Monday, October 27, 2008

Paul and the Doctrine of Atonement

Have you ever thought you would like to travel backward in time and experience some particular event or happening from the past?

I can think of several that would interest me…. Religiously speaking, I think I would like to go back to the day Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth was received by that little group of followers. We really don’t know how little or big the group was. It could have been six people or it could have been sixty. We just don’t know.

The year was somewhere around 56AD.On that day, the people gathered either in the synagogue or perhaps someone’s home, or in some public place to have one of their number read this letter, just received, from this self-proclaimed itinerant preacher named Paul.

I have stood in the ruins of those homes in Corinth. I have walked up the steps of the synagogue there. I stood in the public meeting place and listened to part of the letter from Paul being read, ….but this was in 2005.

The church at Corinth was having problems. Apparently discipline problems among its members. Paul was writing to attempt to get them to ‘straighten up’.

I’ll not read the entire letter, just one sentence from chapter five where he writes, “For our Passover feast is ready, now that Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.”

Had I been there, that day in 56AD, I think I would have spoken up at that point and said to the reader…”Wait, wait… read that part again, please.”

“For our Passover feast is ready, now that Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.”

I may have listened in silence to the rest of the letter, but then I would have hurried to my home and searched for a piece of parchment and I would have penned a letter to be carried back to Paul (he had written from Ephesus).

I would have written something like;

“Dear Sir….We just finished the reading of your letter. Thank you for your concern for the people of this area. It is very kind of you. However, I have one question for you…. By what authority have you called this man Jesus, ‘our Passover lamb’? ….Where did you come by the idea that he was sacrificed for us?”

You see, on those simple statements, hinges the entire church doctrine of Atonement and Salvation. …Paul said it, the people accepted it, apparently without question, and for the ensuing two thousand years, it has dominated the doctrine of the Christian church ….

By what authority?… what special knowledge?…. what evidence?

The answers, of course, are …None …..none …..and none !…. No authority,… no special knowledge,… and no evidence.

Where could Paul have gotten such a story? Did he make it up? Did he have a dream? Did this thought come to him through meditation/prayer? Did he base it on his interpretation of some portion of ancient scripture? We are not given a clear indication of any of these. Yet the church has followed this vague line of self delusional thinking ever since.

I wish I could have had the opportunity to query Paul about that statement and the other similar statements he made to the Galatians, the Thessalonians, the Romans, the Ephesians and others.

Perhaps Paul, knowing that many nations and many religions of that era had deemed certain of their heroes ‘Savior’, it would be quite alright for him to promote Jesus to the same status. If he could get people to believe such a thing it would certainly strengthen his cause as well.

Paul wrote nothing of the teachings of Jesus, only that he died for the salvation of all humankind.

By what authority did he declare these things to be true?….By what special knowledge?…. What evidence?

Unfortunately the answers seem to be,…None…. None…. and none.


Copyright © Barry E Blood 2008

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree with you 100%. As a 78 year old man I look backwards to those years of feeling guilty. At the age of 58 I started taking Prozac and so began growing my feelings of self worth.

ken Forbes