Paul was a mystic. So claimed scholars from Adolf Deissmann to Albert Schweitzer. Others disagreed, figures no less significant than Rudolf Bultmann, Karl Barth and Ernst Käsemann. The ‘pro-mystic group’ argued that Paul's theological message was best understood when set within the context of Hellenistic or Jewish mysticism. The ‘anti-mystic group’ could not accept a ‘mystical’ Paul without adding qualifications that would ensure Paul's uniqueness. It may be claimed that this disagreement depends on the opinion of any particular author on reading Christian theology as part of the larger network of religions (comparative religions or, formerly, the history of religions school).Footnote 1 But I trace it back to more general misgivings about mysticism in European thought, where, according to Richard King, the ‘mystical’ was projected onto the East.Footnote 2 Relying on post-colonial criticism of religious studies, I will examine the arguments for and against Paul's mysticism to see what was theologically and politically at stake in these debates. To make my case, after giving a sketch of the reception history of Paul's mysticism, I will review the reasons that have been put forward for the strange relation between the reception of Paul and mysticism. I will argue that the discomfort with a mystical Paul may be attributed to the construction of a rational Christian self, as well as the construction of the rational–mystical binary itself. An alternative portrait of a mystical Paul, with the help of comparative theology, can shed new light on his letters.
1. A History of the Debate
Adolf Deissmann is credited with starting the whole debate about Paul's mysticism, when he claimed in 1911 that Paul's teaching could be understood in light of his ‘in-Christ mysticism’. Deissmann started his book by saying that after two journeys to Anatolia he had gained significant insights into Paul:
[B]eside the Paul who has been turned into a western scholastic philosopher, beside the aristocratised, conventionalised, and modernised Paul now suffering his eighth imprisonment in the paper bondage of ‘Paulinism,’ I would fain set the Paul whom I think to have seen at Tarsus, Jerusalem, and Damascus, in Antioch, Lycaonia, Galatia, Ephesus, and Corinth, and whose words became alive to me at night on the decks of Levant shipping, and to the sound of birds of passage winning their flight towards the Tarsus – alive in their passionate emotion, the force of their popular appeal and their prophetic depth. I mean Paul the Jew who in the days of the Caesars breathed the air of the Mediterranean and ate the bread which he had earned by the labour of his own hand; the missionary whose dark shadow fell on the glittering marble pavement of the great city in the blinding glare of noon; the mystic devotee of Christ, who, so far as can be comprehended historically at all, will be understood not as the incarnation of a system but as a living complex of inner polarities which refuse to be parcelled out.Footnote 3
Albert Schweitzer's disagreement starts already with Deissmann's preface. Before discussing the latter's perspective, it is useful to note that, as the title of Deissmann's book (St Paul: A Study in Social and Religious History) indicates, he was using the methods of the history of religions school to show that the apostle's teachings were embedded in their Hellenistic context, observed in terms of a mystical Hellenistic legacy rather than a philosophical tradition. Following up on Adolf von Harnack's distinction, Deissmann held that Paul's preaching resembled a cult of Christ more than the religion of Jesus.Footnote 4 Unlike Richard Reitzenstein and Wilhelm Bousset, who emphasised the Hellenistic origins of Pauline mysticism,Footnote 5 Deissmann found both Jewish and Greek elements in it. But he was careful to note the differences as well. In Paul's theocentric mysticism, communion rather than union, sanctification of personality, conformation of the human towards the divine are highlighted. This is contrasted with the Hellenistic ego-centric mysticism, in which no boundary between humanity and deity is observed.
