Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:56:20.623Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Material Spirit: Cosmology and Ethics in Paul

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2009

Troels Engberg-Pedersen
Troels Engberg-Pedersen
Affiliation:
Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Koebmagergade 46, DK-1150 Copenhagen K, Denmark email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay argues that the traditional dichotomy between ‘apocalypticism’ and philosophy should be transcended with regard to Paul's understanding of the pneuma in relation to sarx. The essay first analyses the cosmology of the pneuma in connection with the future resurrection of believers (1 Cor 15.35–50), then considers its presence in the bodies of believers here and now (2 Corinthians 3–5), then interprets the ‘anthropology’ of 1 Thess 5.23 and 1 Cor 2.14–15 and 15.44 and its connection with Paul's ‘ethics’, and finally proposes a reading of Rom 8.1–13 in relation to 7.7–25 that is based on Paul's concrete cosmology.

Keywords

PaulpneumaapocalypticismphilosophyStoicismRomans 8.10
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 179 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Do I also wish to go beyond the dichotomy between a metaphorical and a literal reading in relation to Paul's many forms of expression concerning the pneuma (as Margaret Mitchell has very pertinently asked about my position)? No. On the contrary, the brunt of my argument is that in spite of everything that can be (rightly) said about the ineliminability of metaphorical language in human talk and thought, there is and remains a clear distinction, which should precisely be enforced in relation to Paul's talk of the pneuma.

2 Gunkel, Hermann, Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes nach der populären Anschauung der apostolischen Zeit und der Lehre des Apostels Paulus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1888)Google Scholar.

3 See Gunkel, Die Wirkungen, 76–9 (‘Old Testament’) and 79–82 (‘Hellenistic Judaism’).

4 Thus Gunkel, Die Wirkungen: ‘supernaturalistisch’ (75), ‘Supernaturalismus’ (101), ‘übernatürlich’ (73, 75, 99). Gunkel does realize that ‘auch für die urapostolische Anschauung die Grenze des Uebernatürlichen und Natürlichen der Natur der Sache nach nicht immer scharf gezogen werden konnte’ (84). Seen from our perspective, this observation should have led him to query the distinction itself.

5 See Gunkel, Die Wirkungen, 43–9, for the early church (‘ein übersinnlicher Stoff’, 44; ‘stofflich oder an ein stoffliches Substrat gebunden’, 47) and 99–101 for Paul (the pneuma is ‘mit einem himmlischen Stoff verwandt’, 101; cf. 99, where Gunkel also uses the term ‘verwandt’). Note, however, that while he recognizes this aspect of Paul's understanding of the pneuma, Gunkel criticizes Holsten, Lüdemann and Pfleiderer for having made ‘die Stofflichkeit des Geistes zum Ausgangspunkt der Schilderung…der paulinischen Lehre vom πνεῦμα’ (101).

6 Gunkel, Die Wirkungen, 75: ‘[D]as ganze Leben des Christen ist eine Wirkung des πνεῦμα, das bedeutet: das ganze Leben des Christen offenbart eine gewaltige, überweltliche, göttliche Kraft’. According to Gunkel, this idea was Paul's own invention.

7 Horn, Friedrich Wilhelm, Das Angeld des Geistes (FRLANT 154; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992)Google Scholar.

8 Horn, Das Angeld, 60.

9 E.g. 1 Thess 1.5–6; Gal 5.22; 1 Cor 12.11; 14.2.

10 E.g. 1 Thess 4.8; 1 Cor 3.16; 6.19; Rom 8.9, 11.

11 E.g. 1 Cor 10.4; 12.13; 2 Cor 1.21–22; 3.8; Rom 5.5.

12 E.g. 1 Cor 2.10; Rom 5.5; 8.26–27.

13 E.g. Gal 5.25; 6.1; 1 Cor 4.21; Rom 8.4; 15.30.

14 E.g. 1 Cor 6.20 v.l.; 16.18; Rom 1.9.

15 As against this, Horn explicitly finds—and argues all through the book—that only a developmental perspective can explain the different aspects of the pneuma addressed in the letters: ‘Solange…dieses Werden [sc. “der pl Briefe”] und die situative Bedingtheit der pl Aussagen missachtet werden, muss der Exeget bei der Feststellung eines Nebeneinanders unterschiedlicher Aussagen stehenbleiben’ (Horn, Das Angeld, 429 [my italics]).

