CLICK HERE FOR INDEX TO THIS SERIES ON ST PAUL

The tensions and conflicts within the Church seem to be ageless. In today's commentary Dr Ian Elmer examines the tension between the search for truth and the search for certitude — which Bishop Geoffrey Robinson has pointed to as one of the key lines of conflict in our contemporary Church — through the perspective of similar tensions that existed between St Paul and his followers and Peter and James and their followers.

Parallels between the Church of Paul's day and our own…

In 1927 Bertrand Russell delivered a lecture called "Why I Am Not a Christian", in which he criticised Christianity for its irrationality and its inability to accommodate change. More recently, Richard Dawkins and other neo-atheists, have mounted an attack upon all religious devotion, claiming it to be delusional or worse — the "root of all evil", as Dawkins put it. Something similar is at work in Bishop Geoffrey Robinson's recent discussion of different types of Catholics/Christians — seekers of truth and seekers of certainty. In all these cases we are attempting to reduce complex social structures and processes down to simple formulae. The problem is certainly not a new one, and we can see parallels between the Church of Paul's day and our own.

As we noted in an earlier commentary, Paul admits that he was always a bit of a zealot; an aspect of his character that remained unchanged even after his conversion to Christianity (Gal 1:14; Phil 3:6; cf. Rom 12:11). Paul may have jumped ship from Judaism to Law-Free Christianity, but he remained a zealous and unbending advocate for his chosen religious tradition.

Paul persecuted the Hellenists for their apostasy from the Law. After his conversion to the Hellenists' movement, he became equally zealous in propagating the Law-free mission to the Gentiles. For this reason, he was branded a "heretic" by the Apostolic Community in Jerusalem and he spent the last two decades of his life defending his Law-free Gospel. But who was right, Paul and the Hellenists or Peter, James and the Jerusalem Apostles?

We often assume that the problem lay with the Jerusalem Apostles, whose inability to accommodate a Law-free mission to the Gentiles derived from their inability to tolerate anything other than the status quo. Caught up the legalistic mindset of Law-observant Judaism, the Jerusalem Apostles viewed the innovation of Paul and the Hellenists as one that stood outside the acceptable bounds of tradition and practice; and, moreover, was not something which could be traced back to the practice of Jesus himself.

On the other hand, we must ask if we can reasonably argue that Paul, a Johnny-come-lately on the scene of Christianity, a persecutor of the Church who later "jumped ship", understood the import of Jesus' mission and message better than those who had been Jesus companions and kin? Paul himself makes no such claim. He attributes both the content of his Gospel and his commission to preach it to a direct revelation (Gal 1:11-24; cf. 1 Cor 9:1; 15:8-11).

Seekers of certitude — security in conformism…

Reading between the lines of Paul's account of his disputes with Jerusalem in Galatians and the Corinthian correspondence, it appears that Christian Jews, like James and Peter, seem to have radicalized their "Jewishness" to a point where they advocated a sort of ancient form of the doctrine "Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus" – to wit, "outside the [Christian Jewish] church [and its adherence to the Mosaic Law] there is no salvation". In Bishop Robinson's terminology, we might call the adherents of the Jerusalem church, seekers of certitude. There is security in being a conformist.

Jerome Murphy O'Connor OP Professor of New Testament École Biblique, Jérusalem

Paul and the Law-free Christians, by contrast, went to the other extreme and claimed that "the Law was no more". Jerome Murphy O'Connor (1996) even goes so far as to suggest that a close reading of Paul's letters suggests he opposed any sort of hierarchical authority, preferring to allow communities to settle their own disputes — such was Paul's distaste for "legalism". So called "liberal Catholics" embrace Paul as the quintessential "seeker for truth", who was willing to tear down all institutions and laws to follow his vision.

We can see the depth of the divisions here, and the complexity of the issue involved. There may have been right on both sides. We cannot demonise either Paul or his opponents. Our own Catholic past is similarly complex, and we cannot really demonise anyone or any part of the system. It does not come down to a simple choice between being seekers of truth or seekers of certitude.

The real challenge is to hold centre against the tensions of competing forces at the fringes, one of which seeks constant renewal and change, while the other extreme tries to maintain the lessons and successes of the past. It is the old question of deciding how much bathwater can be thrown out before we put the baby in peril. But there is an even greater problem, especially for the so-called "liberal" reformers.

All-too-often rallying cries to "return to the spirit of Jesus" are heard. Many would want to tear down the edifice of the Church, its hierarchical structures and its traditions to get back to the "original genius" of Jesus. But, as a biblical scholar I am always conscious of how little we really can know of the historical Jesus independent of the Church's tradition — very, very little indeed, I suspect. Hence, we must always rely upon the witness of the tradition as preserved by the guardians of the apostolic succession.

Returning to the criticisms of the likes of Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins, we might note that at this point in our discussion we can see that there are clear parallels between the Church and the scientific community. In the realm of science we recognize that the cumulative weight of acquired knowledge must always be brought to bear on each new scientific endeavour. So too, the weight of tradition as safeguarded by the Church must always be taken into account when we seek to understand the "truth" of Jesus' message.

Paul's "success" probably an accident of history…

We can learn from the mistakes of both Paul and his apostolic opponents. Paul's zealotry almost destroyed his entire mission. James' and the Jerusalem Apostles' inability to compromise led to a schism within the growing Christian movement. And, Paul's ultimate success probably resulted from an accident of history – the destruction of the Temple (70 CE) and the complete annihilation of the apostolic, Christian-Jewish community at Jerusalem. Deprived of its leadership and the focal point of their faith practice (i.e., the Temple cult), those Christian Jews who survived the conflagration became gradually more and more irrelevant in an ever-increasingly Gentile and Law-free movement. I think there is a message in this for all of us.

Catholicism has transmuted itself many times throughout its history — even if it has often done so only after stubborn resistance. This is not too unlike science, as well, which usually does not seek to overturn what has gone before but to resolve problems within an existing framework. The goal of science is resolution, not revolution, the latter generally being a last resort. Science tenaciously, and properly, holds on to that which works — and, I believe, that the real strength of Catholicism rests in that it has done the same.

CLICK HERE FOR INDEX TO THIS SERIES ON ST PAUL

Bibliography and Further Reading:
For those who are looking for resources on Paul that are both reliable and readable, I can recommend the following:
G. Robinson, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus (Mulgrave, VIC; John Garratt Publishing, 2007).
J. Murphy-O'Connor, Jesus and Paul: Parallel Lives (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2007).
D. Wenham, Paul: Follower of Jesus or Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995).
Photo Credits:
The headline image of St Paul has been sourced from an icon which you will find at: www.airmaria.com. Clicking on the other images will take you to the original source.

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©2008 Ian Elmer

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