Deissmann belonged to the long tradition of scholarship, which can be traced back to the Acts itself,Footnote 6 where Paul and Jesus followed separate agendas. Yet these differences were neutralised by a special relationship between the two. Not only a concern with historical contexts, but also a need to explain the relationship between Paul and Jesus led scholars, like Deissmann, to toy with the field of mysticism: ‘Just as the air of life which we breathe is “in” us and fills us, and yet we at the same time live and breathe “in” this air, so it is with St. Paul's fellowship of Christ: Christ is in him, he in Christ … The formula “in Christ” (or “in the Lord,” etc.) occurs 164 times in St. Paul: it is really the characteristic expression of his Christianity.’Footnote 7
Schweitzer followed Deissmann's formulation, but with important criticisms and qualifications. He agreed that Jesus and Paul were involved in different kinds of mysticism, viz. in-God and in-Christ respectively, but disagreed with Deissmann in that he saw Paul's thought as quite systematic. Schweitzer held that this system was wholly in line with Jewish eschatology. That is, while Schweitzer was keen to read Paul in his milieu, he was also concerned about the uniqueness of Paul. This may be one reason why he portrays a Paul who is a mystic, but an intellectual mystic, deconstructing the rational–mystical binary that was being developed around the same time by theologians and scholars of religion alike. Just as Deissmann had distinguished between egocentric and theocentric mysticisms, Schweitzer emphasised the distinction between primitive and intellectual mysticisms. According to Schweitzer:
Primitive mysticism has not yet risen to a conception of the universal, and is still confined to naive views of earthly and super-earthly, temporal and eternal. The entry into the super-earthly takes place by means of a ‘mystery’, a magical act … In a more developed form magical mysticism is found in the oriental and Greek mystery-religions at the beginning of our era. In the cults of Attis, Osiris, and Mithras, as well as in the Eleusinian Mysteries in their later more profound form, the believer attains, by means of an initiation, union with the divinity, and thereby becomes a partaker in the immortality for which he yearns.Footnote 8
By contrast, developed or intellectual mysticism ‘is a common possession of humanity. Whenever thought makes the ultimate effort to conceive the relation of the personality to the universal, this mysticism comes to existence. It is found among the Brahmans and in Buddha, in Platonism, in Stoicism, in Spinoza, Schopenhauer, and Hegel.’Footnote 9 In a less abstract form, intellectual mysticism may be found in the works of many Christian figures, not least Hugo of St Victor, Francis of Assisi, Jakob Boehme and Meister Eckhart, among others.Footnote 10 This distinction between two kinds of mysticism helped Schweitzer to associate Paul with mysticism without allowing him to lose his philosophical aura. Again, in addition to a concern for the historical context of founding figures, a long-standing trend of associating Paul with philosophers is at work.Footnote 11 Where does Paul stand here? According to Schweitzer, Paul's mysticism occupies a unique position between primitive and intellectual mysticism. The religious conceptions of the Apostle stand high above those of primitive mysticism. This being so, it might have been expected that his mysticism would do with the unity of man with God as the ultimate ground of being. But this is not the case. Paul never speaks of being one with God or being in God. He does indeed assert the divine sonship of believers. But, strangely enough, he does not conceive of sonship to God as an immediate mystical relation to God, but as mediated and effected by means of the mystical union with Christ.Footnote 12
In addition to asserting in-Christ union, Paul's mysticism has another peculiar feature: it is an ‘eschatological mysticism’ – that is, the central experience is the believers’ dying and rising with Christ.Footnote 13 In other words, they really participate in Christ's bodily suffering. It should be noted that this eschatological vision promotes an ethical reading of theology, as well. Here, Paul ‘arrives at an essentially ethical vision of Christianity, which, determined by the hope of a coming kingdom, bids men, through union with Christ, understood as the will-to-love, to act upon the world in such a way as to make it more like God's coming kingdom.’Footnote 14
Schweitzer's reading of Pauline theology as mysticism, and moreover a unique kind of mysticism, situated him in the transition from the history of religions schools to existentialist schools. While he did accept that Paul can be understood with reference to similar mystical tendencies in other religions, Schweitzer also drew a distinction between the apostle and other mystics. In fact, it is interesting that while an important camp in theology and religious studies focused on the authenticity of religious experience, Schweitzer did not look for such experiences in Paul, explaining everything instead by referring to the apostle's logical and rational thinking. Besides, as Bernard McGuinn has suggested, the ‘in-Christ’ mysticism gave Schweitzer a chance to evade the mysticism of identity with God, which was not a favourite of many Protestants.Footnote 15 He was probably one of the last among his contemporaries to declare that Paul was a mystic. His major influence on his intellectual disciples was to show the similarities between Paul's ideas and Jewish tendencies.Footnote 16
