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The Reception of Pauline Mysticism: An Ideological Critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2022

Fatima Tofighi Open the ORCID record for Fatima Tofighi [Opens in a new window]
Fatima Tofighi*
Affiliation:
University of Religions and Denominations, Imam Sadiq Blvd, Pardisan, Qom 3749113357, Iran Email: f.tofighi@urd.ac.ir
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Abstract

Paul was a mystic. So claimed scholars from Adolf Deissmann to Albert Schweitzer. Others disagreed, figures no less significant than Rudolf Bultmann, Karl Barth and Ernst Käsemann. The pro-mystic group argued that Paul's theological message was best understood if set within the context of Hellenistic or Jewish mysticism. The anti-mystic group could not tolerate any similarity of that sort, which, in their opinion, would damage Paul's uniqueness. The disagreement among biblical scholars can be traced back to more general misgivings about mysticism in European thought. After surveying the reception history of Paul's mysticism, and relying on the ideological critique of religious studies, I argue that the discomfort with a ‘mystical’ Paul may be attributed to the construction of a rational Christian self, where the ‘mystical’ is othered altogether. In addition to a historical reading of Paul in the context of Jewish mysticism, it may be helpful to read him in comparison with Islamic mysticism. Hence some Pauline passages are compared with passages from Sufi literature.

Keywords

history of religions schoolAlbert Schweitzerin-Christ mysticismcomparative theologySufismChristian mysticismNew Perspective on Paul
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 68 , Issue 4 , October 2022 , pp. 363 - 374
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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26 M. Bockmuehl, ‘The Personal Presence of Jesus in the Writings of Paul’, Scottish Journal of Theology 70 (2017) 39–60, at 42 (emphasis original). Bockmuehl's examples of ‘four whopper-sized English-language Paul books … in less than a decade’ are the following: D. A. Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009); N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2 vols.; London: SPCK, 2013); J. M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015); and E. P. Sanders, Paul: The Apostle's Life, Letters, and Thought (London: SCM, 2015).

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39 For discussions of the role of Baur's biblical studies in the construction of European modernity, see S. Heschel, ‘The Image of Judaism in Nineteenth-Century New Testament Scholarship in Germany’, Jewish-Christian Encounters over the Centuries: Symbiosis, Prejudice, Holocaust, Dialogue (ed. M. Perry and F. M. Schweitzer; New York: Peter Lang, 1994) 223 and C. O'Regan, Gnostic Return in Modernity (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001).

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42 King, Orientalism, 7–14.

43 King, Orientalism, 16.

44 King, Orientalism, 18.

45 King, Orientalism, 22; James's exact phrasing is: ‘they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness’ (W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (London and New York: Routledge, 1982) 374).

46 King, Orientalism, 22.

47 King, Orientalism, 25.

48 King, Orientalism, 28–30; see also R. King, Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999) 1–16.

49 Represented by works such as W. R. Inge, Christian Mysticism (London: Methuen, 1899); R. M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion (London: Macmillan, 1909); E. Underhill, Mysticism (London: Methuen, 1911); and R. Otto, The Idea of the Holy (London: Oxford University Press, 1923).

50 Dunn, Paul, 393.

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53 For a study of the relationship between biblical scholarship and Judaism after the Arab–Israel War, see J. Crossley, Jesus in an Age of Terror: Scholarly Projects for a New American Century (London and Oakville: Equinox, 2008).

54 For introductions to comparative theology, see F. X. Clooney, Comparative Theology: Deep Learning across Religious Borders (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2010); C. Cornille, Meaning and Method in Comparative Theology (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2020).

55 M. Al-Ghazzali, Ihyā’ ‘ulūm al-din (4 vols.; trans. M. Khwarazmi, ed. H. Khadivjam; Tehran: Elmi va farhangi, 1972) iv.801–2.

56 J. al-Din Rumi, Masnavi Ma'navi (Tehran: Dibayeh, 2013) 13–14 (introduction to book v).

57 Al-Ghazzali, Ihyā’, i.325–80.

58 Al-Ghazzali, Ihyā’, i.284–5.