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    Pauline spinoff thread

    On the 1 in 18 American Men thread, GY, responding to something someone else wrote, said the following;

    I'd also agree that US Christianity is uniquely Pauline, which is also why it tends to be so nutty, but that's another conversation.
    This is that other conversation. Is this a commonly held view, that US Christianity is especially Pauline?

    I'd tend to the opposite view, that US Christianity is distinctively and uniquely gnostic in its culture and practice, and hence opposed implacably to Paulinism. This is doubly true if you construe "Christianity" broadly enough to include the Mormons which - I reluctantly suppose - you probably should.

    Harold Bloom says so, so it must be true...

    #2
    Pauline spinoff thread

    Can you elucidate your terminology, old thing?

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      #3
      Pauline spinoff thread

      You may be using Pauline in a different, theologically technical sense to me. I'm using it to mean that (especially but not exclusively among fundies) there's a dramatic and unusual emphasis on the Pauline books compared to the Gospels. Indeed, it's easy to get the impression from listening to US preachers and others that they've read the Pentateuch, the Pauline books, Revelation and nothing else. Well, maybe the strongly prophetic bits like Ezekiel and Isaiah.

      Now I absolutely don't mean to suggest this is universal. It's not especially true in my mostly Wesleyan extended family. But it's the dominant strain in Southern Baptism, for sure, and seems to apply to a lot of American Catholicism these days as well.

      Comment


        #4
        Pauline spinoff thread

        gnostic in its culture and practice, and hence opposed implacably to Paulinism
        Could you provide subtitles for the hard of thinking here.

        I have no idea of the basic difference between gnosticism and Paulinism

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          #5
          Pauline spinoff thread

          Growing up Methodist, we virtually ignored the Book of Revelation in Bible study. (Well, it was mainly treated as something of an oddity.) Whereas I gather the Baptists give it a good heeding to.

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            #6
            Pauline spinoff thread

            Gnosticism is syncretistic, you see, Bored.

            Comment


              #7
              Pauline spinoff thread

              In words of one or two syllables?

              I am doing a Ethnicity and Education essay and can't handle any more jargon

              Comment


                #8
                Pauline spinoff thread

                Doesn't "syncretistic" just mean it's a bit of a hodgepodge? It doesn't tell us what it's a bit of a hodgepodge of.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Pauline spinoff thread

                  I mean, Paulinism is a bit of a hodgepodge too, right?

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Pauline spinoff thread

                    GY - ah, okay. We may be at cross-purposes, so.

                    Broadly speaking, gnosis is something like "the direct knowledge of God". Gnosticism, which urged the direct contact of the believer with the supernatural, was persecuted as a heresy within Christianity - largely as a result of Pauline trends - but has surfaced in many other religions, and persists in a lot of strains of Christianity.

                    Now, Paul tends to be very dismissive of this idea of direct contact. He is, in modern terms, much more of a rationalist, concerned rather with how to order Christian societies in the here-and-now than with personally engaging the supernatural. He does believe in Angels, but he doesn't at all embrace them - they are ambivalent and mysterious figures for Paul. The Pauline church, as Harold Bloom notes, strikingly excludes from the canon almost any reference to the forty days Jesus spent on earth with His disciples after resurrection.

                    Pauline Christianity has tended to be concerned with law and theological doctrine, with reason and praxis. It runs largely counter to the emphasis on tongues of fire and glossolalia, on personal relationship with angelic forces and "having one's own spirituality" that strongly characterises many distinctively American strains Christianity, such as Pentecostalism, Mormonism, Adventism, and many strains of Baptism.

                    From this point of view, focussing on the reason-magic split, the idea that American religion tends to be distinctively Pauline in character, and thus nutty, seemed an odd one.

                    Also, yadda yadda yadda, "rationalism", yadda yadda yadda...

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Pauline spinoff thread

                      Yet paradoxically, the Gifts of the Pentecost are described pretty much only in Paul's Epistles. To be sure, he's often saying that they ain't all that compared to agape, but without his writings there perhaps wouldn't be a Pentecostal element to Christianity at all.

                      I took GY to be contrasting the content of the Epistles with that of the Gospels.

                      A woman spoke in tongues to me once, in the laundrette on Murray Street in Camden.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Pauline spinoff thread

                        Ah, but the gnostic contention is usually that Paul minimised their significance, which couldn't be outright denied, and then excluded everything else from the conversation.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Pauline spinoff thread

                          Wa ayat al Urbi wrote:
                          Doesn't "syncretistic" just mean it's a bit of a hodgepodge? It doesn't tell us what it's a bit of a hodgepodge of.
                          I know. I was trying to bamboozle Bored.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Pauline spinoff thread

                            To me gnosticism connotes dualism and all that.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Pauline spinoff thread

                              Yeah. Demiurges and that.

                              Mind, American Bible-belters do go on about the Devil a lot. I've been called Satan myself, on message forums (which at one level kind of rocked, in a way).

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Pauline spinoff thread

                                QUOTE:
                                Doesn't "syncretistic" just mean it's a bit of a hodgepodge? It doesn't tell us what it's a bit of a hodgepodge of.

                                I know. I was trying to bamboozle Bored.
                                Job done. Consider me bamboozled

                                Wyatt, I would never think you as the Devil. It's usually "Talk of the Devil" and he pops up. You, on the other hand, pop up whenever God is discussed.

                                Hmmmmm.

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Pauline spinoff thread

                                  Wa ayat al Urbi wrote:
                                  I've been called Satan myself, on message forums (which at one level kind of rocked, in a way).
                                  And where are you choosing to wade in and grapple with such forces? I wouldn't think intellectual blind alleys were your thing.

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Pauline spinoff thread

                                    I thought this thread was going to be about Wendy Richard.

                                    Comment

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