Status Updates From Paul: A Biography

For Paul and all the other early Christians, what mattered was not "saved souls" being rescued from the world and taken to a distant "heaven," but the coming together of heaven and earth themselves in a great act of cosmic renewal in which human bodies were likewise being renewed to take their place within that new world.

In the modern Western world, "religion" tends to mean God-related individual beliefs and practices that are supposedly separable from culture, politics, and community life. For Paul, "religion" was woven in with all of life; for the modern Western world, it is separated from it.

In Paul's day, "religion" consisted of God-related activities that, along with politics and community life, held a culture together and bound the members of that culture to its divinities and to one another.

Talking About Paul’s Letters:
It is a safe bet to say that these letters, page for page, have generated more comment, more sermons and seminars, more monographs and dissertations than any other writings from the ancient world.