Paul's Necessary Sin: The Experience of Liberation - Pauline Christianity = PaleoChristianity

[Esprit]

Session 28 December 2019
I do feel like that weak and insubstantial part of me is coming back again and with fear and trembling trying to find it's bearings in a weird and chaotic reality. I'm planning to read the Collingwood thread before going back to Paul's Necessary Sin, which I've left off at Part 2, but may have to start from the beginning again because I feel that now I have new eyes to see.

If anyone has any suggestions to prolong this state or how to proceed further I would really be grateful, I'm honestly just quite scared, in fear and trembling whenever I reach this point, because any undue circumstance from the outside world, any lie accepted or any shock unprocessed and I might just lose myself in the morass again. It feels like a really crucial time to proceed cautiously and not make any sudden moves.

I think you are identifying. Put yourself more in the seat of the observer would be my suggestion.

In one of the sessions IIRC, the C's explained how you are drained of energies by sts entities, when caught in their frequency, and shifting the thoughts/conversation on a complete different direction leaves the vampire baffled. I'm paraphrasing here but maybe you can see the connection.

Also humour, like Don Juan in Castenada's book The fire from within is a great way of doing this. (Dark humour coming just teasing you)
Something like: So, you are dealing with a fabricated reality where you have been put to, where you don't remember much, where there are parallel worlds to take into account, psychopaths, lizzies and grays who time travel, a need for ascension on a time schedule, meteorites showers and ice age and you are concerned ? Ppffftt...snowflake !
( the author if this post is now in a little ball on the floor sucking his thumb and trying to make sense of it)
"- Pick up your damn cross and bear it"
JBPeterson

Some thoughts about the relationship between "law" and "faith" worth pondering IMO:

The background of Paul's view on the "law" seems to be a religious society where some kind of moral/religious law is more or less upheld (along the lines of the 10 commandments), and it can lead to righteous action. His concept of "faith" then goes way beyond that - it points towards a communion with Christ/the spiritual world, where the entire structure of our goals and motivations change and God becomes active through us. Moreover, a direct guidance by God/the spirit world may be established. For that to happen, we first need to be "crucified" - the old self needs to die, a deep realization of our sinful nature (and therefore sinful past) needs to kick in (i.e. First Initiation).

The word sacrifice comes to mind here. The need to let go of something to make something else happen. The aim also comes into play osit. As truth/knowledge/light also you can't aim at highest possible goal without it.

And the law of 3 again kicks in.

 

[genero81]

Wow, was not expecting this:

In this chapter and the next we will explore in more detail Paul’s understanding of the relationship between the Spirit and the individuals and communities to which it comes. Crucial to getting a clear idea of how the Spirit is involved in human transformation is appreciating that Paul’s conception of the Spirit is always bound together with a sense of a universal transformation that is to come in the future. Manifestations of the Spirit are signs of this future total transformation.

Timothy Ashworth. Paul's Necessary Sin: The Experience of Liberation (Kindle Locations 3386-3389). Routledge. Kindle Edition.

 

[beetlemaniac]

I think you are identifying. Put yourself more in the seat of the observer would be my suggestion.

I do tend to get emotionally identified with things very often and then get carried away, making bad decisions due to wrong thinking. I will keep this in mind and I've been working on keeping my thinking brain activated but it can leave me a less social person because I tend to want to keep myself in that hyper-rational mode for fear of losing it.

In when of the sessions IRC, the C's explained how you are drained of energies by sts entities, when caught in their frequency, and shifting the thoughts/conversation on a complete different direction leaves the vampire baffled. I'm paraphrasing here but maybe you can see the connection.

That's a good reminder, I do remember this session from somewhere. Good to work against my own predators machinations by diverting my focus to other productive activities. I'll remember to be less one-pointed in my focus as well in my conversations with others just to make things more interesting. I've already been doing that in situations.

Also humour, like Don Juan in Castenada's book The fire from within is a great way of doing this. (Dark humour coming just teasing you)
Something like: So, you are dealing with a fabricated reality where you have been put to, where you don't remember much, where there are parallel worlds to take into account, psychopaths, lizzies and grays who time travel, a need for ascension on a time schedule, meteorites showers and ice age and you are concerned ? Ppffftt...snowflake !
( the author if this post is now in a little ball on the floor sucking his thumb and trying to make sense of it)
"- Pick up your damn cross and bear it"
JBPeterson

Yeah, thanks for the reminder. See what's happening between the US and Iran, that's an example of ongoing chaos if anything.

The word sacrifice comes to mind here. The need to let go of something to make something else happen. The aim also comes into play osit. As truth/knowledge/light also you can't aim at highest possible goal without it.

And the law of 3 again kicks in.

Unfortunately, no concrete aim at the moment, just living life day by day and observing my sometimes crazy behavior. I guess endeavoring to do what's in front of me to do and then being open to learning from each moment whenever I can is the only thing I can think of right now.

 

[Esprit]

I do tend to get emotionally identified with things very often and then get carried away, making bad decisions due to wrong thinking. I will keep this in mind and I've been working on keeping my thinking brain activated but it can leave me a less social person because I tend to want to keep myself in that hyper-rational mode for fear of losing it.

That's a good reminder, I do remember this session from somewhere. Good to work against my own predators machinations by diverting my focus to other productive activities. I'll remember to be less one-pointed in my focus as well in my conversations with others just to make things more interesting. I've already been doing that in situations.


Yeah, thanks for the reminder. See what's happening between the US and Iran, that's an example of ongoing chaos if anything.


Unfortunately, no concrete aim at the moment, just living life day by day and observing my sometimes crazy behavior. I guess endeavoring to do what's in front of me to do and then being open to learning from each moment whenever I can is the only thing I can think of right now.

Funny ! I was replying to Luc's message but as I was writing it I thought it applied to you as well !!

 

[Chrístofir]

Paul's Necessary Sin: The Experience of Liberation by Timothy Ashworth, seems to be a book worth recommending and reading. I've been reading all posts where one also learns about many other things in connection with the book, and from the personal reflections of others. Inspiring, Thank You!

So, consequently, I went on a short trip on the Internet to look for the book, and ended up with this scholarly book review:

2008, Ashworth's "Paul's Necessary Sin: The Experience of Liberation" - Book Review Timothy W. Seid, Earlham School of Religion

Now, a review is a review and prone to subjectivity, but I read it anyway, only to see if I would get another perspective in some way.

The review begins:

I differ, however, from the author in some significant ways. First, Ashworth wants to detect the root meanings of words and apply that to every instance where the word is used. I think we can reinterpret Paul in significant ways if we pay attention to the way in which language is used within its cultural context and interpret idiomatic expressions according to those contexts. Secondly, Ashworth seems to move quickly from the literary context of Paul's letters dealing with Jews and Gentiles to talk broadly about the human condition. I think we fail to understand Paul properly if we ignore the ethnic distinctions Paul makes, particularly in Romans and Galatians (specifically, if we fail to understand Paul's message about Gentiles not needing the Jewish law). Thirdly, I'm also aware of our own social locations. Ashworth is in dialogue mainly with scholars who are either from the UK or taught there (]. Dunn, J. Ziesler and E. Sanders) and who represent the mainstream of Anglicanism in Britain. I am more influenced by North American scholars on Paul (S. Stowers,]. Gager, L. Gaston, R. Hays and A. Malherbe), and have no religious concern with what Anglicans teach about Paul. Finally, Tim Ashworth and I come from distinctly different Quaker traditions: Ashworth represents classic, British Quakerism, while I am a pastor of a programmed Friends meeting in Indiana.

To me, as a translator, it is interesting that Timothy Ashworth here is somewhat criticized for choosing a literal stance to the idiom of Paul's writing, choosing to examine the root meaning of the greek words.

In general, if one knows the source of anything, in any context, it should be the natural thing to go to that very source to gather information in how to interpret or render. And the quest for the source, to find out what in fact the source of anything we wonder about is like, or where to find that source, whether in ourselves or elsewhere, is the very process where we learn so much!

After a few pages of language scrutiny, the reviewer ends with:

I've only been able here to engage with one small section of this book. But this is a representative example of the sorts of philological, grammatical and exegetical errors that run throughout the book. That is unfortunate, because I think Ashworth's goal in the book is laudable. Contemporary followers of Pauline Christianity continue to be enslaved to principles of Christian conduct rather than discover the freedom and transformation Paul describes as the life of the Spirit. But that doesn't mean Paul didn't advocate preaching and proclamation or exhort people to follow codes of conduct for moral living. In the end, Ashworth fails to make his case. Nevertheless, I hope he will continue to work on the project of reinterpreting Paul, but that the next time he will be more careful about his Greek exegesis.

Now, why did I decide to at all write this post? Because everything is perspective. I find it commendable of Timothy Ashworth to choose to go to the actual source of Paul's language and explore the root meaning of the Greek words, to reinterpret his message. That way he may have captured the spirit of Paul's writings in a way which other translated versions may not have.

This is what we all are doing, or should be doing, in our quest to understand ourselves and the universe, in the lessons we have. We go to the source, i e what is perceived within. And sometimes, in this exploration process, that what we perceive, turns out not to be the actual source, but a subjective rendering of another kind. We also go to learn about other's perceptions of the same source for comparison, or to add to, or modify our own knowledge library. Or we simply realise that what we thought we knew needs thorough revision and a closer and more truthful introspection altogether. The result of taking part of other's experiences may have a great impact on us and in the understanding of ourselves.

As individuals we tap into the Source in different ways and thus render Truth, that multifaceted diamond, somewhat differently, because we often tend to end up looking at different facets of the same thing, all according to our lessons, thus nurturing different perspectives. We are all looking at the same Source within, and each openly offering our piece, our key, to the common understanding according to our own ability at the time, to render and translate that which we perceive.

So, I can see where the reviewer is coming from, that he implies that it all depends on how you are able to translate a source. Just because somebody studied the root source meaning of something, does not necessarily mean that you will get a "correct" translation of that source.

When you're reading spiritual texts like this, in their original, there is almost never a literal translation to be desired, because in the words of an original text there are also feelings and inner images stirred in the reader, which cannot be translated. We are doing that translation all by ourselves while reading, to make sense of what we're reading.

In translation from one language to another one has to find similar words, or sometimes when words are failing you in the target language, you need to rewrite in ways without loosing the original intention, save that you have really understood the meaning of the original, and is not inventing your own meaning along with the translation process. Because every single word is carefully chosen by the author to communicate with the reader, to work as triggers and keys to opening up understanding or to push for further introspection in the reader. That is the main duty and nature of such texts, to stir awareness of that which the underlying message of the writing is communicating. And then it's up to the reader to choose in what direction to take the next step, if answering the inner calling to align oneself closer with the underlying message, and that stirred within, or to put the text aside as "interesting" and do nothing else. Or rejecting it altogether.

What is a literal translation?

Well, you can read something in the original and inside of you translate every word according to your best understanding. But will it be literal? How do you know if the end result of your understanding of the text is subjective or objective?

Or you can translate the original text into another language, word by word, and in the process get to understand the text just from having to understand every word and its meaning in each specific context where it occurs. In this process, it is also my experience, as I suspect was the case with Timothy Ashworth, you are suddenly - at some point - geting in touch with the spirit of a text and the intention of the author when originally writing it.

So, I have been working myself a lot with translation issues, in translations of books from the Russian and the English into the Swedish, but above all in the context of my own native language, Jamtlandic. I've seen and acknowledged the similarities in how the translation process may improve or disprove the spirit of the original text, and how this process may also similarly translate to my own path at large, and my introspective insights, as well as in my shamanic work, which is almost entirely based upon empirical study and interpretation - translation - of "what is", that is what you see, sense, perceive and understand and according to the factual context at hand. And in the empirical interaction with the universe, as the source, one is constantly upgrading and revising that which you experience and translate.

The translation process, in whatever context it takes place, is both a laborious work as much as it is a fruitful contribution to the expansion of your being.

I once wanted to translate 1 Corinthians 13, The Path of Love, into Jamtlandic, but knew I wanted the translation to be as accurate as possible. I didn't want anything to get "lost in translation". I wanted to be true to the text source. So where to find the source of the bible text, as I am not familiar with Greek, and shun most bible translations because they breathe disharmony, that is I sense there is no balance in the translation, which in turn points to a deliberate corruption of the translation from the original language?

At the time the universe answered my calling and I got to know a Norwegian guy who was studying at a priest seminar in order to become a priest. He was also very interesting in Jamtlandic, as the Old Norse language it is, and in our efforts in Jamtland to revitalise the genuine Jamtlandic language. He was actually the one suggesting I should translate any part of the bible into Jamtlandic. I immediately thought of 1 Corinthians 13, as I had been wanting to translate that passage for a long time.