16 Unfortunately, there is no room to discuss here the last question concerning the relationship between the pneuma as entering into human beings and as a messenger between God and men. For some speculation in this regard, see n. 57 towards the end.

17 Martin, Dale B., The Corinthian Body (New Haven/London: Yale University, 1995)Google Scholar.

18 Martin, The Corinthian Body, 128. There is the vital difference from Gunkel, however, that where the latter referred almost exclusively to the ‘populäre Anschauung’ of the early church, Martin does a splendid job of surveying the generally accepted views in the Graeco-Roman world far more broadly. In spite of this, there is a bit of dichotomic reading in Martin's argument since he claims that the ancient world did not really have the notion of the ‘immaterial’ at all, which only came in with Descartes (2–6). That claim is manifestly false. Platonism certainly operated with the notion of the ‘immaterial’. Indeed, it is quite probably correct to say that the intuitive, modern understanding of Paul's talk of pneuma as referring to something ‘immaterial’ or ‘spiritual’, an understanding that very much remains with us and against which Martin was rightly reacting, is the result of the invasion of Platonism into early Christian thinking. Note, however, that this only happened after Paul and the first century ce, probably via a route that goes from Philo to Clement of Alexandria and into mainstream Christianity.

19 To call this a dichotomy to be overcome will not appeal to people with Marxist leanings. I am not myself a Marxist even though I recognize the risks of ideological thinking. And I do believe that there was a closer connection than a Marxist (or even a Nietzschean) would acknowledge between the views of ancient philosophers and those of the non-elite (so-called ‘popular morality’). If so, there is a dichotomy to be overcome here, too.

20 On the body: Martin, The Corinthian Body, 17–18. On powers and ‘apocalypticism’: e.g. 129–35.

21 Compare Käsemann's, famous claim that ‘[d]ie Apokalyptik…die Mutter aller christlichen Theologie gewesen [ist]’ in ‘Die Anfänge christlicher Theologie’ (1960), repr. in Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen, vol. 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 3rd ed. 1970) 82–104, esp. 100Google Scholar. Also ‘Zur paulinischen Anthropologie’ in Paulinische Perspektiven (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2nd ed. 1972 [1st ed. 1969]) 9–60, esp. 48, with a thrice-repeated ‘Apokalyptisch ist…’ On spheres of power, see the same article on ‘Herrschaftswechsel’, ‘Mächte der Dämonie’ and more (55).

22 These differences are huge inasmuch as Martin's approach is fundamentally anthropological, whereas that of Käsemann is, of course, strongly theological.

23 I confess that I am quite sceptical about the use of ‘kosmisch’ or ‘cosmic’ in the Käsemann-Nachfolge. ‘Kosmologisch’ and ‘cosmological’ should be taken to mean just that, and the former pair should be avoided until somebody manages to give it a precise sense. This linguistic and conceptual point slurs an otherwise fine survey by Martinus de Boer of ‘Paul and Apocalyptic Eschatology’, The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, vol. 1 (ed. J. J. Collins; New York/London: Continuum) 345–83. It does not, however, in itself undercut de Boer's distinction between two distinct patterns of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology, one being ‘cosmological’ and the other ‘forensic’ (see de Boer, ‘Paul and Apocalyptic Eschatology’, 357–61).

24 The battle over whether Paul was a ‘systematic thinker’ or not was wholly appropriate in its own time and place (the 1980s and 1990s). By now, while we should remember the frontiers of that battle, we should also allow ourselves to look for coherence. It is not an either/or. Perspectives of ‘development’ or ‘situational’ explanations remain valid. But they do not render invalid the attempt to discover some degree of systematic coherence.

