One of biggest uncertainties for Paul Taunton as he enters the priesthood at the very outset of the 60s is where is he going to fit in. The Catholic Church runs on obedience and Paul knows that. What he didn’t know was how much of a nonconformist he was. As he moves through his doctoral studies, he becomes aware of his dislike for mere form and formality, for structures that avoid critical substance, even a morality that allows culture to decide the application. Paul dislikes thoughtless adherence. Worse yet, Paul has a hard time keeping his objections under wrap.
At the outset of the novel Paul’s instincts and intuitions start driving him away from the institutional mindset. Over and over he sees Jesus outside of institutions. His instincts drive home the conviction that, “Jesus is not religion. Jesus is first and foremost his Father’s Son, not some icon in a church mural. Jesus is a teacher, a preacher, a Rabbi, not a static object of worship.” Religion time and time again takes Jesus out of his true gospel contexts—in the marketplace teaching a lesson, even sometimes with a whip.
One startling revelation he hurls at one of his doctoral classmates (who’s writing an entire dissertation around Jesus as “priest according to the order of Melchizedek”), is that Jesus is a Prophet not a priest. Paul argues that Jesus follows John the Baptist, not Melchizedek. The only precursor to Jesus was John the Baptist, no Melchizedek. And John was a prophet extraordinaire.
Another of Paul’s pet beliefs is that we are wrapped in God from the beginning. “God dwells innate in our consciousness. We not only come from God, but we also come with God,” Paul argues at his doctoral thesis defense. “God’s presence is a conscious one, and concomitantly knowledge filled one. Our brains are internally fed with God. If we are conscious, we are God-conscious simultaneously. It is an internal event, whereas religion is an external event.”
Paul Taunton takes the reader on a journey of awareness’s, serious and penetrating awareness’s. Nothing is taken for granted. It’s surgical theology. So much of the official religion is ecclesiastical theatre. For Paul, God is already embedded in our heads.
The reader will find Paul a refreshing and rewarding observer of what most of us deem important for now and a long time afterwards.
