06 Paul and Religious Experience: The Impact of Paul’s Experience of the Spirit on his Awareness of God’s Salvation-History.

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The Current State of Religious Experience

Trends are volatile phenomena. They come and go, rise and fall, and revolutionise or simply distract. An emerging trend within contemporary biblical scholarship is that of religious experience. It is the contention of this paper that such a trend exists as a profitable and necessary approach to discussion on the thought of the Apostle Paul specifically. The recent trend of religious experience has been highlighted by Luke Timothy Johnson as a long neglected approach to the NT texts, and his remarks have been heard by key writers in their subsequent studies.[1] The growing prominence of religious experience as a method of biblical interpretation has now been seen in the formation of a distinct section within the Society of Biblical Literature devoted to the study of religious experience in early Judaism and early Christianity,[2] and in specialized studies that develop particular themes or arguments utilizing religious experience as a method.[3] While it is necessary to acknowledge that religious experience has sporadically existed as a method in biblical scholarship over the last century, the prominence of the method is only now beginning to emerge as a recognizably viable and powerful means of analysis of the NT material. This is particularly the case with regard to Pauline studies. Closely aligned with religious experience as a method is the recent interest in Jewish and Christian apocalypticism and Jewish and Christian mysticism and a reading of Paul according to such categories. While an adequate common definition of any of these terms is still elusive,[4] the apparent overlap between religious experience, apocalypticism and mysticism provides an intriguing blend of potential enquiry points.[5]

While analysis of religious experience is on the rise in biblical scholarship, it is surprising the limited extent to which the Spirit is incorporated into the discussion on religious experience, early Jewish and Christian mysticism and apocalypticism. Notable exceptions have appeared in scholarship,[6] yet there does not exist an enquiry into the impact of religious experience of the Spirit on the narrative worldview of Paul.[7] It is the contention of this paper that precisely such a discussion on the Spirit in Paul’s experience will be fruitful. The extent to which religious experience plays a role in the formation of Paul’s narrative worldview of God’s salvation-history will be the focus of this investigation, and the argument maintained that the Spirit remains an integral component of Paul’s thinking on his placement within God’s plan of salvation. We shall first need to give a brief overview of a new approach to biblical theology – that of narrative worldview – and then enter into a discussion on the impact of Paul’s religious experience of the Spirit on his thought.

The New Reading: Narrative Theology

A perennial shift has occurred in recent approaches to biblical theology. While many post-enlightenment texts, influenced by rational and systematic forms of thought, structured their work according to strictured theological categories, such compartmentalization resulted in a certain distance from the biblical texts with which they were concerned. Not that what was produced was not ‘biblical’, rather, a simple comparison between biblical text and systematic text was much like comparing an apple and a seed from which it was produced. This form of systematization was viewed as a necessary task since the bible was a varied assortment of texts, written by numerous authors utilizing a plurality of genres. A mix of this assortment naturally calls for systematization and order. But recent processes of rummaging and piecing together the various puzzle pieces have produced a fresh approach to the task by highlighting the importance of narrative in the ordering process.[8] Whereas the enlightenment birthed rationalized categories ordered according to logic, post-modernism naturally highlights the role of story, or narrative, in the task of order, thus the categories utilized are not logical positions that are intrinsically internally consistent, rather the points are derived from certain points in the progression of a particular story.

While I am aware that to argue post-modern categories of thought is to risk the danger of anachronism, that is, to impose on the text a thought form from a later time, such a narrative approach can be seen to reflect much more closely the thought of the NT authors and Paul in particular. Such an approach can be seen in recent studies that utilize and engage with narrative as a means of understanding Paul’s thought.[9] A simple perusal of Paul’s letters will indicate the extent to which his thought is framed, not by logical categories of Theology, Soteriology, Christology, etc, but rather by certain points in a narrative. Clearly, the decisive change in Paul stems directly from Christ and the Spirit. As N.T. Wright has remarked, “Paul’s theology can…be plotted most accurately and fully on the basis that it represents his rethinking, in the light of Jesus and the divine spirit, of the fundamental Jewish beliefs: monotheism (of the creational and covenantal sort), election, and eschatology. This theology was integrated with the rethought narrative world at every point.”[10] Wright’s work, while immensely helpful in situating Paul’s thought within a Jewish framework, has unfortunately not given attention to the role of religious experience of the Spirit. Richard Hays in his published doctoral thesis has come closer to religious experience (but not by religious experience of the Spirit) in application to Gal 3:1-4:11. Hays has stated his argument clearly:

In this study, I propose the thesis that any attempt to account for the nature and method of Paul’s theological language must reckon with the centrality of narrative elements in his thought. As we shall see…in certain key theological passages in his letters, the framework of Paul’s thought is constituted neither by a system of doctrines nor by his personal religious experience but by a ‘sacred story,’ a narrative structure. In these texts, Paul ‘theologizes’ by reflecting upon this story as an ordering pattern for thought and experience; he deals with the ‘variable elements’ of the concrete situation…by interpreting them within the framework of his ‘sacred story,’ which is a story about Jesus Christ.[11]

Hays has rightly emphasized the overarching importance of the narrative structure of Paul’s thought, yet his comments with regard to religious experience (in response to earlier Pauline studies) results in a far wider dichotomy than which I feel is necessary. While I agree with Hays that religious experience cannot be identified as the ‘core’ of Paul’s thought,[12] it nonetheless plays a far more significant role within the life and thought of Paul then that which Hays has argued. Ben Witherington has helpfully noted that the narrative structure of Paul’s thought “involves elements from other traditions (Jewish, Greco-Roman, Christian), elements of logic (e.g., the syllogism in 1 Cor 15:13ff.), and perhaps most important, elements drawn from Paul’s own and other Christians’ experiences of God in Christ.”[13] While I agree that Witherington is closer than Hays to our thesis by raising the possibility that Paul’s own experiences were “perhaps most important,” Witherington has still left open the role of the Spirit within Paul’s religious experience and the impact of these experiences on his narrative thought world. The nature of the relationship between narrative structure and religious experience therefore presents itself as a viable point of discussion.

