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Paul had a seemingly insurmountable task: to make intelligible to a conservative, establishment Roman Empire the good news of a Palestinian Jewish end-time figure who had inaugurated a secret, alternative kingdom.

So Paul had to be both a conservative and radical. He was conservative for strategic reasons; to reach his culture, he learned how to communicate Christ’s message in the most intelligible forms (without compromising its content).

At the same time, Paul was radical: he inherited from Jesus a radical gospel and took the implications of that gospel to its radical conclusions.

Much of the aristocracy of the first-century Empire, especially in Rome, was threatened by changes in the status of women, former slaves, and foreigners. Leaders were disturbed that “Eastern cults,” like Judaism and the cult of Isis, were making converts among Roman aristocrats, especially among women. So they felt it was essential to preserve traditional religion and other elements of society if social order was to be preserved.

What was an early Christian missionary to do in such a setting? Since Christianity was born out of Judaism, one approach was to appeal to Gentiles who already appreciated Judaism. Sometimes Paul, therefore, explained that Jesus was the hope of Jewish history and prophecy; faith in Jesus constituted the right form of Judaism (Acts 13:16–49, Rom. 4, 9–11).

But many Romans and Greeks confused Judaism with the cults of Dionysus and Isis, which they accused of being immoral. Other Greeks and Romans detested circumcision as a form of mutilation, ridiculed the Sabbath as an excuse for laziness, and mocked Jewish food laws as utter foolishness.

So another strategy of Jewish apologists was to appeal to the highest standards of pagan philosophers (who, they often claimed, must have plagiarized Moses to get their ideas!). Jewish thinkers appealed to the popular Stoic notion of a supreme and universal God; other gods could be disposed of as merely guardian angels.

Most of what Paul says in Acts 17:24–29 and Romans 1:18–23 corresponds perfectly not only with the Bible but with Stoic thought: “The God who made the world and everything in it … does not live in temples built by human hands” would have been heartily affirmed by a follower of Stoicism. In this, Paul simply followed the lead of earlier Jewish thinkers, first establishing common ground by appealing to the best in Greek philosophy.

Over the years, Paul grew increasingly adept at interpreting his message in pagan categories yet clarifying and sticking to the essentials of the faith. The Greeks who read his first letter to Thessalonica probably misinterpreted his teaching on the end-time and death because it contrasted so starkly with their world-view. In his later letters, Paul shows more sensitivity to the way his Greek audience thought.

Paul even adapts the language of Plato to describe the soul’s state after death: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. We know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven” (2 Cor. 4:18–5:1). But neither Paul nor Judaism found the soul’s immortality incompatible with the doctrine of the future resurrection of the body (e.g., 1 Cor. 15; Phil. 3:20–21).

Also notice Paul’s cultural sensitivity regarding his teaching about the Lord’s Supper. Paul had not forgotten the significance of the Old Testament Passover for understanding Jesus’ mission (1 Cor. 5:7), but he also understood how outsiders would see the Lord’s Supper in Corinth. Business guilds, like many religious associations, would meet once a month (often in homes) to eat a meal whose meat had been offered to their patron deity. To outsiders, there was little difference between the meal of cult associations and the meal of house churches, except that the Christians’ patron god claimed to be the only true God. Paul readily adapted the language of the outsiders: instead of the “table of Serapis,” the Christians celebrated at the “table of the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:20).

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