Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

So, assuming a historical entity, are you saying that this is something that we would have expected Paul to have talked about? Why do you think this, and where should Paul have mentioned it?

Originally Posted by Thomas Aquinas

I answer that, The clarity which Christ assumed in His transfiguration was the clarity of glory as to its essence, but not as to its mode of being. For the clarity of the glorified body is derived from that of the soul, as Augustine says (Ep. ad Diosc. cxviii). And in like manner the clarity of Christ's body in His transfiguration was derived from His God. head, as Damascene says (Orat. de Transfig.) and from the glory of His soul. That the glory of His soul did not overflow into His body from the first moment of Christ's conception was due to a certain Divine dispensation, that, as stated above (14, 1, ad 2), He might fulfil the mysteries of our redemption in a passible body. This did not, however, deprive Christ of His power of outpouring the glory of His soul into His body. And this He did, as to clarity, in His transfiguration, but otherwise than in a glorified body. For the clarity of the soul overflows into a glorified body, by way of a permanent quality affecting the body. Hence bodily refulgence is not miraculous in a glorified body. But in Christ's transfiguration clarity overflowed from His Godhead and from His soul into His body, not as an immanent quality affecting His very body, but rather after the manner of a transient passion, as when the air is lit up by the sun. Consequently the refulgence, which appeared in Christ's body then, was miraculous: just as was the fact of His walking on the waves of the sea. Hence Dionysius says (Ep. ad Cai. iv): "Christ excelled man in doing that which is proper to man: this is shown in His supernatural conception of a virgin and in the unstable waters bearing the weight of material and earthly feet."

Wherefore we must not say, as Hugh of St. Victor [Innocent III, De Myst. Miss. iv] said, that Christ assumed the gift of clarity in the transfiguration, of agility in walking on the sea, and of subtlety in coming forth from the Virgin's closed womb: because the gifts are immanent qualities of a glorified body. (Summa Theologica, Tertia Pars, Question 45, Christ’s Transfiguration, Article 2)

Originally Posted by ynquirer

Thanks.

If you are right, the mythicist inference from the theological outlook of Paul’s writings that he didn’t believe Jesus was historical - that would be as unwarranted as the conclusion that, say, Thomas Aquinas didn‘t believe so either. Wouldn’t it?

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

Take any pagan myth: why on earth would anybody assume the myth is talking about a historical entity?

Originally Posted by spamandham

I don't see how this supports the idea of Paul's belief in an earthly Jesus. Paul claims to have received a vision from Jesus.

Originally Posted by spamandham

Yes, but if it's merely a reference to the OT, it tends to support the idea that Paul thought Jesus was a spiritual being, revealed to Paul via vision through the OT, rather than a spiritual being who took form as an independent human.

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

No, I'm saying why should we assume a historical entity when none is present in the text, when all the "historical" items are merely Scriptural references? It's only if you assume a historical entity that the problem of "why should he/shouldn't he have mentioned this/that" arises.

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

Take any pagan myth: why on earth would anybody assume the myth is talking about a historical entity? I mean, there might be some learned speculation that some historical entity might, in the dim and distant past, have formed the root of the myth, but it wouldn't be the first thing scholars would think about, would it? They would talk about how the myth was related to other myths, how it might have developed and been influenced by other myths, by social circumstances, by mystical and magical practices, etc.

Originally Posted by ynquirer

...
By the same token, here Aquinas was purposefully talking of a mythical person. Is that what you mean?

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

That only works because we have independent evidence to show that Thomas Aquinas believed in a historical Jesus. We have no such independent evidence re. Paul. Absent such evidence, the entity Paul is talking about looks, on the face of it, mythical: a visionary entity and a fulfillment of Scripture.

Originally Posted by Toto

The Enlightenment questers for the historical Jesus have gotten themselves into a mess trying to untangle the supernatural from the merely human Jesus. I think that it just can't be done without doing some violence to either history or the religious nature of Christian texts.