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Seebold, Susie and Paul

Susie’s story (Lovely Bones Pts 1 & 2) left us with a positive message as Susie comes to see how her spirit, picked up, reinforced and put into action by Grandma Lynn, is still very much ‘a Presence’ in those she left behind, product of her ‘lovely bones’, and you don’t have to be a card-carrying church-goer for a reminder of Easter. 

So what happened next after that first Good Friday? 

Time to re-visit the New Testament texts and reflect on 'the next Act', but a word of warning. In the case of Jesus we assume we know, but what do we really know? And might we be missing something because we think we know? So with The Lovely Bones as a common background (violence, bereavement, and the rest) I decided to step into the shoes of the disciples and the women to see events through their eyes, constantly re-visiting The Lovely Bones in the light of the Gospel narratives, hoping each might be beneficial to a better understanding of both.

Holy Week began on a high, though the clouds were never far away and the forecast uncertain. By late on Wednesday growing anxiety, hostility and rumour were rampant. Nobody knew what was going on or what to believe. By Thursday night the dye was cast. Events moved swiftly. and by mid-day Friday the worst fears confirmed.  That was it. Their friend and hero was dead and on the way to his grave, horror mollified only by Joseph of Arimathea (‘one of them’) who had managed to secure the body for respectable obsequies.

The Sabbath passed quietly, but next day, in a well-meaning attempt to come to terms with reality, the lid blows off. He’s gone! Jewish rumour that the disciples had stolen and hidden the body was a non-starter. Shell-shocked and suffering from what today might be described as  PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) the disciples are in disarray. But then, a ray of light. They see him. Not once, not twice, but four times in seven days, and his disembodied spirit becomes a more embodied ‘Presence’ with each visit.¹

Any TV viewer, coming to the end of Episode 4 (John’s gospel) would be holding their breath for the next, only to be disappointed if all they can find is Luke Volume 2 (Acts of the Apostles). The principal character has gone and except for Peter the supporting cast nowhere to be seen. ‘So what did happen?’

In the case of the empty tomb, nothing. That quickly fades from the picture and once the disciples have ‘seen’ him and convinced themselves that he is not dead but very much alive, the focus switches to the ‘appearances’. 

But what appearances? When, where and to whom? Apart from the four or five appearances to the inner circle, evidence is scant, but within a couple of years, backed up by similar appearances to James and all the apostles and (as if that were not enough)  to ‘more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time’, such accounts  proved sufficient to provide Saul with the tipping point he needed.² In a word ‘he saw the light’.

 

When we next meet Saul he is now Paul, a changed man and the forerunner of a new creation.³ Prior to the crucifixion (in the lingo of The Lovely Bones) Paul was a writer on ‘ruled lines’ par excellence. Status quo was his trademark. Hence his enthusiasm for a commission from the Jewish authorities to root out these ‘Jesus people’ before they did any damage. But then, on that fateful day, out of the blue, something happened. Precisely what we have no idea, and maybe Paul didn’t know either. A ‘blinding light’ and a ‘voice’ (though apt) is the best he can do.⁴ It tells us little but for Paul it was enough to see himself as ‘having had an appearance of ‘the risen Lord’, comparable to the appearances to Peter and the Twelve’^.5 Different in detail and consequences, certainly, but from now on Paul is the ‘doyen’ in the Christian story, the focus for ‘what happened next’ and head and shoulders above all others, though not immediately, and not without a struggle, as much within himself as with colleagues, friends and opponents.

The ‘ruled lines’ of Judaism did not vanish overnight, but the new Paul has found a freedom to ‘write the other way’. Unfortunately, as with Sebald’s Susie, his new life is not quite what he was hoping for. He never expected his former friends and associates to share his joy and queue up to join him. Turncoats are rarely popular and even more rarely trusted. What they have done once they may well do twice, but what he was not prepared for was the cool reception from the disciples, who could hardly feel confident with what they saw, nor from the early church leaders whose broad line seemed to be ‘let’s wait and see’.

Paul’s self-confidence, nevertheless, was not dented, or not much. With encouragement from Ananias,⁶ he felt sure he was now moving in the right direction and even before he left Damascus, narrowly escaping a plot on his life,⁷ he was busy in the synagogues with his ‘new Messiah’ proclaiming Jesus as ‘the Son of God,’ much to the chagrin of Jews who distrusted him and saw him as a threat. 

