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<\/a>Let us say from the outset of this post that Luke Johnson is right about a wide variety of things.\u00a0 For instance, there can be no doubt at all that many Gentiles who became Christians under the aegis of Paul or others brought with them into their Christian communities certain Greco-Roman ways of being religious.\u00a0 You can see this for example in the reference to proxy baptism for the dead in 1 Cor. 15.\u00a0 Their approach to Christian initiation rites was no doubt affected by their previous beliefs about such things, whether they had participated in the Mystery religions or not. \u00a0 They were partially socialized Christians who had not yet fully imbibed a Christian way of viewing things like the \u2018sacraments\u2019\u00a0 to use an anachronistic term. \u00a0 What is important to notice about this however is that Paul and others corrected such behaviors at various points.\u00a0 It was not going to be satisfactory for Corinthian Christians to continue to go to dinner parties at pagan temples, and the reasons why they shouldn\u2019t were at once theological, ethical and practical (its a bad witness).\u00a0 Nor can we dispute that writers like Paul or the author of Hebrews used Greco-Roman philosophy and rhetoric in order to relate to their audiences.\u00a0 These things, in themselves would not make Christianity a Greco-Roman religion, any more than Philo\u2019s use of Greek philosophy meant he was no longer a Jewish thinker. \u00a0 And doubtless Johnson is also right that many converts to Christianity went into their new religion with a religious sensibility that predisposed them to see what divine benefits or moral improvement they could get out of the new religion. \u00a0 All of this is beyond reasonable cavil or doubt.\u00a0 The issue really becomes whether \u2018ways of being religious\u2019 can be studied or should be studied in isolation from the symbolic universe, the narrative thought world and the theologizing and ethicizing we find going on in NT documents? \u00a0 That is whether such ways or sensibilities can be isolated from questions of the thought world or ideation. \u00a0\u00a0 While I think distinctions can be made, I don\u2019t at the end of the day think one can bracket out \u2018theology\u2019 for instance and still adequately discuss \u2018ways of being religious\u2019. \u00a0\u00a0 This whole approach rather reminds me of the story of Jacob and Esau when Jacob sought to steal Esau\u2019s blessing. \u00a0 The voice is the voice of Jacob but the hands and arms are those of Esau.\u00a0 That is, Greco-Roman dress or form doesn\u2019t really determine who it is that is wearing the clothing.\u00a0 The fact that there were priests, temples, and sacrifices prayers and tithes and offerings in almost all ancient religions while not an unimp0rtant similarity does not at the end of the day allow us to neglect the salient differences between say Judaism and Greco-Roman religion, even in regard to praxis.<\/p>\nWith this as prolegomena we need to consider Chapters 10-11 on NT Christianity and Religiousness\u00a0 A and B.\u00a0 Naturally enough,\u00a0 Johnson first turns to the ecstatic Corinthians as an example of Religiousness A\u2014 those who approach their religion looking for divine benefits including signs, wonders, ecstatic speech, charismatic experiences and the like. \u00a0\u00a0 There is something to this, but it is\u00a0 a mistake to ignore the fact that 1 Corinthians is a letter that is a problem solving and correcting letter, and while Paul doesn\u2019t want to stifle the Spirit in Corinth, he does want to deprogram them from for example mistaking glossolalia for prophecy (a natural mistake in view of what went on at the oracle at Delphi\u2014 see my Conflict and Community in Corinth), and he wants them to understand the concept of grace and truth.\u00a0 There are all sorts of religious experiences, and doubtless many sorts of \u2018real\u2019 religious experiences, but not all of them are beneficial, not all of them are of the Lord, not all of them build up the body of Christ.\u00a0 The \u2018realness\u2019 of an experience one can have at the temple of Asklepius in Corinth does tell one anything about the goodness of the experience or the godliness of the experience. \u00a0 If Paul had heard a\u00a0 Corinthian say \u2018but I cannot deny my experience I had at the Asklepion\u2019\u00a0 Paul\u2019s response would have been \u2018no, but you can deny it was a good or godly experience\u2019\u00a0 and so he would tell them \u2018you cannot dine at the table of the Lord and also at the table of\u00a0 daimons\u2019. \u00a0 And when it came to the Christian meal,\u00a0 Paul busily deconstructs the notion that it should be approached or treated as just another stratified Greco-Roman meal with a symposium to follow.