What Paul Meant - by Garry Wills (Paperback)

About the Book

A brilliant synthesis of the Apostle Pauls thought and influence is written by a "foremost Catholic intellectual" ("Chicago Tribune").

Book Synopsis

"If you think you knew Paul, get ready to have all sorts of cherished preconceptions exhilaratingly stripped away. If you've ever been vaguely curious, there is no finer introduction." (Los Angeles Times)

Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What The Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017.

In his New York Times bestsellers What Jesus Meant and What the Gospels Meant, Garry Wills offers fresh and incisive readings of Jesus' teachings and the four gospels. Here Wills turns to Paul the Apostle, whose writings have provoked controversy throughout Christian history. Upending many common assumptions, Wills argues eloquently that Paul's teachings are not opposed to Jesus' message. Rather, the best way to know Jesus is to discover Paul. In this stimulating and masterly analysis, Wills illuminates how Paul, writing on the road and in the heat of the moment, and often in the midst of controversy, galvanized a movement and offers us the best reflection of those early times.

Review Quotes

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Praise for What Paul Meant

"With characteristic clarity and insight, Garry Wills has given us a vital study of the earliest voice in the New Testament."
--Jon Meacham, author of American Gospel

"The best description of how the Jesus movement emerged."
--Andrew M. Greeley, author of The Catholic Revolution

"A tour de force revision of what we thought we knew about the apostle who helped give the Christian faith its distinctive shape."
--Slate.com

"With this bracing book . . . [Wills] further cements his reputation as one of the most intellectually interesting and doctrinally heterodox Christians writing today."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Wills writes more gracefully and economically than scholarly authors in this gem of a book."
--The Boston Globe

"A fascinating read, worth examining by anyone with an open mind and an interest in Christianity and its most prolific early voice."
--BookPage

"Lucid . . . Wills is not a biblical scholar, but he is a voracious reader and an eloquent writer who makes judicious use of the best recent scholarship."
--The Washington Post

"Everybody should be as lucky as St. Paul. Not only did he have a transformative spiritual experience and become a founder of one of the world's greatest religions, but two thousand years later he has Garry Wills to explain, interpret and defend him. . . . One could hardly wish for a more capable advocate than Wills."
--Chicago Tribune

"A bracing book of spiritual commentary [by] one of this country's leading public intellectuals and American Catholicism's most formidable lay scholar."
--Los Angeles Times

About the Author

Garry Wills is a historian and the author of the New York Times bestsellers What Jesus Meant, Papal Sin, Why I Am a Catholic, and Why Priests?, among others. A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and other publications, Wills is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a professor emeritus at Northwestern University. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.