I’ve known lifelong Christians who have found Paul abrasive, especially in passages where Paul says things like, “If anyone is disposed to think differently there are no other churches that agree with you”, which is roughly what he says to the church in Corinth.

I don’t expect non-Christians to entirely or even partly get Paul. As Paul put it himself, there are some things only the Spirit enables you to do. It may very well be one of the gifts of the Spirit is that Christians can read Paul in a way that a non-Christian can’t. I can think of a few atheists who think 1 Cor 15 is really Paul’s big argument AGAINST physical resurrection.

I can say, that in context, Paul’s statement doesn’t come across as abrasive, just practical. Two verses down you find him passionately exhorting that people love one another. The ESV rendering doesn’t make sense in context to the rest of the passage.

Keeping in mind Paul’s position and responsibilities as an Apostle, it is not surprising that he would become forceful at times when dealing with heresy and false doctrine. Paul has every right to speak with authority and to do so boldly. But Paul always tempered his forceful language with statements of his love and intense caring for those he wrote to.

Look, I’d have the same problem with people today taking the same tone Paul sometimes did in his letters. Using Paul to excuse a lack of tact and compassion is sinful. What I object to is the insinuation that Paul was that way in his letters. I think he was fully justified when used bold or seemingly harsh language.

You say he was an “argumentative” and “contentious man”. I think your conclusion is simplistic at best. Large portions of his letters are devoted to his gratitude for what people have done, his love for the churches under his care, his wish for grace, mercy and peace, and his desire for unity. I think his epistles paint a picture of a man given a great responsibility, who suffered much for his faith, and who had to defend a gospel that was much despised by many and that went against the mainstream of religious and political thought in that day.

To say Paul was argumentative and contentious is a conclusion that can only be reached if you fail to consider the times Paul lived in, the responsibilities Paul was given, and the enemies Paul faced. And Christians who use Paul as a defence of contentious, argumentative and abrasive behavior suffer the same lack of understanding of Paul.

I think you are making a valid point critiquing Bibio-idolatry. But I can’t help but notice something about the nature of Mr. Freeman’s comments. It is not just that they are critical (as an unbeliever might indeed make), but they are flat out insulting. Something makes me think that Mr. Freeman would never talk the same way about the Buddha or Muhammed with the same derision and scorn. (Even though with Muhammed there is much more to criticise).
Sure, St. Paul had his problems. He wasn’t perfect. There are instances where he sounds like such an attractive personality and then says something completely off the wall. But I find the grace manifested in his life so much more attractive than the condescending “observations” of secular scholarship.
But then that is the real problem, something that goes with your whole idea behind this website. Would Mr. Freeman (or most Evangelicals, Catholics, Orthodox, etc) like the real Biblical Jesus or any of the Church’s saints? Not really. Because these people would be just as authentic and (non-compromising) as Paul. Saintliness seems to not always go along with popularity.
I guess though that goes to the heart of what you want to do, what I am trying to do. To actually construct an orthodox, authentic, and real Christianity but by throwing out whatever was not Christian from our background. In my case though, it is Catholicism not evangelicism. I guess the only question remaining for me is can I be authentic enough to actually achieve the humility to really attain real charity…Oh well. (There is something after all in a name.)

I would be interested in a specific example of where I am lacking in understanding of Paul and his epistles.

I said that Freeman’s piece was thought provoking. I didn’t say it was a great revelation of the truth about Paul. I suggested that Christians might have some blinders on regarding Paul’s short-comings.

Your statement that you never found Paul to be abrasive is interesting. Gal 5:12? I mean, Paul is abrasive all the time, on purpose. He says so frequently in many of his letters. “Do you want me to come visit you with a stick?” I mean, c’mon. Who did Paul get along with? Letter after letter makes it clear that he was an intense, argumentative, contentious man. I’m not suggesting he’s useless. Far from it. I am suggesting that he’s a lot more honestly human than we are about ourselves.

He was an Apostle…attitude and all. He was justified by faith, not by being nice. But I am sick of people whose whole approach on the net and in life is to beat people down, and then claim they are just being like Paul. The egos of people who have a Paul-complex are a curse in the church.

Paul said he was the chief of sinners. Can I agree?

I’ll agree that no christian should defend such behavior, least of all in himself. The Apostle Paul would have told us as much, and did is several places in his letters. But I found the passage from Freeman’s book to be insulting, and wholly lacking in any nuance or familiar understaning of the book he was critisizing. And, I think IM’s thoughts on the matter, to some degree, are lacking in the same understanding of Paul and his epistles.

Yeah I’ve often thought that too. Whatever the reason for God not including it in the canon, obviously what we have now is enough. Sola Scriptura and all that.

1 Corinthians 11.1 says Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. which indicates that Paul’s Christian life and beliefs are definitely to be imitated by us.

1 Timothy 1.15 says …Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost which obviously indicates Paul’s own sinfulness.

I suppose together they point out the need for faith in Christ and commitment to God the Father. We are like Paul in his sinfulness and shortcomings, but we should also be like Paul in his commitment to the Gospel of Christ.

Freeman’s thesis is very difficult to hold. There are many holes in his arguments, not least the explicit assertion that modern scholars know more about “the spiritual life of the Greco-Roman world outside Judaism” than Paul did. This pov is not just a problem for someone who believes that Paul’s words are Spirit-inspired, it is also difficult from an academic and scholarly perspective.

I naturally think of Paul’s writings as being the inspired word of God, infallible yada yada yada, but there is no doubt that they do not reflect everything that Paul knew or believed. It was God’s choice that Paul’s letters were restricted to the ones we have in the New Testament.

In the end, if we are to imitate Paul then we are to be zealous for the Gospel, be thoroughly grounded in the Word of God and honour God with our daily lives. That’s essentially everything that Paul says.

I’m developing some thoughts that this is one more leg of a stool being worked on by Dr. Pete Enns (of Westminster Philly) in his book Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. Enns proposes that rather than try to explain away or “harmonize” well-recognized problems in Scripture (such as the weird hermeneutic of the New Testamnet writers use of the Old; very different accounts of the same events, etc.), we embrace them as being exactly the way God chose to reveal himself. He proposes an “incarnational analogy” of Scripture: just as Jesus Christ was (and is) fully God and fully human, so the Bible is of both divine and human authorship, with neither cancelling out the other. In other words, God chose to reveal himself through fallible human authors who wrote from within the perspectives of their own times and cultures. Enns proposes that this is not a mistake; that the word of God is not hidden somewhere behind or above the sometimes crazy-quilt writing of the human authors, but that God chose to actually reveal himself in and through those culture-bound writings.

So isn’t it possible that we are to read Paul not as “super Christian” but rather as one more example of God’s obsession with entering into his own creation and revealing himself through it. Perhaps by idealizing Paul, we have missed the opportunity that may be present in his writings to learn as much from his bad or faulty examples as we do from his good ones and his theologizing.