[In what follows, I will frequently speak of the Pauline “salvation myth.” More normally today, the word “myth” is used to emphasize an assertion that something is false, untrue. I use the term “myth” in a different sense, explained in more detail in another essay Understanding Mythologies in Religious Classics. Here I emphasize the function of myth in axial age writings generally: They provide people with an alternate context in which to see their lives, alternate and superior to a normal “worldly” context. Some elements of my proposals here take their starting point from some ideas from scripture-scholar Rudolf Bultmann, connected with his program of “demythologizing” the message of the New Testament. The main motivations for this program are explained in excerpts from an essay by Bultmann’s, available here at Rudolf Bultmann on “De-mythologizing”)]
Pauline salvation-myths.
A certain supernatural salvation-narrative, conveyed in mythological imagery, has been central to mainstream Christianity.
The first eight chapters of Paul’s Letter to the Romans state the main elements of this myth in its classic form, as follows.
All people are in need of salvation, because without it they are in a state of sin, from which they are unable to escape by their own efforts.
God sent his divine Son Jesus to save people from their sinful state. Somehow it was Jesus’s death and resurrection which brought about this salvation. (Quite remarkably, there has never been an official church declaration as to exactly how it is that Jesus’s death brought about this salvation. At least for different accounts have been proposed, no one of which has received official approval. See Four Different Later Christian Theories of How “Jesus’s Death Saves”)
Most Christians throughout history have looked on “Jesus’s death saves” as a set of doctrines, belief in which is a membership requirement for being a member in good standing of a Christian community. But this is another example of exclusive and mistaken focus on the content of religious doctrines, to be believed in “by faith,” without considering the function of such doctrinal beliefs in the life of believers.
This is especially important when trying to account for the origins of these beliefs. Paul was not yet a recognized authority in an Christian church. He preached to people who were people like us, who would not believe just anything they heard him say, just because he said it. I think, to account for the origins of belief in the Christian salvation myth, we have to make some educated guesses about the mindset of Paul’s audience, what exactly might have motivated them to begin believing in this supernatural narrative, and how exactly accepting it as central to their worldview might have changed their lives.
Two different accounts of salvation/justification in the Letter to the Romans.
The earlier part of the Letter to the Romans, especially chapters 3 and 4, present this myth in a form that makes such a task difficult. It just states very baldly that “we,” (Paul and his audience), were all previously regarded by God as in an inescapably sinful state, but that God had sent Jesus whose death and resurrection saves those who believed in Jesus, bringing them out of this sinful state and rendering them instead just and right in the eyes of God.
As normally understood, all this refers to invisible events happening in an unseen supernatural world with no connection to any human experiences. One has to first believe that before the coming of Jesus, God had regarded all people as inescapably sinful in their ordinary state. But then he sent his Son Jesus whose death has caused Him to change his attitude toward people, and regard Jesus-believers as now not sinful. All this should be seen as an act of God’s grace, not merited by anything believers do on their own.
From the present perspective, the main problem with all this is that the entire account refers to events happening in an unseen supernatural world, with no hint of connection to any human experiences or anything else which might have motivated people to believe this entirely supernatural narrative, also having no connection to any specific account of how such belief might change a person’s life. I am just called on to believe that I once was sinful in God’s eyes, but that as a result of Jesus’s death God no longer regards me as sinful. How can we give a humanly understandable account of the origins of these beliefs? What might have motivated large numbers of people to believe this supernatural narrative? Academic scholars, especially dedicated Christian scholars, seldom ask such questions about early Christian teachings. And this is only one instance of a tendency visible in studies of many other religious classics coming down to us from antiquity: Once some set of doctrines is extracted from some given writing, the scholar’s work is done, because this is the essence of what is taught in any given writing. The present essays are pursuing a different approach, to Paul’s letters as well as to writings from other traditions. We have not fully understood any given religious classic until we have formulated some ideas about how the beliefs found in these writings functioned as part of a larger complex of experiences, motivations, and life-changes associated with these beliefs in the concrete lives of some flesh and blood people.
