The Meaning of Being ‘in Christ’ For Paul

(Tina)Theresa Hannah-Munns
RLST 248-001 - Dr. William Arnal



A New Perspective on Paul

Spirit possession and deification are two ways of interpreting Paul’s mysticism. Much has been written on Paul’s mystical experience that converted him from persecuting early Christian sects to building a theology that is the foundation for the Christianity that lives on almost two millenniums later. Yet these interpretations miss the implications of Paul’s ‘in Christ’ formulation, fitting his words into the concepts that model this binary understanding. Few have questioned that there are other perspectives, or there may be a need for a new perspective of what being ‘in Christ’ means. A deconstruction of both concepts as they apply to Christian mysticism needs to be undertaken so that this subject can be transcended into new frames of reference based on the context of Paul.


Where it all began

Saul of Tarsus was an educated Jewish man that persecuted Christian people before having a mystical experience that lead to his conversion prior to 35 CE , resulting in his being renamed ‘Paul’. He was raised and educated within his Jewish heritage that was shaped and structured within the Hellenized world of first century Asia Minor. Within Paul’s later letters is evidence that “Philo’s Hellenized form of Jewish mysticism must have been shared by many in the Jewish Diaspora.” At the time of Paul, not only Jewish mysticism but also Gnosticism and the Mystery Religions created a social context “saturated in mystical thought.” Paul’s doctrine centers on the early Christian’s belief that the “eschatological character of the time is attested by the presence of the Holy Spirit.”


The Problem of Later Analysis

The benefits of being able to look back from our place in history are enormous and many scholars have accomplished impressive works in interpreting Paul through various methods of analysis. These benefits of an evolved understanding have allowed us to collect the letters of Paul and even differentiate between the Pauline and the attributed ‘pseudo-Pauline’. We are able to do comparative analysis between the different authors, and even use different scholarly disciplines in order to reconstruct the world of first century Christianity.

The problems of later analysis are varied as well, but may be possible to easily overcome if scholars utilize the same methodological inquiries that have been beneficial in generally contextualizing the early Christian era. This movement is now one of deconstructing the subjective elements from within the theological structure of Paul’s ideology that have shown up within the institutionalization of Christianity. With each interpretation, the context of the current age of the theologian has crept into the models and theories that are applied to such early writers as Paul.

For example, Paul followed the trend of Jewish apocalypticism by his account of “visionary ascents” in describing his mystical experience, but is said to have broke the trend of “attributing these experiences to ancient biblical figures.” Most scholars say that Paul gives a first hand account, which it is, but Paul attributes it to being the experience of someone he ‘knows’. This is a third person narrative and, even though this may seem like a small difference in interpretation, it is still a difference, with Paul being credited as taking a larger break from the social context of his time then he actually did. Reading much on Pauline mysticism, especially with Albert Schweitzer’s writing on Paul, this over-interpretation is predominant within this subject. A more critical analysis of past interpretations is needed.

This deconstruction has already begun in the larger spheres such as who wrote which books and epistles in the Bible and who influenced whom in order to get at a linear timeframe for both the construction of the Bible as a whole and for the theological frameworks of each of the writers themselves. Now it is time to deconstruct the concepts we have relied upon that have lead us to the understandings we currently have. Two of the frameworks that permit stagnation towards a deeper understanding of Paul’s theology are the concepts of ‘spirit possession’ and ‘deification’.


Spirit Possession

Examples of spirit possession abound within the narratives about Jesus and his apostles. Spirit possession is seen as negative, associated with demonic spirits that take over an individual, making the individual an effect within one’s own life. This state is temporary and if cast out one assumes that the individual is ‘healed’ in a good way.

The concept of spirit possession as applied to Paul is one that is positively framed and is associated with Jesus – a good guy and not a demon- as the possessor of Paul. This implication makes sense with his formulations of Christ within and his descriptions of how the Holy Spirit operates in relationship to himself and the Christian community.

With this concession, too many questions are raised that remain unanswered:

If Christ possesses Paul, then why do his theological formulations and other arguments not have a clarity and perfection about them? Why are they formulated out of contextual conflict? With his laying on of hands passing on the spirit possession, why then is there conflict in the first place? If spirit possession is a temporary state, as could be supported with the behaviours of Paul’s followers, why is Paul’s possession so permanent? Does it have something to do with the mystical experience he had in the beginning and the revelations he received at other times? If this does have implications, then why do the followers not get a mystical experience that would sustain them from the need for Paul’s earthly directions?

Two other sets of questions arise within the concept of spirit possession as it concerns Paul: Why did no other religious groups try to de-possess the Christians? Why are they simply arrested or dealt with in violence? Did the demon-possessed also have a mystical experience when they first were possessed? If they did not, then when did Paul get possessed if not at his conversion?