As in bereavement, Paul had to move on. Time to ‘let go’ of the inherited ‘ruled lines’. Time to let go of the  empty tomb.⁸ That was then, this is now. Time to embrace a Living Presence, and for that and what was happening elsewhere (the appearances) there was evidence abundant. The crucified Jesus, whose followers Saul had been committed to destroy, were proving overwhelmingly indestructible and there was no way Paul or the whole of Judaism could prevent the life and spirit of Jesus from surviving and blossoming as a crucial ‘Presence’ in the wider world. It’s a tough call but that ‘blinding light’ was blindingly obvious and that ‘irrepressible voice’ could not be silenced. In a word Paul knew he had been wrong.

 

Rewind to Micklem’s conclusion (Lovely Bones Pt 1)

'The heart of the ministry of Jesus was not what he said or did,
but the impact on those who experienced eye contact with him’. 

Support comes independently in a similar study by Leslie Houlden,⁹ whose research into ‘what the early Christians believed’ led him to see that in every case where Jews were open to reform it was Jesus who tipped the scales for  the change in their beliefs. 

From now on the appearances take centre stage. What tipped the scales for Paul (and the five hundred) snowballed. Precisely what words they used we have no means of knowing nor would we know what they understood by them if we did, but if we find it difficult to express such extraordinary experiences in our own lives small wonder if those early believers had a similar problem^.10 Literalism can sometimes be a barrier to truth. What matters is an imaginative appreciation of their experience rather than pouring over words in another language, in a different culture and environment, 2,000 years later.

So once over the trauma of that unforgettable Holy Week, how long before the disciples came to see that the impact of Jesus in some of those close encounters with others was something which they too had witnessed at first hand but not personally experienced (or not fully appreciated) at the time.¹¹

Why, when or how can only be a matter for speculation but a momentary pause for reflection on our own experience of astigmatism may help. Had they been too close, or not close enough? Too involved, or too detached? Too mesmerised with the superficial or too indifferent to the depths? Had familiarity or disproportionate enthusiasm over those three years been a barrier to a richer and a fuller understanding of what was going on? Maybe they were over-influenced or over-awed by contemporary ‘ruled paper’ Jewish divisions between believers (Pharisees) and disbelievers (Sadducees). Pondering our own answers may be more profitable than speculation as to theirs, always remembering that then as now, stubborn resistance, no better than blind acceptance or cool dismissal, are all obstacles in the search for reality. Whatever it was, only when they started in a different place (‘writing the other way’), letting go of ‘a body and a tomb’, did they begin to see that even when Jesus was no longer there in the flesh there could be no doubt about his overwhelming Risen and Living Presence.¹²

The message was catching on. The mood was changing. Too many people were reporting similar experiences. Sooner or later the penny must have dropped. The disciples were not sitting in a stationary bus wondering where to go. The bus was on the move and they had to be on board. Jesus was ‘in the air’ around them. Five hundred claims¹³ to have had an experience of his presence (and still counting) within the first two or three years, could not be overlooked. Here were the seeds of the churches which Paul later was to visit. Their major problem was that the bus kept hitting obstacles, placed on the road by an anti-Christian ‘virus’ called Saul. He had to be stopped and if he couldn’t be stopped (and they were in no position to stop him) he had to be curbed if not controlled. But how? What was first regarded as extraordinary was now rampant. Tales of ‘his’ appearances were popping up everywhere. What first looked like an epidemic was rapidly becoming endemic.

With someone as clear, powerful and singleminded as Saul direct confrontation would only have played into his hands and been counter productive. Humanitarian compassion was not part of his make-up.¹⁴ Their only hope (and it must have seemed a very long shot!) was to go for ‘word of mouth’ and ‘the drip’. So, more in despair than hope, they simply used every opportunity to tell Saul what he was not so much missing as resisting, and once he heard what had happened to Cephas, then to the Twelve, to James and all the apostles and on one occasion to more than 500 brothers and sisters at the same time, the dam burst. Saul knew the game was up, changed his name, declared himself Paul and shared their joy.¹⁵

Without ever meeting Jesus ‘in the flesh’ (as far as we know) and with never a mention  of anything approaching an empty tomb or ‘gospel-like appearances’, Paul had discovered what Theissen¹⁶ describes as ‘the Jesus story’; a narrative in which Jesus never appears but whose shadow is everywhere, laying the foundation history of Christian origins, with ‘a narrative of the deepest realties of human experience’ in an attempt  to convey what it means to say that ‘Jesus is risen’.¹⁷

From now on Paul holds centre-stage, affording a mix of relief and satisfaction for the disciples, paralleled by a similar set of emotions of his own as he comes to terms with his dilemma and sets himself on course for a new future. Neither party could have foreseen what was to come. Details are in short supply and a little constructive imagination may be necessary as we pick up the thread.

