Johnny Skeptic

Some readers may be interested in an article at http://www.thepaulpage.com/Abraham.html.

Johnny Skeptic

Readers should enjoy this, including Earl and Ben. It is not copyrighted, so I will post the entire article.

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/c...05/001963.html

{snipped by mod - the writer of an email such as this retains the copyright. Please see the link}

Amaleq13

Yes. So Paul didn't choose the "odd" phrase because of the unique nature of the incarnated Christ but because that was the way he thought of the world in general.

Thanks,


Doug

Rick Sumner

[Nitpick]Just because there is no explicit statement of copyright does not mean that it is not the intellectual property of the author. It's generally best to rule the other way--if it's not explicitly termed Creative Commons or the like, it belongs to the author[/nitpick]

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Johnny Skeptic

Ok, the author Paul Toseland closes with the following:

Toto

The link to Paul Toseland's home page from that post to ibiblio is dead, but there appears to be a new homepage here - Weak Among the Weak, which has no mention of the research referred to above. Strangely, it does have a link to one of Jason Gastrich's weekly notes.

Ben C Smith

Hmmm.... You are correct to say I am certainly spending too much time here. Even the simplest of points is a battle.

My entire point was that in Romans 9.6-8 the word seed in the phrase regarded as a seed is being used to mean what it usually means in such contexts, that is, descendants. I gave an example in English, I regard you as a brother, in which brother is being used literally.

That this is so ought to be innate for an English speaker, but let me run a very simple test to illustrate the point more fully.

The most literal definition of brother, I hope we can agree, is a male who shares the same parent(s). Correct? A figurative definition of brother (and there are many) might be a fellow black person, in the vernacular of some ethnic African Americans. Another figurative definition of brother might be a fellow member of a lodge or club.

So, when I say that I regard you as a brother, which definition of brother fits best? Am I saying that I regard you as a fellow black person? Am I saying that I regard you as I would a fellow Mason or Elk or Grand Moose or what have you? Or am I saying that I regard you as a member of my own family?

It is the literal definition that usually fills out this phrase best, not the metaphorical or figurative definitions. (I can see the figurative definitions working in some very specific contexts, but the literal definition works in virtually all.)

Now, the word seed in Greek is already metaphorical to some extent. It literally means one of the reproductive parts of a plant, or perhaps semen. But I think we can all agree that, in contexts of descent and kinship, it is regularly used to mean descendant.

Call that meaning what you will, literal or figurative or regular or what have you, but that is clearly the meaning of the word in Romans 9.6-8. Paul is saying that it is the children of promise who are regarded as if they were descendants, and thus heirs.

If you cannot comprehend that, in Romans 9.8, the word seed means descendants, then what hope is there of understanding each other?

That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but rather the children of the promise are regarded as seed.

I myself have no trouble plugging in descendant(s) for seed both in Romans 9.8 and in Romans 1.3. What word other than descendants (or a synonym) would you plug in for seed in Romans 9.8? And can you plug the same word into Romans 1.3 or not?

Please tell me what word(s) you would use.

Ben.

EarlDoherty

(Referring to the post by Ben just above), I think you will find that I deal with this along the way, in the very long posting I am about to add...

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

This is a very long posting (I hope I haven’t exceeded some kind of cut-off length), but all of it is in keeping with the thread’s subject. It’s a bit of an indulgence on my part, since to a certain extent I’m still working out some of the ideas I’m putting forward. And I hope I’ll get some feedback, from either side.

First, the article at Johnny Skeptic’s link (it’s pertinent).

I think Ben would love this article, and I half expected he might try to use some of it to bolster his position against mine. But I would suggest caution.

I found “Paul as the New Abraham” extremely interesting, but I think its author, Pamela Eisenbaum, ‘over-interprets’ certain passages in Paul and arrives at an insupportable conclusion, one which seems to be undermined by some of her own further observations and analysis. (That is, if I understand her correctly, she is not entirely consistent). Basically, she contends that Paul envisioned himself as a new Abraham, giving birth to a new race through his preaching and his “faith” in Christ, just as Abraham had “faith” in God and accepted that God would through him give birth to a new race. So far so good. The problem is, she interprets Paul’s “children of the promise” as literally Abraham’s descendants through Isaac. In other words, they are “natural” children, actual literal “seed”. Those descendants are to be seen as both Jewish and gentile, and she appeals to the “not commonly emphasized” occasional Jewish view that Abraham was also the father of (certain) gentiles, apparently this being deduced from Genesis 17:5, that Abraham shall be “the father of many nations.” (Paul himself never actually says all this directly, but she deduces it in his mind.)

