream Judaism did not promote celibacy, because of the biblical mandate, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28)—it was the passages from Paul and Matthew that made celibacy a major issue in Western and especially Christian history.

Paul’s second distinctive and long-lasting admonition concerns obedience to secular rulers. In his letter to the Romans 13:2–7, he asserted that “whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment” (13:2). In later centuries this passage was used to support the doctrine of the divine right of kings, which maintained that royal power came from God, and gave biblical authority to the church’s teaching of submission to rulers, no matter how unjust they were. Few Christians were willing to stray from Romans 13 until the 18th century, when the Founding Fathers of the United States decided to follow the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke rather than Paul on the question of revolt against unjust rulers.