Paul, a loving teacher to all ages

The final chapter in Mary Baker Eddy’s book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures includes a remarkable set of accounts that testify to the change in thought that can accompany the reading of that book. In one account, M.A.H. of Brockton, Massachusetts, concludes “I have since seen the power of Truth overcome error of many forms, including croup, whooping-cough, tonsillitis, etc. I am thankful for all these proofs, but far more grateful am I for the spiritual teaching to love, to forgive, to curb my tongue, and cease my criticism” (p. 686). The book is the teacher.

In Robert Peel’s book Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Trial, there is an interesting passage about Eddy’s teaching methods. He mentions that “her classes were for thinking” (p. 168). One of her early students, Hanover Smith, writes of her “reasoned dialogue” and “her great love and charity”.

She was teaching her students that God is Mind as well as Love.

Paul, too, was a teacher, “a chosen vessel” (Acts 9:15). His letters preserve for us a sense of both his great intellect and his enormous love. Paul had been raised a devout Jew. His home town of Tarsus lay on the trade route between Syria and Turkey. He was in the thick of things!

After his remarkable experience on the road to Damascus, including his encounter with the thoughtful Ananias, he dedicated his life to teaching others about Christ Jesus. In doing so, his deep reasoning was always accompanied by a huge capacity to love. Eddy says “He beheld for the first time the true idea of Love” (SH 326:31). 

Love permeates his letter, written some four to five decades after Jesus’ resurrection, to the little band of new Christians at Thessalonica. His encouraging words can be applied to Christian groups today. He really “bathes all in beauty and light” (SH 516:13).  

Here's a sampling.

I Thessalonians (KJV)

Chapter 1 – greeting the congregation

•   “Grace to unto you, and peace…” (Verse 1)
•  "We give thanks to God always for you all…” (Verse 2)
•  “Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.” (Verse 4)
•  Eugene H. Peterson translates: “It is clear to us, friends, that God not only loved you very much but also has put his hand on you for something special. When the Message we preached came to you, it wasn’t just words. Something happened in you. The Holy Spirit put steel in your convictions.” (The Message)
•  “ye were ensamples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia” (Verse 7)

Chapter 2 – encouragement

•  “ye were dear unto us” (verse 8)
•  “we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father doth his children” (verse 11)
• The Message: “we were like a father with his child, holding your hand, whispering encouragement”
•  “when ye received the word of God…ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe” (verse 13)
•  “ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews” (Verse 14)
•  “Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?” (Verse 19)
•  “ye are our glory and joy” (Verse 20)

Chapter 3 – more encouragement in the face of difficulties

•  “I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labour be in vain.” (Verse 5)
•  “Timotheus…brought us good tidings of your faith and charity” (Verse 6) 
• The Message: “now that Timothy is back, bringing this terrific report on your faith and love…”
•  “…we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord” (Verse 8)
• The Message: “Knowing that your faith is alive keeps us alive.”
•  “…the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men” (Verse 12)

Chapter 4 – loving counsel to stay on track and to support each other

•   “ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another” (Verse 9
• “study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands” (Verse 11) - The Message: “Stay calm; mind your own business; do your own job.”
• “walk honestly toward them that are without, …that ye may have lack of nothing” (Verse 12
• “comfort one another” (Verse 18)

Chapter 5 – responsibility of the church body

• “ye, brethren, are not in darkness” (Verse 4)
• “Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.” (Verse 5)
• “let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation” (Verse 8)
• The Message: “Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in faith, love, and the hope of salvation.”
• “comfort yourselves together, and edify one another” (Verse 11)
• “be at peace among yourselves” (Verse 13)
• Message: “Get along among yourselves, each of you doing your part.”
• “warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men” (Verse 14)
• “See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good” (Verse 15)
• “I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless” (Verse 23)
• “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” (Verse 28)

Julie Swannell

Paul as a loving teacher

My goodness. The way knowledge comes to us when we start on a path! I am currently reading a novel about the young princess who was to become Queen Elizabeth 1. At thirteen she has travelled (in the author's imagination) to Constantinople to be present at a Chess Tournament which was to decide the Chess Champion of the world – sponsored by Suleiman, the Sultan of the Ottoman (Moslem) empire. She travelled with her beloved teacher and the English chess champion. Her father and her tutor thought it was a good idea and she learned a lot about being a good queen, which is the author's purpose of writing the story.

