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  • From: "Ronald L. Troxel" <rltroxel AT facstaff.wisc.edu>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: 1 Cor 13
  • Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 09:54:32 -0500


What you're suggesting sounds (from the way you have worded it) as though Paul was an unusual beast: a man cut off from his culture, whose ideas were indebted to no one else. It reminds me of the old attempts to describe Paul's thought as "Jewish" over against "Hellenistic," as if there were anything other than Hellenistic Judaism by this time. If even the conservative Ben Sirach thinks in Hellenistic categories (as is easily demonstrable), then why not Paul? Certainly we have to consider what in Paul's thought is given unique shape by his convictions about Jesus of Nazareth, but that cannot be viewed as distinct from the Hellenistic categories he used, including those deriving from the likes of Plato.

Ron Troxel
University of Wisconsin-Madison

I am not at all convinced that Paul would have seen the world from Plato's
perspective -surely there was a'New Perspective'in Paul's view of reality.
To put Paul in historical perspective means we need to understand the
hellenism of his day, but at the same time to differentiate him quite
sharply from it.Why is it that hellenism is still so attractive to us? Is
it that the form of Christianity we are accustomed to is deeply hellenistic
perhaps more so than Pauline ?




At 11:19 12/09/00 GMT, you wrote:
Any thoughts on the object of what 'we see in a mirror dimly' in 1 Cor
13:12? Is it God? ourselves? the future? something else?

i have always taken it to be "reality". we perceive reality only in the
most
indescript and vague fashion. our perceptions of the whys and hows of
life are
frequently skewed because of our finitude. i think what paul says here is
that "we now perceive all things in a rather distorted way but in future we
will perceive things as they really are". this is, of course, almost a
recapitulation of plato's famous allegory of the cave, but i think that is
precisely what paul is thinking.

so, it is god, ourselves, the future, and everything else to which paul
refers. its not "one of the above" from your list of possibilities but
"all of
the above".

best,
as ever


Jim West




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Dr. William S. Campbell
Department of Theology and Religious Studies
University of Wales, Lampeter
Lampeter
Dyfed
SA48 7ED

Tel: 01570 424708 x415
Fax: 01570 423641

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