Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Lucia Eitzen - "Everything is Sacred" (Sermon Oct 6, 2019)

Lucia Eitzen

Everything is Sacred

Reflections on NAIITS Symposium: “Land & Place: Indigenous Perspectives in an Era of Displacement”

 

Maybe the conversation I had with an indigenous couple from New Zealand sums it all up. They invited me to sit with them. They wanted to get to know me and learn where I felt at home. As they shared their story, he said until he became a Christian, he had not known there was a distinction between the sacred and the secular.

In his indigenous spirituality, everything was sacred. We burst out laughing. I said, for me, it is the other way around. I am now learning that everything is sacred. It is this learning that guides me in sharing these reflections on the NAIITS Symposium I attended at Tyndale University in Toronto this past June. It was called “Land & Place: Indigenous Perspectives in an Era of Displacement”.

CLICK HERE Download "Everything is Sacred"

Perfect Eschatology - Kenneth Tanner

Someone finally described perfect eschatology. This is my only answer now about my end or the world’s end or when Christ is coming again.

Bear in mind that the definition of "world" here is not “the earth” or “the cosmos” or “material creation” but “the fallen order” or “the realm that is captive to death.”

All who listen to the depths of the gospel and live it so completely that none of it remains veiled from them care very little about whether the end of the world will come suddenly and all at once or gradually and little by little.

Instead, they bear in mind only that each individual’s end or death will arrive on a day and hour unknown to him and that upon each one of us ‘the day of the Lord will come like a thief.’

It is important therefore to be vigilant, whether in the evening (that is, in one’s youth) or in the middle of the night (that is, at human life’s darkest hour) or when the cock crows (at full maturity) or in the morning (when one is well advanced in old age).

When God the Word comes and brings an end to the progress of this life, he will gather up the one who gave ‘no sleep to his eyes nor slumber to his eyelids’ and kept the commandment of the One who said, ‘Be vigilant at all times.’

But I know another kind of end for the righteous person who is able to say along with the apostle, ‘Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me and I to the world.’ In a certain sense, the end of the world has already come for the person to whom the world is crucified. And to one who is dead to worldly things the day of the Lord has already arrived, for the Son of man comes to the soul of the one who no longer lives for sin or for the world.”

—Origen of Alexandria, saint, theologian, exegete, Commentary on Matthew, 56.

The opening of that last paragraph has the sort of weight I feel when Paul says, “And I will show you a still more excellent way.”
‭‭(1 Corinthians‬ ‭12:31‬)

Four Tips for Keeping It Together in Contentious Situations — Andrew Klager

As I began my commute by car to work one morning last week, I made a deliberate decision to pay closer attention to my inner dialogue and the impatience and frustration that often bubbles up when I contend with traffic that’s moving slower than I’d like. I would characterize myself as a zippier and more assertive driver than most, and how I respond to the traffic around me is often my go-to barometer for how I’m doing spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically. In this unexpected spell of intentionality, I — I’m slightly embarrassed to admit — even came up with my own private make-believe (and funny to me but nobody else) campaign called the “NMO (Not Mad Once) Campaign” complete with its own hashtag (#NotMadOnce), in which I challenged myself not to get mad even once during my long commute.

Our wandering minds in these situations can hold a lot of power over us if we let them. They lack intentionality and a purposeful trajectory and are instead at the mercy of the deeply planted cacophony of cultural and social instructions that make up our day-to-day lives. But it’s our wandering minds and the thoughts and our decisions in life that we mistake for our true selves that often get us into the most trouble. These are, or should be, the targets of transformation.

Although I teach and write on the inner transformation of a peacemaker and am well-versed in contemplative theology and acknowledge its profound importance, I’ve been slipping in this department in my day-to-day life lately (I often have the line of the late Robin Williams’ character, Sean Maguire, from the movie, Good Will Hunting, running through in my head in these moments: “I teach this shit, I didn’t say I know how to do it.”). My lower-than-normal attentiveness to my inner life lately may have to do with several life challenges that have distracted me the past number of months, and perhaps the stress applied by these circumstances has temporarily (hopefully) shifted my priorities and compelled me to set aside what I’ve long viewed as indispensable.

Whatever the case, it appears that my deeper self was somehow jolted out of its stupor in a moment of clarity and inspiration to actually try again to follow through with what I teach and therefore normally deem vital. And so as I maneuvered down the freeway that morning last week, I isolated four practical tips for myself to implement in those moments of frustration that can easily breed pride, impatience, anger, intemperance, envy, vengefulness, grudge-holding, violence, and other passions and vices.