\u00a0 He talks about taking the Lord\u2019s Supper in an unworthy manner\u2014 an ethical way of processing things. \u00a0\u00a0 Johnson at several points in his book wants to say things like the religious experiences of pagans and the experiences of Gnostics and the experiences of Christians seem to be just as genuine and authentic across the board. \u00a0\u00a0 But the question is not whether they had \u2018genuine\u2019 experiences.\u00a0 The question is whether it was the one God whom they were experiencing. \u00a0 You can have a genuine experience and you can be absolutely sincere in your devotion\u2014 and you can be experiencing the wrong spiritual reality and in the end it will be bad for you.\u00a0 You can be sincerely devoted to the wrong thing however real your experiences. \u00a0\u00a0 To say this is not mere polemics,\u00a0 its at the heart of Jewish and Christian thought because they are monotheistic religions.\u00a0 They do not take a smorgasbordian approach to \u2018true\u2019 religious experience or valid and valuable religious sensibilities.\u00a0 And neither should we. \u00a0 Thus while it is right to note that Irenaeus and others may well have over-egged the pudding when it comes to polemics against Gnostics and the like,\u00a0 gone beyond the appropriate bounds of speaking the truth in love, at the end of the day the substance of their critique was correct\u2014 there is only one God, and all others are something less or something else.<\/p>\n
One of the most helpful points in his analysis of Paul\u2019s letter to the Galatians is when he seeks to get inside of the mindset of some of the recently minted Galatian converts and says \u201cThey reasoned by analogy: if the cult of the Messiah was an association (ekklesia) rather than a domestic cult or local cult shrine or civic liturgy, then it can be thought of as a Mystery\u2026And if it was a Mystery then initiations in it would naturally be multiple.\u00a0\u00a0 Further initiation (as into the cult of Moses) would require an ordeal (such as circumcision or physical asceticism) to be sure but it would also provide lore not available to others (such as Torah) and an elevated status within the association.\u201d (p. 146).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This seems likely to be right.\u00a0 Those who came from a polytheistic background would not see a contradiction between being baptized into Jesus and being thereafter initiated into Moses.\u00a0 Religious exclusivity claims were not part of their religious background or sensibilities, and so Paul had to correct them.<\/p>\n
Johnson\u2019s arguments about Paul\u2019s letters have more strength to them, and I think he is right that Gentiles did approach becoming followers of Christ in various ways with the same sort of religious sensibility as they approached pagan religions.\u00a0\u00a0 This I think is demonstrable, but it needs to be added that Paul was busily correcting them on various scores whether they approached Christianity from a Religiousness A or B perspective.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 More dubious is his analysis of the Synoptic Gospels.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How so?<\/p>\n
In the first place the Synoptic Gospels are about Jesus\u2019 relationship with Jews, almost exclusively so.\u00a0 Did Jews approach Jesus for healing and help and instruction in the same way that Gentiles approached Paul\u2019s communities?\u00a0\u00a0 The answer to this question must be yes and no.\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, they approached Jesus because they saw he had divine power, and wanted help or healing.\u00a0 There\u2019s no doubt about that.\u00a0 But they did not approach Jesus from a polytheistic religious gestalt or world-view that suggested the more initiations, the better.\u00a0 They took Jesus\u2019 call to discipleship to rule out other calls to discipleship, even other Jewish ones.\u00a0 It is precisely the monotheistic exclusivity of the religious environment in which Jesus operated which is mirrored in these Synoptic Gospels, not pagan environments.\u00a0\u00a0 This explains the intensity of debate between Pharisees and Jesus, indeed of all sorts of people and Jesus, for they understood that if Jesus was right, and indeed was some sort of messianic figure, then they were wrong, and he eclipsed other such figures.