Why Saint Paul might have had an unhealthy soul

[Audie]

You don't think there are other explanations why you have Paul say one thing in one book, and a completely contradictory thing in another? You have to go to mental illness first? What about this simpler, and widely accepted view of modern scholarship? The later books were not written by Paul at all, but someone trying to normalize the radicality of Paul's early theology to Roman conventions and norms?

That actually is the consensus opion of scholars. Authorship of the Pauline epistles - Wikipedia

Now, isn't that simpler than trying to psychoanalyze someone 2000 years ago, when you don't even know what your source material is about?

For those who like simple, and plausible, how about
that he just made the whole thing up?

 

[Estro Felino]

Sociopathy has nothing to do with bipolar or epilepsy. Autism can involve impairment of empathy but doesn't involve the anti-social traits of sociopathy.

Biglino, the book author might have misquoted some other psychiatrist.

 

[stvdv]

Saint Paul used to say that women should wear head coverings not to turn angels (?) on..

I don't think this is a good premise to prove he was normal.

All men are angels. Is it not "normal" for men to be turned on by women?

 

[Estro Felino]

All men are angels. Is it not "normal" for men to be turned on by women?

It is. As a woman I feel gratified if I do, wearing revealing clothes.

 

[Rise]

We can sum up what sociopaths like Paul have as main characteristics;
- lack of empathy or contempt towards suffering
- Schadenfreude that is, persistent but unwilling joy towards people's mishaps or misadventures, and insufference or hate towards people's joy.
- Incapability of feeling romantic love and incapability of understanding it.


Paul probably had a unhealthy sexuality due to physical or hormonal problems. At the same time he felt hatred towards women's beauty.

You don't have any evidence for any of your claims about Paul. Anyone can sling accusations around without proof, but if you want your belief to be taken seriously as being true you need to provide some evidence from Scripture that backs up your claim. Being quite familiar with Paul's writings, I can tell you now that you won't be able to prove it because it's not true.

 

[stvdv]

He said we women are supposed to wear veils not turn men on.
I wonder what he would say in a 2019 Rome, in full Summer

Something like: Ha detto che noi donne dovremmo indossare il velo e non accendere gli uomini.

 

[metis]

Of course it is a trauma capturing christians and bringing them to be put in prison or to death and getting a rebuke by the Jewish Messiah that you got it all wrong.

And exactly what did I supposedly get "all wrong"?

 

[74x12]

Why Saint Paul might have been a sociopath. By sociopath I mean a person who according to the modern psychiatric discoveries, suffered a sort of bipolar disorder.
In neuroscience, these subjects are absolutely guiltless since it is due to the fact that the two parts of the brain don't communicate, or tend not to.

We can sum up what sociopaths like Paul have as main characteristics;
- lack of empathy or contempt towards suffering
- Schadenfreude that is, persistent but unwilling joy towards people's mishaps or misadventures, and insufference or hate towards people's joy.
- Incapability of feeling romantic love and incapability of understanding it.


Paul probably had a unhealthy sexuality due to physical or hormonal problems. At the same time he felt hatred towards women's beauty.

There is no reason to come to these conclusions.

 

[Windwalker]

For those who like simple, and plausible, how about
that he just made the whole thing up?

If he made it all up, it would only be in 7 of those 13 letters ascribed to him. The other dudes made up the other, contractary stuff in those other letters he didn't write.

 

[blü 2]

Why Saint Paul might have been a sociopath. By sociopath I mean a person who according to the modern psychiatric discoveries, suffered a sort of bipolar disorder.
In neuroscience, these subjects are absolutely guiltless since it is due to the fact that the two parts of the brain don't communicate, or tend not to.

We can sum up what sociopaths like Paul have as main characteristics;
- lack of empathy or contempt towards suffering
- Schadenfreude that is, persistent but unwilling joy towards people's mishaps or misadventures, and insufference or hate towards people's joy.
- Incapability of feeling romantic love and incapability of understanding it.


Paul probably had a unhealthy sexuality due to physical or hormonal problems. At the same time he felt hatred towards women's beauty.

I'm unable to agree with Mr Biglino and Mr Esposito on several fronts.

For a start, bipolar disorder and sociopathy are two entirely different things, with entirely different symptoms. It's not impossible for one person to suffer from both, but that's not what's being said.

Second, I don't think Paul's a sociopath, though there may be a fanatic's touch of the manic to him. There are two places in particular where he appears to be judgmental instead of empathetic ─

1 Thessalonians 2:14 For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judea; for you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all men 16 by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they may be saved--so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God's wrath has come upon them at last!​

and

1 Corinthians 14:33 For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints, 34 the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. 35 If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. 36 What! Did the word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached?​

My impression of Paul from what he wrote elsewhere about women and Jewish people is that although he was a dingbat, he wasn’t antisemitic or misogynistic (just with hangups, which he acknowledged, about sex as such). Nothing else in Paul comes even close to the sentiments in those passages; and Jews as the "killers of Christ" is much more a sentiment from around John's time (~100 CE) than Paul's in the 50s; so I'm inclined to think both are glosses by later authors incorporated by copyists into the text, or outright forgeries.

