Constructing Paul: The Canonical Paul

Abstract

This volume is the first of an anticipated two-volume set by an eminent NT scholar on the Apostle Paul. Johnson aims to make a case not so much for a historical Paul but for the canonical Paul. It is not that historical questions will be completely left to the side. Rather, historical discussions, along with a range of others, are taken up in an effort “to provide a sense of how a wide variety of elements must be kept in play when reading his letters” (p. 13). Typical historical approaches tend to limit analysis of Paul’s thought to the Hauptbriefe, bracketing out the remaining letters and regarding them as “deutero-Pauline.” And such approaches run the risk of relegating the apostle to a relic of history. “My effort will be not to fix Paul in the past but to liberate his letters for the present” (p. 13). Johnson’s task is ultimately in service to the church. “The canonical Paul is the lectionary Paul, the preached Paul, the Paul of theology among those not captive to the dogmas of historical criticism. For the church, the authority of any NT composition does not rest on its authorship but on the fact of its canonization” (p. 13).In assessing the sources for Paul’s thought in his initial chapter, Johnson states that, while Acts may get Paul’s world right, it may be less helpful in reconstructing his story and informing his thought (p. 32). Further, Johnson reviews the case for regarding only the seven undisputed letters while neglecting the “deutero-Pauline” letters in piecing together Paul’s theology. “Although arguments continued to be made for the authenticity of all Paul’s letters (often by great scholars), the compromise position—so serviceable for the dominant framework of New Testament studies—hardened to what is sometimes called a scholarly consensus, but may more accurately be designated an academic dogma, since the majority of those now holding it have not actually done the hard work of examining and testing the arguments for and against it” (p. 35).In his second chapter, Johnson constructs what may be known from the letters, with some input from Acts, about Paul’s life. Growing up in Tarsus, Paul would have been exposed to a range of Greco-Roman philosophers and teachers, including significant Stoics. Paul, as a diaspora Jew, “was exposed to the same Hellenistic environment as his older contemporary Philo of Alexandria” (p. 50). Why did he persecute the church? To this Pharisee zealous for the law, early Christian claims “could be considered blasphemous and a direct assault on the authority of Torah since, according to a strict reading of Torah, Jesus’ death by crucifixion must be considered as one cursed by God (see Deut 21:23)” (p. 54).Johnson treats Paul’s correspondence in his third chapter, and he makes two significant points. First, the production of letters is a far more complex process than has been recognized. We ought not to imagine “Paul sitting by lamplight alone in a tent, summoning vagrant thoughts and imaginations” (p. 74). Rather, the process of producing letters was “both socially and literarily a complex process,” involving “secretaries, cosponsorship, the presence of social teaching practices (midrash and diatribe), and the use of prior traditions” (p. 74). Second, Johnson proposes a conception for regarding Paul’s letters that goes beyond the traditional model of authentic and inauthentic ones, for “an honest assessment of all the data reveals that the premise on which the conventional authentic/inauthentic hypothesis is based is wrong: there is no consistent Pauline core (of style or content) against which other letters can be measured and adjudged pseudonymous” (p. 74). Johnson envisages a series of “clusters”: the Thessalonian letters, Galatians/Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, Colossians/Ephesians, letters to Paul’s delegates, and Philippians/Philemon. The complex process of composing letters gets past a simple distinction between Paul as author over against a “later school” in order to account for differences between the Hauptbriefe and deutero-Paulines. On Johnson’s account, there is a “Pauline ‘school’ at work in all his letters, albeit in varying degrees” (p. 91).In several chapters covering the symbolic world(s) within which Paul ministered and wrote, Johnson treats Paul’s Jewish tradition, his reliance on Scripture, and aspects of Greco-Roman culture. Inquiring as to what sort of Jew Paul was, Johnson regards him Paul as a “prophetic Jew.” “Paul considers the spirit of prophecy to be active and powerful in himself and in others because of the resurrection of Jesus” (p. 143). All of the symbols “Paul used to express this new reality” come from torah. “Indeed, Paul taps directly into one of the deepest and most powerful themes of the Jewish tradition: that the living God moves ahead of the people in new and surprising ways, and calls them to an ever-renewed obedience” (p. 144). Johnson calls into question postcolonial approaches, suggesting that perhaps they have uncritically mapped “eighteenth- and nineteenth-century experience of empire and colonialism on the ancient Mediterranean world” (p. 165). For him, Paul was not a social revolutionary, for “although Paul advocates countercultural ideals and dispositions within the community of believers, he does not—indeed could not—challenge the societal order as such” (p. 167).In a lengthy chapter on the place of experience in Paul’s thought, Johnson argues that Paul’s experience of the resurrection—“that is, the experience of the power of the Holy spirit understood as coming from the exalted Lord Jesus” (p. 205)—is fundamental to understanding all of his teaching. Paul relayed that transformative reality through “mythic discourse,” which Johnson describes at length in ch. 9. He provides a reading of Philemon along with Colossians, in ch. 10, arguing that the former letter was preserved because it was delivered by Tychicus as part of a three-letter packet brought and read to several churches in Asia Minor.In a final chapter, Johnson provides a brief history of how Paul has been read as a voice of oppression, arguing to the contrary that Paul is a powerful exponent of human liberation. By this, he indicates a “liberation from the powers that seek to distort and destroy the image of God among humans, not simply a freedom from entrapment by human or cosmic forces but a freedom for a new way of existing according to this renewed image of God, with capacities and powers far exceeding our paltry imagination” (p. 294).This first volume succeeds masterfully in both clearing the ground and laying the foundation for a reading of Paul that is historically responsible and promises to bear much fruit for the church. Johnson’s argumentation is cogent, lucid, robust, and sensible. It excites anticipation for the second installment.