(Back in real time) We now move on from the disciples and the past to Paul and the future with those emerging Christian communities (fledgling churches). Who were these people? Where did they come from? What did they believe and who nurtured them? Probably most of them were Jews, some with a fairly flexible approach to the faith, some of a more liberal persuasion and maybe even some of them rebels. But then, enter the Gentiles: tribes, races, nationalities, Greeks and Romans in particular, some well rooted in other faiths, mostly minorities and losers to whom Jesus had always been well-disposed, often signposting them as a highly important group whose responses could not be overlooked.  

What these early widely disparate Christian communities actually believed is a more difficult question, but after observing what brought them together, either out of obscurity or more often within a Synagogue, Houlden¹⁸ noticed the same continuing trend — Jesus was always a significant part of the story, soon becoming not one you believed ‘about’ but the one you believed ‘in.’ Most of them already had a belief in (or about) God, but once Jesus becomes centre-stage God remains in the wings. He never goes away nor does Jesus become a substitute, but rather the lens through which people come to see God differently.

Act 5 clearly belongs to Paul. For the next thirty years, with Jesus as his focal point and inspiration, Paul is his major advocate and the potential leader of the early Christian communities. Predating the gospels and Acts by some thirty years, Paul is virtually the only source of ‘what happened next’. With his travels he extended the geographical range (Macedonia and Rome, for example). In his letters he supported the nascent churches with comments, checks and balances, establishing a firm foundation for Christianity for the next 2,000 years and providing not only a major source of information prior to the gospels¹⁹ but also the foundation documents for ecclesiastical development in those early and formative years.

More than any other individual Paul not only expounds but also demonstrates an awareness of the spirit of Jesus,²⁰ his ‘Risen and Living Presence’, with a capacity to proclaim and promote ‘the Way’²¹ in word (spoken and written) and deed: Belief and Praxis (Behaviour).

Whether he was as  clear, single-minded, determined and confident as history has tended to make him is questionable. To begin with he was certainly stunned and in limbo, suggesting a problem of identity. Who was he, and where did he fit? Was he still Saul, with a Paul struggling to get out, or was he now Paul with a Saul constantly needling him because he had? Unwelcome and unappreciated all round, and with no specific programme or following, he goes into retreat to sort himself out. After three years, thinking the dust may have settled, he returns to Jerusalem only to find that little had changed until a friendly Barnabas came to his defence and established his credibility,²² resulting in a joint mission to Antioch,²³ where for the best part of a year they exercised a shared ministry largely among Gentiles, but tensions persisted. 

Bringing the message of Jesus ‘to Jews only and to no others’ (Italics mine)²⁴ was not Paul’s line. Paul had no intention of seeing Christianity as a sect inside Judaism (embracing the new without letting go of the old!). Any hint of Jewish believers who were ‘Jew first, and Christian second’ or Gentiles being required to become Jews in order to be accepted in the church was anathema. Church leaders in Jerusalem were less sure, and it was only thanks to Peter²⁵ that they could bring themselves grudgingly to admit that with certain qualifications and clarifications they could find no reason NOT to accept Gentiles into the church.

Paul, an ‘all or nothing’ character,²⁶ was already set on ‘writing the other way‘. Working in Antioch was too much like ‘writing on wavy lines’ and when it was time to revisit the communities they had met on the way out, he and Barnabas went their separate ways.²⁷

Disappointed, if not disillusioned, he moved on only to find that the pattern varied little, sometimes better, sometimes worse. Little could he have known that life was always going to be more a ‘path of thorns’ than ‘a bed of roses’, from a ‘baptism of stoning’ in Lystra²⁸ at the beginning to being shoe-horned out of Ephesus²⁹ by the town clerk at the end, in the interests of his own safety and that of his fellow-travellers, followed by a Jewish plot to kill him on a visit to Macedonia and Greece,³⁰ en route for Jerusalem’, where a warm welcome from some with appreciation for the effectiveness of his ministry³¹ was countered by others, still hostile, who seized him, dragged him out of the temple, clamouring for his death and Jerusalem in uproar.³²  Finally, saved by virtue of his Roman citizenship, Paul accepted the offer of trial in Rome only to spend a further two years awaiting trial in prison (or relatively open confinement).

So who was 

’THIS MAN PAUL’?

What was he offering and where did he get it from? 

