Philosophers and historians draw lessons from sages of the past, and for such interests Paul’s insights have no less academic merit. For Christians, his work is even more important than an exclusively academic interest would require. Paul’s role as one of our movement’s seminal thinkers, as key leader in the mission to reach Gentiles in culturally relevant ways, and especially as author of a significant portion of the Christian canon invites our close attention.
Divided Churches
One possible application of this material is to challenge the common divide in many Christian circles between emotional religion (related to US frontier revivals and earlier mystics) and intellectual religion (historically related to academic training). The former has sometimes trivialized the value of the latter as “dead letter,” and the latter has sometimes disdained the former as mere “enthusiasm.” To some extent this divide in US history was socially constructed: only elites could obtain education, and those excluded from centers of religious power were also forced to appeal to alternative epistemologies.1 Given Paul’s emphasis on both God’s Spirit and the important role of human cognition, Christians should surmount such historically and socially formed forced choices.2
All Paul’s teachings on the mind cohere, so that any one offers a window into the entire experience that he describes. Nevertheless, we may not all experience all aspects in the same ways and to the same degree. In practice, balancing various aspects of this experience may demand patience and wisdom in a messy world. The highest demand toward others is love (Rom. 13:8–10), despite our differences on secondary matters (14:1–23). We are gifted in different ways and should respect one another’s gifts even where they differ from our own.
This love also must be expressed in respectful and kind treatment of those outside our community of faith, including those hostile to us (Rom. 12:14–13:7). At the same time, Paul would want believers to always honor God’s plan and God’s perspective, and this priority will sometimes lead to tension when nonbelievers resent believers’ commitments. For Paul, as in the Gospels, Christ offers a model of reaching people lovingly without compromising God’s perspectives. Like the Gospel writers, Paul recognizes that the ensuing tension between Jesus and members of the elite eventuated in the cross. Although we must live at peace with all people insofar as it depends on us (Rom. 12:18), the peace of which Paul speaks does not provide an easy escape from the realities of tension and conflict in this life.
Divided Hearts?
Another potential application is to challenge the expectation, sometimes implicitly communicated to new believers in Christ, that they must struggle with temptation and sometimes fail. This script truncates Paul’s gospel and refuses to accept its teaching of the new identity in Christ.3 Struggle, of course, sometimes occurs;4 but for the believer, the battle must be one of faith (i.e., recognizing the truth of what God has accomplished in Christ), as in Romans 6:11, and not an attempt to combat the flesh by means of the flesh (i.e., by merely human effort), as the figure in 7:7–25 attempts to do. This battle also depends on God’s Spirit, as in 8:1–16. Against some other human-dependent scripts, we should thus view this battle neither as a matter of active fleshly effort without faith nor as a matter of passive resignation that God will do whatever God wills without our choice to obey. Rather, this approach acts on the faith that God himself has already acted and continuously remains active; the approach acts in confidence and credits God for the power to do so.5
Paul does not deny the value of effort, self-control (as a fruit of the Spirit, Gal. 5:23), and obedience; but for Paul, the obedience that comes from (or expresses) faith (Rom. 1:5) differs from the sort of self-focused obedience undertaken in order to achieve greater righteousness (cf. 9:32). Because faith is accepting God’s truth, we might view it not as an effort but as simply the unresisted effect of God’s now-recognized truth; the believer therefore obeys as an act of faith, acting (sometimes in defiance of feelings or past self-image) in accordance with God’s declaration that in Christ one is a new creation.
Acting in defiance of false beliefs—beliefs held by most of humanity and that seem consistent with purely natural, unaided human existence—naturally feels difficult because it opposes ingrained habit. Nevertheless, for Paul such deliberate action simply expresses the nature and character of the new person in Christ. For Paul, one overcomes the character of the flesh not by addressing it on its own terms but by recognizing the greater reality of what God has done for us in Christ.