He graciously pointed to an Internet site where the bible is found in the original Greek and Hebrew, but translated word by word into the English. Every word also has a translation comment to it, which is very useful, where you can find more contextual information about the word and the translation of it.

I was excited to know that I could get so close to the original bible text source without having to learn ancient Greek! Even if I at first had a few doubts about it, because even if it was a word by word translation, it was still a translation. I decided, however, to trust the interlinear version as it was as close to the original text as one could possibly get. Just what I wanted!

And to go to the text source and to actually see it, and feel it, for yourself written in the original language translated word by word, without hampering or corrupting the text, was a revelation! I had studied many different versions of 1 Corinthians 13 and realised they were all rather different when compared with each other. But now that I had the original text in front of me, and each word translated in their own proper context, it was like reading the 1 Corinthians 13 for the first time. I even compared with several other bible translations of this particular passage in other languages for comparison, and to look for in what detail they differed, i e where the apparent corruption had been made in the translation. This was also very interesting to do, because you then realise where, in this very plain Message of Love that it is, others had felt the need to "put right" and "adjust" according to their own beliefs, or traditions.

The original in the Greek is simply so plain and heartfelt.

And I suggest you do like Timothy Ashworth and go to the source to see and sense for yourself the original version of any bible text. If you want to read the bible in the original, translated word by word, please go to

The Interlinear Bible

A direct link to 1 Corinthians 13

This is why I found it interesting to find a review of Timothy Ashworth's book criticizing him for going to the root meaning of the Greek words, and how he went about it. Timothy Ashworth simply did the most logical thing to do when wanting to do an analysis of Paul's writings - he studied the source, and tried to find the most truthful way of interpreting that source.

I say, why choosing the risk of corruption and manipulation in second hand sources, when there is a primary source to be found? And where you can learn from the source itself, its language, its intention, its meaning. And where you don't understand, or getting lost, you can look for help, and network, to get help in understanding.

And that goes for any translation of any kind of source in life and existence, I believe.

It's no wonder that "we in the future" chose/chooses/are chosing to communicate letter by letter at an Ouija board in order for the translation not to get lost, at least as a way to reduce the noise in interpreting the communication. Quite smart!

Thank You!

 

[Laura]

Problem is, even the interlinear Greek translation is flawed as I discovered to my dismay.

The reviewer you have cited above is likely a mainstream type Christian with a strong vested interest in the standard translation. Only reading Ashworth's text will show that he is, undoubtedly, correct. He comes at each word from many different directions. Additionally, what he ends up with is completely coherent AND, for me the most convincing thing is that it coheres with Cs, Gurdjieff, Castaneda, much of Stoicism, and our understanding of hyperdimensional realities. It really doesn't get any better than that.

For an amazing revelation about mainstream Christianity in these days, read
"Heretic: One Scientist's Journey from Darwin to Design" by Matti Liesola.

 

[Breo]

In his introduction Ashworth writes about how his approach translating Pauls text developed. He tells us about having gone through a spiritually transforming process which shifted his perception and opened his eyes significantly:

In December 1989 I went through a religious experience that changed the way I saw things. Staying at Buckfast Abbey in Devon, I attended a series of evening dialogues with American spiritual teacher, Andrew Cohen, author of Embracing Heaven and Earth (Lenox, Massachusetts: Moksha Press, 1999) and Living Enlightenment (Lenox, Massachusetts: Moksha Press, 2002). Cohen’s teaching uses concepts from the Buddhist tradition but it was the sharpness and directness of his questions which triggered a change in me that I had not expected. My usual way of seeing things changed and a shift in perception occurred that became established for a number of weeks. As a result, my eyes were opened to possibilities about what happened in the beginnings of Christianity that I had not previously considered. (Kindle-Positionen327-332)

Inevitably, as a scholar approaching the biblical text, one of the vital elements shaping the questions asked is the basic conviction about what is or is not possible. For example, in seeking to understand what happened around Jesus himself, the interpretation of any scholar will be shaped by his or her view on the possibility of miracles. The same is true in approaching the early Christian movement. Your interpretation of what went on – scholar or not – will be shaped by the nature of your own religious experience. As I entered this period of study there is no doubt that my own recent experience was shaping the direction of my study. As a result of what had happened to me in Devon, my ‘particular expectations’, to use Gadamer’s phrase, of what I might discover in the text had significantly changed. When it came to interpreting particular words and relating those meanings to the bigger theological concepts that they were part of, I was not only prepared to let go of traditional theological and scholarly interpretations but also had a new cluster of ‘fore-projections’ which shaped my enquiry. As I went back and forth, testing different translations of individual words in different settings and relating them to the bigger theological framework in Paul I quickly had a sense of a coherent picture emerging which made sense of Paul in a way that I had not previously discovered.
(Kindle-Pos 344-346)

It seems to me that these transformatory experiences previous to writing this book set the ground for Ashworth being "worthy" of uncovering Pauls message. Not only does he restore the true meaning of Pauls message but also is he able to channel (?) the spirit within: He really illuminates for the reader Pauls transformed sense of how God acts within.

He guides us "exploring the nature of transformation among early Christians" showing "how a new way of living is bound together with a new perception of how the old life [present 3D] had been a kind of slavery which had not been perceived as such." He also brings Pauls universal image of the movement from childhood (external obedience to laws/PTB) towards adulthood (inward knowledge of God) into the center of awareness.

Ashworth´s book enables to connect so many dots and lessons of your own while reading. What a grace - at the verge of WW3 ?- to be reminded to remember again and again.

Thank you Laura for this precious book and team participating in the according threads putting this message into practical context.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Wow, was not expecting this:

In this chapter and the next we will explore in more detail Paul’s understanding of the relationship between the Spirit and the individuals and communities to which it comes. Crucial to getting a clear idea of how the Spirit is involved in human transformation is appreciating that Paul’s conception of the Spirit is always bound together with a sense of a universal transformation that is to come in the future. Manifestations of the Spirit are signs of this future total transformation.

Timothy Ashworth. Paul's Necessary Sin: The Experience of Liberation (Kindle Locations 3386-3389). Routledge. Kindle Edition.

That reminds me of something from Engberg-Pedersen's book Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul. The background is that Paul seems to operate with a fairly standard Stoic cosmology of pneuma/spirit as the fundamental stuff making up the cosmos. So when Paul talks about "spiritual" things, he is speaking quite literally about that air/fiery element: God's/Christ's spirit/breath literally flows within him, allowing him to have Christ's mind, to experience Christ's death as and with the dying of his own fleshly body, and to experience Christ's resurrection as the powerful spirit growing within him, transforming his fleshly body into a body of pneuma. This ties in with what Ashworth says about the "prophetic word" speaking within believers. The reason this works is because they literally speak with God's voice/breath, via Christ. And as a corporate body, they share in that spirit with each other.

Anyways, here's the bit that it brought to mind, with reference to 1 Corinthians 15:

To begin with, he here speaks of the resurrection of human beings (15:20–2). At the end, however, when death itself has been conquered, what will now be subjected to God is everything (15:27–8), which leads to the idea that ‘God is (now) everything in everything’. Apparently, then, the transformation of human bodies described by Paul later in the chapter should be placed within a setting which comprises everything in the world. Can we build that much on a few references to ‘everything’ and the idea of God’s becoming ‘everything in everything’? Fortunately, Rom. 8:19–22 shows that Paul did have the idea of the ‘creation’ as a whole undergoing a change at some point in the future. Here is what he says (NRSV with a few changes):

"(19) For the creation waits with eager longing for the revelation of the children of God; (20) for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope (21) that the creation itself will also be set free from its bondage to corruption and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (22) We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now . . ."

Such a change is just what the whole idea of a movement from death (corruption in Rom. 8:21) to eternal life is all about.

If this is Paul’s picture, then there is indeed a closely comparable idea in Stoicism: that of the conflagration (ekpyrosis), when everything in the world—including the earth with all its earthly bodies—will be transformed into the single, ‘uppermost’ element of pneuma, which constitutes the essence of God himself. This is the Stoic anastoicheiosis in its proper, technical sense: the ‘resolution’ of the whole world into God.

This gives us our thesis: Paul’s idea of the change, and indeed the transformation, of individual bodies of flesh and blood into pneumatic bodies should be understood on the model of the Stoic idea of the transformation of the whole world into (pneuma and) God at the conflagration. The arguments for this proposal that we have considered so far are two. One was that Paul after all does speak of a transformation of the world as a whole, and not just once, but in several places. Another is that the idea of a genuine transformation of individual bodies of flesh and blood into pneumatic bodies seems to require a Stoic-like outlook. After all, both the starting point and the end point of the process are explicitly said by Paul to be bodies. And transformation of bodies constitutes the essence of Stoic physics with its emphasis on the physical continuum that binds everything together.

Sounds to me like a description of what the Wave could be like: a transformation of the stuff of the cosmos from one "tension" of pneuma (or density of mindstuff) to a higher one. What is not prepared gets burned in the fiery pneuma. What is prepared, is transformed by it.

Interesting sidenote: looking at things in this way causes Engberg-Pedersen to argue that Paul thinks the spirit body will literally be a heavenly body, i.e. made out of the same fiery plasma that stars and comets are made of. It's a pretty far-out idea, because according to legend, Caesar's 'resurrection body' was a comet!

 

[whitecoast]

This book was immensely impactful to me. The exegesis was impeccable, especially in its gradual incorporation over time of more and more concepts and interpretations from the Greek text into what is a plain English understanding of Paul’s mission, religious experience, and his Apostleship among those early Christian communities he guided.

I’ve shared some chapter summaries and relevant section summaries below with relevant quotes, as well as my own comments about some Gurdjieffian and Cassiopaean corollaries. I only share the G related things as aids because a part of me strongly doubts that we can just reduce Paul to terms of Gurdjieff or The Work has he characterized it. A few of these concepts I feel go beyond G and (as Laura said) Stoicism for that matter. Some of Paul’s work, I feel, that can’t really be described except on Paul’s own terms, and maybe that of other Eastern Church Fathers building on his wisdom.

PART ONE: LIBERATION

Chapter 1: A New Revelation

Paul uses the passive of dikaioō to indicate a real change for the individual in which right action becomes possible.... An experience of their earlier state as sinful in a way not previously seen is integral to the transformation of individuals, like himself and Peter, that Paul is describing.... When Paul uses the passive voice of dikaioō he is referring to a lasting and effective liberation from sin.
{snip}

The first steps have been made in showing:

(a) how by dikaiosunē (righteousness) Paul means ‘a state/manner of existing which subsists in a way of doing what is right’;

(b) that this definition can apply to the different settings in which Paul uses this word: of both God and humankind and of human life based on both faith and the law;

(c) that by dikaioō (‘to be justified’ in the passive voice) Paul means ‘to be given the state/manner of existing which subsists in the way of doing what is right by faith’;

(d) that when he uses this word, Paul is indicating a real change in the individual which can be well expressed by the English word ‘absolution’ – a setting free from sin;

(e) that associated with this absolution is a new perception of what sin is. A preliminary sketch has been made of how Paul could consider that God’s righteousness was being newly revealed in setting people free from sin – understood as assertion against God – so that they, by their way of acting, themselves reveal God’s righteousness. What has so far been sketchily drawn will be filled out in the chapters that follow.

To me The Gurdjieffian correlate of dikaioo is the formation of a permanent I in which the new center of gravity in a person takes control – the Master. Such a perfect state of conscience cause a person to, in Gurdjieff’s words, “commit no act opposed to their understanding (of right and wrong), and to have no understanding (of same) that is not expressed through some action.

Chapter 2: Faith’s New Way of Listening

The coming of the prophetic word is bound together with the coming of the Spirit: both are described by Paul as coming to and operating in the individual and, at the same time, as being clearly from God, that is, distinct from the individual.... For Paul the prophetic word of God is central to faith and gives just as clear guidance on right action as the law but is directly available to all.
{snip}

When Paul uses the phrase akoē pisteōs , usually translated as ‘a message that is heard’ like ‘the gospel message’ or ‘the message of faith’, it is possible to maintain a consistent translation of the single Greek word akoē if Paul is understood to be speaking of something heard within the believer. It has been proposed that this is indeed what Paul means and that what is heard in association with faith and the coming of the Spirit is the prophetic word from God guiding the actions of those who receive it. It is with this word of prophecy that Paul claims to speak. In what Paul writes to the Thessalonians he indicates that by their recognition of the prophetic word spoken by him they themselves become recipients of the same prophetic word. Paul’s question to the Galatians examined earlier can be understood with this sense in the following paraphrase:

Was it through works of the law or when you heard the word that comes by faith, the word of God spoken through me, that you received the Spirit of prophecy that empowers and guides, the same Spirit by which I spoke?

