Mission and Moral Reflection in Paul

The Apostle Paul sought to exert his influence and authority over the congregations he founded long after they had been established. Such ongoing oversight by Christianity’s prototypical evangelist has not been adequately understood. In a brief 1987 article, W. Paul Bowers challenged John Knox’s assertion that Paul’s pastoral and administrative work irked him and that he wanted to be free of it. This book confirms and significantly develops Bowers’s little-known thesis, examining a wide range of passages in the apostle’s undisputed letters and highlighting crucial implications of Paul’s broadly conceived vocation for understanding his mission and moral reflection.