Other theologians have similarly grappled with this issue. It is famously claimed that many Protestant theologians preferred to interpret Paul's ‘in-Christ’ remarks as ‘participation in Christ’, many of them showing an anxiety over the word ‘mysticism’. Although the language of in-Christ participation is traced back to Schweitzer, there is a change in subsequent readings of this relationship. Rudolf Bultmann, who could see why Paul's message approached something resembling gnostic dualism or mysticism, had sufficient reason to reject mystical interpretations. Put in Bultmann's existentialist terms, Paul was similar to gnostics when he saw a cleft within humans in their losing grip upon themselves and surrendering to outside powers.Footnote 17 However, Paul did not disdain the body, and even preached the resurrection of the body. Another difference between Paul's ideas and mysticism was that Paul's apocalypse was not a ‘passion mysticism’ because ‘this “fellowship” or “sharing” does not take place in absorbed meditation on the passion or in soulful appropriation of Christ's suffering in mystical experience’.Footnote 18 Although Bultmann (unlike Schweitzer) accepted the gnostic roots of the Pauline in-Christ formula, he emphasised that the formula was ecclesiological, rather than a formula of mysticism: ‘It denotes not, to be sure, an individual mystical relationship to Christ, but the fact that the individual actual life of the believer, living not out of himself but out of the divine deed of salvation, is determined by Christ.’Footnote 19 In Bultmann's opinion, although Paul did have ecstatic experiences ‘as a rare exception’, Paul's in-Spirit or in-Christ experience was about his whole way of life: ‘the Spirit’ did not mean to him the capacity for mystical experiences. Rather, everything indicates that by the term ‘Spirit’ he refers to the eschatological existence into which the believer is placed by having appropriated the salvation deed that occurred in Christ.Footnote 20 Bultmann's student, Ernst Käsemann, however, did not even allow for this. He went so far as to suggest that Paul's doctrine of ‘justification’ was a ‘protection against enthusiasm and mysticism’.Footnote 21 E. P. Sanders also believed that ‘participationist’ is a better description of the Pauline experience than the ‘controversial term “mystical”’.Footnote 22 James Dunn was, quite exceptionally, fairly comfortable with the term ‘mystic’. As he tried to interpret Paul within the in-Christ framework instead of the common framework of justification by faith, he felt that the term ‘mysticism’ helped him to capture the in-Christ character of Paul's experience.Footnote 23 He did not reject that term and tried to find historical explanations for its replacement by other terms. For example, one reason for its replacement, according to Dunn, could be Schweitzer's own book: ‘the extremeness of Schweitzer's view [on Paul's mysticism] helps explain why the mystical approach faded so quickly as a viable option for Pauline studies in the middle decades of the century’.Footnote 24 He also mentioned some other reasons that will be explained below. Dunn generally felt that the insights of pro-mystic scholars could help with understanding Paul's thoughts. He stressed the fact that Paul's mysticism was by no means an individual union; rather, it involved social integration.Footnote 25 Although subsequent Protestant scholarship seems not to have any qualms with the language of ‘in-Christ participation’, this language has been largely replaced by ‘the transactional dimension of narrative or ideas about the “Christ event” instead of any experienced engagement with him’.Footnote 26
This brief sketch of the reception of Paul by Protestant theologians reveals deep misgivings about the word ‘mysticism’. This difficulty with mysticism might have been a solely ‘Protestant’ trend. The Catholic Alfred Wikenhauser bemoaned a Protestant antipathy towards the term. But in order to object to the Protestant equation of mysticism with Hellenistic experiences, Wikenhauser emphasised the difference between Pauline and Hellenistic mysticism: Paul was driven by a monotheistic clear eschatology, and he was aiming at union with a person rather than infinity.Footnote 27 By contrast, another Catholic, Lucien Cerfaux, found what he called ‘vague mysticism’ an inadequate explanation of Paul's ‘precise theological ideas’.Footnote 28
