Solo

Hi all,
I am interested in testing the feasibility of the view that Paul paradoxical wisdom of God as set out in 1 Cr 1:18-31 is a conscious paraphrasing of a well-known maxim in Greco-Roman antiquity: Whom God wishes to destroy, he makes first mad. The hypothesis in a nutshell goes like this:

Paul, when he first came into contact with the Nazarene apocalyptist missions, opposed them vigorously, and thought the lot of them insane, if not blasphemous. He then himself had a series of ecstatic revelations that (he believed) were about the figure of Jesus proclaimed by the missions. Reflecting on his own states of non-compos mentis and physical afflictions after the mystical peaks, he paralleled them with the reports of Jesus' sayings and doings, and decided that (the earthly) Jesus was "led" by the same spirit as he, Paul, was and that the spirit led him inexorably to the cross. The kingdom Jesus believed could be brought to earth from heaven by God in the messianic age (as Paul received it through the grapevine from the disciples' following) were delusions, but delusions planted by God. Paul reasoned that if Jesus was deluded by God and crucified because he, in his delusions was made to break the Mosaic law, then his death could not signify but the absurdity of human existence. But if Jesus' death had a hidden meaning, and his apparent madness that caused his violent end was actually designed by God to show Paul (and through Paul) that Jesus' and Paul's own madness was not what it seemed to others then there was hope. If the delusions of grandeur, were actually how God worked and the ecstatic peaks of pleasure and fulfilment a revelatory preview of the life in Jesus Christ that comes after one has faithfully served God, then Paul was not mad and Jesus was Lord. If Paul could dissociate his ego from the grandeur he was experiencing he would retain a measure of sanity and win salvation by proclaiming it as Christ's. Whatever else can one say of Paul, he convinced enough fellow pneumatics of his and their special commission, and they in turn found enough following in their communities for it, that they built a solid believer base. That base was Paul's proof that he had seen the Lord.

Paul had admiration for Greek intellect but a deep disdain for the pagan cosmology. He likely sensed behind the querulous Pantheon and its perverse habits of thwarting humans the passive, fatalistic, oriental view of life. Paul's God was not a demiurge, like Einstein's he did not play dice with the universe. If he destroyed a madman who thought God told him to inaugarate God's kingdom on earth, there was a purpose in it. Paul believed it was a holy purpose worthy of wise God !

Now, it would be helpful to me to understand better the history of the saying Whom God wishes to destroy, he makes first mad and how it was available to Paul. Ruth Padel of Princeton (Whom Gods Destroy (or via: amazon.co.uk)) says the Latin version of the saying originated somewhere in the Republic. Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius, says Padel might have been first loudly proclaimed by Seneca or Cicero but it has a distinctly Greek flavour. Indeed, there is a Greek version of the saying (hon theos thelei apolesai prot' apophrenai) but its origins are uncertain. Some say that it first saw light in some modified form in Euripides (perhaps Hieros to Xouthos, in The Ion: are thy wits maddened by an angry God's spite ? ). Padel cites Sophocles' Antigone as a witness the idea had some currency in 5th cent. BCE Athens :

With wisdom some man
spoke the famous saying
that evil eventually seems
good to the man whose mind
god drives to blind rage (ατή)

The presence in Latin of the saying and its transparent origins in Athenian tragedies are probably enough to make the claim but I remain curious: is there any other evidence out there for the saying and its use before or in Paul's time ? Much obliged.

Jiri

Susan2

I disagree that Einstein’s God did not play dice. Einstein believed in predestination, as obviously did Paul’s, in my view. Einstein’s views were probably a result of his Jewish/Catholic upbringing. If I remember correctly, Einstein attended Catholic School, and studied to make his Bar Mitzvah, which he never made. As I understand both religions, predestination is a belief within the religions. Perhaps residue from earlier beliefs and influences of Buddhism and Hinduism, karma, etc. These same beliefs are found in Christianity, and Islam.


Einstein ‘claimed’ that God did not play dice. I presume that to mean that God did not take chances. If God did not take chances, did the gods? Einstein believed in predestination, I presume that to mean that anything that did/does happen was supposed to happened, was/is God ordained, ordered, sanctioned. I think Einstein’s belief in predestination is a very important aspect of Einstein’s psyche that is often forgotten, and not reported. Einstein apparently felt no moral obligation to expound on his theories. If it was his intention to leave that to the clergy, well I guess they failed miserably, as is evidenced in WWII.

Obviously, Paul believed in predestination, as is evidenced in his writings, not just in regards to the social relationships of men and women, but the very privacy of their intimate lives, and other details.

The Paul’s and the Einstein’s of the world have played dice with the minds, bodies, and souls (journey) of men and women since time began, disgustingly, in the name of an alleged Supreme Being, whether that Supreme Being be science, government or religion, or self.


