The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, delivered a series of three Holy Week Lectures on the theme "St Paul: the Man and his Letters".
The lectures took place in Canterbury Cathedral, England on 2nd, 3rd and 4th of April.
Lecture 1 [50Mb, 52 mins] In his first lecture, "Outsiders and Insiders: Paul's Social World" the Archbishop draws from the book of Acts and St Paul's letters to talk about the world in which Paul lived - a cosmopolitan world held together by the Greek language and the authority of the Roman Emperor, but where universal human rights and dignities did not exist.
Lecture 2 [46Mb, 49 mins] In his second lecture, "The Universal Welcome: Paul's Disturbing Idea", the Archbishop talks about Paul's concept of a new kind of community where the powerful divisions existing within society no longer matter.
Lecture 3 [46Mb, 49 mins] In the third and final lecture, "The New Creation: Paul's Christian Universe", the Archbishop considers the process by which Paul came to understand that Jesus, one of his own contemporaries, was in fact the image of God.
You will find the downloadable Mp3’s here.
As with all lectures or commentaries about Paul the question arises did Rowan (or anyone else) ever meet "Paul" up close and personal in a living-breathing-feeling human form? And thus have extended conversations with him about what he (Paul) understood to be the nature of Truth and Reality.
Another necessary question is, is whether the words attributed to "Paul" in the New Testament were actually spoken or written by him. Remembering that what eventually became the "official" version of the New Testament was put together approximately 300 years after the life of both Jesus and Paul. By people (the church fathers) who obviously could never ever have met either Jesus or Paul up close and personal.
Which of course also raises the question as to how in the course of 300 years of the chaos of history any kind of authentic "reporting" or recording of the "events" described in the Bible was accomplished.
Furthermore, does any of what Rowan said in his lectures really enable anyone to understand the nature of Truth and Reality in 2012?
Posted by: John | Thursday, 10 May 2012 at 02:31 PM