Paul vs. Jesus...the grudge match...

Fair enough, but I think my question is still valid. I think the answer will be different for each individual. For a non-Christian the answer I presume would be "none." For a Christian, it depends which flavor is that person's preference.

Of course, the next logical clarification to the amended question "Which version of Christianity serves humanity best?" is, "What is meant by 'serves?'"

Christianity can be used by many different persons to serve many different purposes. So can any religion, or pseudo-religion for that matter.
 
juantoo3 said:
Fair enough, but I think my question is still valid. I think the answer will be different for each individual. For a non-Christian the answer I presume would be "none." For a Christian, it depends which flavor is that person's preference.

Of course, the next logical clarification to the amended question "Which version of Christianity serves humanity best?" is, "What is meant by 'serves?'"

Christianity can be used by many different persons to serve many different purposes. So can any religion, or pseudo-religion for that matter.
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Agreed. I think I would define "serves" as that which promotes human flourishing. I guess what I'm getting at is that the dividing line between the two types of Christianity seems pretty sharp and if there is any debate on things like validity, probability, lineage, doctrine etc, ultimately we need to consider what these scriptures really are.
It seems to me,sitting in the peanut gallery, that the real difference between spiritual texts or interpretations of the same, is if the information gleaned from the text will help human kind in a search for ultimate reality, or does scripture become a thing unto itself, an object to be endlessly debated for little more than entertainment.
Having said that, I'd like to add that I really, really tried not to make this question verbose, and this is the best I could do. :)
 
Paladin said:
Agreed. I think I would define "serves" as that which promotes human flourishing. I guess what I'm getting at is that the dividing line between the two types of Christianity seems pretty sharp and if there is any debate on things like validity, probability, lineage, doctrine etc, ultimately we need to consider what these scriptures really are.
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Fair enough. Your point is valid...for some. For others...not so much. I can only speak for myself, of course, and I do find value in the teachings of Paul. But I am not ready to commit his teachings wholesale to the realm of "inerrant" and "G-d given." Perhaps "spirit led" is the term I might use. Even so, I can also understand how some might find a different interpretation, particularly those who prefer to nit-pick and fault-find. As with any teaching from the Bible, I find it better to consider each as a whole and consider on its merits...that is, when I am using them as a source of inspiration and morality lessons.

It seems to me,sitting in the peanut gallery, that the real difference between spiritual texts or interpretations of the same, is if the information gleaned from the text will help human kind in a search for ultimate reality, or does scripture become a thing unto itself, an object to be endlessly debated for little more than entertainment.
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From my perspective...the teachings *are* a thing unto themselves. However, as humans are apt to do, interpretations are going to vary. What I glean from Paul may not be the same as what the next person may glean from Paul...so differences are bound to arise. Where we end up with being endlessly debated is when a person has no room to allow another a differing interpretation.

As for the search for ultimate reality...isn't that outside of the purview of religion? I rather like Stephen Gould's approach, of two competing "magisteria." As much as one may want to, religion is not equipped to answer the "how" of reality...just as science is not equipped to answer the "why" of reality. Expecting religion to answer the question of "ultimate reality" isn't a realistic expectation, in my view. Neither do I expect science to answer the question of why we should love our neighbors as ourselves.

Having said that, I'd like to add that I really, really tried not to make this question verbose, and this is the best I could do. :)
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Fair enough, and I hope you understand the implied reasoning behind my request for clarification.

Having said what I have, I will add a caveat...one I am sure someone (Thomas perhaps?) might readily come to in short order. That being how on one hand I can "argue" so strongly for Paul at one moment, and at another seeming to be at odds with the entire construct of Christianity. My answer is this: it depends whether in a given moment I am using the texts as a morality teaching, or whether I am pursuing the history behind it all. I cannot find a great deal of fault, other than perhaps interpretation and motivation, with much of the scholarship that picks apart the texts. But I also know to temper my position both to the audience I am in, and to the purpose I am about at the moment. It is unwise in my view to undermine someone's cherished beliefs in a wholesale manner for any kind of selfish aggrandizement. That has never been my purpose, and I will go to lengths to avoid it. By the same token, reality in the form of history also deserves its rightful consideration...so long as the motivation isn't to undermine the "truth" that is still viable and valuable to so many.

My apologies if I am too verbose, but this deserves more than a simple answer. If that is considered as debating for little more than entertainment, I don't know what to say, other than people will always take away what they will and disregard the rest. Some will do so with tolerance to other views, some will do so with great violence to other views, and very many will do so somewhere in between.
 