A Brief Pauline Narrative Worldview

It is necessary before we examine Paul’s own experience of the Spirit and the impact of this on his narrative thought world to briefly offer a broad Pauline narrative worldview. It is well known that the Hebrew Scriptures function as the landscape within which Paul views the horizon.[14] As Witherington broadly summarises, “It is a Story that focuses on God’s relationship to humankind, from the beginning of the human race in Adam to its climax in the eschatological Adam, and beyond. It is a Story about creation and creature and their redemption by, in, and through Jesus Christ.”[15] For Paul, God was the sole ruler and creator of all things who alone was to be worshipped (Rom 1:19-25; 1 Cor 8:6).[16] He knew that sin and death entered the world through Adam, with the consequence that death came to all humanity (Rom 5:12-21, cf., 1 Cor 15:45), and in this way God’s creation was now subject to death and decay (Rom 8:19-22). While such an effect was significant, Paul also saw the action of God’s call to Abraham as a means by which a solution was offered to the problem of sin and death. The call of Abraham marks the beginning of God’s plan to redeem and re-create a people whom recognize and respond to his status as the only true God of the cosmos (Gal 3-4; Rom 4). The promises of God to Abraham of a family, through whom all the nations will be blessed, signifies God’s intention for Abraham. While the polytheism of the surrounding Gentile nations blinded them from recognizing the one true sovereign and creator God, it was the formation of a holy people who worshipped God alone that would initiate such an ingathering. While Abraham himself was a Gentile, before God he was vindicated and identified as righteous on the basis of his faith in God (Rom 4:16-18). Only following this act of vindication was Abraham given any covenantal requirements (i.e. circumcision) as a sign of his continued faithfulness to the promises of God. The freedom of Abraham’s descendents from bondage in Egypt, led by the Spirit, was for Paul a further sign of God’s continued faithfulness to his promise to bless the nations through Israel, his chosen people.

Despite Israel’s idolatry and unfaithfulness to the covenant expressed in their lapse of monolatry, the giving of the law to Moses at Sinai was intended both to define sin and to hem it in (Gal 3; Rom 5:20-21, 7:7-25). The Deuteronomic choice of life or death, blessing or curse was designed to demonstrate that God would be faithful to his covenant, despite the presence of sin within Israel. The choice to remain faithful to God himself, rested in the hands of Israel. The consequent exile of Israel, after a long and tumultuous cycle of faithfulness and unfaithfulness to God confirmed the overarching reign of sin and death even over the people of God (1 Cor 10:1-11). While God was faithful to all his promises, the effectual action of God was ultimately seen in the coming of Jesus the Messiah to rescue Israel from their slavery to sin through his death (Gal 2:15-21, 3:1; 1 Cor 1:18-2:5; Rom 3:25, 4:24-25, 6:1-14; Phil 2:5-11, 3:10-11) and resurrection (1 Cor 15; Rom 1:3-4, 6:4-5, 8:11), and in the outpouring of the Spirit in order to overcome sin and the flesh (Gal 3:1-5, 5:13-6:10; 1 Cor 12:12-13; Rom 8:1-17). These simultaneous dual factors, the coming of Messiah and the sending of the Spirit, were integral to God’s plan to reach the pagan nations, now through the church (Rom 15: 14-22, 16:25-27) for the ultimate purpose of converting all the nations to the one true sovereign and creator God.[17]

As a Jew immersed within the worldview of Second Temple Judaism that was characterized by an increased expectation of the appearance of the Messiah, Paul looked back to the anticipatory emphasis on the story of God and his people Israel and the promises attached to the covenant that form the core plot of the Hebrew Scriptures.[18] It cannot be doubted that Paul’s pre-Christian experience was informed by the understanding that Israel had been unfaithful to God’s covenant, and increased fidelity, concretized by Torah observance, would initiate the coming of Messiah.[19] The emergence of a movement claiming Jesus of Nazareth, a condemned Jew by Roman crucifixion, as Messiah, would not fit this paradigm. The end of exile was sure to ensue the coming of Messiah, yet political, social and to a varying degree, religious domination was still wielding its oppressive hand. Additionally, the jettisoning of Torah appeared to unfasten the public demonstration of faithfulness to God’s covenant.