The book sometimes calls Constantinople, Byzantium! When I wrote my last blog and mentioned Byzantium, it didn't occur to me that this was Constantinople. I had forgotten that Istanbul had been called Byzantium before it was called Constantinople. My geography is having a good brush up. I actually thought the city was more on the eastern side of the Bosphorus. I love all this. The Via Egnatia trade route which seems to end in Byzantium must have crossed the Bosphorus into Asia and joined other trade routes leading to the Middle East and Africa, even the Silk Road to China, gathering other names as it changed countries. Likewise from the Adriatic westward.

Perhaps you are saying, Why doesn't she get back to I Thessalonians? OK. I will.

The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) points out that the praise which Paul accords the Thessalonicans (see I Thessalonians1:6-8) is unequalled in any of Paul's other letters. This is a Greek society, so Paul's purpose is very specific. He must take a different angle, addressing problems which are different from those confronting the Jewish community (which was rather in opposition to Paul's teaching). Paul's themes are marriage, community life and engagement in civil life: rather general, but important, for then and now.

Paul includes Silvanus and Timothy in his initial greeting and a quick scan tells me that he usually uses we and us rather than I. 

Is this the royal “we”? Yes, I think so. However, in chapter 2, verse 18, Paul reverts to I; and note that his salutations conclude with "I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you” (4:27, 28) - no mention of Silvanus and Timothy. (NRSV uses “solemnly command” rather than “charge” in that first sentence.) 

Paul speaks with authority, the authority he knew he had through Christ. How important that everyone in the community got the message! As I read the book I know I would wish to have had my own copy of the letter. Was this done in that age? Was that a scribe's job?

Surely it is a recommendation to all Christians that they should be as the Thessalonians in their work of faith, their labour of love, and their patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ (1:3). We are told by Bible scholars that this is the first time these qualities were banded together in Paul's writings. Later references occur in Rom. 5:1-5, I Cor. 13:13 and Gal. 5:5, 6. The most famous, of course, is I Cor. 13:13, the climax of his wonderful teaching on love/charity: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”

The beloved disciple, John, has been mightily extolled for his teaching on love, but to read I Thessalonians is to realise that Paul also had a mighty ability to love and teach love. Hear this: “...though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us” (I Thess. 2:7, 8 NRSV).

I find myself wondering what Paul learned from the Thessalonians. Surely every teacher learns much from their students.

Joyce Voysey

The oldest book in the New Testament and ancient Rome

I Thessalonians.

The New Revised Standard Version of I Thessalonians has some valuable information under its opening paragraph “Addressees". To quote:

"Paul wrote I Thessalonians, the oldest book in the New Testament, to the church in Thessalonica, a port located on the northern shore of the Aegean Sea. This city was the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia and was devoted to the imperial cult of Rome, but culturally it remained a Greek city governed by Greek law. Its location on the Via Egnatia, which ran from Byzantium to the Adriatic Sea, ensured commercial prosperity."

How important these trade routes are to our grasp of history and geography! Byzantium is right over on the left of the map Julie has supplied and the route is sort of straight all the way to the Adiatic, through Phillipi.

So, what is “the imperial cult of Rome” mentioned in the quote above? Wikipedia says that it gave divine authority to emporers and some members of their families.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_cult_(ancient_Rome)

These lead to a further question. If divine implies God or gods, what were these in ancient Rome? A little research under the “Roman Gods” brought up the web site called Roman Empire (http://www.roman-empire.net/children/gods.html), which tells us that there were many different gods and goddesses. 