25 This was the great idea that lay behind the Library of Early Christianity (eight splendid volumes published in 1986–7 by the Westminster Press, Philadelphia). In the words of its general editor, Wayne Meeks, ‘[t]his series of books is an exercise in taking down fences’ (see ‘Foreword’ to Grant, Robert M., Gods and the One God [Library of Early Christianity 1; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986] 13–14, esp. 13)Google Scholar. ‘The history of Christianity's beginnings is part of the history of Judaism in antiquity, and both are part of the history of Greco-Roman culture’ (see Meeks, , ‘Foreword’ to Shaye J. D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah [Library of Early Christianity 7; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987] 9–10, esp. 9 [Meeks's italics])Google Scholar.

26 The scare quotes around ‘anthropological’, ‘ethical’, ‘apocalyptic’ etc. are intended to remind us all the time that these are modern constructs (with more or less clear bases back in history) that have no explicit foothold in Paul himself. While we can certainly use these terms, we must with all accessible means try to avoid absolutizing them as if there were, for instance, an independent field of discourse in Paul that one might identify as constituting his anthropology (etc.).

27 Once more on ‘systematic’ versus ‘developmental’: I am not denying the developmental view. Nor do I reject the view that one should always primarily consider any given topic or concept in Paul within the individual letter to which it belongs. On the contrary, I applaud these views. Still, one must also be allowed to try to think somewhat more systematically, as it were trying to adopt a bird's-eye view on all the (genuine) letters taken as a whole.

28 Where nothing is noted, translations are my own, based on Nestle-Aland 27th ed.

29 I have set out parts of the argument more substantially in ‘A Stoic Understanding of Pneuma in Paul, ’, Philosophy at the Roots of Christianity (ed. Engberg-Pedersen, Troels and Tronier, Henrik; Working Papers 2; Copenhagen: The Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, 2006) 101–23Google Scholar.

30 For substantive change in Aristotle, see De Generatione et Corruptione I.4, 319b10–18: ‘there is “alteration” when the substratum is perceptible and persists, but changes in its own properties… The body, e.g., although persisting as the same body, is now healthy and now ill; …But when nothing perceptible persists in its identity as a substratum, and the thing changes as a whole (when e.g. the seed as a whole is converted into blood, or water into air, or air as a whole into water), such an occurrence is no longer “alteration”. It is a coming-to-be [γένεσις] of one substance and a passing-away [φθοϱά] of the other…’ (trans. H. H. Joachim in Ross, W. D., The Works of Aristotle, vol. 2 [Oxford: Clarendon, 1930]Google Scholar; the italics are, of course, neither Aristotle's nor Joachim's, but mine).

31 The same picture lies behind Phil 3.21, 2 Cor 5.1–10 (I contend) and Rom 8.11. Still, do I not let very much hang on 1 Corinthians 15 (as John Barclay has queried)? Both yes and no. Yes, in the sense that this text provides the key that shows (as I take it) how Paul understood the pneuma. No, in the sense that the rest of the material analysed below provides additional support once one sees how it is opened up by that key.

32 For Stoicism, see, e.g., Lapidge, Michael, ‘Stoic Cosmology’, The Stoics (ed. Rist, J. M.; Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California, 1978) 161–85Google Scholar. See also, e.g., Long, A. A. and Sedley, D. N., The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1987) 266–343Google Scholar. The best argument for the claim that the idea is specifically Stoic may be the fact that when Philo, who was fundamentally a Platonist, gets near to ideas about the connection between heavenly bodies and earthly ones mediated by the pneuma, he invariably turns Stoic. An example: Leg. 1.31–42 is Philo's famous exegesis of Gen 2.7, in which he basically employs Platonic categories in his analysis of the immaterial nous. At 1.42, however, he connects nous with pneuma and contrasts pneuma with the pnoe of Gen 2.7 by the following technical Stoic terms: τὸ μὲν γὰϱ πνεῦμα νενόηται κατὰ τὴν ἰσχὺν καὶ εὐτονίαν καὶ δύναμιν.

