Abstract
Paul often uses the phrase ‘in Christ’ in his letters. Teresa Morgan has written an important book that rejects a participatory interpretation of this phrase, suggesting an encheiristic interpretation instead (that it means ‘in his hands’). I provide a participatory view, in terms of a sharing of divine and human minds, in experience, feeling and action. By considering Professor Morgan’s account of ‘en Christo’ in Galatians, I argue that a participatory view adds something important to, without detracting from, an encheiristic view.
The expression en Christo is frequently used in the New Testament, and especially in Paul’s letters. There has been much discussion about how to interpret this phase. Teresa Morgan has recently written an important book (Being ‘In Christ’ in the Letters of Paul) 1 which provides a survey of much of the literature on this topic and proposes a new interpretation. The book is comprehensively researched and concentrates largely on philological issues to try to determine what Paul might have meant, or might have been understood to mean, by his frequent use of that expression. She distinguishes a number of uses of this and cognate expressions, both in the New Testament and in Ancient Greek sources. Of particular importance in her account are: instrumental uses, where en means something like ‘through’ or ‘because of’; encheiristic uses, where it means ‘in the hands of’ or ‘in the power of’; locative uses, implying some sort of physical or metaphorical nearness; and participatory uses, taking en to denote some sort of participation or sharing in the person or body of Christ.
Her account is clear and illuminating, and she makes an excellent case for her own view that the instrumental uses mostly refer to past events, such as Jesus’ death and resurrection, and that the encheiristic uses mostly refer to a present and continuing relationship of the believer to Christ. She does not, however, have much time for participatory uses, partly because she does not think they add anything substantive to the instrumental and encheiristic uses, and partly because she finds any participatory doctrine obscure and implausible.
I think that the doctrine of participation in Christ is more important than she thinks, and that it is possible to state it in a clear and intelligible form. That is what I intend to do.
Believers in an ontological participation in Christ do not usually think, as at times she puts it, that it means sharing in Jesus’ person or body. If we live ‘in Christ’, it is not that we live in Jesus’ physical body or even in his human person. Although the term ‘Christ’ is a translation of the Hebrew ‘Messiah’, in Paul and other Christian writers it takes on a very different connotation from that of being the Davidic king who will liberate Israel from her enemies and unite the tribes of Israel. For Paul, Christ is not a political inaugurator of the state of Israel, but the universal saviour of all humanity. Nor is Christ a purely human leader or prophet. Christ is divine, and it is as such that he can forgive sin, be the judge of all humanity, and be addressed as ‘Lord’.
I do not mean to imply that Paul had a clear view of the relation of Jesus to God. It is hard to know what exactly he thought, but it seems fairly clear that he regarded the risen Christ as worthy of worship, and as existing at the right hand of God, and that he was at the very least a man with divine power, not just someone of political acumen.
If we are to share in Christ, then, we share in the being of a Divine Saviour, not a human person (in the modern usage of that term). The preface to the Gospel of John was later to express this by saying that it was the ‘Word of God’, eternally one with the Father, who became flesh in Jesus. The Word of God is not a physical entity, but a purely spiritual reality. To share in the being of a spiritual reality is something that it may be hard to describe in our sensorily oriented languages. But it would seem to be rather like one (finite and very limited) mind sharing in another (unlimited and supreme) mind.
If we can conceive of telepathic communication of thoughts and feelings between one mind and another, in the human case (whether or not it actually happens), we might well want to call that a ‘sharing’ of mental contents. It does not seem too hard to think of a supreme mind allowing a much more limited human mind to know its thoughts, feelings and intentions by a form of unmediated acquaintance.
God is no doubt not just a supreme mind, but since God is said to think, to speak, to feel and to act, it seems justified to say that God at least has mental properties. In which case, to share the mind of God would be to be permitted by God to have immediate acquaintance with some of God’s mental content. To that extent, it is not too difficult to think that humans might be able to share the mind of God, to be ‘in’ the mind of God in an ontological sense. They could, if permitted, range around in the mind of God to discover some of the things that were there. Although human physical bodies might not be in God, human minds could be. Their access, however, would presumably be set by God, and it might vary between different human persons.