In recent decades, however, there has been a turn to a mystical Paul and quite a few scholars have tried to read his message in light of his mysticism. This tendency seems to have been a rather gradual process. For example, Christopher Rowland, who studied Paul in the context of first-century Jewish mysticism, did not use the word ‘mystical’ for the apostle himself.Footnote 29 But by the 1980s it was becoming seemingly easier to use the term. Alan Segal found it a bit anachronistic, as it is a modern, analytic category. Despite that, he did not have any qualms in detecting some form of apocalyptic mysticism in Pauline literature akin to Jewish experiences.Footnote 30 Much of this has been in line with the proliferation of literature on the Jewish Paul, in that he read Paul as having experiences similar to contemporary Jewish mystics. In addition to Segal, Seyoon Kim and C. R. A Morray-Jones also engaged in this kind of comparative-historical reading.Footnote 31 Colleen Shantz likewise observed that all of the debates around Paul's mysticism arose from a thought–experience dichotomy that could be reassessed and then Paul's experience could shed light on his message.Footnote 32 Daniel Marguerat noted that Paul's ‘writing contained all of the elements of mystical knowledge and his work can be interpreted in light of that.Footnote 33 Relying on post-modern theory, which, according to her, provides room for mystical, aesthetic and transformative experiences, Celia Kourie argued that Paul's mysticism is not confined to certain ‘lofty moments of excitement’ but involves one's daily life (what she terms ‘quotidian mysticism’). Being part of daily life, suffering leads to a transformed ethical life and inner tranquillity.Footnote 34
John Ashton's study deserves special attention, as he uses the lens of comparative religion to explore the different possibilities for explaining Paul's experience, while also critically building on the legacy of Schweitzer. He concludes that ‘mysticism’, especially first-century merkabah mysticism, may be the best way to understand Paul, in particular his experience as explained in 2 Cor 12.1–10, as well as Phil 3.7–11; 1 Cor 15.3–8; 2 Cor 3.18; 4.16–17; Rom 6.1–11; 8.23–30.Footnote 35 Critically appraising Schweitzer's work, Ashton wonders why he did not go further in appreciating Pauline mysticism. Schweitzer was so anxious about establishing Paul's rational thinking that he did not read Paul as a ‘real mystic’.Footnote 36 This anxious misgiving about a mystical Paul will be discussed below.
2. Causes of the Discomfort with Pauline ‘Mysticism’
A number of scholars have noted this discomfort with the attribution of ‘mysticism’ to Paul and have put forward some reasons for their discomfort. First of all, the definition of ‘mysticism’ and people's attitude towards it vary to a great degree. Jouette Bassler attributes the anxiety about mysticism to one's definition of mysticism and to one's personal attitude towards it:
There has been a shift in terminology: the language of ‘mysticism’, deemed by many to be confusing or discomforting, is often replaced by reference to ‘participation’ or, less frequently, ‘interchange’. And debate continues, even among those who accept the reality of Paul's language of participation, over what this participation actually entails … only another mystic can grasp the ‘category of reality’ of which Paul speaks, and the mystical scholars are few and far between. Yet whatever the language used and whatever the level of insight into the nature of reality, more and more scholars of a non-mystical bent are acknowledging that some form of real union with Christ was important, even central to Paul's experience and thought.Footnote 37
The question of definitions is important. Mysticism is usually difficult to define, and theologians have offered their definitions of the term before stating their agreement or disagreement with a mystical Paul. As noted previously, those who disagreed with the term ‘mysticism’ held that their disagreement resulted precisely from a discomfort with it.
Secondly, as mentioned above, some have attributed this anxiety about Paul's mysticism to a Protestant–Catholic divide and have stated that the Catholics were not quite as uncomfortable with a mystical Paul as the Protestants. Bernard McGuinn holds that German Protestants, more particularly, rejected mysticism, ‘at least God-mysticism or the mysticism of union with God, as essentially world-negating and solipsistic’.Footnote 38 If there is anything like a Protestant–Catholic divide in the mysticism debate, it is reminiscent of the all-pervasive and highly influential Bauerian biblical scholarship. Influenced by Hegel's notion of a ‘spirit of history’, F. C. Baur's church history involved the grand synthesis of ‘Pauline’ and ‘Petrine’ tendencies in Catholic Christianity, as reflected in the Acts of the Apostles. Since Baur claimed that Christianity had yet to be purged of its Jewish (or ‘Catholic’?) elements, it had to be ‘paulinised’, so to speak. It is not too implausible to suggest that Baur deemed himself nothing short of a ‘modern’ Paul who sought to rid Christianity of those redundant elements.Footnote 39 Rejecting mysticism, which was usually associated with the Christian Middle Ages, could be a step in that direction.
