The following is an excerpt from an article by Dr. Ian Elmer on the mission of St. Paul. The full article can be accessed here: http://catholica.com.au/ianstake1/072_it_160808.php
Paul's Christian-Jewish opponents at Galatia and Corinth seem to have made much of Paul's former legalistic zeal, pointing out how he once preached circumcision (Gal 5:11) and persecuted Christians as apostates (Gal 1:13; 1 Cor 15:9). Paul is hard-pressed to defend his conversion to Law-free Christianity; it was, after all, a remarkable redirection in his faith journey, a complete change of mind (metanoia). Just to demonstrate how far Paul had travelled since his early Law-observant days is evident in his comment to the Philippians (3:8) that he now considered his former legalism as "skubalon", a Greek vulgarity that is best translated as "dung", or better, "crap" (as it is translated in the recent Scholars Version of the New Testament).
Live by "the Spirit" not "the letter of the Law"…
Calvin Roetzel (1999: 45) argues that "Paul's allusion to his considerable achievements in law observance as 'dung' (Phil 3:8) was less a repudiation of Jewish observance than a revelation of it in the light of Christ".
It is not that Paul ceased to be proud of his Judean heritage and his former zealous Law-observance, but that his conversion rendered such legalism null-and-void. In Galatians (3:24) he speaks of the purpose of the Law as a "disciplinarian" or "child-minder" that guides our first faltering steps in living a life of faith; but "now that faith [in Christ] has come we are no longer subject to the disciplinarian" (3:25). If we truly want to embrace the Christ life, Paul argues, we must live by the "Spirit" and not the letter of the Law, for legalism and the mature spiritual life are incompatible (Gal 5:18). ("But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.")
Legalism has always been the greatest temptation in the history of Christianity. The Pauline letters in particular testify to Paul's problems with such legalists. By the standards of his fellow Judeans, Paul's conversion to Law-free Christianity meant that he became apostate. He placed himself beyond the boundary fence marking "good" Jew from "bad" Jew; or, more accurately in Paul's case, the boundary between "ethnic" Jew and "uncircumcised" Gentile. In a very real sense the whole of the New Testament grew out of this struggle to justify the "criminal" actions of those founders of Christianity, like Paul and the Hellenists, who chose to depart from the legalistic faith of their childhood.
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I don't know how anyone can read the Epistles of Paul and not understand that one of his main points was that life in Christ transcended the law. He repeatedly speaks to the message that life in the Spirit leads to love and that love leads to leading a life which does not transgress on the rights of others, nor abuse of the self. Following the Spirit makes the law null and void.
Paul is talking about a metanoia or a complete reordering of one's life. This reordering involves leaving the rules and regulations behind and integrating ones psyche around the Spirit and the law of love. It involves trust in the internal promptings from inside one's self, and it takes the ability to discern true promptings from those which are ego driven. Discernment first involves determining if a given prompt is towards love and life, or not. It's really pretty simple. It doesn't need a catechism or a book of canon law. While it helps to have a spiritual advisor, discernment doesn't need a magically ordained priest. Living in the Life of Christ takes self honesty and trust in the process. It's not rocket science, but it is counter cultural and therefor very difficult.
It didn't take very long for the institutional church to revert back to the law mentality. Following Paul's concept of Church didn't call for a full blown hierarchy and a magical clerical caste and this ran counter to the law observant Jerusalem branch of the church. Paul may be accorded equal status with Peter, but no question the Petrine branch suppressed the best of the Pauline branch.
Paul's Christian-Jewish opponents at Galatia and Corinth seem to have made much of Paul's former legalistic zeal, pointing out how he once preached circumcision (Gal 5:11) and persecuted Christians as apostates (Gal 1:13; 1 Cor 15:9). Paul is hard-pressed to defend his conversion to Law-free Christianity; it was, after all, a remarkable redirection in his faith journey, a complete change of mind (metanoia). Just to demonstrate how far Paul had travelled since his early Law-observant days is evident in his comment to the Philippians (3:8) that he now considered his former legalism as "skubalon", a Greek vulgarity that is best translated as "dung", or better, "crap" (as it is translated in the recent Scholars Version of the New Testament).
Live by "the Spirit" not "the letter of the Law"…
Calvin Roetzel (1999: 45) argues that "Paul's allusion to his considerable achievements in law observance as 'dung' (Phil 3:8) was less a repudiation of Jewish observance than a revelation of it in the light of Christ".
It is not that Paul ceased to be proud of his Judean heritage and his former zealous Law-observance, but that his conversion rendered such legalism null-and-void. In Galatians (3:24) he speaks of the purpose of the Law as a "disciplinarian" or "child-minder" that guides our first faltering steps in living a life of faith; but "now that faith [in Christ] has come we are no longer subject to the disciplinarian" (3:25). If we truly want to embrace the Christ life, Paul argues, we must live by the "Spirit" and not the letter of the Law, for legalism and the mature spiritual life are incompatible (Gal 5:18). ("But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law.")
