The Church's Mission to the Gentiles
Acts of the Apostles, Epistles of Paul

With the exception of Jesus, no one in the history of Christianity has played a more significant role than Paul, apostle extraordinary. This fact has already become apparent to us as we have examined the book of Acts, for more than half of that narrative is devoted to his career. Imagine how truncated Luke's story would have been if he had tried to tell it without mentioning Paul! Furthermore, half of the New Testament writings--thirteen out of twenty-seven--bear his name. In actual bulk, his letters comprise approximately one-fourth of the total New Testament. Only one other writer has contributed more: the author of Luke and Acts. Yet that author is anonymous; we know virtually nothing about him. Paul's documents, by contrast, are thoroughly colored by his personality. We cannot separate his written legacy from his person.

Perhaps even more significant than the quantity of his writings is their age. His letters are our oldest extant Christian literature. From a chronological perspective the present-day arrangement of the documents in the New Testament is somewhat misleading. Since the Gospels are placed first, we tend to think they were written before the remaining books. Obviously, the story they tell chronologically precedes everything else in the New Testament. But Paul wrote his letters long before the Gospels were recorded. Although we cannot state for a fact that he was the first Christian writer, he certainly was the first whose materials have been preserved for us within the New Testament canon.

As Acts has demonstrated, Paul, more than any other individual person, transformed Christianity in those earliest decades from a narrow, nationalistic, Palestinian Jewish sect to an inclusive, worldwide religious movement. Steeped in both Greco-Roman culture and a fervent Jewish piety, he was able to bridge the gap between the two in such a way that he was able, as Davies put it, "to plant a Palestinian gospel in an alien word and yet keep it true to its root."

Through the legacy of his writings, furthermore, Paul has continued to have a formidable impact on subsequent Christian history. Augustine, the great fourth-century church leader and the most significant theologian (after Paul) of the ancient church, turned from a life of debauchery to the Christian faith upon reading Romans 13:13-14. A thousand years later Martin Luther ushered in the Protestant Reformation, primarily as a result of insights gained from his intensive study of the Pauline epistles.

Further, two centuries later John Wesley's heart was "strangely warmed" as he heard someone reading from Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, thereby began the Methodist movement and the evangelical revival of the eighteenth century. Finally, Karl Barth, arguably the most significant theologian of the twentieth century, rose to prominence as a result of his study of Paul, and the publication of his commentary on Romans. From the first century to the present, Paul has been associated with the most vibrant movements in the life of the church.