Personal revelation is out of favor in
orthodox Christian circles—that’s orthodox with a little ‘o’, meaning
mainstream. We have a closed canon, a
closed list of books of Scripture we consider to be authoritative, even though
it’s a different list than most
Christians have, and although we admit of
the possibility of it, I don’t know of anybody in recent times whose personal
visions or revelations have been incorporated into mainstream Christianity,
with the possible exception of Joseph Smith, who was visited by Jesus and
Elijah and Moses—as well as assorted apostles, over the years—in the New York
woods. And even though his religion is
the only one that is uniquely American, as critic Harold Bloom has pointed out,
and even though Latter Day Saint-ers vehemently argue that it is, in fact, a
form of Christianity, Christians point to Smith’s “revelations” with derision
and scorn, perhaps ending with the question “wonder what he was smoking?”
Most latter-day personal revelations haven’t
been nearly so successful. They’ve
resulted in—at best—small sects. For
example, in 1744 Emanuel Swedenborg had a vision in which the Lord opened his
eyes, and from then on, he could freely visit heaven and hell, hob-nob with
angels and demons, and do all kinds of other cool things. The Swedenborgian church based on his
writings still exists—my Oregon dentist was a Swedenborgian, much to his
Lutheran-minister father’s disgust—but they’ve never been very big. Contrast this to Christianity which—a strong
argument can be made—is based as a
religion on Paul’s revelation described in this passage. Certainly, Christianity wouldn’t have the
same shape if Paul hadn’t had that revelation, which Luke described as
happening on the Damascus Road, although Paul himself never said so. He just said—and we just read it—that the gospel
is not from a human source, nor was he taught it, but that he received it
through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
And you know what the Greek word for revelation is, don’t you? It’s apocalypse . . . Paul did not get the
gospel from a human source, nor was taught it, but he received it through an
apocalypse of Jesus Christ.
And what an apocalypse that must have been
. . . maybe Luke was right, maybe the Lord did
knock him off his mule and blind him on that ol’ Damascus road . . . it surely
must have taken a whole lot of shakin’ to move Paul who was by his own account
an über-Jew, violently trying to
destroy the church, persecuting it beyond measure . . . and though he may not
have been using violence—the New American Standard translation’s “beyond
measure” is another way of putting it—he paints a picture of a very dedicated
defender of the tradition, advanced in Judaism beyond many of his
contemporaries. And so it must have been
something quite dramatic to make Paul mend his ways, something perhaps quite
outside normal experience, whether he was knocked off his donkey or not . . .
And there’s a reason he’s being so
defensive about all of this, he was likely under attack by the shadowy false
teachers he’s writing to warn the Galatians about, they might have been saying
“Ol’ Paul, now, he’s not a real
apostle, he didn’t come by his revelation, his apocalypse, first hand, he had some coaching, some teaching . . . lookit—those pillars of the church up
there in Jerusalem, James and Peter and John, gave him these revelations, he doesn’t have direct apostolic
authority, he didn’t get it directly from the Lord” and Paul is saying
“No. The proclamation, the version of
the Gospel that I’m preaching came by
direct revelation from our Lord Jesus Christ, even though I did go up to visit Cephas (also known as
Peter) and James the brother of our Lord . . .”
And then he’s off to the races, detailing his travels to the regions of
Syria and Cilicia, telling the Galatians—and us—that the Judean churches didn’t
know him by sight, only hearing it said that the one who formerly was
persecuting them is now preaching the
faith, and that they glorified God because of him.
And it’s a very valuable passage from an
autobiographical point of view, because it’s one of the only places we get his
biography from him, not filtered
through tradition and Luke’s memories thirty years later in Acts, but for
sermonic materiél it would seem to be
lacking, except for the fact that Paul infused everything he wrote with
theological depth . . . in particular, when Paul speaks of his own experiences,
it’s to illustrate some larger truth about the Gospel, and here it’s no
exception. He says he was advanced in
Judaism, and that word “Judaism” is very rare in the Greek of the period, and
it occurs nowhere else in the New Testament but here, so it carries a special
connotation, as one that is immersed in the traditions, who is playing the game
by the traditional rules, who is living a good life by the best standards of
his people.