The Spirit and word of prophecy can be understood as being directly from God, objective and yet appreciated within the individual, that is, subjectively. This points to the possibility that in speaking of ‘righteousness by faith’, that is, the way of doing what is right by faith, Paul is referring to a life guided by the word of prophecy. Paul can directly contrast righteousness by faith with righteousness by the law because they are both ways of knowing what to do . The difference is in the directness or immediacy of guidance by the prophetic word from God. The mediation of law is no longer required in those who have the way of doing what is right through faith. Paul can summarize his task as being to bring about the ‘obedience of faith’ (hypakoē pisteōs ) among all the nations: ‘the hearing and acting upon the directly given word of God.’

Chapter 3: The Freedom of Obedience

The verb stoicheō carries the simple and unchanging sense of ‘to keep aligned’ and is used by Paul in connection with faith, the cross and the Spirit to indicate the direction from which right action comes: those who ‘keep aligned’ by the Spirit naturally bring forth the ‘fruits of the Spirit’ and no longer need the law.... The interpretation of the plural noun, stoicheia , as ‘elemental spirits’ is incorrect and destroys the logic in Paul’s argument; it is used by Paul for ‘things which keep a person aligned’, which, in more idiomatic terms, give ‘direction for behaviour’ or ‘keep a religious adherent on the right path’....

Understanding stoicheō and stoicheia as carrying the sharp and simple image of alignment establishes the view that Paul sees all religious law, including the Torah, the law of Moses, as ‘weak and beggarly’ and that there is no need and therefore no essential place for law once an individual has come to the freedom of knowing God’s will through the Spirit.
{snip}

It will be argued that the existence of a sharp dividing line in Paul’s thinking that is indicated by the above analysis makes good sense of difficult elements of his understanding. The crucial links that have been made so far are these:

(a) coming to live by the Spirit involves a real liberation from sin which necessarily issues in transformed behaviour;

(b) Paul uses the idea of ‘faith’ in close connection with the coming of the prophetic word, understood as direct guidance from God for the individual and the community;

(c) for those who live by the Spirit, guided by the prophetic word, this liberation from sin is also liberation from the need for law.

It will be argued in the second part of the book that the image that Paul uses to describe this change is that of the movement from childhood to maturity. In the whole of the Galatians 4 passage in which the two uses of stoicheia occur, Paul is working with this image. To illustrate the situation of both Jew and Greek prior to the coming of faith, he pictures an heir, who, whilst still a child, is ‘no better than a slave’, being ‘under guardians and trustees’. And having introduced the image he says, ‘when we were children, we were slaves under the earthbound stoicheia (‘directions for behaviour’). This image reveals an understanding of a real change within the individual, as a consequence of which, all things, whilst having some continuity with the past, are different. In particular this applies to the law which Paul says is necessary for childhood but not for maturity. Without this understanding of a real change it can seem that Paul is simply contrasting two ways in which it is possible to choose to live: law and faith. Without the acknowledgement that Paul considered that a real change was involved in coming to faith, this is an incomplete and misleading way of describing Paul’s position. By looking carefully at other aspects of what Paul says, it is possible to get a more full and vivid sense of the nature of the real change which is illuminating in itself and reveals far more clearly the coherence in Paul’s understanding. We will discover that, for Paul, coming to faith, like coming to adulthood, involves a real change through which the direction for behaviour ceases to come from outside but becomes part of the responsible individual who can now act in freedom without the external obligation of the law.

While Ashworth believes “elemental spirits” to be a transliteration of stoicheia that detracts from Paul’s message, I think it actually fits in quite well.

Stoicheo is described in other areas of being something against which we align ourselves. Christ, Conscience, the Spirit, etc is that into which we are trying to bring ourselves into alignment. The plural of this, as described later, encompasses not only Jewish law but Gentile custom also. These in a sense are all the other little i’s along which we may align ourselves, and it is in this wilderness of different organic, psychic, and cultural forces that we find ourselves in our ordinary state of sleep, as Gurdjieff would say. The Cassiopaean perspective can attribute other cosmic forces (STS) to the various operation of these stoicheia on earth – as in the sense of the Powers and Principalities against which Paul says we struggle.

Chapter 4: Childhood under Law

It is worth developing Paul’s image of the wandering infant while returning to the first response which Paul makes to his own question, ‘Why then the law?’. What he says is this, ‘It was added because of transgressions…’ (Gal 3:19). Once a baby becomes a toddler, parents have to be vigilant in ensuring that the child, which does not understand danger, does not wander where it might come to harm. The law was added because of ‘wandering’, which is what the word translated ‘transgression’ (parabasis ) literally means. The young child being taken upon the road to school is inclined to wander into danger and one purpose of the paidagōgos is to restrain the child within the safe boundaries of the path. So, in Paul’s conception, law has a clear, positive function: it was given to infants to prevent their wandering, their transgression. He is not working with an image of the law as an imprisoning jailor, but rather as a childminder to keep the wandering infant safe until maturity comes and the law is no longer needed.
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Understanding stoicheō and stoicheia as carrying the sharp and simple image of alignment establishes the view that Paul sees all religious law, including the Torah, the law of Moses, as ‘weak and beggarly’ and that there is no need and therefore no essential place for law once an individual has come to the freedom of knowing God’s will through the Spirit....

The fact that Paul can use the word nomos when his primary sense changes within a single short section between (a) the Torah – ‘the written code and circumcision’, (b) a consistent principle and (c) the perception that Gentiles have of (i) ‘God’s eternal power and deity’ through ‘the things that have been made’ and (ii) the requirements of God ‘written on their hearts’ indicates that these meanings are all operating when he uses the word and when one meaning is to the fore the other meanings are not altogether excluded and enables him to argue in a subtle way his essential point that, before the coming of faith, all – both Jew and Gentile – are ‘under the law’.

Paul has a major problem in wanting to affirm that there is a new intimacy with God, a new and better way of knowing what God requires and receiving empowerment to do it. If this is true, what does this say about the past, specifically, about God’s covenant relationship with the people of Israel? Does this not inevitably undermine any idea of God’s consistency and faithfulness, God’s integrity? Two elements that form part of Paul’s answer to that question have occupied this chapter: (a) that he conceived of all people, Jews and Gentiles, as under the law before the coming of faith; (b) that the law had a positive but temporary function.

In much of his discussion of the law, the Torah of the Jews is clearly uppermost in Paul’s mind but, as the interpretation of stoicheia in the last chapter indicated, he is concerned to establish that the religious observances of the Gentiles have a similar purpose to the practice of the Torah. In the letter to the Romans, Paul makes further connections between the religious state of Jews and Gentiles. Even though they do not have the Torah, certain Gentiles indicate by their actions that they have awareness of the commands of God revealed to them through their consciences and through their observation of the world around them.

The question ‘why then the law?’ has received only a preliminary response. An introduction has been made to the important idea that Paul understands the law to have been given by God as operative for a limited period, a period he identifies as a kind of childhood. Just as a paidagōgos , a childminder or guardian, gives protection to a child so that it does not wander into danger, so law gives protection to a people. God’s guidance is given in a clear external form. Doing what is right is determined by consulting the written law. When faith comes, doing what is right is determined by the inwardly revealed word – the prophetic word. For Paul, it is the real experience of this inwardly revealed word that now provides the right direction for action.

The image Paul uses for this new situation is a subtle one. The movement from childhood to adulthood involves a real change. The external word of the parent must become the word inwardly established and revealed within the individual. Without this fundamental shift within, the law provides essential guidance and protection. Once the shift has occurred, the law is no longer required. Going back to the external word of the law makes no sense once the inwardly experienced responsibility of adulthood is reached. The real and obvious change from childhood to adulthood terminates the need for the external authority of the law just as coming to maturity involves a new life of independence from the parent.

While this image is a simple and universal one, it is usually obscured in interpretation. A long ‘discussion section’ was needed in the middle of this chapter for, on the question of Paul and the law, the confusion and complexity offered by commentators can already be overwhelming and paralyse the ability to go further. Only from the simplicity of the position on law and faith presented in the whole of Part One can a coherent interpretation of Paul begin to be constructed. In Part Two, the image of the child in relation to adulthood will give further help as we explore the condition that the law existed to contain and from which, according to Paul, liberation was needed. Moving forward with a clear understanding of Paul and the relationship between law and faith, there is much more to be discovered which, as well as revealing the subtlety of Paul’s theology, will also confirm the accurate placing of these early stages of the argument, the foundation stones at the base of the arch.

Had Paul been writing this today, he may have used the words “training wheels” to describe the function of the law, as it is something external to us which keeps us in a particular alignment while we train our muscle memory to maintain a steady position on a bicycle. The positive world of A influences force us in a mechanical manner to act in such a way that we minimize harm to ourselves in terms of our organic, psychic, and spiritual wellbeing until we are able to hear instructions from conscience on how to behave. This is at least the ideal function of Law; many stoicheia have much more ambivalent or negative influences on us, depending on a variety of factors.

PART TWO: THE EXPOSURE OF SIN

Chapter 5: Childhood and Sin

In different ways, Paul links Jesus and Adam. He describes Adam as ‘a type of the one who was to come’ (Rom 5:14); he says further:

Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification (absolution) and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous (absolved). (Rom 5:18f)

This is an important text which will be returned to in the next chapter. These explicit references to Adam and to his ‘disobedience’ are the most obvious indication that the Genesis account of the fall of humankind from paradise into sin is informing the thought of Paul in a significant way.
{snip}

The bold but necessary inference must now be drawn. God’s creation of humankind is good; the desire in humankind for dominion over creation is God given and therefore good. The particular tension present in the Genesis account has a curiously inevitable consequence: God makes a creature in God’s image, that is, unlimited, and then places upon it a limitation; the creature, being true to its unlimited nature must resist, but this means opposing the very Creator. It is this opposition which is ‘the sin’. But it is also in this opposition that the creature comes to understand the nature of sin. It is this knowledge that Paul now vividly describes....

The central section of the letter to the Romans has been examined in the light of the Genesis account of the creation of humankind and the image of the law as protective restraint for childhood. This has made it possible to see some major and long-standing difficulties in interpreting Paul from a completely new perspective. A substantial and coherent reason has been given which makes sense of how Paul could consider the God-given law to be both a check to transgression and, at the same time, crucially involved in the coming into being of sin. What is necessary is to acknowledge the scale of Paul’s conception: he is concerned with nothing less than the Genesis picture of humankind being made in God’s image and likeness. The radical conclusion that he has faced is that being in God’s image has to include the knowledge of good and evil. So Paul has come to view the God-given law as instrumental in bringing about a radical split in each human being leading to an infirmity of purpose: even though what is good is known, what is evil continues to be done. This, in the terms of the Genesis account, is the knowledge of good and evil which comes as a consequence of disobeying God. Further, Paul does not avoid the fact that this disobedience is inevitable. Just as the disobedience of the child towards the supervision of the parent is inevitable, so is the disobedience of humankind towards God.

The focus in this chapter has been on the ‘childhood’ of humankind, a time of immaturity in which, because, from the perspective of childhood, the future adult life can only be understood in a limited way, guidance is needed. Crucial to the coherence of this picture is the fact that the passage that has been examined in this chapter does not end at this point. Paul goes on to speak of a setting free from the law of sin and death. We will see in Chapter 8 how Paul envisages a transition to adulthood for humankind, a ‘coming of age’. Just as the individual child becomes an adult after adolescence, a relatively short period of transition, so it will be for humankind. From that new maturity everything, including the past, is seen from a new perspective.

The theme of this new life will be returned to in Chapter 7 but the need in the next chapter is to further investigate the plight which, for Paul, is the experience of all humankind. Once we have gained further clarity on the nature of the slavery in which Paul believes all humankind is trapped we can then move to his understanding of the liberation that is the heart of his gospel. That clarity is particularly important because, as we shall see in later chapters, it is in the nature of humankind under the power of sin that there is a dulling of perception which includes a blindness to the state of enslavement and the need for liberation. Only in the light of the transformation that Paul claims to be experiencing is the need for liberation exposed.

The chief aim of this chapter was to deal with the issue that, in spite of being under the Law or pedagogue of the positive mechanical influences (organic, psychic, or cultural), one is still an infant, and in a state of fundamental dependency on other positive forces manifest in the world, which Paul deigns to equivocate with still being under the power of sin or distance from God. Even if one is simply an obyvatel who does right by the law in his community he is still dependent on the community because he is cut off from the higher, root source of that good: conscience in its full operation and manifestation in the individual.

I did also find interesting the idea that in order for humans to be truly in the image of God they must assert themselves against limitations, even if such limitations are placed on them by the creator himself.

