Mystically Present

I find this section more straightforward.

It is spiritual experience, or in my terms spiritualization of and mystical phenomena, in regards to the absentee messianic figure in my terms, in Paul’s terms, the real and actually present Messiah, through Spiritual Experience.

Every Word is This Actually

Albert Schweizer wrote a book a hundred years ago called “Mysticism of the Apostle Paul” which says it all. It works through Paul's writing and shows how every phrase is a mystical frame of thought if not an actual experience.

This is all very significant because Paul is not traditionally considered a mystical thinker. He is typically perceived as a theological thinker, or a founder of a religion. But this shows that he was very much an apocalyptic minded mystical mystic through and through. 

For example, phrases like - “being a new creation in Christ”, “I was crucified with Christ”, “to be found in Christ”, “one body in Christ”, “to be one with Christ”, “the Spirit of Christ is in you”, “to gain Christ”, “participate with/in Christ”...

And deeper things -  “to be sons of G-d through Christ”, and they are “adopted sons”, and sons of G-d because his spirit is in them, and they are then also heirs to the inheritance of G-d, etc. And more importantly - small subtle phrases, such as - in Christ, with Christ, by Christ, through Christ…

In other words, to read Paul as speaking of spiritual experience, from which he produces theological ideas and doctrine perhaps.

It’s a whole mindset. He is also very real about the rituals, they are mystically concrete - the communion wine and bread, marriage and other matters, mean that there is an imminent legal-spiritual connection there.

Especially baptism, immersion in water, in the name of, means you are actually one in him and the others. Dying and being resurrected in Christ. These are real events, mystical-realism.

Schweizer asserts that Paul was not so influenced from Hellenistic mysticism and philosophy, but rather Jewish apocalyptic thinking.

This notion fits with the line of assumptions mentioned previously - Paul was a Jewish mystical and post-rabbinic messianic apocalyptic thinker and activist... 

This is also a logic that works into Taubes’ rift with Scholem, over the question of Jewish versus Christian messianism, whether the one is political and the other spiritual in orientation:

Taubes said that divide doesn’t work, not in the case of Sabbatians and Hasidism for example, and also in early Christianity - both are political and spiritual. And the spiritual expression of messianism is not necessarily a Christian or foreign influence, but rather, an organic development.

Instead of seeing the Hasidic phenomena as a step away from the price of political messianism, it was rather a natural religious development, from internal processes, in the same way:

So was Christianity, the Messiah was absent, and the political redemption did not manifest, so the political theology was still there, but it naturally took a more spiritualistic form, as long as the believers continued to believe, and as long as their Messiah did not fulfill the whole redemptive picture…

Suffering and death are also mystical realistic things. Suffering is death, in part, in the mystical experience. And it is the death of Christ, participating in it, by these sufferings. And being in the apocalypse is part of it as well. They are apocalyptic community, called out, literally in Greek - the Ekklessia, they are the righteous in the book of the prophet Daniel, who are persecuted. 

The apocalyptic called-out community is one by immersion and suffering one in Christ in his death and also his resurrection - the resurrection power, which is all the spiritual gifts, spiritual power, charismata - healing, prophesying, etc.

This is a whole additional department of mystical experience that is part and parcel of the paradoxical messianic apocalyptic realism of Paul.

Paul draws upon scriptures of the prophets - Joel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and more - to say that the messianic redemption entails spiritual giftings, spiritual knowledge… and they are the ‘firstfruits’ of that.

Firstfruits is a messianic original phrase here, in the paradox, because they are manifesting bits of the redemption, mystically, the mystical is ‘firstfruits’ of the messianic redemption, which is the resurrection…

The event of broad resurrection, an element of the messianic redemption in the apocalypse, is expected but not manifested - so Paul says, it has not manifested yet, but the beginning of it has manifested, in us, mystically, spiritual phenomena is exactly that. He ties in the variety of mystical experiences to their situation!

In this context think of Paul’s listing of spiritual fruits and spiritual giftings. 

Also in context, note the outer body experience of Paul, described in 2 letter to the Corinthians, to the garden or to paradise, which is a matter of status. 

Adopted Sonship

Finally, the concept of sonship. This is a peak of Paul’s mystical thinking. Christ is the son. They have the spirit of the son. The spiritual experiences are evidence of the son in them, and that they are sons.

They are adopted sons, the father is G-d and also Abraham, the father of the people of Israel. They are adopted sons to the heritage of Abraham. And the heritage itself is the sonship, not just sonship for the heritage, but the sonship is the heritage. If one has the heritage, then evidently he is a son.

This fits with the idea of Christ as THE son, so they have the son in them, by which they also can say “Father” to G-d. One receives that ability by being a son, and if one has that ability then evidently he is a son.

The peak of Paul’s writing mystically and in regards to sonship is in Romans, naturally, in chapter 8, in the broader context of laying out the history of salvation, and this eschatological peak of salvation reaching the nations, they, as other sons, are mystical agents, through them G-d works amongst mankind, in this world - all things come together, leading to messianic redemption.

All these things are tied together as a whole mindset, that is messianic and paradoxical and apocalyptic and mystical.

Circling back to Scholem and Taubes is the point that spiritualization or mystical thinking and lifestyle and phenomena are natural organic authentic progression of messianism. In early Christianity as in Sabbatianism and Hasidism.