Mysticism of Paul the Apostle
The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle
Albert Schweitzer
- New York Seabury Press 1931
- 411 p.
Contents Prefatory Note Author's preface I. The distinctive character of Pauline Mysticism II. Hellenistic or Judaic? III The Pauline Epistles IV. The Eschatological doctrine or redemption V.The problems of the Pauline Eschatology VI. The mystical doctrine of the dying and rising again with Christ VII. Suffering as a mode of manifestation of the dying with Christ VIII.Possession of the spirit as a mode of manifestation of the being-risen-with-Christ IX. Mysticism and the law X. Mysticism and righteousness by faith XI. Mysticism and the sacraments XII. Mysticism and ethics XIII. The hellenization of Paul's mysticism by ignatius and the Johannine theology XIV. The permanent elements in Paul's Mysticism Indices
Immediately after the Gospels, the New Testament takes up the history of the early Christian Church, describing the works of the twelve disciples, and introducing Paul, the man whose influence on the history of Christianity is beyond calculation. Teacher, preacher, conciliator, diplomat, theologian, rule giver, consoler, and martyr, his life and writings became foundations for Christianity. Paul inspired a vast, serious, and intelligent literature that seeks to recapture his meaning, his thinking, and his purpose.
In his letters to early Christian communities, Paul gave much practical advice about organization and orthodoxy. These treated the early Christian communities as something more than a group of people who believed in the same faith: they were people bound together by a common spirit unknown before. The significance of that common spirit occupied the greatest of Christian theologians from Athanasius and Augustine through Luther and Calvin.
In The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle Albert Schweitzer goes against Luther and the Protestant tradition to look at what Paul actually writes in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians: an emphasis upon the personal experience of the believer with the divine. Paul's mysticism was not like the mysticism elsewhere described as a soul being at one with God. In the mysticism he felt and encouraged, there is no loss of self but an enriching of it; no erasure of time or place but a comprehension of how time and place fit within the eternal. Schweitzer writes that Paul's mysticism is especially profound, liberating, and precise. Typical of Schweitzer, he introduces readers to his point of view at once, then describes in detail how he came to it, its scholarly antecedents, what its implications are, what objections have been raised, and why all of this matters. To students of the New Testament, this book opens up Paul by presenting him as offering an entirely new kind of mysticism, necessarily and exclusively Christian.
"There is at least one other point that Albert Schweitzer scores here . . . The hard-won recognition that divine authority and human freedom ultimately cannot be in conflict must never be taken for granted, and the irony that the thought of Paul has repeatedly been invoked to undo that recognition truly does make this insight one of 'the permanent elements.'"―from the Introduction
Apostles Death of Jesus Redemption of Paul Mysticism and Ethics