I'm
reading a book at the moment called “Breakfast with Buddha,” about a guy named
Otto who’s the ultimate, successful family man.
He’s got a well-paying job, two typical adolescent kids, and a strong,
loving wife. He is a decent man who goes
to Cape Cod with his family a couple of weeks a year, does charity work on the
side, is tolerant of others, and gives back to the community. Like Paul, he lives by the rules of his day,
in his case the middle-class rules upon which much of our commerce turns.
Problem
is, there’s a nagging hole in his middle, a nagging emptiness he doesn't know how
to fill. He's a Christian, he believes
in God and all that, but there's something . . . missing. And I wonder if Paul felt like that, I wonder
if he ever felt like there was more than just the rules, more than just leading
a good life? Otto feels that way, but doesn’t
know what to do about it, until his sister—flaky purveyor of “alternate spirituality,
of everything he derisively finds antithetical to the “responsible” life he's built—until
his sister cons him into a cross-country trip with a robe-wearing, Buddhist-ish
spiritual master named Volya Rinpoche—Volya being his given name, Rinpoche his
title. And as they drive from New York
City to North Dakota, Otto undergoes a conversion, of sorts, but not from
Christianity to Buddhism, or Hinduism, or whatever the Rinpoche is, but something
else . . .
And
as Paul receives his apocalypse, he isn't converted from one faith to another, from
Judaism to Christianity either. As far
as we know, he continued to be a Pharisee until the end of his days. But if it wasn't a conversion—at least in the
sense of a full change-over, an abandonment of one way of believing in favor of
another, what was it?
Well,
we know he quit persecuting Christians, and he developed—or had revealed to
him—the notion that we are saved by grace through faith Christ, but is that
all? Is it just a change in philosophy,
a change in intellectual belief, a new set of conclusions? Anybody who's tried to wade though Romans, for
instance, know it is full of closely-reasoned, logical arguments. Was his conversion no more than an assent to
a new set of precepts?
There's
a clue, I think, in his prose. When he says
“God was pleased to reveal his Son to me,” the whole subject of the sentence
changes . . . before it was I violently persecuted, I was advanced in Judaism, I
was zealous for the traditions, I, I, I.
Then, bam! All of a sudden, it’s
God—God set him apart before he was
born, God called him through his
grace, God was pleased to reveal . .
. The shift in emphasis from Paul’s agency, Paul’s actions to those of God is
striking. Before the statement of
revelation, it was all Paul; after, it is nothing but God.
In
“Breakfast with Buddha,” Otto doesn't suddenly change his lifestyle—as far as
we know he returns to his job in New York publishing and his house in the
‘burbs. What has changed—just a little, it's not an apocalypse like for Paul—is
his view of the world and his place in it.
He is no longer quite so much in the center, he doesn't feel the need to
assert his own opinion, to constantly argue any more. He’s learned to take life as it comes and to
value things other than his own, contented life. Although he still values that as well. Like Paul, what he undergoes is not so much a
conversion as a transformation.
Philosopher
Ken Wilber studies the evolution of consciousness, among other things, and he
views it as a series of transformative steps.
And he notes that at each of these steps, the characteristics of the
former stage are not all done away with but are included at that higher
stage. He calls this principle
“transcend and include,” and I think that's what's going on with the fictional
Otto and, most certainly, the Apostle Paul.
Otto didn't quit being a Christian, didn't give up his comfortable life
style, but he viewed it all very differently, from a very different place. Paul went from self-centered I-I-I to a God-centered
way of looking at the world. He
certainly didn't abandon his old ways, but transcended and included his
Pharisitical leanings. In fact, it can
be argued that he could be as intolerant, at times, of challenges to his way of
viewing the Gospel as he was to his way of viewing Judaism.
Whatever
the case, Jesus had a metaphor for this transformation, didn't he? He likened it to losing one’s life: “whoever
loses their life for my sake shall save it.”
He’s speaking of a losing of self, a de-centering from one’s ego to a
re-centering with God in the center. It
happens to Paul in a revelation, in an apocalypse, all of a sudden, but many
times it is gradual, as we deepen in our life of prayer and meditation. It all becomes less and less about “I” and more
and more about the spirit and the kingdom, which is in each and every one of
us. Amen.
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