Harry Nigh's Ground-Breaking Sex-Offenders' Support Group - Wayne Northey

The Circles of Support and Accountability model has spread worldwide

By Julie McGonegal October 22, 2019

Wayne Northey: Last week in Canmore Alberta, CoSA Canada held a celebration of 25 years of work with sex offenders returning to the community, and deemed high risk to reoffend. We had a small reception Wednesday October 16 in the evening, during two days of our annual national gathering. There was a presentation of a westcoast carving of a wolf, by an aboriginal prisoner. Harry Nigh, the recipient, is the subject of the story below. Hugh Kirkegaard, our Board Chair, worked with Harry in organizing the second Circle in Toronto with Wray Boudreo. 

It was a joyous moment. Harry reminisced, and as in the article highlighted below, captured the unique privilege of doing this work.

As indicated that evening: The Native Wolf Symbol represents loyalty, strong family ties, good communication, education, understanding and intelligence. Of all land animals, the Wolf has the strongest supernatural powers and is the most accomplished hunter. The Wolf is a very social and communicative creature, he uses body movement, touch and sound. The Wolf Symbol has an important cultural significance to First Nations in North America.

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SHOULD GOD BE GRACE - poem by Jessica Williams

SHOULD GOD BE GRACE

 

Should God be Grace

I know Her ways

The purest Light

Beyond the haze

That’s shining through

To show the way

When all else lies in darkness.

 

Should God be Grace

She’s held my hand

When I’ve forgotten

Who I am

She’s lifted me

To help me stand

From beds of my own making.

 

Should God be Grace

She falls like drops

Of truth

On all my tired thoughts

That keep me in my

“I am nots”

And speaks a different story.

 

Should God be Grace

She is the floor

That comes to hold

My feet secure

When every other

Place before

Gave way and left me falling.

 

Should God be Grace

She changes shape

To fill the gaps that

Life has made

She knows the place

Of every pain

And fits within the spaces.

 

Should God be Grace

She is the wind

That moves me to

Begin again

Regardless of the

Place I’m in

Her offering is Mercy.

 

Should God be Grace

I’ve felt Her move

In ways that I

Could never prove

But what I know

I cannot lose

And so I let Her hold me.  

"Queering Allyship" - Beth Carlson-Malena

Editor's note: Beth Carlson-Malena has kindly contributed the full transcript of her introductory talk at a Generous Space Allyship event in Vancouver. While introducing Sarah Bessey, Beth delivered this profound and clear talk we've titled "Queering Allyship."

I’m here to kick us off tonight with some opening thoughts on allies and allyship from the perspective of a queer person, that is, yours truly, and also share thoughts from other LGBTQ+ folks in our Generous Space community.

My hope in the next 15 minutes is to “queer” the idea of allyship.

In other words, I want to shake it up and turn it inside-out, to break it out of its box. (in case you’ve never heard “queer” used as a verb before!)

The word “queer” is queerer than you knew – it’s multifaceted and sometimes slippery, even when used as a noun.

You have to handle it with care – it has its baggage and it has its beauty, and can elicit polar opposite responses within the LGBTQ+ community, let alone outside it. ... much like the word “ally.”

Ally is just as slippery and tricky, and I think that’s especially true in Christian LGBTQ+ contexts...

CLICK HERE to download Beth Carlson-Malena's full transcript
on "QUEERING ALLYSHIP" from the Generous Space "Allyship event"

Beth Carlson-Malena (she/her/hers)
Director of Community, Generous Space Ministries

www.generousspace.ca

Beth Carlson-Malena grew up in Saskatoon and moved to Vancouver to study at Regent College almost thirteen years ago. There, she met and fell in love with her housemate, Danice, sending them both on a journey of trying to reconcile their sexuality and their faith. Meanwhile, Beth co-pastored a Baptist church plant and worked at Jacob's Well, an incarnational Downtown Eastside community, and Danice was a Baptist youth pastor. Their marriage four years ago meant they could no longer pastor among the Baptists. Beth now works with Generous Space Ministries, offering pastoral care and connection to LGBTQ Christians across Canada, and two years ago launched a new church start-up called "Open Way" in East Van, co-pastoring with her friend Mark."

The Coming King - Sarah Van Diest

The death of Jesus on the cross is utterly confounding; affronting our sensibilities of justice. How can this bloody mess of a man be our conquering king? How can this victimized, brutalized plebeian be our savior? But he is. Wholly and completely. And the universe bows to him.

