Article,
The Battle for Paul in the Second Century
Irish Theological Quarterly, 75 (1): 3--14 (2010)
DOI: 10.1177/0021140009353120
Abstract
Tracking Paul as he was remembered in the second century demands recognizing the different patterns such ‘remembering’ took, without measuring them by later standards, particularly by judgements about the centre of Paul’s theology, and without privileging certain authors or genres. Paul was remembered as persecutor, missionary, apostle to the Gentiles, but also as visionary or as preacher of asceticism; his sometimes tense relationships with the other apostles could be softened into harmony or resolved by retreat by one or the other side. While Marcion and Justin Martyr represent very different styles of such remembering, the changing fortunes of the remembered Paul should not be explained by his supposed status as ‘apostle of the heretics’ or by simplistic reconstructions of a binary division within the early church; rather Paul serves as a ‘hero from the past’ through whom different patterns of practice, of communal structure, of confrontation with contemporary society and ideas, of authority, could be explored and negotiated.