A third factor that might have contributed to this disinclination towards ‘mysticism’ was perhaps the rise of existential theology between the World Wars. The subjective feeling of the nearness of the soul to God or the Romantic optimism of liberal theology during the nineteenth century was a fertile ground for interpretations that emphasised mysticism. On the opposite side stands the dialectical theology of the likes of Karl Barth, which was built on the ‘infinite qualitative difference between’ God and humanity.Footnote 40 Unlike the earlier liberal Romanticism, existentialism ‘offered a more robust alternative which spoke with greater power to a traumatised intellectual generation in the postwar period’.Footnote 41 In other words, when the divine and the human are set far apart, it does not make sense to name characters, such as Paul, who managed to bridge the gap in a mystical union. The doomed post-war generation could not hope for anything resembling a Pauline nearness to God, which would neutralise their loneliness and abandonment.
3. Pauline Mysticism and the Protestant European Identity
Without refuting the above factors and their role in the discomfort with a mystical Paul, I would like to suggest a fourth factor that contributed to it. Debates about Paul's mysticism can be read in light of anxieties about his political location. Richard King's study of ‘mysticism’ in religious scholarship can be helpful in this discussion. King argues that defining ‘mysticism’, like its sister term ‘religion’, is fraught with difficulties.Footnote 42 Mysticism and religion have been invented and reified in modern times, and largely in academia. Like religion, mysticism is a social construct, which has over time been relegated to the realm of the private. In the history of the definition and use of the term ‘mystical’, one can see a first instance of disapproval in the work of Martin Luther, who rejected the allegorical and mystical exegesis of the scriptures.Footnote 43 The pejorative use of the term ‘mystical’ in the seventeenth century was perhaps due to some sort of novelty, where it had a history of barely three or four centuries, starting with figures such as Meister Eckhart and John of the Cross. The response revolved around two strategies. First, finding precedence for the mystical in the Scriptures. This strategy was not very successful because finding a secret meaning outside ecclesiastical auspices seemed a threat to the church's institutionalisation of biblical meaning. The second strategy involved finding historical precedents for mystical figures within Christianity itself. King remarks that the ‘consequence of this second strategy, of course, was that it tied the newly sanctified mystic and their apologists to the established tradition of exegesis and the overarching authority of the Church, as well as binding them to a canon of acceptable and orthodox ecclesiastical literature’.Footnote 44
Another key moment in the study of mysticism is the emergence of William James’ theories of religious and mystical experiences. Reflecting the influence of the Romantic attack on Kantian philosophy, James’ reading of mysticism highlighted the private, psychological and individual aspects of mystical experiences. These states are not seen as part of the ‘normative’ or ‘everyday’ experiences, making them sound ‘delusory, subjective and hallucinatory, or … “altered” states of consciousness’.Footnote 45 The establishment of this notion stands in contrast to religious traditions (such as Buddhism and classical Yoga), where those states are seen as ‘normative’ and ‘natural’, and where the everyday states of waking and dreaming are regarded as ‘alterations’, as King rightly notes.Footnote 46 At this point, these kinds of readings located the mystical in the second terms of the binary distinctions between the normative and the altered, the public and the private, the rational and the non-rational, as well as the Western and the Eastern: ‘Mysticism comes to represent the preeminently private, the non-rational and the quietistic. As such it represents the suppressed Other that contributes to the establishment of and high status of those spheres of human activity that are defined as public, rational and socially oriented in the modern Academy.’Footnote 47 Even when in Romanticism and New Age Spiritualities mysticism is celebrated, it is arguably precisely for the elements of the irrational and the mysterious that it contains: that is, both its celebration and its rejection are embedded in the rational–irrational binary. It can even be noted that modernist histories of philosophy often do not take Eastern thought into sufficient account, since, according to secularised understandings of philosophy, it is pure rational activity, and Eastern philosophies are best categorised as theology or mysticism rather than philosophy.Footnote 48
