And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
-- 1 Corinthians 15:17
This statement would have come as quite a shock to the many people whose sins Jesus actively forgave in his own lifetime according to the Synoptic tradition, who never once heard Jesus conditioning God's forgiveness of them on Jesus' own future death and resurrection. They might have been forgiven for thinking Paul's casuistry made him one of the Pharisees.
The Passion Narrative shows strong evidence of having been reworked from the later standpoint of this theology of the cross, but elsewhere hardly so thoroughly as that.
The Passion Narrative shows strong evidence of having been reworked from the later standpoint of this theology of the cross, but elsewhere hardly so thoroughly as that.
On the contrary, the Synoptic tradition preserves a Jesus who conditioned God's forgiveness not on some once for all sacrifice whose efficacy was to be proven by resurrection, but rather on faith and its reciprocal human action which demonstrated the sincerity and efficacy of the individual's repentance. Faith is not yet a system of dogma, but a description of the right relation and interaction between God and men and men with each other in relation to God.
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
-- Matthew 6:14f.
Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.
-- Matthew 10:8
Both things can't be true. Either forgiveness of sins is a fundamentally social matter or it is not.
The reasoning of Paul sometimes makes a mockery of the life and teaching of Jesus, whose many pronouncements of forgiveness and salvation during his public ministry become not simply relativized by Paul, but of no real effect. They become pointless episodes in a pointless life finally given meaning only by death. Paul even boasts of not knowing that Jesus, the Jesus of the flesh.
It is sick when you really think about it, but it explains much about the conflicted mind of Paul, who is possessed of a morbid fascination with death and who also owns a history of lashing out born of unresolved inner hostilities, both before and after his conversion.
We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
-- 2 Corinthians 5:8
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
If it is to be life in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell.
I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.
But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.
-- Philippians 1:21ff.
But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other
gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be
accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.
-- Galatians 1:8ff.
If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema! Maranatha!
-- 1 Corinthians 16:22
For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.
-- Romans 9:3
For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it.
-- Galatians 1:13
Being "in your sins" seems to have been a topic of debate in early Christianity after the death of Jesus. Apparently forgiving one another was no longer thought to be a sound basis for right relation with God and with each other. While Paul sought to make forgiveness of sins contingent on an "historical" datum, the resurrection, the Fourth Gospel made it contingent on simple belief in the Good Shepherd, the Light of the World, etc.
I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins. ... Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
-- John 8:24ff.
This is an otherwise unremarkable passage, fully in keeping with The Fourth Gospel's focus on the Divine Logos who descends from heaven in the Incarnation and ascends back up to heaven in the Resurrection. Forgiveness of sins depends entirely on belief in this person who did this. It is an entirely vertical conception. There is no social dimension to it. Gone is the "sell that ye have and give to the poor" basis of the call to discipleship found in the Synoptics.
Except this must have caused offense at this point in John's narrative to some of the scribes, knowing the Synoptic tradition as they might have. Accordingly it is remarkable that some of them inserted before this section of John 8 the famous Pericope Adulterae, where Jesus forgives the woman caught in adultery. Nowhere else in John do we encounter this Jesus who goes about forgiving the sins of the people like we do in the Synoptics, demonstrating the horizontal faith relation which is ubiquitous there.
But even at that Jesus does not go out looking to do this in John. The woman, caught in the act of adultery, is brought to him as he's teaching in the Temple, early in the morning. And the social aspect is wholly negative compared to the positive, other-directed examples found in the Synoptics. In John the accusers simply melt away under the withering challenge of Jesus, so that no one is left. It is just the woman and Jesus alone.
Is their a more vivid image of the new gospel of the solitary individual in relation to his god?
Think of it as one of the unintended consequences of Jesus' impact.
And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are true, and teach the way of God truthfully, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men.
Except this must have caused offense at this point in John's narrative to some of the scribes, knowing the Synoptic tradition as they might have. Accordingly it is remarkable that some of them inserted before this section of John 8 the famous Pericope Adulterae, where Jesus forgives the woman caught in adultery. Nowhere else in John do we encounter this Jesus who goes about forgiving the sins of the people like we do in the Synoptics, demonstrating the horizontal faith relation which is ubiquitous there.
But even at that Jesus does not go out looking to do this in John. The woman, caught in the act of adultery, is brought to him as he's teaching in the Temple, early in the morning. And the social aspect is wholly negative compared to the positive, other-directed examples found in the Synoptics. In John the accusers simply melt away under the withering challenge of Jesus, so that no one is left. It is just the woman and Jesus alone.
Is their a more vivid image of the new gospel of the solitary individual in relation to his god?
Think of it as one of the unintended consequences of Jesus' impact.
And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are true, and teach the way of God truthfully, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men.
-- Matthew 22:16
