Provocative controversialist David Arthur Walters explores The Mystery of Paul. The Author Author's Profile
Friday, October 17, 2003
Paul's Christian Constitution
by David Arthur Walters
Christians tell me that Paul's goal was to create a vertical Church hierarchy. I do not think so. I am not a Christian and I have not been to bible schools, but I have read a few of Paul's letters and some of the writings attributed to Luke. What do I know for certain? Very little. I do know that the biblical texts were edited and that entire passages were interposed by ideological conservatives opposed to Paul's libertarian theme. Hence I wonder how people can be so sure of where Paul stood on the constitution of Church authority.
I recall that, somewhere in Romans, Paul advised Christians to submit to secular authority. Luther, relying on Paul and Augustine, gave the same advice, and, in his tract on the justification of war, Luther advised Christians not to engage in armed revolt no matter how evil their prince might be; that is, unless the prince was Catholic and he was contemplating an attack on Lutherans; in that event, Luther would not restrain Lutherans from launching a pre-emptive strike on the Catholics in self-defense, although he could not in good conscience condone such an action.
I have no doubt that Paul established the Christian religion, but I do not recall seeing any structural blueprints in his writing. Paul's enduring principle was clear to me when I read his letters. Paul was a spiritual libertarian. The secular authority should be obeyed but there must be no tyranny over the Christian religion of spiritual freedom. Paul's Christianity is a universal religion; for instance, circumcision is not required to enter the house of god. Paul's letter to the Galatians is Christianity's Magna Carta. As for the various administrative difficulties confronting him, I think he dealt with them on an ad hoc basis. The assumption made over the centuries, that he was deliberately laying down administrative doctrines surprised me when I recently heard about it. Is the assumption another loose interpretations of some text? I do not know yet. I have not read every word and my memory may deceive me on what I have read. I do know that Luther insisted that we go directly to Paul's letters themselves for their meaning in their context, ignoring the priest's interpretations, for a preacher of any other doctrine besides Christ's would have no authority at all. The doctrine itself is set forth in scripture for all to read and to discuss - no priestly interpretation or twisted fabrication is necessary to understand the truth, or so some say. Did not Paul himself insist on that direct approach in his letter to the Galations? Should we not go to the horse's mouth?
I recall that Paul's first great champion, Marcion, purchased a position in the Roman Church, but he eventually opposed the Church, compiled the first Christian canon and founded his own Christian religion, which at one point was more popular than the Roman Church. Hence Marcion was not obedient but rather was an arch heretic. And we have Luther, the great protester. He was certainly no democrat or communist, but neither was he a monarchist or papist.
As for churches in Paul's time, I assume that Christians assembled in homes, and that Christian were, in terms of social structure, patriarchically organized around recognized elders. But I recall no mention of a vertically structured universal church. I believe the vertical structure of the Roman Church was more of a Roman development than a Jewish one, although the Jews did have their priestly authority and high priests. And, if my memory of my scattered readings serves me correctly, the hierarchical Roman Catholic system was not established until around the 5th century; prior to that, bishops, who were supervisors, and priests, who were elders, were nominated by the congregation, and bishops were wont to run important matters by the congregation before making decisions.
Whatever the case was, I want to know the truth about it, so I will inquire further. I will keep in mind what Lucian said in the 2nd century: "The historian should be fearless and incorruptible; a man of independence, loving frankness and truth; one who, as the poets says, calls a fig a fig and a spade a spade. He should yield to neither hatred nor affection, not should be unsparing and unpitying. He should be neither shy nor deprecating, but an impartial judge, giving each side all it deserves but no more. He should know in his writing no country and no city; he should bow to no authority and acknowledge no king. He should never consider what this or that man will think, but should state the facts as they really occurred."
Friday, October 10, 2003
I am justified by history.
"Paul is irrelevant. You can't feel or experience the past," a historian friend of mine who thinks history is a "mistake", insisted yesterday. I think we can experience the past to a certain extent. In any event, I think it is wise for a student of history to at least imagine how it felt to live during a particular period studied, to get a feeling for it. I'm not a professional historian - I do have a sixth-grade education - but I read history, and historians who do not have a living feeling for the past are very boring to me.