To put it simplistically, the standard view of Paul’s thinking is that Christians share in the “faith” which Abraham showed, and thus they are by that ‘standard of affinity’ to be reckoned as Abraham’s heirs and inheritors of the promise to him. Eisenbaum takes a different meaning. Because Abraham’s prime (but not only) example of “faith” was that he believed God’s promise, despite his and Sarah’s advanced age, that he would have a son, the birth of Isaac becomes the “promise” and thus the “children” of it are the descendants of Isaac, which includes gentiles.

This interpretation is very much dependent on a single preposition in Galatians 3:9 – “So those who are descended of faith [hoi ek pisteōs] are blessed along with Abraham the believer.” The usual translation is “those who have faith”, but E. thinks “ek” implies a lineage of actual descent, and this descent is identified as from Isaac. Ergo, the children of the promise are those who are descended from Isaac, Jew and gentile.

But this raises problems which she fails to address. If not all gentiles are these actual descendants of Isaac, how is it determined by Paul which gentiles can be saved? He doesn’t say: those gentiles who have faith AND also happen to be among those descended from Isaac are children of the promise. Everywhere Paul simply says, you only need faith in Christ Jesus and you’re automatically “in”. She further ‘refines’ this by saying that such gentile children are not such simply by birth, but they have to then be adopted, they have to assume their potential status by having faith in Christ. The same goes for the Jewish descendants of Isaac, which again implies that only those Jews who happen to be descendants of Isaac enjoy that potential, and thus it is impossible that all gentiles and all Jews could be saved, regardless of whether they adopt faith in Christ. Paul nowhere suggests this. And it would take a rather convoluted and very unsavory kind of predestination principle to get around the problem. Paul does have some predestination ideas, as we see from Romans 9, but there is no suggestion that the system is based on God predestining a combination of faith and certain portions of Jewry and Gentility as descendants of Isaac.

Her theory seems directly contradicted by Galatians 3, where Paul in dubious exegesis declares that the gentiles are saved by being linked to Christ, who is the (singular) seed of Abraham, not to Isaac. And 26-29 says directly that it is “through faith you are all sons of God in union with Christ Jesus…if you thus belong to Christ you are the ‘seed’ of Abraham and so heirs by promise.” Nothing about descendants of Isaac here. If there is “no such thing as Jew and Greek” in order to be saved, why would there be such a thing as ‘descended from Isaac’ and ‘not descended from Isaac’? Perhaps somewhere along the line I am misunderstanding Ms. Eisenbaum, because I find it hard to think that she seriously could believe this theory.

One of her main appeals is to Romans 9:6-9, which Ben and I recently sparred over. In that passage there is certainly some kind of link being made to Isaac. The only important “seed”/descendants of Abraham are those through Isaac (v.7b). And then verse 9 says: “For this was how the promise was stated: ‘At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son’.”

But can that possibly mean that Paul thought that only the physical descendants of Abraham that were through Isaac (presumably both Jew and gentile, although Paul never states this idea) could be included in the “children of the promise”? Nowhere does he say that, and there are many places where he defines the latter and would need to say that if he believed it, but he does not.

Moreover, if this is what he means, then he contradicts himself right in that Romans passage. Verse 7b, as I said, offers a quote from Genesis 21:12 – “It is through Isaac that your offspring (lit., “seed”) will be called.” Can this be simply physical descendants of Isaac when in the very next verse he says, “In other words, it is not the children of the flesh who are God’s children....”? Are not the ‘seed’ through Isaac indeed “children of the flesh” if verse 7 refers to the physical descendants of Isaac? In the mind of the writer of Genesis they were, but they can’t be in the mind of Paul. For reasons unclear to us, Paul seems to be doing some kind of tracing of the children of the promise through Isaac, but it can’t be in a sense of physical descent, because he would be contradicting himself right here, and in a broader sense in many other places in his letters, particularly Galatians 3. So something is wrong here, and I hope it isn’t me misunderstanding what Eisenbaum is saying.