These questions may have to remain unanswered due to the limited scope of this paper, but it is enough to put them out so that our security in the concept of spirit possession in Paul be broken so that we can once more look at the theological and academic study of Pauline scripture.

For example, Boehme postulates that we are both mortal and “a temple of the Holy Spirit that lives in us” (1Cor 6:19) and that “Christ must win a form in us” (Gal 4:19). At first glance this may seem like spirit possession but he expands his understanding for it to mean that “we must consider earnestly what kind of man (sic) is in us who can be like to and capable of the Godhead.” This belief that we can become self-aware leads to the natural conclusion that humans have a choice to be like God, or to allow Christ to take form in us. This is not spirit possession, but an innate ability that we can choose to develop.
Boehme closes his thought with these words: “Thus the Holy Spirit lives in the will, and creatures in the body.” This makes for a much divided picture of what it means to be human and sounds more like the demonic reference to spirit possession.

Fanning notes that gifts of the Holy Spirit are seen as the “hallmark of being Christian” in the first century. Receiving the Holy Spirit is the possession, the ownership of the Spirit. I can own a television without that relationship being implied that I no longer have my own substance, even though I can sit for hours being a ‘couch potato’. Does this mean that I am being possessed by the television? At times I would say that I am when the programming can actually change my perspective on life.

Another critique that both these interpretations raise is that if Paul is spirit possessed, then Jesus would have been to an even higher degree. Both men have had to go into prayer and consultation with Spirit in order to operate. This is not a unified process that occurs only from within but is a process of relationship between the human and divine. Spirit possession only accounts for an immanence, without accounting for the transcendence of the divine that must connect with the immanence that is spoken of so often in the New Testament and in the later commentaries on biblical passages. As Underhill points out about the resulting change in consciousness after a mystical experience, “the onset of this new consciousness seems to the self so sudden, so clearly imposed from without rather than developed from within, as to have a supernatural character.” Her example is of Paul’s conversion experience, with “the sudden light, the voice, the ecstasy, the complete alteration of life.” It is hard to find a concept that is adequately big enough to contain all of these characteristics. Spirit possession allowed for
us to conceptualize this, but is no longer a big enough container and many characteristics
are spilling out, needing to be interpreted properly.

Being of supernatural character, the mystical experience, when over, seeks to be understood and expressed with only the language of natural, everyday experience to pull from. The lack of conceptual framework makes for an ineffability that is studied extensively within the field of mysticism. Other characteristics that can be noted of Paul’s mystical experience are: an unmediated direct experience which Paul has and then tries to transfer to his followers in the different Christian communities; a reality experienced not within the ordinary way of perceiving, as mentioned before and could also explain why Paul needed time to integrate the experience; and the cognitive profoundness of the event that transformed both Paul and his life drastically from the moment of the experience onwards and also provided him with the stamina, tenacity and determination to overcome every obstacle to proliferating the Christ message to the Gentiles. With the ineffability of a mystical experience, it is natural that another concept is largely used in framing its expression.


Deification

The widest definition for deification is “dwelling in God as an eternal idea.” Though this is a nice abstract conceptualization, it has no boundaries that help to contain the ‘in Christ’ formula so that we can come to understand it.

The standard understanding, without getting too complicated, is of the human ascent into union with God. Paul does not try to be unified in God, but ‘in Christ’ and with Christianity being a monotheistic religion, can become a little sticky if this point is pressed. Even though throughout his letters Paul talks as if achieving his goal, of being unified in Christ, in Philippians, his last genuine letter, he states:
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death… Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

Here is a key that is not written about within the concepts of deification or spirit possession; Paul is always using himself as an example of emulating Christ and recommending to his communities to imitate him doing so. Where does emulation fit into a union that eliminates any necessity of relationship, since there is only one subject and no object to talk about?

This same question is raised when Smith labels Roman 8:19 as essentially having “in germ the doctrine of deification” and that those “who have known and seen become the children of God, in whom He dwells, and through whom He works, and thenceforth they live in conscious union with Him.” Yet earlier, she had formulated that to Paul, in Romans 8:6, an individual’s soul was the “image and glory of God.” An image is not what it represents, but only has a ‘likeness’, an essence of the fullness it points to. One can not mistake the symbol for the reality. Smith continues to postulate that by “self-mastery and enlightenment and love, the seeker might attain to the Vision of God, to be spiritually discerned only by those fitted to receive it, not by the finite, human understanding,” using 1Cor 2:9-10 to back up the latter part of her statement. This quote of Paul’s does not mention anything of self-action; it only states that humans cannot conceive what God has in store for us and that divine revelation is the only access to the “deepest things of God.”