In light of King's arguments as I have recounted them here, it is possible to gain a clearer idea of the European reception of a mystical Paul. It might be instructive at this stage to go back to the scholars I discussed earlier. First, the very emergence of the debates about Paul's mysticism at the turn of the century can be seen as being in line with what King has observed about the strategies of the pro-mystic group to show their long heritage – that is, how mysticism can be traced back to the fathers of the church. But more than that, important questions of inclusion and exclusion arise in discussions over the relationship between Christianity and mysticism. The pioneer Deissmann made a case for a mystical reading of Paul based on his journeys to the Orient, because of which he was convinced that Paul belonged more to the mystical Levant rather than the philosophical Greece. Only when Deissmann was at risk of getting too close to locating Pauline thought in the Orient did he qualify his statement by distinguishing between egocentric and theocentric mysticism. Yes, Paul was a mystic; no, not that kind of ‘other’ mystic. Deissmann was including Paul in a mystical tradition, excluding him from a philosophical tradition, and taking extra care not to include him within the ‘unfavorable’ mystical traditions.
Schweitzer, through whom the mystical Paul is known and remembered, took this a step further. Schweitzer was not willing to locate Paul in primitive mysticism. He insisted that Paul was an apostle of thought and freedom of thought. But Paul, according to Schweitzer, was not an intellectual mystic as such because he was not thinking of unity with God, rather his aim was unity with Christ. (Of course, it is only Schweitzer's own definition of mysticism that excludes union with Christ from intellectual mysticism.) Schweitzer's Paul was influenced by Jewish eschatological beliefs, rather than Hellenistic mysteries. Schweitzer was struggling with a rational–mystical binary that did not fit in with his reading of Paul, but he did not challenge very easily.
The resistance to the Hellenisation of the Pauline message that was represented in the history of religions school echoed in the work of other theologians, not least such as Barth and Bultmann. What they saw in Paul was not at all similar to what they knew of mysticism (some version of proto-gnosticism, or similar Hellenistic esoteric trends). Gradually, Protestant theologians proposed to use substitutive terms that expressed almost the same thing, but also preserved the uniqueness of Christianity and the Pauline message. James Dunn held that ‘the wider interest in mysticism,Footnote 49 which had been a feature of the pre-World War II period, had anyway been diminishing in the face of psychological critique and the horror of World War I’.Footnote 50 By psychological critique Dunn means William James’ work, as well as J. H. Leuba's The Psychology of Religious Mysticism (1929), although he does not explain it further. The ‘horror of World War I’ refers to the predominance of existential theology that emphasised the unbridgeable human–God distance, obliterating any chance of union between them. Dunn also notes a similar flight from mystical readings in the studies of John's Gospel.Footnote 51
This entire story points to the project of the construction of a rational Paul by discarding the language of ‘mysticism’. Mysticism could connect Paul to his historical (Jewish or Greek) context; it could explain Paul's relation with Christ; and it could explain his position towards the law. However, this description should not amount to losing what is distinctive about Paul – be it his peculiar ‘in-Christ’ rather than common ‘in-God’ mysticism or the fact that he did not display behaviour or utter words that made him similar to the followers of esoteric movements. If we grant that ‘mysticism’ was a major player in the construction of a philosophical European heritage, misgivings about the kind of mysticism that European intellectuals might have had (if not outright rejection of his mysticism) point to anxieties about appropriating Paul in a European context.
The above narrative also explains the comeback of mysticism in recent years, not only among Catholics – who were not as adamantly against it from the beginning – but also more generally when it comes to Paul. In his survey of studies of Pauline mysticism, Dunn has noted recent studies of early Christian mysticism, in line with a renewed interest in Jewish mysticism.Footnote 52 If we read the reception of Pauline mysticism within a grand narrative of the construction of European rational self, we might be able to read the comeback of a mystical Paul, which is set within studies of Jewish mysticism, within a history of a return to the Jesus and Paul who were ‘Jewish but not that Jewish’.Footnote 53 Paul remains the figure that the European Protestant wants to emulate, and if the reception of his mysticism changes, one of the plausible causes is the change in the ideal type of European Protestant.