That answers my question, at least from your perspective Juan, thank you. I don't have a dog in the hunt here, but the thought process and the human experience aspect of spirituality is always worth a little investigation. You are right that sometimes it takes quite a few words to convey a nuanced view, and I often find your responses anything but stereotypical.
 
Hi Juantoo3 and Paladin! Nice to be talking this way.

I started writing this 'off the cuff' and must admit it's not something I have pursued in any detail, although it might prove fruitful!

But, heck guys, I started composing a response to 'the Pauline Conspiracy' root of the argument hours ago, and it's turning into a bloomin' dissertation! I've kep a copy, but I can't go on, so let me cut to the chase. (In so doing I ask your indulgence with regard to the lack of references. I will if required.)

Let's assume there is a 'Pauline Christianity' as Mr Garaffa proposes. If so, then I suggest one which turns his thesis on its head! (His being Paul is more dogmatically restrictive and repressive, than the Christianity founded on the words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels.)

Now lets look at sources, dates and contexts.

Mr G. would have Saul or Tarsus understood as an erudite urbanite, a Hellenized Jew of the diaspora. OK. I would dispute 'Hellenized' (on what grounds does he make such an assertion, he does not say), but then I could say that many scholars draw close parallels between the Stoicism evident in Paul and in Seneca (so much that some seek to conflate the two!).

Saul is educated at Jerusalem, 'at the feet of Gamaliel' in his own words. According to Jewish sources, Gamaliel was an elder if not the head of the Sanhedrin. "Since Rabban Gamaliel the Elder died," the Mishnah states, "there has been no more reverence for the law, and purity and piety died out at the same time." In Acts it is Gamaliel who speaks out against the prosecution of Christians, ""if it be of men, it will come to naught, but if it be of God, ye will not be able to overthrow it; lest perhaps ye be found even to fight against God."

So Saul was shaped in an atmosphere of 'reverence', 'purity and piety' with regard to the Law, but one flavoured with a contemporary Hellenistic liberalism, a 'live and let live (God will decide') attitude evident at the highest levels of the Sanhedrin.

(This seems quite at odds with the scourge of the church who appears in Acts, and indeed by Paul's own admission, but I digress. When someone says 'erudite, urbanite, Hellenized' to me, I think of a liberal if not radical outlook. Then again, Luke's rather dim view of Athenian discourse suggests a spring long since dried up, and its memory the delight of 'the chattering classes' who liked to dispute for its own sake. Scholars are not too quick to discount that view, either.)

Anyway ...

If Paul is inventing his own brand of Christianity, he's the first one off the blocks, as far as the NT canon is concerned. But, of course, he's not the first voice of Christianity. The church exists as an entity (even if as yet an inchoate entity of markedly differing beliefs). Peter and John are preaching in the Temple, James is never off his knees in prayer ... but it seems largely confined to Jerusalem and, presumably, Jesus's old stomping grounds in the country.

But Paul's goal is not Jerusalem. He starts founding churches all over the place, and in the end his sights are set on Rome, although that would play out not as he might have hoped.

Does Jerusalem, the mother church, not confront him? Take him to task on the content of his letters? On his claim to have received a commission from Christ Himself? No. The only conflict we have presents Paul as the liberal, the man for whom 'there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. But Christ is all, and in all" (Colossians 3:11). Paul, if I recall correctly, did not write Colossians, but it belongs in the Pauline Corpus and thus is affirming his 'conspiracy'. Paul argues with Peter for eating apart from the Gentile Christians, whom his Jerusalem companions regard as 'second class' or, as we Brits would have it, 'below the salt'.

More evidence of an easy-going, urbanite, erudite, Hellenized Christian, perhaps?

If so, then the Christianity he opposes is, presumably, not so easy-going at all. As Mr G. would have it, Jesus and His companions were neither 'urbane' nor 'erudite', they were country boys, not tainted by 'Hellenism'. The countryside where Jesus was born and grew up, and came to prominence, was Pharisee territory. He visited but never settled in Jerusalem. He cared little for the company of the rich, and didn't travel in any great style, preferred the company of drinkers and whores. He was happier in the country, talking to the people.

In short, He and they were red-necks.

Now let's look at the Gospels, the next tranche of Christian writings. Mark is c65AD, Paul and Peter are probably already dead. Mark might well have been a travelling companion of Paul, but it's generally held that Mark's gospel is the testimony of Peter, witnessed by him whilst Peter was awaiting execution.

Was he not aware of a difference between Paul's preaching and Peter's?

