The interpretation of the passage by commentators since Moffatt has not paid serious attention to this alternative punctuation pattern and to the simplification of meaning that it offers.8 The French commentator Jean Héring, without indicating any awareness of Moffatt, is one who reads with quotation marks as does Moffatt, without arguing the matter.9
In the absence of serious attention by commentators to the hypothesis stated here, it cannot be considered either as refuted by the fact that it has not been picked up by others, nor as sustained by the absence of negative response to Moffatt. It therefore must remain a worthwhile hypothesis, no more but also no less. We are free to continue to assume it as part of a larger hypothetical synthesis.
Is Conversion Mainly “Inward”?
Our first specimen question exemplifying the difference between our habitual assumptions and the simple meaning of the text in its context had to do more with Paul’s self-understanding than with the content of his message. A more critical specimen of this problematic, to which we now move, is the interpretation of verse 17 of this chapter, which is the locus classicus for a particular modern Protestant view of conversion. “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature,” the King James Version renders it. The “new creature” is then a new individual human person, made new at some very deep level of what it means to be a human person. This is so profoundly assumed to be the self-evident point of the text that it is very difficult for a conservative Protestant reader to let the text speak for itself.
What is then the traditional “standard” interpretation of the passage? We must restate it in order to clarify the challenge we must address to it. First of all it is clear that it is a statement about the individual. It is in the singular. It makes a statement about this one person, any person, “he,” who is “in Christ,” who is therefore “a new creature.”
Secondly, it is clear in the prevalent interpretation that this person in herself or himself has a new nature, is different in the root of what constitutes him or her as a human organism. Of course this transformed person is in some sense the same person she or he was before, but the weight of the affirmation is upon the newness that has been given. Not only is the newness located in the “‘nature” or “essence” of the individual: the “nature” is itself located within the person, away from any social or empirical tangibility. The “Living Letters” paraphrase puts it most pointedly: “When someone becomes a Christian he becomes a brand new person inside.” The individualizing change goes on: “the old things are gone” becomes “he is not the same any more,” and “they have become new” is changed to “A new life is begun.”
Third, this event is thought to have taken place at some precise time in the past. It is not clear whether it needs to be conceived as instantaneous or as a process that took some time; but it is definitely a process having been concluded in the past for any person who is “in Christ.” To be “in Christ” is not a matter of more or less, but of yes or no. Whether conversion is therefore a matter of several minutes or several months, in any case, it is now possible to speak of it as past and achieved. To be “in Christ” and to be a “new creature” is in some sense at least a finished happening.
Fourth, this change in nature involves a divine work in the personality of the new creature. This is the significance of the very word creature. It points to the divine intervention having created something new. It is not said in what relationship this novelty stands to other kinds of causation that make a person what he or she is (to this question we shall return), but in any case a distinct divine intervention is affirmed. For us to be able to affirm it as solidly as it is usually understood, it must be discernible, and not merely be an affirmation of faith with no visible evidence.
It should not be necessary to outline the strength or the attractiveness of this way of conceiving the gospel message. It has definite implications, many of them evidently positive, for the attractiveness of the gospel invitation for those to whom it is addressed, as well as for the appropriateness of the call to a fuller discipleship when this call is addressed to those who have affirmed that they are in Christ. It might further be pointed out (less definitely to be counted as an unequivocal advantage) that this individualistic view is very compatible with modern Western understandings of being human.
Before proceeding to identify the grounds for suggesting that the text in question, and perhaps the entire New Testament, might be making a somewhat different point, let us proceed beyond the self-evident strength of this interpretation to recognizing a few of its handicaps in contemporary thought. For the following reasons I suggest these handicaps before moving on to the alternative exegesis:
To make more visible by example the extent to which this thought pattern is predominant and sets the rules of the game for any other discussion;
To suggest some of the unanswered problems we may keep in mind when we come back to read the text anew;
To attempt to loosen up our settled axioms so as to be more able to read the text with open eyes.
Models of the Human
One kind of question that is especially important if the passage is to be interpreted in the traditional way, but also especially difficult, is how to relate this conception of the transformed believer to the way in which different kinds of discourse, sciences, and theories also try to understand the wholeness of the human being. If we say that a person is transformed at the root of what makes him or her what he or she is, that must certainly relate somehow to the tools of analysis used by those other people who also claim to be dealing with the roots of what makes someone what that someone is.
What makes a person what he or she is in terms of what we usually call “personality” is profoundly correlated with the nervous system. Who a person is can be influenced by electric shocks applied to that nervous system, by chemicals, by brain surgery, and other kinds of intervention in the personality that are not mental or spiritual at all in the traditional understanding. Whatever the relationship of the life of the nervous system and the life of the spirit may be, at least there has to be some kind of serious correlation. For example, there is biochemical physiology, according to which a man or a woman is made what he or she is by his or her DNA, and continues to become and remain what he or she is by virtue of electrochemical events in nerve cells. These are the ways the first creation worked to make humanity human. Does the “new creation” work this way? Would sufficient sophistication enable us to find how conversion changes a person’s DNA or his or her neural electrochemistry? If not, why not?
Another level of the reality of what it means to be a person is that which is dealt with by the various schools of psychology. There are behavior patterns that are learned and can be unlearned. There are complexes and syndromes that are the product of the interaction between the individual needs and appetites on one hand and the family and social environment on the other. Especially, certain major figures in the early life of a child and certain pivotal experiences in development through adolescence are generally understood to have much to do with defining who a person is. Does conversion change syndromes and complexes? If so, does it do so through experiences of learning and unlearning that are themselves subject to psychological interpretation? Or does it happen on some other level? Is the new birth a cathartic self-understanding? Does it provide one with a better father image (in God) or a better ego model (in Jesus) that thereby enables one to cope more adequately?10
There is also a pedagogical view of the nature of the whole person, who is seen as learner, acquiring skills and awarenesses. Is conversion a “learning?” Does it fit on a scale of “moral development?”
These questions could be asked with an intention that might be flippant or destructive. That is not my intent. The fact needs simply to be faced that if we do claim in any concrete sense that the new birth changes who a person really is, we cannot avoid the encounter with questions of the kind that are asked