Sahaja ja Liberaaliteologia

Paavali vs. Jeesus

Kirjoitin aamulla tämän, englanniksi. - Sahaja yogin ajatuksia luterilaisesta 1800-luvun "radikaaliteologiasta". - On kumma miten Paavali on joka paikassa, Nag hammadin kirjoituksissakin "Apocalypse of Paul"! Muka nousi seitsemänteen taivaaseen...
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"Everything that is known of Jesus belongs to the world of imagination."
- Bruno Bauer, “Christus und die Caesaren“, 1841

“Jesus or Paul: this alternative characterizes, at least in part, the religious and theological warfare of the present day" - William Wrede, “Paul”, 1904


Dear Sahaja Yogis, Seekers and Friends,

BY STRANGE COINCEDENCE of fate, in these days I’ve come in touch with the history of protestant theology, and I have viewed it from a perspective of a sahaja yogi. And perhaps the discussion about the Organisation SY repressing and denouncing the Divine Message of Shri Mataji made me thoughtful. The likeness with repressions inside Christianity is striking. Some intuitions and discoveries here.

IT WAS about last week, I had a shady recollection, of memory, that I had read from somewhere, about anti-Pauline sentiments among Christian theologians. I just didn’t remember where. Were they German theologians? I remember someone was asking quite blatantly: Jesus or Paul. Surely there was a time, in history, when Christians had faced critically the question about Paul? Why modern Christians are so fanatically Pauline, why they so much love him?

YESTERDAY EVENING I went almost mad. I did search. Among the “zillions” on fundamentalist-Christian websites, I found some hints. Someone mentioned with a leer, - “the pioneering work of the Tübingen critics”, “liberal theology”, "Historical Criticism", “higher criticism”, “textual criticism”, “19th century” – these taboo things…

Then, I found out that A Jewish scholar; Hyam Maccoby has written the book: “The Myth-Maker, Paul and the Invention of Christianity”, New York: Harper Collins, 1987. Now, this is beginning to get more interesting.. Just I don’t understand why he is saying that Paul is a Gnostic? But:

“Maccoby is flying in the face of generations of scholarship which has rejected and repressed Baur and his radical colleagues. Maccoby views their rejections of Baur as a retreat into Christian apologetics. It is no accident that Christian scholars have rejected conclusions so theologically repugnant to them.“

WHAT EXCATLY is so repressed and rejected? I try to trace the origin of this line of thought, but it sure gets difficult! I have to change the language into German. I have to travel back in Time, following the vibes….

I REALIZE that this has something to do with the allied victory of WWII. It must be. I find names like Ferdinand Wilhelm BAUR (1792-1860), William WREDE (1859-1906) and Paul WERNLE (1872-1939) - Professor Wernle states, "Jesus knew nothing of that which to St. Paul is everything. That Jesus regarded Himself as an object of worship must be doubted; that He ascribed any meritorious atonement to His death is altogether improbable. Paul is not a disciple of Jesus. He is a new phenomenon. Paul is much further removed from Jesus in his teaching than he would seem to be when regarded only chronologically."

I SEE a vision, that shallow biblical fundamentalism must be of Anglo-American origin. It became popular after the victory in WW II, and the finer, German critical views got unpopular. Perhaps people were so wearied out by the war, they lacked energy to think critically? In my minds eye I see Dutch 19th-century theologians, taking the Bible in their hands, highly suspicious, they deconstruct the Bible, weight every word, very ounce, every Biblical character and then say: well, maybe there’s something good in it.

IT WAS the Amsterdam professor of theology Abraham Dirk Loman (1823-1897), who wrote about himself: “The author is a radical like we seldom meet among theologians and hardly ever among English theologians.” The Dutch Radical Criticism of the Pauline Epistles was born. It’s getting vaguely anti-British! And worse still, it was Adolf Hitler himself who said that Christianity must get rid of Paul, who has falsified Christ: “Just as Saul became St. Paul, Mardochai has become Karl Marx”. [Hitler's Table Talk, p. 314] “Christ was an Aryan and St Paul used his doctrine to mobilize the criminal underworld and this organize a proto-Bolshevism.... Christianity is an invention of sick brains....The war will be over one day. I shall then consider that my life's final task will be to solve the religious problem.” [p. 142-4] Hitler said about the protestants: “ You can do anything you want with them. They will submit . . . they are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs . .” But of course many priests dared to resist the Nazis, like Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer… - Not all. Some cooperated with the Nazis. There was the Lutheran theologian, professor Adolf von Harnack. 1851-1930. I think he is something like the pet-hate of Anglo-American believers. Why?