If so, then one might at least expect some 'correction' of Paul's vision, at least an oblique 'redirection' of Paul's teaching?

Maybe that's unfair. Mark, we can tell by his penmanship, was no scholar.

Matthew then. Whoever he was (he was not the disciple of that name, we know that), here we have a Rabbi steeped in the tradition, a scholar and an intellectual. The structure of Matthew's is chiastic, following a highly sophisticated narrative motif. The thrust of his whole gospel is to present Christ as the fulfilment of Jewish prophecy. You'd think he had the wit and the insight to counter the errors of the Pauline teaching. But no.

Luke is interesting. He utilises the Greek 'journey' literary motif in his presentation of the materials, more than half the Gospel recounts the final journey to Jerusalem. Scholars have dubbed his 'Acts of the Apostles' as 'The Gospel of the Holy Spirit' in telling of another journey, the story of the early Church (Luke dates c80AD). Paul figures a great deal but in embedded into a greater story. Tellingly, Luke has Paul go straight to the Christian community at Damascus after his conversion experience. Baptised and instructed by Ananias, he goes off and starts founding churches left right and centre, for the greater glory of God, coming to Jerusalem to present the Twelve with a fait accompli.

But Luke was also a companion of Paul on his travels. So was he under the Pauline spell? If so, then Luke and Acts must be seen as part of the conspiracy! If not, where is the contradiction of a false teaching?

One might argue 'in the general tenor of their testimonies', to which I would answer, are we sure?

Take 1 Corinthians 8.

Paul has heard there is some contention in the church over eating meat purchased from the temples. These meats were gift offerings made to the temple god, and which it was the common practice to sell on to the populace. But some Christians evidently felt it was wrong to eat meat offered as a sacrifice to false gods.

To Paul's mind, the upshot is that meat is just meat. It's sold as meat, not as a sacred relic, it's food for the belly, not a source of some mystery rite.

But, if by so doing I offend my Christian brothers and sisters, Paul says, then for their sake, for the sake of love, I should desist from eating meat. That's Paul's ruling, and it makes sense to me. (I am a 'domestic vegetarian' because my partner is vegetarian, so we never have meat or fish in the house. Except when the cats are ill, and she feeds 'em fish! That puts me in my place:mad:). But it's not a dogma. All Paul is saying is, keep the peace. Go that extra yard, for your brother's sake.

But what does Scripture say? The Synoptics are quite dogmatic. You don't have to do it to be a sinner, all you have to do is think it! Jesus says it's better than one member perish, than scandalize the whole body! Cut off a hand, a foot, an eye ... so if you see meat at a good price in the temple, and you know it's just meat, but your brother sees it as an offering, then better to put a millstone round your neck and jump into the harbour than buy that meat!

So is this evidence of a Pauline Conspiracy? Is he watering down the Word of God? It would seem so. Is this what Mr. G. means by a Hellenized Paul?

Now, how about this.

If there is a conspiracy in Scripture, it's John's Gospel. He alone claims direct first-hand witness of Jesus, and his testimony is markedly different to the Synoptics. It's also dated a lot later than them, and by the 2nd century was widely regarded as 'the first fruits of the Gospels' (Origen).

John was seen as a markedly theological Gospel (John is 'the theologian' in the Orthodox tradition). Scholars speak of a 'High Christology' in John as opposed to a 'Low Christology' of the Synoptics.

Being late, we can only assume John was trying to make something known to the Christian community they had not perhaps quite clicked.

John is often cited as a doctrinal source of Christian anti-Semitism. John is also accused of attempting to remake a Jewish-inspired apocalyptic prophet into a Greek demi-god, just as Paul had done earlier? Was this a Johannine conspiracy to subvert a primarily odd-ball Jewish sect into a new and universal (read Greek) religion, founded by Paul?

The argument I have heard, that John is a Hellenised version of Christianity, preaching a broader, non-dogmatic 'invisible church' of Christ, an all-encompassing church of a purely spiritual order.

The kind Paul was banging on about decades earlier. "Neither Jew nor Greek", that sort of thing. "Wives, obey your husbands" and "husbands obey your wives", even if they aren't Christian.

And yet we have Christ saying that only those who commit themselves to God can count themselves His brothers and sisters!

But hang on. John settled at Ephesus, a community founded by Paul. So had he, too, come under the 'all inclusive' Pauline spell, in the face of a fiercely dogmatic, doctrinal, hardline Judaism preached by Christ in the Synoptics? Repent! The end is nigh!

We know John wouldn't even sit in the same space as Cerinthus, who was preaching a proto-gnosticism. We know Peter gave the magician Simon Magus short shrift.