Chapter 6: Sin and Flesh

Paul’s view of the human plight – trapped in a struggle between good and evil – is not the end of the story. Romans 8 begins with a confident affirmation that the struggle is over. ‘I have been set free.’ In order to be clear about the nature of this affirmation, this liberation, we still have further work to do on the nature of the plight, in particular, what Paul means by ‘the flesh’.

This is especially the case because it can seem that Paul sees the flesh as a force for evil. This is a misinterpretation but one that has had a lasting impact with Paul’s words providing grounds for the denigration of the body and physical existence that has recurred throughout the Christian era. To get an alternative view it is necessary to look with more care than is usually done at precisely how Paul writes about the flesh and its connection with sin.

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All human individuals have identified their existence with the flesh, with the body, the locus of individuality, and because the flesh is mortal and always subject to infirmity and corruption, then the mind set on the flesh is similarly subject to infirmity and corruption, a central fact of which is the inability to perceive the wrongness of this state....

In the light of the new life of liberation that Paul says has now come about in which he and others are empowered to act rightly, Paul perceives that, in the radical identification of humankind with ‘the flesh’ which is infirm and dies, all come under the power of death, experienced, not only as a deeply rooted sense that death comes when the physical body dies, but, as a ‘state of deadness’, the universal condition of limited perception and understanding described in Romans 7:7–25 which is characterized by an inability to know what is right and act consistently in line with that knowledge.
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It has been shown that Paul is working with an understanding of the flesh that is informed by the Genesis account of creation. Just as in Genesis the flesh is associated with the creation of individuality, so, in Paul’s understanding, the flesh is associated with individual selfish assertiveness. The identification of existence with the flesh leads to an assertion by the individual against God and others. This is the fundamental ‘sin’. Because the flesh is mortal and corruptible, an understanding of existence as based upon the individual ‘flesh’ is always ‘infirm’ – it is always mortal and corruptible. Humankind, identified with perishable, mortal, fleshly existence, cannot inherit the imperishable kingdom of God. A significant part of that infirmity is that humankind is unable to see what is wrong, to see the nature of the identification with fleshly individuality. This Paul describes as a state of slavery or imprisonment. This is the condemnation which is being exposed and, from which, Paul is claiming, God is bringing liberation.

For humankind trapped in this state, the law is protective, in that it guides people in how to act rightly, but it also has a role in intensifying the sense of sin as humankind consistently tries and fails to do what is right. It is easy to see how the protective function of the law sits easily with it being given by God, but we have also seen in Chapter 5 how the way that the law intensifies the state of sin has a necessary and positive effect in humankind in that it is through this struggle that humankind comes to the knowledge of good and evil which is necessary for maturity, for being the conscious instruments of God, the true image of God in creation.

Romans 8:1–4 is a powerful summary statement in which a number of key elements of Paul’s theology come together: the law, the Spirit, liberation, the flesh, sin, death, the sending of the Son, ‘in Christ’, condemnation, ‘right action’. Part Three of the book will be concerned to clarify what Paul is speaking of when he speaks of the Spirit and what it means to be ‘in Christ’. Part Four will tackle what Paul means by ‘the sending of the Son to deal with sin’. The argument of the book so far has revealed how Paul is concerned with a central fact of human experience which is recognizable today – the struggle to know and do what is right. Paul speaks with a confidence that the struggle is over. Liberation has come. Although only affecting a small group, he claims that the way to know and do what is right is established in humankind. And from this perspective, he describes the previous lot of humankind as a condemnation, an entrapment in a kind of slavery – humankind unable to know clearly what is right and act consistently in line with that knowledge. And it has been argued that Paul has a subtle understanding of the source of that condition as arising from an identification of existence with our physical state. Identified with our individual physical bodies, our understanding is limited in a false understanding of what we are created to be. Our focus in the next part of the book is the fact that Paul does not limit his conception of what is taking place to his own liberation or even to that of the first Christians but that the movement from childhood to adulthood embraces ‘all’ – the whole of humankind.

Pretty self-explanatory. “Flesh” as defined by Paul is the seat of the passions of lust and “selfish assertion,” identification with which limits our sense of self and duty toward the body and those with whom the body develops attachments. In such a state we cannot do anything useful to God, except perhaps by accident, and our thoughts and feelings in such a state of identification are governed by entropy.

Ziesler, philologist Ashworth frequently discuses, characterizes flesh as in itself “an enemy power:”

[Sarx ] is not merely an error, but a demonic enslaving power. It is anything other than God in Christ in which we put our final trust.

Ashworth departs from Ziesler’s view of characterizing the flesh as a power unto itself, thinking Ziesler has paid insufficient attention to the fundamental root of the power this force has – namely identification of ourselves with the flesh and the passions that originate in the flesh. I tend not to think that these views are mutually exclusive.

Consistent through this chapter though is the repetition that Paul was himself liberated from enslavement to the flesh; in this liberated state it is impossible to sin or act according to the flesh in any way opposing God. This is the end goal of living by the Spirit and seating the higher self.


PART THREE: FROM CHILDHOOD TO ADULTHOOD

Chapter 7: Infants in Christ

Those ‘in Christ’ have received the ‘first instalment’ of the Spirit, the beginning of the liberating power of the Spirit that will be fully given in the future....

This chapter began by introducing the idea that Paul conceived of the Spirit as bringing a transformation of natural, physical life. While he speaks of a dying that is gone through in baptism, emphasizing the discontinuity between the old life and the new, Paul also speaks of the new immortal life being put on over the old mortal existence. He speaks of the mortal being ‘clothed over’ with either the life-giving Spirit or the risen Christ without any apparent difference in meaning.

This change is the effective reversal of the fall. Identification with ‘the flesh’ – individual physical existence – is over. Life is identified with ‘the Spirit’: immortal; of God; empowering each person as Jesus was empowered. Guided by the Spirit, clothed in the Spirit, individuals act in line with the purposes of God but the distinctiveness of each individual is maintained. This life is essentially ‘corporate’. Any idea of individual liberation recedes as Paul describes life in the Spirit, life beyond fleshly identity, as bringing about an ideal community. As parts of the same body, individuals are led by the same Spirit in their own individual expression of the life of God.

While it is clear that Paul believed there to be a real change in baptism, it is also clear that he conceives of this change as, essentially, a preparation for a further change in the future. Those who are baptized seek to be animated and guided by the same Spirit that was in Christ. They become sons and daughters in relation to God the Father. But, while children, in the present they remain heirs; the inheritance is still in the future.

The relationship between present transformation and future inheritance was explored further. It was argued that to make coherent sense of what Paul says it is important to see that the life of faith is not equivalent to life in the Spirit. Both describe a life without the law but in the life of faith there is evidence of continuing identification with separate fleshly existence with the propensity to living on the basis of self interest that brings. Friction between people is the consequence and this is clearly in evidence in the Christian communities to which Paul writes indicating that the freedom from sin and consequent unity that flows from life in the Spirit is still not realized among the baptized.

Yet Paul does not deny the reality of work of the Spirit in the communities. Behind Paul’s use of the precise terms expressed in English as ‘firstfruits’ and ‘earnest’ or ‘first instalment’ is an important fact which strengthens the coherence of what Paul is claiming. To describe the present activity of the Spirit as a foretaste of the full transformation that the Spirit will bring about in the future is not quite an adequate description. There is no doubt that Paul affirms the real activity and gift of the Spirit among the early faith communities. What is important to see is that Paul does not separate the present gift from the future transformation. This is the precise sense of the images of ‘first-fruits’ and ‘earnest’. They are already the future gift, but given and received before the time for full payment. The modern equivalent is a down-payment: payment has not yet been made but in anticipation of the time when that full payment will be made a suitable amount of that payment is given. The down-payment is part of the future payment and not separate from it. What this image indicates is that when Paul encounters the activity of the Spirit, integral to his experience is a sense of the future event to which the phrase ‘earnest of the Spirit’ points; this future perspective to the present experience of transformation pervades his thought.

Ashworth uses the below diagram (taken from Chapter 8) to describe the progression of those who receive the “first instalment” of the Spirit and how it evolves to fully seat the Spirit.

It bears a strong resemblance to the concept of the magnetic center (Fig. 20), which gradually forms and grows in a person subject to “B” influences (the lines all moving in one direction) coming from the Spirit. The “A” influences (the lines moving in all directions) can be grouped roughly into the types of random, entropic influences that can characterize the flesh and passions and false beliefs.

Chapter 8: Coming of Age

Much of the book so far has been examining two sharply contrasted pairs in Paul’s way of thinking: ‘flesh’ and ‘Spirit’; ‘law’ and ‘faith’. We have discovered the clarity in Paul’s thinking:

(a)‘ living by faith’ excludes ‘living by law’;

(b) ‘living in the Spirit’ brings to an end ‘the deeds of the flesh’;

(c) ‘the law’ is no longer needed once ‘the deeds of the flesh’ are brought to an end;

(d) ‘living by faith’ is not equivalent to ‘living by the Spirit’;

(e) at least some, if not most (more precision on this is to come in the following section and in Chapter 11 ), of those who ‘live by faith’ are ‘infants in Christ’ who have ‘the first instalment of the Spirit’. We now need to pursue the relationship in Paul’s thought between a further contrasted pair: childhood and maturity.

{snip}

We have already shown how important the contrast between ‘childhood’ and ‘adulthood’ is for Paul. It is this image that Paul is working with in this brief but very significant section. As we have seen in earlier sections (pp. 18 –19 , 134 –5 ), in 1 Corinthians 12–14, Paul is addressing the present state of the community, in particular, how different gifts of the Spirit operate in harmony in ‘the body of Christ’. At this point, he interrupts the flow of his discourse saying ‘and I will show you a still more excellent way’ (1 Cor 12:31). He then goes on to speak of the primacy of love and, as the section moves to its climax, the fact that, in contrast to other gifts of the Spirit, ‘love never ends’ (1 Cor 13:8). At this point, Paul has introduced the element of time, of a contrast between present and future. Now, he is saying to his brothers and sisters in the community, our prophecy and our knowledge is ‘in part’ or ‘incomplete’; then, in the future, what is ‘in part’ will come to an end:

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Cor 13:12)

It is of the most profound significance that at this point Paul presents ‘love’ as the ‘gift of the Spirit’ that will not come to an end but is available in the present; it is a bridge to the future life. It is this focus on love that makes this passage so universally accessible. Butforthose engaged on understanding the elements of Paul’s theological picture, it is very illuminating to see clearly how, in this passage of central importance, he again uses the universal image of the transition from childhood to adulthood to illustrate the universal change – the movement from ‘first instalment’ to ‘fullness’; from becoming ‘heirs’ to ‘inheritance’ – that is still to come, for those ‘in Christ’ as much as for those on the outside.

{snip}

We have already seen how Paul uses the idea of ‘childhood’ and ‘adulthood’ in Galatians 3:23–4:11 to illuminate the positive nature of the law as a guide for childhood in preparation for the step into greater maturity involved in being guided by faith (pp. 81 –4 ). We have seen too how parallels between the relationship of parent and child on the one side and God and humankind on the other can illuminate the interpretation of Romans 7 (Chapter 5) .

The clarity and coherence in Paul’s use of the image of ‘childhood’ and ‘adulthood’ in relationship to the life of faith and life in the Spirit received further clarification in the examination of 1 Corinthians 13:10–12. Just as in each person’s life there is a ‘coming of age’ when, over a relatively short period of time, the things of childhood are put away, and knowledge which was inaccessible to the child, is now open to the adult, so, for humankind, Paul’s vision is of a similar process: there is a childhood for humankind in which the law provides guidance; there will be a coming of age when the fullness of the Spirit comes. The present is a time of transition in which for those who are ‘infants in Christ’ liberation and the continuing life in the Spirit are still partial.

This future transformation moved to the fore in the final part of the chapter: to describe someone as an ‘heir’ makes no sense unless there is something to inherit; the present change in status that comes through becoming an heir is entirely directed to the reality of a future inheritance. The child becomes an adult at the right time – the ‘coming of age’. It has been suggested that Paul is using the image of the passage from childhood to adulthood of a universal future change for all humankind in keeping with his sense that through the coming of Christ, the reversal of the fall is underway. In the time of inheritance for humankind the fullness of the Spirit will come and ‘what is mortal will be swallowed up by life’. The next chapter will explore this future inheritance in more detail. How does Paul conceive of this change? What does he mean when he speaks of the inheritance’?