Morgan rightly points out that the word entheos was sometimes used in Greek thought to refer to the possession of an oracle or seer by the Spirit of God. The word is not used in the New Testament, but it shows that en was not unfamiliar in the Greek-speaking world as referring to the non-sensory communication of something in the mind of a god to some human mind. This entailed some access to the mind of God, although it was usually temporary and very restricted. I suppose Paul’s Damascus Road experience, a vision and audition, parts of which were not experienced by others, involved privileged access to God’s mind. A vision might be thought to be produced by God, rather than simply being in God’s mind. However, it is not produced by physical causes, but by the direct intention of God, which is in God’s mind and is not publicly accessible. So, while not being just a mental content of God’s, it is directly caused by such a mental content. Visions, observed by only some people, seem to be intermediate cases between ordinary sensory experiences and direct non-sensory acquaintance with God’s mental contents.
When prophets speak the words of the Lord, they speak words that are directly caused by God’s mental contents. In such cases, it could be said that God speaks through the prophets, puts words into their minds, and in this way is ‘in’ their minds. It is assumed in the Bible that God knows all the contents of all human minds, and so in this way God could be said to be also ‘in’ our minds, as at least a non-sensory observer. But that might be misleading, if it suggests that God could be contained within human minds. It would be better to say that God takes the contents of our minds into the divine mind. There they would be evaluated, ‘judged’, and modified by their new context of God’s universal knowledge. This would suggest a new element of inclusion in the divine mind – namely, that human minds would not only have access to the divine mind, but that they also would contribute new content to the divine mind, which would not have existed if they had not existed.
Human minds, then, can be contained in the divine mind, but the divine mind cannot be contained in human minds. The divine mind, however, could act to modify the contents of human minds. This happens in prophetic utterances and also in visions, which lie between direct non-sensory divine actions in human minds and ordinary (or ‘natural’) sensorily caused perceptions.
In the New Testament, it is said to be the ‘Holy Spirit’ that inspires prophetic utterances, enables ‘speaking in tongues’, and in general produces the ‘fruits of the Spirit’ in believers. It is reasonable to think that these things are acts of the Holy Spirit ‘in’ human minds, causing them to act and think in ways they would not otherwise have done.
One major activity of Jesus recorded in the Gospels is the exorcism of demons, or spirits that are not holy, but destructive. At that time, the world was seen as populated by both demons and angels, and demons could produce mental disorders. Their expulsion would cure those disorders, and, according to the Gospels, when they were expelled they often spoke and protested. They could possess and control human minds and could be regarded as ‘in’ those minds, needing to be expelled from them (on one occasion being removed to a herd of pigs). The Holy Spirit, for Christians, was the Spirit of Jesus Christ. It was not destructive, but life-enhancing. It could be ‘quenched’ (Gal. 5.19) and be cultivated by the mind it was ‘in’, and it was not seen as an alien and disabling force, but as a power that amplified the mental powers of some human minds. If evil demons were thought to be exorcised by Jesus, having been active in the minds of humans, it seems natural to think that the Spirit of God could also be active in the minds of humans, preparing them for eternal life with God.
God has access to every aspect of every human mind. God can also contribute new content to human minds, usually, perhaps, by increasing their natural capacities, including especially their love, faith and hope. It makes sense to speak of God being ‘in’ human minds in these ways – giving non-sense-based knowledge of the divine nature, and amplifying their normal mental capacities.