The extent to which the pre-Christian Paul persecuted the Christian church is evidence both for his zealous commitment to the covenant given to Moses and to his self-awareness of his placement within the narrative of God’s salvation history. To extinguish an unfaithful and contentious strand of Judaism was to proclaim a sign of faithfulness to Torah and to situate himself within the present status of those righteous before God, i.e. those considered truly within the people of God. The expectation of the Messiah naturally anticipated the ingathering of the nations. For the pre-Christian Paul, Jesus of Nazareth had not fulfilled the appropriate criteria.[20] His experience had not altered the present reality of the story. For the Christian Paul, God had acted decisively in Israel’s history by sending Jesus the Messiah and poured out the Spirit in order to break in the kingdom of God. Paul, as a result of his conversion found himself, along with the primitive Christian community, located within this narrative at a time of growing awareness of the reality of this story. In fact, Paul’s own conversion and call can be understood as Paul’s realization that his life and mission to that point had been in defense of a misguided understanding of God’s story. It was a turning of the page, and a re-reading of the plot was the necessary response. Paul’s subsequent mission to the Gentiles was a fundamental product of his conscious awareness of the role he played within this narrative.

It is within this conviction that the role of the Spirit in the life of Paul and the early Pauline communities, constituted with a strong Gentile orientation, plays an integral part in Pauline thought. It is the mapping of Pauline thought according to this narrative of God’s redemptive activity in Jesus the Messiah, affected by the Spirit, that drives the focus of this paper. More specifically, it is the relationship of the experience of the Spirit as the confirmation of the reality of Paul’s placement within this narrative that drives home the importance of religious experience of the Spirit as a fundamental necessary component to any discussion on the identity and activity of the Spirit, at least within the thought of Paul.

The Role of Religious Experience within Paul’s Christian Narrative Worldview

The importance of religious experience of the Spirit for Paul is seen in two fundamental points. Firstly, in Paul’s own experience of conversion, and secondly, in the presuppositional manner in which Paul can assume a common experience of the Spirit at conversion with his Gentile converts.[21]

Discussion on Paul’s conversion naturally centers on his recognition of Jesus as Messiah. While this is necessarily a fundamental component of Paul’s perception of God’s engagement with Israel, now evidenced in Jesus of Nazareth, it nonetheless runs the risk of excluding the importance of the Spirit. To understand the profound change in the pre-Christian Paul – that is, his awareness that a new page had been turned in the larger story of God – the nature of the event must be discussed from the perspective of religious experience of both Christ and the Spirit.[22] This highlights Gal 1:11-16, 1 Cor 15:1-11 and 2 Cor 3:7-4:6 as viable entry points into Paul’s own conversion experience.[23]

Paul’s Conversion and the Resurrected Christ: Gal 1:11-16 and 1 Cor 15:1-11

It is a curious observation that all three passages (Gal 1:11-16, 1 Cor 15:1-11 and 2 Cor 3:7-4:6, to be discussed below) in their context reflect a similar line of thought. Each passage rests within a discussion of either Paul’s pre-Christian experience of persecution against the Church for their unfaithfulness to Torah (Gal 1:13-14; 1 Cor 15:9), or Paul’s strong attack against opponents whose agenda is to impose Torah observance on his Gentile recipients as a sign of their covenant membership (Gal 1:11-12, cf., 3:23-4:7; 2 Cor 3:1-4:6). Each passage also emphasizes Paul’s own experience in some particular way, particularly, as this paper will argue, 2 Cor 3:7-4:6 in a more opaque manner within Paul’s broader argument. The significance of this will be noted as my argument progresses. But first, Gal 1 and 1 Cor 15 and their relevance to Paul’s experience of Christ.

Both texts contrast Paul’s earlier way of life within Judaism, which was characterized by violent persecution of the Church, and his experience of the risen and exalted Christ. Key to the discussion is the growing consensus that Paul’s background within Judaism was also framed and influenced by apocalypticism. Gal 1:12 and 16 are informative not only for its verbal echoes, but also for its function within Paul’s argument. The gospel that Paul preached to the Galatians was neither received from nor taught by any man (ἄνθρωπος) but (ἀλλὰ, in strong contrast to) was received ‘through a revelation of Jesus Christ’ (διʼ ἀποκαλύψεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ). That the objective genitive (‘of Jesus Christ’) reading should be applied here in contrast to the subjective genitive (‘from Jesus Christ’) is demonstrated from 1:16.[24] Paul expands on this statement to claim that God ‘was pleased to reveal (ἀποκαλύψαι) his Son in me’ (ἐν ἐμοί). That the experience Paul recounts is a revelation of Christ himself appears to be demanded by the use of Paul’s prepositions which indicate that what occurred was not ‘to’ Paul but rather ‘in’ (ἐν) Paul.[25] The use of ἀποκάλυψις terminology also orients Paul’s experience within the world of First Century Jewish Apocalypticism towards the objective genitive reading. These verbal echoes with Jewish Apocalypticism confirm the powerful nature of the experience.

