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The Incarnation according to St. Paul a. St. Paul's Apprenticeship To turn from the mind ofJohn to the mind of Paul is to go through a moving, creative, spiritual and intellectual experience. John, a deeply religious young man, first appears as a disciple of John the Baptist, and is persuaded by John's preaching that is the . After three years with Jesus he grows into the status of being Christ's most trusted disciple, almost his confidante. He sits close to him at that Last Supper to hear all those final discourses. He stands by Jesus at the Cross, where Jesus commits his mother to his care after his death. He is the first disciple at the empty tomb, "he saw and be• lieved," a witness of the Ascension and final commission. The disciple "whom Jesus loved" tells the story of that divine love in his Gospel, as he experienced it, and what it means for all mankind. How different the apprenticeship of Paul! his convictions as a Jewish scholar brought him into violent rebellious opposition. While engaged on what were murderous activities (e.g. the stoning of Stephen), he was confronted by a blinding vision of the risen Christ to be asked the simple question why was he persecuting Christ. Why? The result of that conversion produced a doctrine of Christ for the Graeco-Roman world and for itself - a striking complement to St. John's in• terpretation. Yet in that difference is created a strikingly penetrative, evangelical interpretation of 's purpose in Christ. In his shattering, devastating and destructive conversion, he was given the task, which only he as a learned Pharisee and Rabbi could do, of persuading Juda• ism that they had mistaken God's temporary plan for Judaism, i.e. land, law, ethnic principles, as the final purpose of God. God's final purpose was disclosed in Christ, and that was Jewry's mission for the world. This mission was given to Paul. 84 Understanding the Incarnation

b. St. Paul's Interpretation of Christ Paul's dramatic experience convinced him that he had been seized by God, seized by God for God's purposes. He perceived that in the Res• urrection God had vindicated Jesus as God's Messiah (Christ). Paul concluded that such divine action meant that Jesus was God in action: "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself' (2 Cor 5 .19). What Jesus did on the Cross is something only God could do. Before the Incarnation Christ was "in the form of God," but did not regard his equality with God to be used to his advantage but only to reveal more fully the true character of God by his self-abnegation, incarna• tion, death (Phil 2.6-8, 9-11). The resurrection is God's own affirmation that such love is God's own nature, as Christ showed, even shared with God. True, there is only one God, but in Christ he shared the deeper of his true nature. Such position is not the aban• donment of (as Jews and Muslims see it), but rather a tender enrichment, an advanced definition of monotheism, a Christ• shaped monotheism. Paul relates the activity of God in creation to his activity in the re• creation of man through Christ (1 Cor 8.6; Col 1.15-20). He places Jesus alongside the Father in what are Jewish statements of monothe• ism over against the polytheistic views of paganism. Paul is not developing some kind ofJesus cult; he retains his Jewish monotheism. It is a kind of heightened monotheism, monotheism fortified, a Chris• tocentric monotheism, highlighting the love of God. It was from this theology that he derived his doctrine of the Holy Spirit, at work in men and women to fulfil God's purpose in history, the giving of true life in Christ (Rom 8.1-11; 2 Cor 3.3; 6.12-18). This at once leads into his new vision of the nature and role of the people of God, the Church, to fulfil and complete Christ's ministry in the world, the whole world. To see St Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians as an encyclical to the whole church, even to the world, rather than a letter to a particular church, suggests very profound truths to the reader; it elevates his mind to a higher level of insight. It is not dissimilar from reading Christ's words to a blind man or a dumb man. He addresses us in our blindness, in our incapacity to express ourselves. In the presence of Christ I am but a blind man begging for sight, a dumb man begging for speech.

c. St. Paul Addresses the Universal Need Paul immediately begins by declaring his authority to write as an apos• tle of Jesus Christ, and by the will of God, and writes to the "faithful