“ Therefore Protestants are not only free, but bound, to criticize it; for a Protestant, dogma cannot be said to exist.” – Adolf von Harnack

IT´S BEEN SAID, that Harnack made the way easy for the anti-Semitists; - he was in correspondence with Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and knew Alfred Rosenberg. It happened that in that time, the anti-Catholicism of nineteenth century German liberalism became the anti-Jewish Christianity of twentieth century Nazis. The Anglican Dean Inge, of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, did not hesitate to say in 1945: “If we wish to find a scapegoat on whose shoulders we may lay the miseries which Germany has brought on the world, I am more and more convinced that the worst evil genius of that country, is not Hitler or Bismarck or Frederick the Great, but Martin Luther. “ So it’s getting a mighty politicized issue, this Paul vs. Jesus controversy… No wonder that the mainstream Christian believers keep silent, and don’t dare to dwell into the heart of these matters. It seems “apostle” Paul got on the side of western allied powers; on the winning side!

II WAS getting late, and my brain was pondering the question why the Pauline heresy sticks so deep in Christianity.. and it was then I found the underground jewel. The root of vibration. There was one man who had written clearly about the question, and he is William WREDE. He published a book; “PAULUS” (Paul) in Tübingen, 1904. It was translated in English, in London 1907. There’s someone TRYING to review this book:

“His Paulus is rather a work of art than a popular book, though it belongs to a popular series. It does not concern itself with detail, but is a polished treatment of the essential life and work of the apostle, comparing that life with the life of Jesus. In that it does not furnish a purely historical decision it reflects Wrede's subjective standpoint. The author regards Paul as the second founder of Christianity, the builder of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, who changed, by his doctrine of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ, the religion of Jesus. Not that he charges Paul with a fault here, but rather regrets that it was Paul who did what had to be done. As a check upon the unwholesome and panegyrical exposition of the life of Paul, Wrede's work was valuable; but Wrede does not present the entire Paul to his readers, it is a profile picture which he paints”. - (Christian Classics Ethereal Library at Calvin College. G. A. JÜLICHEA.)

AND there’s another book, published in Tübingen 1907, by Arnold O. Meyer: Wer hat das Christentum begründet, Jesu oder Paulus? Translated in English by J.R. Wilkinson, London 1909 by the name “Jesus or Paul?”. But I can’t find further information on this…

SUCH WONDERFUL theological geniuses. Forgotten gems. I collected some classic anti-Pauline quotes. They; - the few enlightened souls KNEW what the majority of believers did not! I was so surprised, and felt joy. I mention Kahlil Gibrans wonderful text here, Emerson, I don’t know at what time anti-Pauline thoughts emerged, - Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Enlightenment thinker and professor of Oriental languages at the Hamburg Gymnasium charged the gospel writers with “conscious fraud and innumerable contradictions” already in 1778. Martin Luther had the beautiful reformative pure idea of five solus: Sola Scriptura, Solus Christus, Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Soli Deo Gloria. – I think it must come to that Lutheran root.

Just wished to share this joy with fellow sahaja yogis.

