What does Paul have to do with religion? The very question seems strange. Should it not be, what does Paul not have to do with religion? Is he not the most important of all the early followers of Jesus of Nazareth? Is he not considered the architect of the religion called Christianity?

Religion is very good at deciding who is in and who is out. In fact, it might be said of the religious form of life that it often legitimizes with claims of divine approval the human tendency to categorize as ‘others’ those who do not share one’s own beliefs and practices. A catalogue of examples is unnecessary; it would include intra-religious splinters within faith traditions and inter-religious hostility, even murderous conflict. It is small wonder that religious fervour is not always considered a virtue in others.

Some conversations end, but are not finished. We may run out of time or energy. We may give up and walk away. We may realize that the issues are more complex, the feelings more sensitive, than can be helped by continuing the talking right now.

When a reputation has suffered the accretions of twenty centuries, it is difficult to know how to chop off the distorting bits. The hope that one could get to the ‘real’ Paul underneath the layers must inevitably be abandoned. For one thing, the evidence available from his own hand is limited, and for another, he will always have to be located somehow in relation to our time and place. We understand him, not as his own spirit or God’s spirit understands him (as he notes in 1 Corinthians 2), but in response to the assumptions and concerns of our day.

What does it mean to be ‘in Christ’ for social and ethical relationships? This ‘new life’ is not so much individual conversion into being a different person as it is belonging to a ‘new creation’, being granted status as members of something that did not previously exist. We need to consider the ways in which Paul describes this community, asking what holds it together. In Chapter 6 we will consider how its members should behave towards each other. Chapter 7 asks about marks of membership: what practices identify who belongs? Questions about the relationship between insiders and outsiders come in Chapter 8.

Those ‘in Christ’ should see themselves not as separate independent individuals, but as members of a body, the ‘body of Christ’. They are not merely collections of people put together for specific and limited purposes; they are also family members. What binds them, though, is not blood or genes. They belong together because they experience the love of God in Christ. God’s Spirit is poured out in them, flowing over into agapic love for each other. At least that is how Paul argues it should be.

The question of how we should live is a perennial concern. Immanuel Kant asked ‘What ought I to do?’ as the second of three questions crucial to humanity. This what-to-do question belongs, he says, to ethics. The first question, ‘What can I know?’, Kant gives to metaphysics, and the third, ‘What may I hope?’, to religion. However, when it comes to helping people resolve their questions about how to live, religions are only too happy to spend more time on ethics than on hope. Indeed, among the functions religions carry out assiduously is telling their adherents how they should behave. Moreover, religious edicts range wider than ethics: they encompass religious practices, social relations, and civic duties. The answers to ‘what must I do religiously?’ set out the qualities of a virtuous life, but they are also intended to create and express distinctive identity, to reinforce what our group does as opposed to other groups.