Three mornings with St Paul: 3. Christian community, then and now

Paul’s letters to different communities of believers are the earliest surviving Christian writings. He is our founding theologian, but he is a contentious figure even among faithful readers of the New Testament. Other people who know very little about the letters can also have strong opinions about what they think Paul wrote!

He writes to believers in the now distant culture of the first century, Jewish and Hellenistic. However, his core theological beliefs are now ours: ‘We preach Christ crucified’; ‘Jesus is Lord’. They were forged from the cross of Christ, from God’s promises in the Hebrew Bible, from those who were in Christ before him and from his own experience. In the letters, he relates this theological core to the issues that the early congregations wrestle with: behaviour in community, in personal relationships, in leadership and ministries. There are ways to explore how this informs us in applying the theology to ourselves and our communities.

These three mornings are designed as a whole, so we hope you can come to all three. If you can come only to one or two, you will still be very welcome. (If you can only join on the second or third morning without having been able to come to previous ones, Robert will try to summarise the earlier sessions…) People booking themselves in for any morning will be sent suggestions of which letters to read as preparation for that session.

The Revd Robert Evans has degrees from Oxford, Cambridge and London, and is recently retired from an academic career in New Testament theology and biblical interpretation. One of his books that is relevant (not required) for these sessions is Judge for Yourselves: reading 1 Corinthians (Darton Longman and Todd, 2003). He comes from St Ives, was a curate (early 1980s) in Wadebridge and St Columb Minor, and now lives in Coverack.

This is session three.
Session one takes place on 22 February.
Session two takes place on 21 March.