What goes up must come down, a watered down popular version of law in science, doesn’t give me the right to fly airplanes into tall buildings. It doesn’t give me the right to go to the top of the Empire State Building and drop a brick on someone’s head. It doesn’t give me the right to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma, killing innocent men, women and children, as in tic for tac. It doesn’t give me the right to kill a doctor because I believe that he is killing.

Unfortunately, ‘it is all relative’ is a modern day meme created by scientists, and it often appears to me that they make no apologies, offer little to no explanations to the uneducated and less intelligent.

That same meme can be found in a story of David in the OT. Perhaps in the new testament as well if I would think about it.

Global warning, polluted waterway, polluted oceans, corporate theft, and a whole host of other ills plague mankind because some one thinks, ‘well it all relative’.

Sorry for my rant.

bacht

I suspect there's a category error in equating 'relativity' in physics to moral relativity (apples vs oranges). Maybe you'd like to bring your ideas over to the Philosophy > Moral Foundations sub-forum?

Toto

Einstein used "God" or "the old man" as a symbolic reference to the laws of physics. He was clear that he did not believe in a personal god. When he said that God does not play dice, he meant that physical processes are deterministic.

I don't know if Paul's god was the demiurge - probably not. But Einstein's god has little or nothing to do with this.

Back to the main question, wikiquote says that this aphorism is misattributed to Euripides.

The closest aphorism listed by wiki is from a first century BC Roman mime, Publilius_Syrus But most of the quotes there that are alleged to be the same as this aphorism are not about the gods making anyone "mad" in the sense of insane - the only common part is that when the gods wish to destroy someone, they do something that results in him destroying himself (mess with his mind or sense of morality.)

Back Again

Excellent post Solo. I hope it generates some discussion.

Susan2

I disagree. And I won't take the time to get into the theology vs the science of the subject, nor the theology/science of the subject.

Anyone interested in the subject can do the research.

An excellent book is Einstein, His Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson. It is a fascinating read of a complex man.

We are all complex individuals, imo. As well there are many excellent video's on youtube in regards to his thought experiments.

Susan2

Einstein didn't think so. Why should I? He was a brilliant man. Perhaps I am just intuitive.

Let me clarify; Einstein found WWII shocking and disturbing.

As to your invitation to post a thread at the Philosophy or Moral Foundation sub-forum, perhaps I may just do that.

I might learn something, and even have a contribution or two of my own for others to consider.

As to apples and oranges? Hmm, what do they have in common, catagorically.........ah yes, I think science calls them fruit, each distinctly different but of the same family tree. It kinda reminds me of another tree.

Which should help you understand that I am not saying that Einsteins theories are evil, nor that Einstein was evil, but that when we say 'it's all relative' I am asking to which fruit?

Which isn't to say that apples or oranges are evil.

Back Again

Well I won't propose to know Einstein's personal beliefs but the famous quote about God playing dice is about whether the universe is deterministic. Being a smart guy, he realized that there were ways in which quantum mechanical effects could be could scaled up to the macroscopic world (eg Schrodinger's cat). Einstein refused to believe in different states of reality existing in superposition. He also refused to believe in faster than light exchange of information (ie quantum entanglement).

Susan2

I do not fully understand quantum mechanics. I am far from an expert.

I don't want to derail the thread, but I find parallels, even to the thread.

Read the book, it is fascinating.

Solo

I mentioned Einstein as one who intuited (like Paul) that there was some order and meaningful purpose in the way the universe operated - as opposed to the idea that the phenomena of physics are ultimately expainable in terms of events happening at random or as designs of a hostile and malicious deity.

I did not mean to imply that Einstein prayed the rosary or that he ate matzos soaked in the blood of Christian prepubescents.

Thanks, Toto. Padel is a well respected scholar of Greco-Roman antiquity, so I take her word that this bit of wisdom was in (or had passed into) Latin consciousness before the break of ages. I would be interested in finding in some context which would make it beyond reasonable doubt that this was in the Greek town squares, so to speak, in Paul's time.

I think it is the same - the classic Greek tradition from Homer understood the individual, or better the often scattered aspects of what we in the West today call an individual, as being driven and manipulated by the will of the gods. In some cases the mischievous and malicious deities drove people to a blind, (self-)destructive fury.

The image of a insane person in a classical tragedy would be that he or she was sane until some fault in him or her offended the gods who then arranged for a downfall by making the victim act foolishly or (self)-destructively.

There appears to have been something of a rationalist revolution that took hold in Greece some time before before Pericles which consolidated what we today in the West take for granted as self-consciousness. But the process was far from complete and was spreading unevenly, proportional to the influence of Athens. It came to a halt by the rise to political prominence of a backward Macedonia. In some measure, with the Rome becoming the dominant entity, much of the rationalism of Athens was revived and cultivated by the Latins. The idea of gods interfering with and manipulating human mind, remained probably strong in artistic and public consciousness, despite rationalist philosophy and empirical medicine.

Jiri