1. You call Jesus "the first Christian." Why is this an important designation?

Paul Zahl: It is an important designation because many scholars and theologians today are too focused on Jesus' Jewish identity. Obviously, Jesus was Jewish and it is also absolutely true that he lived and served in an entirely Jewish context and world. Only at the end of his life, in the encounter with Pilate, and also once or twice during his ministry as the Gospels record, did Jesus ever have direct contact with non-Jews.

Nevertheless, he broke out of his Jewish context in several vital and core areas. What has happened in recent Christian scholarship as a whole, is that Jesus has not been allowed to speak in a "Christian" or non-Jewish voice. And I am arguing that much of what he said constituted a break with the Judaism he inherited. Vive la Différence! — that is what I wish to say. After all, what is the reason for being a Christian unless there is something distinctive to the teachings and persona of the founding figure?

2. Is Jesus still able to be called Jewish?

Paul Zahl: Naturally and obviously, yes. He was Jewish by birth and from nurture, in every sense of the words. But his ideas were at odds, in extremely significant ways, with the religious approach that nurtured him. You could say it this way: Jesus was a Jew whose ideas about the Law and about the Kingdom of God put him on a collision course with all the parties and schools of thought within Second-Temple Judaism.

We have got to recover the Christianness of Jesus. The identity of Christianity itself is in play. For if he were just the exponent of a variant of Judaism, then the Christian religion as a whole would be a gigantic and possibly even a vicious mistake.

3. How does Jesus' message differ from John the Baptist's? Along those lines, Paul's ministry comes after Jesus — is he also more "Christian" than "Jewish"?

Paul Zahl: As I say in chapter three of The First Christian, Jesus' message differed from that of John the Baptist in respect to the timing of the Kingdom of God's coming. John believed that the "axe was already laid to the root of the tree" (Matthew 3:10), in other words, that the end of the world was actually imminent, any day. Jesus foresaw, by contrast, a "time between." This meant that there was time to repent, and that it was not yet clear who were the saints and who were the losers in respect to their portion in the coming kingdom. Therefore it was possible to at least "seem" to be both sinner and saint at the same time. Clarity on the moral status of human beings was something about which one had to be agnostic in the now. Only on the day when the Kingdom came would the saints and sinners be discerned and separated. In the meantime, they were intermingled. This birthed, or generated, the great idea of simul iustus et peccator, that we can be both redeemed and contaminated by sin at the same time, an idea out of which Paul spoke in his letters, and which Luther would later deduce from Paul. So much of what we today consider to be Christian is implicit in the preserved teachings of the historical Jesus. Theological Christianity is not just the inferences of the early Church. Christianity exists within the words of Christ himself.

It is proper to say that Paul was a Christian, while at the same time being ethnically and by nurture Jewish. But it is not right to split Paul from Jesus, and say the former was "Christian" and the latter "Jewish." I want to say that both Jesus and Paul are Christian. But Jesus was the first Christian.

4. Your book Five Women of the English Reformation offers a compelling argument for more recognition of these women's roles in church history. Do you feel that any positive movement has been achieved for female theologians today? Is that in part to these five women's achievements?

Paul Zahl: It looks certain that female theologians have experienced positive movement for their reception in our time. I am not female, so that may be easy for me to say. But everywhere I turn, at least within the mainstream Christian world, I see high-profile thinkers and doers who are women.

Such forward movement, however, is not due to the achievements of the women I profiled in Five Women of the English Reformation. Those women were almost all forgotten immediately after they died. And they were forgotten not because they were women, but because they were militant Protestants. Jane Grey's family went into a century of decline — into a century of guilt by association, in fact — as a result of her life and martyrdom. The Willoughbys, too, took a long time to land back on their feet. The same with the Boleyns and with the family of Katharine Parr. What I am saying is that it was not a gender issue — their being completely hidden from history for a long time. It was a theological issue. Note that Elizabeth Tudor was very much not forgotten, who was a more circumspect and less "out there" thinker and person.

I love those five women of the English Reformation because they were willing to die to self-image and self-hopes. They would never have seen themselves as "female" theologians, except possibly for Anne Askew, who was mischievous and playful with the heavy-handed churchmen who came after her. Our five women were theologians of the "new religion" and the Reformed faith before they were anything else. And their words and self-understanding are in print, to prove this point.

