CHAPTER SEVEN
UNDERSTANDING PAUL'S MODEL OF GOD
It is not an easy or simple task to see Paul's model of God as Paul saw it. It requires us to identify the ideas that informed Paul's model and trace those ideas as they created his model of God. Fortunately, for those who wish to understand Paul's model of God, he did everything necessary for us to accomplish this difficult task.
First, Paul identifies the people who taught him about God. Paul did this because he knew if we knew his teachers, we could figure out what they taught him about God. In Galatians 1:13-14 Paul tells us this about himself, "For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers." In another place Paul specified exactly what kind of Jew he was: "a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee," and we are told by Luke that Paul was a disciple of Gamaliel. So if we can see the model of God commonly held by the Pharisees of the school of Gamaliel, we will possess much of that which, at least before Paul became a follower of Jesus, must have been Paul's model of God.
The Pharisees held a model of God formed totally by their interpretation of Scripture. Torah, the law, was the start and finish of the material they used in constructing the subjective model of the God they worshiped and tried to serve. In opposition to everyone in Israel who suggested there was another way to know God, they held to an unshakable view of the authority of Scripture as God's revelation of Himself to His chosen people. The Pharisees of Paul's day inherited a tradition of scholarship and commentaries on the meaning of Scripture, which commentaries were all designed to prevent people from deviating in the slightest way from obedience to the God revealed in Torah. The school of Gamaliel was committed to continuing that tradition and expanding the understanding of the people concerning the God revealed in Torah.
What was the God revealed in Torah like? It is necessary to answer this question if we are to actually have insight into Paul's concept of God.
The Pharisees believed in the God who created a man named Adam and a woman named Eve. They believed in the historicity of the Garden of Eden. They believed that a created being named Satan deceived Adam and Eve into entering into rebellion against the Creator of the Universe. They believed that God had a plan that allowed the rebellion to occur without sacrificing any aspect of the sovereignty held by an omnipotent God, or in any way making himself culpable in the introduction of sin into the world. They believed that the plan of God involved choosing a people who were uniquely His own and equipping them to regain the righteousness lost in the Garden of Eden. The Pharisees believed themselves to be those Chosen people and believed themselves to have regained the lost righteousness because they were involved in perfectly following the instructions given by the One, True, God in his law.
The God they believed in was Independent, Immutable, Infinite, One, Holy, Good, Incomprehensible: in fact, any and all attributes ascribed to God by the most learned, devout Christian of any age would have been accepted by the Pharisee, for they looked to the same source as the Christian to inform their point of view, to construct their model of God--the Holy Scripture of what we call the Old Testament. And they believed without reservation the God who revealed Himself there.
The point I am leading to is this: the model of God held by Paul was a model formed by the message in the Old Testament, a message that defined God and told much about the plan that God had set in motion with the creation of the universe. Paul saw himself as a part of the plan of God long before he encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus. But that encounter caused Paul to rethink every conclusion he had ever reached about the plan of God. What came out of that rethinking process was not a new model of God different from the model Paul had held as a Pharisee, but an insight into how the same God he had always believed in had fulfilled the plan that had begun in the Garden of Eden. Paul realized how the same God who had driven Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden in order to prove His justice could be the same God who, in Christ Jesus, justified the ungodly.
Paul came to understand that the model of God created by the Pharisees was a false model of God. The Pharisees had assumed God had given the Law because obedience to the law was possible, and such obedience would make people righteous in God's sight. Paul's ministry, from first to last, revolved around the task of correcting the Pharisee's false assumptions and the false model of God that resulted from the Pharisee's false assumptions.
One of the dominant ideas that influence many Christians and virtually every non-Christian today is the idea that Paul's train of thought and message was developed independent of the train of thought and message presented by Jesus Christ. Paul would have thought those people were joking because Paul believed himself to have "the mind of Christ." In order to demonstrate at least part of what Paul meant when he said he had "the mind of Christ" it is necessary to examine the model of God communicated to us in the life, work and words of Jesus Christ. As we do so, keep in mind that our purpose is to demonstrate how the model of God communicated by the Apostle Paul was a model of God that grew out of Paul's knowledge of Jesus Christ.
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