Some more on Paul…
In his discourses/letters, Paul makes reference that there are neither Jew nor Greek in Christ. Why those two? “Greek” really doesn’t encapsulate the totality of all the “nations” (ethne), does it? “Jew” doesn’t encapsulate everything not-Greek. So, why those two? Why not “Roman” and “Jew”?
That’s because Paul wasn’t talking ethnicity or nationality. He was talking ideology/philosophy. Basically, Christianity fails as a Jewish idea because of the continual refusal to perform signs that the Jews demanded. The Jewish idea of a “master” was one who would perform miracles on demand. Look at the prophets of the Old Testament. Signs were not the focus of Christ.
Christianity also fails as a Greek idea because of the continual refusal to submit to logic or answer the questions. Paul tells the Greek sophists in Acts that the weakness in God is strength and the foolishness in God is wisdom. You can’t get any more illogical than that. The Greek idea of a master was one who answers the perplexingly complex questions in a logical manner. Christ’s focus was not on answers.
Paul makes Christianity into a new discourse. It won’t conform to Jews nor Greeks. In fact, it asserts that those are utterly worthless in this new Christian discourse. This new discourse is one of declaration. It is found in Paul declaring the Resurrection. By people experiencing this event that breaks History into two, salvation occurs. By experiencing this salvation, the person is transformed from slave to son. By becoming a son, the person also becomes an heir. That is Paul’s message.
Published on
19 October 2005 ago in
General.
i’m so glad for Mandie. Last night, we stayed up past midnight finishing cleaning up the house before Jeff and his wife arrive. She had been awake since before 6 am and at work at 7 am (for 11 hours!). i couldn’t do this without her.
i’d normally list the book i’m currently reading, but i’ve gotten quite a bit from the library:
- On the Geneaology of Morals and Ecce Homo by Nietzsche (Kaufmann translation)
- The Will to Power by Nietzsche (Kaufmann and Hollingdale translation)
- Pathmarks by Heidegger (McNeill translation)
- Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, 2nd ed. by Kant (Carus and Ellington translation)
- Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle (Crisp translation)
- God and the Philosophers by T.V. Morris
- Dogmatics in Outline by Karl Barth (Thomson translation)
- Institutes of the Christian Religion, I by John Calvin (Baillie, McNeill, et al translation)
- Lectures on Romans (Luther’s Works, vol 25) by Martin Luther (Oswald translation)
- The Confessions by Augustine (Universal Library translation)
That (except for #6: God and the Philosophers, as that is for personal reading), on top of a few books from my personal collection:
- Belief by Vattimo
- The Transparent Society by Vattimo
- Saint Paul by Badiou
- Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry by MacIntyre
- Being and Time by Heidegger
- On Certainty by Wittgenstein
- The Fragile Absolute by Zizek
- The Cost of Discipleship by Bonhoeffer
- God, Here and Now by Barth
- Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel
- Critique of Pure Reason by Kant
- The Next Reformation by Raschke
will be the beginning materials for my thesis.
Of course, if you want to read some pretty good philosophy that has serious applicability in theology, i can definitely suggest the 12 books in my personal collection (the first 7 if you want an understanding of what postmodern philosophy looks like without getting into the majors: Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, etc).
One of these days, i’ll start a list of books i believe all Christian philosophers/theologians should read before dying.
i’ve been reading Alain Badiou’s Saint Paul over the last week for class. He writes about Paul and Paul’s antiphilosophy from his atheistic perspective, but many of his interpretations of Paul seem to be very accurate. Here are some notes from his section on the law of the Flesh and the law of the Spirit.
The resurrection of Jesus–whether actual or not (as Badiou claims it to be)–is the central part of Paul’s message and is the life-changing event of the present. For all people, argues Paul, are living under the (only) Law. To call it the “Law of the Flesh” implies that there is some other Law. This Law is similar to the commandments–”thou shalt not”s which must be followed reactively (here, Nietzsche’s Will to Power, along with Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche, can be used for furthering the notion of the reactive will to power and its link to this). The Law of the Flesh can be best described as the autonomy or the automatism of desire (cf. Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, specifically his distinctions between the autonomy and heteronomy of the will). The autonomy is characterized by the “freedom” from the law–that is to do what the self wants. This “freedom“, though, is a delusion of self-power (cf. Heidegger’s Being and Time, specifically the concept of the hiddenness of Dasein from Dasein) because the self lacks the ability to enact its will. It is enslaved to its desires (Nietzsche: “The condemnation to be whay my desires want me to be”).
