Pauline Variations on a Greek Theme

Pauline Variations on a Greek Theme September 4, 2014

Paul uses the phrase “elements of the world” several times in his letters. The phrase had an accepted meaning by the first century, referring to the four elements of Greek science—fire, air, water, earth. Paul uses the phrase, but he doesn’t use the phrase in the accepted sense. What conclusions—substantive and methodological—might we draw from that?

1) Paul employs a phrase well-known in Hellenic thought, an idiom as much in the first-century air as “quantum physics” might be today. Paul may have known as little about Greek theories of elements as modern preachers know of Einstein, but he must have known at least the rudiments of the meaning of the term. Like any educated man of his day, he knew about the four elements of Greek science and his use of the term makes little sense if he was completely unaware of the religious practices associated with ta stoicheia. Paul thus anticipates the (possibly) more self-conscious use of Hellenic terms and concepts found in patristic writers, especially in their debates over the Trinity and Christology. Methodologically, this shows that the New Testament endorses later Christian uses of Hellenic philosophy. A modern philosophical theologian following Paul’s lead might use the terminology and conceptual apparatus of “relativity” in expounding on God’s relation to the world or differance when formulating a theological hermeneutics or a Trinitarian theology.

2) Just as clearly, Paul deploys this common phrase in an argument that on the surface has nothing to do with ta stoicheia in its normal senses, and in so doing puts the words and the concept to evangelical use. No Greek scientist would have thought to describe Jewish Torah as a constitution for life under ta stoicheia. Paul implicitly endorses the use of non-biblical terminology and conceptual apparatus insofar as they are put to use to expound the gospel. This is the method of theologians from patristic Trinitarian theologians to of scholastics like Aquinas. For all their admiration for Platonic, Neoplatonic, or Aristotelian concepts, they all aimed to do what Paul was doing, namely, to “evangelize metaphysics.”

3) At an abstract level, what Paul does is to move ta stoicheia tou kosmou from cosmology to history. For Aristotle and others, elements had fixed and permanent natures that determined their motion, and these regular natural movements explained the order of the cosmos. For Paul, the elements of the world are temporary regulations for Jew and Gentile in childhood. Elements are instituted, “conventional,” and variable over time, a matter of nomos rather than physis. Paul is not much interested in explaining continuities of rest and motion or the order of the cosmos. Perhaps Paul is content to know that the world was created and maintained by a gracious Creator, harmonized by the living logos, and does not feel the need to explore further explanations. We may thus draw the further methodological conclusion that theologians using categories and terms from philosophy or science should adjust them to make them serviceable as a part of an account of redemptive history.

4) More speculatively and substantively, we might conclude from Paul’s use of ta stoicheia tou kosmou that the basic constituents of reality are subject to change. According to Paul, Jew and Gentile both lived in subjection to elements. Those who are in Christ do no longer. Paul seems to preach a gospel of such radical apocalypticism that he can speak of a change in the elements of reality itself. Perhaps Paul implies something like this: Before Christ, the world was overseen by elemental spirits, angels and also demons. Demon fought with demon, so that there was strife in the cosmos. Once Christ has come, and taken His throne, the world is brought into harmony. The world no longer works as it once did.

5) Finally, we may take note of the specific practices that Paul associates with ta stoicheia: calendrical observances, purity rules and practices, including sacrifice. Paul uses a phrase from Greek science to describe covenantal, sociological and religious realities. Might we “read back” Paul’s sociological use into cosmology? Might sacrifice not merely be a “covenantal” element but one of the constitutive realities of the physical cosmos, even of the life of God Himself? Instead of trying to isolate, whether scientifically or metaphysically, irreducible fixed bits of reality, should we instead be looking for irreducible sequences of action and a processes and movements that resemble the movement of sacrifice? Might purity rules be not only common practices of stoicheic religion, but also pointers to the elemental realities of the natural world, or of metaphysics?


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