I think that later chapters in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, chapters 6-8, gives an account of salvation different from the one found in chapters 3-4, an account that is more promising for my proposed project of giving a humanly understandable account of the origins of this set of Christian beliefs in sin and salvation. In this account, the mythological narrative of sin and salvation functions in fact as an interpretation of particular kinds of life-transforming human experiences, functioning like many ancient myths to give heightened meaning to these experiences.
The following is my attempt to give a summary account of this interpretation.
The context.
First, we have to keep in mind that Paul was not yet a recognized authority in an established Christian “church.” His addressees in this letter would not have believed whatever he said just because he said it.
On the view that I propose, in this letter Paul is addressing a Jewish synagogue community in Rome, made up both of ethnic Jews and individuals who were not ethnic Jews but who identified with the Jewish tradition. All were dedicated to reading and basing their lives on writings from the Jewish tradition (which were eventually incorporated into the Jewish bible, the Christian “Old Testament”). Inspired study of such scriptures was the central purpose of synagogue gatherings.
So Paul is addressing members of such a synagogue community in Rome. One result of their inspired study of Jewish scriptures is that people he is addressing have had certain kinds of highly emotional and life-transforming experience which they interpreted as spirit-possession. The effect of this spirit possession was to awaken in them what I will call an emotion-driven and wholehearted “passion for rightness,” which they felt had taken over their lives.
What stood out for them about this experiential transformation was a contrast with a very different way of achieving the kind of rightness-ideal they had learned through study of Jewish scriptures. This previous way involved strenuous efforts to keep a body of Jewish laws derived from these scriptures, essentially by means of will-power. Looking back retrospectively, and judging these previous efforts in the light of their experience of being carried away by a spirit-driven passion for rightness, what now stood out for them was the wholehearted character of this newly aroused passion for rightness, contrasted with a previous state in which determined efforts to keep Jewish laws by will-power were always accompanied by an awareness of internal division and conflict, feelings of reluctance and rebellion against the imposition of externally derived standards of conduct.
On the account I propose here, prior to their transformative experience of spirit-possession, they probably had not seen anything greatly lacking in this law-oriented version of Judaism. But once they had had this experience of being wholly taken over and emotionally transformed by a wholehearted passion for rightness, this became a standard by which they judged their previous efforts to attain the rightness-ideals that they had learned from Jewish scriptures. Judged in this way, all they could see about their previous attempts was the way that their dutiful but reluctant attempts to keep God’s laws by ordinary human efforts fell short of the wholehearted passion for rightness which they felt had taken over their lives.
This is the context in which some elements of Paul’s unusual vocabulary needs to be understood, special meanings he gives to the words “sin,” “justification/salvation” and “flesh.”
Sin
In the Letter to the Romans, “sin” does not refer to “committing some sins” by breaking some laws, but simply the continued co-existence of any feelings of reluctance, coexisting with and conflicting with desires to live up to norms of rightness derived from Jewish scriptures. So long as they felt in themselves any countervailing desires, coexisting with a desire to do what is right, they counted themselves as still in a state of “sin.” The transformative experience of Spirit-possession, giving them a completely wholehearted devotion to rightness, had engendered in them a perfectionist ideal of what true “rightness” consisted in. It is in the light of this perfectionist ideal that they regarded anything falling short of this ideal as “sin.”
Flesh.
Paul’s term “flesh” in this letter does not refer to sensuality, but to “merely human” efforts to live up to moral standards by means of will power, assumed to be always accompanied by contrary resistance and reluctance. Thus “fleshly” efforts to keep Law fall short of the true, more perfect, kind of “just-ification” brought about by Spirit. This is why, from Paul’s perspective, “Flesh” is inescapably “sinful,” as when Paul describes it as “Sin-flesh” or “the flesh of Sin,” or when he says that “I see that nothing good exists in me, in my flesh, that is.”
