Paul said a lot of odd things about sex. Like he wanted everyone to be celibate as he was and not even marry. Since he was convinced the apocalypse was probably happening in all of their lifetimes anyways. But at the end of the day, he covered himself (on these subjects specifically) saying "But I give the charge. Not the Lord." In some of these cases, he was charting unknown territory, and I think... doing his best to give advice.
I agree with that. he was trying to resolve all the typical issues that pop up in a new community setting where people have still carried their old values and old baggage into the new sitting, there's a body of an old ingrained culture trying to do things their way with an influx of new blood (the gentiles joining the church comprised in some locations of Jews), etc. He was going around and trying to make everything mesh up so that the communities could settle out rather than imploding.
The problem is that Christianity hangs on his every word since. Laws about marriage, laws that prohibit females from even speaking in church, laws that tell them they should cover their heads, etc..
Yup. Instead of realizing he was just making things work, using his brain and his knowledge of the Law, to make the smoothest kind of transition possible, people try to read him as if he were giving literal commands that apply universally... the rulebook approach. It just really makes no sense. And I will credit Paul, too, with specifically trying to say what things he thought were coming from God and the faith vs what things were just his and the best answers he personally could come up with. But anyway....
This is why we still have Amish people and nuns. Because of Paul. I think he was very regressive compared to Jesus (specifically when it came to female roles).
Well... jesus lucked out (aside from that crucifixion thing) -- he basically ended up jumpstarting the thing, but he didn't have to organize the structure, codify the rules, establish the procedures, etc., for the community he had created. Paul -- who actually started out as kind of a zealot and dogmatic -- had to learn to be more diplomatic and just do his best to help everyone live in peace. So we see him trying to keep the church from being too radical about some things and not getting caught up in political struggles... hence issues like slavery, where he's not trying to stir up a rebellion but instead focusing on the relationship between people and having them reflect God regardless of their station in life; or the issue with women, trying to form a smooth bridge between the culture and the church so that again the road might be smoothed for the gospel to have in-roads into the culture. I guess it depends on your individual outlook as to whether you see that as diplomatic and wise, or compromising in some way.
Jesus did definitely treat women with respect and as equal human beings; while there are none numbered among the "12 disciplines," he seems to have been emotionally intimate with a number and they were the first ones to find him after the Resurrection. Even women in the early church typically did better than the culture, I think, and there seems to have been a few female elders.
The funny thing is, these are just letters he was writing to different congregations. Who knows how much freeform thought he was employing for this medium. It's like building a religion out of someone's TypoC posts (lets hope that doesn't happen).
Sounds like a weird analogy, but it's not really that false of one. Basically, that is what was kind of happening.... imo.
