St. Paul: The Apostle We Love to Hate (Icons)

by Karen Armstrong

Instead, Paul described an interrelated order in which all members, without exception, depended upon one another. The head was demoted and the inferior body parts elevated.

When he described the dramatic arrival of the Christ, instead of drawing on the conventional imagery of Jewish apocalypse, he used terminology that was quite new to the Jesus movement, presenting Jesus’s return as an official visit of an emperor or king to a provincial city. When the command is given, when the archangel’s voice is heard, when God’s trumpet sounds, then the Lord himself will descend from heaven; first the dead who belong to the Messiah will arise, then we who are still alive shall join them,