St Paul

And so it happened - as the Acts of the Apostles relate that, when they had come very near to land, some jumped into the water, and the others held on to some planks or woodwork and swam to the shore, "And when we had reached land," we read in the Acts " we knew that the island was called Malta and the inhabitants took great care of us." No life was lost, all 276 passengers were saved. Saint Paul the Apostle (born ca. 10, died ca. 67) ,the "Apostle to the Gentiles" (Romans 11:13, Galatians 2:8) was, together with St. Peter, the most notable of Early Christian missionaries. Unlike the Twelve Apostles, Paul did not know Jesus in life; he came to faith through a vision of the risen Jesus (1Corinthians 15:8–9) and stressed that his apostolic authority was based on his vision. As he wrote, he "received it [the Gospel] by revelation from Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:11–12); according to Acts, his conversion took place as he traveled the road to Damascus.

Paul is the second most prolific contributor to the New Testament (after Luke, whose two books amount to nearly a third of the New Testament). Thirteen letters are attributed to him, with varying degrees of confidence. The letters are written in Koine Greek and it may be that he employed an amanuensis, only occasionally writing himself. The undisputed Pauline epistles contain the earliest systematic account of Christian doctrine, and provide information on the life of the infant Church. They are arguably the oldest part of the New Testament. Paul also appears in the pages of the Acts of the Apostles, attributed to Luke, so that it is possible to compare the account of his life in the Acts with his own account in his various letters. His letters are largely written to churches which he had founded or visited; he was a great traveler, visiting Cyprus, Asia Minor (modern Turkey), Macedonia, mainland Greece, Crete, and Rome bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, first to Jews and then to Gentiles. His letters are full of expositions of what Christians should believe and how they should live. What he does not tell his correspondents (or the modern reader) is much about the life and teachings of Jesus; his most explicit references are to the Last Supper (1Corinthians 11:17–34) and the crucifixion and resurrection (1Corinthians 15). His specific references to Jesus' teaching are likewise sparse, raising the question, still disputed, as to how consistent his account of the faith is with that of the four canonical Gospels, Acts, and the Epistle of James. The view that Paul's Christ is very different from the historical Jesus has been expounded by Adolf Harnack among many others. Nevertheless, he provides the first written account of the relationship of the Christian to the Risen Christ—what it is to be a Christian—and thus of Christian spirituality.

Paul's influence on Christian thinking has, arguably, been more significant than any other single New Testament author. His influence on the main strands of Christian thought has been massive: from St. Augustine of Hippo to the controversies between Gottschalk and Hincmar of Reims; between Thomism and Molinism; Martin Luther, John Calvin and the Armenians; to Jansenism and the Jesuit theologians, and even to the German church of the twentieth century through the writings of the scholar Karl Barth, whose commentary on the Letter to the Romans had a political as well as theological impact. At the end of a life filled with many hardships and dangers, shipwreck and imprisonment, St Paul wrote

"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, and I have kept the faith” There’s something to encourage us all!