Welcome to Rideau Park's 2010 Book Study!
This season we are using The First Paul, by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, Harper Collins Pulbishers, 2009. You are welcome to follow along with the reading schedule and comment on this blog spot to be part of the discussion, if you wish! Our meetings are being held the five Monday evenings in November at Rideau Park United, 2203 Alta Vista Dr. Call 613-733-3156 for more information.
The outline of readings is as follows:
November 1 – Introduction, etc.
November 8 – Chapters 1-2
November 15 – Chapters 3-4
November 22 – Chapters 5-6
November 29 – Chapters 7 and Epilogue
Our Session on November 1 will be an overview of some of the assumptions we bring to the study:
About ourselves as learners: that we respect many different perspectives, keep confidences shared within the group, and understand that everyone learns and reads the faith story in their own unique way, at their own pace.
About biblical studies: that the Bible we read is a compilation of many different writers, shaped by faith communities, translators, pastoral situations and the work of the Holy Spirit in both author and reader.
New Testament studies in particular may involve various kinds of study - understanding the ancient world, in particular the Roman Empire; Jewish culture and theology at the time of Paul; technical nuances of ancient texts written in greek, then translated into latin, then many other languages; thorough self-examination of our own subjectivity in reading the text.
A while ago, the United Church of Canada created an advertising poster for its wondercafe website, which featured a picture of a bible with lots of little sticky notes poking out from the pages - the pink were noted "agree"; the green "disagree. That's the way you may feel about Paul's epistles! Read the following and make a mental note of whether you agree or disagree:
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
Agree OR Disagree?
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord for ever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Agree OR Disagree?
Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Saviour. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.
Agree OR Disagree?
What then are we to say? Gentiles, who did not strive for righteousness, have attained it, that is, righteousness through faith; but Israel, who did strive for the righteousness that is based on the law, did not succeed in fulfilling that law.
Why not? Because they did not strive for it on the basis of faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling-stone, as it is written,
‘See, I am laying in Zion a stone that will make people stumble, a rock that will make them fall, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.’
Agree OR Disagree?
Paul has always been a controversial figure in any community - Christian, Jewish, Roman.
Just read 2 Peter 3:15b-16!
So also our beloved Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.
Your perspective on Paul may depend on whether your background is Catholic or Protestant, because Paul's writings played a big part in the Reformation. It may depend on whether you are traditional or feminist, because his epistles don't fit your understanding of power and hierarchy. It may depend on whether you are evangelical or mainline, and how you see the purpose of the church. It may depend on whether you read the Bible from a liberal or fundamentalist understanding, and whether every word must or might be "true".
In our opening discussion, we will read a quote from Bart Ehrmann's Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene, Oxford Univeristy Press, 2006, which Ehrmann calls Paul's "afterlife" or legacy:
Whether or not Paul himself came back to life after his death, it is clear that his writings and teachings lived on. As we have seen so many times, this does not mean that his actual teachings were cherished and remembered. Far more often, his teachings were remembered in ways that bore little resemblance to what he rally taught. Maybe that’s true of every great religious teacher. In any event, it is surely the explanation for how Paul could appear in so many guises after his life. Some of his followers remembered him as supporting the teachings of the Jewish scriptures (for example, those hwo preserved his letter to the Romans.) Others saw him as an outspoken opponent of the Scriptures. Some remembered him as thinking that the resurrection was to be a future, physical transformation of the bodies of believers (those who preserved 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians.) Others saw him as an advocate of a spiritual resurrection that had already happened in Christ (the pseudonymous author of Ephesians.) Some remembered him as a supporter of women and their important role in the Christian church (the author of Acts.) Others saw him as an outspoken opponent of women’s participation in church, requiring women to remain silent and urging them to be saved by having babies (author of 1 Timothy.) … Paul, in short, seems to be, if not all things to all people, at least starkly different things to different people – much as Simon Peter was, and much as Jesus before him. Maybe this is a mark of Christian greatness.
Hope you enjoy learning along with us!
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