Saturday, April 4

Philippians 2:5-11

Paul and Jesus in the Development of Christianity

While the name of Christianity is taken from the anointed designation given to Jesus at various times in the Gospels, the apostle Paul had every bit as much to do with the initiation and development of Christianity as Jesus did. Except that Jesus and Paul had quite different ideas of what direction the church should take. Jesus had no intention of starting a new religion. He just wanted his Jewish community to work toward a non-violent overthrow of the crushing Roman empire. He did this with parables and teaching about how to live in a world controlled by a foreign domination system. Jesus was concerned with what the Kingdom of God looked like here on earth.

Paul was concerned with the development of community, and religious communities in particular. For this, Paul needed a well developed theology, and chose for his object of reverence, Jesus Christ. This passage is the epitome of changing from following Jesus by doing what he did to worshiping Jesus as the Christ. And this track is the one taken by “The Church” in the formative years after Jesus and Paul. I think it is easier to proclaim belief in a particular set of ideas / values than it is to actually live the values, even if those values are the same. In this case they are not. Jesus wanted to reform society, reducing the differences between haves and have-nots. Paul wanted to build a close knit community whose focus was on the divinity of Jesus.