In much later developed Christian theology, the three ‘persons’ in, or aspects of, the divine nature were said each to act in every divine act, albeit in different ways. Paul had not developed that theology, but he had at his disposal the idea of God as Creator of all things other than Godself, God as the Divine Saviour (the eternal Christ) who had been known in and expressed in Jesus, and God as the Holy Spirit, who enabled humans to perform mighty acts and wonders. It was possible for him to say – and he did say at different times – that we are ‘in’ God (1 Thess. 1.1), ‘in’ Christ (Gal. 3.28), and ‘in’ the Spirit (Gal. 5.16). On the account I have given, all these things could be true.
They would provide something additional to ‘being in the hands of’, or under the power and protection of, God, Christ and the Spirit. They would assert a unity of human and divine minds, such that they would be bound together in experience, feeling and action in an intense and enduring way.
Perhaps an analogy of this sort of unity can be found in the doctrine, held by many, that in the Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit are different ‘persons’, related to each other in specific ways, and yet they form one unitary being. This is a union containing relationships, and yet not one that can be broken up so that their parts exist separately without destroying the distinctive and fundamental reality that they together form.
What are the ways in which human minds might exist in God, Christ and the Spirit? Given that all human language has limitations that might make any neat and precise definitions inadequate, I suggest we might say something like this: we exist in God as those who are totally dependent for our being on some primal source or origin. We exist in Christ as those who are freed from sin and given new life by the saving acts of the eternal Christ, manifested in physical reality in the man Jesus. And we exist in the Spirit, as those who are being transformed by a power other than our own, which works within our minds, to become fitted to share in the Divine nature. It is the same God who works in these different ways to unite us to the divine.
Why should Paul choose en Christo as his most frequently used of these possibilities? Perhaps if he called Christians ‘those in God’, this would not distinguish them sufficiently from other religious movements. ‘Those in the Spirit’ might not give any idea of what sort of Spirit it was, whereas ‘those in Christ’ would make it clear that they lived in the Spirit of the Divine Saviour who had been, and still was, manifested in Jesus.
Another powerful reason might lie in Paul’s description of the body of believers as ‘the body of Christ’ (1 Cor. 12.27). That is, they are to heal and reconcile as Jesus did, to be, as Teresa of Ávila said, ‘the hands and feet of Christ’. They are to practise dying with Christ and rising to new life with him in their own lives. Christ is the one who gave them life and gave them the pattern of their lives, and who still mediates God to them through his risen presence. Christ is, in a realist but non-physical sense, in them and they are in Christ. I would think that this is a participatory account of en Christo that says something more than that we are in the hands of Christ, as those who trust in Christ, who are in Christ’s power and under his protection. 2
For reasons of space, I will consider only two passages of Galatians, which most scholars take to be almost certainly by Paul, to show how a participatory account adds to an encheiristic account of en Christo. The crucial, and much debated, passages are (for Christ being in me), ‘not I live, but Christ lives in me’ (Gal. 2.20), and (for we being in Christ), ‘you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3.28).
Galatians 2.17–20 is a difficult passage, in which the chain of reasoning is unclear. I read it to say that, if Christian disciples turn to keeping the Torah, they will find that they fail to keep the Torah in all its rigour, so they are sinners, and so Christ would be admitting unreformed sinners to union with God. But if the Torah, which condemns me, is set aside, then I can be dead to the law, and turn to a different way, accepting that the law does not bring me to God, but that God’s grace is given to me freely, because ‘Christ lives in me’ (v. 20).
However, since Christians seem to be in practice just as sinful as Jews, it still seems that faith in Christ, true and unyielding faith, leaves in place what Christian philosopher John Hare calls the ‘moral gap’ between the moral demand – of keeping the Torah fully, or of having total faith in Christ – and the righteousness to which we are called. This is a well-known problem for many Christians, who are not sure if their faith is strong enough to save them. And anyway, do not sincerely believing practitioners of the Torah admit their moral failures and see the need for trust in God’s mercy? What, then, is different in Christian faith?
