Irish1975 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 25, 2021 11:39 am
Trying to find the “center” or “core” of Pauline thought is about as successful as the quest for the HJ. I am not denying the presence or even the dominance of the scripture-fulfillment theme in the epistles. I just don’t think everything can be reduced to that, because there are fundamentally heterogeneous elements in “Paul.” But you are not really addressing the distinctiveness of the passages on the hidden mystery, or taking account of the absence of midrashic/prophetic conceits in these texts, as noted in my previous post.
I was thinking back to the point where I entered the discussion where I was responding to Turmel's point about a gloss or interpolation making a muck of an original Pauline letter. I was taking the part of Turmel when he argues his case for identifying an original layer of "real Paul" beneath the Marcionite and Catholic additions. I find some of Turmel's reconstructions questionable and am not going to bet my house of T being right here, but I thought identifying the words of Paul to make sense of a letter that otherwise reads as contradictory nonsense was a reasonable step in this case. Maybe we both have some reservations about the totality of Turmel's case.
Apologies for overlooking the other passages you note as addressing the mystery. Some of the books you cite are not considered authentic Paulines, but that's only removing the question to a step back.
Different interpretations of Ephesians, for instance, are possible. "Hidden in God" can be read as applying to the deeper meanings of all Scriptures. (It appears in some sources, the Jews actually saw the Scriptures as an embodiment of God, but this view is not necessary for the point I am making.) The deeper meaning of Scriptures was hidden in God's thoughts and he chose to reveal that meaning of the scriptures at a certain time to key persons like Paul. So I don't think there is necessarily a contradictory meaning here.
In the earlier verses of Ephesians 3 we read that the mystery that was hidden is that gentiles will be made one with Israel -- verse 6. I would have thought that that mystery is elsewhere written in Paul's letters (and Ephesians, as you point out, is referring readers to other letters) as a revelation of the meaning of God's promise to Abraham. All nations are to be blessed in the seed is, presumably by God's interpretative revelation to him, an anouncement that gentiles will be united by the new seed that was represented by the former child of promise, Isaac.
I'm only putting this out there as an alternative to Turmel's point about a particular contradictory mess in a passage in Paul. It's just another way of reading the passage he finds problematic.