Chapter 9: The Inheritance

Drawing on all the elements of Paul’s thought that have been explored so far, this chapter reveals the precise nature of what Paul expected by the idea of ‘inheritance’. We have taken seriously Paul’s claim that a transformative experience is going on among the first Christian communities. If Paul is claiming that God is restoring what was lost in the fall then this must involve the whole of creation including the whole of humanity. A reformed life for particular individuals, even a large number of individuals living in community, cannot amount to the setting right of what went wrong with humankind. We will see how from his present experience of transformation, Paul draws conclusions about a real change in the future on a universal scale.
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As we saw in the last chapter, it is clear that the scope of Paul’s vision includes the whole of humanity: [F]or as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. (1 Cor 15:22) This vision of the whole of humanity is clearly operative when Paul presents his own description of the fall….

In Paul’s account of the fall, the loss of the appropriate response to God, which Paul says is to honour and give thanks to God, worship and serve God, is tied together with a coarsening of human consciousness – ‘they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened’ – and a descent into idolatry. The implication of this is important for understanding Paul. The assertion of futile human thinking is tightly linked with the loss of the ability to perceive the invisible things of God. The ‘futile thinking’ and ‘darkened mind’ is bound up with a situation in which God is not glorified and thanked and, as a further consequence, is no longer ‘known’. Once, according to Paul, the perception of the invisible things of God is lost all that can be perceived is that which is created. The fall, according to Paul, is a change in perception, a loss of the perception of the divine connected with the assertion of futile human thought and a darkening of the heart. The consequence of this is that humankind can only see clearly the physical and comes to be identified with the physical stuff of human existence. This is ‘the lie ‘. Having been created to be the image of the Creator in the world of what is created, doing the creative work of the Creator, humankind ends up blind to the invisible things of God and identifying existence with what is created – physical, visible and mortal. And, very importantly, ‘the invisible things of God’ includes that ‘image of God’ in humankind itself….

As the visible, mortal creation and the invisible, eternal things of the Creator co-exist in each human being, the experience of the fall – exchanging the truth of God for the lie and identifying life with the physical body – is part of the consciousness of each person.

There is a solid consistency in Paul’s framework of thought. There is a clear line between, on the one side, Spirit, freedom, right action and eternal life, and on the other, flesh, law, sin and death. What Paul says in Romans 8:20f is that, in the revealing of the children of God, there is a reconciliation of all that is created with the Creator. The further implication is the momentous one indicated in this sentence that this transformation could only be accomplished through the real experience of ‘subjection to futility’ – the real identification in humanity, the image of God, of ‘that which creates’ with ‘that which is created’….

What is indicated by observing the repeated pattern in his thought is that Paul’s expectation for the future is not an ending of ‘earthly’ or ‘created’ or ‘mortal’ life, but rather its transformation – ‘the redemption of our body’. Paul says that what is mortal will not come to an end – the mortal will not be ‘unclothed’ – but rather be ‘clothed over’ with what is immortal. Paul looks forward in confident hope to the future time when the separation between Creator and that which is created – between Spirit and flesh – is over. The false identification of humankind with the flesh, a life that manifests in individual self-centred striving will be at an end. But this is not the end of physical life but rather its transformation. The conscious identification of the Creator and what is created, of flesh and Spirit consciously reconciled, is the extraordinary vision of the life that Paul believes will be the adult inheritance of humankind.

This chapter has contained an examination of passages from 2 Corinthians and Romans 8 in both of which Paul is concerned with the way the present situation of believers relates to a future transformation. It has been argued that Paul had a view of the identification of humankind with what is created as ‘necessary’ in order that the whole created order might be transformed. The locus of this transformation is the human body in which Spirit and flesh – ‘that which creates’ and ‘that which is created’ – will be reconciled – ‘the redemption of our body’. The pattern of Paul’s thought in both passages indicates that he considered that this future inheritance would not be the end of ‘earthly’ or ‘created’ existence but rather its transformation. The perception of the invisible things of God that was lost in the fall will revive as existence is no longer identified with the mortal body but with the eternal Spirit. In this transformation in human self-understanding individual assertion is at an end.

This is the ‘coming of age’ when humankind comes into its ‘inheritance’ as adult: a life in this creation, without self-centred striving, with direct experience of the painful consequences of being at odds with the Spirit of God, having seen the true nature of what is wrong, with consequent knowledge of good and evil. This is humankind, the image of God in creation, exercising God’s creative and loving dominion, fully at home in the flesh, able to enjoy mortal bodily existence, but not identified with fleshly existence, conscious of being surrounded and animated by the eternal Spirit of God. And this is a transformation that affects all creation. For matter now has at work within it a conscious utterly unselfish player in the image of God and therefore filled with the loving purposes of the creator and, being physical, able to implement that loving purpose directly.

One idea that stuck out for me in this chapter (and there were a lot) was the idea that a fallen human race, and being sinful in oneself, sabotages creation in some way. That a darkened mind and awareness shuts one off from God and the higher order of things, and leads to further entropy.

Contrasting this attitude in its entirety is the intent of one to listen to the cosmic order and fulfilling the cosmic function we as humanity are meant to fulfill. And the manifestation of God’s incarnation into this reality is what directly facilitates our own overcoming of the physical universe (the flesh and its magnetism).

PART FOUR: THE SOURCE OF FREEDOM

Chapter 10: God’s Outcast: The Transformation of Jesus

One Right Action

And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings right action .… Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s right action leads to justification (absolution) and life for all. (Rom 5:16,18, adapted NRSV)

….Here Paul describes in more detail the nature of the ‘free gift’. Our first examination of this text established that Paul is contrasting two continuous states which follow from the actions of Adam and Jesus. The action of Adam leads to ‘condemnation’ for humankind with the sense of a continuous state of ‘imprisonment’ or ‘slavery’ in ‘mortality’. The action of Jesus leads to a real change in which ‘right action’, ‘doing what is right’ becomes a continuous state.

….Paul indicates his understanding of Jesus as uniquely close to God. More specifically, Jesus is the only one ‘who knew no sin’ (2 Cor 5:21). In the understanding of sin presented earlier (pp. 92 –6 , 101 , 103 –8 ) this means that in Jesus there was no assertion against God. It is this condition that makes the pure right action possible. Jesus can perform an act of complete obedience to God in which there is no selfishness – a human act in which only God is the doer. As we will now see, a central theme for Paul is the new beginning for humankind opened up by ‘the right action of Jesus’ – an action of total faith.

The Faith of Jesus
Vital for understanding the nature of faith was seeing the connection between faith and the prophetic word established in Chapter 2 . Now we need to see how Paul connects faith with Jesus:

We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ , even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ , and not by works of the law: for by works of the law shall no flesh be justified. (Gal 2:15f, AV)

Most modern translations replace the phrase rendered ‘by the faith of Jesus Christ’ in the AV translation above with the phrase ‘through’ or ‘by faith in Jesus Christ’ (NRSV, RSV, NIV, NJB, REB, TEV). This is a significant difference. Interpreting the phrase as ‘faith in Jesus Christ’ marks a sharp distinction between those who have faith and Jesus Christ, the one in whom they put their faith.

The Faith of Abraham
In order to present the primacy of faith, Paul sets out to demonstrate in the letters to the Galatians and the Romans that the response of Abraham to God was the response of faith and that, hence, since Abraham and his faith came before Moses and the law, faith does indeed have some kind of precedence over the law….

Abraham stays confident in and obedient to the prophetic word of God even though ‘his body was as good as dead’ and the womb of Sarah was dead. Even when he is asked to kill Isaac, the apparently miraculous fulfillment of God’s promise that he would have descendants by Sarah, his obedience to the word of God does not falter. It is Paul’s presentation of Abraham’s confident obedience in the directly given word of God even in the face of death which connects the faith of Abraham with the faith of Jesus.

Faith and the Liberated Life
In Paul’s understanding, faith enables a person to move from life under the power of sin to a life of righteousness, of right action. But there is more to faith than simply the transference to a new way of life. We need to return to the question that Paul puts to Peter, recalled in the letter to the Galatians:

But if, in our effort to be justified (‘righteoused’/‘made right’) in Jesus, we ourselves have been found to be sinners, is Jesus then a servant of sin? Certainly not! (Gal 2:17)

It was argued (pp. 8 –9 ) that in this question Paul is reminding Peter that it was in coming to faith in Jesus that both he and Peter found they were sinners in a way that they had not previously been aware of. This new awareness of sinfulness is directly connected with the event of ‘justification’ or ‘absolution’, understood as a real change, the actual crossing over of the dividing line separating God and that which falls short of God’s glory. The implication of the references in Paul to the ‘faith of Jesus’ that we have considered above is that, just as faith is an essential part of revealing what is wrong and bringing about liberation, so, after liberation, faith is the way in which life continues to be guided. ‘The faith of Jesus’ is continuing obedience to the word of God.

But we have highlighted one further essential dimension to faith. In presenting Abraham as an example of faith, Paul is concerned to indicate Abraham’s continuing faithfulness to God’s word even in the face of death. In this specific way, Abraham’s faith is the faith of Jesus. The implication is that Paul is presenting Jesus as demonstrating the same faithfulness to God’s directly given word even though it takes him into conflict and ultimately to his death. We will see in the next section how it is this faith – a faithful obedience to the akoē pisteōs , the directly given word from God, even when it leads to death – that Paul presents as being essential for liberation.

The Accursed Death of the Christ
In order to understand the universal effect that Paul is claiming for the death of Jesus, we need to return to the precise circumstances of his death. For a right understanding of the meaning of the death of Jesus can only come from understanding something of its Jewish context. An indication of this fact is the amount of effort Paul employs on the issue of the law and the Jewish people, not only, as we have seen, to convince fellow Jews (Chapter 4 ).
{snip}

To see how Paul understands the law to be crucial in bringing about the universal transforming effect of the death of Jesus it is necessary to turn to a difficult passage in Galatians where Paul speaks of the death of Jesus Christ using four texts from the Hebrew Bible:

‘Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law.’ (Gal 3:10 quoting Deut 27:26)

‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.’ (Gal 3:11 quoting Habakkuk 2:4)

‘Whoever does the works of the law will live by them.’ (Gal 3:12 quoting Lev 18:5)

‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’… (Gal 3:13 quoting Deut 21:23)
….

This sharp division in Paul’s thought, parallel to the separation in Deuteronomy between life in the land and the destruction that comes with expulsion from the land, is essential for understanding the significance of the second curse text in Paul’s argument:

When someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death and is executed, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse must not remain all night upon the tree; you shall bury him that same day, for anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not defile the land that the Lord your God is giving you for possession. (Deut 21:22f)

Paul is presenting a text that highlights an essential element of his understanding of Jesus’ death: For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin … (2 Cor 5:21) Deuteronomy provides a text from ‘the law’ that confirms and sharpens Paul’s understanding of the nature of Jesus’ death. He is one who was ‘hung on a tree’; in his death, he ‘is under God’s curse’.

A Faith Beyond Human Logic
How does [Abraham’s story] connect with the faith of Jesus? As we have seen, Paul is not concerned to present the way Jesus was faithful in the events of his life but, rather, connects the faith of Jesus to his death. And just as with the faith of Abraham, it is not simply a faith that goes beyond death which Paul presents as the faith of Jesus but a faith that perseveres even when God’s promises appear to be contradicted. For Paul, there is no question that Jesus is the Christ, whose life and death is bound up with the fulfilment of the covenant promises of God to Israel. Yet, far from fulfilling the will of God revealed to the people of Israel in the law of that covenant, in Paul’s assessment of what happened, the obedience of Jesus to God leads him to the apparent contradiction of it. Jesus is put to death at the behest of Jewish authorities believing that they are acting to defend the law. Putting this in the most powerful way that he can, Paul suggests that Jesus was obedient to God’s directly given word, even though it took him into contradiction to that word revealed in the law:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who … humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. (Phil 2:5,8)

The word ‘cross’ here is translating the Greek word, stauros , meaning ‘a spiked wooden stake’ (pp. 41 –3 ). The significance of the phrase, ‘even death on a wooden stake’, directly connects the death of Jesus with the curse text of Deuteronomy 21:22f. It is not simply going to death in obedience to God that expresses Paul’s understanding of the faith of Jesus; it is not even going to the particularly horrific and despised death of Roman crucifixion; it is, very particularly, death on a tree – death as one accursed by God. It is this ‘mind that was in Christ Jesus’. It is this obedience to what God directly reveals, even when it contradicts God’s written law and therefore, from the perspective of the law, brings the consistency and faithfulness, in other words, the righteousness of God into question.

