Wednesday, March 16, 2016

THE APOSTLE PAUL - Part III

St Paul in Ephesus
In this final post on the apostle Paul (for now), I wish to examine his legacy.  It would have been interesting if the New Testament canon had been laid out chronologically . Being that Paul's letters  are the first known writings of the New Testament would have placed them in front of the gospels.  I think doing so would offer readers a different perspective on the gospels and would have allowed the reader to understand how much Paul's perspective is reflected in what became written about Jesus in the four gospels that ended up in the New Testament. 

In examining Paul's legacy, it is important to keep in mind that his writings occur within the context of the Church of Jerusalem's existence, the spiritual center of the early church, just as the Temple was the center and focal point of Judaic worship.  Christianity was very much understood by the earliest Christians to be Judaic, a part of Judaism. The link between importance of the Temple and the church in Jerusalem is undeniable.  This ultimately played a major role in the promulgating Paul's theological perspective, when both the Temple and Church in Jerusalem were destroyed in 70 CE and Paul's theological views of the church became the foundation upon which the church grew throughout the Roman Empire.

Paul's endeavor to include gentiles into the emerging early Christian church without the need for conversion to Judaism and male circumcision led to development of what I referred to as his adoption matrix, whereby every Christian was considered an adopted child of God until such time all, like the resurrected Jesus, become the raised, spiritual children of God. This was a very inventive approach that, for the first known time in Judaic history, the centerpiece of Judaism  - adherence to the law - was questioned as relevant to the concept of righteousness in the sight of God.  Paul did not take this lightly and his writings illustrate a torn individual who struggles with his past relationship to the law and it's relevance in the light of God's unmerited grace.

Paul was a rational visionary, who greatly expanded the Christian church.   His reasoning abilities provides a template for further development and has been, in fact, the inspiration for most of what is considered Christian doctrine and dogma.

As I have said in another post, the Holy Bible helps us form our questions rather than give us the answers to them.  Times change and we need to have the ability to reinterpret these ancient scriptures, much the same way the apostle Paul took liberties in redefining the meaning and purpose of Judaic law and the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures in the light of his visionary experience which led him to embrace the unmerited grace of God.
Paul's use of logic is refreshing but is under-appreciated. He has become so mainstream today, that few realize the radical inventive way he utilized Hebrew scriptures to support his theological perspective.  Reason in religion may not be everyone's cup of tea, but Paul underscores the necessity of reason in forging a path for the good news of the risen, spiritual Jesus who becomes the Christ of God. While Paul referenced little of what Jesus taught during Jesus' ministry as recorded in the canonical gospels, he undoubtedly has helped shaped many of the teachings about Jesus.

Because Paul employed a logical and reasoned approach in his writings he also understood the limits to which he could know, to which he could reason.  His visionary experience led him to a realm of the unknowable, what some would call mystery. Even here, Paul identifies tools to utilize on this side of life that help us deal with the mystery we find ourselves in, life.  Faith, hope, and love become the centerpiece of Pauline theology, what I have referred to in other posts as the affective elements of life; that help shape our responses to what our life experiences bring.

What I have not spent a great deal of time discussing in these posts is Paul's reference to the Holy Spirit in his writings. The Holy Spirit is ubiquitous throughout Paul's epistles.  It becomes that eternal presence in our temporal existence working in, through, and with our acts of faith, hope, and love.  The Spirit of God becomes the bloodline and life force of Paul's version of the Church, the spiritualized Body of the risen Christ in this world.

The spiritual realm that Paul writes about is breathtaking in scope. It gives wide berth to expand our thinking and perspectives especially with regard to Paul's concept of God's grace which, by Paul's account, is limitless.  Neither Paul's mind nor ours can wrap themselves around such limitlessness.  Room for growth, the expansion of God's Spirit, and the ever evolving meaning of the Church as the body of Christ is evident in what Paul writes.  What limits he mentions appear based on human kind's inability to look past our dimensional perspective and limited knowledge.

As with the ministry of Jesus, I do not see Paul's work complete.  Incompleteness is woven into the very fabric of Christianity.  There is always work to be done. The "once-and-for-all-ness" of Christ's death and resurrection is not an end but rather a beginning on this side of life.  Paul's emphasis that a new creation is afoot hints at a completeness yet to come, not mission accomplished.

The apocalyptic and eschatological strains that are embedded in Christianity and in Paul's writings do not, in my opinion, necessitate having to be interpreted as they were some two thousand ago.  Paul may have been caught up into that mindset and may have been expecting a return of Christ within his lifetime ...  but maybe not.  His visionary experience opened him to the likelihood of a greater reality that breaks into our present world and co-exists with the present until such time as this world no longer exists.

Paul was capable of skepticism and at times he expressed it in roundabout ways.  If he had not been skeptical he could not have been receptive to his vision; Doubt is a key to what appears to be a locked tight mind. To apply and paraphrase a saying of Leonard Cohen, it is the crack that sometimes let's the light shine through.

Paul could not have argued Judaic law from the perspective of certainty.  He could not have put forward the affective elements of faith, hope, and love in the manner he did.  These ideas and principles did not proceed from a certain mind, but rather  a questioning one.

What permits Paul to think freely is his ultimate trust in God's faithfulness, hopefulness, and love as discovered in his vision of the risen Christ Jesus.  In this sense, Paul, more than any other person of the early church period, shaped the Christian Church we know today; a church that continues amidst its failures and setbacks.

Until next time, stay faithful


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