The significance of God revealing his Son in Paul is observed firstly, in the locative sense of ἐν.[26] It is in Paul himself that the revelation of God’s Son took place. The image Paul constructs is not so much a picture of rational reflection but rather of transformative experience at the sight of the exalted Christ. So much so, that Paul’s immediate response was not to consult any man but to go to Arabia (1:16-17). Why would Paul need any consultation, even from the eminent Jerusalem Apostles, when his experience of Christ was evidence enough of the reality of Jesus as Messiah? No engagement with Jerusalem altered Paul’s fundamental experience and the interpretation he gave to it (Gal 2:1-10). Paul’s experience of the exalted Christ was so profound that it produced a radical and unexpected reversal of all that Paul had dismissed as contradictory to Jewish expectations, and that no engagement with the Jerusalem Apostles was necessary in order to legitimate what had occurred. In this sense, an experience had occurred in Paul that did not happen ‘to’ him but was clearly demonstrated by what ensued ‘in’ him, i.e. his profound reversal. There is no basis for alternate gospels because such gospels are clearly incongruent with Paul’s experience of the risen Christ. For Paul, his experience is decisive.[27]

Secondly, the purpose of God revealing his Son in Paul is in order that (ἵνα) Paul ‘might preach him [i.e. Christ] among the Gentiles’ (1:16). What this demonstrates is Paul’s own response to the significance of the event. Paul’s conversion experience, now seen from the perspective of a call like that of Jeremiah and Isaiah, was the critical occasion which reoriented Paul’s self-understanding of his place within God’s salvation-history.[28] Paul therefore stands within that strand of Second Temple Judaism that expected the ingathering of the nations at the coming of Messiah. What indicated this coming of Messiah for Paul? His own experience of Jesus of Nazareth. Paul’s consequent missionary activity simply reflects the line of Jewish thought that viewed Messiah as responsible for fulfilling the promise given to Abraham that through Israel, all the nations would be blessed.

It is therefore with some sense of surprise that we shift to 1 Cor 15:1-11 and observe Paul arguing what appears to be a contrary position to Gal 1:11ff. – that he received the tradition of the gospel, including the resurrection of Jesus, which was passed onto him. But a closer inspection would posit that the two passages are not so far apart. It appears that in 1 Cor 15:1-11 Paul is describing Gal 1:11-2:21 but in reverse. That Paul includes his own experience of Christ as the final sequence in a series (15:3-8), his experience in fact is consistent with yet not determined by the preceding tradition. In other words, Paul’s experience was enough to legitimate the reality of the resurrection of Christ, yet the tradition Paul describes to the Corinthians cemented that which all the Churches received (cf. 1:2). What then was the nature of Paul’s experience here? Unlike Gal 1:11, 16, Paul does not use the apocalyptic terminology directly here,[29] but he clearly is referring to an experience of the resurrected Christ in much the same way. That this is not a ‘vision’ in the sense of an ethereal, spiritual, metaphorical, non-concrete experience[30] is evidenced in the grounds of Paul’s entire argument: Christ was seen (ὤφθη,) by Paul,[31] and what was viewed was the resurrected Christ.[32] That Christ was embodied is the presupposition, for to interpret Paul as merely experiencing a ‘vision’ that portrayed Christ as either angelic or ethereal, would completely undermine Paul’s entire argument to the Corinthians. That the issue is the bodily resurrection of Christ necessitates that what Paul himself viewed was just this resurrection body. This therefore legitimates his argument that the Corinthians, like Christ, will receive a resurrected body also. As with Gal 1:11-17, Paul’s argument is grounded in his own experience of the exalted Christ, explicitly confirmed in 1 Cor 9:1. Alternative perspectives on the nature of the resurrection contradicts not only the tradition the Corinthians received but also Paul’s own experience. Additionally, as with Gal 1:11-17, Paul’s experience was the impetus for his reversal and for the proclamation of the gospel to the Gentiles (15:9-11). Thus both texts, Gal 1:11-17 and 1 Cor 15:1-11 demonstrate the experiential nature of Paul’s conversion to Christ, particularly his reflection of this experience with apocalyptic terminology.

Paul’s Conversion and the Spirit

It should be clear that the argument to this point has not been concentrated on the Spirit. The preceding discussion has been necessary in order to highlight the experiential nature of Paul’s conversion experience, and the impact this experience had on Paul’s subsequent proclamation to the Gentiles. Further, the content of Paul’s proclamation centered on Jesus the Christ, and thus the expected coming of the Messiah had occurred within God’s salvation-history. But the dual expectation in Second Temple Judaism was that God would not only send the Messiah, but would pour out his Spirit as a sign that the new age had begun. It is the contention of this paper that Paul’s conversion, and subsequent Christian life, was characterized by religious experiences, experiences that were pivotal for Paul’s self-awareness of his place within the broader narrative of God’s plan for not only Israel but all nations. Therefore it is necessary to enquire into Paul’s religious experience of the Spirit to balance the discussion of the expectations of Second Temple Judaism.

While the majority of scholarship has accepted the validity of Paul’s conversion experience as an appearance of Christ, they are more reluctant to ascribe the experience to that of the Spirit. Such hesitancy is grounded in the fact that in discussion of his conversion, Paul does not explicitly reference the Spirit. [33] To proceed forward, there are two potential avenues that present themselves as viable enquiry points.[34] Firstly, the role of the Spirit within Paul’s Apocalyptic thought, and secondly, the possible allusions to Paul’s conversion experience in 2 Cor 3 and the activity of the Spirit.