Faith, according to Paul, is an obedience to the word of God in each moment, even when it seemingly contradicts what God has promised. For Abraham, that faith meant being prepared to kill Isaac, even though Isaac’s very existence was the vindication of God’s promise to Abraham that, while he was ‘as good as dead’, he would have a child and be the father of a great nation blessed by God. For Jesus, that faith meant accepting a death at the behest of the guardians of the law, and cursed by the law, even though it had seemed in his ministry of word and healing that the inauguration of God’s kingdom – God’s vindication of Israel and the promises of God’s covenant law – was at hand. This is the faith of Abraham and Jesus and, as we shall see in the next chapter, the faith of Paul and his fellow apostles.

I just about fell out of my chair when I read about the mistranslation of “Faith of Jesus” to “Faith in Jesus”. This feels like such a criminal mistranslation – God knows how many people have been mislead about the nature of faith and our actual relationship with the faith of Christ-Caesar. We are to have his faith, not simply have faith in him or believe he did the things he did (although I’m sure it helps on some level).

The faith of Jesus was also a topic of the C’s Oct 22 1994:

A: If you simply have faith, no knowledge that you could possibly acquire could possibly be false because there is no such thing. Anyone or anything that tries to give you false knowledge, false information, will fail. The very material substance that the knowledge takes on, since it is at the root of all existence, will protect you from absorption of false information which is not knowledge. There is no need to fear the absorption of false information when you are simply openly seeking to acquire knowledge. And knowledge forms the protection -- all the protection you could ever need.
{snip}

Q: (L) During a previous reading we asked several questions about Jesus of Nazareth known as the Christ. The question was asked: "Was Jesus special, that is, Christed, in some way?" The answer came back was: "Quick exalted; wars; civil entrancement. Zindar council." I would like to know the meaning of these references.

A: Quick exalted refers to a sudden boost of awareness level as related to your previous questions about knowledge. Sometimes that acquisition can occur in a surge and sometimes this is referred to as illumination. Jesus acquired his knowledge by having complete faith in his ability to acquire the knowledge from a higher source. This faith caused an equal balancing interaction with higher sources, which allowed him to gain supreme knowledge simply by having that faith. Remember that the resources for the acquisition of knowledge in the space/time ere of Christ were much more limited than they are now. There were few options open for acquiring true knowledge except total and complete faith. And this one was instilled with the awareness that total and complete faith would cause dramatic and spectacular acquisition of knowledge; also would cause dramatic and spectacular progression of the soul being. Therefore, the faith was felt, the knowledge was received.

Q: (L) What was the source of the knowledge?

A: The source was the sixth level of density which is where we reside and we also were involved in that as well.

Q: (L) What does the term "Civil entrancement" mean?

A: Civil entrancement is a complete balancing of one's useful energies to a level where there is no experiencing of over balancing on the positive or negative side which is preferable for meditation in a mass form.

Q: (L) What is the Zendar Council?

A: Zendar Council is a sixth level density council which spans both physical and ethereal realms and which oversees dramatic development points at various civilizational sector s in lower density levels.

Paul’s use of scripture to show the extent of Jesus’ faith – that he remained faithful in spite of being cursed by God’s law though he himself was righteous – highlights IMO the dark places and abysses that faith may take you through in life. Even Jesus’ last words on the cross “why have you forsaken me” seem to show that in the darkest points of human life even God could be persuaded he doesn’t exist. It sounds harsh, but in particularly rough mirrors it feels viscerally like you are facing outright annihilation. And I think it’s through breaking these barriers and limitations that we break the limitations on our own knowledge, or the things that can allows to assimilate false knowledge due to insufficient faith in the universe.

(Continued below)

 

[whitecoast]

Chapter 11: God’s Fools: The Transformation of a Few

Parent in Christ
It is not hard to show that Paul considers there to be a significant division between himself, as one of the apostles, and the members of the communities to which he writes….

And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. (1 Cor 3: 1f)

….Paul writes as a parent berating his children, implying both a confidence in his own maturity and a relative immaturity on the part of the communities he has formed. But a brief examination of one Greek word in a passage from Philippians will suggest that, in Paul’s mind, this contrast between the apostles and the communities is temporary and that he sees the lives of the apostles as an anticipation of a transformation into maturity that is to come for all humankind.
{snip}

The Foolishness of the Apostles
In the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul is concerned to establish that his authority is not based on any worldly achievement at the same time as he affirms that there is a new way of seeing things – a new ‘wisdom’ – not available to those who are ‘infants in Christ’ but only to those who are ‘mature’ or ‘adult’:

Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. (1 Cor 2:6f)
{snip}

An End to ‘Boasting’
In Paul’s affirmation that he has come to maturity early there is a claim that is central to the argument of this book: that the theological picture that he presents is founded in a real experience of liberation. Paul is stating that he has no concern with fleshly achievement and reputation; liberation is a real ending to identification with concern for the achievement of the separate self identified with a particular fleshly existence; the death of self-interest has already happened in him. His complete confidence that his outward ability is not what is effective in bringing about change in others is his primary evidence that he is called and sent by God, that he is an apostle. Far from being a limitation to God working through him, his awareness and acceptance of his limitations are necessary for the powerful and effective transformative work of God to operate through him.
{snip}

The Ministry of Reconciliation
In 2 Corinthians Paul describes the task with which he believes he has been commissioned by God – the ‘ministry of reconciliation’:

In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. (2 Cor 5: 19f)

He then goes onto describe what is involved in ‘the ministry of reconciliation’ in terms of warfare in a way that further indicates his belief that the power that he exercises is from God, that fleshly assertion has gone and now God can work powerfully in Paul and others. In this power from God, Paul is quite prepared to boast….

I myself, Paul, appeal to you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ – I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold towards you when I am away! – I ask that when I am present I need not show boldness by daring to oppose those who think we are acting according to the flesh. Indeed, we live in the flesh , but we do not wage war according to the flesh ; for the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly , but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ. (2 Cor 10:1–5 incorporating text in footnotes)

So the paradox is that the ministry of reconciliation involves a kind of warfare. What needs to be seen is that essential to the ministry of reconciliation is not only the peace making task of liberating or absolving from sin. Along with this goes another task that was also referred to in Chapter 1 : bringing people to a new perception of sin, a recognition that they are sinners in a way that they had not previously been aware of. It is not difficult to see that such a task – exercising what Paul calls ‘divine power’ to oppose any ‘fleshly’ human assertion against the knowledge of God – has the potential to bring strong resistance and acute conflict. What follows is further evidence that this is indeed what Paul is speaking of.

Exposing what is Wrong
In the course of 1 Corinthians 12–14, Paul presents a unique description of the effect of a Spirit-led community upon someone coming in from outside:

If, therefore, the whole church assembles and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are mad? But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed; and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you. (1 Cor 14:23–25, RSV)
{snip}

Paul is presenting here a description of how, through the mouths of others, the prophetic word of God exposes, scrutinizes and discloses the secret wrong of the individual, in other words, reveals the personal state of sin of the unbeliever or outsider. As a consequence of this extraordinary activity of the community, ‘the secrets of his heart are disclosed’ and the unbeliever is convinced that it is not by any human ability that the truth about himself is revealed but that it is God who is speaking to him through the word of prophecy and hence he declares that ‘God is really [Gk ‘living’, ‘existing’] among you’ (1 Cor 14:25). In this unique passage. Paul is describing the effect of a community led by the Spirit, actively guided by the prophetic word of God, upon unbelievers, that is, those on the outside. Something previously hidden and painful for the individual to see is revealed as an essential part of the experience of liberation.

This provides further support for the view that central to the experience of transformation as explored in this book is a revelation about the old life as essential to entry into the new. That old life is now newly revealed as a form of slavery or death. What Paul speaks of is liberation from a fundamental state of sin that stays unexposed until it is revealed in the process of liberation; only its consequences in ‘sins’, in small or great acts of wrongdoing are seen.

The most interesting thing I found about this chapter was the process of prophesizing or speaking the Word of God to newcomers and outsiders of the Church. It is spoken of in such a way that apostles and other people who have received great knowledge of God and live beyond “fleshly” corruption speak authoritatively to the neophytes and outsiders of their wrongdoings and shortcomings before God, and this painful realization is in itself a form of atonement and partial reconcilement of God (in the sense of the first installment of conscience/Spirit). This more or less directly resembles the mirroring process on this forum, where the wiser strive to help those below them on the ladder to see themselves better and to challenge them to rise up.

Chapter 12: Seeing is Becoming: the Transformation of All

In one major section of 2 Corinthians, Paul describes the process of transformation with which this book has been concerned. This verse is at the heart of the passage (2:14–5:21):

And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Cor 3: 18)

‘All of us … seeing the glory of the Lord … are being changed into the same image …’ We have examined earlier (pp. 158 –9 ) how ‘glory’ is associated with God’s immortality. It is a quality of the invisible God that can be ‘ seen’ or perceived by humankind. It is the loss of this perception that characterizes the fall according to Paul (Rom 1:23). Central to Paul’s description of transformation is revelation (apokalupsis ) which means literally, in both English and Greek, ‘the lifting of a veil or curtain’. It is the removing of this veil that enables the glory of God to be seen.

In this section of 2 Corinthians, where he focuses on transformation, Paul’s thought has a striking internal consistency, enabling us to draw together all the themes that we have already explored. Losing perception of the glory of God is what leads into darkness, death and sin, or, in other terms that we have considered in detail (pp. 101 –4 ), to an identification of existence with what is created, the flesh that dies. This chapter will show how Paul presents the lifting of the veil as something that happens within people, yet, in a way that transforms everything. People see and simultaneously come to participate in the glory that is seen; they become what they see.
{snip}

Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians of ‘a new covenant (3:6), of ‘a letter of Christ’ written ‘not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts’ (3:3). When a few verses later he speaks of Moses coming down from the mountain (3:7), it is absolutely clear that ‘the tablets of stone’ are the words of the law. What has replaced what Paul calls the ‘ministry of death’ are letters ‘written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God’ (3:3). We have seen how the Spirit is bound up with the idea of prophecy – words from God (pp. 18 –23 ); in the new covenant, according to Jeremiah and Paul, words of prophecy, words from God, are written on each heart. Completely in line with what we have seen throughout this book, for Paul, turning to the Lord, the Spirit, is turning to the living word of God.

Encountering God: The Hilsaterion
All the above translations of hilastërion emphasize sacrifice and the forgiveness of sin. Central to the argument of the book has been the idea that Paul presents the directly given prophetic word of God, manifest in the early Christian communities, as a new and superior way to receive guidance from God. Despite its absence from the above translations, this same issue of God’s communication with humankind is involved in the understanding of the purpose of the hilastërion and in the whole of the scriptural presentation of the establishment of the covenant between God and the people of Israel when the law is given at Sinai.
{snip}

The story presents the understanding that, because of the awesome nature of God’s presence, the people are not able to receive the word of God directly. So, in the giving of the ‘old’ covenant, God’s word comes through his chosen servant, Moses, and is channelled into a written form in the commandments.

This sets the scene for understanding hilasterion , the word Paul uses in Romans:

For there is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified (liberated/absolved) by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a hilastërion by his blood, effective through faith. (Rom 3:22–25)
{snip}

The mercy-seat (hilastërion ) is the place where the sin-offerings for the people of Israel are made and forgiveness is received. The conventional translations and interpretation are clear about this element. What also needs seeing is that, located directly above where the tablets of the covenant, God’s essential communication with the people of Israel, are stored, is the hilasterion – the ‘mercy-seat’ – the place of ‘meeting’, of communication, between God and Moses. The awesome presence of God, the thought of which is able to terrify the people, is channelled through a particular holy place and through a specially chosen individual.
{snip}

Sacrifice, forgiveness and God’s communication with humankind are all involved in the giving of the first covenant to the people of Israel. In Paul’s understanding, they are equally involved in the giving of the new covenant but whereas, in the first covenant, forgiveness is for the people of Israel, now, forgiveness is for ‘all’, as everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Whereas the hilastërion is the special place of communication with one chosen individual, now, the faith of Jesus has opened up a new intimacy of communication between God and humankind.

‘Christ died in place of us’
In Chapter 6 (pp. 101 –4 ) it was argued that, as a consequence of this identification with the flesh, there is always in humankind an infirmity of purpose and that it is for this reason that even the most committed attempts to live by the law of Moses will never put an end to the struggle in the flesh. Indeed, the continued use of the law is itself an indication that the struggle in the flesh goes on otherwise there would be no need for the law, for external instructions for behaviour. It is argued in what follows that, when Paul speaks of the death of Christ as a death ‘for’ or, better, ‘in place of all, this is a further indication of how radical is the nature of what has gone wrong in humankind. From within the closed circle of sin, death, law and flesh that Paul so vividly describes in Romans 7 there is no escape (Chapter 6 ); the actions of humankind are always veiled with selfishness. Paul’s words imply that it is only the death of humankind and a new creation that is adequate to transform this situation. But somehow through the death of Christ, Paul claims that the situation is saved and a new beginning comes about without the destruction of the old. How can this be?