The implications for believers’ transformation that Paul draws from the gospel message may be of special relevance here to scholars and other intellectuals. We are trained to solve problems with our own minds, without depending specifically and explicitly on God. Most of us thus find ourselves in a predicament similar to that of ancient philosophers, trying (at best) to transform ourselves by new beliefs without acknowledging dependence on God’s Spirit. We can truly embrace Paul’s message only when we recognize our need for the agency of God—in Pauline language, the Spirit. Contrary to what all of our training leads us to expect, this experience comes not through wrestling with the idea of the Spirit intellectually but simply by entrusting ourselves to the one who gives the Spirit.
Ancients who wrestled with psychological issues sometimes produced insights that remain helpful today. Thus, for example, scholars of Stoicism have pointed to valuable insights from ancient Stoic thinkers regarding cognitive therapy; Stoics worked on these issues both theoretically and by trying to put them into practice, and thus they had the experience to offer some insightful contributions.6 Modern philosophers have also noted insights in Stoicism helpful for cognitive psychology.7 Stoic theories also contributed to the rational therapeutic approach of Freud (though he disagreed at some significant points).8
It should not be surprising, then, if scholars in general and Christian thinkers in particular ask what contributions Pauline thought might make to modern discussions of Christian psychology. Paul wrote in ways relevant to his context and exploited the popular psychological language of his day. As when applying the insights of Stoics, then, readers today will better grasp Paul’s message if we can translate Paul’s concepts into the closest available psychological language of our day, preferably in a widely accessible (hence less technical) way.9
The vast array of theories of counseling and psychotherapy today10 make such an endeavor challenging, but the endeavor is best undertaken by those who know psychology best. That is, one essential area for continuing research on this subject must be interdisciplinary.11 Hopefully, the results of the present study can be both better articulated and further refined through insights from cognitive psychology and related disciplines. This study may offer a contribution to the dialogue, but this is a point at which biblical studies can also be informed by data from the cognitive sciences.
This is not to suggest that all approaches to psychology will have the proper conceptual vocabulary to translate all key elements of Paul’s thought. Insofar as some psychological theories are exclusively naturalistic,12 excluding divine action from their purview, we should not expect those who practice these approaches in a purely naturalistic way to recognize divine action; they cannot address by these methods what is most central to Paul’s theology. At best, they may view the new identity in Christ as a useful fiction of self-esteem—a helpful placebo—rather than an eschatological creation foreign to the concepts of this age. Though concerned for nurturing and thus often helpful to the patient, such approaches function with a grid definitionally incapable of recognizing divine activity in the created world.
Nevertheless, any approach that offers empirical data and useful maps for understanding the human person will explore many issues that overlap with Paul’s concerns. Approaches competent in addressing the material creation are also important for addressing the sorts of issues, such as neurological or chemical disorders, that Paul’s argument was never meant to address. Theologically informed psychological and counseling approaches that already welcome genuine divine activity will be able to draw on Paul’s resources more richly.
Worldviews
Part of Paul’s teaching about the new mind involves our worldview or framework for thinking. For Pauline Christians, the world’s values are no longer determinative; we live instead in light of the cross, which shames the world’s evaluation and proclaims the absolute superiority of the divine, eternal evaluation. From the standpoint of Christ, everything takes on a new meaning (2 Cor. 5:16–17).13 For Paul, a Christian views the present age from the vantage point of God’s promise for the eternal future age, evaluating present decisions in light of eternity. Likewise, we boast in Christ’s achievement and not our own.
Such new perspectives can affect the lenses through which we view every area of life. This can include even disciplines sometimes popularly visioned as autonomous from worldviews. Science is about measurements, and a Christian who is a scientist will not measure nature differently than a scientist who is not a Christian. On the personal level, though, the scientist who is a Christian can place the object of her study in a larger context of wonder and appreciation for God’s works. She can view her scientific task in the same way that seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler reportedly described his own mission, “thinking God’s thoughts after him.”14 (Like Kepler, of course, one can mean that divine way of thinking in only a limited, finite sense.)
