Doug Shaver

It was your assertion that the context explains Paul's silence in Rom. 1:19-20 about the alleged incarnation of God. I claimed that you failed to provide the explanation. Merely repeating the words of the context does not explain the silence. Doherty's question was: "[H]ow could Paul fail to conceive and express the idea that Jesus himself was the primary revealer of 'all that may be known of God'?" [Emphasis added.] You referred to some context, and you quoted some context, but you did not explain how that context answers the question. And you still have not explained it. You have only repeated your assertion that the context does answer it.

I am not questioning the importance of the context. I am questioning your assertion that it explains Paul's failure to remind the Christians in Rome that, just a few years previously, God had revealed "all that may be known" of himself in Jesus of Nazareth.

And therefore the incarnation of God in Christ was irrelevant? Was Paul claiming that nature itself revealed "all that may be known" about God? If that is what he thought, what could he have imagined the purpose of Jesus' ministry to have been?

Historicists often argue that Paul said nothing about Jesus' ministry because the pertinent facts would already have been common knowledge in the Christian community. You are now saying that according to Paul, everything mankind needs to know about God was revealed in nature -- in which case all the pertinent facts about God would common knowledge throughout the world. But if that were the case, he would have thought his missionary work to be pointless. Anyway, it is perfectly obvious from his writings that Paul believed that some things about God had been revealed to him and to a handful of other apostles and not to anyone else. In his thinking, the only way for the world to know those things was for the apostles to preach them at every opportunity. And, had Paul believed in a historical Jesus, it is inconceivable that he would not have thought that Jesus himself, during his earthly sojourn, had revealed a thing or two about God that would have otherwise remained unknown to the world in general.

How does this answer Doherty's question? How does "First there was Adam, and then afterward there was Jesus" account for Paul's failure to remind the Romans that Jesus was the incarnate revelation of God on earth?

To whatever extent Paul believed that God was revealed in nature, he was not faulting all men for failing to see it. He presupposed that they all saw it. What he faulted them for was ignoring it.

As for the shroud . . . yes, not all people mention it. In fact, most Christians don't mention it . . . because most Christians know that it's either a fake or, at best, not provably authentic. But the ones who do think it's real will, most of them, eagerly mention it if given half a chance -- even though, according to their own dogma, it is a complete irrelevancy compared with the biblical record of Jesus' resurrection. Granted, that leaves a handful who won't mention it because they're convinced that if you can't win souls for Christ by quoting scripture, then you can't win them, period. In other words, for those believers, the shroud just doesn't matter even if it is authentic. Could Paul, though, conceivably have felt that way about Jesus? Did Jesus' ministry, in Paul's mind, have no more significance or relevance than the shroud has to some modern Christians?

On the historicist assumption, Jesus' teachings had to be the primary source for everything the early Christians believed. Paul's failure to cite secondary sources in a particular place does not explain his failure to cite the primary source in that place.

Paul had a point or two to make besides "We're all sinners." That merely stated the problem. Paul was also offering a solution, and that solution was supposed to have been revealed by Jesus of Nazareth.

Ever since the gospels became widely known sometime in the second century, Christians do not seem to have thought that mentioning Jesus was going to confuse anyone. The man was supposed to have founded their religion, for goodness' sake. Has any Muslim ever thought that mentioning Muhammad might confuse anyone?

How could he have inspired Christianity if not by his teaching? Just by being crucified? I don't think so. Even assuming that he was perceived by a few followers as a martyred innocent, he could not have been the only innocent man whom the Romans ever executed. Why, out of them all, would he alone have been deified? If it happened at all, it had to be because of his teaching. His elevation to divine status, within less than a generation after his death, is otherwise inexplicable.

Paul does not mention any ministry anywhere else, except his own. Any person who had never read or otherwise heard of any of the gospels would not know, from reading anything Paul wrote, that Jesus ever spoke a word to anyone at any time during his life.

Indeed. And why not? Maybe because Paul had no idea that Jesus ever had a life on earth?

Paul's own words suggest that it was the fact of the resurrection, not its meaning, that was revealed to him. It is hardly to be supposed that before his conversion, Paul believed the resurrection had occurred but failed to understand what it meant.

On the historicist assumption, Paul would have known that Christians were affirming the resurrection, but he would have disbelieved them. His conversion in that case would have entailed nothing more than his becoming convinced that Christians were telling the truth. Exactly what really happened to so convince him we can only speculate.