4. An Alternative Story?
Now, the question is whether the image of a mystical Paul is necessary or helpful at all. As a Muslim teaching Christianity in a Muslim context, I have noticed that students, having a different epistemological standpoint from European Christian readers, see some similarities between Sufi teachings and Paul's ideas (especially if he is read in light of the New Perspective and beyond). This led me to ask whether comparative theology could be helpful in understanding Paul. In comparative theology, the texts, doctrines and insights of another religion are integrated into a theological understanding of one's own religious traditions.Footnote 54 It is a faith-based approach, and hence different from comparative religion.
I suggest that by taking a comparative theology approach, we can have a better grasp of Paul's stance towards the law in light of Sufi teachings. It is true that due to certain practices of meditation (such as the Sufi dance) and their own structures of authority, Sufis had conflicts with Muslim religious scholars. Yet, this does not mean that they disregarded the law itself. Rather, they held that the law is not to be observed just for its own sake. The diversity of their approaches to the Muslim law (Shari'a) notwithstanding, they shared the emphasis that the essence of Islam is divine love, and that everything, including the observance of the law, should be directed towards attaining union with the divine. It is, therefore, not difficult to find parallels between Paul's teachings and those of a number of Sufis. An important theme in Pauline writings (Rom 5.5; 8.37–9; 1 Thess 4.9–12), divine love is a significant theme in Sufi literature. It is so central and so extensively discussed that it is not easy to pick only a few examples. Take for instance Muhammad al-Ghazzali, one of the most renowned Muslim thinkers and a staunch defender of Sufi practice, who wrote two of the greatest works in Muslim literature. In a passage whose sentiment is very similar to Paul's eschatological hope and concomitant indifference to worldly pleasures (1 Cor 7; 1 Thess 4), al-Ghazzali mentions the virtue of ‘shortening one's hope’. This means that one should not put one's hopes on things that are far away and are built on a belief in a long life. Al-Ghazzali also tells the anecdote of the Prophet Muhammad being surprised at a person who was so confident in having a long life that he had engaged in trade.Footnote 55
Not only did Paul share his mystical experiences (2 Cor 12; 1 Thess 4.17) with many mystics; he was also similar to them in his stance towards the law. Although Paul was convinced ‘in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself’ (Rom 14.14), he would not want the purity laws to become a matter of dispute. Yet, he did not deny the importance of observing certain rules (Rom 1; 6; 1 Corinthians). He was only worried that an overemphasis on the law would undermine the purpose behind it: ‘we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh; for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live’ (Rom 8.12–13); ‘all must test their own work, not their neighbour's’ (Gal 6.4). The Letter to Philippians is also filled with moral teachings. For Paul, the spiritual meaning of the law was important: law is not outward, but inward (Rom 2.27–9); ‘the law is spiritual’ (Rom 7.14); one can choose between the path of the flesh and that of the spirit (Rom 8); ‘do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you?’ (1 Cor 3.16). The role of the spirit is so important that it guides us in our works: ‘likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God’ (Rom 8.26–7).