But I’m not ‘reviewing’ this article just for the heck of it. In the later passages (where she actually seems to be contradicting herself), she says a few things which got me thinking, and produced a little different angle in my view of the usages of “kata sarka” (and “kata pneuma”), almost an epiphany of how we can answer the question of why Paul used this seemingly odd (to us) language. First let me quote a couple of those later passages in her article:

(Does this not seem a direct contradiction to what her previous claims were—as I’ve laid them out? If anyone would like to check out that article and see how they read it, I would appreciate it. I don’t mind being told I’ve misread her.)

The intriguing ideas above are that the family of Abraham (“the children of Abraham”) are not such kata sarka but by spiritual descent, not dependent on biological birth. As for her translation of Rom. 4:1, I think she has applied her own spin, and I wouldn’t bet the family farm on it. But she again draws from it that “physical descent” is not the thing that determines Abraham’s children. The same conclusion is drawn from the allegory of Gal. 4. The important lineage is not biological, so such a lineage is not needed by the gentiles to be Abraham’s children.

(Again, this seems in direct contradiction to what she says earlier, and I quote: “Paul argues that Christian believers can claim Abraham as their father and claim to be the rightful heirs of God’s promises to Abraham. In polemical terms, Abraham is not just the father of the Jews but of Gentile believers also, and not just metaphorically or spiritually speaking. Abraham is just as much the patriarch of believing Gentiles as he is of Jewish believers.” I find it hard to understand how she can combine both, physical descent of some gentiles from Isaac and some other spiritual / not biological channel, especially in view of the problems I noted above. And Paul never addresses such a ‘combination’.)

Here is her next passage:

Here again, lineage “by birth” is rejected as not significant. Paul “spiritualizes” Israel to include Jew and gentile, who merely need to have faith to join the new Israel. Genealogy has nothing to do with it. So why did Paul bring in Isaac so pointedly in Romans 9 (and also in Romans 4:16-20, as she points out)? In order not to get Paul into logical difficulties, we have to assume that he does mean it only symbolically. The “seed” becomes non-literal where the “children of the promise” are concerned. Perhaps he is simply being influenced by scripture (just as he was in 1:3). He has that passage in Genesis which seems to focus the “promise” to Abraham on Isaac—which it does, but in a context where it made sense: the promises to Abraham and the future of his descendants were through Isaac and his literal seed. But Paul can’t do the same in his system; it can’t be literal descendants of Isaac. He is forced to work in Isaac (because of scripture, just as he had to regard Christ as of the seed of David) as some kind of fountainhead of his own ‘children of the promise through Christ,’ but he doesn’t spell it out, probably because there is no way to do so. The parallel has to be there (because his dependence on scripture imposes it, just as it did in regard to David), but he lets it stand in some symbolic or mystical form.

Finally, she says:

So the heirs of the Abrahamic promises, in the thought of Paul, do not have to be biologically descended from Abraham. (Just as Jesus being of the seed of David does not have to be a biological relationship.)

So what is our bottom line in all this? This is the direction of thought the latter part of Eisenbaum’s article prompted me to:

Paul regarded humans as being able to have non-literal “spiritual” links/relationships with both humans and with non-humans, the latter being the heavenly Christ. This is regardless of whether that Christ had been previously human, for the linkage between Christ and believers in all those mystical passages I addressed in my essay are on the spiritual/mystical level. Thus, humans enjoy both physical relationships and spiritual relationships, the latter with humans (gentiles linked to Abraham) as well as spirits (believers linked to Christ).

Now, since spiritual beings are as ‘real’ to Paul as human beings, there should be no impediment to him believing that spiritual beings can do the same. They can have both physical relationships and spiritual relationships, though being on the mystical plane, these are harder to describe and to understand than the ones humans have. (But don’t expect me to explain the unexplainable!)

So this leads to the question: Is this the reason why Paul (and other like-minded early epistle writers) uses the phrase “kata sarka”? (And also its counterpart “kata pneuma”.) His thinking is saturated with this duality of flesh and spirit, of physical linkage and spiritual linkage; both apply to humans as well as spiritual beings. To discuss what they are discussing, would it not make sense that such circles of belief would need and develop a terminology to reflect the two sides of this pervasive duality, namely “flesh” and “spirit”, “in regard/relation to the flesh” and “in regard/relation to the spirit”, when speaking of physical linkages and spiritual linkages?

