9/29/06 9:59 AM thoroughly revised draft essay on the logic of the Paulian or gentile Christian and its import with regard to evangelizing Muslims. I begin with a perspective on the present day Christian Church. I will later add the expected imact on the conversion of Muslims and others.

A Fresh Perspective on the State of the Christian Church

There are two conceptions in the Christian faith which, it seems to me, escape the attention of the vast majority of people. The first notion is the equality of God and man in terms of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:22). This means that the individual has no need of any divine provision concerning good and evil, for we can figure it out ourselves.

The second requires stringing together some verses from the reports of the disciples of Jesus into a unity. According to this chain Jesus has all authority in heaven and in earth. He conveys this authority to Peter and to all of his beloved disciples, i.e., whatever they require of humans to be pleasing to them will be also pleasing to God. We then understand further (Acts 15) that these disciples decided to require of the gentile converts to the faith nothing other than their allegiance to Christ. This Edict of Liberation, according to their sacred history, also had the concurrence of the Holy Spirit, thus confirming the truth of Jesus’ delegation of authority to them.

When you put these two ideas together you come up with the notion of the Free Man, the person who takes no external dictation as to what is pleasing to God, and who then freely seeks to implement the spirit of love in all that he does, and thus not out of a spirit of reward and gain. This liberation is the legacy of the disciples. They could have chosen otherwise if they had wished, e.g., forbidding same-sex sex or left hand writing, but they refused to do this. And this is hardly some oversight on part of the Holy Spirit, for that would be demeaning to the confidence that Jesus explicitly placed in these disciples.

In all this we see a revolutionary moment in religious history. For in this liberation there is no need ever again of a divine communication, at least not with regard to what is pleasing to God, for this is now known, in the Christian conception, once for all. [This will be a powerful message for evangelizing of non-Christians.] The gentile Christian (as every person) knows of himself what is good and evil, and possesses a spirit which is focused on good.

At the time of the writers of the gospel there was a particular understanding of the world. They saw the sky as the ceiling of a marvelous dome and they considered all people as naturally heterosexual and right handed. As a result same-sex sex was engaged in by rebellious heterosexuals. And the latin word for left hand is the root of the English word for sinister. All such people were rebellious and defied the law in general, not only the natural law but also the moral law of good. Early and authoritative Christian writers used same-sex sex as an example of this obvious demonic lawlessness and thus as the epitome of evil, something that no Christian would ever want to engage in.

Now thinking is different: the sky exists only in the eye (like a rainbow), and homosexuality has been recognized as a natural fact, just as also the preference 10% of the population expresses for left hand writing. For if it should even be found that both of these proclivities are disorders, nevertheless the Christians cannot condemn practicians for what they do, for they know good and evil and they know that in the eyes the spirit of love of neighbor both practices are morally innocuous. In fact, in a time of straining populations it would even be good to have a large homosexual population in secure unions and reduce these strains without need for abortions and other artificial and unnatural means.

Now we can consideration the development of ideas from the time of this liberating doctrine. The liberation of the gentile resulted then in two congregations of a single church, the Jewish Christian which could be called Peter’s Congregation (and which paid respect of Jewish law) and the Gentile Christian or Paul’s Congregation. The former might also be called “law-abiding” and the latter “lawless” except that the latter would suggest no even the law of love. It is better to call them Peterian Christians and Paulian Christians.

Something now happens. The Peterians die out in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE and leave only the Paulians. But, and this is the strange thing, the Paulians become Peterians in spirit, i.e., adhering to externally promulgated laws, but keep the title of Paulian. And in fact, since there is now only one congregation, the Paulian congregation is the church and the Paulian term as well as that of the Peterians is relegated merely to history. Thus the Paulians have become Peterians and don’t even realize it. How could this happen? The best theory I know is proposed by Immanuel Kant. He thinks that the Paulians were very interested in converting the Jews and in order to make them feel at home in the Christian church, introduced things familiar to them, e.g., priests and regulations and rituals. These were different in details from what the Jews were used to, but they had a familiar form. Then, it would seem, these accouterments stuck even after it was clear that no more Jews were going to become Christians.

The church found two sources for the many laws and regulations that were imposed upon the gentile Christians, scripture and itself. Luther rejected the claim that the church could impose any law and started the movement for the reconstitution of the Paulian congregations, but did not go all the way and the Protestants claimed that the scriptures remained a source of law. And affirmation of creeds remained a critical element of the Protestants and it did the Roman Catholics.

Very recently, in memory of all, the final element of the reconstitution has been put into place, namely that of the American Episcopalians, where the scriptures have been rejected as law book (especially with regard to same-sex sex) and where even allegiance to creeds can be set aside according to the conscience of the members and which are recited together for the sake of a unity in spirit.

Accordingly the Western Christian Church can be understood today in terms of between two extremes. One the one end we have the Peterian congregation called the Roman Catholic Church with its church and scriptural law, and on the other end we have the Paulian congregation called the American Episcopal Church with no law, and arrayed in between we have the Protestants who have no church law but only more or less scriptural law. The only one which is really out of place with respect to the authority of sacred history is the Protestant, for no provision was made for a congregation which would have no church law and only scriptural law. And so it is expected that the Protestants will gradually be incorporated into the Roman Catholic Church or come to reflect the liberty of the American Episcopalian Church (and both of which claim apostolic authority)

The eventual interaction of the two great congregations of the church can be expected to be modeled in line with Romans 14. Here it is made clear that no Christian is to judge whether another is pleasing to God or not, and that both are to cooperate together and to defer to one another and to focus on what is uplifting with respect to the spirit of love and not with regard to what separates them in terms of rules and regulations and doctrines.

The practical import of future evangelizing will be the choice available to new converts to become Peterian or Paulian.