This was not what was expected. 400 years of the silence of God was endured for greater things than this! Surely the journey of the Children of God would climax with triumph at last and with victory over their oppressors. Where is their conquering king? Where is their righteous reckoning?

And what of us today? We wait and long for things to be made right. This isn’t how it is supposed to be. Death and sorrow, hate and betrayal are defining characteristics of our day and age. Where is our righteous reckoning?

Just like the Jews of the Old Testament, we look toward the return of the King with hopes that the Lion of Judah will stride in with his judgments and pronounce to all those deserving of wrath their sentence. The putting of all things to rights is what we are eager to see. But why do we think our story will be different from the Jews’ story? Why do we think the second coming of Jesus will be a fiery, wrath-filled, venge-fest where old scores are finally settled once and for all? Isn’t that the same hope the Jews had? Weren’t they disappointed?

Stars Like Us - Jessica Cotten

Stars Like Us

By Jessica Cotten

 

I saw a falling star tonight

It was beautiful

We admire the beautiful things, you know.

 

But did you forget?

This star

Falling

Lighting the sky

Was also burning,

Dying.

 

We crave beauty

We crave glory

We crave the gasps we make

When stars fall from the sky

We rarely realize

The cost

The pain

The fire

The death.

 

We want our path.

             Our path wants mystery.

                                    Mystery wants faith.

    

                                                                        Faith without fire

                                                                        Is no faith at all.

Knulp and Wandering: The Plight of the Bohemian Way - by Ron Dart

Knulp and Wandering: The Plight of the Bohemian Way                                   

Hesse had established himself, as a compelling and attractive writer, before WWI. The publication of such Hesse classics and primers as Peter Camenzind, Under the Wheel, Gertrude, From India, The Prodigy andRosshalde placed Hesse at the forefront of a thoughtful and emerging German and European romantic tradition and ethos. But, dark clouds were emerging at a variety of levels in Hesse’s life: tensions at home with wife and family and WWI were demanding their exacting due. Hesse saw all too keenly, given his sensitive temperament, the imposing challenges before him. It is understandable, from a certain perspective, why the need for a certain escape from such growing responsibilities can and might occur. When life becomes too overwhelming, there is a tendency to go to places in which the sky is clear blue, there are no dark clouds and much is calm and peaceful--such is, in some ways, the naively sweet yet worth the reads of Knulp and Wandering.

Ralph Freedman suggests that Hesse in Knulp “developed the figure of the perennial wanderer--literally the sensitive hobo-who could stand out as the vagabond par excellence (p. 140). Knulp does, in many ways, anticipate some of the American Beat writers that emerged after WWII, Kerouac’s On the Road, for example,a decades later version although perhaps not as tender and elusive as Knulp. There is a definite sense in which Hesse in Knulp is pondering both the appeal yet end destination of those who are ever on the road, uprooted, unrooted and committed to nothing other than the next step of being on the trail of life. The 3-part life story and biography of sorts of Knulp tracks and traces his life from that of a seemingly gifted person, his departure from what he might have been if he had continued his schooling, painful and disappointing life experiences, his longing for a home and settling but never making the decision to do so. Knulpwas published in 1915 and is divided into three sections or tales: 1) Early Spring, 2) My Recollections of Knulp and 3) The End. Needless to say, the young Knulp of the early spring phase has a winsome, winning and delightful charm to him. He has turned aside from the expected demands in his life and has chosen to live as he wishes and wants—there is a spring-like budding and blossoming in this tale but also consequences of making such decisions and living them. The young Knulp certain appeals to the childlike within and what Blake might call the “songs of innocent”. The next section of the short story walks the interested reader into, increasingly so, the “songs of experience”, life demanding its inevitable due and exacting wage. “My Recollections of Knulp” walk the reader to Knulp in midlife stride, Knulp now living into the troubling reality of his earlier decisions made. The midlife phase tends to be more layered and complex, the fresh and bountiful scenery, fruit and air of “Early Spring” now fading in Knulp’s summer and emerging autumn years. “The End” brings Knulp’s final years to a conclusion, alone and deserted, assistance from an old doctor friend initially received, Knulp takes to the road again and dies penniless, snow frozen and starving, the temptation of the early spring season, once absolutized and made a vocation, ending in a tragic and painful way. Who has not seen Knulp’s in their lives? Hesse certainly understood the temptation and Hesse poignantly described, in Knulp, the end of such decisions and journey of those who make a vocation of ever wandering and a commitment to nothing but wandering.