Yet no one, not one of them, ever said a word against this upstart Paul who was leading the church up some creek of his own imagination. They and many more, died for a cause that none of them saw was being derailed by the very man who hunted them so visciously?

Was John the clincher in the Pauline arsenal that out-flanked the Synoptics?

So, following Mr G.'s argument, if there was a conspiracy, this is it:

Paul set out to make sure that the Church was not something that belonged exclusively to the Jerusalem elite, and the way to take the message out into the wider world and found autonomous churches in which all were equal, in which the Levitical observations were abrogated. You don't have to be a Jew to be a Christian.

Remember it's Paul who puts forth the idea of 'one bread, one body', of a mystical union in Christ. A nuptial union. The spirit of Sonship. Deification by adoption. None of the Synoptics say anything about that.

So between 50-60AD Paul is pushing this message. The 'redneck' community responded with their own (synoptic) gospels — c65-85AD — that asserts Jesus' status more toward a Jewish orientation, as an outspoken and radical apocalyptic prophet with intimations of Messianism, at odds with a Hellenized Jerusalem. Maybe that's why the Romans saw the writing on the wall and stepped in and flattened the place before the followers of this Jesus cult became a global nuisance.

This, in time, is over-shadowed by John's Gospel, an apparently anti-semitic (perhaps anti-redneck) text which offers a luminous portrait as Jesus Christ as the incarnate Logos of God (an idea which he could have derived straight from Colossians 1, for example, as well as many other places in the Pauline corpus). The very stuff of Pauline legend. If Paul claims to have met Christ in the spirit, John claims to have met Him in the flesh. And they both preach Love above all else.

I leave the rest to you. Thank God for Paul, I say. Without him, John looks a real outsider. One might dare add, following from the natural progression of Mr. G.'s thesis, we might have had a true, authentic 'Jesus Christianity' which bears a close resemblance to those attitiudes found among the Taliban and their ilk today ... God preserve us from fanaticism!
 
Those are all excellent points, Thomas. Thank you.

I've been doing a little thinking this morning while packing to move, and the thought occurred to me...how much the excising of Paul seems to have more to do with chasing the Boogie Man than it does have anything to do with loving our brothers and sisters. It almost seems an annual ritual among certain Christian sects to go looking for the anti-Christ. This year he is Obama. A few years back he was Geo. Bush. Sometime before that it was Saddam Hussein. Prior to that he was some Austrian (I think) hereditary prince. And on it goes.

In spite of the admonition not to judge one another (lest we be judged!), a great many in Christianity do make a livelihood of doing just that. It's not limited to just the hunt for the anti-Christ, it spills over readily into judging our neighbor instead of loving him or her in spite of the admonition.

Recently I had my own ire provoked when a person who made a promise to me long ago that he has never yet fulfilled, claimed to be a "good Christian." I became livid. I know this person must know the wrong he has done to me, and when I spoke up his response was "what are you talking about?" Exactly the wrong thing to say to me at that moment.

I'm sorry but...I have seen a great deal of wrong, hatred and evil done in the world by so-called "good Christians." History is full of such things.

Casting judgement and being on a perpetual hunt for the boogie man (there he is! no wait, that's not him, look over there!) are *not* qualities taught by Jesus...nor Paul for that matter.

Too many Christians in my experience are too quick to burn someone at the stake first, and then say "ooops, wrong person." And then go looking for another victim. How many denominations are exclusive, believing theirs is not only *the* way to heaven, but the *only* way to heaven...and everyone else is going to the eternal barbeque? I can't give exact figures, but rest assured it is a lot!

When I find something that undermines some portion or total of Christianity without demonstrating or even suggesting how and what would be improved for the lot of Christians...that tells me they are judgmental demolition experts that have no interest in edifying their neighbors.

And yes, I do speak from a form of experience. At one time, I conducted my faith walk as though I knew it all (funny how little it turns out I really knew at the time), and I was going to tell you all about it! And if you refused to receive it, well, to me that was sufficient proof to tell me you were doomed...and "wipe the dust off my feet." I was mentally preparing for Armageddon...I had my stocked pantry and my wilderness survival books, and by G-d if you got in my way there would be hell to pay! I found myself just this side of being a Christian version of the Taliban.

Two events occurred, and the timing of both could not have been any better. The OKC bombing, and reading the passage in Revelations that said that during the time of Jacob's troubles those who killed with the sword must be killed with the sword, and those who led away into captivity would themselves be led into captivity....Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. BTW...that's John, not Paul.

