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Saint Paul, Pseudo-Paul, and Reclaiming Radical Christianity
Third Sunday of Easter (Year C, RCL)
April 14, 2013
Acts 9:1-6 (7-20)
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19
In today’s reading from Acts, Paul literally gets knocked on his ass. Jesus says to
him, “Yo, dude, why you messin’ with my homies?”
But . . . I’m not going to preach on Acts. Instead, I want to offer something of a
sidebar—but a very important sidebar—on what I’ll call Saint Paul, Pseudo-Paul, and
Reclaiming Radical—that is, rooted—Christianity.1
We Episcopalians, of course, schizophrenic as always, have Paul all figured out: we
both love and hate the guy. Every Episcopal wedding or marriage blessing uses the
“love passage” from 1 Corinthians 13. At the same time, many Episcopalians have an
almost-Pavlovian response when they hear Paul’s name; we hiss and pizzle at such a
passage as this:

1 Corinthians 14: As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent
in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be
subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know,
let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak
in church.2
The only thing is: Paul didn’t write this.
Let’s look closely at 1 Corinthians. There’s an insert in your bulletins with the
passage I’ll be discussing.3
There’s a sliiiiiight problem in 1 Corinthians 14.
1
Radical < Latin radix, radicis, “root,” then “foundation, basis, origin.”
1 Cor 14:33b-36.
3
The insert follows the sermon.
2
Saint Paul, Pseudo-Paul, and Reclaiming Radical Christianity
Third Sunday of Easter (Year C, RCL) / April 14, 2013
The passage that begins “As in all the churches of the saints, women should be
silent in the churches” is verse 33b (“b” means it’s the second sentence in a verse).
Verses 33b-36 are in a smaller font. Now look at verses 32 and 33a: “And the
spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, for God is a God not of disorder
but of peace” (14:32-33a). You can see by the boldfaced words in verses 29-32
that Paul uses “prophets” or “prophesy” four times.
Verses 32-33a conclude a section of 1 Corinthians where Paul is talking about
speaking in tongues, revelation, and prophesying.4 Here’s a summary: speaking in
tongues and prophesying are cool, but for God’s sake please keep it under control.
(You could subtitle this part about speaking in tongues and prophesying
“Episcopalians May Skip this Section.”)
Now drive past the part in smaller font with the nasty stuff about women; speed
by it as though it were one of those stinky stockyards on I-5. Go to verse 37:
“Anyone who claims to be a prophet, or to have spiritual powers, must acknowledge
that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord.”
As a presidential candidate from Texas once said: Oops.
Do you see what’s going on? Verse 37 continues quite logically from verses 32-33a:
they’re both about prophets. Verses 33b-36, on the other hand, are totally off the
subject. These verses are what scholars call an interpolation: someone not named
Paul stuck them in at a later date. I like the sly way that the NRSV suggests that
these verses don’t belong here: the translators have quarantined them between
parentheses.5
4
Verse 37 actually concludes the passage, but the interruption of 33b-36 obscures this.
See Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary behind the
Church’s Conservative Icon, 57: “that disputed section is not given after 14:33a, but at the end of the chapter, after
14:40, in some early manuscripts. Furthermore, these verses are given as a separate paragraph in all Greek
manuscripts. It is also like that in our modern, official Greek New Testament. That is why the New Revised
Standard Version . . . puts that entire unit in a separate paragraph and in parentheses. They note also that the
passage contradicts 1 Cor 11:4-5.
5
2
Saint Paul, Pseudo-Paul, and Reclaiming Radical Christianity
Third Sunday of Easter (Year C, RCL) / April 14, 2013
One of my favorite historical guidelines is “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” If
women hadn’t been speaking in church, whoever wrote this interpolation against
them wouldn’t have been p.o.’d enough to pitch a hissy-fit about it. (Since he
demands that women ask their husbands about church stuff at home, maybe his
wife wasn’t keeping silent—maybe she was one of the ones speaking in church!)
But why does all this matter?
Let me offer four reasons, from least important to most important:
1. The interpolation in 1 Corinthians 14 is in the Bible, as are other writings
attributed to Paul but which he didn’t write. 6
2. Some Christians use these writings to bludgeon their fellow-Christians; some
atheists use these same writings to bash Christianity.
3. My buddies Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan have pointed out that
writings falsely attributed to Paul have “deradicalized” him.7
4. A deradicalized Paul is a domesticated Paul, even a Paul who’s been neutered.8
Let’s look at just one example of the radical Paul, from Galatians 3:
As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves
with Christ. There is no longer Jew or non-Jew, there is no longer
slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one
in Christ Jesus.9
Like the “love passage” of 1 Corinthians 13, as with many passages of scripture, we
may have heard this message from Galatians so often that it’s lost much of its
6
For example, the Pastoral Epistles—1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus; see The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible
(1962) 3:671a: “The conclusion to which the great majority of scholars has come is that the pastoral letters are (at
least in their present form) non-Pauline and must be ascribed to a pseudonymous of the early second century, who
invokes the authority of the great Apostle to the Gentiles in order to give his exhortations the necessary apostolic
support and weight.”
7
See Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The First Paul, 57.
8
Just as we’ve managed to castrate much of what Martin Luther King Jr. really said and stood for.
9
Galatians 3:27-28.
3
Saint Paul, Pseudo-Paul, and Reclaiming Radical Christianity
Third Sunday of Easter (Year C, RCL) / April 14, 2013
meaning. But

where there is neither Jew nor non-Jew means we lay aside our religious
identity;

where there is neither slave nor free, we lay aside our socioeconomic
identity;

where there is neither male nor female, we lay aside our sexual identity.10
Let’s radicalize what Paul says for our own day:
As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves
with Christ. There is no longer Muslim, or Christian, or Jew; there is
no longer black, or white, or brown; there is no longer Republican, or
Democrat; there is no longer homeless, or working poor, or middle
class; there is no longer gay, or straight, or transgender; there is no
longer Episcopalian, or Mormon, or Pentecostal; for all of you are one
in Christ Jesus.
To truly be in Christ means to “lay down the various identities that . . .
otherwise define us,” just as Christ gives himself for us.11
The real Paul—as opposed to the supposèd misogynistic, homophobic, antiSemitic caricature that some have turned him into—the real Paul, the radical
Paul, the Paul rooted in the gospel, reminds us that even the identity of
“Christian,” when it becomes a narcotic, a straitjacket, a semiautomatic rifle,
or an idol we bow down to, even that sacred identity, is something Christ
calls us to strip off, as though it were infested with vermin, and throw into
Christ’s purifying fire.
Amen.
10
Peter Rollins, Insurrection, 165, cited in Brian D. McLaren, Why did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed
Cross the Road: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World, 186.
11
Rollins, in McLaren, 186.
4
Saint Paul, Pseudo-Paul, and Reclaiming Radical Christianity
Third Sunday of Easter (Year C, RCL) / April 14, 2013
†
†
†
1 Corinthians 14
When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue,
or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.27If anyone speaks in a
tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn; and let one
interpret.28But if there is no one to interpret, let them be silent in church and speak
to themselves and to God.29Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others
weigh what is said.30If a revelation is made to someone else sitting nearby, let the
first person be silent.31For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn
and all be encouraged.32And the spirits of prophets are subject to the
prophets,33afor God is a God not of disorder but of peace.
33b
(As in all the churches of the saints, 34 women should be silent in the churches. For they
are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says.35If there is
anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a
woman to speak in church.36Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only
ones it has reached?)
37 Anyone who claims to be a prophet, or to have spiritual powers, must
acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord.
5