Yes, I'm an amateur who likes to read history. I examine a text in the context of its time, which I think may be partially but never fully known without reference to other ''texts'', including the archaeological records, before passing judgment on the subject studied; that, at least for me, is axiomatic. Sometimes I get the feeling when I read history that I am in a historical person's shoes, and on rare occasions that person seems to guide me, as if his or her spirit were living in me. Certain things happen that cannot be just coincidences, but I am not supposed to talk about them. In any event, I feel history, and I have never felt like my friend, that history is a mistake, although I notice people have made many mistakes.
Of course I don't think we can experience the past as it was experienced in its time, nor can we live the life of the dead. My friend is descended from Prussian aristocracy, people with 'vons' in their names. He talks a lot about the Prussian historical school and it's historicism, which he doesn't like, because, he says, it found justification for its nationalism and power politics in a bunch of historical documents, and that caused a lot of trouble for the world. He said, "There is no real justification for anything in old documents. Justification can only be found in the present life." He admits that studying history is practical - at least he makes a living at it! He calls himself an activist historian: he interprets the facts of history in a way that he thinks will have a good effect on people's lives. He says every historian is a revisionist, and some are too stupid to know it so they call the others revisionists.
I looked into the history of Germany, and it seems to me that my friend is doing the same thing he denounces the Prussian historical school for - making propaganda. Of course the Prussian historians did not have identical views - nobody does - but they generally agreed on what they considered to be the right attitude and approach to historical research. They were big on digging up original historical records instead of just rephrasing the texts of previous historians. It amazes me how historians get Pulitzer Prizes for plagiary just because they twist a phrase so fashionably. The German school, of historicism, certainly exposed a lot of historical bunk in the glaring light of new facts dug up.
As far as I know, the secular Prussian historians did not openly advocate being the persons they studied, but they had their heroes, such as Alexander the Great, who was a sort of saint of religious nationalism - I have no doubt they worshipped their heroes and wanted others to do the same for their own good. Saint Paul was the spiritual hero of Luther and the Protestants in north Germany. As for Jesus, the German nationalists wanted to take the Jew out of Jesus - some said he was a Greek - others even claimed that Germans were the real Jews. They might have more effectively said that Paul was a Christ, and called him Paul the Christ. But that would not do at the time, so they, like Paul, kept Jesus as a screen for spiritual projections.
German theologians disagreed on important issues. Some said that Jesus as a historical person, and Christianity as a religion, could never be fully understood except by a Christian who subordinated himself to Christ. Others insisted that too much emphasis had been placed on a mere person, and not enough on God. Yet others thought that the undue emphasis was not on the persona or mask called Jesus, but rather on the dogma about the person, the Christology and interminable nitpicking over the metaphysical nature of the trinity. And one prominent theologian said that Christians should not try to live the old life, the life of the early Christian community, as that was impossible and destructive - my friend concurs, saying it is dangerous and destructive to imitate Jesus the Christ as he presented in the bible, or to try to live as Christians used to live.
Well, I am not an historian, and with my limited education - I am practically uneducated - I cannot begin to understand sort out the philosophies of history. Yet I beg to disagree with my historian friend. He lives upstairs from me; we got together last evening to watch the TV movie, Caesar. I said, during a commercial, that I personally find a great deal of justification in old documents. I told him that I find justification of myself, of my being, in the community, whether that community is present or past. And that community cannot be present to me all at once, but its discourse is represented in documents. He said I should look into post-modernism, where discourse is everything, and reality is talk about talk. For the life of me, I don't know what he was talking about. He said the justification I feel was not in the past, but was based on what I need and want in the present, so I should use history accordingly - everybody else does.
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Tomatoes live in the Now.
"History is a mistake", said my friend, a historian, when I mentioned Paul the Christ. I know how he feels, since nothing is perfect, but I do not approach the past with the assumption that it is a mistake. As far as times goes, the past is all I can know. I encounter it whether I like it or not, and I do so with a curious attitude. First of all, I want to know what happened. There is always another lesson in history as far as I am concerned.
I am an uneducated man, yet I have made a small number of judgments on right and wrong which have been quite helpful to me. History can be one's sin or salvation. Whatever it may be, I am glad that I've had some: I don't consider it to be a mistake at all.