The few examples from Sufi literature that explain their understanding of the law may serve to illustrate their similarity with Pauline teachings. Many Sufis rested their argument on a triangle of law (shari'ah), walking on the path (tariqah) and truth (haqiqah). Although the last element is the goal of religion, the three are interdependent. For instance, according to Rumi,
The law is like a candle that shows the path. And if you do not get the candle, the path cannot be taken. And unless you get the candle, the path is not taken. And when you step in this path, your walking is tariqah, and when you reach the destination, it is haqiqah. And that is why it is said, ‘if the truths are unveiled, the laws are abrogated’ … Shari‘ah is like learning alchemy from a master or from a book; tariqah is using the drug and mixing the copper in the alchemy; and haqiqah is the change of copper into gold. The alchemists are happy with the science of alchemy saying ‘we know its science’; and the performers are happy with the performance of alchemy saying ‘we perform such things’; and the truth-finders are happy with the truth saying ‘we have become gold and we are free from science and alchemy. We are liberated by God’ … Shari‘ah is like learning the science of medicine; tariqah is following the guidelines of medicine and taking the medicine; and haqiqah is permanent health and freedom from both … Shari‘ah is the knowledge; tariqah is the deed; and haqiqah is union with God.Footnote 56
Many Sufis distinguished between two kinds of legal observance, that of the flesh and that of the spirit. For example, al-Ghazzali elaborates this difference in his discussion of many legal practices. So, when it comes to Islamic daily prayer – salāh – he first explains the details of the gestures and formulae that should be performed. Then, he mentions the symbolic and esoteric meanings of those gestures and formulae. While, for al-Ghazzali, the practices themselves are important, they would remain at the level of mere bodily gestures if their esoteric meaning is not taken into account.Footnote 57 When it comes to purity laws, he divides purity into that of the body and that of the heart, the latter being more important and the former only providing certain conditions for the proper performance of religious rituals that might help with the purity of the heart. Al-Ghazzali also criticises those who engage in the purity of the body excessively, spending their entire time on washing and cleansing, ‘and due to their obsession and the deficiency of reason, they think that the desired purity is only this. They do not know that the earliest examples (salaf) put all their effort and thought in purifying their hearts, taking the purity of their bodies very lightly.’Footnote 58
5. Conclusion
In this article, I briefly surveyed the modern Western European responses to Paul's mysticism. Debates on Paul's mysticism arose in order to include Paul within a tradition – gnosticism according to Boussuet and Reizenstein, Jewish eschatology according to Schweitzer, both according to Deissmann, neither according to Bultmann. Many of these studies started with definitions. This is methodologically correct and helpful. But when situating or not situating Paul within mystical traditions, scholars went out of their way to distinguish different kinds of mysticism. Here, the disagreements about favourable and not-so-favourable kinds of mysticism are striking. Relying on post-colonial criticism of religious studies, I suggested that these debates about Paul's mysticism indicate certain attempts at recognition, inclusion and exclusion. Paul was a pioneering mystic, but not to be mistaken for the kind of mystic that can be observed in other, non-Christian, traditions. Paul's was a unique experience.
The narrative of the acceptance of a ‘mystical’ Paul is, therefore, part of Europe's self-image, where important Christian intellectuals are trying to associate Christianity with its neighbouring traditions and simultaneously highlighting its distinct character. Mysticism seemed a phenomenon shared by Judaism, Greek cults and Pauline Christianity. However, the Pauline relationship with Christ or God was not to be seen as anything like what is found in the above traditions. The mystical had to be suppressed, and this was in line with the definition of the European ideal type of rationality, excluding the ‘mystical’ as the other. It is no surprise, then, that Schweitzer read Paul as a rational, or intellectual, mystic, trying hard to overcome the prevalent rational–mystical binary, but still stuck within it. For Paul to count as a mystic, the inclination of his interpreters towards mysticism is of utmost importance.
This is all missed when research centres on the singularity of Paul's message in contrast to the moments when it opens itself up to similar messages and experiences within other religious traditions. The fact that a turn to a mystical Paul was predominant among those interested in the history of religions school – where similarities between religions were highlighted – might tell us something about what we miss in historical readings when we are only looking for the unique features of a particular religion. Indeed, the above point about the simultaneity of the acceptance of a mystical Paul with a growing interest in Jewish mysticism indicates the importance of interreligious readings. Not only contemporary Jewish mysticism, but also other mystical systems, I argue, including Islamic Sufism, contain ‘Pauline’ themes, helping us, through comparative theology, to shed light on what the apostle might have meant in his discussions of the observance of the Jewish law. In other words, comparative theology helps to appreciate both the particular historical circumstances of Christianity and the ethical implications of biblical interpretation.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this essay has been presented in the conference ‘Bible and Politics’ at St. Mary's University (Twickenham) on 2 June 2017. I am grateful to Prof James Crossley, Prof Simon Gathercole and the anonymous reviewers for their comments. I would like to specially thank Dr Hannah Strømmen for her help in accessing resources and for reading through earlier versions of this essay.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
