The Bishop of Ephesus Protestants have treated “Saint” Paul as the Christian equivalent of the philosopher Plato. An ivory-tower thinker, dedicated to producing an abstract system of “timeless truth.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Paul, writing concrete responses to specific circumstances, was a “task” or “occasional” theologian. And a narrative theologian. His letters initiate a flexible dialogue between the story of Jesus and story of a local Christian community.257