I think history is analogous to a person''s memory. Perhaps the older we get the more pessimistic we become about history, and think there is no lesson in it, except that, despite all our efforts, we are to die, therefore the past is useless to us, or just too painful to behold, for it brings us to the conclusion that time is running out.
No doubt my immediate experience is presently passing, but I do not live in the Now. I have heard wise men talk about living in the Now, and preachers preach the virtues of ignorance, but I wouldn't know about the Now. I am uneducated, so the wise men sound like fools or charlatans to me. The knowledge I have is knowledge of past history, and that memory I would not curse nor call it a mistake, for it is my human nature. History has been of great advantage to me those few times that I acted with it in mind. I have often deliberately ignored it, and had hell to pay, so how can history be a mistake? I don't think so!
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Have faith in The Herd.
by David Arthur Walters
Luther identifies many kinds of righteousness, for instance the righteousness of the emperor, the Torah, the parents, and so on. But "over and above all these there is the righteousness of faith or Christian righteousness, which is to be distinguished most carefully from all the others. For they are all contrary to this righteousness, both because they proceed from the laws of emperors, the traditions of the pope, and the commandments of God, and because they consist in our own works and can be achieved by us with 'purely natural endowments,' as the scholastics teach, or from a gift of God. These kinds of righteousness of works, too, are gifts of God, as are all the things we have."
According to Luther, the righteousness of the various works are active while the righteousness of faith as Luther explains it is passive - God works through the person. "For here we work nothing, render nothing to God; we only received someone else to work in us, namely, God.... This is a righteousness hidden in a mystery, which the world does not understand."
Luther's works are full of mysteries, of absurd statements that cannot be explained without reference to "god's mysteries." Contradictions in these matters cannot be helped, although they might be concealed by logical sophistries - self-conscious man is a self-contradiction. Nonetheless, experienced logic-jugglers can see the ambiguites very well and take turns taking equal and opposite stances.
Since faith is passive, it would seem no work at all would be required to maintain it - even maintaining faith implies work, hence maintenance would be disallowed under the strictest definition of the passive faith required to "receive the Lord." We might think that those who have faith would have no reason to defend it, except that they, for love of others, or, as they prefer to put it, for the love of god, would bring others to the same freedom they enjoy. However, we notice most faithful people seem rather desperate to prove their faith, as if it were an insecure, uncertain, fragile thing, and some definite community of agreement is needed to have it. No man stands alone.
Luther quotes Paul: "Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall." (1 Cor. 10:12). Even in the absence of an objective personal god, the absolute freedom of the individual is tempered by nature and that includes other human beings without whom the individual would have no actualized or relative freedom; that is, a freedom relative to something, the freedom from resistance, from the inertia or force of something or another. Nor is he human without others of his kind - he would have no existence as such.
Thus we observe many who fervently profess faith in god but whose ferver seems to give their profession the lie. They do not seem to have been graced with faith, for they strive for company in that faith, as if they have no strength in it, are not as certain as they would be, and are afraid of that absolute freedom which would leave them alone in the world, as omnipotent as their god, without any need for faith or works, without any need of thoughts or justifications whatsoever, without any need for a god to justify them and excuse and save them, and fully responsible, alienated and alone. It seems they have no geniuine faith in god, and cling to each other instead, for their faith is actually in the herd. This is one of god's mysteries.
