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  • From: Robert M Schacht <bobschacht AT juno.com>
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Pre-existence of Christ
  • Date: Sat, 31 Jul 1999 17:04:52 -0700




On Sat, 31 Jul 1999 12:29:58 -0400 "Liz Fried" <lizfried AT umich.edu>
writes:
>> From: Robert M Schacht [mailto:bobschacht AT juno.com]
>

>>
>[Bob Schacht:]
>> I think that the difficulty here is about what you both mean by
>"Jesus,"
>> which seems to shift as this dialogue progresses. Perhaps our
>English
>> vocabulary is not well-suited to discussing pre-existant forms.
>>
>> Pre-existant form #1: "Jesus" consisted of a dis-embodied
>consciousness,
>> capable of having thoughts, self-aware, aware of difference between
>self
>> and other
>>
>> Pre-existant form #2: "Jesus" consisted of something else (Torah?
>Logos?)
>> that was not necessarily conscious, having thoughts, self aware,
>etc.
>>
>> Pre-existant form #3: "Jesus" was not something with an independent
>> existance, but was an attribute of some other entity that
>differentiated
>> when he was "made flesh".
>>
>> Unfortunately, we do not have much of a vocabulary for discussing
>> disembodied spirits. We tend to operate on analogies with physical
>bodies
>> (pre-existant form #1), and we get lost when we try to talk about
>things
>> such as the trinity and pre-existant form #3.
>> Doesn't this take us straight back to platonism? What is it's
>typology of
>> disembodied spirits?
>>
>> Another problem is jumping to conclusions from a limited datum. For
>> example, I gather that from your Christ hymn in Philippians datum,
>it
>> looks like you conclude that they must mean something like
>pre-existant
>> form #1.
>>
>> Bob
>[Liz]
>
>Bob, this is really helpful. Yes, I think the poem in Phill has #1 in
mind.
>Looking again at GJohn 1, the poem originally may not have referred to
>Christ at all, but perhaps to the torah. This is what Jeffrey was
getting
>at. Certainly tho it was *used* by the author of GJohn to refer to
Christ. I
>think maybe as #3. This is very interesting. OK, now what about ! Cor
>8:15? where would that fit in?

Can't help you there, Liz; My copies of I Cor. 8 only have 13 verses. :-)
Please clarify the reference.

>Re: Platonism and a typology of disembodied souls. I conceive of it as
in
>the Wisd of Sol. The author implies he does not know whether he was a
body
>waiting for a soul, or a soul looking for a body. This strikes me as
really
>interesting. ... The souls are up (?)
>somewhere hanging around waiting to be born. They have a separate
identity.

Certainly the Wisdom of Solomon is a good example of Greek ideas
breaching the Hebrew field of meaning regarding the soul (Achtemeier's
Bible Dictionary, "Soul"), introducing explicit Greek ideas. The question
is, what with Paul addressing Greek audiences, can we assume he is
addressing such concepts? What we seem to be addressing here are Middle
Platonist controversies about the hierarchy of being, arising out of the
ambiguity of the relationship between the "Good" in Plato's Republic, and
the Demiurge of his Timaeus (Anchor Bible Dictionary, "Platonism").
The point at issue, of course, is how much of a concern were these
controversies to either Paul or his audiences? The answer may lie partly
in the evolving ideas about the pre-existence of souls, which has Hebrew
roots in Jeremiah 1:5, as well as references to various heavenly beings
in the Tanakh (Job 38:6-7, Pss. 19:2, 29:2, 148:2-3). Of course, the
Wisdom of Solomon contributed to this evolution, as did 2 Enoch 23:5,
including hints of Adam's pre-existence (chap. 32). Josephus' descripton
of Essene belief (JW 2.8.11) also is suggestive. Not to mention Philo.
(see "Souls, Preexistence of", by S. Kent Brown in the Anchor Bible
Dictionary). And then of course there were a host of Gnostic
speculations, but most of them are later, aren't they?

But how much of this was known to Paul or his audiences? According to
Brown, the best evidence may be in Gal. 1:15 (I wonder if this is an echo
of Jeremiah 1:5?) and Ephesians 1:4. Apparently there are some issues of
the Greek vocabulary in these passages that lie far beyond my competence.

>This seems to be what is described in Phill 2. Getting back to 1 Cor
>8:15,
>I think that may be #3.
>
>Looking again at John 1 (sorry Jeffrey) he speaks there of the glorsy,
>doxa,
>of God. What is this exactly? Alan Segal suggests the early
>Christians, and
>Paul, assimilated Jesus to the doxa. That would be #3 as well.
>

Doxa (Heb. Kabod) and Shekinah were the two main attributes of God. If
one was to try to assimilate Jesus to the Godhead, it would have to be by
one of those two routes. Perhaps Paul assimilated Jesus to the doxa, and
John assimilated him to the Shekinah.

>what do you think?
>
>Liz

I think there were some Middle Platonic speculations floating around
which most people didn't know anything about. The kind of guy Paul seems
to have been suggests to me that he engaged in dialogue with every
intellectual he could find, but in the end, he counted all philosophical
speculations as suspect and didn't trust them, even though the ideas
intrigued him. I think he lost a few of these philosophical arguments
with Platonist intellectuals, and decided that he couldn't really beat
them at their own game in a sustained argument. But that didn't mean that
he wouldn't use some of those ideas if he thought he could score some
points with a particular audience.

Bob
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