In Christ

Scot Hafemann has recently published a collection of previously published essays on Pauline themes, Paul’s Message and Ministry in Covenant Perspective. Hafemann’s characteristic themes are here, most reflected in the title: A covenantal understanding of Paul’s gospel and theology, a pastoral focus, an emphasis on the role of suffering in ministry, Paul’s use of Old Testament Scripture, especially in 2 Corinthians.

In an early footnote (xiii, fn 7), Hafemann explains his remark that “Paul’s understanding of the eschatological new covenant inaugurated with the coming of the Messiah may not include ‘participation in Christ’ in the sense so often assumed to be at the heart of Paul’s ‘in Christ’ terminology.” Schweitzer and, latterly, Sanders, may have mistaken Paul for a Christ-mystic. 

Citing Matthew Novenson’s Christ among the Messiahs, Hafemann explains that “when Paul speaks of ‘in Christ’ . . . with verbs of ‘being’ he is referring to life within the sphere of the Messiah’s rule as Lord; when he uses ‘in Christ’ with statements of action he is referring to the Messiah’s agency in bringing them about, i.e., ‘by means of the Messiah.’”

This is excellent. Hafemann doesn’t need to deny that being and acting “in Christ” involves mysterious communion with Christ in the Spirit, but he places that communion in its properly human, historical, ecclesial, and pneumatological context.