Digital Faith

A Revolutionary Paul

Continuing with this series of posts on Paul, here's what N. T. Wright (in What Saint Paul Really Said) says about E. P. Sanders:

It is a measure of Sanders' achievement that Pauline scholars around the world now refer casually to "the Sanders revolution." ... [T]here is no denying that he has towered over the last quarter of the century much as Schweitzer and Bultmann did over the first half.

I don't have Sanders' major work Paul and Palestinian Judaism, but I do have Sanders' short book Paul: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2001) which summarizes his views on Paul. What did Sanders say that now makes earlier views of Paul seem so dated?

Reading Paul's Letters

My last post was titled "A Mormon View of Paul." This post is more about the view of Paul that comes from reading Paul's own letters. It is easy to read Paul's letters through the lens of the gospels (which were written decades later), Orthodox Christianity (which emerged centuries later), Protestant scholarship (millennia later), and Mormonism (a fairly recent development). It requires real effort to bracket these later developments in order to try to understand Paul on his own terms. [Whether you agree with Paul as understood on his own terms is another matter, of course.]

Highlights From Hardy

Times & Seasons has posted a 12 Questions interview with Grant Hardy. He gives serious and detailed responses, a real treat for anyone who has read Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide (OUP, 2010) and incentive for anyone who hasn't read it yet to go out and find a copy. Here are a few one-liner highlights from the interview responses, with my brief comments in italics following the bolded quotation.

A Mormon View of Paul

Despite his central role in the New Testament — hero of Acts, apostle to the Gentiles, author of Romans, Galatians, and other letters — Paul presents a number of questions and problems for any serious student or scholar of the New Testament. What is the LDS view of Paul? Is there even an LDS view of Paul? Peter, James, and John appear prominently in LDS scripture and history, but Paul played no apparent role in the Restoration. Why not?

Bible and Authority

I've been renting N. T. Wright's The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture (HarperCollins, 2005) from my local library for the last few days. [It starts out as borrowing, but when the book starts collecting fines but you choose to keep it and finish it anyway, then it's a rental.] Wright's discussion is a lot more interesting in light of a post I did last week, "Bible, Church, and Mystic: for those in cells 4 and 5 (Bible-type churches that ascribe transcendent or rational authority to the Bible), explaining how texts actually confer authority is a critical discussion.