Sometime soon after I did read in Paul, how those without the law were a law unto themselves. There is more to the verse, but its been awhile and I am pressed for time...but it clearly told me at that moment that G-d has other paths for other people. A Hindu isn't going to hell for an accident of birth, of being born a Hindu. Likewise any religion...it is not what you know, it is what you do with what you know.

If I am using what I know to destroy my brothers' or sisters' faithwalk, I am not walking rightly, and I am not applying my knowledge correctly.

If I see my brother or sister err, and I admonish them...I also provide what I understand to be the correct path. I don't just take away, I give in return. I get that lesson from Jesus in the Gospels, so that's not a Pauline thing either...but clearly it is a lesson lost on far too many Christians.
 
I would add an extension to my appeal to authority...you know, where is G-d's hand in all of this? If it were not of G-d, it would come to naught.

Doesn't it seem more than a bit counter-intuitive to give ha-Satan credit for building at least one entire faith that preaches G-d? Without Paul, using the exact same arguments, Christianity would not exist as any more than a footnote in history, certainly not the the claimed faith of what? a quarter of the world's population.
 
Thomas, since I'm completely ignorant of Christian theology I'll just have to trust you on all your points, you've earned that, but if nothing else your reasoning was brilliant. And there is nothing I respect more then the ability to step back and see what you love the most in all it's greatness and all it's flaws.

I also want to thank juntoo3 and Paladin for sharing their thoughts, I have come to respect you two as highly as anyone here.

May your gods bless you all.
 
Thomas said:
I think a really interesting source on Paul is the Anglican theologian, N.T. Wright. There are various texts of his here.
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Thank you for pointing that out! His "New Perspectives on Paul" is a gem. I'm relieved a little by this paper. Although I have not read his sources: Sanders, Augustine etc., this did not ruin the experience.

Thomas said:
But what does Scripture say? The Synoptics are quite dogmatic. You don't have to do it to be a sinner, all you have to do is think it! Jesus says it's better than one member perish, than scandalize the whole body! Cut off a hand, a foot, an eye
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I like your off the cuff rebuttal on the whole and apologize for bringing up this small tangent: For this part here, I wonder if Jesus isn't saying "Cut it off" in an ironic way? As Juantoo3 was just saying, Christians today tend to cut each other off willy-nilly; and that seems out of line with the spirit of the gospel (as well as what NT Wright was pointing out about the gospel's ecumenical nature). This statement of Jesus as a sentence -- "If your right hand causes you to sin, cut if off" -- makes a readable phrase with subject and verb, but surely Jesus knows that the left hand can cause as much trouble as the right? Perhaps he is pointing out how ridiculous it is to cut people off over disagreements.
 
juantoo3 said:
If I see my brother or sister err, and I admonish them...I also provide what I understand to be the correct path. I don't just take away, I give in return. I get that lesson from Jesus in the Gospels, so that's not a Pauline thing either...but clearly it is a lesson lost on far too many Christians.
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But that's exactly what Paul did, that's what his writings are all about! All his letters are responses to problems in the community.

The problem for Paul is that he's dealing with 'real world' problems that no-one would ever dare take to Jesus (Matthew 20:20 an exception, when the mother of James and John asks that her sons sit alongside Jesus in heaven, much to the indignation of the other disciples). He's dealing with politics and factions and and all manner of issues that people would never breathe a word about in Jesus' presence ... Paul pleads with them to be good, Jesus tells them they'd be better off dead.

Jesus preached to twelve hand-picked followers. He preached to amorphous groups of generally peasant people with stories and parables to give them hope, and He argued with Pharisees and Sadducees and other barrack-room lawyers and gave them short shrift, and we all admire that.

But Paul preached to congregations riven with factioneering and politics and egos ... and what is his baselines message? Love each other and try to get along ...

Who threatens people with Satan? Jesus. Does Paul? Nope. Who bangs on about hell? Jesus. Paul never mentions it. Who said to Peter, "Get thee behind me, satan!" (Mark 8:33, Matthew 16:23) ), and if that's not enough, He tops it with "thou art a scandal unto me: because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men."
Put yourself in Peter's place. What went through his mind then? Don't imagine the Jesus of our imaginings. Try to picture a Jesus who Peter has suddenly decided is God, and then He says that to you! Might as well polish up that millstone ... I'm a dead man walking!

