II The Dualistic Motif in Paul and Marcion Dualist motif more pronouncedly present in his (Paul’s) thought than are synthetic or radical, not to speak of cultural tendencies Issue of life lies between the righteousness of God and the righteousness of man, or between the righteousness of God and the righteousness of man or between the goodness with which God is good and desires to make men good on the one hand, and on the other the kind of independent goodness man seeks to have in himself. On his cross Paul had died to the world and the world had died to him; henceforth to live meant to be with Christ and for Christ and under Christ knowing nothing and desiring nothing save him. The encounter with God in Christ had gelatinized for Paul all cultural institutions and distinctions, all the works of man. They were all included under sin …whether law known through reason or made known through past revelation it condemned men equally, was equally ineffective in saving them from lawlessness and self-seeking, and was equally instrument of divine wrath and mercy …Christ destroyed the wisdom of the wise and the righteousness of the good Christ had brought to light the unrighteousness of every human work They were also equally subject to his redemptive work.. Through his cross and resurrection he redeemed them from their prison of self-centeredness, the fear of death, hopelessness, and godlessness. Out of the inner fountains of the spirit of Christ there would flow forth love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Not as lawgiver of a new Christian culture but as the mediator of a new principle of life---a life of peace with God---Christ did and does this mighty work in the creation of a new kind of humanity He warns against participation in actions and customs that are flagrant exhibitions of human faithlessness, lovelessness, hopelessness, and godlessness. … Those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But he is far from suggesting that those who refrain from such conduct will therefore inherit the kingdom, or that training in good moral habits is a step in preparation for the gift of the spirit. Since the battle was not with flesh and blood but against spiritual principles in the minds and hearts of men, there was no hiding place from their attacks in a new, Christian culture. Christian citizenship was in heaven, their hiding place was with the risen Christ It was not possible to come closer to the reign of Christ by changing cultural customs Political authorities were recognized as divinely instituted, and obedience to their laws was required as a Christian duty, yet believers were not to make use of the law courts in pressing claims against each other. Only the religious institutions and customs of non-Christian society were completely rejected. --- 165 Thus Paul seems to move in the direction of a synthetic answer to the Christ-and-culture problem, and yet the manner in which he related the ethics of Christian culture to the ethics of the spirit of Christ is remarkably different from the way in which Clement and Thomas proceed from one to the other. --for one thing the order is different…since the synthesists move from culture to Christ, or from Christ the instructor to Christ the redeemer, whereas Paul moves from Christ the judge of culture and the redeemer to Christian culture. --this variation of order has something more significant… THE SYNTHESIST REGARDS THE CULTUREAL LIFE AS AHVING A CERTAIN POSITIVE VALUE OF ITS OWN< WITH ITS OWN POSSIBILITIES FOR THE ACHIEVEMENT OF AN IMPERFECT BUT REAL HAPPINESS. IT IS DIRECTED TOWARD THE ATTAINMENT OF POSITIVE VALUES. BUT FOR PAUL IT HAS A KIND OF NEGATIVE FUNCTION. …THE INSTITUTIONS OF CHRISTIAN SOCIETY AND THE LAWS FOR THAT SOECITY AS WELL AS THE INSTITUTIONS OF PAGAN CULTURE IN SO FAR AS THEY ARE TO BE RECOGNIZED SEEM MORE DESIGNED, IN IHIS VIEW, TO PREVENT SIN FROM BECOMING AS DESTRUCTIVE AS IT MIGHT OTHERWISE BE, RATHER THAN TO FURTHER THE ATTAINMENT OF POSITIVE GOOD. The function of law is to restrain and expose sin rather than to guide men to divine righteousness. Paul’s two ethics refer to contradictory tendencies in life. The one is the ethics of regeneration and eternal life, the other is the ethics for the prevention of degeneration No virtue save the love that is in Christ…combined with faith and hope IN THIS SENSE PAUL IS A DUALIST…His TWO ETHICS are not contradictory, but neither do they form parts of one closely knit system. They cannot do so, because they refer to contradictory ends, life and death, and represent strategies on two different fronts--the front of the divine-human encounter, and the front of the struggle with sin and the powers of darkness As long as man remains in the body he has need then, it seems, of a culture and of the institutions of culture not because they advance him towards life with Christ but because they restrain wickedness in a sinful and temporal world ------------------------167 Marcion in second century p. 169 Marcion’s answer, then, in effect was not truly dualistic, but more like that of an exclusive Christian. The true dualist lives in tension between two magnetic poles; Marcion broke the poles apart. p.167 Often with Gnostics in efforts to wrest Christian faith free from associations with Jewish Culture Particularly in his attempt to exclude the Old Testament and all elements derived from it from the Christian scriptures. At same time he used Gnostic ideas in his theology . On the other hand we must associate him with the radical Christians, for he founded a sect separated from the church and marked by rigorous asceticism. …often thought….distinguished two principles in reality and divided the world between God and the power of evil. But Maricon was first of all a Paulinist, for whom the gospel of divine grace and mercy was the wonder of wonders….which could not be compared with anything else. He did not begin with the law of Christ, but with the revelation of divine goodness and mercy. But two things he could not rhyme with the gospel. One was the OT presentation of God as the wrathful guardian of justice, and the other was the actual life of man in this physical world with the demands, the indignities and the horrors to be faced in it. Marcion found his answer in the belief that men were dealing with 2 gods, the just but bungling and limited deity who had created the world out of evil matter; and the good God, the Father, who thought Christ rescued men from their desperate plight in the mixed world of justice and matter. He recognized 2 moralities, the ethics of justice and the ethics of love, but the former was bound up with corruption Hence Marcion sought to draw Christians out of the physical as well as the cultural world as much as possible Sundered Marcion’s answer, then in effect was not truly dualistic but more like that of an exclusive Christian. The true dualist lives in tension between two magnetic poles; Marion broke the poles apart ------------------------------169 Dualistic motif is strong in Augustine; but since the conversationalist note seems more characteristic of his thought we defer consideration of his views to a later connection. In medieval Christianity the dualistic solution appears in special areas as when Scotists and Occamists abandon the synthetic way of dealing with revelation and reason yet seek to maintain the validity of each… It is offered also in connection with the problem of church and state, as in Wycliffe’s reply to that question.