The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle

by Albert Schweitzer, William Montgomery (Translator), Jaroslav Pelikan (Introduction)

Continues religious view of Quest for Historical Jesus. Immediately after the Gospels, the New Testament takes up the history of the early Christian Church, describing the works of the twelve disciples, and introducing Paul, the man whose influence on the history of Christianity is beyond calculation. Teacher, preacher, conciliator, diplomat, theologian, rule giver, consoler, and martyr, his life and writings became foundations for Christianity. Paul inspired a vast, serious, and intelligent literature that seeks to recapture his meaning, his thinking, and his purpose. In his letters to early Christian communities, Paul gave much practical advice about organization and orthodoxy. These treated the early Christian communities as something more than a group of people who believed in the same they were people bound together by a common spirit unknown before. The significance of that common spirit occupied the greatest of Christian theologians from Athanasius and Augustine through Luther and Calvin. In The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle Albert Schweitzer goes against Luther and the Protestant tradition to look at what Paul actually writes in the Epistles to the Romans and an emphasis upon the personal experience of the believer with the divine. Paul's mysticism was not like the mysticism elsewhere described as a soul being at one with God. In the mysticism he felt and encouraged, there is no loss of self but an enriching of it; no erasure of time or place but a comprehension of how time and place fit within the eternal. Schweitzer writes that Paul's mysticism is especially profound, liberating, and precise. Typical of Schweitzer, he introduces readers to his point of view at once, then describes in detail how he came to it, its scholarly antecedents, what its implications are, what objections have been raised, and why all of this matters. To students of the New Testament, this book opens up Paul by presenting him as offering an entirely new kind of mysticism, necessarily and exclusively Christian. "There is at least one other point that Albert Schweitzer scores here . . . The hard-won recognition that divine authority and human freedom ultimately cannot be in conflict must never be taken for granted, and the irony that the thought of Paul has repeatedly been invoked to undo that recognition truly does make this insight one of 'the permanent elements.'"―from the Introduction

Genres: Religion, Christianity, Theology, Christian, Philosophy

440 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1956

About the author

Albert Schweitzer, M.D., OM, was an Alsatian theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician. He was born in Kaisersberg in Alsace-Lorraine, a Germanophone region which the German Empire returned to France after World War I. Schweitzer challenged both the secular view of historical Jesus current at his time and the traditional Christian view, depicting a Jesus who expected the imminent end of the world. He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize in 1953 for his philosophy of "reverence for life", expressed in many ways, but most famously in founding and sustaining the Lambaréné Hospital in Gabon, west central Africa.

Reviews

[Douglas Mccall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! I think to many people are afraid of the word 'mysticism' in religion, in any form, but with the understanding of what it means to paul, brings a new understanding of the scriptures and to bring even other things into light. I really liked the last few chapters of the book that gave me more understanding of the flow of the word, with paul and peter. Thanks, would recommend this book for a good read in christianity.

[Travis Wise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nobel Peace Prizer; Sam Elliot lookalike; Lutheran with the gumption to dislodge justification from the center of Pauline theology—what’s not to like? Well… it’s dated. I’m no chronosnob, but in some fields—theology being one—with their incessant battling, the field changes fast; and if you spend your time arguing with the crowd, it changes faster. (Although, published in 1931, it’s not sooo old in a field that goes back to Jesus). My lack of love may be a me problem, or plausibly, something lost in translation. But two thumbs here: prophetic in locating the center of Paul as participation “in Christ.”