Last thougths about the nickname affair.
I wonder if it's
possible to see links between the name ''Paul'' and the more generic Gnostic myth.
But then I realized one thing, thanks this comment of Stuart Waugh:
The Marcionite depiction of Paul is always authoritative, never passive, never delegating, never recognizing any equals.All self-deprecation and belittling are from later Catholic strata, including that statement about Paul being an "abortion." In contrast we have a presentation in the Marcionite text of divinely sanctioned birth of Paul in Galatians 1:15-16 which fits the Marcionite view of this special Apostle.
"When it pleased God, who separated (ἀφορίσας) me from my mothers womb, to reveal his son in me that I might preach him among the gentiles, I did not immediately consult flesh and blood."
Paul's birth is one so special God separates (ἀφορίσας) him from other men for a special notice, lofty position. This is the same word used in Romans 1:1 (ἀφωρισμένος) by the redactor to announce Paul's now Catholic mission (see also Acts 13:2). It shows an importance of the mission. But for Marcion that importance is from birth.
Hardly an abortion, and hardly the least of the Apostles, which we see in Galatians 2:6.
(source:
http://sgwau2cbeginnings.blogspot.com/2 ... 9472567524 )
According to marcionite theology, the human people are product of Demiurg, body
& spirit. Nothing is from Verus Deus.
While for Gnostics in general, only the Spirit, at least for pneumatic people, has a divine origin.
The marcionite are non Gnostics - it's often said - insofar they regarded the true God totally distant from this world and from his inhabitants.
but with one exception:
PAUL.
Assuming the Stuart's words above, it's possible to find an explanation for the invention of name Paul.
For Marcion,
the man called 'Paul' is the only man who has within himself the divine spark of the Son, in a Gnostic manner.
Therefore:
Why the Marcionites called ''Paul'' their hero, if he was not for them the last of the apostles nor the weak and sick physically (in apparent contradiction to all I say in this thread)?
Now I can realize partially the answer.
''Paul'' alludes to the divine spark that has been embedded in the body of the man called Paul.
The mission of the divine spark is to return to its divine source, leaving the body in which it was trapped since birth of that body.
Under this light, are more true these words of Dr. Detering:
Moreover, that the name Paul could already be conceived in a figurative sense by the writer of the Pauline letters can be clearly seen in 1 Cor 15:9, where “Paul” speaks of himself as the last and the smallest, like a “miscarriage” as it were. B. Bauer correctly commented about this: “He is the last, the unexpected, the conclusion, the dear nestling. Even his Latin name, Paul, expresses smallness, which stands in contrast to the majesty to which he is elevated by grace in the preceding passages of the letter.”
Bauer rightly calls attention to the theological significance in the concept of smallness. In fact, beyond Bauer, who did not yet have this connection in view, one must consider that precisely for the Marcionites—and obviously already for the Simonians as well, to whom this goes back—the word “Paul” expressed everything that constituted the core of their theology and for which the “letters of Paul” provide continuous testimony. Where is the freely occurring, unannounced and unconditioned, election by grace better illustrated than precisely by the inferior, the incomplete, by a child, by a small one?
(
The Falsified Paul, p.146-147)
The marcionites betray their gnostic origin (or sincretism)
limiting to only the man called Paul the gnostic dualism between body and spirit.
Note that Paul is not a Jew for marcionites.
Then I can see the separationism of Cerinthus or the adoptionism in Mark as the natural reaction to marcionite partial deification of Paul.
To have the 'Son in me' is not more Paul, but the man Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, who is called Christ.