For all that happened over those thirty years we are dependent entirely on ’this man’. Paul's Letters are virtually our only written source of information and they are just that — Letters: the convictions and reflections of one man, addressing one particular situation, at one point in time, and Paul is unlikely ever to have thought of them as anything approaching the earliest surviving writings of the apostolic church. Furthermore, pre-dating the gospels as he does, Paul was much more influential in defining the Christian tradition than the gospel writers, who doubtless drew on earlier anecdotal evidence but may also have drawn on Paul’s Letters if only as pointers to those incidents which had purchase in the light of his experience.    

So long before his Letters became enshrined in the New Testament Canon, acquired status as the major source of Pauline theology and ethics alongside the gospels, and the touchstone of orthodoxy for believers worldwide,³⁴ what I propose to do is to eavesdrop as Paul dictates to his amanuensis and step into the shoes of his contemporaries as they read them — to sense the atmosphere rather than debate the doctrine. This is Paul ad hoc, with no competitors or peer review. 

Reflecting on Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, after a lifetime of traditional, liberal and evangelical Pauline theologies, almost exclusively in a church environment, led me to take a fresh look starting in a different place: not with traditional theology, but with a modicum of naivety and as much objectivity as I could muster I soon realised that the obvious question (‘Where did he get it from?) was  the wrong question, as if he sat down one day, worked it all out in his mind and then set off with a structured programme to preach it. He didn’t. He is emphatic on the point that he didn’t get it ‘from anywhere, or anyone’ and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. His Gospel was the child of  experience (divine inspiration?) nurtured and burnished in the heat of life.³⁵ So what I really needed to know was not where he got it from but what it was. What was ‘the fire in his belly’, or (more politely) ‘the prevailing winds’ in his message, and two clues soon stood out: his choice of Language and his Personal Experience.

Starting with Language two words dominated. One was ‘crucifixion’, rather than resurrection (which he barely mentions, and the empty tomb not at all),³⁶ and the other, based on Personal Experience and almost always in the same breath, was 'suffering’.³⁷

Paul’s gospel is the child of suffering, not miracle. Factual Cross not Problematic Tomb. It is more about sharing suffering than believing doctrines, and the suffering is not punishment for sins nor anything to do with expiation: it is suffering which achieves ‘the destruction of the sinful self’.³⁸ It is ‘death’ in the sense of surrender, giving up, letting go rather than clinging on, thereby opening a door (or rolling away a stone) for new life to break out, because in Paul’s gospel it is in that new life that we encounter ‘the Living Christ’ (a ‘Presence’), always there, and everywhere, just waiting for recognition and response, and the power of the resurrection stems less from belief and more from experience,³⁹ as we identify with him, cease to live for ourselves, crucify the lower nature and set our feet upon the new path of life.⁴⁰

In Paul’s gospel crucifixion is a beginning not an end, the agony of Gethsemane not the peaceful satisfaction of a Garden 'with a history’, and if that leads anybody to wonder why, a re-reading of  Paul’s letters with an eye on his personal experience of suffering as a source of authority (rather than his doctrine) the reason becomes obvious — it would be difficult to find anyone else among the early believers who suffered so much, for so long and so little reward, and with confirmation from Luke’s Acts of the Apostles which never misses a chance to include that element of Paul’s ministry, constantly under threat and almost destroyed. Very briefly, consider Paul's record In Sufferings Oft.

Moreover, personal attacks and physical abuse were only part of the story. Add in the mental pressure (and temptation) simply to pack up and go home. Yet when, towards the end of life he looks back to how it all began, his most painful moment must have been that fateful decision to change sides and ‘let go’ what he had always been brought up to believe: Judaism, the Law, the system, circumcision and all those familiar Jewish rituals and traditions. That was more than ‘writing the other way’. That was tearing up the paper and starting afresh with a plain sheet.

Yet, in spite of everything, he can still say that having ‘written off’ (NEB) all he once regarded as ‘assets’ he now sees those ‘assets’ as ‘dung’ or garbage’ (according to the version you use⁴⁸) compared to the joy of that ‘Living Presence’,⁴⁹ (the Living Christ) in the air around him. Paul saw his 'crucifixion' as  little more than a preamble to that Living Presence which he cherished for all, but if this is what he wants to convey by being ‘crucified with Christ’,⁵⁰ no wonder the opposition found him a handful!⁵¹

OPPONENTS AND THEIR AGENDA

The new life in Christ (resurrection), futuristic, vague and questionable, was fine; the problem was the bit before and that was the heart of the opposition, coming from all sides in a unifying Pilate-Herod-like relationship. To life's losers, music to the ears, making even the 'crucifixion bit' tolerable. To life's winners, most likely a  a temporary blip, light music, easy come, easy go, cheap and nasty.