Practically Implementing the Insights
Temptations to view reality from the prism of the old perspective abound, whether from social pressure or from ways in which we have been conditioned to respond to various internal and external triggers. The battle is in a sense learning to accept that Christ has already won, to recognize temptations as on some level falsehoods rather than true markers of our identity.15 This does not mean that we should deny that temptations confront us and are sometimes rooted in past choices or our biology; rather, it means that we are called to share God’s perspective on our justification. We must stand firm in defining our core identity in terms of Christ rather than in terms of those past choices, experiences, or genetics. Yes, the temptations may be deeply rooted in our past and even in our present neurochemistry, but believers in Christ are defined first and foremost by our identity and destiny in Christ. We must thus continue to reaffirm and thus learn to live by the truth that we already embraced in conversion: Christ alone is our righteousness, and Christ is enough.
The difference between this recognition and some other traditional Protestant articulations of Christ’s righteousness is that it invites us to follow through with the implications of justification.16 Paul’s Letter to the Romans does not end with his treatment of justification and the like in Romans 3:21–5:11; it goes on to talk about spiritual union with Christ and, in chapters 12–14, Christian ethics. The heart of Paul’s vision in those later chapters is the law of love (13:8–10), the law already written in believers’ hearts (8:2). Insofar as we genuinely believe our core identity to be transformed, and understand from Paul’s concrete examples what that transformation should look like, our deliberate choices will reflect that core belief.
Embracing as truth what we profess to believe seems fairly straightforward, but for many, such faith involves a battle of relearning.17 Indulging passions in given ways accustoms us to react to them accordingly; whereas some drugs create direct chemical addiction, less directly our own behaviors produce chemical responses to which the brain in turn responds. The wiring of our brain and neurochemistry are a divine gift: when we consistently make intelligent choices, our brains adjust to the pattern so that we do not have to pause to consider the choice so deliberately each time.
Unfortunately, our negative choices also wire our brains for particular neurochemical responses, so that we become accustomed to respond to stimuli in such detrimental ways automatically. In such cases, walking by the Spirit rather than by the flesh requires a continuing, deliberate rethinking and retuning, with many determined decisions to believe God’s truth about our identity, until our brain is rewired enough that the new way becomes the more prevalent way. Even so, the old memories and patterns may resurface, especially under stress, whether in dreams or while awake, and therefore continued vigilance is important. Naturally, this will be harder for some people in some areas than for others.18 Stressors cannot all be avoided (and sometimes should be confronted), but thinking in new ways should become easier when new patterns become more habitual and one’s sense of personal identity in Christ is reinforced through personal faith or through the affirmations of one’s faith community.19
The key issue, however, is that this is a battle of faith based on God’s truth about Christ and therefore about us who are in him, not simply an abstract struggle among components of our identity. Our thinking does not create the new reality, subjecting the genuineness of our identity in Christ to the starts and bumps of the renewing of our minds; instead, it recognizes the new reality already inaugurated in Christ, the actual beginning of the new creation. We may therefore fight this battle by embracing Christ’s accomplished victory, rather than approaching it with an expectation of defeat. In fact, it is a battle that can be fought at the point of temptation, which is not itself sin: that is, in principle a believer need not succumb to deliberate sin. Or to put it differently, when temptation comes, we can develop a confidence in Christ’s victory in us that is greater than our confidence in the temptation to redefine our identity.
When we do fail, it feels easy (at least for me) to become discouraged and succumb to the repeated cycle of expected further failure; but that is why we must ground our identity in Christ’s finished work and in the vision of our eschatological destiny in him, not in our past performance. It is a matter not merely of self-confidence but of confidence in the Lord’s good work in us. Righteousness is Christ’s image in us just as sin is the devil’s (John 8:31–47; 1 John 3:8–10).
Of course, we recognize that this power is Christ’s and not our own, and God’s forgiveness in him means that we have no reason to fear confessing sin. That Christ provides forgiveness for sin, however, is no more a reason to accept unnecessary defeats in the battle than the fact that an ideal spouse or friend forgives is a reason to indulge in insulting them. Many Christians today say, apparently glibly, that everybody sins, so long as these Christians define the sin as being merely an attitude of the heart rather than as something visibly egregious or scandalous. If the temptation is to become an ax murderer, however, we suddenly recognize that temptation must be overcome completely. Why wait until we face publicly “dangerous” temptations (if we ever do) to learn the lesson of faith?
