Summer travelers should recall Paul

That's the view of a panel of scholars assembled by The Evangelist. They have been answering questions about the history of the Church during 1999, in anticipation of the coming millennium. Previously, they selected the greatest pope, most important era and other "bests of" (see box).

This time, they were asked: "What was the most significant journey in Church history"? Most chose Paul's travels throughout the Roman Empire, spreading the Gospel.

Transition

"That did not happen immediately, of course," Father Dallen continued, "but Acts' description, 20 or 25 years later, of Christianity's coming to the center of the Empire clearly has Jesus' journey in the background and a sense that now its full significance could be seen as the faith was planted in Rome."

A similar answer came from Rev. Robert Scully, SJ, assistant professor of history at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, who said: "In his several extended preaching tours around the eastern Mediterranean world, Paul reached out not only to his fellow Jews, but also to the Gentiles. This melding had an enormous impact on the history of Christianity. Moreover, Paul's letters to his fledgling communities, i.e., his epistles, came to form a major part of the New Testament canon."

Going west

Agreement came from Francesco C. Cesareo, associate professor of history and director of the Institute of Catholic Studies at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio.

"Of all those responsible for spreading the Christian Gospel to the Gentiles, Paul is the most significant," he explained. "In three great missionary journeys between 46-58 A.D., he was responsible for the founding of Christian communities in modern-day Syria, Turkey, Yugoslavia, the Greek mainland and islands, and Cyprus.

"In each of these communities, he focused on the basic Christian message of Jesus' resurrection, aiming to create a group capable of existing on its own, thus freeing him to establish new communities. He kept in touch with the communities he founded by letter and return visits, helping them to build on the rudimentary instruction, basic liturgy and primitive organization that he had left them. His most important task was to give these individual communities a sense of belonging to one Church.

"His success in creating this consciousness not only avoided a decisive split between Christians of Jewish and pagan backgrounds, but also created a solidarity which was to be enormously important in the struggles that the Christians were to face in the future."

Spreading the Word

"The most significant journey for Christianity was that of Paul's journey to Damascus to pressure the Christians there to abandon their new form of belief and return to the orthodoxy of pharisaic Judaism," he said. "The journey's significance came with the religious experience Paul had of the risen Jesus which led to his conversion from oppressor to advocate of the Christian way."

But Father Fiore also cited Paul's "subsequent mission to the Gentiles in modern-day Turkey, Greece and the Adriatic coast. [The mission] relied on Paul's energy and persistence for its success. His letters to the churches founded in these areas expressed the beginnings of Christian theology and Church practice.

"The theological formulations of the Church fathers, the medieval and contemporary theologians, and the Church councils quote Paul. The Protestant churches drew the inspiration for their original perspective on Christianity from Paul's letters."

Final journey

A similar vote was cast by Dr. William R. Barnett, associate professor of religious studies at Le Moyne College in Syracuse.

"The Apostle Paul's journey from Antioch to Jerusalem (compare the accounts in Acts 15:1-35 and Galatians 2) resulted in the decision by the early Jewish followers of Jesus to undertake a mission to non-Jews unhampered by cultic traditions of circumcision and dietary laws," he explained. "Had this journey not occurred, the Jesus movement might have been restricted to nothing more than small band of followers of yet another Messianic pretender.

"As matters turned out, however, Paul's intervention and the decision of the leaders of the followers of Jesus at Jerusalem made participation in the community that proclaimed Jesus as Christos possible for all throughout the Roman Empire. In sum, Paul's journey made possible the great Gentile Church."

Mediterranean tour

This trip was "of moderate importance," he continued, because "it brought the faith to new lands and demonstrated that Christianity is essentially a missionary faith. But it was of literally epoch-making importance because of the letters that Paul wrote to the communities he founded. In them, he laid out his understanding of the Christian message: God's unconditional acceptance of us as sinners, faith as the saving act in which we let God be the one who loves us without bound or limit, and the cross as the event in which God participates in suffering and death, and gives them the power to be sacraments -- effective signs of His loving presence."

Prof. Dwyer noted that "every authentic movement of revival and reform in the Church has been driven by a return to Paul's magnificent vision, which he bequeathed to us in the letters he wrote during his travels."

(07-15-99) [[In-content Ad]]