Reggie, if interesting… I read this article and personally found it atrocious scholarship. I have trouble with perspectives that are uncharitable and set out to portray their case in the worst possible light. They are taking Paul’s words and twisting them ridiculously to make it sound like he had a bizarre worldview. Take one example…
Paul understood the crucifixion as a cosmic event, whatever terrestrial story may have underlain it. In 1 Cor. 2:8, he explains that the Lord of glory was crucified by “the archons of this age ( aeon )” out of ignorance because they did not understand the secret wisdom ( sophia ) of God (Lewis, pp. 55ff).
Um, ok. And I believe that too. So does pretty much every Christian. But they want to phrase it to make it sound bizarre. Yes, Crucifixion happened in one time and place and absolutely has cosmic implications. And yes, he was crucified by Roman magistrates who didn’t know the secret plan of God. I believe every bit of that. Is this somehow noteworthy? But they are going to use the craziest sounding words and interpretation to make the most innocent or innocuous statement sound like he was peddling some radical view. One more example…
Van Kooten notes that ‘throne’ was also a technical term in astronomy for the powers exerted by the planets (Van Kooten, p. 122).¹⁵ All these terms together stand for the entire cosmos.
This is either borderline academically dishonest or just plain stupid. “Throne”, surprisingly enough, is also the name of a kind of chair that sometimes kings and emperors would sit on (who knew?) …let’s ignore the context where Paul was talking about rulers and authorities… surely “throne” here must mean “planets”!!
I think Paul would be very, very surprised to discover that he believed such things. I read more but their own arguments just got more and more bizarre.
This is one of those exercises where scholars went to the Bible not to glean from it an honest understanding of what said author believed, but they knew what they wanted to find and used every linguistic manipulation to put into Paul’s mouth all sorts of odd archaic sounding beliefs.
I can’t roll my eyes enough to convey how I think of this argument…
This not to say there isn’t a place for legitimate questions of what Paul’s view of the cosmos was, and how it influenced his writings… but the way this article approaches things is just ridiculously over the top. Almost something out of Babylon Bee