The Forgotten Creed
Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism
Long before the followers of Jesus declared him to be the Son of God, Jesus taught his followers that they too were the children of God. This ancient creed, now all but forgotten, is recorded still within the folds of a letter of Paul the Apostle. Paul did not create this creed, nor did he fully embrace it, but he quoted it and thus preserved it for a time when it might become important once again. This ancient creed said nothing about God or Christ or salvation. Its claims were about the whole human race: there is no race, there is no class, there is no gender. This is the story of that first, forgotten creed, and the world of its begetting, a world in which foreigners were feared, slaves were human chattel, and men questioned whether women were really human after all. Into this world the followers of Jesus proclaimed: "You are all children of God. There is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female, for you are all one." Where did this remarkable statement of human solidarity come from, and what, finally, happened to it? How did Christianity become a Gentile religion that despised Jews, condoned slavery as the will of God, and championed patriarchy? Christian theologians would one day argue about the nature of Christ, the being of God, and the mechanics of salvation. But before this, in the days when Jesus was still fresh in the memory of those who knew him, the argument was a different one: how can human beings overcome the ways by which we divide ourselves one from another? Is solidarity possible beyond race, class, and gender?
Tags
Genre
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
Short thoughts: I have nearly 1700 words on my blog. I really considered stopping the book about five different times. I also considered asking for a refund from Audible because they have an easy refund of books you don't like. But I didn't. I bought the book and I am reviewing it so you don't have to.
There are a couple big problems with the book, the largest is that I can't figure out who Patterson is trying to persuade, because his argument would be unpersuasive to most, even though I think he may be right about the larger point that Gal 3:28 was derived from an early baptismal creed. The introduction dismisses several books attributed to Paul as pseudonymous writing. Others do as well, I don't particularly have a problem with that take. But if, as Patterson suggests, Paul was not actually sexist or in favor of slavery because Paul wasn't really the author of 1 Timothy, that doesn't really help solve the problem for people that are going to take seriously 1 Timothy regardless of whether Paul wrote it.
Another good example of the problems of the book is that Patterson argues that the books of Acts was likely written to both counter Marcion but affirm supersessionism. If this is the case, Acts could not have been written any earlier than 150-160. Many scholars date the book of Acts of the Apostles to around 80 or 90. If the earlier dating, which is more commonly held by most scholars is accurate, the whole argument around Marcion co-opting Paul and Acts being written to counter parts of Marcionism but to affirm a type of supersessionism completely falls apart. There are several other places where odd datings also make his argument difficult. But the Acts one is the worst. Even if I agreed with the underpinnings (Paul's attempt as cross ethnic table fellowship in Antioch was a failure and Acts was in part of repudiation of it), which I don't, the dating makes the argument unworkable.
There are a number of problems with the book and I can't recommend it. But if you want to read my longer comments, you can go to my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-forgotten-creed/
This is a decent summary of a lot of New Testament scholarship around Paul.
He references Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza's classic work, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins several times which has been on my to-read list for a while.