33 That this is, in fact, the case is suggested by the transition he makes from his apparently more philosophical and cosmological argument in 15.35–49 to the more picturesque, ‘mythic’ and ‘apocalyptic’ account in 15.51–52. He introduces the new section at 15.50 by a Τοῦτο δέ φημι in the sense of ‘What I mean is this: …’ And he is quite unconcerned that the more philosophical points he makes in 15.50 and 15.53–54 surround a revelation by him of an ‘apocalyptic’ ‘secret’ concerning the change that believers will undergo.

34 Ep.Mor. 66.12: Ratio…nihil aliud est quam in corpus humanum pars divini spiritus mersa.

35 One difference is that in Stoicism soul and body are separated at death. Whereas the soul of the non-wise person stays on for a brief time, that of the wise person (compare believers in Paul) lives on in heaven in a manner like that of ‘the other stars’ (SVF 2.812) until the final conflagration (ἐκπύϱωσις); cf. SVF 2.809 and 810–22. Compare on this Long, A. A., ‘Soul and Body in Stoicism’, Phronesis (1982) 34–57, esp. 27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. (Also in Long, , Stoic Studies [New York: Cambridge University, 1996]Google Scholar.)

36 Question (as put to me by Cilliers Breytenbach): If Paul thought of the pneuma along Stoic cosmological lines in terms of two of the four cosmological elements, then why is he so disparaging in Gal 4.3 and 9 of precisely the στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου? Answers: First, in Galatians he is comparing heathen gods with God, not speaking of the pneuma. Second, he has a predecessor for the same move in a text that nevertheless draws on the pneuma in its Stoic form: the Wisdom of Solomon. Here 1.6–7 clearly describes wisdom in terms derived from the Stoic account of the pneuma. At 13.1–9, however, an account of the (Stoic) gods in terms of the elements is rejected as being wholly inadequate as an account of (the author's own) God.

37 Cf., e.g., Gal 3.2–5, 14, 26–29 + 4.5–7 and Rom 8.14–17.

38 Is Paul not rather engaged, in 3.17, in a hermeneutical interpretation of the text from Scripture that he quotes in 3.16 (as Wayne Meeks and Peder Borgen have independently asked)? Surely, yes. But this should not exclude that he also means what he ‘hermeneutically’ finds in Scripture. Paul hardly did ‘hermeneutics’ in the modern way. He probably thought that Scripture described the world more or less directly. Thus he will have thought that the risen Christ was pneuma or at least a ‘pneumatic’ being, which does not necessarily imply that the two cannot also be notionally separated. Compare his easy change in Rom 8.9–10 from pneuma Christou to Christos.

39 As already argued by Gunkel (Die Wirkungen, 87), but the point is contested.

40 This goes against the interpretation of Hans Dieter Betz in his presidential address, ‘The Concept of the “Inner Human Being” (ὁ ἔσω ἄνθϱωπος) in the Anthropology of Paul,’ NTS 46 (2000) 315–41: ‘the indwelling of the spirit is identical with the indwelling of Christ; …this indwelling is not identical with the ἔσω ἄνθϱωπος’ (333) and ‘the ἔσω ἄνθϱωπος is not identical with the indwelling Christ. Christ is not an earthly ἄνθρωπος, but the divine κύριος present in the heart through the πνεῦμα’ (334, my italics). But does the italicized sentence not virtually imply that the ‘inner human being’ is the pneuma/Christ as present in the heart of the believer? However, a substantial discussion of Betz' excellent analysis would require considerably more space.

41 Vollenweider, Samuel, ‘Der Geist Gottes als Selbst der Glaubenden’, ZThK 93 (1996) 163–92, esp. 187Google Scholar. (Also in Vollenweider, , Horizonte neutestamentlicher Christologie [WUNT 144; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002]Google Scholar.) Incidentally, on p. 186 Vollenweider connects the idea of a ‘pneumatic self’ with the ‘inner human being’ of 2 Cor 4.18.