Just-ification.
In English when we speak of “just-ifying” some action or some person this means giving some defense of that action or person. But Paul uses an equivalent Greek verb to refer to a person who has actually been just-ified, “made just or right” in the eyes of God. “No flesh is just-ified before God by works of law” means that fleshly efforts to keep laws will not render a person just/right in the eyes of God. As I will explain below, “Jesus rose for our just-ification,” means that we are rendered just/right (not sinful) in God’s eyes by participating in Jesus’s resurrection (something that happens through spirit-possession). In what follows I hyphenate the word “just-ification” to draw attention to this point.
Salvation.
This is also the meaning of “salvation” then: what people are saved from is what they now see as futile efforts to achieve true rightness by such conflict-ridden, half-hearted, will-power-driven efforts to live up to particular laws representing rightness, which could now only appear retrospectively as not achieving “true” rightness. God had remedied the failures of these merely human efforts, by sending a divine “Holy Spirit” felt as a powerful internal force positively driving a person from within to live up to very high standards of rightness in one’s daily life.
Martin Luther’s Similar Account
Although this psychologically-oriented account is probably decidedly outside the mainstream of modern Christian scholarship on Paul, it is actually very similar to ideas proposed by Martin Luther in his 1515 Commentary on Romans.
The works of the law are every thing that a person does or can do of his own free will and by his own powers to obey the law. But because in doing such works the heart abhors the law and yet is forced to obey it, the works are a total loss and are completely useless. That is what St. Paul means in chapter 3 when he says, “No human being [the Greek says “no Flesh”] is justified before God through the works of the law.” …. How can anybody prepare himself for good by means of works if he does no good work except with aversion and constraint in his heart? How can such a work please God, if it proceeds from an averse and unwilling heart?… No one can satisfy [God’s Law] unless everything he does springs from the depths of the heart.
Comments:
“… every thing that a person does or can do of his own free will and by his own powers to obey the law” This is a good description of what Paul means by “flesh,” and “fleshly” efforts to live up to moral law.
Other phrases describe the co-existence of reluctance, also associated with “flesh”: “the heart abhors the law and yet is forced to obey it… aversion and constraint in his heart… an averse and unwilling heart…. he does everything through fear or coercion.”
Luther proceeds:
No one can satisfy [the Law] unless everything he does springs from the depths of the heart. But no one can give such a heart except the Spirit of God, who makes the person be like the law, so that he actually conceives a heartfelt longing for the law and henceforward does everything, not through fear or coercion, but from a free heart. Such a law is spiritual since it can only be loved and fulfilled by such a heart and such a spirit. If the Spirit is not in the heart, then there remain sin, aversion and enmity against the law…
What mainly needs to be added here is that in Paul’s context, “Spirit” is associated with experiences of being carried away by intense emotion beyond rational control (I’m not sure what Luther thought of “Pentecostal” Christians of his time). Otherwise we can see the same associations here that were explained above: So long as a person has a sense of forcing or coercing themselves by will-powerto conform to rightness-rules, there will continue to exist feelings of resistance, and this itself constitutes a state of “sin,” even in the absence of any “sinful” behavior breaking these rules.
The most important point is that here Luther is giving an explanation of Paul’s doctrine of the universal human state of “sin.” This is what we would regard as a perfectionist and internal standard. It does not refer to sinful behavior or even sinful desires. Only completely wholehearted enthusiasm for doing the right thing will make a person just/right in the eyes of God. So long as any contrary internal impulses exist in a person, which require suppression by will-power, that person will not be “pleasing to God.” Luther is right in supposing that Paul’s picture of God as an extremely demanding God–demanding internal perfection–not ordinary pessimism, that underlies his idea of universal human “sinfulness.”
