Immediately after the Gospels, the New Testament takes up the
history of the early Christian Church, describing the works of the
twelve disciples, and introducing Paul, the man whose influence on
the history of Christianity is beyond calculation. Teacher,
preacher, conciliator, diplomat, theologian, rule giver, consoler,
and martyr, his life and writings became foundations for
Christianity. Paul inspired a vast, serious, and intelligent
literature that seeks to recapture his meaning, his thinking, and
his purpose.
In his letters to early Christian communities, Paul gave much
practical advice about organization and orthodoxy. These treated
the early Christian communities as something more than a group of
people who believed in the same faith: they were people bound
together by a common spirit unknown before. The significance of
that common spirit occupied the greatest of Christian theologians
from Athanasius and Augustine through Luther and Calvin.
In "The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle" Albert Schweitzer goes
against Luther and the Protestant tradition to look at what Paul
actually writes in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians: an
emphasis upon the personal experience of the believer with the
divine. Paul's mysticism was not like the mysticism elsewhere
described as a soul being at one with God. In the mysticism he felt
and encouraged, there is no loss of self but an enriching of it; no
erasure of time or place but a comprehension of how time and place
fit within the eternal. Schweitzer writes that Paul's mysticism is
especially profound, liberating, and precise. Typical of
Schweitzer, he introduces readers to his point of view at once,
then describes in detail how he came to it, its scholarly
antecedents, what its implications are, what objections have been
raised, and why all of this matters. To students of the New
Testament, this book opens up Paul by presenting him as offering an
entirely new kind of mysticism, necessarily and exclusively
Christian.
"There is at least one other point that Albert Schweitzer scores
here... The hard-won recognition that divine authority and human
freedom ultimately cannot be in conflict must never be taken for
granted, and the irony that the thought of Paul has repeatedly been
invoked to undo that recognition truly does make this insight one
of 'the permanent elements.'"--from the Introduction
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!