There is a sense in which Wandering is a companion missive to Knulp although the end is not so sad and sobering. Wandering, unlike Knulp, is a series of short reflections and sketches of a wanderer of sorts who makes a walking pilgrimage from Switzerland, over an alpine pass, and into Italy, WWI now over. Each short reflection and poem ponders significant life issues and does so in a tender and probing way and manner. The short book begins with the wanderer leaving what he has known and been and heading alone southward to the lure of Italy (a common European and German literary destination). The wanderer is ever the outsider, watching, observing yet ever moving on. The final chapter, “Evenings”, like Knulp, portrays the wanderer, like a spectator in a play, watching the drama of life but refusing to be committed to acting on the stage. The wanderer, therefore, is torn between longing for some sort of meaningful life and a commitment to place and people and yet refusing to make the decision that will ground him. The wanderer, ever the reflective and uncommitted skeptic, impotent and ever in the maze of his insights yet paralyzed by them. Wandering was published in 1920, Hesse feeling the brunt of many a German nationalist having turned on him, the literary elite suspicious of him, his marriage ailing, his children with friends and relatives, his life, in many ways, in a turbulent and painful place. The wanderer, like Knulp, remains the lone romantic individual, unheard and misunderstood by the bourgeois, philistine and thoughtless classes of the time. The question for Hesse of which Knulp and Wanderer were provisional answers was this: how is the sensitive artist and political oppositional thinker to respond to opposition, indifference and those close to the bone relationships unraveling? Is the answer merely to isolate oneself and leave society and family behind, be committed to observing the unpredictable and much ado about nothing in much of life? Idealism once betrayed can and often does lead to cynicism or a form of realism in which life is hard and painful, hence only by being alone and isolated can one not be hurt and betrayed again. And yet such a stance of indifference and skepticism creates its own difficult dilemmas.

Those who retreat into their private worlds of inner reflection and, at times, meaningful insights, but disconnect themselves from other people and community, predictably so, often become depressed and disoriented, solipsism and nihilism their tempting companions on the journey. Hesse has certainly probed such a path hiked in these two small books (worth many a read), but his deeper and more mature thinking and writing go further and are more nuanced than Knulp and Wandering. It is to these more thoughtful novels we now turn as Hesse ever grows in his nuanced probes in the journey of life.  

It is probably of some significance to note that twenty-two of Hesse’s fairy stories written 1904-1918 was published, edited by Jack Zipes, as The Complete Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse (1995). The shorter and earlier version was published in 1919 in German as Strange News from Another Star (translated into English in 1972). Many of these, broadly speaking, fairy tales, highlight the trying and difficult nature of growing into wisdom, depth and maturity. It is in this sense that the fairy tales are a companion and corrective to what might seem a rather thin and subtly indulgent life journey as embodied in Knulp and Wandering, the life of the detached wanderer and bohemian. A thorough immersion in the fairy tales will reveal a meditative breadth and depth in Hesse’s life and writings not necessarily discovered in Knulp-Wanderingand, such fairy tales both antedated Knulp-Wandering and many were written about the same time.                          

Reflections on Chris Hedges' "Saying Goodbye to Sam" - Wayne Northey

Cf. Chris Hedges, "Saying Goodbye to Sam" [Samuel Hynes] at Truthdig.com

Wayne Northey: Chris Hedges is amongst my favourite writers on these themes. My main disappointment has always been his denial of the historical Resurrection of Jesus. The evidence does not compel such a conclusion^[1].  I believe his general tone of hopelessness in much of his otherwise brilliant writing has a joyous counterpoint he is missing out on! I explore this with reference to close relatives who are as hopelessly lost–in this case in extreme anger against Christianity and the Church. On their logic, just as soon dismiss the entire human race! (Something I reference in the preface to my “Rwanda Dispatches“.) I consciously choose hope and joy:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:1 – 11)

Indeed, this hope has not disappointed, rather has underwritten buoyant joy and an overall sense of well-being–for untold and told multiplied millions–including me!

