Everything you know about the Gospel of Paul is likely wrong

[C C]

https://aeon.co/ideas/the-gospels-of-pau...k-they-say

EXCERPT: This past year, I burdened the English-speaking world with my very own translation of the New Testament – a project that I undertook at the behest of my editor at Yale University Press . . .

[...] Paul’s actual teachings, however, as taken directly from the Greek of his letters, emphasise neither original guilt nor imputed righteousness (he believed in neither), but rather the overthrow of bad angels. A certain long history of misreadings – especially of the Letter to the Romans – has created an impression of Paul’s theological concerns so entirely alien to his conceptual world that the real Paul occupies scarcely any place at all in Christian memory. It is true that he addresses issues of ‘righteousness’ or ‘justice’ [...] Questions of law and righteousness, however, are secondary concerns.

The essence of Paul’s theology is something far stranger, and unfolds on a far vaster scale. For Paul, the present world-age is rapidly passing, while another world-age differing from the former in every dimension – heavenly or terrestrial, spiritual or physical – is already dawning. The story of salvation concerns the entire cosmos; and it is a story of invasion, conquest, spoliation and triumph. For Paul, the cosmos has been enslaved to death, both by our sin and by the malign governance of those ‘angelic’ or ‘daemonian’ agencies who reign over the earth from the heavens, and who hold spirits in thrall below the earth. These angelic beings, these Archons, whom Paul calls Thrones and Powers and Dominations and Spiritual Forces of Evil in the High Places, are the gods of the nations. In the Letter to the Galatians, he even hints that the angel of the Lord who rules over Israel might be one of their number. Whether fallen, or mutinous, or merely incompetent, these beings stand intractably between us and God. But Christ has conquered them all...

MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/the-gospels-of-pau...k-they-say

[Yazata]

Everything you know about the Gospel of Paul is likely wrong

Well, first off, the four 'gospels' of the New Testament are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. So there's that...

[Syne]

I had long contemplated attempting a ‘subversively literal’ rendering of the text.

Seems to fancy himself more "subversive" than he actually managed.

Paul’s actual teachings, however, as taken directly from the Greek of his letters, emphasise neither original guilt nor imputed righteousness (he believed in neither), but rather the overthrow of bad angels.

He doesn't seem to understand that a person's tendencies toward sin (original sin) are their "bad angels". He, at least, doesn't define it otherwise in the article.

But for Paul, pistis largely consists in works of obedience to God and love of others. The only erga, ‘works’, which he is anxious to claim make no contribution to personal sanctity, are certain ‘ritual observances’ of the Law of Moses, such as circumcision or kosher dietary laws.

Obedience and love are not generally considered "works", and "rituals" are well-known to be meaningless.

Paul’s voice, I hasten to add, is hardly an eccentric one. John’s Gospel too, for instance, tells of the divine saviour who comes ‘from above’, descending from God’s realm into this cosmos, overthrowing its reigning Archon, bringing God’s light into the darkness of our captivity, and ‘dragging’ everyone to himself. And, in varying registers, so do most of the texts of the New Testament. As I say, it is a conceptual world very remote from our own.

He seems to be the only one conflating the physical and spiritual worlds. His Archon (Satan) has dominion over the physical world, because that is where man suffers from original sin. The dominion and need for conquest is wholly spiritual.


Now, perhaps his making some point specific to Catholicism or something. I'm not as up on their interpretations of scripture.