Jay Shri Mataji!
An An. SY from Helsinki…

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"The oblivious contradictions in the three accounts given by Paul in regard to his conversion are enough to arouse distrust....The moral majesty of Jesus, his purity and piety, his ministry among his people, his manner as a prophet, the whole concrete ethical-religious content of his earthly life, signifies for Paul's Christology nothing whatever....The name 'disciple of Jesus' has little applicability to Paul....Jesus or Paul: this alternative characterizes, at least in part, the religious and theological warfare of the present day" - William Wrede, Paul, 1904

"In the teachings of Christ, religion is completely present tense: Jesus is the prototype and our task is to imitate him, become a disciple. But then through Paul came a basic alteration. Paul draws attention away from imitating Christ and fixes attention on the death of Christ The Atoner. What Martin Luther. in his reformation, failed to realize is that even before Catholicism, Christianity had become degenerate at the hands of Paul. Paul made Christianity the religion of Paul, not of Christ Paul threw the Christianity of Christ away, completely turning it upside down. making it just the opposite of the original proclamation of Christ" - Soren Kierkegaard, in The Journals

"True Christianity, which will last forever, comes from the gospel words of Christ not from the epistles of Paul. The writings of Paul have been a danger and a hidden rock. the causes of the principal defects of Christian theology." - Ernest Renan

"Paul....did not desire to know Christ....Paul shows us with what complete indifference the earthly life of Jesus was regarded....What is the significance for our faith and for our religious life, the fact that the Gospel of Paul is different from the Gospel of Jesus?....The attitude which Paul himself takes up towards the Gospel of Jesus is that he does not repeat it in the words of Jesus, and does not appeal to its authority....The fateful thing is that the Greek, the Catholic, and the Protestant theologies all contain the Gospel of Paul in a form which does not continue the Gospel of Jesus, but displaces it." - Albert Schweitzer, winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize, in “The Quest for the Historical Jesus”

"It is most obvious that Paul does not appeal to the words of the Lord in support of his....views. when the essentially Pauline conceptions are considered, it is clear that Paul is not dependent on Jesus. Jesus' teaching is -- to all intents and purposes -- irrelevant for Paul." - Rudolf Bultman, in his “Significance of the Historical Jesus for the Theology of Paul”

"If one may be allowed to speak rather pointedly the Apostle Paul was the only Arch-Heretic known to the apostolic age." - Walter Bauer

"There is not one word of Pauline Christianity in the characteristic utterances of Jesus....There has really never been a more monstrous imposition perpetrated than the imposition of Paul's soul upon the soul of Jesus....It is now easy to understand how the Christianity of Jesus....was suppressed by the police and the Church, while Paulinism overran the whole western civilized world, which was at that time the Roman Empire, and was adopted by it as its official faith." - George Bernard Shaw, in “Androcles and the Lion”

"The Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount is completely opposed to Paul" - Martin Buber, Two Types of Faith

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Saba of Antioch
On Saul of Tarsus


THIS DAY I heard Saul of Tarsus preaching the Christ unto the Jews of this city.
He calls himself Paul now, the apostle to the Gentiles.

I knew him in my youth, and in those days he persecuted the friends of the Nazarene. Well do I remember his satisfaction when his fellows stoned the radiant youth called Stephen.
This Paul is indeed a strange man. His souls is not the soul of a free man.

At times he seems like an animal in the forest, hunted and wounded, seeking a cave wherein he would hide his pain from the world.

He speaks not of Jesus, nor does he repeat His words. He preaches the Messiah whom the prophets of old had foretold.

And though he himself is a learned Jew he addresses his fellow Jews in Greek; and his Greek is halting, and he ill chooses his words.
But he is a man of hidden powers and his presence is affirmed by those who gather around him. And at times he assures them of what he himself is not assured.

We who knew Jesus and heard his discourses say that He taught man how to break the chains of his bondage that he might be free from his yesterdays.

But Paul is forging chains for the man of tomorrow. He would strike with his own hammer upon the anvil in the name of one whom he does not know.
The Nazarene would have us live the hour in passion and ecstasy.

The man of Tarsus would have us be mindful of laws recorded in the ancient books.
Jesus gave His breath to the breathless dead. And in my lone nights I believe and I understand.

When He sat at the board, He told stories that gave happiness to the feasters, and spiced with His joy the meat and the wine.

But Paul would prescribe our loaf and our cup.
Suffer me not to turn my eyes the other way.

- Kahlil Gibran, Jesus the Son of Man(1928) http://terebess.hu/english/gibran1.html

PS. This text is a bit chaotic, but I put here all I could find about this theme. Something like a conclusive list.