Smith is also confusing the fact that Paul nowhere speaks about deification, let alone a union with God. Paul’s theology is christocentric, with only traces of theocentric formulations. This is expanded later into a definition that continues to confuse Paul’s intentions; deification “is the identification of God with the soul of the mystic. The Mind, now made divine, becomes one with Christ and is itself the Son of God.” Paul identifies with Christ, not with God. He praises God and lives ‘to God’ , but Paul is concerned with being ‘in Christ’. She quotes Galatians 2:20 to support her statement without analyzing the relationship it has with the verse before it.

With the mind unified with Christ, why then does Paul get so frustrated, and even hurt, by the actions of his followers and feel that he must justify his authority so often? Christ himself did not put forward his authority, nor have his emotions sway so easily. And if all are in the one body of Christ, why is there conflict if all are unified ‘in Christ’? Again these questions are not answered by most interpretations that are put forward.


Conclusion

An example of the deconstruction that is necessary is found when Mack puts the ritual meal back into the contextual perspective of early Hellenized Christian community and out of its mythological limelight. As part of any common community meal, no matter the purpose or binding philosophy of the group, bread and wine were served, with the former being at the start of the meal and the latter completing the meal. Both bread and wine functioned as symbols for the source of life in many different philosophical systems of thought. All groups who met together had different metaphorical meanings for these symbols of life. As Mack states, “There is no sense in looking for the secret, allegorical meaning of bread and wine that must have evoked Jesus’ words.”

While over-interpretation must be deconstructed in order to be corrected, other considerations also must be taken into account. Criticism of Paul’s own justifications of authority must be put into the context of his own understanding and that of his mission to form organizations of people. Fanning points out two important points; that Paul expected “those who believed in Jesus to receive the Holy Spirit” and that “mysticism in an organization leads to a crisis of authority.” This is seen when each time Paul was faced with a crisis, new formulations came into being (after his frustrations or disappointment was voiced emphatically), and the way these formulations came into being can be seen as not arising from divine revelation or formation, but from Paul’s own mind as he deals with specific situations within each community’s context. His letters were never written with the intention of being analyzed together in a whole system. Paul’s mysticism is a series of situational-specific formulations that develops along with a string of Christian communities that are loosely organized. The language of Paul’s theology seems to sometimes become more inconsistent and more authoritatively evocative as time goes on. The more he theorizes, the more he has to persuade and the further he gets from the experiential truths of his original mystical experiences.


Recommendations

Following is a few insights into possible areas for researching new concepts or methods of inquiry:

1. Emulation by Imitation within Pauline Mysticism

Within the pre-Pauline fragment of a Christian hymn found in Philippians 2:6-11, is clues to the early Christian belief in the relationship of Jesus to God that mirrors the model for Christians to emulate Jesus. Since Jesus is seen as “in the form of God” but “born in the likeness of humankind” a new interpretation may be hinted for the relationship between Paul and Jesus. Spirit possession is in essence a descent of the divine into Paul, which is the part played by the process of the Holy Spirit, but this process is of a quickening rather than a taking over, such as seen in the demons that Jesus expels in the New Testament. The Holy Spirit is the power that communicates through relationships between the divine and humankind, having both a subject and an object that it continually brings together. This is not necessary within a deified, or unified, relationship that becomes one in essence; to have a relationship, a subject needs to communicate with an object, ‘the other’.

Words of St. Teresa show that she has contemplated on Paul and speaks of love as “spiritually fruitful”, of being “in the presence of quietistic heresy”:
In giving these graces our Lord intends, as I have often told you, to strengthen our weakness so that we may imitate Him by suffering much…. Whence did St. Paul draw strength to support his immense labours? We see clearly in him the effects of visions and contemplations which come indeed from our Lord, and not from our own imagination or the devil’s fraud. Do you suppose St. Paul hid himself in order to enjoy in peace these spiritual consolations, and did nothing else? You know that on the contrary he never took a day’s rest so far as we can learn, and worked at night in order to earn his bread.”

Examples of imitation can be found within the Pauline letters, as well as those mystics that incorporate a similar approach to interpreting their own experiences through concepts that Paul put forward, such as St. Teresa’s use of suffering.


2. The Use of Paradox in Pauline Mysticism

Paradox allows the space so that multiple conceptions can be understood for what they are, rather than our trying to fit our own interpretations onto them. Louth points out one paradox within Paul’s mystical theology, that human effort and obedience can meet with God’s grace in a synergistic relationship, rather than an opposition of understanding: It is a paradox that St. Paul lays hold of when he says, ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure’:
here the ideas of our own effort, God’s grace, and the fact that the fruits of our efforts in obedience are the work of God, both at the level of deed and at the deeper level of the inspiring will, are united. Here is true synergism that cannot be opposed to the idea of response (to grace).

By using this one example from Paul’s theology, the paradoxes can be highlighted and studied to see what new relationships, or new twists on old relationships, can be uncovered.