Luther’s first statement here is also important: “The works of the law are every thing that a person does or can do of his own free will and by his own powers to obey the law.” This is an interpretation of Paul’s statement that “no flesh is justified before God by works of law.” In Paul’s thought, the key thing about “works of law” is that they refer to ordinary human efforts to adhere to some set of ethical norms (in Paul’s context, this refers to Jewish norms). I think “no flesh is justified” is important here because in the Letter to the Romans, “flesh” does not refer to sensuality. It refers to “merely human” efforts to make oneself adhere to some set of ethical norms, normally requiring a person to overcome internal resistance. This is why humans in their normal “fleshly” state are inescapably “sinful.” All this explains why Paul can say in ch. 7: I know that nothing good lies in me, in my flesh that is,” and his use of the term “sin-flesh” in another passage.
In Paul, “flesh” is contrasted with “spirit,” and spirit has a concrete reference to an internal drive, giving a person a wholehearted enthusiasm for doing the right thing.
…. No one can satisfy [the Law] unless everything he does springs from the depths of the heart. But no one can give such a heart except the Spirit of God, who makes the person be like the law, so that he actually conceives a heartfelt longing for the law and henceforward does everything, not through fear or coercion, but from a free heart. Such a law is spiritual since it can only be loved and fulfilled by such a heart and such a spirit. If the Spirit is not in the heart, then there remain sin, aversion and enmity against the law…
The only thing we need to add to Luther here is that in Paul, “spirit” is associated with highly emotional experiences (normally in response to preaching), interpreted after the manner of Paul’s day as “spirit-possession.” (I am unsure of Luther’s own view of “Pentecostal” Christians of his day.) It is only important to my reconstruction that spirit-possession is not just any kind of wild emotion, but specifically the arousing of an emotion-driven and enthusiastic passion for rightness. It is this inner-driven passion for rightness that would overcome any internal “fleshly” resistance to concern for doing the right thing, and cause a person to be taken over by an enthusiastic passion for rightness, a God-given gift which alone would satisfy the demands of Paul’s God who is only satisfied by such enthusiastic and wholehearted devotion.
A key Pauline passage.
Throughout the Letter to the Romans, Paul speaks in the first person plural. He says that at some time in the past, “we”–himself and his addressees in this letter–have been saved and just-ified by an act of God. I think the transformative experience of Spirit-possession is this act of God, who is responsible for sending the Holy Spirit to inhabit believers, who now “walk according to the Spirit, not according to the flesh.”
All this sets the context for understanding a key passage in chapter 8, where Paul says
What the law was not capable of, in that it was weakened by flesh, God [did] sen[ding] his own son in the likeness of sin-flesh, and for sin’s sake condemned sin in the flesh [of Jesus], so that the just demands of law are fulfilled in us who walk, not according to flesh, but according to spirit. (My translation.)
The law was “not capable” of bringing true just-ification because Paul associates law-keeping with “the weakness of flesh,” i.e. inadequate and reluctant “fleshly” efforts to live up to external norms.
God set his son in the likeness of sin-flesh, and in that flesh condemned sin
This is an interpretation of Jesus’s crucifixion. The crucifixion event is interpreted as a symbol of a very demanding God’s condemnation of flesh–i.e. people’s flawed and inadequate attempts to try to render themselves just by their own “fleshly” efforts. So long as a person is dedicated to relying on their own rationally controlled fleshly efforts to bring themselves to a state of rightness, they will not be open to being carried away beyond rational control by an emotion-driven “irrational” and wholehearted passion for rightness awakened by an experience of being taken over by something beyond their control, interpreted as spirit-possession brought about as a gift of God.
… so that the just demands of law are fulfilled in us who walk, not according to flesh, but according to spirit
Believers have participated in God’s condemnation of the “fleshly” crucified Jesus by condemning their previous attempts to justify themselves by their own fleshly efforts, thus dying to their old fleshly selves. This is a condition for the transformative experience of a divine Spirit, which alone allows a person to live up to God’s (perfectionist) demands, bringing about true just-ification. Paul sees this experience of just-ification by Spirit-possession as a participation in Jesus’s resurrection, as he says at the end of chapter 5: “[Jesus] died for our sins and rose for our just-ification”.
