Playing with Paul as though he were Quixote
November 5, 2009
The Miracle of Paul
Good idea from Ehrman’s “Jesus, Interruptedâ€. Dreaming up an alternative explanation of the resurrection. Jesus may be (per Ehrman’s speculation) a petty character who has a band and he is executed. His band buries him. Later two of them, thinking he needs a better burial, take his body away in the night. They happened to be caught by soldiers and killed and tossed into a common pit. And the rest is hallucination and vision.
I suddenly liked the very idea, and got to thinking: wouldn’t that be a slick trick on the part of God to have this Jesus fellow appear as an hallucination which would have been prompted by Saul’s (later Paul) makeup and temperament who in turn is so moved that he does a 180 degree turn and goes off in the opposite direction with equal zeal as he had exemplified in his pursuit to eradicate the Christians. And this guy Paul, then, figures out essentially the Moral Law of Kant and in that way is able to take the legends of Jesus from his associates and give it a universal application, which he was not even fully aware of himself. So God, according to this hypothesis, will undoubtedly show those in heaven that the historical Jesus was a totally righteous man (proof to the angels that it can happen among the humans) and we will adore him for what he was as a totally loving person (and who spoke of dark ends in order to get people to join him in his endeavor of establishing the Kingdom of God).
So Jesus would be just as worthy of praise and adoration if he were a common man, as we are, and who actually in fact did lead a morally perfect life (using Kant’s terminology). So he would be praised and loved forever and hailed by the angels as the one man who did it, who did not succumb to temptation.
And so all the New Testament stories give us the descriptions of this marvelous, though petty, man who did much good and was killed for his troubles, and we see in him that which we all know that we should be like, the historical Jesus, where indeed every knee will bow and every tongue confess, that Jesus is the Lord of all.
So early then is Kant’s Moral Law revealed to the world! And Kant knew this and declared this expression of Christianity the only moral religion in the history of the world. Thus through Paul and through his hallucination, everything naturally fitting together, and the legend of Jesus’ resurrection God gives to the world that which it needs most: the understanding that it is only moral acts and disposition that can make a person pleasing to God.
Paul then takes the stories and produces a synthesis of Jesus doing what he did in order to enable man to be pleasing to God, something what was very important in an earlier time. Paul, by the way, in this supposed hallucination, looked for a very early return of the Lord Jesus in Triumph and Finality. So Paul conceives of the Law of Law, the law of universal neighborly love (solution to all problems through sharing), and sets about to get people to join up quickly before Jesus gets back when it will be too late.
So he doesn’t go the way of the Jewish Christians and their commune, but tells everyone just to remain where they are and start practicing the law of love in their condition, e.g., as wife or slave or master. The end is very near. Well, time has proved that Paul’s hallucination failed at the early return bit. But that is to God’s glory, we might say, for the miracle of God was the message that Paul had presented (independently of culture and of himself as a product of culture), namely the universal kingdom of God as a practical expectation of conduct in accordance with the law of love. Paul will have meant this: by means of this law, universally complied with, we could create a New Jerusalem on this earth, and so this is going to be the rule of conduct and nature in our expression in that world (via some heavenly vehicle).
So, unwittingly, Paul gives the world the only tools that it needs in order to make this world as it will be in its final state, and such where it might be anticipated (except for the “evil†people, but who may ultimately be converted, for our timeframe is longer than that of Paul).
How does Paul go about convincing people of their salvation and “second chance†before God? Since one has to be pure and no one is pure it is impossible that anyone would ask to sign on to doing good deeds. So Paul acknowledges publicly that it is impossible for any human to pass muster before the moral court of God. But because God is so good and wants to get people to start living right and godly, he has let the death of this truly perfect man Jesus pay for the sins of all who will join in Jesus’ band. So there is no reason to hold back. Everyone can obtain purity in the sight of God at this moment, by trusting Jesus, by taking him at his word, and dedicating one’s life to the good of his band.
Quite a miracle. A petty preacher of righteous perfection arises and dies and an hallucinating Saul is turned into Paul and provides both the blueprint for a possible perfect society and an incentive to join in and take part in making it happen and in glorifying God who made it all possible.
Note: Had Paul had a longer range of time, he would certainly have worked for equality among Christians in all things, something close to the commune of First Church Jerusalem.
According to this hypothesis, stirred by Ehrman, it is all a natural progression and the result in a transformed world. But isn’t that what you would really have to call a miracle?!
The Koran is the miracle of the Muslims, and Paul, according to all this, is the miracle of the Christians.
The compelling element, for me, is the identification of the early Christian conception with the Moral Religion of Kant. And so this Christian faith, rightly interpreted (in its time) is exactly what Kant is looking for, as he himself admits, for it can produce moral zeal among all peoples and provides a moral hope for the future, namely the Highest Good, the great rectification and clarification as envisioned by Kant.
In a nutshell: the implementation of the principles of Paul, disrobed from his cultural context, will result in a world-wide Christian commune, where “no one will count anything as his own†(Acts 4). That is the ultimate goal, for that is the world of perfection, and while God has predicted the New Jerusalem, we have the tools to accomplish this ourselves and are charged to make God’s predication come true, by doing it ourselves. The idea of the marriage expands into a commune of all people, for Paul’s primary rule of action was the law of love. That trumped everything. The “legendary†Jesus seems to agree (John 5). The marriage is then a prefigure of the commune.