42 Compare also Käsemann, Ernst, ‘Zur paulinischen Anthropologie’, Paulinische Perspektiven (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 2nd ed. [1st ed. 1969] 1972) 9–60Google Scholar, esp. 46, 52: ‘Anthropologie ist auch im Bereich des Glaubens Kosmologie in concreto’ (52). The difference between Käsemann and myself is that I understand ‘cosmology’ wholly concretely and do not oppose it to ‘philosophy’.

43 Allow me to repeat an earlier point: there is no ‘anthropology’ in Paul.

44 Let me emphasize the simplicity of this understanding. On the one side there is a being with a body and a soul—as any Greek philosopher would say. On the other side there is the same kind of being who has now also received the pneuma and whose body and soul have already been transformed and are also continually undergoing a transformation. Thus there are basically only two types of being here, not three.

45 See my Paul and the Stoics (Edinburgh/Louisville: T. & T. Clark/Westminster John Knox, 2000) 152–55 and 209–12. I am not denying that something like the understanding of bśr to be found in the Qumran texts may well lie behind Paul's talk of sarx, as has been argued by Jörg Frey, ‘Die paulinische Antithese von “Fleisch” und “Geist” und die palästinisch-jüdische Weisheits-tradition’, ZNW 90 (1999) 45–77, against Brandenburger, Egon, Fleisch und Geist (WMANT 29; Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1968)Google Scholar. But Paul's use of sarx and pneuma is not identical with the one in the Qumran texts. And as always, it seems to me that there is room for both Frey's ‘palästinisch-jüdische’ tradition and Brandenburger's ‘hellenistich-jüdische’ tradition—and for the line offered here.

46 There is one corollary of this reading that I would like to spell out. In 1 Cor 2.14–15 Paul has distinguished between the ‘psychic man’ and the ‘pneumatic man’. When he then speaks in 3.1–4 of the Corinthians as being σάϱκινοι (3.1) and σαϱκικοί (3.3), he is not introducing a third type of figure. On the contrary, the merely ψυχικὸς ἄνθϱωπος is also, necessarily, σάϱκινος and σαϱκικός. Compare for this the distinction in 1 Cor 15.44–46 between the ‘psychic body’ and the ‘pneumatic body’, which is then almost immediately followed by a statement on σὰϱξ καὶ αἷμα, which evidently refers back to the ‘psychic body’.

47 Cf. Gal 5.24 on the ‘pneumatics’: …τὴν σάϱκα ἐσταύϱωσαν σὺν τοῖς παθήμασιν καὶ ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις.

48 Compare the careful way in which Paul has laid out this duality in 7.5–6, where 7.5 prepares 7.7–25 and 7.6 prepares 8.1–13. The reading of 7.7–25 that I am presupposing here has been defended in ‘The Reception of Graeco-Roman Culture in the New Testament: The Case of Romans 7.7–25’, The New Testament as Reception (ed. M. Müller and H. Tronier; JSNTSup 230; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2002) 32–57.

49 Ulrich Wilckens rightly emphasizes the first half of this (referring to Rom 1.32); see Der Brief an die Römer 2 (EKK VI/2; Zürich/Einsiedeln/Köln: Benziger; Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1980) 128–9. Compare also the commentaries by Dunn, James D. G., Romans 1–8 (WBC 38A; Dallas, TX: Word, 1988)Google Scholar and Fitzmyer, Joseph A., Romans (AB 33; New York: Doubleday, 1993)Google Scholar ad loc. However, the use and context of δικαίωμα in Rom 5.16 taken together with 7.10 suggest that the term may also have the other meaning.

50 Note how carefully Paul distinguishes between the people and sarx itself. He does not say that the people are ‘enemies of God’, which would not either fit his account in 7.7–25. By contrast, the φϱόνημα of sarx itself is ἔχθϱα εἰς θεόν (8.7).