Thus Paul’s idea that we are “saved” and just-ified by Jesus’s death and resurrection is ultimately not a stand-alone belief, believed in “by faith.” His supernatural salvation-narrative comes as an interpretation of concrete transformative human experiences he assumes have been experienced both by himself and by his addressees. This was a transformation from (1) a previous way of life in which individuals tried to live up to perfectionist demands for rightness by rationally controlled efforts to live up to external moral norms, to (2) a new way of life in which they felt internally driven by a whole-hearted, non-rational, emotion-driven enthusiastic passion for rightness.
Interpreting all this in terms of a mythological salvation narrative is to give this transformative experience a meaning beyond what it might seem to have when pictured in an ordinary and prosaic worldly context, giving it a higher meaning by seeing it in a larger and higher context, as participating in a divinely engineered supernatural salvation narrative.
Appendix: A Synagogue context accounting for the mindset of Paul and his addressees.
Essential to the above proposals is the assumption that particular kinds of experiences–interpreted as spirit-possession–were widespread in Paul’s milieu. These involved unusual and highly emotional experiences, feeling being carried away beyond conscious control. But, in order to account for the clear assumption implied in Romans 8:1-13 that these were also experiences that brought people to a state of true rightness in God’s eyes, I proposed the hypothesis that these experiences can also be described in terms of an “enthusiastic passion for rightness,” which also brought about an enduring transformation in the lives of those affected. My account here assumes that certain parts of the Letter to the Romans itself constitute evidence that such experiences were common and widespread enough that Paul could take for granted that his addressees in Rome have all had these kinds of experiences.
To this hypothesis about the specific character of these experiences, I also want to add an hypothesis about a concrete religious context which might have been conducive to the fostering of these kinds of experiences. The context I propose is synagogue gatherings in the Jewish diaspora. Because my treatment must be brief, I want to just summarize some relevant conclusions from detailed evidence gathered by Dieter Georgi from both Jewish and pagan sources concerning phenomena connected with diaspora synagogues in Paul’s time, published in his book The Opponents of Paul in 2nd Corinthians.
I refer here to one particular section (p. 84-117) of this book in which this author cites evidence showing the following:
(1) The study and interpretation of Jewish scriptures, often collectively called “law” (torah) was the main purpose of synagogue gatherings
(2) “Interpretation” of these scriptures was regarded as itself a spirit-inspired activity
(3) Spirit-possession was a common phenomenon in and around these synagogue gatherings.
I propose this as the kind of religious environment conducive to the kinds of transformative spirit-experiences which I argued above are evidenced in Romans 6-8.
“Rightness,” and the demand for rightness, is a main characteristic of the God of Jewish tradition represented in Jewish scriptures. Intense inspirational (“spirit-ed”) reflection on the God represented there could plausibly have given rise to a highly exalted ideal of “God’s rightness” and to the idea of perfectionist demands that God’s “law” makes on devotees of this God.
This provides an account of a plausible origin of what (with Luther) I proposed above as the “perfectionist” sense of what scriptural “law” requires, responsible for Paul’s sense of universal “sinfulness” from which only divine intervention could save us. This could well be what Paul is referring to as “the glory of God,” and what he means by saying (Romans 3:23) that “all have sinned in that all fall short of the glory of God.”
This sense of falling short of a highly idealized sense of what God demands (determining Paul’s idea of universal sinfulness) would be one negative result of inspired meditation on the image of God represented in Jewish scriptures. But this could also have had a positive result, feeling very emotionally inspired, moved and carried away by an enthusiasm for the ideal of rightness represented by this God and his law, experiences easily interpreted as brought about by God’s Holy Spirit.
For more on the social setting of Jewish synagogues outside of Israel in Paul’s time, see excerpts from the work of Burton Mack on this topic, given in Social Setting of Diaspora Jewish Synagogues
