Paulism and Turning Logic Around

Paulism and Turning Logic Around

Barrie Wilson’s “How Jesus Became Christian”, though a shallow work written by an unimaginative drudge, still it raised some bookish facts. At the end of the First Century the point was raised by the Messianic Jews that since the Apostles disagreed with Paul on every single doctrinal point, that Paul must have been wrong, because two contradictory points cannot both be true – if one believed the Apostles, the True heirs of the Messianic Legacy, than one could not also believe Paul. It was thought that the Jews finally found a Logical Tool for excluding Paulism – they finally found a weapon that the Greek Mind could appreciate.

Well, a certain very wealthy Greek Merchant, Marcion, saw this Anti-Paulist Logic as something of a challenge… even as an opportunity. If the Jews wished to play Logic with the Greeks he would be pleased to oblige. He saw that this logical sword had two edges and could point either way. If both Paul and the Jews could not both be right, then, fine, he agreed. But he would insist it was the True Apostles of Jesus who were wrong. We can wonder today how Marcion could have the brass to assert such an outrage, but we need to remember his context – he was a Greek in Greece arguing for Free Sin, and against the Jews who were considered a troublesome minority (in the Roman Jewish Wars of the early 2nd Century hundreds of thousands of Greeks had been caught in between… indeed, in many instances the Romans only interceded after the Jews had massacred entire regions of Greeks. So we need not be surprised that if in the 2nd Century the Greek would see the Jew with a certain tinge of hostility and resistance).

So Marcion went on the offensive. Jesus would be presented not as a Messianic Jew, not as the Jewish Messiah, but instead as a Rebellious Individual challenging the Old Jewish Traditions and Laws while offering a completely New Dispensation, which the old fish mongering Apostles were too dense to understand, but which Paul, studied in Greek Philosophy, had the spiritual and mental agility to comprehend correctly. The Argument of the Jews was reversed as like a Mirror Image and turned back against them, and in this format, the Greeks were quite convinced by it.

Now, unfortunately, there is more in Barrie Wilson’s book “How Jesus Became Christian”. He goes far to point out the sophistic and false nature of Marcion’s reverse argument. But if two contradictory points cannot both be True, nothing prevents them both from being False, and this is what Barrie Wilson decides in the case of Jesus and the Messianic Jews, that they are wrong too. We are informed that Jesus was false because he had claimed to be a Messiah, but, well, never became a Messiah. Historically Jesus simply never amounted to anything. When Barrie Wilson decided to sum up his book with a big moral message, it was this, that Christianity should just strike its tent and quit Religion altogether and accept themselves only as Gentiles, defined in terms only of not being Jewish, and that they should learn from it all to find a new appreciation for Jews as the Chosen People of God, and to stop being so Anti-Semitic.

I can understand how the Jews would enjoy being proclaimed the Master Race, and have every Gentile bow before them, their faces in the dirt. But I wonder what appeal Barrie Wilson thought the Gentiles would see in it. The book probably had Jewish Publishers.

Anyway, the same kind of Double Edged Argument as before crops up and I was surprised the Barrie Wilson missed it. What Mr. Wilson fails to point out is that the Failure of Jesus reflects equally upon the Jew. His Failure is their Failure. The only reason Jews have been held in high regards, more than we appreciate, say, the Gypsies or the Kurds, is because they were the Race that brought us our Messiah, Our Savior. If Jesus was a nothing, then what does that make the Jews? Without a Jesus, then the claim of the Jews to be a Chosen People resounds only of self-aggrandizement, bigotry and anti-gentile Apartheid.

Without the New Testament to give it point and direction, the Old Testament is only a chronicle of a cunning and quarrelsome people from whom God obviously withdrew all favor. Solomon’s Temple was destroyed. The Promised Land, held for only a few hundred years anyway, was taken back. And God would give it, to paraphrase Alexander the Great on his death bed, to whomever was strong enough to take it.

But, you know, it is not necessary that Jesus was not the Messiah just because his people turned against him and killed him. Because his people were incredibly Evil is no logical proof that he wasn’t absolutely Good… indeed, it is just one more Spiritual Paradox we find ourselves having to deal with. Professor Wilson takes no look at the History of Spiritual Christianity, particularly at the High Point of Christian Civilization, when the numerous Christian Saints stood at least the equal to any Jewish Prophet or Patriarch, and when Paulism was all but forgotten except by a small cluster of the hedonistically corrupt Bishops. But the Christianity of a great Civilization believed in a God, a Messiah and a Pure Mother of a Messiah, worthy of joining with God Almighty Himself. Yes, it was a Religion that went way beyond its Judaic roots, but it is no crime to rise up above one’s roots – every plant, every flower, every tree hopes to do the same. Life reaches toward the Sky. Death reaches down, staying with the Roots. And reaching up Christianity became a Moral Religion, with Moral Expectations. Indeed everything we have today which makes us capable of Moral Reflection comes to us from that Old Christian Civilization and Religion that was vibrantly alive with its own Miracles and deeply inspired with brilliant Visions of actual Spirituality.