In the last chapter, an effort was made to introduce the idea of a continuity of experience between Jesus and the apostles who Paul presents as witnesses to his resurrection. In particular, they come to share his faith and come to no longer identify their existence with the individual flesh. It was claimed that because of this God can work through them as he worked through Jesus. As we saw in the last chapter, in the following text from 2 Cor 5, Paul is speaking of the role of the apostles.
{snip}

There is the idea of Christ as the one ‘who knew no sin’ – the one in whom there was no identification of existence with the flesh and therefore no assertion against God – and yet he is ‘made to be sin in place of us’, that is, as we saw in Chapter 10 (p. 187 ), he comes to be wholly identified with assertion against God, the fundamental sin of all humankind. There is the idea of the apostles speaking now in the place of Christ. The word of reconciliation that was his is now placed in them; there is a continuity of ministry between him and them. The word which exposes what is wrong in the condition of humankind is now being spoken through them. And the purpose of this is that God’s righteousness, God’s ‘way of doing what is right’, might now be maintained in the world.

Becoming the Revelation of God
Paul makes extraordinarily bold claims for his ministry and that of his fellow apostles in 2 Corinthians 3–5. As we saw in the last chapter (pp. 195 –6 ), Paul’s sense is that they have arrived early at experiences that will be universal in the future. As we have already suggested (pp. 192 –4 ), it is his own lived experience which gives him the confidence to speak of the transformation to come to all. This section of 2 Corinthians gives the clearest indications of the nature of the ministry exercised by the apostles. Central to that ministry is ‘God’s word’ and it has been a major aspect of the presentation of Paul’s ideas in this book that this is not a message or a collection of ideas about Jesus but a ministry of speaking words from God, words which primarily have the purpose of revealing what is wrong, that is, what needs reconciling with God. This is a ministry which is bound together with faith – a faith in the living word of God rather than an external, already given, word – even the word of the law. It is also the same ministry as Jesus exercised; this is his ministry of reconciliation. This is not an easy ministry and this passage affirms both the nature of that ministry and the cost of it.

So Paul states at the beginning of this section:

For we are not peddlers of God’s word like so many; but in Christ we speak as persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God and standing in his presence. (2 Cor 2:17)
{snip}

A subtle indication of the centrality of the work of exposing what is wrong for Paul lies in how he links this work together with the idea of new creation and the Genesis story:

For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor 4:6)

‘Let light shine out of darkness’ evokes the Genesis story of the creation of light (Gen 1:3). What Paul’s words, ‘who has shone in our hearts’, point to is that central claim of this work that the drama of the new creation is one going on in the heart of each human being.

Is the life of Jesus that Paul is speaking of here ‘visible’ and ‘mortal’? Surely, it has to be one of the invisible, imperishable things of God? Yet through the death to self that Paul is claiming that he and others have gone through, the invisible ‘life of Jesus’ becomes visible in mortal flesh. The life of God, incarnated first in Jesus, now becomes incarnated in those who accept his ministry, which involves ‘being given up to death for Jesus’ sake’.

‘You will be like God’
Given that, for Paul, God did not make some sort of mistake in the process of creating humankind then the fall has to have a purpose. Some effort has been taken in earlier chapters to demonstrate that Paul does indeed attempt to show this to be the case. Through the identification of existence with the flesh, humankind experiences evil and, through the gift of the law, comes to know good and evil through the straggle in the flesh This is the knowledge of good and evil that both God and the serpent said would come to humankind through eating from the tree. God says that along with this knowledge will come death. This is the precise consequence of identifying existence with the flesh. What the serpent says is this:

‘You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ (Gen 3:4)

It has been argued that what Paul claims for those who come to faith is that they are set free from the law of sin and death, enabled to do what is right without need of the law.

To fully appreciate what Paul is claiming is to take seriously the idea that the fall was for a purpose – it was ‘necessary’. For this to be so, Paul must consider there to be something added to the human situation which was not there in Adam. This is why Paul talks of coming to ‘maturity’ or ‘adulthood’. How Paul understands the extra dimension of adult life recurs over and over again in his gospel:

It is ‘freedom’ or ‘liberation’: For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Gal 5:1)

Now, having the intimate knowledge of good and evil, humankind can freely choose to do God’s will, no longer a child needing the guidance of the law, truly adult, sharing God’s responsibility for the whole of what is created. This is the ‘inheritance’ to which Paul looks forward.

Inheriting the Dominion of God: God’s Way of Acting in the World

In Genesis, being created in the image of God and sharing God’s dominion over all that is created are directly related. What should not be missed is the similar way in which Paul also relates the restoration of the image of God in humankind through Christ to a renewed dominion over all that is created. To see this it is necessary to be aware that one of the first lessons of New Testament studies is that the word translated ‘kingdom’ in Greek, basileia , is more properly understood, not as a ‘state’, but, as the ‘activity of ruling’, that is, as ‘sovereignty’, ‘royal power’ or ‘dominion’:

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven. What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom (basileian ) of God [‘God’s dominion’], nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We shall not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. (1 Cor 15:49–52)

The old ‘dominion’ or ‘kingdom’ of death is ending, the ‘dominion’ in life is coming. This is nothing other than the ‘dominion’ or ‘kingdom of God’. Not a place but rather the activity that humankind was created for: doing what is right, God’s grace-filled, right action in the midst of all that is created, consciously aware of the nature of life as eternal, no longer identified with the passing mortal body, but rather delighting in its God-given place in creation.

Disclosing the Righteousness of God: God’s Way of Acting in the World

It is important to return to the first stage of our presentation of Paul’s thought. A very simple observation was made there:

The free gift of absolution from God is a real and effective liberation from sin … (p. 12 )

Everything that has followed in this work has built on this observation and the last stages confirm it as much as the first steps. Paul writes out of a conviction based in experience that what has happened to him and others is a real and effective liberation, once for all, for good. Any attempt to modify this fundamental element of Paul’s theological picture leads to distortion and complication. His central affirmations about the righteousness of God confirm it: the righteousness of God is disclosed in the faith of Jesus, specifically in how he goes to his death. The death of Jesus only discloses the righteousness of God to the extent to which those who witness it do so in the light of an experience of the continuing life of Jesus, the ‘alive-making Spirit’. As they encounter that ‘alive-making Spirit’ which fully illuminates their hearts revealing what was wrong as well as the way to act rightly, they are themselves transformed and become ministers of the same transformation for others: they become ‘the righteousness of God’, God’s way of acting rightly, God’s dominion, and speakers of God’s revealing and reconciling word as Jesus was.

{snip}

It is in the nature of turning to the Lord, the Spirit, that the only way in which the veil can be lifted between the Lord and the beholder transforms the one who sees, who then, in turn, embodies the righteousness of God, God’s way of acting rightly, God’s dominion, and becomes a speaker of God’s revealing and reconciling word as Jesus was…

According to Paul, both Christ and the apostles are effective ministers of reconciliation. Just as the apostles now share the faith of Jesus, so they speak the same effective reconciling word that Jesus spoke, with the same willingness to suffer for it as he did.

I included discussion of hilastërion because I thought it highlighted a distinct feature of Christianity. Seeing God in his pure glory or essence is fatal, whether it was Yahweh or Zeus (who incinerated Dionysus’ mortal mother with his glory after she asked to see his true form and he obliged). I find it also interesting that hilastërion was also sacrifice: an animal slain to propitiate. Zeus himself came down in the form of an animal (among many other things :p) to interact with humanity although not in a redemptive form. What Christianity does is turn God himself as the Son into an ordinary person, who physically was in the thick of things in the world at the time. The Old Testament God is comparatively extremely remote, and dangerous to those who got too close to him.

Changing the translation of basileia from “kingdom of God” to “dominion/rulership of God” also makes a bunch of interesting changes. Paul posits that growth in one’s conscience and one’s liberation from the gravity of the material world is what puts one in a place to inherit and participate in God’s rule over creation. This is very much about being a conduit for higher creative energies entering the realm, and more importantly doing so as part of a collective social memory complex (as Ra would say) that forms the “body of Christ” that allows the DCM’s will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven”.

That both Christ and his apostles share the same faith and therefore the same ability to reconcile others with God means that such spiritual elders are best at exposing what is wrong in those who are not yet on the path or who are walking the path and growing their magnetic center and conscience. Their ability to shine light on their shortcomings grants those with the eyes to see their folly an opportunity to grow and to learn to see and to hear the word of God also.

CONCLUSION

A new perspective has been offered on what has become known as the way Paul’s thought moves ‘from solution to plight’. This is the view that Paul did not feel himself in desperate need of being saved from his situation as a law-abiding Jew but nevertheless experienced God ‘saving him’ and concluded that all needed the salvation God was offering. What we have seen as an alternative is Paul experiencing a transformation which is just as much a revelation about his former state as an introduction into a new way of life. The new reveals the old as a kind of slavery which was even more enslaving because it was not perceived of as such. Exposing what is wrong about the human condition is a major part of the transformation Paul speaks of.

As a consequence of seeing this fact clearly, it has been possible to see a good deal more of the nature of the enslavement. Through examination of what Paul means by ‘mind set on the flesh’, we have seen how the slavery of the old life can be helpfully conceived of as a false identification with the flesh, understood not as sinful in itself but, as the location of separate individuality. This individuality we found was part of the God-given diversity in creation but we saw how Paul describes humankind created able to perceive the invisible things of God being taken in by what he calls ‘the lie’, each person coming to identify with separate, fleshly existence. This Paul presents as ‘the sin’, a fundamental self-centredness from which all wrongdoing arises. For with that identification with the flesh which is mortal comes death to humankind. It is this fundamental state of sin for which Paul believes the remedy has been given.

It has been shown how the opposition in Paul’s thought between faith and law arises because both give guidance on what to do. Paul presents the law as God-given but unnecessary once there is release from this identification with the flesh. Identified instead with God’s eternal Spirit, good actions flow naturally. Just as the prophets of old were seized by the Spirit and heard words from God which guided them in all their actions and words, so, the new life is characterized by guidance from God. A new insight has been offered into how faith and the prophetic word are directly connected. Central to the revelation that Paul describes as bringing a once for all liberation is the recent scholarly insight that Paul speaks on several occasions of ‘the faith of Jesus’ (pp. 178 –84 ). Where that faith is most in evidence is in the way Jesus goes to his death. His complete confidence in what God asks of him transcends the logical thought that in going to his death the extraordinary creative possibilities of his ministry die with him. He is obedient to the same word that led his teaching and healing even though it takes him to his death as one apparently cursed by God. Paul uses this idea of the curse as a way of demonstrating his experience that, in encountering Jesus risen from the dead, it is clear that Jesus is blessed by God and the curse falls instead on sin, the law and death.

Paul’s subtle view of the way transformation occurs is that something is seen only as there is a radical shift in the one’s seeing. As their old sense of self dies they come to see from a new place. Real understanding of what Paul speaks of can only occur as transformation happens. The understanding of transformation presented in the book is described by Paul in the most exalted terms. This is humankind as ‘new creation’, as ‘the image of God’, instruments of God, sharing God’s dominion, and God’s righteousness or ‘right way of acting’. Specifically, this is humankind now with God’s ‘knowledge of good and evil’. In the flesh of humankind, God the creator has been truly united with the creation.

All that we have seen of Paul points to an extraordinary observation: the necessity of sin. At one point Paul speaks of how both Jew and Gentile have been imprisoned in disobedience by God (Rom 11:32). Only this way can humankind genuinely have come to knowledge of evil. Just as real understanding of what Paul says cannot happen without the transformation into the life he speaks of, so becoming the image of God, knowing both good and evil could not come without losing the consciousness of the things of God and entering the blind slavery of sin.

Amen! Going back to the law as serving a function in nomos, as one stoicheo against the many potential I’s, I see the eventual futility of both Jew and Gentile law as exhausting the idea of a mechanical, material reality. Even Judaism is a highly materialistic religion, with the word of God tending to operate with respect to the masses of people in almost a deistic fashion (all they receive are the tablets on which Moses recorded). A well crafted material worldview may inculcate some positive values but it is a far cry from being able to operate directly as a conduit of the DCM.

Paul’s discussion of the extent to which an apostle (one sent by God) can embody conscience and become an optimal receiver for the DCM’s STO thought center resonates strongly with me. The works and sacrifices of Julius Caesar in his life, loved and regarded as he was by the multitudes in his age seemed to create a strong opportunity for people who could see the value in Caesar’s life, philosophy, faith, and love to walk in his shoes, with him as the stoicheo (that which brings alignment). The C’s also said Julius Caesar incarnated for “civil entrancement:”

A: Civil entrancement is a complete balancing of one's useful energies to a level where there is no experiencing of over balancing on the positive or negative side which is preferable for meditation in a mass form.

