Quote for the Day: Paul the Deceiver
"The real Paul is the reel Paul, the fisher of ignorant and deceived humanity, who keeps his audience reeling as he enmeshes them in a net woven of ambiguous, cunning, and deceptive words...[His] apocalyptic God is a mysterious, ambiguous, and finally sophistic God, who cares enough to be cunning and is devoted enough to be deceptive." (Mark Given, Paul's True Rhetoric: Ambiguity, Cunning, and Deception in Greece and Rome, pp 176, 181)
Sometime after Thanksgiving I plan on dealing with Mark Given's thesis at length, which will tie back to my previous series on lying and deception. (On which see the following links: Prologue, I, II, III, IV, Epilogue.)
posted by Loren Rosson III @ 11/21/2005
2 Comments:
Just a couple of stray impulsive thoughts:
"ambiguous, ... words"
…to those who cannot understand Paul perhaps! Although I admit I haven't read his book yet, so that is unfair, I know.
"[His] apocalyptic God is ... ambiguous"
The presence and activity of Christ through the Spirit in his missionary work was anything but ambiguous - Paul could even refer to their experiences as reason to reject the claims of the Circumcision group in Galatians.
P.S. I very much enjoy your blog
All the best,
Chris
Given's approach may seem counter-intuitive, but there's actually a lot going for it. More on this later.
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