Paul never confronts his congregations with anything like that. (Paul says, if you scandalise your neighbour, go that extra mile for him.) Even when we do submit to Satan, it's not our fault: "And no wonder: for Satan himself transformeth himself into an angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14). And when we know we've done a really, really bad thing ... have faith, you will be forgiven, because: "... in all these things we overcome, because of him that hath loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:37-39).

If Jesus is right, we're for the high jump. If Paul is right, we're going to be lifted on the wings of angels.

Paul's account of his conversion in Galatians is way different to Luke in Acts. What Luke discreetly overlooks is that after whatever 'happened' to Saul on the road to Damascus, Saul took himself off to 'Arabia'. Arabia is where Elias came from, and Elias was Saul's spiritual father – Elias was the emblem of everything Saul belived. He was a Jew, a Pharisee, a zealot (by 'zealot' we know it means someone who is willing to commit violence for the Law).

The God of the zealot kills. He destroys Israel's enemies, He allows Israel's enemies to triumph if His people disobey Him. They suffer occupation, slavery, persecution, exile, the slaughter of their children, the slaughter of their enemy's children, He visits plagues upon whole peoples, famines, wars.

Then God 'reveals' Himself to Saul. A voice says "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" Saul's confused because God (and to a Jew, who else but God comes out of a light from heaven?) was saying 'why persecuteth thou me?' I mean, what else can he think, but 'I'm not. I'm persecuting Christians ... oh ... oh dear ...'
And God says "(Oh yes, Saul,) I am Jesus whom thou persecutest."
(And Saul said a very rude word. OK. He didn't, but some part of him must have thought it. Or felt the way you do when you see the truck coming round the bend on your side of the road.)
So, quick on his feet, he says, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?"
Not, "I'm sorry", no apology at all! Nor the classic human response, "it's not my fault" or "I didn't know", but "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?"
Man, the guy's an optimist! There must have been some part of the good Jew, the good Pharisee, the good zealot who, in light of the experience of Israel, would expect God to say "I will have you drop down dead ... "

But Scripture isn't that kind of narrative. It doesn't go into the psychology in that way, it cuts to the chase, so in Luke, as soon as Saul says that, God tells him what to do.

In Galatians, Paul goes to Arabia, and goes to the mountain of Elias, to work it out. According to scholars, he could have been there for as much as fourteen years! Then he comes back to Damascus.

What took him so long? From all we know, Paul's not the type to sit on his hands. He racked up his seamiles, he was all over the shop, founding churches. What was he doing?

I think he did have a vision. At the very least, it was a psychodynamic breakthrough. That question was a koan. It triggered a life-changing event. It turned his world, and everything he knew and believed, on its head.

At the very, very least, it was a metanoia, a change of heart, that was earth-shattering. God didn't just move a mountain – he changed the whole cosmos around him.

You don't get over that order of thing in three days.

That's the way it is. God doesn't turn up and wave a magic wand. Jesus picked the twelve and even after He was crucified, they still hadn't got it. They thought He was dead. It took the Resurrection for them to see the light. They were years with a man preaching wisdom and performing miracles, and they still couldn't quite bring themselves to believe.

All Saul knows is, Something Happened. It took him years to work it out. Enlightenment is like that. It's like something seen in a flash of lightning, that for the rest of your life you're trying to put the picture together.

Think about it. (I'm talking to me here.) God comes out of the cloud in a Ray of Light and speaks to you. And you have faith. Faith? Just 'faith'? You'd think if something like that happened, you'd have absolute bloody certainty! Who needs faith when the thing you believe in is blazing in your face?

Look how Jesus marvelled at the centurion who said, 'just say the word and she will be healed'.

Saul comes out of Arabia as Paul. He's still a Jew, but has come to realise that Jesus was everything they'd been waiting, hoping, praying for, and more. He's a Pharisee who sees the Law has its source in Jesus. And he's a zealot who sees the Love of God is irrefutable. Love is the immovable object. Love is the irresistible force.

But more than that, when the irresistible force of sin hits the implacable and immovable Love of God, Love wins. No contest. Despite our every best, worst effort, God's gonna win.

He's still as driven. He's still as belligerent. He's still as argumentative. He's still a handful, he's still trouble. He has a stand-up, face-to-face row with Peter of all people, and is not afraid to call him to order. He turns up at Jerusalem and says he's as good as any of the Twelve, I've built churches all over the place, and what have you done? He presents the Curia of his day with a fait accompli, and a tithe from the churches of his foundation. I've built churches in which you don't have to be Jewish! He, calm as you like, tries to take a Gentile into the Temple and starts a riot. What the hell did he expect? Open arms? ('Actually, yes, he's a fellow Christian.'). If there was a riot, it means a proportion of the mob was on his side. But I wonder how many Christians thought this was going a step too far? (The Ebionites, the Nazoreans, for whom Christ was a strictly Jewish possession, I wonder.) The Romans have to turn out to bring order, and he declares himself a citizen under their protection! When they take him into protective custody, what does he do, but ask to address the mob who's followed him ... and starts another riot! The Romans are so worried about civil order they decide to get him out of town. So they sneak him out, at night, with over 200 men as escort, knowing full well the place was seething with people who were planning to bump him off.