Legalism has always been the greatest temptation in the history of Christianity. The Pauline letters in particular testify to Paul's problems with such legalists. By the standards of his fellow Judeans, Paul's conversion to Law-free Christianity meant that he became apostate. He placed himself beyond the boundary fence marking "good" Jew from "bad" Jew; or, more accurately in Paul's case, the boundary between "ethnic" Jew and "uncircumcised" Gentile. In a very real sense the whole of the New Testament grew out of this struggle to justify the "criminal" actions of those founders of Christianity, like Paul and the Hellenists, who chose to depart from the legalistic faith of their childhood.
*****************************************************************
I don't know how anyone can read the Epistles of Paul and not understand that one of his main points was that life in Christ transcended the law. He repeatedly speaks to the message that life in the Spirit leads to love and that love leads to leading a life which does not transgress on the rights of others, nor abuse of the self. Following the Spirit makes the law null and void.
Paul is talking about a metanoia or a complete reordering of one's life. This reordering involves leaving the rules and regulations behind and integrating ones psyche around the Spirit and the law of love. It involves trust in the internal promptings from inside one's self, and it takes the ability to discern true promptings from those which are ego driven. Discernment first involves determining if a given prompt is towards love and life, or not. It's really pretty simple. It doesn't need a catechism or a book of canon law. While it helps to have a spiritual advisor, discernment doesn't need a magically ordained priest. Living in the Life of Christ takes self honesty and trust in the process. It's not rocket science, but it is counter cultural and therefor very difficult.
It didn't take very long for the institutional church to revert back to the law mentality. Following Paul's concept of Church didn't call for a full blown hierarchy and a magical clerical caste and this ran counter to the law observant Jerusalem branch of the church. Paul may be accorded equal status with Peter, but no question the Petrine branch suppressed the best of the Pauline branch.
Losing this battle was probably inevitable, but it was a big loss for the concept of a mature Christian spirituality. Obedience trumps trust and love.
I suspect this is one of the reasons my own spiritual path has involved a great deal of Native American experience. Native spirituality isn't about laws or obedience as much as it's about a spiritual quest for personal meaning and spiritual connection. The inner dimensional aspects of spirituality are given far more importance. In some respects it's a different spiritual universe. Catholics talk about the communion of saints and angels, while Natives communicate with their version. And Native American spirituality tests your connections.
One of the tests is to actually find given ceremonial sites. Natives say that if your meant to be at a given ceremony you will find the way. When my friend Julie and I went to our first Sundance we had terrible directions compounded by being completely unfamiliar with the Pine Ridge reservation. Once we hit the rez we had very little idea of where we were going, but having driven 650 miles to get there, we weren't about to give up. So we trusted to intuition and turned down one of a multitude of gravel roads. Eventually we wound up at a small trading post where we decided to ask directions of the proprietor. After buying a couple of wool ponchos which subsequently turned out to be an absolutely necessary purchase, we found out that on that given weekend there were about a dozen Sundances. However, knowing the name of the Sundance leader made all the difference and we were given precise directions on how to find the Sundance. We had turned on the right gravel road and overshot out target by 3.3 miles. Since the Sundance camp was in a river bottom, it was not visible from the main road. We were meant to be there.
This year a group coming from Seattle was 'inadvertently' given really bad directions from one of the dancers. This dancer asked me to use my cell phone to give her friends the correct directions which I did via voice mail. Her friends showed up six hours late with an incredible story of getting hopelessly lost. They had put 220 miles on their car and found three other sundances before one of the travelers in a fit of frustration asked the dancer's brother if he wouldn't use some of his native juju to find the damn thing. So the brother did and they then found the correct turn. Just as they got through the gate his cell phone went off with my voice mail message. Apparently the message had been 'lost' in cyber space for two full days. Like all of us, this group had to find the place on their own abilities.
There are stories from Navajo country in which would be celebrants were at the right time and place to meet up with the leaders in order to follow them into a ceremonial area only to never see the ceremonial leaders, who were also there at the right time and right place. The problem is they weren't in the same dimension and the would be celebrants weren't meant to be at the ceremony.
Since a number of us are going to this particular Navajo ceremony this fall, we're hoping we'll all be in the same dimension. It's a long drive for us and it would be something of a bummer to find out we weren't meant to be there. But that's the nature of a spiritual quest, the only you thing you can do is start out in a good way, trusting you will wind up in the right place. It's never solely a matter of self selection, it's also a matter of 'other' selection. It's definitely not Catholicism.
I've often wondered if Paul's original communities didn't have the same sort of protective dynamic where if you weren't meant to be at a Christian celebration you didn't find it. I suspect any community that lives that closely under the Spirit would be heavily protected, just as an individual is when they are truly on the path. Paul called obedience to ritual and dogmatic laws 'dung'. He was right in many many ways. This kind of obedience traps one in future think and undercuts the magic of the moment.
In the Spirit, the moment is everything, and if you keep that your focus you not only find the way, you find things you didn't know you needed---like wool ponchos when the weather turns out to be far more like winter than summer and you didn't bring a jacket.
