Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul The Material Spirit

by Engberg-Pedersen, Troels

• ISBN13: 9780199596744
• ISBN10: 0199596743
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-01-07
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul challenges the traditional reading of Paul. Troels Engberg-Pedersen argues that the usual, mainly cognitive and metaphorical, ways of understanding central Pauline concepts, such as 'being in Christ', 'having God's pneuma (spirit), Christ's pneuma, and Christ himself in one', must be supplemented by a literal understanding that directly reflects Paul's cosmology. Engberg-Pedersen shows that Paul's cosmology, not least his understanding of the pneuma, was a materialist, bodily one: the pneuma was a physical element that would at the resurrection act directly on the ordinary human bodies of believers and transform them into 'pneumatic bodies'. This literal understanding of the future events is then traced back to the Pauline present as Engberg-Pedersen considers how Paul conceived in bodily terms of a range of central themes like his own conversion, his mission, the believers' reception of the pneuma in baptism, and the way the apostle took the pneuma to inform his own and their ways of life from the beginning to the projected end. In developing this picture of Paul's world view, an explicitly philosophically oriented form of interpretation ('philosophical exegesis') is employed, in which the interpreter applies categories of interpretation that make sense philosophically, whether in an ancient or a modern context. For this enterprise Engberg-Pedersen draws in particular on ancient Stoic materialist and monistic physics and cosmology - as opposed to the Platonic, immaterialist and dualistic categories that underlie traditional readings of Paul - and on modern ideas on 'religious experience', 'self', 'body' and 'practice' derived from Foucault and Bourdieu. In this way Paul is shown to have spelled out philosophically his Jewish, 'apocalyptic' world view, which remains a central feature of his thought. The book states the cosmological case for the author's earlier 'ethical' reading of Paul in his prize-winning book,Paul and the Stoics(2000).

Author Biography

Troels Engberg-Pedersen is Professor of the New Testament at the University of Copenhagen. He is a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
A Stoic Understanding of the Pneuma and Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15	p. 8
Looking for a Real World-View	p. 8
A 'History of Salvation'	p. 10
Modern Understandings of the Pauline Pneuma	p. 14
The Philosophical Context: Cicero on Pneuma and God	p. 19
The Philosophical Context: The Wisdom of Solomon and Philo on Pneuma and God	p. 22
Stoic Cosmology in 1 Corinthians 15:35-49	p. 26
Stoic Cosmology in 1 Corinthians 15:50-5	p. 31
'Apocalyptic' and Philosophical Cosmology in Paul	p. 37
The Bodily Pneuma in Paul	p. 39
Broader Questions about the Pneuma	p. 39
The Pneuma and Resurrection in Philippians and their Present Implications	p. 41
The Pneuma and Resurrection in 2 Corinthians 4:7-5:10 and their Present Implications	p. 46
Conformity with Christ in His Death and Resurrection: Romans 8:10, 8:14-30, and 6:2-6	p. 51
The Relationship between Christ and the Pneuma	p. 55
Paul's Conception of God	p. 58
The Ontology of the Pneuma 'Itself'	p. 61
The Pneuma Outside and Within Human Beings	p. 66
The Gift of the Pneuma: When?	p. 67
The Gift of the Pneuma: How?	p. 70
Prayer and the Pneuma	p. 73
Physics, Cognition, and Superhuman Persons	p. 75
Three Types of Discourse	p. 75
The Cognitive Role of the Pneuma	p. 76
Physics, Cognition, and Personhood	p. 80
Examples of Overlap-and the True Contrast	p. 83
Christ in the Underworld, Paul in Heaven	p. 87
Beyond the Elements of the World	p. 90
The Pauline Geisterwelt: Angels, Demons, Satan	p. 92
Is the Stoic Picture of the World More Optimistic than Paul's?	p. 98
Paul's Cosmological cum 'Apocalyptic' Anthropology	p. 102
Divine and Human Agency and Freedom	p. 106
Overview	p. 106
Epictetus: Three Questions	p. 109
Epictetus: The Human Being on the Scala Naturae	p. 111
Epictetus: Prohairesis	p. 112
Epictetus: Prohairesis and the Human Relationship with the Body and the World	p. 114
Epictetus: Prohairesis and the Human Relationship with God	p. 116
Epictetus: A Personalist (and Physicalist) Conception of God-and a Cognitivist One	p. 118
Epictetus: Divine and Human Agency	p. 119
Paul: Introduction	p. 121
Transferrals of Agency	p. 123
Divine Agency in Conversion	p. 125
Divine Agency vis-à-vis Non-Christ-Believers	p. 126
Divine and Human Agency after Conversion	p. 127
Summary on Paul	p. 128
Comparison with Epictetus	p. 131
Conclusion	p. 137
From the Self to the Shared	p. 139
A Change of Gear	p. 139
Bourdieu's Concept of Habitus	p. 141
The Pauline Language of Experience	p. 142
Foucault's Concept of Subjectification	p. 145
Overview: Three Texts, Three Topics	p. 147
Philippiahs 3:4-11: Paul Himself	p. 147
Philippians 3:12-4:1: Paul and the Addressees	p. 153
The Underlying Missionary Logic of Philippians 3:4-4:1	p. 155
The Converted Self in Galatians 1-2 and 6	p. 157
The Shared Habitus in Galatians 5	p. 162
A Generalized Self-Account and Its Paraenetic Purpose in Romans 7-8	p. 164
The Christian Habitus in 1 Corinthians	p. 169
Bodily Practice	p. 172
The Special Contours of the Christian Habitus	p. 172
Metaphorical Speech in Paul	p. 173
The Physical Underpinning of Paul's Cognitive and 'Ethical' Language	p. 175
Paul's Christian Habitus in Context: A Breakthrough	p. 182
Paul's Christian Habitus Now?	p. 193
The Initial Transmission and Reception	p. 194
Paul's Bodily Practice in 2 Corinthians 1-7	p. 198
Paul's Letter-Writing as a Bodily Practice	p. 205
Notes	p. 208
Bibliography	p. 254
Index Locorum	p. 271
General Index	p. 280
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