51 This is my reading of διὰ ἁμαϱτίαν.

52 The interpretations of 8.10 by commentators are myriad. For instance, Fitzmyer translates the first half concessively: ‘though the body be dead because of sin, the spirit has life because of uprightness’, and comments: ‘Without the Spirit, the source of Christian vitality, the human “body” is like a corpse because of the influence of sin…; but in union with Christ, the human “spirit” lives, for the Spirit resuscitates the dead human body through the gift of uprightness’ (Romans ad loc., my italics). Fitzmyer at least takes νεκϱόν to mean ‘dead’. By contrast, Byrne in his otherwise excellent commentary translates ‘while the body may be mortal because of sin’ and explicitly obtains this meaning from θνητά in 8.11 (Byrne, B. SJ, Romans [Sacra Pagina 6; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1996]Google Scholar ad loc., my italics). But νεκϱόν does mean ‘dead’. Jewett concludes that ‘no completely satisfactory explanation of all the details [of 8.10] is currently available’ (see Jewett, Robert, Romans [Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007] 492Google Scholar). Perhaps this is because scholars have balked at Paul's wholly concrete and quite stark idea.

53 This idea, on which Horn rightly places much emphasis, is found in 2 Cor 1.22, 5.5 and Rom 8.23.

54 What has triggered this whole essay is a difficulty I had in Paul and the Stoics (esp. 246–53) of accounting well enough for the precise relationship between the ‘apocalyptic’ vocabulary of 8.1–13 and the philosophical and cognitive terminology in which Paul has in 7.7–25 stated the problem to which 8.1–13 provides the solution. The precise understanding offered here of Paul's concept of pneuma removes the difficulty.

55 I have argued for this claim in some detail in Paul and the Stoics, 187 and 223–25, with references to Wilckens, Der Brief an die Römer ad loc., Schnackenburg, Rudolf, ‘Römer 7 im Zusammenhang des Römerbriefes’, Jesus und Paulus (ed. Ellis, E. E. and Grässer, E.; FS W. G. Kümmel; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975) 283–300Google Scholar; von der Osten-Sacken, P., Römer 8 als Beispiel paulinischer Soteriologie (FRLANT 112; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elliott, N., The Rhetoric of Romans: Argumentative Constraint and Strategy and Paul's Dialogue with Judaism (JSNTSup 45; Sheffield: JSOT, 1990)Google Scholar; and Fitzmyer, Romans ad loc. To these may now be added Byrne, Romans ad loc., and Moo, D.J., The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 1996) 472Google Scholar.

56 I am referring to the problem of the whole point of exhortation if the addressees are supposed to be doing the proper thing anyhow. The solution lies in understanding paraenesis as a reminder, a feature that has been very importantly brought to the fore in the work of Malherbe, Abraham (e.g. ‘Hellenistic Moralists and the New Testament’, ANRW II.26.1 [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1992] 268–333)Google Scholar. (As an example, think of a former smoker who has given up smoking, but may still need to be reminded of its dangers.)

57 This is perhaps the best place to add a few words on the pneuma in Paul as a messenger between God and human beings, inasmuch as this figure is most explicitly addressed in the immediately following text of Romans: 8.14–30. Here Paul twice (8.16 and 26) speaks of ‘the pneuma itself’ as distinct from ‘our pneuma’ (8.16). How did he think of the pneuma in this form? In its function, at least, it appears to operate exactly like Christ himself: both are said to ‘petition’ God (ἐντυγχάνειν) on behalf of the Christians (8.26–27 for the pneuma, 8.34 for Christ). Perhaps Paul just saw both figures as literally (and physically) operating in the kosmos between human beings at one end, whom they would enter and thus become ‘our pneuma’, and God at the other end, with whom they would have a relationship that remains a mystery. (There is no indication in Paul of any ‘cosmological’ understanding of God himself. I suppose Paul's God was, as it were, nothing other than—the Jewish God.)