The Second Temple period, in which Paul was situated, was consistent in identifying the Spirit as inspiring charismatic activity, specifically prophecy and wisdom. Because of the prominence of the role of the Spirit within such charismatic experiences, the Spirit became identified as the Spirit of Prophecy. [35] The relationship of the Spirit to Apocalyptic thought, however, is an underdeveloped area of research and this is remarkable in the light of the clear overlap between the role of the Spirit as inspiring charismatic insight and the apocalyptic understanding of revelation and mystery as that which is unveiled. That Paul reflects this shared tradition of the Spirit and apocalyptic thought is demonstrated in 1 Cor 2:6-16 where the role of the Spirit is that of unveiling the mystery of the gospel; that is, the crucified Christ as the power and wisdom of God (1:24). ‘God’s wisdom’ (i.e. Christ) is a mystery (μυστήριον) hidden (2:7) but revealed (ἀποκαλύπτω) by the Spirit (2:10) to the Corinthians.[36] That Paul is included in such an experience is confirmed by the emphatic position of ἡμῖν in 2:10 and the inclusive statements of 2:12 (cf. ἡμεῖς) that refer to the shared experience of Paul and the Corinthians. Paul himself acknowledges that no one speaking by the Spirit of God can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ (1 Cor 12:3), for the Spirit inspired recognition of the identity of Jesus. While not explicitly referenced, it is not too difficult a move to understand Paul’s statement ‘the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God’ (Rom 16:25-26) – i.e., Christ – as reference to the inspiring activity of the Spirit. So too Paul’s response to ‘a revelation’ in Gal 2:2 is likely to have been at the direction of the Spirit.[37] Such a reference is confirmed by Paul’s understanding of revelation as occurring under the influence of the Spirit in 1 Cor 14. That 14:6 links γνῶσις, προφητεία and διδαχή with ἀποκάλυψις, all terms that are recognized as Spirit inspired activity elsewhere in Paul,[38] is a sure sign that in Paul’s thinking, revelations were the domain of the Spirit. 14:26 is also evidence of such reasoning in Paul where to ἀποκάλυψις and διδαχή is added ψαλμός, γλῶσσα, ἑρμηνεία.[39] Indeed, the revelatory insight of the Spirit is so profound for Paul, that he advises the Corinthian church that ‘if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop’ (14:30).

Paul’s language of mystery (μυστήριον) is largely utilized as a description of God’s action in Christ (1 Cor 2:1, 7, 4:1; cf. Col 1:26-27, 2:2, 4:3), yet, like ἀποκάλυψις, the linking of προφητεία, γνῶσις and πίστις to μυστήριον in 13:2 demonstrates the proximity of Paul’s thinking with regard to the activity of the Spirit.[40] Even more direct is Paul’s understanding of γλῶσσα as ‘speaking mysteries by the Spirit’ (πνεύματι δὲ λαλεῖ μυστήρια, 14:2). That this line of reasoning is appropriate is confirmed by the later text of Ephesians where the Spirit is directly responsible for granting understanding of revelations and mysteries, specifically the mystery of the Messiah revealed so that Gentiles may become heirs along with Israel of the promise of Jesus (1:17, 3:2-13).[41] These overlapping terms reflect Paul’s location within an apocalyptic framework and illustrate the proximity with which apocalyptic thought is connected with Spirit inspired activity. That Paul describes his conversion experience in apocalyptic terminology thus demonstrates, albeit indirectly, that the Spirit was involved in his experience of the resurrected Christ. Such a discussion demonstrates that Paul understood the Spirit to be at work in the revelatory experience of apocalypticism.[42]

The second avenue to pursue is the text of 2 Cor 3:7-4:6. S. Kim, and recently A. Segal and F. Philip, have noted the possible allusions to Paul’s conversion experience here.[43] Indeed, Segal claims that, among other passages in Paul, 2 Cor 3:18 is “critical to understanding Paul’s experience of conversion.”[44] This avenue provides itself as a viable emerging interpretation when the nature of Paul’s religious experience is taken seriously, particularly in relation to the Spirit. That this passage is a reference to Paul’s own conversion experience is confirmed by the use of Paul’s language to describe the exalted Christ which makes this record consistent with Gal 1:11-16 and 1 Cor 15:1-11. The language of δόξα demonstrates Paul’s particular angle of attack against the Corinthian criticism of his style of ministry (4:1-6). While the broader context of the passage is polemical in nature, it is fascinating to observe that the force of Paul’s response is not grounded in a deductive argument. While admittedly Paul does utilize a logical argument when contrasting the superiority of the new covenant over the old, the thrust of the argument is grounded in his experience of glory. This experience of Paul is the force of his defense, for he knows that the glory of the new covenant is far greater than the glory of the old covenant. It is Paul’s experience of δόξα at his conversion that is the reality of the claim.

The experiential nature of Paul’s discussion in 2 Cor 3:7-4:6 is developed when the role of the Spirit is recognized as an integral component of his argument. While the exegetical issues are many, what remains clear from 3:16-18 is that the Spirit plays a vital role in Paul’s experience, particularly as it relates to δόξα. Paul understands the present role of the Spirit as that of YHWH in the Exodus episode. In his paraphrase of Ex 34:34, Paul deliberately broadens the subject indefinitely so that ‘anyone’ who turns (ἐπιστρέψῃ) to the ‘Lord’ has the veil removed in order to ready the application of the verse to the role of the Spirit in v.17.[45] That YHWH is understood as ‘Lord’ in v.16 is presupposed from the Exodus citation, yet a re-reading of v.16 in the light of Paul’s interpretive reading of his own present Christian experience of the Spirit offers an informative insight into Paul’s understanding of the role of the Spirit. Paul understands that the function of the ‘Lord’ of the Exodus passage is in fact the present function of the Spirit in his own experience. When anyone turns (ἐπιστρέψῃ) to the ‘Lord’, the Spirit, they undergo a conversion experience, and ἐπιστρέψῃ should be understood with this sense in mind.[46] Further, the role of the Spirit is understood by Paul as unveiling hearts that are blind to Christ (3:14). The focus of Paul’s understanding of the Spirit is nonetheless observed in the controversial statement: “and we all who with unveiled faces behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit,” (v.18).[47] While this verse is known notoriously for its exegetical difficulties, I wish to focus on the subject of the mirror – ‘the glory of the Lord’ for my purposes here.

