About Meditations on the Letters of Paul
Dr. Weiss’s book truly captures the spirit of the Apostle Paul. Paul comes alive in this text, which addresses the whole person and not just the intellect. Dr. Weiss invites the reader to experience Paul’s vision and understand the historical settings that inspired Paul’s Letters. Readers will discover a living Paul, imperfect yet insightful, mystical yet practical, activist yet contemplative, and evangelical yet universalist. This text is a creative addition to the literature on Paul. It is scholarly, yet accessible to the committed layperson. It deserves to stand in the company of Pauline texts such as those penned N.T. Wright, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and Jouette Bassler. This text will inspire pastors, professors, seminarians, and educated laypersons.
– Bruce Epperly, PhD, author of Experiencing God in Suffering: A Journey with Job, Philippians: A Participatory Study Guide, and Process Theology: Embracing Adventure with God
Weiss has done more than summing up Paul’s theology under seventeen chapters, each titled after a fundamental Christian doctrine largely formulated by the Apostle. Having crystallized the complex network of thoughts in the Letters, and displaying thorough familiarity with the literature devoted to them, he draws his readers into these well-considered beliefs—in historical context and for our times. A must-read book even for those who have explained Paul’s understanding of Christ and the implications of the cross.
– Abraham Terian, PhD, St. Nersess Armenian Seminary
Dr. Weiss well named this book Meditations, for it is to be savored in small servings, not digested all at once. Have your Bible at hand, for you will be driven to reread it with new and refreshing insights. He lets Paul speak for himself. The chapters/themes build on one another so that each turns back upon itself to create a fullness that brings Paul fully to life. What ensues is a cohesive summary of his major themes, chapter by chapter. Weiss moves effortlessly from Paul’s apocalyptic worldview to our day making Paul relevant then and now.
Weiss does not restate tired observations, but recreates Paul as a man, a Jew of his time. In doing so, we are offered a side of Paul not often seen, one quite different from the traditional Pauline theology of the Reformation. He gives us a real man whose struggles to understand the Christ event pitted him against his own people, his churches, and even himself. The result broadens not only our understanding of the apostle, but of ourselves, and the meaning of our faith.
– Rev. Steve Kindle, Director, Clergy United
Author of I’m Right and You’re Wrong:
Why We Disagree about the Bible and What to Do about It
Paul the theologian was also Paul the pastor. He brought his deep theological convictions about Jesus and the gospel to bear on the pastoral concerns of his audience. Harold Weiss understands that and help us to understand it in this book.
I invite you to read the reflections in these pages to gain a new and/or renewed perspective on the great Apostle, who has been the most influential theologian/pastor of the Christian faith throughout the centuries.
– Allan R. Bevere, Pastor
Team Ministry and Professional Fellow in Theology, Ashland Theological Seminary, Ashland, Ohio
Herold Weiss’s meditations on Pauline thought are ideal introductions to this influetial, but complex and often misunderstood early Christian figure. Weiss is a steady, careful, and insightful guide who provides the pefect amount of background and attention to interpretive issues to help tease out Paul’s theology buried in his authentic letters. And as a bonus, the book is a pleasure to read.
– Ruben Dupertuis, PhD
Trinity University
Meditations on the Letters of Paul
Exercises in Biblical Theology
Herold Weiss
Energion Publications
Gonzalez, FL
2016
Copyright © 2016, Herold Weiss
Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Cover Design: Henry E. Neufeld
Aerio Edition: 978-1-63199-601-6
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-63199-601-6
Print ISBNs:
ISBN10: 1-63199-222-8
ISBN13: 978-1-63199-222-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016935327
Energion Publications
P. O. Box 841
Gonzalez, FL 32560
Energion.com
Dedicated to the memory
of
Roland E. Loasby
1890 – 1974
an inimitable and most effective teacher
of the exegesis of Greek texts.
He taught me how, with unforgettable precision and humor,
to read the New Testament texts
and get it.
Preface
My first book, Paul of Tarsus: His Gospel and Life, was published in 1986. The first printing was soon exhausted. That gave me the opportunity to publish an expanded revised edition in 1989. That second edition has been sold out for a number of years. A few years back a friend suggested to me that I should write a new revised edition and offered his help for the project. After giving the matter some consideration I decided not to pursue it. At the time I had other projects that needed my attention.
When I finished writing Meditations on According to John: Exercises in Biblical Theology, I thought I should write a companion volume on the letters of Paul. As I mention in the Preface to According to John, I had wanted to write a book on that gospel for a long time, but I could not come up with the appropriate structure for the book. Once I came up with the format and actually wrote the book, I felt that I had also found the way to give my reading of the letters of Paul a satisfactory new dress. A lot of water has run under the bridge since 1989; therefore, I could no longer use the schema I had used back then. While on some things my mind has remained the same, in some important ways, as I considered the evidence after many years of theological reflection, I have changed my mind.
Around 1999, my colleague at Northern Seminary, Charles Cosgrove, invited me to write with him and K. K. Yeo, a professor at Northwestern University, a book that would look at Paul’s letters from different cultural locations. Since each of us had grown up in a different culture, each wrote a chapter reading Paul in terms of his own culture, and then another chapter from a culture other than his own. The idea was to exhibit the influence of cultures and the difficulties and the rewards of trying to see things in terms of other cultures. The book, Cross-Cultural Paul: Journeys to Others, Journeys to Ourselves, offers six different cultural readings of Paul and draws some conclusions from the exercise. Writing my chapters of that book certainly taught me to pay more attention to Paul’s own culture. That was something I had not paid much attention to in my first book.
My meditations on Paul’s letters are attempts to come to terms with how Paul’s mind works, what are his basic presuppositions, what is peculiarly his when handling issues also considered by others. In this effort I have not been primarily concerned with treating everything he wrote, but to see how what he wrote holds together around central ideas. In my meditations, I have tried to understand Paul in his own terms as well as I possibly can. Hopefully, my struggles with Paul will also bear fruit for others. Trying to understand his struggles with his contemporaries is the best way to gain insights into his fruitful, creative mind. Again, I call these