For Paul, the next step is the realization of this bondage and the divorce of thought from power (“Who will save me from this body of death?”). The life under the Law of the Flesh is really life under the sign (or reign) of death (cf. Santner’s “death in life” or “undeadness”). The self then desires not to do what it desires to do (cf Romans 7). This leads to a freedom of the self to doubt its desires.
This situation is utterly transformed when the self experiences the resurrection (cf. Romans 8, 2 Corinthians 5). This is the re-aligning of the self’s will to God’s. It is the liberation from the body of death (see above). For Paul, though, it is not a re-animation of the dead, but a de-animation of the dead. It is the present crucifying (cf. Galatians 2) and not a promised future. It is this (present-tense) sharing in the death of Christ that the self can share in life (cf. Philippians 3, Romans 6). Ultimately, this is the only message Paul preached after Damascus, of course).
The resurrection transforms the self to live under Love (what Paul calls the Law of the Spirit). This law is true freedom from the law in that it becomes a freedom to choose what the self wants and no longer be enslaved to doing what the self wants. This results in the empowerment of the self to enact its will and freedom from the automatism of desire. The will is no longer under the autonomy of desire, but the heteronomy of desire. It subjects itself to some other law (i.e. God’s will) and aligns itself to that. This is a law of God (cf. 1 John 4) as God is Love.
From this Law of the Spirit, the self is no longer required to perform. Reading Paul closely, he is not against rites or rituals (such as circumcision), but is indifferent to them. Those rites are worthless to the Law of the Spirit that results from encountering and sharing in the death and resurrection of Christ. This is a message for all peoples. It was meant to be secularized and brought forth to all nations.
Published on
13 October 2005 ago in
General.
That book i was reading (Saint Paul…see below) is really good. After reading and discussing it, i had this huge theological/philosophical/religious epiphany (if that’s strong enough of a word!). All of that sparked by reading what an atheist wrote about Paul, along with prior understanding of many philosophers of the modern period (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Hegel, Kant, plus Augustine). i’ll post it tomorrow once i finish collecting my thoughts (as it’s pretty darn long).
Published on
12 October 2005 ago in
General.
Just an update…i am alive. We had snow. i’m reading way too much for school (new book…must be read for tomorrow). My Islam class is really great. That professor (who is a practicing Muslim…i think he’s Sunni, like most are) will also be team-teaching a course in the spring with the “Christian Origins” professor (i get him in the winter for “Early Christian Old Testament Interpretation”) about fundamentalism (the generic cross-religion one, not the Christian one arising in the 18th/19th century). He’s been hinting at it a lot in class, including some bashes of Jerry Falwell and Osama bin Laden as they both happen to be fundamentalist in their respective religions (he’s even posted this one comic of Falwell saying how evil Islam is and bin Laden responding with “Amen, Brother!”). We’ve had to see a Sufi (Islamic Mysticism…think something similar to the Gregorians or Thomas Merton of the Catholic tradition) performace which was interesting, as well as observe a nightly prayer at the Mosque. Because Rhamadan began last week and our class is 6-10 pm, we pause for the Muslims to break their daily fast (of everything…including water). It has been interesting to see Islam in this light as he, along with the Muslims we have encountered, has repeated that Islam is only violent in the fundamentalist interpretations of the Qur’an. We watched a video last night of Andalucia, a colony in Spain that began around 711 (the year of convenience, as the professor calls it) and consisted of Muslims, Christians, and Jews living peacefully together and fighting on the same side while being under Muslim rule. It was so tolerant that Christians and Jews were allowed to practice their own religion and break Islamic laws (such as prohibition) in private.
In other news, Yom Kippur is tomorrow. Kol Nidre is tonight. i’m going tonight to a Messianic Jew group to observe (for Psych of Religion) their Kol Nidre practices of preparing for tomorrow’s Day of Atonement. It will be interesting.