Absent the historicist assumption, we really have no idea what Paul believed before his conversion, other than whatever may be inferred from his claim to have been a Pharisee.

Doherty has addressed those particulars and there was no reason for me to regurgitate his arguments. He obviously didn't address the issues to your satisfaction, but just because you weren't convinced doesn't mean the issues have been overlooked.

Certainly. But *how* we deal with it depends on what presuppositions we bring to the dealing.

Whether or not that is the most reasonable construal of Paul's writings is precisely what we are debating.

Make them up? Would I accuse a religious advocate of making things up? Perish the thought.

Seriously . . . I would not put it so uncharitably. I would say Paul was very creative in his thinking.

I'm assuming that a ceremonial meal was among Christianity's rituals before Paul's conversion. At the moment, I have no opinion as to the source of his ideas about that particular ritual's significance, except to note that, according to the text, divine revelation seems the likeliest candidate.

I fail to see how references to the Didache or I Clement contradicts what I said, unless you thought I was referring to the entire corpus of Christian writings during the first two centuries. For the sake of civility, I will admit to a bit of imprecision, though. By "outside the gospels," I meant "in the canonical writings other than the gospels."

I don't accept your apparent presupposition that ancient documents should be presumed credible until proven otherwise. Anyway, the immediate issue is what we may reasonably infer about Paul's thinking from Paul's writings. We have no reason whatever, aside from 2,000 years of Christian tradition, to assume that Paul would have agreed with anything that Clement believed about Jesus or that the authors of the Didache had to say about Jesus.

Furthermore, even stipulating that they are "related information," we cannot simply assume that the relationship is that which Christian orthodoxy has always said it was. There was obviously some historical influence going in one direction or the other between Clement and the Didache, on the one hand, and the canonical gospels on the other. It is not obvious, absent historicist presuppositions, that Paul was influenced in any way either by any of them or by any of their sources, whatever those might have been. There is therefore no justification for assuming that he believed anything about Jesus that they believed, except at most only where he explicitly and unambiguously declares the same belief (e.g. "He was crucified.")

I don't find your argument to that conclusions at all cogent. I don't think you've shown that Paul's references to the guilt of all mankind, to the offering of salvation to gentiles, to the revelatory power of nature, or to anything else he mentions in the context, implies that a reference to the incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth would have been so irrelevant as to make it unanomalous that Paul would have said nothing about it. Of course, my own opinion of your argument doesn't prove a lot, and others will make their own judgments.

There is no disputing that Paul thought Jesus had godly attributes. The dispute is over whether Paul believed that he exibited those attributes while living as a man in this world and, if he did believe it, why he never said so.

Ted, that looks like rank disingenuousness. Whether you accept his explanation or not, he does provide one, at great length and in some detail. You cannot have read the book or the Web site attentively and not know that.

gstafleu

It shows why we would expect a mythical figure, about whom at least some details can be extracted from myth, to be able to go without extra embellishments longer than a posited human.

And the answer is: because while both a mythical figure without any earthly details and a posited human without any details are unstable, a posited human without details is more unstable, and hence a non-earthly-detailed mythical (spiritual, heavenly) figure can survive longer in myth.

It makes it look more like the person was in fact a normal historical person. Compare Matthews christogenesis (birth, be it miraculous) with that of John (an ever preexisting logos becomes flesh). Which looks more like a historical narrative (false or not) to you?
Huh? Are you saying you really believe that he not only died (ok, if debatable) but that he then resurrected (here the mind would boggle)?

Gerard Stafleu

TedM

That's true. I should have qualified the statement more clearly by referencing the lack of evidence for his claims.

I'll try to respond to some of your other comments as time permits.

ted

Ben C Smith

I think this is much of the hang-up for Earl. He cannot imagine for some reason that a person like Paul would know about an HJ but not really care about him.

Yet it seems like such a natural thing to me.

Ben.

GakuseiDon

It's a good question, and one deserving its own thread. I'll start a new one on this.

Amaleq13

You've suggested it but you haven't really established it as true but it seems to me to be dancing around an unstated assumption about the amount of time between Paul's preaching and the Gospels. Would you mind making your point clear?

Are you claiming that a human Jesus would have resulted in Gospels much earlier than they were written? Are you rejecting oral myths for any particular reason other than convenience?

You really haven't established that a posited human is more unstable and you seem to be ignoring the nature of Paul's theology which doesn't really encourage interest in historical details.

A magical birth story makes a character seem more historical than depicting him interacting with Pilate? No.