Paul is continually contrasting the spiritual with the physical, being in the flesh and being in the spirit, ‘walking’ in one and ‘walking’ in the other. His innate tendency is to interpret everything in those terms, to slot everything into one or the other. It is usually the case that a single entity, whether it be himself, or a group, or Christ, can be thought of or spoken of as “in flesh” and “in spirit” across a variety of applications. Some of them are neutral, some of them involve value judgments. Some of them are literal, some of them are mystical. Their chosen application, the chosen terminology, can often be objectively defined only with difficulty, if at all; in many cases they are treated entirely subjectively.

But the scope is there. Let’s see how such a principle applies and how we may interpret various passages that use “sarx,” especially “kata sarka,” and see how it relates in many cases to the spiritual, the “kata pneuma.” We can also get a sense of how thoroughly Paul inhabits this dualistic world of flesh and spirit, and how this language would become natural and innate to someone who does so.

Here is a passage which repeatedly contraposes “flesh” and “spirit”, “kata sarka” and “kata pneuma”:

Romans 8 – “… 4 in order that the ordinances of the law may be fulfilled in us who live, not according to the flesh (kata sarka) but according to the spirit (kata pneuma)…. [verse 5 has a similar dichotomy with the same words] … 6 the mind of the flesh (tēs sarkos) is death, but the mind of the spirit (tou pneumatos) is life and peace.”

Verse 4’s dichotomy refers to the standards of this world vs. the standards of the spiritual world, of God, etc. Verse 6’s dichotomy is in the two possible states of mind, and what result each one has.

Galatians 3:3 – “After beginning with/in the spirit (pneumati), you are now being perfected in the flesh (sarki)?”

Paul is being caustically sarcastic: “I put you into the spirit, you now allow others to put you back into the flesh with their so-called ‘perfection’?”

And of course, the famous allegory in Galatians 4:

23 His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh (kata sarka), and the one by the free woman (was born) through the promise…

Here, “through the promise” must be equivalent to “kata pneuma,” since it is clearly in opposition to the “kata sarka.” It is a spiritual ‘birth’—even though the actual birth to Sarah was of course physical; it too was “kata sarka.” This means (contrary to Ben recently) that the whole comparison is symbolic, none of it literal. If a “kata sarka” birth is said by implication to be “kata pneuma,” non-literal, then the comparison item must in turn be non-literal—or if you prefer, serve non-literal purposes; it too is being used figuratively, just as the “kata sarka” and “kata pneuma” examples given above were: walking in the flesh and walking in the spirit, which are non-literal usages. That both are serving non-literal purposes is clear from the succeeding verses 25 and 26: Hagar stands for one thing, the earthly Jerusalem, Sarah stands for another, the heavenly Jerusalem. Both represent, not lineage, but the two states of being, fleshly and spiritual. And Paul goes on to actually use the dual terms:

29 …the son born according to flesh (kata sarka) persecuted the one (born) according to the spirit (kata pneuma), as it is now.

That added phrase “as it is now” shows that both “kata sarka” and “kata pneuma” are being used symbolically (regardless of whether behind the first there lies a literality). Paul is not concerned with that literality, with the physical lineage on either side of the equation. He uses both as a representation of the non-saved and the saved, those who live in flesh and those who live in spirit. You don’t have a two-sided allegory where one side isn’t allegorical.

So we have examples above of “kata sarka” being used with non-literal application to human beings. Others include Galatians 5:16 and Galatians 2:20. The latter even has Christ living “in flesh” (en sarki) within Paul’s flesh, which has been “crucified with Christ.” A lot of non-literal, mystical stuff there! It is also in his flesh (en sarki) that Christ has abolished the law (Eph. 2:14). In his body (en somati) he has made one man out of two (Eph. 2:16). In his flesh (tēs sarkos) he is the veil of the new sanctuary (Heb. 10:20).

I’ll call special attention to Ephesians 5:29-30, where Paul refers first to a man who “never hates his own flesh (tēn sarka), but nourishes it,” and then compares this to Christ who similarly takes care of his own “body” (sōmatos), of which the members (i.e., limbs or organs) are the church. This clearly equates the term “body” with “flesh” in regard to Christ, an interchangeability which is evident in other passages as well. In such cases, Christ’s “body” or “flesh” is hardly literally human, but spiritual/mystical (suitable examples of one of the lexiconal definitions of “sarx” as “non-human” and “of divine beings”).

