andrewcriddle

I don't think it is a rationalization. There are passages such as 2 Corinthians 10 referring to differences between Paul as a writer and Paul as a face-to-face speaker.

Of course we don't know what the differences were, but at the very least Paul's introductory sermons would presumably have spelled out things that have to be inferred from the letters.

Andrew Criddle

Peter Kirby

To my mind, there is agreement on the existence of an early Christian theology in which Jesus's action takes place in heaven, or without a body on earth. The disagreement comes in the argument over historical primacy and the implications of that. The people who want to make this early Christian theology marginal, the one which is visible in the battle between gnostics and catholics, emphasize the lateness of gnostics and the idea that they've more severely corrupted the most ancient strand. The other people just generally want the issue to be opened up so that people can see it is less certain than it is pretended to be, or they argue that the evidence supports a different trajectory's antiquity.

ApostateAbe

It's a completely different topic. Start another thread and I'm game.

ApostateAbe

Christian theology most certainly did evolve, but you don't go from that point to saying, "This very bizarre and unsubstantiated model of the origin of Christianity is just as good of an explanation for this particular verse as your explanation." We care about plausibility. We care about finding the most sensible interpretations of a text. If the boring interpretation fits with everything else we know about Christianity, then we don't need the bizarre theory to explain it. We would need the bizarre theory when no other explanation makes as much sense. I am not saying that Paul wasn't a mystic or an apocalypticist--he most certainly was both--but that is not nearly the same as saying he believed in a sublunar realm where Jesus had the likeness of sinful flesh. That is strictly Earl Doherty's peculiar theory.

dog-on

You are correct, wrong Abe thread...my bad.

ApostateAbe

OK, here is the reason why it matters: it would be more difficult for the established theory to explain why Paul wrote, "...likeness of flesh..." since Paul supposedly believed in a model of Jesus who REALLY was flesh, not just a likeness of flesh. Earl Doherty's theory would win. When you express the quote as, "...likeness of sinful flesh...", then Paul's true meaning becomes immediately apparent, and the establishment wins.

Steven Carr

This is a very good point.

Paul explicitly tells the Corinthians that he has been giving them 'milk' up to now, as they were not yet ready for 'solid food'.

Presumably all those teachings about Jesus deeds and sayings were milk given to entry-level Christians until they were ready for the important stuff.

The Lord's Prayer,Jesus being born of a virgin, Jesus talking about the resurrection to come, Jesus teaching on the Sabbath, Jesus prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem, Jesus telling people that the greatest commandment is to love God, Jesus appointing disciples, Jesus appointing Peter as a special disciple - all mere milk that immature Christians were given in introductory sermons until they were mature enough for solid food.

Paul rubs the Corinthians noses in the fact that they were so immature in their Christianity that all they had been given was teachings about Jesus.

After all, isn't it claimed that new Christians were told all this stuff about Jesus?

No wonder Paul taunts the Corinthians with the fact that they were only mature enough to be taught all about Jesus.

Of course, if new converts to Christianity really had been taught all about an historical Jesus, Paul could hardly have taunted them with putdowns that they had only received 'milk' up to then...

bacht

Paul talks about Christ manifesting in the future, not the past. "At the last trump" He will meet his chosen in the air. Paul also talks about having a new spiritual body for the resurrection. Doesn't sound very carnal, nor would it if Paul was some sort of dualist like his gnostic successors.

Toto

I don't think means the historicist side wins, or that there is some different interpretation to be put on likeness of sinful flesh.

If you think that there is a distinction between "likeness of flesh" and "likeness of sinful flesh," then you have to invent a new category of "Jesus flesh" which is unlike the taudry, sinful flesh that mere mortals have. At this point, you are half way to mythicism, because Paul's Jesus is not an ordinary human.

The historicist side can still claim that Paul believed that Jesus, being wholey God as well as wholey man, wrote this poetically to express the idea that Jesus as God inhabited Jesus as Human's body, which was the likeness and the reality of flesh, and the likeness of sinful flesh, although Jesus was not sinful... but I find Doherty's ideas more coherent, and more in keeping with what Paul says about flesh in other parts of his writing.

ApostateAbe

I completely agree. Paul's Jesus really was myth and primarily a spiritual being, not just a human.
Very well.