Paul ('Jauvert'), single-minded, undaunted and undauntable, presses on. His gospel music is certainly not light music to him. He is in for the long haul with a bigger mission than changing people or small communities (churches); his mission is to change the world through changed people. Hardly light music! Paul’s vision is something more approaching the likes of a symphony.

     PAUL’S GOSPEL MUSIC

Most symphonies have one or two themes which are easy to pick up, respond to and hum around the house.⁵⁷ The rest then plays round those themes with a plethora of variations, no less important to the whole, but the listeners’ responses will be more personal and varied. 

In the Pauline collection I identified two such major themes: Romans 12 (perhaps because  a senior cleric of my youth said that it should be read in every church at least once a month, backed up by Romans 8:31-39) and 1 Corinthians 13 (perhaps because it must be one of the easier bits of Paul to digest, so basic and down-to-earth.⁵⁸ Taken together they combine the need to accept ourselves as we are with our own gifts and limitations (Romans 12:3-8) and the counter requirement to adapt, change a way of life, with a different set of values (1 Corinthians 7-12).

Romans 12

In some respects I see Romans 12 as a watershed in Paul’s ministry. Writing to people he has never met it is reasonable to introduce himself and outline his gospel so that they know what to expect. The downside is that Romans 1-11, unlike his other Letters, is heavily doctrinal and something of a turn-off for today’s readers who find it hard going and unrelated to the world they live in, but then (almost as if someone presses a button) the mood changes as Romans 12 crashes in (like a symphony building up to the finale. or a preacher waxing eloquence) switching with surprising clarity from 11 chapters of Belief into twenty-one verses on Behaviour (Praxis). Underlying themes he has been wrestling with burst out⁵⁹ leading to a climax with a Council of Perfection, ticking the boxes one by one with a focus on sound character (vv 9-21), personal relationships for life in the community in general and sound common sense for the world of church administration.

1 Corinthians 13

Writing here to people he  knows, in what appears to be a fairly established church community, he covers a whole range of issues on Behaviour (Praxis),⁶⁰ clarifying foundations, setting out the shop and putting down markers. But then, a second button pressed, and (Chapter 13) a totally different genre describing Life in the Kingdom as directed and fortified by the Presence of the Living Christ. Human rather than legalistic, almost with Paul as a grandfatherly figure, his feet firmly on the ground and setting ‘Good Practice’ for the coming age.

Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 13 have much in common but the tone is different.⁶¹ Romans 12 is slightly corrective (a bit more stick than carrot). 1 Corinthians 13 is positively inspirational, more like a Hymn to sing (In Praise of Yahweh) than a Creed to recite,⁶² and whereas Romans 1-11 is predominantly Belief (doctrine) leading to Behaviour⁶³ (Praxis) 1 Corinthians 13 is Behaviour exemplifying Belief, with Belief as the product of Experience.⁶⁴

SOURCES OF INSPIRATION

By this point, what struck me most forcibly was the similarity of both to the Sermon on the Mount,⁶⁵ especially Matthew 5 with all those ‘Our forefathers were told . . . (but) ‘I say to you’ passages⁶⁶ where  Jesus reverses all manner of traditional and generally accepted beliefs,  traditions and customs, which Paul now seems to apply one by one with customary single mindedness, but then, once again, just when we think we know where we are going, the music changes as different contexts change the emphasis and different questions come to the fore.  

Micklem’s generalised description of Jesus exercising a healing ministry is fine as far as it goes, but not at the expense of his over-riding emphasis⁶⁷ which was not so much ‘healing’ (or miracle) as the impact he had on those people who on close contact found whatever help and assurances they had long wanted but never got. Some wanted little, if anything, more than to be noticed simply as a person, and this wider approach forms the backbones of Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 13. So is ‘People First’ the heart of Paul’s gospel?

Almost but not quite. Romans 1-11 (heavily doctrinal) suggests that even at quite an advanced stage Paul was still a bit Belief 3, Behaviour 2. He has not quite crossed the Rubicon from Judaism to Christianity but is Romans 12 where he takes the plunge and gets halfway, followed by 1 Corinthians 13 where he reaches the other side.

