Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2008 / The Year of St. Paul: The greatness of Paul's theology
The Year of St. Paul: The greatness of Paul's theology
by Fr. Richard J. Cassidy special to The Michigan Catholic
Published October 10, 2008
Editor's note: This is the second in a five-part periodic series on the Year of St. Paul.
Almost immediately after his conversion experience, St. Paul began to proclaim the fundamental truth that Jesus, who had been crucified, now reigned as Messiah and Lord. Paul could not be deterred from this proclamation for he himself had personally encountered the risen Jesus in blinding light upon the road to Damascus.
Yet St. Paul's gifts enabled him to serve Jesus in other ways beyond his fundamental proclamation that Jesus was Messiah and Lord. Over the course of time, Paul's capacity to be an outstanding builder of Christian community came to the fore. Over time, he became a talented letter writer who used his letters to nurture and guide the various Christian communities, particularly those he had founded.
In some cases Paul's letters focused upon concrete pastoral issues that had arisen with the life of a given community. Convinced that he had been graced to know the mind of Jesus Christ, Paul addressed a wide variety of pastoral questions with great insight and with great confidence. He was able to exhort his hearers to embrace Jesus Christ crucified and risen and, because of their faith in Jesus, to reject erroneous and sinful practices.
During more than 20 years spent establishing and building Christian communities, Paul continued to reflect upon the centrality of Jesus Christ within all of history. In due time, after years of meditation, Paul set forth reflections about Jesus pivotal role that were so profound as to result in the acclaim of St. Paul as the leading Christian theologian of all time.
On the road to Damascus, Paul learned that Jesus was indeed risen. But how did this decisive event fit into the larger framework of God's dealings with humanity? Paul's reflections eventually led him to identify four crucial factors: 1) the universality of sin; 2) the universality of death; 3) Adam's disobedience; 4) Christ's obedience.
In composing chapter five of his Letter to the Romans, Paul posited a link between sin and death that had never previously been grasped. Paul's brilliant intuition was to see the unyielding connection between sin and death. Human beings inescapably suffered death as a consequence of their sinfulness. Sin and death: the one begets that other.
But where did sin come from? Paul posited that God had not wanted sin to occur and had not intended that human beings would experience death. Yet because of the "original" sin that Adam committed, death entered the created world. Further in mysterious connectedness, every descendant of Adam continued in the sinfulness initiated by Adam and thus followed Adam in suffering death.
Fundamentally, Adam's sin was that of disobedience to God's purposes. And, until Jesus Christ, all of Adam's descendants continued to manifest this disobedience. In contrast to Adam, Jesus then became God's instrument for breaking the cycle of disobedience and death. Because Jesus did not sin, but rather practiced obedience unto death, the entire heritage of sin and death that had been in existence since Adam was overturned.
Clearly, in pondering these profound realities of sin and death and the saving purposes of God in Jesus Christ, St. Paul is pre-eminently sensitive to vastness of God's love for humanity. Over time, his reflections enabled him to grasp that the obedience of Jesus through death to Resurrection was the decisive event in God's plan to set humanity free from sin and from death.
To view St. Paul's achievement from another vantage point, it is useful to compare the mission of Jesus Christ with the mission of other historically prominent religious and secular figures. The Catholic Church recognizes that important wisdom regarding righteous conduct has been contributed by the Jewish prophets and by such widely revered figures such as Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, Socrates and Gandhi.
Yet, as insightful as they have been, none of these figures has broken the power of sin and death and reversed the heritage of Adam. This has been done only by Jesus Christ. Only through the saving mission of Jesus is it now possible for human beings to pass through death. We are all indebted to St. Paul, the Premier Theologian of Jesus Christ, for enabling us to behold these great truths.
Fr. Richard J. Cassidy is a professor of sacred Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit, and author of "Paul In Chains: Roman Imprisonment and the Letters of St. Paul."
Related Link:
|
