Was St. Paul a Good Contextualizer of the Faith?

Okay, the short answer I am giving to this question is “I don’t know.” But now I will give the longer answer.

Good

I believe there are evidences that Paul was a good contextualizer of the faith. In this, I am specifically focusing on Paul as a Hellenistic Jew reaching across to Hellenistic Gentiles. One might describe this as E-2 evangelism. The first good example for me is Acts 17. I know this is a controversial one. I have a good friend who decided after a lot of study that this was a “Fail” on Paul’s part. Trying too hard to be relevant to a bunch of pagan philosophers, he gutted the message of God and gave a vague “pagan-friendly” version of that message resulting in little response. I grant that this is a possible interpretation. In fact, I had that view for a long time. Teaching cultural anthropology I eventually reversed and came to view this as an excellent attempt. Paul linked philosophers of the Areopagus with the message of God through stories and thought patterns that they were familiar with. The message was not watered down and still did not deny the “skandalon” (call to respond positively to an aspect of the gospel that would scandalize that culture— responding to the bodily resurrection of Jesus). The lack of the use of the Old Testament was perfectly appropriate since the case he was building was based on recognized authority. The Greeks did not recognized the authority of the Hebrew Bible, so he did not use it. That does not suggest that he was promoting a Bible-less faith, but rather trying to move people from wholeheartedly rejecting the message to being at least open to it. The fact that there were relatively few who responded is in now way an evidence of failure. Impacting academics is hard, and based on the Gray Matrix getting someone from either (or both) hostility or ignorance to the gospel to positive response and encouragement in one session is a pretty amazing feat. Even though response is ultimately through the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart, the message of Paul could make that work easier or harder. I believe that Paul’s speech well-contextualized the gospel.

Another example is Paul’s way of applying the commands of Jesus (particularly the Great Commandment and Golden Rule) to the unique circumstance of meat sacrificed to idols. His response appeared to be a solid attempt to help people be obedient followers of Christ while still living in a land that was very foreign to the teachings of God.

Bad

I think most people know this story regarding Paul. Paul and Barnabas in Lystra (Acts 14) healed a man publicly and that led to a big mess as people attempted to worship the two of them and sacrifice a bull to them. In hindsight this was pretty predictable. Even in Judea, Jesus was pretty cautious at times regarding healing publically. In Judea, such a miraculous act would link him to the Messiah, or to the great prophets of old. Despite this, Jesus was cautious of how people would react to such shows. In fact, he would sometimes tell the healed one to keep silent about it. In a fully pagan culture such a public display seems almost destined to go awry. Personally, I believe the two of them did it out of compassion… but perhaps it would have been best to do it privately.

Not Sure

I am not the first to suggest this, but some of Paul’s metaphors do seem to be a bit… awkward when it comes to contextualization. An obvious one is in Galatians 4 where the metaphor of Sarah versus Hagar is used. It is used to contrast free versus slave and between two covenants. Still, he is writing it to a church that is multicultural and it is hard to see how that metaphor could possibly do any good for the Gentiles in the group. Of course, he wrote it to them, not to me, so I am not in a position to be sure, but I have to wonder about it.

Another one is also in Galatians where Paul gets into a strong argument with Peter. Paul repudiated the alleged hypocrisy of Peter for separating himself from the Gentiles when a delegation from the Church of Jerusalem joined. I do think that Paul has a point— Peter COULD have used the situation as a ‘teachable moment’ for the delegation. From a contextual standpoint, I am not so certain about Paul’s approach. To disrespect someone (Peter) seemingly for attempting to contextualize his behavior based on the people he was with and calling said behavior hypocrisy seems questionable. It makes me wonder whether he was particularly good at contextualizing.

Again, the last section (“Not Sure”) is there because I am not sure. It has me wondering, but I was not there. And even if he was a bad contextualizer at times, that seems pretty understandable. He was a trailblazer so there was not a lot of experience in the church in contextualization. Additionally, I am not so sure that anyone is consistently good in contextualizing. That is why my answer for the title question is “I don’t know.”