Grace Before and Behind
21 May 2007 - 5 סיון 5767 by Huw
Interesting series of emails over the weekend. A summary follows not in exact words, but rather my ideas mixed with those of my correspondent.
What does it mean to wrestle with the Biblical texts? How can we take the Bible as a cultural document, but also as a spiritual one, speaking to us *where we are* but at the same time speaking to us *from where the writers were* - all of us on a journey together, that is as individual as each of us and as common as birth and sunrise. In other words, it’s not that we modern folk know more about things than the author of Genesis 1 or the author of Genesis 2, or even the redactor who combined them. Rather, he or she may have been at the same point on their spiritual journey as any of us - or more or less mature in the faith. How do we hear that author speaking?
That was an interesting point… and I wondered how to look at Saint Paul who is at turns radically inclusive and radically exclusive. There is a progression, sure, from New Convert to Grumpy Old Man. But how do we need to hear it?
And the reply came back, very gently (and perhaps unintentionally) pointing me to my own online ouvre: developmental, yes, yet all online. How might a reader take “I was in Hell” coupled with news of my journeys to Canada to see Brodie? How might any of that be read in conjunction with my first-ever entry of a web-based journal (6 October 1998) or even more, the original, email journal/zine - which goes back to 23 January 1995! How, indeed, would a reader encompass all that? Worse, how do *I* take it? I’ve shredded the print form of the first three years out of horror (as even John Donne did to his work). The online form, however, is with us forever. I can be embarrassed and saddened when someone happens on that past, or…
St Paul’s letters stretch, in time, from the 40s - 60s, of the Common Era - leaving out, for a moment, those letters generally agreed not to be authentically Pauline, (First Timothy, Second Timothy, Titus, Ephesians) - we can see, in Paul’s 15-20 year journey as a Christian, development of doctrine. And Grace in all areas or, as my writer says, “But it has the intriguing virtue of suggesting to you and me (to name two people) that we might look at and listen to our younger selves not only with compassion and forgiveness, but remembering that our younger self - despite all the foibles and failings we each can see in those selves - was up to something authentic, holy, essential and blessed and there’s graceful learning for us in it too.”
St Paul as blogger.
And an image of God’s salvation for our own timelines.
Hmm,
“The books generally agreed not to be Pauline. . . .” Interesting, to get to that phrase, you have to take an unfortunate, and all too typical, viewpoint. The great surprise of the American Episcopal Church was when they found out at Lambeth that the world did NOT generally agree with their (and European) judgement. I suggest that you can only support that phrase by automatically excluding as scholars any person, no matter what degrees they have, who have concluded that those are all Pauline books. I also suggest that they are the actual majority, just as they were at Lambeth.
But that is a side comment to your main point. I have heard some good sermons preached on the development of several of the apostles and some of the prophets. (Hosea is a favorite of mine.) While some were, uhm, pious constructions, some were very thoughtful explorations of the interaction between earthern vessels and the Holy Spirit. The amazing part was that out of that human/divine interaction, a divinely inspired set of Scriptures came out.
I’m with you on the joy in the scriptures. they are a great joy to me and a comfort.
I don’t imagine, btw, the scholars who question the veracity of some of the material attributed to paul to be ALL episcopalian… I’ve not read him yet: does anyone know what Tarazi says? But my point was not the veracity of the claims of either side, rather, if we exclude those books the spectrum is easy to draw. I’ll stick w/ that.
I do hear you on the majority/minority issues. How about “Generally accepted by textual critics”?
The Tarazi approach is that authorship is a matter of being from the same school. Back in the day a follower of Paul would have attached his name to a writing that agreed with Paul’s approach or was from the same school of thought. This became more important after Paul was gone. This was the accepted approach, whether we are talking about Isaiah, Colossians, or the gospel account of John. The kicker is that no one had a problem with it. Fr. Paul makes the connection between this way of writing and the phenomenon of a modern non-fiction book being a product of researchers, ghostwriters, etc. I feel this comparison is a bit off. The stories of Derleth based on Lovecraft sketches are not seen as being equally authoritative, while a ghostwritten campaign bio is seen as being just that and not taken too seriously. Speaking for myself, nothing gets my gizzard so much as when an educated person has a co-author (who is really a ghostwriter). Come on, man, write! But I have no such qualms with Paul’s epistles. Such was the practice - this is partly why scholarship is so important to our faith and should not be feared.
Hmm. “The School of Paul” rather than “Paul’s Own” then? I like that as a bridge. Certainly the material covered in all the Epistles is the same - even if it becomes impossible to trace a developmental line.
Fr E, how does that theory sound?
Is it possible to imagine that Paul’s “See my big letters” notes was a way for him, even in those days, to set off his letters from those merely claiming to be of Paul?
I’m looking forward to reading Fr Paul, in the Fall. I’ll wait until closer to Midsummer to post an official Announcement/Invite.