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
The expression philosophy of history is self- contradictory. Whereas a particular philosophy implies at the least some sort of rational, systematic understanding of its subject matter, the experience of history requires a lucid consciousness free of systematic prejudice and open to the intuition and confession of the absurd. For example, Hegel assumes that history is a rational movement, therefore he must arrive at the conclusion that he wished for, presupposed and projected: his rationalization that the spirit of history is at least as rational as he would like to be, and that its movement is towards the concrete realization of his favorite idol, the perfect state, where he will no doubt reside absolutely free in perfect obedience, safe and sound at last. Any appearances or deviations to the contrary must be attributed to the cunning of reason playing tricks on the historian, just as Luther attributes the factual contradictions to his theological dogma to God's mysterious ways. Now dogma is that which appears to be true, and everyone needs some dogma to get along in the world. Yet the true experience of history must be free of projected notions of a world plan or divine providence - such designs in the minds of fanatics end in madness and chaos. Whereas Hegel's ordinary man or wo-man is an irrelevant victim, a hapless object crushed by the advance of a zigzagging rational world spirit, the point of departure or principle for the experience of real history must be the intuition of man as he exists in all times and places, in sickness and in health. And no matter how healthy mortal man might be, world history is a pathological study of human beings with whom we naturally sympathize. The rational institution of the utopian status quo of Totalitaria is the gravestone of mankind, the concrete state of absolute freedom forever frozen in total obedience. Thus even the movement that appears to be perfectly rational to the rational historian is in reality irrational, a return to the first and final cause at last; a death instinct, so to speak, of death seeking life in death before the beginning and after the end of history. The freelance historian embraces existence and draws his conclusions with chalk on blackboards.
E
Saturday, October 04, 2003
Paul's success was a miracle.
Paul's success was a miracle. Perhaps he was a Christ if not the Christ. Jesus, whether historial or a phantasm, might have been a convenient screen upon whom Paul deliberately projected charisma, providing an objective but mysterious persona for adulation, one difficult to challenge since no longer concretely present. In any event, one would certainly have to be more than an "excellent administrator and propagandist" to organize the Principle of Freedom, which is absolute Power, as a practical Doctrine of Love. Luther pointed out at great length what a difficult task that must have been for Paul, without whom there would be no Christianity today.
Those who slander Paul do so to cover their hatred for both Judaism and Christianity if not their contempt for faith on the whole, which of course is a general form of self-contempt, since none live without faith. Even those who have faith in nothing have faith in Nothing, perhaps even more faith than those who have faith in something.
Yet imagine the faith required to organize the Christian faith. It is amazing what Paul accomplished given the distances involved and the means of transportion in ancient times, and the ease with which a competitor could come along right behind Paul and persuade his converts that traditional Jewish practices such as circumcision were necessary to Judeo-Christian religion, and therefore reconvert them to worship mere things like penises without foreskins again,
Paul's insistence on the anarchic principle of Christ Liberty rather than dogmatic authoritarianism was certainly wise, since differences of opinion on subsidiary matters can be explained casuistically as a bona fide expression of enduring faith in the transcendent being. What a shamefully violent history was written by the pseudo-Christians who pretended to accept Jesus and even Paul, then murdered each other in the name of Love. History might have proceeded differently if Paul had been received as the true Son of God, as Paul the Christ. But again, he succeeded by raising up another.
Thursday, September 25, 2003
What's for dinner?
The Lord's Supper must be taken literally: the sacrificed Lord must be eaten, at least according to the 1551 Council of Trent which set forth the doctrine of transubstantiation, or substantial change, that anathematized the doctrine of consubstantiation, or substantial mixing.
Following the prehistoric tradition, the priest serves as cook at the religious mess - the pope is the high priest or head chef. He wears the sophisticated modern version of the heroic caveman's attire and carries his magic club or staff - the Egyptian priests, Greek Cynics, Sufis, and others were also fond of the official fashion set by the prototypical Hercules around 40,000 years ago. When by means of incantations, hand waving, and such, he consecrates the bread and wine in the kitchen, it is magically converted into the actual flesh and blood of the sacrificed son of god, whose parts are then distributed and devoured - the distribution was not always democratic. Thus is the first born son of god was shared that all may be divine. The ritual cannibalism re-enacted the creation of the world from the substance of the first man.
On the other hand, the doctrine of consubstantiation championed by Luther requires that the substance of Jesus be mixed in with the blood and wine. That allowed the diners to avoid the appearance of cannibalism, perhaps by referring to the substance as the "essence" or metaphysical being of the now transcendental lord. However, a procedure common to cannibalism throughout the world entailed the mixing of human flesh in with other food - we recall the Jesus the lamb of god was sacrified around Passover, when people were bringing their offerings to Jerusalem. Although Luther argued for consubstantiation, he advised people not to get caught up in the metaphysical quibbling over the issue. Nevertheless, it does appear that Lutherans were more finicky about what they ate, while some of the most devout Catholics revelled in graphic descriptions of feasting on their lord.