To my reading, it appears only natural that the ‘Lord’ in this passage consistently be a reference to the Spirit, since Paul has spent the entire preceding verse clarifying that he has the work of the Spirit as ‘Lord’ in mind at conversion. That in v.16 Paul identifies the Spirit as ‘the Spirit of the Lord’ only further strengthens his understanding of the Spirit as functioning in the same way as YHWH in the Exodus narrative. ‘The Spirit of the Lord’ simply becomes an alternate form of identifying the ‘Lord’ as the Spirit. [48] The genitive construction emphasizes the Spirit’s activity and therefore it should be understood appositionally (‘The Spirit, who is the Lord’), and repeating in parallel fashion Paul’s clarification that it is the Spirit to whom Christians turn to in present Christian experience. Thus ‘Now the Lord is the Spirit’ and ‘The Spirit, who is the Lord’ function as parallel statements that repeat the one idea, typical of Hebrew thinking.[49] With this exegesis in place, v.18 must therefore not be a reference to YHWH,[50] nor Christ, but the Spirit as the ‘Lord.’ Paul’s pained clarification must be heard at this point, particularly when each occurrence of κύριος is paired, deliberately in my view, with πνεῦμα three times – 3:17(x2), 18. τὴν δόξαν κυρίου is thus a reference to the Spirit and the appositional phrase ἀπὸ κυρίου πνεύματος confirms this, as does the pairing of δόξα with πνεύμα in v.8 (‘will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?’).[51] Such an interpretation points towards Paul’s phrase ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν as “a description of progression from one state of glory to a further state.”[52] The source of this glory (ἀπὸ δόξης) is the Spirit, whom Paul has already identified as the ‘glory of the Lord,’ and such an experience stems from conversion to the Spirit (cf., vs.16-17).

This exegesis therefore understands ‘the glory of the Lord’ to be Paul’s own experience of the Spirit at the time of his conversion. That Paul has his own conversion experience in mind here is confirmed by his explicit use of ἡμεῖς πάντες where he includes himself in this description.[53] Turning to the Spirit is precisely the parallel experience of Paul when he saw the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. Of interest here is the close proximity in Paul’s thought between δόξα and Christ (4:4,6). 4:4 pairs δόξα and Christ together in a somewhat convoluted fashion (‘the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ’) while 4:6 is more distant and identifies the δόξα as God’s own glory yet seen in the face of Christ. This rather widely applied use of δόξα as reference to the Spirit (3:18), Christ (4:4) and God (4:6) appears to be Paul’s attempt to synthesise his own experience at his conversion. The significance of this exegesis is seen in that the Spirit, as well as Christ, is the missing dynamic between Paul’s own experience and that of his Jewish contemporaries who presumably (3:14-15) have not experienced the Spirit and this convinces Paul that the narrative of God’s salvation-history has taken a crucial step forward.

To return to an earlier observation, like Gal 1:11-16 and 1 Cor 15:1-11, 2 Cor 3:7-4:6 occurs within a polemical context which demonstrates Paul’s reaction against Jewish opponents. The significance of this observation emerges as a crucial point in discussion on the activity of the Spirit within Paul’s conversion for if, as this paper argues, Paul’s experience of the Spirit was of a fundamentally undeniable nature which confirmed Paul’s self-understanding of his position within God’s salvation-history, then the force of his argument against the Judaizers who elevate Torah observance as a necessary component of Christian identity is in fact grounded in this experience of the glory of the Spirit. In each case, Gal 1:11-16, 1 Cor 15:1-11 and 2 Cor 3:7-4:6, Paul points to his experience of the exalted Christ and the Spirit as evidence of his own perception of his placement within the expected age to come. The surprising observation of Paul’s reference to his conversion to the Spirit in 2 Cor 3:7-4:6 is that his form of argumentation is not primarily logically deduced but phenomenologically assumed with his recipients, with whom he attempts to convince of the same realization that they now exist within the coming age of the Messiah and the Spirit. It is this identification between Paul and his own (particularly) Gentile recipients to which we now turn.

Paul’s Gentile Converts and the Spirit

Gordon Fee, and recently Finny Philip have already demonstrated the extent to which Paul presupposed an experience of the Spirit at conversion with his recipients, and the crucial role of the Spirit within Paul’s own arguments.[54] While I do not wish to replay the evidence here (this has been achieved admirably by Fee), the affirmation of the reality of religious experience of the Spirit at conversion by Paul and his early Gentile recipients is a telling development in understanding the thought of Paul. That Paul highlights experience of the Spirit, and assumes that the incorporation of this experience into his argument will necessarily give him the upper hand in his rhetoric, is surely an indication of the importance of this experience in Paul’s own thinking. The truth that Paul’s Gentile recipients experienced a powerful encounter with the Spirit of God is undeniable, it is rather the reality of the conversion event that is of crucial significance. As a Pharisaic Jew situated within Second Temple Judaism, Paul’s expectation that at the coming of the Messiah the Spirit would be poured out and the new age begun was axiomatic. That Paul himself experienced the Spirit and also witnessed the outpouring of the Spirit upon his Gentile recipients is the vital key to understanding the vibrant and zealous commitment of Paul to his missionary endeavors. The reality of the reception of the Spirit by both Jews and Gentiles remained for Paul the key sign that his generation had indeed witnessed the long awaited new chapter in God’s salvation-history. Paul understood his Gentile converts to be evidence of this new chapter precisely because their experience validated the expectation of the outpouring of the Spirit. This reality was grounded not only in a propositional belief in Jesus as Messiah (Gal 2:15-16), but also in the accompanying experience of the Spirit (Gal 3:1-5). Like a hand in glove, one cannot exist without the other.

