Man of many letters
Dear People of St. Boniface,
As a Jewish Pharisee, I was trained at the famous school of Gamaliel in Jerusalem. As a Christian, I did not belong to a school, or found one, though I had extremely valuable followers and helpers – like Priscilla and Aquila, Luke, Titus and Timothy, Silvanus alias Silas – to say nothing of the good souls who actually wrote the letters which I dictated.
Your experts realise that the Letter to the Ephesians is not by me, but by one of these followers, largely because it is not written in my style – although I highly approve of the 202-word-long sentence which comes near the beginning!
Maybe not my style, but certainly my thought. My followers flatter me. They reproduce here key beliefs of mine: that it is in us that Christ is now alive; that our coming to Christ is all a gift of God and not some reward for us being good (still less keeping the religious Law); that it is all part of a great plan which has been in God’s mind since the beginning and has suddenly come to pass. These are ideas which I make much of in my letters to the Romans and Galatians.
By the time this letter was written, the Church was growing, and Christians of Jewish and pagan origin were beginning to cohere together. There was a growing confidence, and it comes across. I gather some are disappointed that such an important letter is not by me. I am delighted, however, because the faith as I taught it was not discarded immediately I was out of the way.
Your clever experts also realise this ‘letter’ didn’t start life as a letter! No, indeed; sermons, prayers and essays, among other things, could always morph into letter form. Like this blog, I suppose.
Now where’s my secretary? I feel another letter coming on!
My blessing, from Heaven, PAUL