Paul is still Saul in his manner and appearance, but the very centre of his being has changed. It's not about vengeance any more. It's all about love. "If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal" (1 Corinthians 13:1 – an early and authentic text). From the tenor of the text, scholars are pretty sure he was furious with Corinth when he wrote that.

I think people don't like Paul because he grounds Christ's teaching in our daily lives. Christ preached in parables. Paul faces it head on. Jesus said "Repent, for the kingdom is at hand." What he meant was "Repent, I am here." The kingdom is within because He put it there, not because we are it. "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world" (John 9:5).

"No man lighteth a candle, and putteth it in a hidden place, nor under a bushel; but upon a candlestick, that they that come in, may see the light" (Luke 11:33). But we don't.

God help us, but we don't, do we? Every time we injure our neighbour, we put another bushel on the wall.

Jesus said "Jesus saith to him: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me" (John 14:6).

That's was the subtext of what Jesus said from the light. "I am the light, and you're not just hiding my light under a bushel, wherever you see it, you're trying to put it out."

It took Saul so long to work out. He'd been, unwittingly, but by any measure, a servant of Satan all along.

But, by God, when he did, he came out all guns blazing for love.

Many of us never do.

Our only hope is when the soul cries out "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" we will look upon eyes radiant with love, and then we will come to realise that He never did, and He never will.
 
Dream said:
For this part here, I wonder if Jesus isn't saying "Cut it off" in an ironic way? As Juantoo3 was just saying, Christians today tend to cut each other off willy-nilly; and that seems out of line with the spirit of the gospel (as well as what NT Wright was pointing out about the gospel's ecumenical nature).
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I agree wholeheartedly.

Dream said:
Perhaps he is pointing out how ridiculous it is to cut people off over disagreements.
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Oh dear me ... can you put that mirror down? This is getting uncomfortable :eek:
 
A Cup Of Tea said:
Thomas, since I'm completely ignorant of Christian theology I'll just have to trust you on all your points, you've earned that ...
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Thank you.

A Cup Of Tea said:
And there is nothing I respect more then the ability to step back and see what you love the most in all it's greatness and all it's flaws.
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It brings it to life, for me, but I do wish there were not quite so many flaws as there are!

A Cup Of Tea said:
I also want to thank juntoo3 and Paladin for sharing their thoughts, I have come to respect you two as highly as anyone here.
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I second that!

A Cup Of Tea said:
May your gods bless you all.
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And may God bless you.
 
Thank you, Thomas. And yes, I have long thought of Paul's teachings as pragmatic application of the faith in real world situations.
 
Originally Posted by juantoo3 -
If I see my brother or sister err, and I admonish them...I also provide what I understand to be the correct path. I don't just take away, I give in return. I get that lesson from Jesus in the Gospels, so that's not a Pauline thing either...but clearly it is a lesson lost on far too many Christians.
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But that's exactly what Paul did, that's what his writings are all about! All his letters are responses to problems in the community.
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I stand corrected.

I had quite forgotten that the woman about to be stoned incident is a spurious addition, and the woman at the well incident is superfluous, and I suppose there are those to whom the woman associated with the comment "even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the Master's table" is easily dismissed as well. And the Good Samaritan? Well...if he doesn't believe precisely as we do, he's going to hell no matter what his works are! (please read this paragraph as a bit of sarcastic irony)

Where some see Paul and James at odds, or at least their writings and teachings, I see them as complementing each other. Faith alone is dead without works, works alone are dead without faith.
 
juantoo3 said:
Where some see Paul and James at odds, or at least their writings and teachings, I see them as complementing each other. Faith alone is dead without works, works alone are dead without faith.
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Good point ... and I enjoyed the irony.

As a matter of interest, in today's self-centric world, when we contemplate the Parable of the Good Samaritan, we tend to cast ourselves as the GS, and ask, 'what would I do?' and the whole thing becomes an exercise in morality and ethics. We're limited to the Literal and the Moral interpretation of the text.