Whether stopping halfway across the Rubicon is tenable is beside the point (was there really anywhere to stop?) but with a limited amount of of information on Paul’s praxis⁶⁸ it could never be a satisfactory position for an all-or-nothing man like Paul. So nothing wrong with his Principles, but to what extent did he embody them in his life? Would people remember him for something he did rather than something he said? With no evidence there is no answer, but if we can twitch the curtain and peep through the chink we may succeed in breaking down this last barrier with a couple of incidents worthy of more attention than they have often been given; one, his first⁶⁹ (at the beginning of his ministry) and the other his last⁷⁰ (at the end).

First, under threat of a world-wide famine near Antioch, where Paul was cutting his teeth with Barnabas, the Jerusalem church leaders decided to send him on a ‘Bread for the World’ humanitarian mission delivering food parcels, which apparently was highly successful, established his credibility in their eyes and must have taught him a lot. Could this be one factor which enabled a convert from a restrictive Jewish sect to appreciate the wholeness and unity of life in the way Jesus did?⁷¹

For example, if we can suspend our preoccupation with miracle, what are  to make of TW Manson’s exegesis of the Feeding of the Five Thousand,⁷² focusing on meeting humanities’ basic needs at a point where pressure threatens to boil over in mass enthusiasm or righteous anger (the crowd)  balanced by the need to retreat (Jesus and the disciples), calling for understanding and simple hospitality as a means of enriching life, reducing hostility and creating unity?

Last, his Letter to Philemon is of an entirely different kind,⁷³ so much so that its inclusion in the Pauline corpus faced considerable opposition and was regarded as ‘incongruous’ by Jerome, Chrysostom and many others’, leaving subsequent scholars ruminating on how it ever got in the canon at all. 

The issue is slavery but the approach here is so different from the flea dispatched on leaving the Galatians. No ‘preaching on the evils of slavery, no lectures, no theories. but a human touch to change the mood as Behaviour trumps Belief. It may be only the first sign of spring but Paul’s ’spring’ is very different from the mists of autumn.

These two events (first and last) provide the cherry on the cake. Neither a healing ministry nor a breaking down of barriers, nor even changing people — all  important and true — but links in a chain, as  a crucified Jesus and a wholly rounded Paul combine to give us a wholly rounded Gospel, with people before dogma, prioritising minorities and losers, whether it’s belief, race, nationality, custom or whatever. A clear call for a change of life style, with a new set of values and a wholly new way of living, 

changing the world through changed people. 

Sadly, for life’s winners, who for a lifetime had accepted the inevitable and often buckled down to make it work, it was the trashing of society’s structures which for generations had kept them safe.⁷⁵ Their opposition is hardly surprising, but  a truly Social Gospel, pure nectar for minorities and losers. How come we ever got a doctrinal one! The challenge for Paul’s successors is to address the problems of the 'new losers' to enable them to cope with their losses and on that, after 2000 years one can only  say 'work in progress'. 

Paul may have been a late learner (we have no means of knowing) but this is a fair indication that he died a whole character, not a split personality. Like those before him, identified by Micklem as bearing the indelible mark of Jesus, Paul is one more to add to the list, starting out as the villain of the piece, never the leading actor and no pretensions to be, then or since, but Lovely Bones nevertheless!    

And Onesimus? Who knows, but could he too be another?

Finish

This concludes my work on Sebald’s Lovely Bones, but leaves
Unanswered Questions, including

WHAT NEXT FOR ONESIMUS ?

Anthony Dean comes up with an interesting answer

Do we know anything else about Onesimus?  

Not for certain. In the 2nd century Ignatius makes reference to an
 'Onesimus’ as Bishop of Ephesus . . . but Onesimus was a common name.

So what are the chances? 

Fairly high. The collection and issue of Paul’s letters took place in
Ephesus towards the end of the 1st century‘.   So . . . 

                         IF the Bishop were Paul’s protégé, and 

                                                   IF he edited the Pauline Epistles, and

                         IF it turned out to be true, 

 it might explain how that letter finished up where it did.

As my old teacher, T W Manson, had a habit of saying, 
‘You pays your money and you takes your choice.’

So have we reached 

AN END OR A BEGINNING?

Nobody will ever know. Who is to say that in another place and at another time,
what once appeared to be an end might turn out to be a new beginning. 

What must have looked like an end for Onesimus
may well have turned out to be a new beginning (thanks to Paul). 

What looked like an end to Paul
has truly been a new beginning (thanks to posterity).

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from (TS Eliot)

Lovely Bones Pt1                      Lovely Bones Pt 2                   Lovely Bones Pt 3