Paul could even live comfortably with Jewish Christians still being circumcised and observing their traditions so long as their soteriology was straight. Just as the gospel was to set free an infinite variety of individuals, developing their distinctive gifts and kinds of beauty rather than stamping them into a mold of conformity, so it was to come to whole cultures, with their dance patterns of folkways and institutions, and to lift these to the highest level of individual expression, erasing or cleansing only those with idolatrous implications.