I have queried several lay Catholics about their current opinion on the subject. I am informed that sensible people believe that, when Jesus offered his flesh and blood, he did so figuratively to illustrate that he would always be with those who believed in him, as if he were present in the flesh and blood. Not one of them was aware of the following:
"If any one shall say that, in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist, there remains the substance of bread and wine together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; and shall deny that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, the species of bread and wine alone remaining, which conversion the Catholic Church most fittingly calls Transubstantiation, let him be anathema" (1551 Council of Trent, Session 13, Canon 2)
Civilized people believe that the bread and wine merely remind us of the essence of the ideal man, an essence that is apprehended by the mind or felt emotionally, and is not a material substance actually grasped by the hand which serves up the reminder. We notice that Paul and Luke believed the eucharist is a reminder. That is, the eucharist is symbolic. However that may be, there is little doubt that human beings were once religiously sacrificed and actually eaten in some parts of the world - the more powerful or godlike or pure the victim, the better. Of course religion is the organized worship of the highest power - politics involves the distribution of that power to the community. The sharing of meals is the most fundamental mode of community activity. Eating replenishes energy, restores power; we are not surprised to hear that the communal incorporation of powerful humans or of humans substituted for gods was practiced by prehistoric cultures, or that the food was distributed via a hierarchical pattern adumbrated by other members of the animal kingdom, particularly the apes.
To appease the highest power, the food should be offered to him first. What he does not take is shared with the others - first with his main troop, then with priests who prepared the food, and then with the rest of the population including the poor. To share with the poor was eventually crucial to the maintenance of the overall ideal, hence in some cultures the harvest is sacrificed through the chief and he and his priests redistribute it.
The high power or head man might be incorporated for his power when he was killed or otherwise died. The highest power of all was of course invisible or spiritual, to whom was offered the smoke and heat from the sacrificial fire. Aromatic materials or herbs were cooked with the food for the enjoyment of the one-god or Sun-god. Of course the fire was associated with the Sun, fire being a gift of god - or perchance it was stolen from god by the son of god.
Sacred cooking rituals and implements evolved around the campfire when sacred fire was brought under technological control. Fire became the possession of humankind - since then, more fires have been set by man than by natural causes. The cooks tending the campfires in India while the warriors were away, fighting demons and outlaws who who did not observe the fire rituals, developed several priestly orders among themselves according to the division of their duties - preparing the site, setting up the altar, preparing the victim, and so on. We owe the discovery of alcoholic spirits to them. Food left in a pot had fermented; they tried the juice and were soon possessed by holy spirits, to which they tried to lay sole claim; but the word got around to all and eventually many priesthoods swore off of the sacred power beverage to gain better control of the drunks around the campfire.
One very important utensil used by the cooks was the sacred pot which came to have the three legs that make the tripod the epitome of stability and symbol of the primordial trinity. The tripod had diverse uses: pot for cooking and brewing; bowl for drinking and eating; bowl for gambling in order to divine god's will; seat for the prophetess to deliver oracles on; prize trophy for champion athletes and heroic warriors. The Chinese had their sacred tripod or t'ing. It may be used for the preparation of food and wine for the ancestors, as a medium for the inscription of laws, maps and magic formulas.. The emperor-dragon flies to Heaven on a tripod. I do not know who cooked up that myth. I have not heard of human flesh being cooked or served in a tripod.
I was disappointed to hear that cannibalism was practiced in China. I had believed that the Chinese, instead of eating their dead, fed them. For that reason a few Christian missionaries accustomed to eating the son of god thought the Chinese did not have a real religion, just ancestor worship. Of course China did not have a monopoly on setting out food for ancestors. It seems that human beings took up similar practices throughout the world. The Christians however made a fine art out of sublimated cannibalism. Only a few people really eat human flesh and drink human blood today; the idea disgusts most of us even when we are starving to death. As a matter of fact, I am getting very hungry for breakfast, so I must leave off here and have some ham and eggs. I know millions of people refuse to eat swine, and various reasons are given for the tabu. I understand pigs are smart and are biologically close to human beings. Maybe I will swear off of eating them for that reason.
