Paul’s existential and ontological identification of his inner self with the Transcendent (become historical in Christ) leads to a second presupposition of the time: that the created order of life’s cycles, its struggles and opportunities, its brevity and limits—indeed the whole physical realm—pales in comparison to the attainment of life’s highest good. Like Orpheus’ “prison house of the soul,” the body itself is but an “earthly tent,” destined to pass away (1 Cor 5:1). Plato’s Apology, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and Epicurus’ views all entertained the same premise. As in the case of transcendence, such a view, when carried to the extreme, created yet another disconnect with Paul’s Jewish heritage by introducing into Christianity a Greco-Asian motif foreign to its Hebraic past. Consider the following.
In the Old Testament the (hesed) love of God, along with God’s zeal for justice and righteousness (zedek), never endorses a diminution of the physical realm’s worth. Rather, it assigns paramount importance to the present, to the now, not solely to a transcendent realm or some distant time to come in the future. Life’s wealth of riches is to be enjoyed and shared, not renounced or avoided. We are creatures of flesh and spirit, not simply spirit. Nor is the life of created matter to be defined in demeaning terms, such as Paul does in his letters. Unbegotten, eternal, imperishable, and perfect Being belongs to God. The begotten, mortal, perishable, and finite qualities of beingness belong to humankind. Understanding this biblical injunction preserves the idea of God as holy, eternal, and ineffable; yet it supports the conviction that human life is nonetheless “a little lower than God’s” (Ps 8), with a divinely-endowed worth all its own. Paul’s presupposition regarding the low estate of “the flesh” compromises its divine dignity, which he considered lost, thereby undermining the true gifts of humankind’s potential in the present.
Paul was comfortably at home in believing that only minds, wills, and hearts transformed by a transcendent love of God in Christ can experience life’s highest fulfillment, free of the distractions of the physical realm and its fall into sin. His view still carries an incontestable truth. From Socrates to the present, transcendence in its noblest form has inspired the world. But that is not the question. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that in Paul’s mind, the end time was coming. The physical world was passing away and was therefore less deserving of full commitment or value. Christ would soon return, though when, no one knew. Nevertheless, Paul’s belief in the end time, with all the chaos that would be predicted to ensue, set Christianity on a course that led, by the end of the second century CE, to a retreat from the worthiness of the vocational calls of the created order. In Schweitzer’s mind, the Parousia’s delay actually exacerbated the transformation from Paul’s “in-Christ mysticism” to an “in-God mysticism,” significantly altering, if not corrupting, Paul’s original dynamic. For Schweitzer, John’s Gospel clearly reflects this change, as well do the letters of Ignatius. It would take the Reformation to reverse this course in its own trans-valuation of transcendence.
A third unexamined presupposition revolves around the satanic forces and demonic dimensions that the ancient world feared were endemic to human existence. Assuming them to be real (i.e., genuine) metaphysical entities that enjoy conscious awareness and will, Pauline theology casts the human struggle as one pitted not only against the temptations of the flesh, but also against the very powers of darkness that thwart human wholeness and fulfillment. In Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, these forces have been dealt a deathblow; nonetheless, they are operative in the world and must be confronted as well as denied authority in one’s life. Paul is fully cognizant of their power and knows that it is only at the end time, with its final judgment, that they will be condemned and ultimately destroyed. Nevertheless, they are present now and must be contested.
Not surprisingly, however, Paul tamps down their influence wherever he can, confident of their final end. He mentions them less often than do the gospels. Paul refers to “Satan” only eight times in his authentic writings, and he refers to “demons” twice, along with “the powers of this age” or “elemental spirits” twice. Perhaps the most notable of his references is the passage in Rom 8:38. It captures the Hellenistic period’s fear of the unknown and its spirits, as well as its fallen angels and their disastrous impact on humankind. “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 3:38–39).
Note that his list of perils concentrates on both the physical realm as well as the celestial. Known today as the gospels’ “three-storied universe,” with heaven above, earth in the center, and hell and its demons below, this was the spiritual equivalent of the Ptolemaic sevenfold view of the universe, whose coming perspective was less than a century away. Paul’s list encompasses it all. His inventory includes life and death, political rulers as well as evil spirits, the present as well as the future, the intermediate powers of the upper and lower worlds that operate between God and Hades, Earth’s anxieties and uncertainties, and the burdensome weight of a fallen creation. Like the rebellious rulers of Ps 2 who have set their faces against God and his anointed, all are arraigned against any human spirit that would strive to live free of impediments. Although Paul recognizes numerous opportunities for human engagement within God’s created realm (Rom 12:1–21), Paul nonetheless views the created order as captive to an array of evil powers committed to assaulting human life and its full attainment. Thus, he appeals to God’s underpinning of supra-transcendence to battle life’s intervening foes.
In this regard, we are humbled to remember the dramatic currents that were associated in Paul’s era with the coming of the Messiah and the esoteric fantasies it created. For example, the book of Enoch traces the story of Enoch’s ascension into heaven, where Enoch learns of the so-called “Watchers of Heaven” and their ruinous impact (1 Enoch 14–16). This is instrumental in understanding something of Paul’s interior views concerning the rulers and powers of this world:
Go speak to the Watchers of Heaven: . . . Why did you leave lofty, holy Heaven to sleep with women, to defile yourselves with the daughters of men and take them as your wives, and like the children of the earth to beget sons, in your case giants? . . . But you were spiritual and immortal for all generations of the world. So I gave you no wives, for Heaven is your proper dwelling place. And now the giants, offspring of spirit and flesh, will be called spirits on the earth, and earth shall be their dwelling . . . The giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack over the earth . . . Their spirits will rise up against men and women because they proceed from them.11
Of such is the human predicament for Paul, haunted on earth by these fallen powers, whose purpose now is to torment, harass, and mislead humankind.
It is interesting to note, however, that Paul’s Jewish heritage rejected this view. From its earliest Mosaic roots, not even the Shema summoned its adherents to such a suspicious or combative view of God’s created order. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words . . . in your heart. Recite them to your children . . . talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise” (Deut 6:4–7).
This remarkable insight has to do with life now, carried out through one’s center of essential vitality (the heart), to be shared with one’s children in one’s home, cutting across one’s occupation and travels, and guarding and guiding one’s activities by day or by night. It is meant to buoy the soul through life’s quotidian hardships and inescapable encounters with reality, not to be a mantra for escape from the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”12 It is this sphere in which God becomes real or not. It