I watched a YouTube video by Gnostic Informant today where "Divine Madness" was mentioned in relation to glossolalia, speaking in tongues.
It got me thinking Paul had what might now be called a "funny turn" where he was taken to the third heaven, 2 Cor. The apostles had ressurection appearances of the risen Lord.
The early Church in Pauls day had prophetic mania, speaking in tongues and ecstatic visions of Christ and angels. Somewhat different to the staid Church services which I used to attend.
I'm writing a kindle book and think this might be an idea worth exploring.
Do you think this idea of divine madness is an important feature of the early church and has this been covered by NT authors?
Divine madness
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Divine madness
I think there are interesting parallels between the spread of early Christianity and the Second Great Awakening in the 19th Century. According to Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening
On Camp Meetings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_meeting
Revival meetings in the 19th Century were also famous for their miracles and audience speaking in tongues. I think Paul and other Christians were running something similar in his time:
Rom 15.19: in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the spirit, so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.
1 Cor 2.4-5: ...and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.
1 Cor 14:22 Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers... 23 So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and inquirers or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind?
Of course there are many differences between the 19th Century and the 1st Century, but I think there were similar psychological mechanisms being played out in the 'camp meetings' in both periods. I think this lead to the great variety of Christianities that sprang up in early Christianity, just as it did during the Second Great Awakening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening
The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the early 19th century in the United States. It spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching and sparked a number of reform movements. Revivals were a key part of the movement and attracted hundreds of converts to new Protestant denominations. The Methodist Church used circuit riders to reach people in frontier locations.
... The outpouring of religious fervor and revival began in Kentucky and Tennessee in the 1790s and early 1800s among the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists. New religious movements emerged during the Second Great Awakening, such as Adventism, Dispensationalism, and the Latter Day Saint movement...
Christians thus had a duty to purify society in preparation for that return... During the Second Great Awakening of the 1830s, some diviners expected the Millennium to arrive in a few years. By the late 1840s, however, the great day had receded to the distant future, and postmillennialism became a more passive religious dimension of the wider middle-class pursuit of reform and progress...
The camp meeting was a religious service of several days' length with preachers. Settlers in thinly populated areas gathered at the camp meeting for fellowship as well as worship. The sheer exhilaration of participating in a religious revival with crowds of hundreds and perhaps thousands of people inspired the dancing, shouting, and singing associated with these events. The revivals also followed an arc of great emotional power, with an emphasis on the individual's sins and need to turn to Christ, and a sense of restoring personal salvation... Upon their return home, most converts joined or created small local churches, which grew rapidly.[18]
... The outpouring of religious fervor and revival began in Kentucky and Tennessee in the 1790s and early 1800s among the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists. New religious movements emerged during the Second Great Awakening, such as Adventism, Dispensationalism, and the Latter Day Saint movement...
Christians thus had a duty to purify society in preparation for that return... During the Second Great Awakening of the 1830s, some diviners expected the Millennium to arrive in a few years. By the late 1840s, however, the great day had receded to the distant future, and postmillennialism became a more passive religious dimension of the wider middle-class pursuit of reform and progress...
The camp meeting was a religious service of several days' length with preachers. Settlers in thinly populated areas gathered at the camp meeting for fellowship as well as worship. The sheer exhilaration of participating in a religious revival with crowds of hundreds and perhaps thousands of people inspired the dancing, shouting, and singing associated with these events. The revivals also followed an arc of great emotional power, with an emphasis on the individual's sins and need to turn to Christ, and a sense of restoring personal salvation... Upon their return home, most converts joined or created small local churches, which grew rapidly.[18]
On Camp Meetings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_meeting
Lee Sandlin gave an overview of the typical camp meeting in frontier America:
"A typical meeting began in a low-key, almost solemn way. A preacher gave a sermon of welcome and led a prayer for peace and community. This was followed by the singing of several hymns. Then there would be more sermons. …
"The next day, and the day following, the sermons grew increasingly sensational and impassioned, and the excited response of the crowd grew more prolonged. By the second or third day, people were crying out during the sermons, and shouting prayers, and bursting into loud lamentations; they began grabbing at their neighbors and desperately pleading with them to repent; they sobbed uncontrollably and ran in terror through the crowd, shoving aside everybody in their path. …
"As the preachers ranted without letup, the crowd was driven into a kind of collective ecstasy. In the night, as the torches and bonfires flared around the meeting ground and the darkness of the trackless forests closed in, people behaved as if possessed by something new and unfathomable. As Finley wrote: "A strange supernatural power seemed to pervade the entire mass of mind there collected."
"A typical meeting began in a low-key, almost solemn way. A preacher gave a sermon of welcome and led a prayer for peace and community. This was followed by the singing of several hymns. Then there would be more sermons. …
"The next day, and the day following, the sermons grew increasingly sensational and impassioned, and the excited response of the crowd grew more prolonged. By the second or third day, people were crying out during the sermons, and shouting prayers, and bursting into loud lamentations; they began grabbing at their neighbors and desperately pleading with them to repent; they sobbed uncontrollably and ran in terror through the crowd, shoving aside everybody in their path. …
"As the preachers ranted without letup, the crowd was driven into a kind of collective ecstasy. In the night, as the torches and bonfires flared around the meeting ground and the darkness of the trackless forests closed in, people behaved as if possessed by something new and unfathomable. As Finley wrote: "A strange supernatural power seemed to pervade the entire mass of mind there collected."
Revival meetings in the 19th Century were also famous for their miracles and audience speaking in tongues. I think Paul and other Christians were running something similar in his time:
Rom 15.19: in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the spirit, so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.
1 Cor 2.4-5: ...and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.
1 Cor 14:22 Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers... 23 So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and inquirers or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind?
Of course there are many differences between the 19th Century and the 1st Century, but I think there were similar psychological mechanisms being played out in the 'camp meetings' in both periods. I think this lead to the great variety of Christianities that sprang up in early Christianity, just as it did during the Second Great Awakening.