In traditional exegesis, it is understood that Jesus is the GS, and we are the victim, beaten and bleeding in the road ... once you make that shift, the other two senses of 'The Fourfold Sense of Scripture' comes in to play, and the analogical and anagogical (or eschatological) element becomes apparent.
 
Thomas said:
In traditional exegesis, it is understood that Jesus is the GS, and we are the victim, beaten and bleeding in the road ... once you make that shift, the other two senses of 'The Fourfold Sense of Scripture' comes in to play, and the analogical and anagogical (or eschatological) element becomes apparent.
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I must confess I didn't see that before, but now I think I see your point here, and it is a good one. Thank you!
 
Thomas, setting aside your view that today is a more self-centric society, could it also be that todays Christians were very different from the earlier ones? It was JS Mill who made me realise how very different Christianity is practices in early times an in Mills times. Could it be said that people were at a greater extent living at the whim of someone else then then they are now? And that when we have greater control over our and other lives, where we put ourselves in the parable naturally shifts?
 

Hi again, wil.

[post=276769]Howard Cossell voice . . .
In this corner . . . Paul . . .
In the other corner the contender . . . JESUS!!

"Paul was the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus."
~ Thomas Jefferson . . .[/post]​

It is pretty easy, isn't it, to see Jesus simply as a great moral teacher?
Set next to that high standard, Paul (and everyone else) looks pretty shallow.

Four days out of any week, I am with you (and Jefferson) there.
But that is perhaps one of the abiding problems with Liberal Christianity.
To see Jesus as the star, in the ring.
To see Paul as the somewhat slimy fix-it man in the shadows over on the sidelines.

Paul institutionalized "Jesus' teachings" into a functioning material church. Yes.
Paul intellectualized "Jesus' teachings" into a consistent theology. Yes.
(Well, Paul did begin those processes. But he had a lot of very competent help over the first few Christian centuries.)
But is that the correct frame through which to view Paul?

It seems to me, that such a symbiotic framework for looking at Jesus and Paul begs the question.
Begs one very serious big question about Jesus.

We know Jesus (through the Gospels) as a moral teacher. But what was Jesus' spirituality like?
The gospels are written compositions structured along the lines of oral folklore. Their style is to erect colorful setpieces which are very memorable for a "listening" audience. But from an oral storytelling perspective, Jesus character comes off in the text of the gospels as simply one of three-plus stock-characters in any given dramatic episode. Pretty flat.

The words of the "moral teacher" are there in the text. Yes.
But the feeling of a spiritual experience of a real human individual is not.

What was Jesus' spiritual experience?
What was he feeling? What thoughts was he having?
(There are clues. But these are all from the outside.
All filtered through the haze of oral lore, where constant and evolving retelling of anecdotes has taken on a logic of its own. Has left real-world context to the wind.)
The emotions (you as a reader feel) are those of Mark's or Matthew's. Not of Jesus'.

The only authentic spiritual experience we get from the New Testament . . . comes instead from the seven letters of Paul.
Paul raw. What he is thinking and what he is feeling, is right here in your face. Starkly real.
Sure, the rhetoric of letter-writing has its conventions too. And Paul is acting out his prescribed role within an intricate intra-organizational transaction. Playing the necessary office politics.
But . . .

The guy's emotions and obsessions and deep concerns are right there, unmistakable. You can feel his voice, his urgency.
Paul, here, is not some idealized archetype performing in folk literature. He is a complicated individual, rough around the edges, struggling with real-world problems. And frankly . . .

Paul to me is quite marvelous!

You don't find anything like him in the literature of the late-classical world till Augustine.
Paul is more vibrantly human than any classical Greek or Latin author that I've read from the early First Millennium (or before).

The "inner life"? . . .
That which is evidenced in every Stoic: was targeted at self-improvement.
In the Neoplatonist: for respite from the world through disappearing into pure forms.
In the Gnostic: to escape the corruption of the world.
Not Paul.
He spent his days working leather in a shop and talking to whoever would listen about death and life and . . . "What do you personally want to do with your existence?" Paul was about the other person. The stranger. Paul opened a person up.

Paul is decidedly post-classical in his outlook, looking anxiously into the future, not glancing backwards into a known past. And he is considerably more-so (i.e. post-archetypal) regarding the depth and constitution (the personal struggles) of his inner life.

Paul is frankly the first soulfully "modern" individual which we have literary evidence of. The first anywhere on this planet, best I can tell.
(Do you have other candidates, wil?)

This is no cartoon spirituality.
Paul's letters? . . . If you are looking for spirituality, this is the real deal.


Jane.

 
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