So what’s my point in all this? That early Christianity, as exemplified by Paul, used the term “sarx” in all manner of ways, with both physical and spiritual connotation, applying it to both humans and spiritual figures. It was their language, and we can judge it and interpret only within their context and thought-world, although we can certainly find parallels in other cultures, such as the example I gave of Cicero’s view of the non-human nature of the “body” and “blood” of a god. It is neither strange nor woolly within that context, but serves to describe all those types of relationship between humans and humans, and between humans and deity. The fact that this language and terminology has been employed in a range of meaning, application and connotation is hardly surprising. That’s what language does, it adapts, it evolves; different groups use it differently for their own particular purposes. To insist on one meaning, and only one meaning, at all times and in all circumstances, is simply poppycock, especially when that insistence is based on how we would understand such language today. Even the un-debated variety in Paul disproves such an idea.

In light of all this, I would like to devote the rest of this post to how can we interpret certain passages that we have been discussing, or which crop up regularly.

Romans 1:3 – of the seed of David kata sarka

A relationship between a spiritual being and an earthly one, not physical lineage but a mystical one, deduced from scripture. It uses “sarx” because it brings the spiritual Christ down to a human connection. It is also used in parallel/opposition to the kata pneuma of verse 4, whose content reflects a spiritual relationship with a spiritual entity, namely Christ as Son to God the Father.

Romans 9:3 – on behalf of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh kata sarka

A relationship between a human and a human group. There is nothing derogatory in this particular usage. As often remarked, why did Paul add “according to the flesh,” since “kinsmen” by itself would have served well enough, or even just the previous “brothers”? Because he was also used to referring elsewhere to other human beings as joined to him in another way, through a spiritual relationship, and he employed this language to differentiate.

Romans 9:5 – and from whom [the people of Israel] is the Christ kata sarka

If Christ can be seen as having a mystical relationship with David, he can be seen as having a mystical relationship with Israel as a whole. If he can, mystically, be seen as of the seed of David, he can be seen as the seed of Israel, although the text itself is not this specific in its description. As I said, taken in context, Christ is simply another item which is said to belong to the people of Israel. (In the case of many passages in Paul, not just on this topic, it is often impossible for even the most accomplished exegete to provide a fully, or even partially, coherent explanation of what he means, so again, don’t expect me to do the impossible either.)

Romans 8:13 – If you live in the flesh kata sarka, you are going to die.

A relationship between oneself and the earthly world. Definitely derogatory there. This is perhaps the most common application of the phrase, often in a contrast with kata pneuma, which represents the new (as a baptized believer) relationship between oneself and the spiritual world—even if one is still living on earth and waiting to be transported and transformed “in the twinkling of an eye.”

Romans 9:8 – Not the children of the flesh (tēs sarkos) are children of God, but (those) of the promise are (Abraham’s) seed.

The children of the promise obviously have a relationship/‘lineage’ with the spiritual world, since those with a relationship/‘lineage’ to the physical world are not children of God. And clearly “seed” here is not literal lineage, since the two halves of the sentence would contradict each other.

1 Corinthians 10:8 – Consider Israel of the flesh (kata sarka)

This is actually an important passage, and I thank Ben for calling attention to it. If all Paul means is “Consider the Jewish people,” why would he choose, even in the context I’ve suggested, to refer to them this way? Why not just “Consider the Jews / the Jewish people”? I suggest that this has a derogatory implication. What Paul asks to “consider” about Israel kata sarka, their sacrifices in the Temple, is devalued in some way, a tone strengthened by him going on to speak of pagan idol worship in the same breath. I suggest that Israel kata sarka is in fact referring to the Jewish entity that is stuck in the world, that has not embraced and enjoys the true spiritual relationship with God and Christ which Christians enjoy, referred to in the preceding verses (10:16-17). So this is probably not a use of “kata sarka” to refer simply to being human, but is another usage of one half of that basic flesh/spirit duality which saturates the world Paul lives in. In the same vein,

Romans 4:1 – What then shall we say was discovered by Abraham, our forefather kata sarka?