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Christianity and the Subversion of Just About Everything! Wayne Northey

Tintoretto: Christ disputing in the Temple

Wayne Northey: This essay was initially written in the 1980’s while I was preparing a sermon on Romans 13. My “aha” moment is that described in the excerpt below. I’ve never seen this elsewhere in biblical scholarship. Someday a New Testament scholar may tell me it really is not good exegesis. But until then… Though the late Mennonite NT scholar Dr. David Schroeder, who later wrote a Foreword when I published it locally, was kind enough perhaps to mention nothing about it…

Were I rewriting the paper today, there would be significant inclusion of theological understandings of Empire, and God’s call to his people throughout Judeo-Christian Tradition to come out of it and all its ways, in radical embrace of Another Way: a robust expulsion of just about everything – Empire! In fact, Empire and Empire ways, above all in manifestation of ruthless domination over others and rapacious abuse of the Good Creation, are posited against a virulent biblical Counter-Narrative, however weakly and at times profoundly ignored in the history of the Tradition. On the contrary, the lived Tradition has time and again tragically embraced and blessed Empire in all its horror, greed, domination and devastation.

The ultimate Counter-Point to Empire is of course the Peaceable Kingdom. In anticipation of it we cry out: Maranatha! (Come, O Lord) – an early Christian rebellious cry in blatant defiance of Empire. It acknowledges there is only One rightful Lord of all Creation, the risen Jesus, over against every Caesar littering the entire human story.

To make the point crystal clear: Donald Trump is the latest and most powerful iteration of such vicious hubris.

The paper has been revised a few times, but the gist is pertinent today. As my Home page indicates, the website is dedicated to the Gospel as Counter-Narrative to Empire.

Here are a few guides to theological understandings of Empire:

“Come Out My People!”: God’s Call Out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond
Unveiling Empire: Reading Revelation Then and Now
Empire Baptized: How the Church Embraced What Jesus Rejected (Second-Fifth Centuries)
Jesus and the Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder
Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit
In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance
Paul and the Roman Imperial Order
Christ & Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times
Christ and the Emperor: The Gospel Evidence
God, Neighbor, Empire: The Excess of Divine Fidelity and the Command of Common Good
Faith in the Face of Empire
Empire and the Christian Tradition: New Readings of Classical Theologians
Paul and Empire (website on The Paul Page)

Here is an excerpt from the paper you may click on below.:

There is a kind of code expression used by Paul on several occasions when dealing with the socially and politically entrenched evil structures of control. To accomplish the task of overcoming evil with good, Paul held that, through resurrection empowerment, it was possible to love the enemy until the death of the tyranny is realized ^[2]! Such love is profoundly the biblical way of subversion. Paul’s code expression is found in Romans 13:14: “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.” I take these words to mean that it is possible to be so immersed in the words and ways of Jesus in his response to the enemy, that we will respond to all our enemies in similar fashion.

I wish to examine more fully Paul’s teachings in Romans 13:14, appearing in the context of relation to the state. In this text, as well as in some others, is an expression that rises from the Greek word enduo, meaning “to put on”, “to clothe”. But first a quick aside…

When I searched for further instances of enduo in the New Testament, I found the Greek expression was always used with reference to power relationships: to the state; to one’s parents; to masters; to the “pagans”/Greeks; to domination between the sexes. What I found as said I have never seen picked up by another commentator. It is the burden of this paper.

Please click on: Christianity and Subversion

Is Paul the Father OF Misogyny and Antisemitism? Wayne Northey

This post first appeared HERE

Wayne Northey: This paper highlighted below answers in the negative the question posed in the title. It was written by Pamela Eisenbaum, Pauline scholar, practising Jew, feminist, and professor at a Christian seminary. She subsequently wrote Paul was not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle.

I delivered a sermon inspired by her, entitled “Paul the Radical” I began and ended the sermon thus:

Introduction A good friend and former elder in a conservative evangelical church recently recounted some of his spiritual journey. When he turned to the Apostle Paul, he said: “Paul, damn him!…”, and continued. In broad strokes, the Apostle Paul has been widely held to have been a profoundly social conservative, a misogynist, and an anti-Semite–or to have, with the Gospel of John, laid the groundwork for a pernicious anti-Semitism that has plagued Western history with the Holocaust its capstone.

While this is a common enough complaint about the Apostle, it is by no means the final word. If you were to visit “The Paul Page” on the Internet, you would find hundreds of essays and bibliographies listed, “dedicated”, the site is subtitled, to “the new perspective on Paul”. In broad strokes, “the new perspective” is an expression coined by New Testament scholar James D. G. Dunn that has launched for three decades a new look at Paul with reference to his own Jewishness, and that of his fellow Jews, and more recently, with reference to Paul’s citizenship in the Roman Empire, backdrop to Christian missionary expansion in Paul’s lifetime.

Historian C. J. Cadoux, in an Epilogue to his huge study of the first three centuries of the Christian church (The Early Church and the World (1925 & 1955) ), says of the early church era:

… we certainly have a moral reformative movement on a scale and with a potency unparallelled at any other epoch before or since… the achievements of the early Church can defy comparison with those of any other moral or religious movement known to history (p. 611).

