Paul’s Dialectical Teaching
Paul as Non-Dual Teacher
Sunday, April 5, 2015
(Easter Sunday)
Meeting the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus changed everything for Paul. He experienced the great paradox that the crucified Jesus was in fact alive! And he, a “sinner,” was in fact chosen and beloved. This pushed Paul from the usual either/or, dualistic thinking to both/and, mystical thinking. The truth in paradoxical language lies neither in the affirmation nor in the denial of either side, but precisely in the resolution of the tug of war between the two. The German philosopher Hegel called this process thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The human mind usually works on the logical principle of contradiction, according to which a proposition cannot be both true and false at the same time. Yet that is exactly what higher truths invariably undo (e.g., God is both one and three, Jesus is both human and divine, bread and wine are both matter and Spirit). Unfortunately, since the Reformation and the Enlightenment, we Western, educated people have lost touch with paradoxical, mystical, or contemplative thinking. We’ve wasted five centuries taking sides!
Not only did Paul’s way of thinking change, his way of being in the world was also transformed. Suddenly the persecutor—and possibly murderer—of Christians is the “chosen vessel” of Christ, chosen and sent “to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel” (Acts 9:15). This overcomes the strict line between good and bad, between evil and virtue. The paradox has been overcome in Paul’s very person. He now knows that he is both sinner and saint, as we too must trust. These two seeming contradictions don’t cancel one another out. Once the conflict has been overcome in you, and you realize you are a living paradox and so is everyone else, you begin to see life in a truly spiritual way.
Perhaps this is why Paul loves to teach dialectically. He presents two seemingly opposing ideas, such as weakness and strength, flesh and spirit, law and grace, faith and works, Jew and Greek, male and female. Normal dualistic thinking usually takes one side and dismisses the other, stopping there. Paul is the first clear successor to Jesus as a non-dual teacher. He forces you onto the horns of the dilemma and thus invites you to wrestle with the paradox. If you stay with him in the full struggle, you’ll see he eventually brings reconciliation on a higher level, beyond the conflict that he himself first illustrates. Many readers stay with the conflict and then dislike Paul. We will go much further this week, I hope.
Gateway to Silence:
I am not separate.
References:
Adapted from Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation, disc 6 (CD);
A New Way of Seeing . . . A New Way of Being: Jesus and Paul (CD, MP3 download);
St. Paul: The Misunderstood Mystic (CD, MP3 download)