This should seem even more out of place than the foregoing. Why add kata sarka to “forefather” to describe Abraham, as it seems totally superfluous? But doesn’t this imply that there is another way, or context, in which to style him otherwise? Of course, Paul’s letters are full of that other way: being descendants of Abraham not kata sarka but through some spiritual, mystical channel, which the “children of the promise” enjoy. Yet why use the (implied) derogatory, or at least baser, phrase here? This may be difficult to answer. Is it because in the context of this passage he is restricting his thinking of Abraham to the simple physical fact that he is the Jewish patriarch-ancestor? Because he is going on to discuss Abraham in terms of what he was at first, a simple man, part of an idol-worshipping society, who before God approached him had no particular claim to fame or reward? That claim only came subsequently, when he showed faith in God’s promise to him. I don’t know, I can’t get inside Paul’s mind to that extent. But again, this verse suggests that kata sarka does not exist in isolation simply as a reference to human linkages; we get the sense of it being one half of a duality that encompasses both the physical and the spiritual—that conceptual world Paul lives and breathes in, in which kata sarka and kata pneuma are very pertinent and useful language, strange and woolly only to us and by our standard of a presumed historical Jesus in Paul’s background.

Colossians 1:24 – (Paul’s sufferings) complete the sufferings of Christ in my flesh (en tē sarki mou), on behalf of his body (sōmatos), which is the church.

It can scarcely get more mystical than this. This is a double relationship between an earthly, physical entity (Paul’s “flesh”) and the “body” (or flesh, since the two terms are interchangeable where Christ is concerned) of a spiritual entity (Christ), which latter is also conterminous to another earthly entity, the church, but which is only “physical” in a collective sense. (How can anyone claim that Paul—here pseudo-Paul—and his language are rigidly consistent and entirely earth-oriented?!)

Colossians 1:22 – (God) has reconciled you through (Christ’s) death in his body of flesh (en tō sōmati tēs sarkos autou)

Another very mystical usage of “body” and “flesh” indicating a non-literal application of “sarx” to Christ. This one is a nice example of Gerard Stafleu’s recent way of expressing things as the transcendent God approaching humanity by becoming immanent through Christ. God in this way develops a relationship with the physical world by giving off an aspect of himself, the Son, which adopts physical-type characteristics, and this is expressed by adapting the language of “flesh” and “body”. Thus we can see that “sarx” and “soma” serve quite non-woolly purposes for early cultic Christianity. And we can compare the concept behind that language to current philosophy, such as of Philo who also speaks of the Logos as “the firstborn” of God, an emanation given off by him through which he communicates with and affects, and is understood by, the physical world.

That reminds of me observations I made in my website article on the Odes of Solomon, and I think I’ll insert some of those here to enlarge on this idea. (What the hell, this posting is already an inordinate length, and if the reader has gotten this far, I’m sure he/she will persevere!) I think it is important and revealing to understand how Paul and others could have adopted their language to express their philosophical ideas about God and the Son.

The Odes are Jewish-sectarian (without any unpleasant apocalypticism, which is rare), having a spiritual Son as channel to/from God, but with no hint of incarnation. That intermediary entity (it is never called “Jesus” but is referred to by a variety of terms) enjoys a certain sense of ‘separateness’ from God, but nowhere near that of Paul’s Son and Christ. There are no Gospel details or anything resembling them.

In discussing Ode 23, I say:

And one other excerpt:

The Odist does not use the language of “sarx” and “pneuma”. His views are developed much less further along than Paul’s and he doesn’t need it. Paul and early cultic Christianity have chosen to adopt the flesh/spirit dichotomy to explain the more complex workings of the relationship they envision between humanity and the spiritual Christ, between earth and heaven. I think we can see a line of evolution here between the thought represented by the Odes and that by Paul, even though those two particular writers were probably contemporary. (If anyone is interested in the whole article: The Odes of Solomon)

Let’s do two more passages from the epistles, both quite important:

1 Timothy 3:16 – who was manifested in flesh (en sarki)

The opening line of a Christological hymn. Is “sarx” a reference to Christ’s spiritual body, as in some other usages of “flesh” in connection with Christ we find in Paul? Or is it understood as “in the realm of flesh,” being nothing more than saying that this spiritual figure was revealed to or within the world of humans? Consider what the rest of the hymn says: “…was vindicated/justified in spirit (en pneumati)…” That recurring duality. Comparing it with a nearly identical duality in 1 Peter 3:18, death in flesh / rising in spirit, is this locational: in what ‘spheres’ he was manifested and vindicated? Or are both passages a reference to his “form” or state in which he experienced both, again a “relationship” thing in regard to the realm of the flesh and the realm of the spirit? It is something we can find a very close parallel to in Romans 1:3 which has the same dual dichotomy: a relationship to the flesh (with David) and a relationship to the spirit (with God, as his Son). The Timothy hymn goes on to say that “he was seen by angels, was preached among the nations.” Clearly any state in “flesh” was not one that came in physical contact with humans: he was neither seen by human beings, nor did he do any preaching to them himself (cf. Romans 10:14f). No hymn writer would opt to express what he has the way he has, and create the glaring omission of such things. That scholars have been able to close their minds to such considerations is a tribute to the power of preconception stubbornly adhered to.

