G. B. Caird - Significance - Paul The Apostle

Paul The Apostle

Another of Caird's lifelong preoccupations was Paul the Apostle, seen particularly in his works Principalities and Powers, Paul's Letters from Prison, and comments scattered throughout The Language and Imagery of the Bible and New Testament Theology. For Caird Paul has not been given his proper due by modern scholarly opinion in terms of the uniqueness and importance of his contribution to Christianity. As a dyed-in-the-wool Cambridge-trained classicist, Caird saw Paul not so much as a conveyor of supernatural information but as a brilliantly innovative thinker, a skillful interpreter of the scriptures and of the mind of Jesus, or "humanity at its very best". Paul was also a revolutionary, as Caird saw him: one who was fervently committed to the socially convulsive implications of the gospel, especially in such concerns as class divisions within society (including the equality of women), the constant corruption of political and religious authority, and the unity of the Christian church as a rebuke to a warring and fractured world. In all his works Caird never shrank from making clear his unqualified admiration for what he saw as the frequently misunderstood apostle; yet this could hardly be mistaken for hero worship. He could disagree with Paul at times, and "if he had ever seen approaching in the High Street, he wouldn't have treated him with exaggerated deference, nor would he have crossed the street to avoid him. He would probably have invited him to read a paper to his Postgraduate Seminar, and would have felt no embarrassment at taking him into the Senior Common Room for tea beforehand". In certain ways Caird contributed to the debate concerning the New Perspective on Paul, seen perhaps most visibly in an extended review of E. P. Sanders's work Paul and Palestinian Judaism.

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