\u00a0\u00a0 The debate was done in the context where exclusivity of religious claims, not pluralism in the broad sense, was the rule.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Synoptic Gospels, though of relevance to later discussions in more pluralistic settings, are not transcripts or mirrors of such later Christian settings.\u00a0 It is certainly right to say however, that we don\u2019t find traces of what Johnson calls type C and D religiosity.\u00a0\u00a0 There is no denigration of God\u2019s creation or of the goodness of the body in these Gospels, not even in John, unlike in the later Gnostic Gospels.\u00a0 They still mirror the strong creation theology of the OT and of early Judaism, caught up as they are in meaningful discussions about resurrection, marriage and family life, children, sexual behavior, and the like.\u00a0\u00a0 While it may be true that Gentiles who read these Gospels would not have cavilled at worshipping Jesus as Lord along with the Father, as a result of their non-monotheistic background, it should be added that many Jews who converted felt the same way, and did not see the Christian belief system as a violation of Jewish monotheism.<\/p>\n
More successful is the analysis of Johnson of traces of Religiousness B in the letters of Paul and in James and Hebrews.\u00a0 This is not a surprise since early Jewish teaching was largely ethical and praxis oriented to begin with and the authors of all three of these books are likely Jews who are now followers of Jesus.\u00a0 Here Johnson is write to stress that the ethics of the NT has been given short shrift,\u00a0 especially in the analysis of Paul, whereas there is a strong emphasis on virtues and moral exemplars (have this mind in yourself that was in Christ) in this literature, and at this level it is not surprising that Paul\u2019s ethical teaching has been compared to that of Epictetus, and with profit.\u00a0 The question is,\u00a0 did the audiences of these documents approach the Christian community hoping for moral instruction and transformation alone? I doubt this. I suspect that the audiences especially of Paul\u2019s letters looked also for divine benefits.\u00a0\u00a0 A case can be made that the audience of James and Hebrews was expecting moral information and transformation, and here Johnson\u2019s argument is clearly stronger. \u00a0\u00a0 But is it really the case that we find little or no Religiousness C and D in first century Christian documents? \u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t Romans 12 count as world-stabilizing religious rhetoric, or the similar remarks in 1 Peter?\u00a0 Were there really no Corinthians who denigrated the flesh and had an other-worldly spirituality?\u00a0 1 Cor. 7 would suggest there were, though Paul does not approve.<\/p>\n
And this brings us to a final major point for this post\u2014 to what degree can we take the religious sensibilities of the authors of the NT documents as representative of the communities as wholes especially if most of these documents are busily correcting the audiences on this or that praxis or behavior or belief?\u00a0 And we must also ask, to what degree can we take what is said about the audiences of these documents as adequate revelations of their actual religious sensibilities?\u00a0 Take for example a document like Colossians or Romans, written to an audience Paul has never personally met or visited? \u00a0 Or an encyclical document like Ephesians? \u00a0 It is very difficult to say how much light can be shed on such subjects by reading between the Pauline or Petrine etc. lines. \u00a0 And I would say that there is certainly not enough data to warrant calling earliest Christianity already in the first century \u2018a Greco-Roman religion\u2019. \u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s more of a Jewish sectarian religion with an evangelistic zeal, prepared to use the philosophy and rhetoric of the culture to further its rather clearly monotheistic, exclusivitic aims in regard to theology, ethics, and praxis, never mind religiosity.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let us say from the outset of this post that Luke Johnson is right about a wide variety of things.\u00a0 For instance, there can be no doubt at all that many Gentiles who became Christians under the aegis of Paul or others brought with them into their Christian communities certain Greco-Roman ways of being religious.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n