The Eastern Orthodox Christians, to this day, place a lot of emphasis on living the life of Jesus, as opposed to merely hearing about him and believing intellectual in his acts and being subjected to sacraments. In the Orthodox Church there is still even the concept of Theosis, or Deification, in which there is a type union with God. Not in the sense of fusion, but in the sense that (quoting from Wikipedia):

every being and reality itself is considered as composed of the immanent energy, or energeia, of God. As energy is the actuality of God, i.e. his immanence, from God’s being, it is also the energeia or activity of God. Thus the doctrine avoids pantheism while partially accepting Neoplatonism’s terms and general concepts, but not its substance.

From St Maximus the Confessor:

A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to deification of human nature is provided by the Incarnation of God, which makes man God to the same degree as God Himself became man. ...Let us become the image of the one whole God, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with God and become gods, receiving from God our existence as gods. For it is clear that He Who became man without sin (cf. Heb 4:15) will divinize human nature without changing it into the Divine Nature, and will raise it up for His Own sake to the same degree as He lowered Himself for man's sake. This is what St[.] Paul teaches mystically when he says, "that in the ages to come he might display the overflowing richness of His grace" (Eph. 2:7)

It really makes me want to read the Philokalia collection of annotations I have again. ;p

 

[Laura]

That is a lovely synopsis of the book, Whitecoast; very impressive comments also. I'm really glad that it was as much a revelation for you as it was for me!

 

[luc]

As to whether Paul was channelling - once you peel away the distortions of Paul's message, there seems to be a strong flavor of channeling. For comparison, here's an excerpt from "Spirit Teachings" by the medium Stainton Moses, which also refers to Paul. I wonder how much is lost of Paul's teachings and/or tempered with - after all, he wasn't just a medium (if he was one), but has undergone a profound spiritual transformation himself.

SM: I referred to the message which immediately precedes this; in the course of which the Church Festivals are symbolically explained: Christmas, self-denial; Epiphany, spiritual enlightenment; Lent, spiritual conflict; Good Friday, triumphant love; Easter, the risen life; Whitsuntide, the outpoured spirit; Ascension, the completed work.

So it is. The whole course of the typical life of the Pattern Man is emblematic of the progressive development of the life begun on earth, completed in heaven (so to use your terms), born of self-denial, and culminating in spiritual ascension. In the Christ life, as in a story, man may read the tale of the progress of spirit from incarnation to enfranchisement. Thirty years and more of angelic preparation fitted the Christ for His mission: three short years sufficed to discharge so much of it as man could bear. So man’s spirit in its development progresses through the course covered by the Festivals of the Christian Church, from the birth of self-denial to the festival of the completed life. Born in self-denial, progressing through self-sacrifice, developed by perpetual struggles with the adversaries (the antagonistic principles which must be conquered in daily life, in self, and in the foes), it dies at length to the external, and rises on its Easter morn from the grave of matter, and lives henceforth, baptized by the outpoured spirit of Pentecost, a new and risen life, till it ascends to the place prepared for it by the tendency of its earth life.

This is spirit’s progress, and it may be said to be a process of regeneration, shortly typified by crucifixion and resurrection. The old man dies, the new man rises from his grave. The old man, with his lusts, is crucified; the new man is raised up to live a spiritual and holy life. It is regeneration of spirit that is the culmination of bodily life, and the process is crucifixion of self, a daily death, as Paul was wont to say. In the life of spiritual progress there should be no stagnation, no paralysis. It should be a growth and a daily adaptation of knowledge; a mortification of the earthly and sensual, and a corresponding development of the spiritual and heavenly. In other words, it is a growth in grace and in knowledge of the Christ; the purest type of human life presented to your imitation. It is a clearing away of the material, and a development of the spiritual—a purging as by fire, the fire of a consuming zeal; of a lifelong struggle with self, and all that self includes; of an ever-widening grasp of Divine truth.

By no other means can spirit be purified. The furnace is one of self-sacrifice: the process the same for all. Only in some souls, wherein the Divine flame burns more brightly, the process is rapid and concentrated; while in duller natures the fires smoulder, and vast cycles of purgation are required. Blessed are they who can crush out the earthly, and welcome the fiery trial which shall purge away the dross. To such, progress is rapid and purification sure.

SM: Yes; the struggle is severe, and one hardly knows what to fight against.

Begin within. The ancients were wise in their description of the enemies. A spirit has three foes—itself; the external world around it; and the spiritual foes that beset the upward path. These are described as the World, the Flesh, and the Devil.

Begin with self—the Flesh. Conquer it, so that you are no longer slave to appetite, to passion, to ambition: so that self can be abnegated, and the spirit can come forth from its hermit-cell, and live and breathe and act in the free scope of the universal brotherhood. This is the first step. Self must be crucified, and from the grave where it lies buried will rise the enfranchised spirit untrammelled, free from material clogs.

This done, the soul will have no difficulty in despising the things which are seen, and in aspiring to the eternal verities. It will have learned that truth is to be found in them alone; and, seeing this, it will maintain a deathless struggle with all external and material forms, as being only adumbrations of the true, too often deceptive and unsatisfying. Matter will be regarded as the husk to be stripped off before the kernel of truth can be got at. Matter will be the deceptive, fleeting phantasm behind which is veiled the truth on which none but the purged eye may gaze. Such a soul, so taught, will not need to be told to avoid the external in all things, and to penetrate through the husk to the truth that lies below. It will have learned that the surface-meanings of things are for the babes in spiritual knowledge, and that beneath an obvious fact lurks a spirit symbolic truth. Such a soul will see the correspondence of matter and spirit, and will recognise in the external only the rude signs by which is conveyed to the child so much of spiritual truth as its finite mind can grasp. To it, in veriest truth, to die has been gain. The life that it leads is a life of the spirit; for flesh has been conquered, and the world has ceased to charm.

But in proportion as the spiritual perceptions are quickened, so do the spiritual foes come into more prominent view. The adversaries, who are the sworn enemies of spiritual progress and enlightenment, will beset the aspirant’s path, and remain for him a ceaseless cause of conflict throughout his career of probation. By degrees they will be vanquished by the faithful soul that presses on, but conflict with them will never wholly cease during the probation-life, for it is the means whereby the higher faculties are developed, and the steps by which entrance is won to the higher spheres of bliss.

This, briefly, is the life of the progressive spirit—self-sacrifice, whereby self is crucified; self-denial, whereby the world is vanquished; and spiritual conflict, whereby the adversaries are beaten back. In it is no stagnation; even no rest; no finality. It is a daily death, out of which springs the risen life. It is a constant fight, out of which is won perpetual progress. It is the quenchless struggle of the light that is within to shine out more and more into the radiance of the perfect day. And thus only it is that what you call heaven is won.

 

[Tuatha de Danaan]

The reviewer you have cited above is likely a mainstream type Christian with a strong vested interest

So true. He states he's an American Quaker and Ashworth is an English Quaker.This is the proof that certain people are blinkered by their religion, and consequently will adjust their translation accordingly. Now that I find extraordinary.!

 

[Tuatha de Danaan]

I am not writing this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you might have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers. Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the GOSPEL. I appeal to you, then, be imitators of me. (1 Cor 4:14–16)

Ashworth, Timothy. Paul's Necessary Sin: The Experience of Liberation (p. 194). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

I'm stuck on this one sentence and confused as to the meaning of GOSPEL. Which or what GOSPEL.? Is he referring to a gospel of Jesus or something else. Everything has been as clear as a whistle up to this.

Any help greatly accepted.

 

[Jones]

I am not writing this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you might have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers. Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the GOSPEL. I appeal to you, then, be imitators of me. (1 Cor 4:14–16)

Ashworth, Timothy. Paul's Necessary Sin: The Experience of Liberation (p. 194). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

I'm stuck on this one sentence and confused as to the meaning of GOSPEL. Which or what GOSPEL.? Is he referring to a gospel of Jesus or something else. Everything has been as clear as a whistle up to this.

Any help greatly accepted.

Here is the etymology of the word Gospel:

gospel (n.)
Old English godspel "glad tidings announced by Jesus; one of the four gospels," literally "good spell," from god "good" (see good (adj.)) + spel "story, message" (see spell (n.1)). A translation of Latin bona adnuntiatio, itself a translation of Greek euangelion "reward for bringing good news" (see evangel). The first element of the Old English word originally had a long "o," but it shifted under mistaken association with God, as if "God-story" (i.e. the history of Christ).

The mistake was very natural, as the resulting sense was much more obviously appropriate than that of 'good tidings' for a word which was chiefly known as the name of a sacred book or of a portion of the liturgy. [OED]

The word passed early from English to continental Germanic languages in forms that clearly indicate the first element had shifted to "God," such as Old Saxon godspell, Old High German gotspell, Old Norse goðspiall. Used of anything as true as the Gospel from mid-13c.; as "any doctrine maintained as of exclusive importance" from 1650s. As an adjective from 1640s. Gospel music is by 1955. Gospel-gossip was Addison's word ("Spectator," 1711) for "one who is always talking of sermons, texts, etc."

www.etymonline.com

The wikipedia entry opens saying that it originally meant the Christian message itself, but that changed in the second century when it was applied to the books in the bible that describe the life and teachings of Jesus - Wiki sees that as being Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and I guess that has been a popular misconception.

A closer look at euangelion:

The Greek prefix 'eu' or 'ev' mean 'good' or 'well'.

Then 'angel':

angel (n.)
"one of a class of spiritual beings, attendants and messengers of God," a c. 1300 fusion of Old English engel (with hard -g-) and Old French angele. Both are from Late Latin angelus, from Greek angelos, literally "messenger, envoy, one that announces," in the New Testament "divine messenger," which is possibly related to angaros "mounted courier," both from an unknown Oriental word (Watkins compares Sanskrit ajira- "swift;" Klein suggests Semitic sources). Used in Scriptural translations for Hebrew mal'akh (yehowah) "messenger (of Jehovah)," from base l-'-k "to send." An Old English word for it was aerendgast, literally "errand-spirit."

Of persons, "one who is loving, gracious, or lovely," by 1590s. The medieval English gold coin (a new issue of the noble, first struck 1465 by Edward VI) was so called for the image of archangel Michael slaying the dragon, which was stamped on it. It was the coin given to patients who had been "touched" for the King's Evil. Angel food cake is from 1881; angel dust "phencyclidine" is from 1968.

Lion - Jesus was also referred to as the 'Lion of Judah' and Caesar also spent time in Judah apparently. The inclusion of 'lion' in the word euangelion also introduces the idea of duality into the term:

lion (n.)
late 12c., from Old French lion "lion," also figuratively "hero" (12c.), from Latin leonem (nominative leo) "lion; the constellation Leo," from Greek leon (genitive leontos), a word from a non-Indo-European language, perhaps Semitic (compare Hebrew labhi "lion," plural lebaim;Egyptian labai, lawai "lioness"). Old English had the word straight from Latin as leo (Anglian lea).

The Latin word was borrowed throughout Germanic (compare Old Frisian lawa; Middle Dutch leuwe, Dutch leeuw; Old High German lewo, German Löwe); it is also found in most other European languages, often via Germanic (Old Church Slavonic livu, Polish lew, Czech lev, Old Irish leon, Welsh llew).

Lowse me, lauerd, ut of þe liunes muð. ["St. Margaret of Antioch," c. 1200]

Extended 17c. to American big cats. Paired alliteratively with lamb since late 14c. Used figuratively from c. 1200 in English of lion-like persons, in an approving sense, "one who is fiercely brave," and a disapproving one, "tyrannical leader, greedy devourer." Lion-hearted is from 1708. Lion's share "the greatest portion" is attested from 1701. The image of the lion's mouth as a place of great danger is from early 13c. Sometimes used ironically of other animals (for example Cotswold lion "sheep" (16c.; lyons of Cotteswold is from mid-15c.). In early 19c., to avoid advertising breaches of the game laws, hare, when served as food was listed as lion.

Or 'ion' which could connect euangelion to electric universe theory and 'doing what it doesn't want you to do' from Predators Mind:

ion (n.)1834, introduced by English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday (suggested by the Rev. William Whewell, English polymath), coined from Greek ion, neuter present participle of ienai "go," from PIE root *ei- "to go." So called because ions move toward the electrode of opposite charge.

I'm profoundly touched by this book. It does indeed feel like 'good new's' and seems to precisely state the meaning behind the internal and external struggles that we face. I'm on my second reading now and am very happy I got the chance to read it.