Everything had a god or goddess in charge: 

. Mars was the god of war; 

. Minerva the goddess of wisdom, intelligence and learning; 

. Venus the goddess of love and beauty; 

. Vulcan the god of blacksmiths and volcanoes. 

. There were also household gods. 

All the gods were classified under what was called the Pantheon. And it is so interesting that these gods still hold a fascination for scholars of our time. (Are they still pushing God aside while they associate with these gods?)

What a job to change the people's thinking to the worship of one God. Even so, Constantine I is credited with having done just that. The web site Roman Gods tells us that in AD 312 Constantine had a dream which he felt had come from the god of the Christians. This was before an important battle. He won the battle and was so grateful that, according to one website, he turned "his entire empire over to this new religion.” http://www.roman-empire.net/children/gods.html
The Roman empire stayed Christian ever after.

Mary Baker Eddy, in her wonderful No and Yes (a great little book to carry in one's handbag for inspiration at odd moments and places), mentions “pantheon.” Here she discusses human philosophy:

Christian Science rends this veil in the pantheon of many gods, and reproduces the teachings of Jesus, whose philosophy is incontestable, bears the strain of time, and brings in the glories of eternity; “for other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (p. 21:20).

The paragraph begins with:

Human philosophy has an undeveloped God, who unfolds Himself through material modes, wherein the human and divine mingle in the same realm and consciousness. This is rank infidelity,; because by it we lose God's ways and perpetuate the supposed power and reality of evil ad infinitum (21:15-20).

She also writes: “Human philosophy has ninety-nine parts of error to the one-hundredth part of Truth, – an unsafe decoction for the race” (21:2-5).

Joyce Voysey

Ed. Readers whose interest in Constantine might have been aroused by Joyce's post here, may find a National Geographic article of interest - http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/timeline_10.html -
especially regarding Emperor Constantine and Christianity. Present-day Istanbul was once called Constantinople (after the Emporer).  

Work we do together - I Thessalonians chapter one

As Christians, we are not isolated individuals, but the body of Christ. We need and have the support of our church fellows. 

Paul's letter to the "Christians assembled by God and the Master Christ Jesus" (The Message by Eugene Petersen) begins with much encouragement, love, edification, and joy.

Drawing on several Bible translations, I found him extolling some strong qualities he had evidently noticed within the church body in Thessalonica: 

• "amazing grace" and "robust peace" ("inner calm" and "spiritual well-being")

their 

• "work of faith" (work "energised by faith"), 
• "labor of love" (effort motivated by love), and
• "patience of hope" (steadfast perseverance); 

and of the 

• "Holy Spirit [that] put steel in [their] convictions". 

This Holy Spirit so permeates the New Testament, and especially Paul's work. For instance in Romans 8:2 (from this week's Christian Science Bible Lesson - B19), Paul preaches that "A new power is in operation,,. Spirit...like a strong wind, has...cleared the air" (Message). 

And so Paul tells this group of Christians in the northern part of Greece that they are the message. They have set the tone for others. Word has got around!

Paul also relied on team work. He mentions two loved fellow-workers, Silas and Timothy. 

In the books of Acts (a continuation of the gospel of Luke), Paul describes Silas as "trusted", "dependable", and a "good preacher". And it's in Acts that we are given a vivid picture of the two men praying and singing in prison, where they found themselves following a public beating. This absolute reliance on God not only saw the release of all the prisoners there, but also the conversion of their jailer and his whole household (Acts 16)!  

Timothy meanwhile, is described as "my partner in this work" (Romans), "my friend" (Colossians), "son" (Timothy), and "brother" (Philemon). He had a Greek father and a Jewish mother.

While each has his individual work to do, it is together that the church moves forward.

Julie Swannell

I like how this map clearly shows us the two areas of Macedonia and Achaia.

Map from: http://www.jesuswalk.com/thessalonians/00_intro.htm