Embracing Christ’s completed deliverance does not mean that we neglect maturation in it; rather, it means that we embrace in our lives God’s own gift to us. Similarly, marriage initiates a new relationship, but romance should not end there. My wedding, for example, did not terminate my continuing desire for my wife. At the same time, romance would be difficult if one continually questioned whether the marriage was genuinely in effect. A spouse who continually requests marriage after experiencing the wedding either experiences severe memory impairment or displays severe lack of trust. The way forward in Christ is to live actively for God, based on the relationship God has already initiated with us in Christ.20
From an academic standpoint, Paul’s Christocentric adaptation of cognitive motifs present in ancient intellectual thought is intriguing. For Christians, it may also offer a model for how we can integrate and adapt insights from cognitive studies today in a Christocentric way. Most of all, those who hear divine wisdom in Paul’s counsel will want to appropriate his insights for our lives. In Christ, old things have passed, and a new order has broken into history; we are part of this new order and should bring this perspective to how we understand reality. Some things have not yet changed; others, however, can never be the same again.
1. See, e.g., discussion in Smidt, Evangelicals, 22; Boda, “Word and Spirit,” 44; Archer, Hermeneutic, 21–22; Kidd and Hankins, Baptists, 42. This observation is not meant to denigrate the alternative epistemologies; I have argued that John’s Gospel provided one such alternative appeal in its day (Keener, John, 246–47, 360–63).
2. For Paul’s appreciation for the mind provided it was transformed by the gospel, see, e.g., Byrne, “Mind.”
3. This aspect of the Platonic legacy has been appropriated into much of modern Western religion along with the West’s traditional Enlightenment syncretism with deism; even many of those who allow a divine change of status so the believer’s spirit may ascend to heaven someday do not expect a divinely empowered transformation in the present. Western academic approaches are also truncated by our insistence on exclusively naturalistic explanations; once rendered outside our academic purview, divine activity is consigned to the exclusively subjective realm, combining Humean antisupernaturalism with a Kantian dichotomy of knowledge.
4. Others also note that deliverance from sin’s power does not necessarily mean that one never sins; see, e.g., Schreiner, Romans, 317; Achtemeier, Romans, 110. Cf. Chrys. Hom. Rom. 11, on 6:6 (trans. Bray, Romans, 158): “You are dead not in the sense that you have been obliterated but in the sense that now you can live without sin.” Exhortations usually presuppose the existence of the problem against which the exhortation is directed (cf., e.g., Aeschines Tim. 13, regarding laws).
5. Cf. Aug. Prop. Rom. 21 (on Rom. 4:4; trans. Bray, Romans, 112): “The good works which we do after we have received grace are not to be attributed to us but rather to him who has justified us by his grace.”
6. Sorabji, Emotion, e.g., 1–4, 225–26 (though he notes that their contributions are relevant for cognitive issues, not for treating mental illness or moods such as depression). The community aspect of many ancient philosophic schools may also suggest a social element in philosophic moral transformation more often explicitly affirmed in modern thought than in antiquity.
7. As with the limitations of Stoicism (Sorabji, Emotion, 153–54), cognitive therapy when used by itself is more useful for some disorders than others (e.g., for reducing phobias but not helpful for anorexia, 155). Cf. Meichenbaum’s approach of cognitive behavior modification, addressing distorted thought processes, as summarized in Patterson, Theories, 265.
8. Rorty, “Faces,” 260–62.
9. Translating Paul’s ancient intellectual language for modern Western intellectual contexts is one of a number of possible settings for which Paul’s language must be translated more fully to make it more fully intelligible to those unfamiliar with the ancient Mediterranean frameworks in which he was communicating. The value of comparative work for communication is widely recognized; for example, some Chinese scholars are bridging traditional conceptual divides (using both comparisons and contrasts) between Chinese thinkers (e.g., Lu Xun and Zhu Xi) and those celebrated by Western tradition (e.g., Plato, Maimonides, or Nietzsche); see, e.g., Zhang, “Ethics of Transreading”; Ying, “Innovations.” Biblical scholars have undertaken this approach most commonly with the language of the Confucian tradition (see, e.g., Yeo, Jerusalem, passim; Yeo, Musing; Yeo, “Xin”; Kwon, Corinthians).
