straighten them out, as it were. This is a whole other area that I cannot delve into in this
paper, but I do not think that Paul saw himself as the authority figure with the right to
give instructions for any and all churches, nor even any and all Gentile churches; rather,
he saw himself as the authoritative pastor only for those churches for which he had
personally served as organizing father. In other words, I see Romans 14:1
15:7 as Paul
reflecting on paper some of his conclusions regarding the Corinthian situation, even
though he is writing to the Romans. He is aware, of course, that the Roman believers
could be facing similar issues, so some general comments are certainly apropos.
Let me draw a conclusion here before I go on. What I have been proposing is that
at times in his letters, we cannot use the mirror method in interpreting Paul's letters--
trying to figure out what is going on the churches he is addressing by making deductions
from the content of his letters. Rather, sometimes Paul reflects his dealings with other
churches in his letters, so that we need to keep the entire Pauline corpus in mind as we
attempt to determine the Sitz im Leben of a particular unit. Paul occasionally reflects on
one church's situation to another because that is the way he is wired. When he gets riled
up, he has to express himself; that personality trait takes precedence over anything else.
That Paul was a man of deep passion who wore his emotions out on his sleeve is
clear from many pages in the New Testament
--
both in Acts and in his letters. Let's begin
with Acts. After his first encounter with Christianity during the sermon and assassination
of Stephen, Paul (at that time, Saul) dedicated his life to the eradication of the movement
of the Nazarenes. He began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he
dragged off men and women and put them in prison (Acts 8:3). Or again, Saul was still
breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples (Acts 9:1). He was so