Nothing I wrote even vaguely suggests such an ridiculous notion.

The early evidence points to belief in a risen Christ. That is the "other way" the evidence points. Understand?

Amaleq13

It certainly seems consistent with his preaching.

EarlDoherty

But this is yet another fallacy. You don’t make out of a man’s death and purported resurrection the movement exemplified by Paul if there was not something in his life which might persuade you to do such a thing. Otherwise, on what basis would Paul and others ever create their cosmic Son of God out of a life which they take no notice of? (And Crossan maintaining that he ‘thinks’ Paul had the teachings even if not the circumstances of his death is simply wishful thinking. The evidence indicates nothing if not the contrary. Not even the ‘love commandment’ is attributed by Paul to Jesus, but simply to God, as in 1 Thess. 4:9.) That “something” in his life would have to have been significant, remembered, integrated and used by apostles like Paul. There could be no question about ‘having no interest’ in the life of Jesus, which is the timeworn ‘excuse’ for why nothing about that life, or even the fact of the life on earth itself, is ever put forward by all the early non-Gospel writers. And if apostles went around ‘purporting’ something as outrageous as a resurrection to prospective converts such as the Gospels claim, they would have to back it up with evidence, and failing that, with something persuasive in his life, his deeds his teachings, etc., which would offer corroboration why you or me, as someone stopped by some wacky guy just in off the dusty road, should accept that a man we never heard of before had actually risen from the dead. That “life” would have to be an essential part of the whole picture. I don’t know about you, but I certainly wouldn’t give a second listen to a guy who claimed resurrection on the basis of “We all saw him!—well, at least, other guys saw him, I only had a vision of him on a road…(Well, yes, the sun was hot, admittedly…)”

Unless, of course, that dusty wacky guy were not trying to sell us a bill of goods about some recently crucified criminal in Judea, some human being who he is treating as part of God and to whom he gives all of God’s hallowed titles to…which, hmmm, he never actually does try to persuade us to, does he?...but instead is speaking of another savior god (we’ve heard about them enough, haven’t we, maybe even follow one of them already) who is an entirely spiritual being involved in mythical activities, and in fact he can cite oodles of passages from scripture about that god. Then it’s a whole different ball game. We’re attuned to that type of thing. But a recent man? A crucified Jewish rebel in a land shot with all sorts of crazy wannabe messiahs promising deliverance from the Romans? Sorry, we’ve got better things to do, buddy. And Paul trudges sadly away….

It does??? Boy, you and I really do live in different conceptual universes!

First of all, to address Doug, how does that faith preached by a group of men make any impact on someone if they are unwilling or unable to tell anything about the life and death of the man they are preaching? By miracles? Do you really think the apostles were able to perform miracles that convincingly? Or that they performed miracles at all? Most critical scholars today reject that, even in regard to Jesus. Such things, they think, were only attributed to him and to them later (as in the Gospels and Acts). Show me one account of one miracle attributed to an apostle in the epistles. (Maybe I've temporarily forgotten one.) Does Paul attribute miracles to himself? Does he ever say that he uses miracles to persuade people to believe in Jesus? Does he ever say that his converts were so persuaded by that means? (All sorts of statements that are conceivable can be made in this forum, all sorts of conceivable scenarios can be put forward. The question is, are they actually supported by the evidence itself?)

To Ben, I say, it is not simply a matter of whether Paul ‘cares’ about the HJ, it is more a matter of whether he could get away with not caring about the HJ. It is a matter of whether he could ever get to a position of turning the HJ into what he does if he didn’t initially care about him. It is a matter of whether everyone whom Paul witnesses to in his letters could seem not to care about the HJ since they never appeal to him, never mention him, never trace themselves back to him. It is a matter of everyone who ever wrote a document in the first century (outside of maybe one or two Gospels) not caring about him.

If that seems like a natural thing to you, then never the twain shall meet.

Earl Doherty

Ben C Smith

I do not think there was nothing in his life that led to the eventual reverence for his death. But it is not always easy to tell what it was, at least from the epistles alone, since by definition it has been superceded by the death and resurrection, which now get most of the attention.

There you go.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

In an attempt to build a bridge between conceptual universes, however momentarily, perhaps you, Earl, could answer this question for me.

Is it possible for someone (especially someone who had not met Jesus personally) to know about most or all of the gospel events about his life, yet become so enamored of just one (or two) aspect(s) of the faith that his writings fail to express (m)any of these events?

Ben.