Coupled with the acknowledgement of the experience of the Spirit by Paul’s recipients is the observation that the occasions with which Paul refers back to his own conversion experience of Christ and the Spirit occur within polemical contexts that defend his perspective on the new covenant. This surely indicates the close proximity with which the Spirit is related to Paul’s own reflection on the present standing of Gentile believers. This preceding discussion has helped to refocus on and understand better the intensity with which Paul reacted to Jewish threats to his gospel, particularly the role of the Mosaic Law in the new covenant. To concede to Torah observance would deny the complete validity of the Spirit as the key sign of those who now constitute the people of God. For Paul, the Spirit exists as the fulfillment of the promise given to Abraham in Gen 12 (Gal 3:14) and therefore this reception (Gal 3:1-5) is the guarantee of ones present status among the children of God (Gal 4:6-7). The fierceness with which Paul combats acquiescence to Torah observance is, in his view, a regression in the story of God’s plan of redemption (Gal 4:8-11). Paul assumes that his Gentile recipients’ experience of the Spirit at conversion and in their ongoing spiritual life is the key evidence of the present state of affairs in the narrative of God’s engagement with creation. That Paul’s Gentile converts have also received the Spirit remains the confirming criteria that prompted and motivated Paul’s conviction that God’s story had taken a new turn.

Conclusion

The present paper has developed the thesis that religious experience of the Spirit, when taken seriously in its rhetorical contexts, can be applied to specific areas of Paul’s thought with great reward. The application of religious experience of the Spirit to Paul’s own comprehension of his place within the narrative of God’s salvation-history is one avenue which demonstrates itself as a viable point of enquiry. We have seen that Paul’s own experience of Christ at his conversion was understood in apocalyptic terms, and that the Spirit, at least within Paul’s own thinking, was intimately related to apocalyptic activity. This provided an appropriate demonstration of the involvement of the Spirit within Paul’s apocalyptic experience of Christ at conversion, and also an experience of the Spirit at Paul’s conversion as a developing interpretation of 2 Cor 3:1-4:6. Paul not only recognized the importance of this experience of the Spirit at conversion as significant for his own life but expanded his understanding of the work of the Spirit to include the incorporation of the Gentiles into the people God. For Paul, it is the experience of the Spirit that confirms the concrete reality of the current point of the narrative of God’s salvation-history. Paul sees himself in the story at a specific point because his own experience of the Spirit and the experience of his Gentile converts confirmed it.

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[1] L.T. Johnson, Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity: A Missing Dimension in New Testament Studies, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998. Johnson’s influence is specifically observed in a recent Festschrift in his honour, Between Experience and Interpretation: Engaging the Writings of the New Testament, M.F. Foskett, O.W. Allen Jr. (eds.), Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2008. See also C.C. Newman who insightfully acknowledges the vacuum of the role of experience within Pauline scholarship in “Transforming Images of Paul: A Review Essay of Alan Segal, Paul the Convert,” EQ 64:1 (1992): 61-74.

[2] Identified as ‘the Experientia Group’. See the symposium of studies now compiled as Experientia, Volume 1: Inquiry into Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Early Christianity, SBL Symposium Series, F. Flannery, C. Shantz, R. A. Werline (eds.), Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008.

[3] L. Hurtado has most prominently applied religious experience in his analysis of the early Church’s religious devotion to Christ, How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus,Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005, specifically ch. 8, “Religious Experience and Religious Innovation in the New Testament,”; S. Callahan has applied religious experience to women in Women Who Hear Voices: The Challenge of Religious Experience, Madeleva Lecture in Spirituality, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2003.

[4] Much of the discussion rests on identifying an adequate definition of what is meant by “mysticism” specifically. For evidence of the diversity of opinion in relation to Jewish and Christian Mysticism, see the collection of definitions complied in “‘Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism,’ A Collage of Working Definitions,” A.D. DeConick (ed.) SBL 2001 Seminar Papers, Num. 40, Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 2001, pp. 278-304, cf., J. Knight, “The Mystical Understanding in the Ascension of Isaiah,” SBL 2000 Seminar Papers, Num. 39, Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 2000, pp. 103-129.

[5] Indeed, Segal claims that the separate literary genres of Apocalypticism and Mysticism are in fact “not unrelated experiences,” and should not be separated, Paul the Convert, p. 38.

