Paul, not Jesus, it has often been said among theologians, created Christianity. In opposition to the Apostles who actually knew Jesus, Paul claims Jesus's message as equally applicable to Gentiles as well as to the Jews and he, quite contrary to the words of Jesus, unilaterally abrogates the eternal covenant with the Jews and any necessity to follow Jewish traditions.Īlthough Paul's expectations of the return of the Messiah were unfounded, he did a fairly good job of creating the organisation that would be its substitute, just as Loisy had quipped. Second, Jesus makes clear his sole concern is with Judaism and the continuation of the traditions of the Torah. In Paul, this ethic is made conditional upon something called pistis, faith, and becomes organisationally controlled by his authority. First in the universal ethic of love propounded by Jesus, not just among human beings, but also between God, who was all forgiving, and humanity. This is most apparent in two specific areas. Nonetheless the 'tension', as theologians call it, between the Pauline Christ and the Jesus of the gospels is real.
It is Paul's letters that are by years, often decades, the first Christian Scriptures and undoubtedly influenced how the later gospels were written. The protagonist of this 'imminent eschatology', as it is called, was Paul of Tarsus. Throughout the next two Christian generations, at least, it was presumed that the end was nigh, that the Messiah would return with a terrible swift sword. Jesus expected the arrival of the Kingdom of God within his generation. It is now generally recognised that Loisy was correct. No one was sure how to define Modernism, but the churchly authorities were certain they knew it when they saw it in the writings of Loisy. For his trouble, he was censured and eventually excommunicated from the Catholic Church for the arch-heresy of Modernism. In it he pithily phrases the central fact of early Christianity: "Jesus foretold the Kingdom, but it was the Church that came." Loisy was attempting to refute the individualism of the Protestant theologian, Adolf Harnack, by pointing to the historical necessity of an ecclesial organisation.
In 1904 the French Catholic theologian, Alfred Loisy, published a book called L'Evangile et l'Eglise, The Gospel and the Church.
0 kommentar(er)