 

[whirlingmerc]

And exactly what did I supposedly get "all wrong"?

Opposing the Messiah was getting things wrong.

 

[whirlingmerc]

I'm unable to agree with Mr Biglino and Mr Esposito on several fronts.

For a start, bipolar disorder and sociopathy are two entirely different things, with entirely different symptoms. It's not impossible for one person to suffer from both, but that's not what's being said.

Second, I don't think Paul's a sociopath, though there may be a fanatic's touch of the manic to him. There are two places in particular where he appears to be judgmental instead of empathetic ─

1 Thessalonians 2:14 For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judea; for you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, 15 who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all men 16 by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they may be saved--so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God's wrath has come upon them at last!​

and

1 Corinthians 14:33 For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints, 34 the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. 35 If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. 36 What! Did the word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached?​

My impression of Paul from what he wrote elsewhere about women and Jewish people is that although he was a dingbat, he wasn’t antisemitic or misogynistic (just with hangups, which he acknowledged, about sex as such). Nothing else in Paul comes even close to the sentiments in those passages; and Jews as the "killers of Christ" is much more a sentiment from around John's time (~100 CE) than Paul's in the 50s; so I'm inclined to think both are glosses by later authors incorporated by copyists into the text, or outright forgeries.

I think some people think of Paul in terms of a caricature.

Gal 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Contrast with the prayer "thank God I am not a gentile, a slave or a woman' popular at that time.

Paul even said

 

[blü 2]

I think some people think of Paul in terms of a caricature.

Gal 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
.

Completely agree that this is Paul's actual position.

 

[Estro Felino]

You don't have any evidence for any of your claims about Paul. Anyone can sling accusations around without proof, but if you want your belief to be taken seriously as being true you need to provide some evidence from Scripture that backs up your claim. Being quite familiar with Paul's writings, I can tell you now that you won't be able to prove it because it's not true.

Romans, 7....the all of it.
A rant from a poor bipolar person, any psychiatrist can confirm you that.

 

[Augustus]

For those who like simple, and plausible, how about
that he just made the whole thing up?

And then devoted the rest of his life, while putting himself in great danger, and eventually being executed for something he 'just made up'?

Doesn't seem the simplest or most plausible explanation at all.

Simplest and most plausible explanation is he had some kind of "religious/mystical experience" of the kind that are well documented in most cultures throughout human history and he believed what he said.

Obviously that someone believes they have had a "religious experience" doesn't mean it must have been an actual Divine intervention.

 

[Augustus]

A rant from a poor bipolar person, any psychiatrist can confirm you that.

Psychiatrists can't diagnose anything based on 2000 year old writings in a rhetorical genre from a very different culture. They can't do anything other than engage in completely worthless speculation that has absolutely no scientific value whatsoever.

 

[Estro Felino]

Psychiatrists can't diagnose anything based on 2000 year old writings in a rhetorical genre from a very different culture. They can't do anything other than engage in completely worthless speculation that has absolutely no scientific value whatsoever.

A psychologist analyzes your soul on the basis of the things you say. He doesn't have to see you in person.
Or are there psychologists that need your blood work or electroencephalogram to make a diagnosis?

 

[Augustus]

A psychologist analyzes your soul on the basis of the things you say. He doesn't have to see you in person.
Or are there psychologists that need your blood work or electroencephalogram to make a diagnosis?

They need to understand your motivations, thoughts, perceptions. They need to understand your culture and its norms.

They can't simply pick up a rhetorical text knowing nothing about the author's internal though process with minimal contextualisation and next to no cultural understanding and make any meaningful statement on their mental state.

Half of the ancient world would be 'psychopaths' based on such cod psychology.

Seneca for example:

"We put down mad dogs; we kill the wild, untamed ox; we use the knife on sick sheep to stop their infecting the flock; we destroy abnormal offspring at birth; children, too, if they are born weak or deformed, we drown. Yet this is not the work of anger, but of reason - to separate the sound from the worthless"

The pre-modern mind was very different to the 21st C one, and anachronistic armchair psychology is less than worthless.

 

[Twilight Hue]

One thing I cannot stand is the modern trend to try to psychoanalyse and pathologise historical figures based on spurious guesswork and the ridiculous assumption that ancient people thought in pretty much the same way as modern people.

It's just a narrative fallacy.

While the culture might have been different and thinking had been different , the human condition is still the same, weither in ancient times or today. They were just as smart and capable as modern day people with all vices as well as assets intact.

It wouldn't be hard to apply modern psychoanalysis to the various ancient characters we come across.

 

[Audie]

And then devoted the rest of his life, while putting himself in great danger, and eventually being executed for something he 'just made up'?

Doesn't seem the simplest or most plausible explanation at all.

Simplest and most plausible explanation is he had some kind of "religious/mystical experience" of the kind that are well documented in most cultures throughout human history and he believed what he said.

Obviously that someone believes they have had a "religious experience" doesn't mean it must have been an actual Divine intervention.

Two types of making it up