APOSTLE PAUL AS A PHILOSOPHER?

The reader who expects a lengthy and momentous treatise, under this promising title, will be disappointed. What you are about to read is more like a brief note on the declared subject. As a Russian Christian, by my birth and upbringing, I am accustomed to seeing Apostle Paul (4-64 AD) as a bona fide Saint of the Church, approaching all his writings with proper religious reverence, which would be completely out-of-place in any philosophical discussion. Some writers of histories of philosophy represent Paul as a Platonic philosopher, but, as I have repeated on several occasions, going in that direction opens up Pauline teachings to criticism, generally healthy and commendable, but quite inappropriate under the circumstances of its direct connection to the professed religion.

The natural question, then, is why should Ihave such a provocative yet unfulfilled entry here, in the first place? The answer is this.

My old friend by now, W. T. Jones, makes the point that Paul is neither a philosopher nor a theologian, but a religious mystic. Why should one, I reply, exclude the others? Other sources pose this question: Who was Paul of Tarsus-- A Jewish theologian or a Greek philosopher? Our Bertrand Russell answers this question by suggesting that, had Paul been the one or the other, Christianity would have remained either an obscure Jewish sect, or some esoteric Eastern superstition. It was exactly because he happened to be both, that these two qualities of his had come together in a unique combination, reassuring the new religion of Christianity of a worldwide acceptance.

Indeed, I agree on this with Russell, and not with Jones, seeing Apostle Paul as all three of these: a mystic, a theologian and a philosopher. As a philosopher, his vision covers a broad spectrum of areas of traditional philosophical inquiry, and had someone had the ingenuity to separate Paul’s philosophy from his theology, to make its consideration and the inevitable criticism of it permissible for an extra-theological discussion, it could be great fun… Perhaps in a few years, if I have the time to bring all my other projects in this book to a satisfactory condition, I could do it myself? After all, there is no disrespect in criticizing Paul’s detached philosophy. Paraphrasing one of my old apte dictums, if his philosophy had been impeccable, his theology would have become superfluous, and with it, perhaps, all particularized religions?..