Well, it may be a new insight that God’s love is sacrificial, and that God shares in the sufferings of creation. It may be a new insight that we do not need animal sacrifices and ritual food laws to relate positively to God – although this is a possible Jewish position too. Jews can have an instrumental relation to God – ‘because God makes a covenant with us, we are in a special relation to God’. Jews can have an encheiristic relation to God – ‘we should live under God’s authority, placing our lives in God’s hands’. Muslims, too, can be related to God in very similar ways. But the element that seems to make Paul’s preaching so impassioned is that God, in Jesus, makes the atoning sacrifice, the self-sacrifice that unites humans to God.
Yet what makes that sacrifice a uniting one? How does Jesus’ death put me in right relation to God? It seems to me that only the idea of participation can provide some understanding of this. We must somehow participate in Christ’s crucifixion and in his resurrected life. Although we cannot achieve sinless perfection – the moral gap is too great – we can, as Romans 6.3 puts it, be ‘baptised into his death’. We must see that the only perfection is Christ’s and seek to share in it. And that can only happen if Christ’s perfection is freely given to us, by Christ ‘living in us’, his wisdom and love being formed in us (Gal. 4.19). If indeed it is possible for God to act within our minds to expand our wisdom and love, then one way of putting this real, non-sensory, action of God is to speak of Christ living in us. We do not offer to God lives that we have achieved by our own moral efforts. We offer to God lives that are being actively transformed by and included in Christ.
Paul puts this succinctly in Galatians 2.20. ‘Faith in Christ’ is not only believing that Christ has acted to save us, and consequently putting ourselves in his hands. It is letting Christ act in us, and offering our lives to God only as formed in and, in that sense, one with him.
Not only does Christ live in us; we live in him. We have ‘put on Christ’ and are ‘all one in Christ’ (Gal. 3.27–28). Since Christ acts in many people, and since many people have individual experiences that add new content to the mind of God, and thus to Christ, Paul says of them, ‘You are the body of Christ’ (1 Cor. 12.27). Bodies are the means by which minds act and by which they experience the world. Christians form a community in and through which the eternal Christ acts, and by means of which Christ experiences the world in many different ways. Thus, these communities are ‘in Christ’, as his manifold and continuing expressions in the physical world.
Morgan interprets Paul’s talk of the body of Christ as a metaphor that signifies that the Church is under Christ’s authority, and acts on behalf of Christ. 3 It is a metaphor, but, I think, what it points to is that the eternal Christ acts in and through the Christian community, insofar as it cooperates, to carry out his will for the world.
In one of her discussions of Galatians 2.17–20, 4 Morgan writes, ‘Christ lives in Paul in order to act through him,’ which seems to be exactly what I am arguing for. But she construes ‘living in’ as ‘being in Christ’s hands’, or having the authority of Christ for, and giving Paul the purpose of, preaching the gospel. It is not, she says, so much a statement of Paul’s personal relation to Christ as Paul’s defence of his authority to preach.
I do not think these are exclusive alternatives. Paul is defending his authority and vocation to preach. But he does so by saying that it is Christ who gives him this authority, presumably in virtue of some personal relation to Paul. Christ, through the risen Jesus, commissioned Paul as an apostle, and this must have been through the conveyance of information and guidance from the divine to the human, which was not conveyed through the senses. This is just what I mean by Christ acting in Paul.
For Christ to live in Paul also says something more than this. It says that Christ is known to Paul as present in a non-sensory way, and that Christ’s action in Paul is not occasional and exceptional, like the temporary spirit possession of a typical prophet, but is an ongoing aspect of his personal life, in which he is being conformed to Christ. For me the idea of ‘being in Christ’s hands’, although I think it is very important, needs to be supplemented by a stronger sense of the presence of Christ to, or in, the mind (i.e. not physically) and of personal cooperation with a power not one’s own, which is yet not felt as alien to and wholly separate from oneself.
I have been able to consider only a small part of Professor Morgan’s rich and complex book, but I hope that I have outlined a meaning of en Christo that evades her dismissal of a participatory interpretation and may even suggest that such an interpretation adds something of importance to her exemplary account.