This movement had its primary champion in the Apostle Paul. Paul can be read – selectively – as anti-Jewish, as can the evangelists, certainly in particular in John’s Gospel. Paul can be read – selectively – as misogynist, as can Jesus. Paul can be read–selectively — as otherworldly and a-political, and therefore socially conservative, as can Jesus.

United Church minister Greta Vosper does read Jesus and Paul in the above way, as does atheism popularizer Richard Dawkins, and as do many others.

All I am suggesting this morning is another way to read Paul–and Jesus!–that is not anti-Jewish, anti-woman, and anti-progressive (to use an undefined, anachronistic term). It is a way in fact that points in the direction of the conclusions of C.J. Cadoux. I want to draw on several sources who read Paul positively in the context of various power arrangements in Paul’s time, and who read Paul as deconstructionist and vision builder in the context of Roman Empire.

Conclusion

If one wants to read the Apostle Paul negatively, accusing him of misogyny, anti-Semitism, and reprehensible social conservatism, one may. The burden of this brief presentation is that one need not. On the contrary, one may read Paul as a passionate radical committed to an egalitarian anti-imperial vision of humanity as one family in Christ. Paul’s towering radicalism was not only imbued with love (I Cor. 13), it was enormously revolutionary in impact in the context of Roman Empire.

“It is an irony of history”, claims Religious Studies professor James Williams, “that the very source that first disclosed the viewpoint and plight of the victim is pilloried in the name of various forms of [biblical] criticism… However, it is in the Western world that the affirmation of „otherness,” especially as known through the victim, has emerged. And its roots sink deeply into the Bible as transmitted in the Jewish and Christian traditions… the standpoint of the victim is [the West’s] unique and chief biblical inheritance. It can be appropriated creatively and ethically only if the inner dynamic of the biblical texts and traditions is understood and appreciated. The Bible is the first and main source for women’s rights, racial justice, and any kind of moral transformation. The Bible is also the only creative basis for interrogating the tradition and the biblical texts (“King as Servant, Sacrifice as Service: Gospel Transformations”, in Willard M. Swartley, ed., Violence Renounced: René Girard, Biblical Studies, and Peacemaking, Telford: Pandora Press U.S. , pp. 195 & 196).”

Many in similar vein suggest that Paul’s radicalism was unequalled in scope and achievement.

***

Like Western Christianity in general, Paul has since the Enlightenment been enormously scapegoated in the academy and beyond. Even a cursory read of Larry Siedentop’s book, Inventing the Individual, especially his chapter on Paul (scanned and underlined here), renders this obnoxious Paul-bashing habit rather inoperative: unless one is willing to put in a gargantuan amount of scholarship to demonstrate otherwise. If so, one will have to take on for starters two towering Pauline scholars:  James D.G. Dunn and N.T. Wright. Hint: you will not digest their material in a couple of one-evening sittings . . . And that is only for starters.

I suggest a tad vigorously that the onus is on the reader to prove the longstanding Enlightenment scapegoating number done on Paul is legitimate. If you succeed, please write me about it . . . I argue to the contrary in a related context, in “Christianity and the Subversion of Just About Everything“, reflecting on (mainly) Paul’s use of the Greek term enduo.

The above all apart from this: Paul was bar none one of the most courageous persons one can meet historically by any scale of measurement. And yet his life demonstrated repeated transcending of horrific “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” most of us would be hopelessly buried under . . .

Oh: And he is my lifelong hero! So please for my sake tread carefully.^[1]

An excerpt from Pamela Eisenbaum’s paper:

I have a passionate interest in the apostle Paul. Many people think this passion is unusual because I am a Jew not a Christian. What’s more, I like to think of myself as a feminist. What’s a nice Jewish feminist doing studying the apostle Paul? After all, from a Jewish perspective, Paul is a heretic who had a demented view of Judaism. From a feminist perspective, Paul is an ally of Christian conservatives who wish to keep women in a subordinate position to men.

Nevertheless, my interest derives naturally from my professional commitments. I am a Jewish New Testament scholar who teaches in a Christian seminary,^[2]. and, after some years of studying and teaching Paul, I have come to the conclusion that Paul was a committed, well-intentioned Jew, even if the subsequent uses of his teachings were abominable where Jews and women are concerned…

Please click on: Is Paul the Father of Misogyny and Antisemitism?