58 There are a number of consequences that I have no space to mention. The most important is that the basic, underlying problem that Paul addresses in Romans 1–8 is not a faulty relationship with God, but sinful behaviour connected with the physical body of flesh and blood. Paul's strategy in these chapters is then to construct a theory that explains this problem in terms of a faulty relationship with God. This leads directly to his postulation of the Christ event as constituting the solution to the problem since the proper relationship with God, which is πίστις in relation to the Christ event, will remove the concern for the individual body that constitutes the problem. For this focus on ‘self-mastery’ as the underlying problem, compare Stowers, Stanley K., A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven/London: Yale University, 1994)Google Scholar and ‘Paul and Self-Mastery’, Paul in the Greco-Roman World (ed. J. Paul Sampley; Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003) 524–50.

59 This essay is my attempt finally to solve the problem raised for me by J. Louis Martyn in his careful and extensive review of Paul and the Stoics: that I unduly neglected the ‘apocalyptic’ dimension of Paul's thought. (See Martyn, , ‘De-apocalypticizing Paul: An Essay Focused on Paul and the Stoics by Troels Engberg-Pedersen’, JSNT 86 [2002] 61–102Google Scholar.) My own reply to Martyn still stands (‘Response to Martyn’, JSNT 86 [2002] 103–14) since I remain convinced that Martyn settles for emphasizing Paul's ‘apocalypticism’ too quickly, that is, before he has tried to spell out what it means. (This is what I call the Käsemann gesture, about which I am quite sceptical.) In the present essay I have attempted to give precise content to Paul's ‘apocalypticism’.

60 In the words of Martinus de Boer, Paul's apocalyptic eschatology must not be ‘reduced to his understanding of the parousia and the end but also encompasses his understanding of Christ's advent, death, and resurrection’ (‘Paul and Apocalyptic Eschatology’, 379 n. 24). Personally, I would say that it contains much more, in particular, reception of the pneuma in believers, revelation through the pneuma of what God has given—plus the whole set of ideas that we have been discussing of the transformation of the body by the pneuma both now and in the future.

61 See Paul and the Stoics, 16–30.

62 It should be noted, however, that the modern physicist Sambursky, Shmuel argued strongly that Stoic physics ‘anticipated basic ideas which have governed physical thought since the seventeenth century’ (Physics of the Stoics [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959] vii)Google Scholar. The strength of Stoic physics (including the theory of seeing the world as a continuum) may also explain why it was felt to be so attractive by a would-be Platonist like Philo.

63 The hermeneutical tool we need to make sense of our both using Paul for contemporary purposes and also not using him directly is that of analogy. We can find analogies in our own world to what Paul was saying within the confines of his own time and place. (We should also, however, be prepared to reject parts of Paul's views even where they only have their counterparts in analogical form.)

64 τὰ ἀϱχαῖα παϱῆλθεν, ἰδοὺ γέγονεν καινά (2 Cor 5.17).

65 After I had delivered the lecture at the SNTS meeting in Lund on which this essay is based, I came across what appears to be proof that the great Origen actually read Paul on pneuma in the way for which I have argued. In his treatise on the resurrection, the bishop Methodius said the following about and against Origen: Πᾶν γὰϱ τὸ ἐκ καθαϱοῦ ἀέϱος καὶ καθαϱοῦ πυϱὸς συνιστάμενον σύγκϱιμα, καὶ τοῖς ἀγγελικοῖς ὁμοούσιον ὑπάϱχον, οὐ δύναται γῆς ἔχειν ποιότητα καὶ ὕδατος, ἐπεὶ συμβήσεται ἔσεσθαι αὐτὸ γεῶδες. τοιοῦτον [i.e. τοῖς ἀγγελικοῖς ὁμοούσιον] καὶ ἐκ τούτων [i.e. ἐκ καθαϱοῦ ἀέϱος καὶ καθαϱοῦ πυϱὸς συνιστάμενον] τὸ ἀναστῆναι μέλλον σῶμα ἀνθρώπου ὁ ʼΩριγένης ἐφαντάζετο, ὃ καὶ πνευματικὸν ἔφησεν. (Methodius, On the Resurrection 2.30.8 [GCS 27; ed. G. N. Bonwetsch; Leipzig: Hinrichs'sche, 1917] 388.) If Origen could φαντάζεσθαι this, so should we.