In my previous post I began to discuss the non-canonical Apocalypse of Paul, a legendary tale that describes what Paul saw when he had his vision after being taken up to the “third heaven”  (see 2 Corinthians 12:1-6).  He was actually taken to see what was experienced by the dead in the afterlife.  For some lucky souls, it was fantastic.  For others, well … read on.

He first sees two souls being taken to their eternal destiny, one is happy, and the other miserable.  The one is carried by angels before the throne of God to be given an eternal reward; the other is dragged off by some very angry angels to face eternal damnation.

Paul then is shown the actual places of bliss and torment.  The bliss is amazing—a glorious utopian place of goodness, where Paul meets with the saints of the Jewish tradition and converses with them in paradise.  The torment, on the other hand, is horrific.  Here are all sorts of punishments arranged for all kinds of sinners, Christian and non-Christian alike.

The first set of torments, in fact, are reserved for Christians.  Paul sees a “river of boiling fire” in which a multitude of people are standing—some of them immersed to their knees, some to their navels, some to their lips, and some up to their hairline. The first group “have gone out of church [to] occupy themselves with idle disputes”; the second engage in fornication after taking the eucharist; the third are those who slander other Christians; and the fourth are those who hatch plots against their neighbors.

Church leaders are not spared torment.  Paul sees an old man who is tortured by hellish angels who pierce his bowels with “an iron instrument with three hooks.”  And why?  He was a bishop who did not administer his office well and did not take care of the widows and orphans.  So too there are punishments for deacons and lesser church officers.

Not to be forgotten are the regular sinners, who are tormented in various awful ways: magicians, adulterers, those who lost their virginity without their parents’ knowledge, and even people who “broke their fast before the appointed hour.”  It’s clearly not easy to escape the terrors of hell.  Nor are heretics exempt.  One of the worst torments is a pit whose stench is more excruciatingly painful than all the other tortures so far described; into this pit are thrown those whom God has chosen never to remember—who, in fact, are none other than the docetists, those who did not believe that Christ actually had a flesh-and-blood existence.

What we have in this text, then, is a remembered Paul who is far removed from the historical Paul.  Paul himself refused to indicate what he had seen in his vision of paradise and indicates that the words spoken to him there could not be pronounced and must never be told.  This author, on the other hand, sees and tells all.  And he clearly had his reasons for doing so.  The heady apocalyptic times of Paul had long passed.

No longer was there an urgent mission to the “ends of the earth” to let the Gentiles know that the day of judgment was at hand, that the coming of Christ was imminent, that they needed to change their ways, turn to the one true God, and accept by faith the death of his Son whom he raised from the dead.  The church, by the time of the writing of the Apocalypse of Paul, is a force in the world.  And it is filled not just with saints, but with sinners.  It has leaders who are self-serving and not concerned for the poor and oppressed among them.  There are heretics at large.  And there are people filling the Christian congregations who do not live the true life of faith.

This life of faith is not, as it was in the days of Paul, a life of urgent expectation of the imminent return of Christ in judgment.  It was a life that renounced this world and all its pleasures for the sake of the world above—a world that would be entered not when this age came to an end, but when the soul died, and faced God for judgment, to be granted a place either in paradise or in the realms of the damned.