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Christian History: Many Christians don’t naturally think of Paul as someone who had a regular and active “Spirit-life.” Why is that?

Gordon Fee: By and large, Protestants think theologically, and then almost completely in terms of soteriology—what does it mean to be saved? We’ve read Paul through the lens of his letters to Galatia and Rome, where the issue was justification by faith. We’ve read these texts so often we tend to understand Paul only as a theologian.

But Paul was a person of prayer before he was a theologian. His desire was not to be a precise theologian but to know Christ personally. That was the passion of his life. Any reading of Paul that doesn’t take that seriously, doesn’t understand Paul.

If you had asked Paul to define what a Christian is, he would not have said, “A Christian is a person who believes X and Y doctrines about Christ,” but “A Christian is a person who walks in the Spirit, who knows Christ.” He wouldn’t have denied the importance of doctrine, but it would not have been the first thing he would have mentioned.

Christian History: What religious experiences were most important to Paul?

For Paul, everything began on the Damascus Road. About that experience, he said, “I saw the Lord.” He considered that a resurrection appearance of the same quality others had. That experience determined everything for Paul.

If we turn to Paul’s letters, it’s clear that the Spirit, whom he considered the Spirit of Christ, was an ongoing, dynamic reality in his life. In addition to receiving visions, he performed healings and spoke in tongues.

Christian History: Was Paul’s experience of the Spirit unusual?

Not at all. In the first century, it was assumed Christians would experience these things. For example, when Paul scolded the Galatians, he began a sentence, “He who richly supplies you with the Spirit and performs miracles in your midst.…” Paul spoke in the present tense—the Spirit was dynamically active, doing extraordinary things in Galatia, and the Galatians were well aware of it. He assumed the same common experience when he wrote the church at Corinth.

Now, Paul did have some unusual experiences of the Spirit, but he never made an issue of them. In 2 Corinthians 12, for instance, he mentions having been “caught up to the third heaven,” and he seems to be validating his ministry by mentioning this experience.

But he was really playing the role of the fool in a Greek play. In the end, he didn’t even know whether he was transported out of the body, and he couldn’t report what exactly happened—some validation! The point is that he downplayed this incredible experience in a playful way. This type of experience was unusual, but it was private for Paul.

But this wasn’t the case with the usual supernatural experiences of early Christians—prophecy, miracles, and tongues.

Christian History: What did Paul mean by “prophecy”?

This experience is mentioned throughout early Christian literature; it was a common denominator in all churches. Prophecy was understood by Paul as the spontaneous Spirit utterance of the faithful. There was a synergy between the Spirit and the speaker; the Spirit prompted the speaker to say things. Prophecy wasn’t a trance; it wasn’t a matter of an individual’s wanting to speak his or her mind. Something supernatural was going on that pushed a person to speak.

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