10. See, e.g., Bongar and Beutler, Textbook; Corey, Theory; Tan, Counseling.
11. Many have already undertaken such studies in helpful though preliminary ways, e.g., Beck, Psychology of Paul; the thoroughly interdisciplinary study of Elliott, Feelings.
12. Technically, an approach that is purely natural may simply prescind methodologically from addressing theological questions for which natural methods are not designed. In this way, believers and nonbelievers can share plenty of legitimate common ground on the natural questions. For believers, though, such approaches remain incomplete, and if we are not vigilant, the habit of excluding divine factors from consideration can easily bleed into our lives and ministry to others in ways that it need not.
13. The Jewish wisdom tradition already recognized how interpretive grids shaped learning, and it invited learners to start from the foundation of faith (what we might call a “hermeneutic of trust”; see Hays, Conversion, 190–201); see, e.g., Ps. 111:10; Prov. 1:7; 9:10; 15:33. This approach remains needed among many Christian interpreters in my own discipline of biblical studies. See, e.g., comments in Wong, “Loss.”
14. On Kepler’s faith, see, e.g., Koestler, “Kepler,” 49–50; Frankenberry, Faith, 35–38, 47–53; cf. Gingerich, “Scientist,” 28; Burtt, Foundations, 60–61.
15. Ancient Judaism viewed Satan as both tempter (e.g., 1 Chron. 21:1; CD 12.2; 1QS 10.21; 4Q174 frg. 1 2.i.9; 4Q225 frg. 2, col. 1.9–10; 11Q5 19.15; Jub. 10:8, 11; 17:16; T. Reub. 4:11; T. Jos. 7:4; T. Iss. 7:7; T. Ash. 3:2; 3 Bar. 9:7; b. B. Bat. 16a; b. Qid. 81a; y. Shab. 1:3, §5; Gen. Rab. 70:8; Exod. Rab. 19:2; 41:7; 1 Thess. 3:5) and deceiver (e.g., CD 4.15–16; T. Benj. 6:1; T. Dan 3:6; T. Levi 3:3; T. Jud. 25:3; T. Job 3:3/4; 3:6/5; 26:6/7; 27:1; Eph. 6:11; 2 Thess. 2:9; Rev. 12:9; 20:8), as well as accuser (Job 1:6–2:7; Zech. 3:1–2; Jub. 1:20; 48:15, 18; 3 En. 14:2; 26:12; Gen. Rab. 38:7; 57:4; 84:2; Exod. Rab. 18:5; 21:7; 31:2; 43:1; Lev. Rab. 21:10; Eccl. Rab. 3:2, §2; Rev. 12:10).
16. In contrast to some popular Protestantism, many early Reformers already recognized the reality of spiritual transformation (e.g., Luther, Second Lectures on Galatians, on Gal. 2:20; Calvin, Commentary on Galatians 2:20, in Bray, Galatians, Ephesians, 79–81 [summary on 70]; see Westerholm, Justification, 48; McCormack, “Faith,” 171; Barclay, Gift, 124).
17. Cognition includes affective as well as rational elements; feelings and moods affect thinking and are affected by it as well. Nevertheless, reason remains vital, since it responds most fully to perceived reality. For Christians, reason should embrace increasingly fully the reality we already profess to believe in Christ.
18. Since this is a postscript, I may note that I was ADHD (diagnosed already in an era when it was diagnosed only in more extreme cases). I thus seem to be neurologically primed for creative interdisciplinary work but find it difficult to concentrate on one thing except when in a mode of hyperfocus. This does give me some cognitive challenges for both academic and ordinary life, as well as sympathy for others who struggle with focus and with reframing thinking.
19. I am grateful to Professor Virginia Holeman for bringing the points in this last sentence to my attention (personal correspondence, November 16, 2014).
20. One may approach God’s presence and favor in Christ in the same way, recognizing them by faith. Cf. Laurent, Practice; Keener, Gift, 27–30; in greater exegetical detail, Keener, John, 2:932–39, 972–73, 976.