Finally, a very important passage often appealed to [using the NIV]:

2 Corinthians 5:16 – So from now on we regard no one [lit., man] from a worldly point of view (kata sarka). Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.

If even the NIV recognizes that the “sarx” does not refer to Christ himself, but to the way of knowing him, I think we can accept that this is the proper understanding. (Though I noticed that Robert Price, surprisingly, has not—tsk, tsk!) This makes sense, because kata sarka here refers both to Christ as well as to “no man”, and it would be awkward to think, if “kata sarka” refers to literal flesh, that Paul is inferring that while we once regarded other men as made of flesh we do so no longer. Rather, he must mean that we once treated other humans according to a physical relationship with the world, but now we do so according to our new spiritual relationship with the world. The old dichotomy again, even if he doesn’t use kata pneuma.

But this leaves a question. What were the circumstances of the previous way of regarding Christ? Scholars who adopted the traditional understanding of “kata sarka” here made various suggestions, one being that this was Paul’s and others’ knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth before their conversions, simply as a human man. While this could conceivably apply to Paul (even though he never gives us a hint of such a thing anywhere else), it would not likely do so in regard to his readers off in the Hellenistic world, who would not have been in a position to “know” of such a Judean figure before Paul buttonholed them and started preaching him.

The context suggests a different answer. Elsewhere, we get the implication that other apostles of the Christ are going around preaching such a figure, even differently enough that he can be referred to as “another Jesus” whom Paul dismisses as erroneous. Such a former way of “knowing” Christ Paul relegates to belonging to a “fleshly” understanding. It is only with his own teaching that Christ has been elevated, in his eyes, to a proper understanding. Verse 17 goes on to elucidate that proper understanding. It is the believer being “in Christ” and becoming a “new creation.” I am quite prepared to believe that Paul’s brand of mysticism about Christ and his relationship to the world was an advance, if not a quantum leap, over rival preaching of the spiritual Christ. Some of the latter, especially on the Corinthian scene, seems not even to have included a theology of the cross, and thus no “baptism into his death” on which is dependent so much of Paul's mystical thinking. Verse 19 also contains a sophisticated mystical view of Christ, “God reconciling us to himself through Christ,” and verse 21: “God made him who had no sin to be sin (offering) for us,” all of which probably went far beyond any previous preaching and understanding.

But I suppose by way of summary, I should refer to

Hebrews 5:7 – who in the days of his flesh (en tais hēmerais tēs sarkos autou)…

The NEB and others typically translate: “in the days of his earthly life”. But what did he do in that “life”? Something from scripture! (Note that most critical commentators regard the details of verse 7 as not a reference to Gethsemane, but in fact from scripture, particularly when evaluated in the context of the whole epistle: see my Article No. 9 on Hebrews. However, it is easy to see how such an originally scriptural derivation could have turned into the Gospel scene of Gethsemane.)

Thus we need to see this reference to “flesh” as having a spiritual-world meaning, a ‘spiritual flesh’ for Christ as revealed by scripture (cf. 10:5). Just as Hebrews sees Jesus doing things in the realm of flesh, in a state of flesh, so 1 Peter 4:1 sees him having “suffered in the flesh (sarki)”—which information he has gotten from where? From scripture, as in 2:21-22: “because Christ suffered for you that you should follow in his steps…” and those “steps” he illustrates by quoting Isaiah 53. No history on earth in ‘Peter’s mind. And no earthly physical human “flesh” either.

Thanks for listening.

Earl Doherty

Clivedurdle

My mum always said the Welsh are the twelth tribe of Israel - a classic confusion of flesh and spirit!


My good pentecostal background insisted I was the temple of the Holy Spirit.

As I understand it this is the root, the core of what xianity is - the coming together of god and man in the person of Jesus Christ and how we can copy that by becoming sons of gods, consumating it all when we become the bride of Christ!

But note carefully the worm in this wonderful story of salvation - it is all an invention, a Holy Spirit did not descend on Jesus, there never was a human as the type ofd the perfect godman!

The greatest story ever told!