St. Paul was able to ply his tent-making trade at Corinth because of the Isthmian Games. In non-Olympic years there would be a great need for tents for the participants and the spectators who attended the games. Corinth proved to be exactly the right place for Paul to live out his vision of Christianity. It… Read More »

St. Paul coming to Athens was like the country boy entering Harvard. He wanted to dazzle the sophisticates who lived there with his wit and erudition. The sermon St. Luke records in Acts 17 shows the Apostle using logical and persuasive argument. The sermon was not very successful. That caused St. Paul to re-think his… Read More »

St. Paul always insisted that his authority came due to his personal contact with the Risen Jesus. However, he knew that was not the whole story. As he says in his first letter to the Corinthians, “I handed on to you what I myself received.” Paul knew that he was part of a tradition and… Read More »

St. Luke describes the Jesus movement rippling out like a pebbled dropped into a pond. From the Hebrew-speakers in Jerusalem it moves out to Greek-speaking Jews, to suspect Samaritans, to African converts to Judaism, into the “God-fearing” pagans who knew something of Judaism and then in Antioch to both Jewish and Gentile (i.e. pagan) followers… Read More »

The Church does not look on the fifty days of the Easter season as starting at the high point of Easter and then gradually rolling down the hill. Rather, Easter and the fiftieth day — Pentecost — are looked on as twin poles with the energy of the season flowing between them. In these last… Read More »

My guess is that St. Paul was not happy that he was “prevented from preaching the message in the province of Asia” and was not allowed “to go on into Bithynia.” He had plans. He had things to do. He, no doubt, felt frustrated that he wasn’t able to carry them out. It was only… Read More »

According to the Acts of the Apostles, the Council of Jerusalem ended its deliberations by sending a letter which stressed that preserving the unity of the Church required only that everyone observe “the essentials.” When St. Paul gives his own report about the Council in his epistle to the Galatians he also stresses unity as… Read More »

The Jesus movement gathered in Jerusalem to decide how inclusive the nascent Church was going to be. As St. Luke describes the debate in the Acts of the Apostles they could only come to that decision after finding the proper methodology. St. Peter, and then Paul and Barnabas, argued “from below.” Look at the evidence… Read More »

St. Luke describes what has come to be known as the Council of Jerusalem. The issue that brought the early leaders of the Jesus movement together was a perennial one in the Church. Do we expect Christians to abide by a certain set of rules and behaviors and if they don’t they are excluded from… Read More »

St.Paul’s initial missionary activity was centered on what today is the country of Turkey. In most of that area Christianity has almost completely disappeared. How could a Church founded by an apostle prove so vulnerable to the advance of Islam several centuries later? At least part of the answer lies in the feuds, disputes, factionalism,… Read More »