A Christian Utopia: Paul's Community of Equality and Justice

In the first century of the Common Era the Romans could boast of being the most pious society in the known world. They possessed a highly structured societal organization with a well-defined hierarchy where everyone knew their place and the personal and interpersonal duties associated therewith. It was understood that their success was due in large part to maintaining a relationship with the gods. Yet at the same time social inequality and lack of justice for its members was ubiquitous and merely part of the fabric of that society. Into this milieu steps Saul of Tarsus later known as the Apostle Paul. Based upon the authentic corpus of Paul a new utopian society was envisaged--a society based on equality and justice for all not just for the elite. This eschatological community is in sharp contrast with Imperial Rome. Following the death of Paul writers invoking Pauls authority by claiming that their texts were authored by the apostle himself continued writing letters to various Christian communities. However their texts differed in significant ways from Pauls vision. Yet these corrupted texts have survived and influenced the development of Christianity for two millennia. It is imperative to retrieve the true vision of Paul for a world in serious need of that eschatological vision. A Christian Utopia is a bold re-creation of Pauls egalitarian vision set against the iron backdrop of hierarchical Roman society. Gaudet succeeds in conveying the radical character of Pauls experiment through differential comparison with Roman sources based upon his detailed knowledge of the social and ideological mechanisms of Roman power . . . . Gaudets retrieval of Pauls vision is a prophetic challenge to the twenty-first-century regime of inequality and the complacency of the institutional church. --Laurence L. Welborn Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity Fordham University Dr. Stephen J. Gaudet was a Fellow in Religious Studies at Harvard University where he studied and completed his thesis under the direction of Professor Helmut Koester. He also has a background in science earning degrees in biochemistry and conducting research at the National Institutes of Health and has taught at the university level. Additionally he also holds a Juris Doctorate.