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Shim
06-04-2011, 08:00 PM
Thinkers have devoted themselves to Paul for nearly two thousand years, historians for two hundred. All of us, Paul's readers, have learned from this great tradition. The tree of Pauline scholarship has now grown beyond all bound. The trunk has divided into branches and these have divided, over and over, in turn. The process is unending.

Paul is forever fascinating. His thought has shaped the Western world. But it has for centuries been disputed exactly what he thought. His letters are vividly personal. But they raise the question ever more sharply what sort of person he really was.

When we think of Paul, we think of a collection of letters. When his churches thought of him, they thought of their founder, father, and friend. We have never had Paul among us and do not miss him. Paul's churches had been founded by Paul in person, and it was the person Paul that they wanted back. Leadership was as important then as now.

Paul was a leader who claimed an extraordinary authority within his communities. Each of those communities was, he believed, dependent for its very survival on reciprocal love and responsibility among its members--and between those members and himself, and so he worked tirelessly to heal divisions. But Paul was himself an ambiguous figure whose writings were fiercely contested. His authority was challenged, his integrity was questioned, his pleas for unity were flouted. How was he to keep control? He warned and wheedled, threatened and cajoled. No more than that. He maneuvered and bullied his addressees. And it didn't help. He deepened the divisions he worked to heal.

Paul's intentions and effects, successes and failures will fascinate any reader interested in the nurture and cohesion of communities, in leadership and the exercise of power.

Any thoughts about the apostle Paul? Personally I have received several private emails throughout time from people in S.F. who have had a problem relating to Paul. Seemingly, Christians in biblical times did not trust him, and in these times, when people approach Paul there arises an issue. Any comments or articles to share to help these people?

Mind's Eye
06-04-2011, 09:04 PM
I was one of the individuals who PMed Shim to ask him what he thought of the ideas that float about today. Ideas as Paul being the first Christian heretic, led people astray, was thrown out of the Christian church and even said not to exist.

Me personally, I never buy into the new fads that say this person didn't exist or they were really a heretic or what have you. These kinds of claims have been made throughout history, and if one does just a little homework on the opposite side of the argument... they will see that many of these claims have been refuted again and again. I think the atheist community is really grasping at straws and throwing up a lot of smoke to try and prove a dead point about there being no God.

As far as Paul or any writers of the Bible go... yes, they had their flaws and sometimes it showed in their own writings. Which is interesting to note how these great men of God recorded their own mistakes and made them available for the world to see. It sounds a little like real life.

But beneath all that is the deeper, spiritual/metaphysical message and meaning that one cannot glean unless he reads with a spiritual understanding. It is like mining for gold... you just can't take one scoop of dirt and say there's no gold in these hills.

Yet many will believe, as Paul himself said, "every wind of doctrine" that comes their way without question or effort to investigate the matter on their own... which in the end.. leads to a hill that produces only fools gold.

Shim
06-04-2011, 09:29 PM
Raise a hand, any one who would read Paul's letters for fun! For a church group, yes, or for school or college. When we think of books to take on vacation or an airline flight, do you think of Paul's letter to the Romans? Real men read Romans! If you do you are one in a million!

And if you did, what would you expect to find? History, for one thing. Unforgettable snapshots of life in the early church, written by one of its leaders writing thirty years of Jesus' death. And doctrine. Paul's views on God and Jesus, on God's promises and demands, on daily life in this world, and on the rewards and punishments stored up for the next.

But to find in any of Paul's letters just history and doctrine is to eat the buns around a burger. Of course Paul wrote to inform his addressees. But far more than that. He wrote to transform them, to lead them, even as they heard his letter, into the new life of which the letter spoke. Paul did not want his addresses to just hear his letter-- but to undergo it.

What Paul attempted in letter after letter (Paul's God is obviously just), the poet Milton knew, sixteen hundred years later,

Of Man's first Disobedience, and the Fruits
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse...
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the way of God to men.

Paradise Lost

Zenith
09-04-2011, 06:34 PM
Raise a hand, any one who would read Paul's letters for fun! For a church group, yes, or for school or college. When we think of books to take on vacation or an airline flight, do you think of Paul's letter to the Romans? Real men read Romans! If you do you are one in a million!

I have read Paul's letters many a time, mostly for my University course. :D I must say that, although disagreeing with him on some points, overall I like his writing :)

He wrote to transform them, to lead them, even as they heard his letter, into the new life of which the letter spoke. Paul did not want his addresses to just hear his letter-- but to undergo it.

Totally agree. I didn't think Paul would like how 'static' his writings have become.

HBuck72
09-04-2011, 08:57 PM
Sometimes it is hard to relate to Paul because his letters are giving advice on various subjects and problems. The disconnect arises, because we don't always have the context of the specific issue he was addressing, so in many ways it is like seeing a one way conversation, where you are only hearing the answers, and not the questions.

Shim
09-04-2011, 09:03 PM
Sometimes it is hard to relate to Paul because his letters are giving advice on various subjects and problems. The disconnect arises, because we don't always have the context of the specific issue he was addressing, so in many ways it is like seeing a one way conversation, where you are only hearing the answers, and not the questions.

A helpful example of this,

Romans 3:1-8

"What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged. But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man) God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just."


The Objector: The result of all that you have been saying is that there is no difference between Gentile and Jew and that they are in exactly the same position. Do you really mean that?
Paul: By no means.
The Objector: What, then, is the difference?
Paul: For one thing, the Jews possess what the Gentiles never so directly possessed-- the commandments of God.
The Objector: Granted! But what if some of the Jews disobeyed these commandments and were unfaithful to God and came under his condemnation? You have just said that God gave the Jews a special position and a special promise. Now you go on to say that at least some of them are under the condemnation of God. Does that mean that God has broken his promise and shown himself to be unjust and unreliable.
Paul: Far from it! What it does show is that there is no favoritism with God and that he punishes sin wherever he sees it. The very fact that he condemns unfaithful Jews is the best possible proof of his absolute justice. He might have been expected to overlook the sins of this special people of his-- but he does not.
The objector: Very well then! All you have done is to succeed in showing that my disobedience has given God an opportunity to demonstrate his righteousness. My unfaithfulness has given God a marvelous opportunity to demonstrate his faithfulness. My sin is, therefore, an excellent thing! It has given God a chance to show how good he is! I may have done evil, but good has come of it! You surely can’t condemn someone for giving God a chance to show his justice!
Paul: An argument like that is beneath contempt! You have only to state it to see how intolerable it is! -- W. Barclay