Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Pauline Mysticism

We invite your critical comments concerning the following thesis:



The claim of Pauline mysticism is groundless for to following reasons:

  1. There is no clear definition of the mysticism itself, so we do not know what we are looking for in the letters.

  2. The term “mysticism” does not occur in the corpus Paulinum, so there is no basis to talk about the mysticism in Paul.

  3. An attempt to find mysticism in Paul is the clearest example of eisegesis.

  4. Mysticism is a much more recent idea than the letters of Paul.

  5. In order to find mystical elements in Pauline writings, one has to presuppose the author to have been a mystic. There is, however, no evidence that Paul was a mystic.



Do you agree or disagree with any of these arguments? How do you support your position?

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