3. The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Pauline Mysticism

A thorough investigation is necessary to study the actual Mystery Religions of the first century as the influence Paul’s presentation of the Christ myth. If his presentation is heavily influenced, then it can be safe to assume that his theology is as well. Which points are referenced from within the influence of the Mystery schools? Which Mystery schools? Louth points out that Paul presented Christianity “as a Mystery Religion possessing its own mysteries, ‘the hidden wisdom of God which we teach in our mysteries’ .” Paul also declares his mission as being founded from within a visionary revelation and this would also supports a Mystery Religion presentation.


4. The Philosophy of Pseudo-Dionysius as Applied in Pauline Mysticism

Many of the early philosophers of the Christian Church within the first several hundred years have been forgotten or branded as heretics within the institutional organization. A return to their writing is necessary since they are closer to the contextual location in both time and space. Pseudo-Dionysius, a sixth century monk who ascribed his writings to a convert of Paul’s in Athens, uses Paul’s reference to the “inner man” as one of three levels of being, with the ‘inner man’ being “‘a sacred order, knowledge, and activity assimilated so far as possible to the form of God,’ whose purpose, he continues, is to make its members ‘images of God… clear and spotless mirrors reflecting the primordial light.’” Here we have writing that could be interpreted using the old concepts and seeing union, but, with the new deconstruction underway, the terms of ‘form’, ‘images’ and ‘reflecting’ highlighting a deeper understanding is needed. No longer do we misconstrue words, such as ‘assimilated’ to represent something they are not suppose to.

Another example Pseudo-Dionysius (also known as Denys and Dionysius the Aeropagite) uses Paul for is in explaining how ecstasy “draws the soul out of itself and centres it on the object of its love”:
Paul, caught up in rapture by divine love and participating in its ecstatic power, said with inspired speech, ‘I live and yet not I, but Christ lives in me’. As a true lover, caught up out of himself into God, he lives not his own life, but that life so much longed for, the life of his beloved.” Divine Names, IV.13:712 A

Paul is not spirit possessed nor deified, but ‘in Christ’. A new interpretation needs to be expounded that builds on what the other two concepts have founded but have not completed. This new interpretation may have implications towards how we must view his writings, his missionary work, his theology about the body of Christ and the frustration over the gap between himself having had the foundation of mystical experience over the foundational experience of baptism that members in the Christ communities have. There may even be further implications into the area of mysticism itself.

References

Boehme, Jacob. (1980). The Way of Christ. New York: Paulist Press.

Crim, Keith. (1981). The Perennial Dictionary of World Religions. New York: HarperCollins.
Fanning, Steven. (2001). Mystics of the Christian Tradition. London: Routledge.

Kessler, Michael & Christian Sheppard, eds. (2003). Mystics: Presence and Aporia. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Louth, Andrew. (1981). The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys. Oxford: Clarendon.

Mack, Burton L. (1995). Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth. New York: HarperCollins.

McGinn, Bernard. (1991). “The Foundations of Mysticism”, Vol. 1 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. New York: Crossroads.

Schweitzer, Albert. (1931). The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. London: A&C Black.

Smith, Margaret. (1995). Studies in Early Mysticism in the Near and Middle East. Oxford: Oneworld.

Underhill, Evelyn. (1955). Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness. Cleveland: Meridian.




References

Ashton, John. (2000). The Religion of Paul the Apostle. New Haven: Yale University.

Boehme, Jacob. (1980). The Way of Christ. New York: Paulist Press.

Conybeare, Rev. W. J. & The Very Rev. J. S. Howson, D.D. (1920). Life and Epistles of Saint Paul. New York: Longmans, Green and Co.

Crim, Keith. (1981). The Perennial Dictionary of World Religions. New York: HarperCollins.
Fanning, Steven. (2001). Mystics of the Christian Tradition. London: Routledge.

Grant, Michael. (1976). Saint Paul. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Kessler, Michael & Christian Sheppard, eds. (2003). Mystics: Presence and Aporia. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Louth, Andrew. (1981). The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys. Oxford: Clarendon.

Mack, Burton L. (1995). Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth. New York: HarperCollins.

McGinn, Bernard. (1991). “The Foundations of Mysticism”, Vol. 1 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. New York: Crossroads.

Nock, Arthur Darby. (1960). St. Paul. London: Oxford University.

Schweitzer, Albert. (1931). The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. London: A&C Black.

Smith, Margaret. (1995). Studies in Early Mysticism in the Near and Middle East. Oxford: Oneworld.

Soelle, Dorothee. (2001). The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance . Minneapolis: Fortress.

Spencer, Sidney. (1971). Mysticism in World Religion. Baltimore: Penguin.

Underhill, Evelyn. (1955). Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness. Cleveland: Meridian.