Letters From Paul
Over the summer, we will be posting a number of guest blogs here. This week, our Teaching Pastor, Andrew Wilson, shares some reflections on how Paul opened and closed his letters.
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You can learn a lot about a culture from the way people open and close their letters.
Written correspondence in the age of email, for example, is brief and functional. We start as quickly as we can (maybe with a “Dear …” or “Hi …”, but often with nothing at all), and conclude with dismissive brevity (“Yours,” “Regards,” “Best”). By contrast, when people had more time and letter-reading was a moment of intimacy to be enjoyed by candlelight, correspondents would use ornate, florid sign-offs: “I need not say how much I am your ever faithful friend,” or “I have the honour to be your obedient servant,” and so forth. To this day, you can tell that French society is more formal than British society by looking at the way people sign letters. In many parts of the world today, it is normal to begin by asking about the wellbeing of the person’s whole family; in the individualistic West, that is much less common. Our greetings communicate more than we realise.
One of the most striking examples of this phenomenon in history, and certainly the most theologically significant, is found in Paul’s epistles. In the Greco-Roman world of the first century, letters opened in a standard format. You would give your name, then the name(s) of whomever you were addressing, and then greet them with a word: “Hilarion, to his sister Alis, greetings.” Several letters in the New Testament follow this pattern exactly (Acts 15:23; 23:26; James 1:1). But Paul, and subsequently Peter, developed a modified introduction. “Paul, to the church of God in X, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Paul was obsessed with grace, so we might not be surprised to hear that he starts all his letters with it. (It represented a very subtle change to the standard format, from chairein or “greetings” to charis or “grace”.) The addition of peace, the common Jewish greeting, both expresses a desire for the congregation’s wellbeing, and displays Paul’s conviction that we have been reconciled through Christ, both to God and to one other. The order may even be significant: it is first grace and then peace, and never the other way round. The theological change, whereby the greeting comes from God and Christ rather than Paul himself, reflects his God-centred vision of everything. So far, so Pauline.
But there is another layer to the “grace and peace” introduction. It looks very much like a deliberate reworking of Aaron’s blessing in Numbers 6 in a short, intense form. For over a thousand years, Israel’s priests had blessed the people by asking that God would make his face shine upon them and “be gracious” to them, and lift up his countenance over them and give them “peace.” So by starting all his letters with grace and peace from God and the Lord Jesus, Paul is both condensing and Christianising the Aaronic blessing. God still wants to bless and keep his people, but now Gentile believers are included, and the blessing comes from God the Son as well as God the Father.
In some ways, the way Paul closes his letters demonstrates an even more pointed change. The ancient norm was well-established: vale in Latin or errōso in Greek, both translated “farewell.” Like our English equivalent, both these words communicated a desire for physical health and strength in the recipient, rather like saying “stay strong” or “go well” might today. There is nothing wrong with that, of course; the apostle James does it too (Acts 15:29). But however subtly, it is a form of words that emphasises human rather than divine agency, our choices as opposed to God’s.
Paul changes it. He moves from valediction to benediction, from “farewell” to “grace be with you” or equivalent. Every single one of his thirteen letters has the word “grace” in both the opening and closing greetings—and this in a world where introductions and conclusions were far more standardized than they are today. The most famous example comes in Trinitarian form: “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all” (2 Cor 13:14). For Paul, even the most innocuous parts of a letter are opportunities to teach, bless and worship.
Preachers often point out that there is a chasm of difference between the last words of the Buddha before he died (“Strive without ceasing!”) and the last words of Jesus before he died (“It is finished!”) We could say the same about Paul’s letters. There is a vast difference between “stay strong” and “grace be with you.” From start to finish, and hello to goodbye, we are a people of grace.
[This article was originally published at Christianity Today.]
