Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 What Ecstasy? An Assessment of the Misregard
- 2 Paul's Brain: The Cognitive Neurology of Ecstasy
- 3 Paul's Voice: Parsing Paul's Ecstatic Discourse
- 4 Paul's Practice: Discerning Ecstasies in Practice
- 5 The Whole Paul: A Short Course in (Nondeterministic) Complexity
- Bibliography
- Index of Ancient Sources
- Index of Modern Authors
- Subject Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 What Ecstasy? An Assessment of the Misregard
- 2 Paul's Brain: The Cognitive Neurology of Ecstasy
- 3 Paul's Voice: Parsing Paul's Ecstatic Discourse
- 4 Paul's Practice: Discerning Ecstasies in Practice
- 5 The Whole Paul: A Short Course in (Nondeterministic) Complexity
- Bibliography
- Index of Ancient Sources
- Index of Modern Authors
- Subject Index
Summary
Whenever theology touches science, it gets burned. In the sixteenth century astronomy, in the seventeenth microbiology, in the eighteenth geology and palaeontology, in the nineteenth Darwin's biology all grotesquely extended the world-frame and sent churchmen scurrying for cover in ever smaller, more shadowy nooks, little gloomy ambiguous caves in the psyche where even now neurology is cruelly harrying them, gouging them out from the multifolded brain like wood lice from under the lumber pile.
– John UpdikeIn any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it.
– John Archibald WheelerIt would be presumptuous in a field like pauline studies to claim that one had found the strangest thing because we are indeed blessed with many. Instead, this book is an exploration of the coincidence of two curiosities. The first curiosity, and the major interest of the chapters that follow, is Paul's ecstatic religious experience. This interest begins with the premise that a certain set of Pauline texts not traditionally read together forms an inherently meaningful grouping. In part, they belong together because in each text Paul is describing occasions in which he considered himself to be in contact with nonhuman agents (spoken of mainly as spirit – whether spirit of God, spirit of Christ, holy spirit, spirit of sonship, etc.). In another way, these texts also belong to the broad category of religious experience and, more precisely, can be categorized as involving altered states of consciousness (henceforth designated by the abbreviation ASCs).
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- Information
- Paul in EcstasyThe Neurobiology of the Apostle's Life and Thought, pp. 1 - 19Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009