5. Are there other seldom-mentioned women throughout history that you also feel contributed to theology?

Paul Zahl: Well, I think of Argula von Grumbach and Katharina Zell, both in the German Reformation, who are far too little known in the English-speaking world. And honestly, I think of many people who are like my own wife, Mary, who are lay theologians of the first order, but who have very little hearing unless they go off and get an academic doctorate. Many women are too committed already, in seeking to rear their children and also having to make a living, to be able to undertake a Ph.D. I actually dedicated my book to four women, lay people here in Birmingham, who are amazing theologians with everything but the time to be able to go for the doctorate.

In our day, there is Anne Long, who is now in retirement and is also Canon of Guildford Cathedral in the U.K. Have enough people heard about Anne's extraordinary achievements within English Anglicanism and beyond? There are many "living stones" out there, who are holding us all up but who are not self-promoters. I'd like to write a book about Anne Long! Fortunately, she is still with us.

6. What compelled you to write A Short Systematic Theology?

Paul Zahl: John Rodgers, who is now an Anglican bishop, came to our rectory in Westchester County many years ago and said his one great ambition in academic life was to write a short, one-volume systematic theology of the Christian faith. I had heard that said by others, but John's words made a lasting impression. So I decided to try my hand at it.

Short is good. Verbose is bad. A great rock'n'roll song is short, like "Woolly Bully" (Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs) or "Can't Explain" (The Who). Short is better. Or at least in a lot of cases. That's how it started in my mind.

7. Is there a particular belief or theme in Christianity that you think needs more attention and reflection than you were able to give in A Short Systematic Theology?

Paul Zahl: Yes. In [the book] I was weak on the Holy Spirit and also weak on the Trinity. I believe in the Trinity, and feel I have experienced the Spirit. If I were to prepare a new edition, I would strengthen the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and affirm the Trinity more wholeheartedly.

8. The U.S. Episcopal Church is in turmoil over same-sex unions and ordination of those with same-sex attractions — what are some of the ways you are seeking to heal the pain and strife in the church?

Paul Zahl: Well, in February I am hosting here at the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham a conference on "Reconstructing our Comprehensiveness." The conference is sponsored by the Fellows Forum of the Episcopal Church Foundation, which is an official organization of Episcopal scholars with earned Ph.Ds and is directly connected with the national headquarters of the Episcopal Church in New York City. I shall be one of the keynoters. My parish is also doing everything we can to welcome this conference, which includes all views, experiences, and opinions.

As a "traditionalist" on this subject, yet also as one whose school of thought has been very much the loser in the political sense of the word, I am asking, as pleadingly and hopefully as I possibly can, for the "powers that be" in the Episcopal Church to concede some real "space" to the dissenting minority. Only if the powers that be in ECUSA are willing to offer the olive branch to the traditionalists will this turmoil not result in a historic schism. The possibility of schism is now a "fact on the ground." But the healing is going to have to come from those in power, not from those who see themselves, rightly I suspect, as people on the verge of being forced out.

So to answer the question, I am doing everything I possibly can to ask for some charity from the majorities who backed Gene Robinson's election. I think Abraham Lincoln, on the day that General Lee's surrender was announced, asked the band in front of the White House to play "Dixie." That is the kind of statesmanship we are asking for.

9. Do you feel the two sides can continue to remain one church while disagreeing on this divisive issue?

Paul Zahl: As I have said, the answer is probably no, unless the ascendant or regnant side, i.e., the bishops who voted for Gene Robinson, are willing to give space to the traditionalist minority. Specifically, the majority need to allow the minority to have their own bishops and "alternative oversight" without condition. If the victors would give this, the losers would become less defensive and therefore less assertive, overnight.

10. What projects are you currently working on?

Paul Zahl: I am currently finishing a user-friendly introduction to Christianity and the history of Christianity. It's a little longer than I usually write, but it tries to cover 2000 years of ground. I would also like to write a pastoral theology of grace, for Eerdmans if possible, in the next two years — how the theology of radical grace works itself out in practice, and particularly in the life of everyday ministry and everyday churches, not to mention what Sly and the Family Stone called "everyday people."