[6] With application to the Spirit specifically, see H. Gunkel, The Influence of the Holy Spirit; H.B. Swete, The Holy Spirit in the New Testament, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1998, orig. 1908; H.W. Robinson, The Christian Experience of the Holy Spirit, London, UK: Nisbet & Co, reprinted 1947, orig. 1928. More recently, see the work of Dunn “Religious Experience in the New Testament” in Between Experience and Interpretation, pp. 3-15 and “Towards the Spirit of Christ: The Emergence of the Distinctive Features of Christian Pneumatology,” in The Work of the Spirit – Pneumatology and Pentecostalism, M. Welker (ed.), Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006; .J.E. Morgan-Wynne, Holy Spirit and Religious Experience in Christian Literature ca. AD 90-200, Studies in Christian History and Thought, Milton Keynes, MK: Paternoster, 2006; C. Tibbs, Religious Experience of the Pneuma: Communication with the Spirit World in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, WUNT 2.230, Tübingen, DE: Mohr Siebeck, 2007; C.L. Westfall, “Paul’s Experience and a Pauline Theology of the Spirit,” in Defining Issues in Pentecostalism: Classical and Emergent, McMaster Theological Studies Series, S.M. Studebaker (ed.), Eugene, OR: Pickwick Pub imprint of Wipf and Stock, 2008, pp. 123-143.

[7] Cf., M.J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross, Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2001, “Yet most accounts of Paul the theologian and of Paul’s theology pay insufficient attention to his religious experience – his spirituality – and to his fondness for narrating that experience,” p. 3.

[8] For an OT example see W. Brueggemann,Theology of the Old Testament, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005.

[9] See R.B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: An Investigation of the Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1-4:11, SBLDS 56, Chico, CL: Scholars Press, 1983; S.E. Fowl, The Story of Christ in the Ethics of Paul: An Analysis of the Function of the Hymnic Material in the Pauline Corpus, JSNTSS 36, Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990B; N.T. Wright,The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991; The New Testament and the People of God, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992; B. Witherington III, Paul’s Narrative Thought World: The Tapestry of Tragedy and Triumph, Louisville, KT: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994; J.D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, London, UK: Eerdmans, 1998, pp. 17-19; M.J. Gorman, Cruciformity.

[10] N.T. Wright,The New Testament and the People of God, p. 407.

[11] Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, p. 6. Hays relies upon Stephen Crites for the phrase ‘sacred story’, “The Narrative Quality of Experience,” JAAR 39 (1971): 295.

[12] Hays argues that “these heavily ‘experience’ –centered interpretations [of the religionsgeschichtliche Schule] do not provide an adequate basis for answering the question about the ‘core’ of Paul’s thought. No one contests the fact that Paul underwent intense personal religious experience, but the question is this: what were the structures of thought within which this experience took place and by means of which he tried to communicate it to others? This question cannot be answered by an appeal to a nonverbal mystical experience, because the experience receives its shape in, with, and through the language with which it is apprehended and interpreted,” The Faith of Jesus Christ, p. 4.

[13] Witherington, Paul’s Narrative Thought World, p. 3.

[14] R. B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.

[15] Witherington, Paul’s Narrative Thought World, p. 2.

[16] R. Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity, Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2009/Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2008.

[17] See Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, pp. 403-409 and idem., Paul: In Fresh Perspective, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005.

[18] On the hope and expectation of First Century Judaism, see Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, pp. 280-338.

[19] This situates Paul within the Pharisaic tradition, M. Hengel, The Pre-Christian Paul, London, UK: SCM Press/Philadelphia, PA: Trinity Press International, 1991. Cf., Phil 3:5.

[20] M. Hengel’s comments are apt: “That the crucified Messiah (Χριστός ἐσταυρωμένος, 1 Cor 1:23), Jesus of Nazareth, was a σκάνδαλον, a serious religious stumbling block, for the Jews did not rest only on the experience of the Christian missionary Paul; it had first been his own innermost conviction as the Pharisaic teacher Sha’ul,” The Pre-Christian Paul, p. 64.

[21] These two focus points constitute the heart of F. Philip’s thesis: “Paul’s early Christian thinking on the Holy Spirit is based on the belief that God has bestowed the Spirit upon the Gentiles apart from Torah observance. This conviction in turn is rooted primarily in his own Damascus experience and secondarily in his experience with and as a missionary of the Hellenistic community in Antioch,” The Origins of Pauline Pneumatology: The Eschatological Bestowal of the Spirit Upon Gentiles in Judaism and in the Early Development of Paul’s Theology, WUNT 2.194, Tübingen, DE: Mohr Siebeck, 2005, p. 27. While there are many parallels between the arguments of Philip and this paper, the point of departure lies in the application of Paul’s experience of the Spirit. Philip applies his study to “Paul’s conviction[s] about the bestowal of the Spirit upon the Gentiles apart from Torah obedience” (p. 28) while I am interested in the impact of Paul’s experience of the Spirit on his own self-understanding of God’s salvation-history. In a similar vein to Philip, but with a more focused attention on the law, see J.A. Bertone, ‘The Law of the Spirit’: Experience of the Spirit and Displacement of the Law in Romans 8:1-16, Studies in Biblical Literature Vol. 86, NY, NY: Peter Lang, 2005.

[22] While the record of Paul’s conversion in Acts could provide interesting discussion points, this paper will restrict any analysis to Paul’s own self-reflection, evidenced in the following texts.

[23] While 2 Cor 12:1-10 is an important passage with regard to Paul’s own mystical orientation and has been prominent within recent discussion, I will discuss only those texts that have a bearing upon Paul’s own conversion experience. See Morray- Jones, “Paradise Revisited (2 Cor 12:1-12): The Jewish Mystical Background of Paul’s Apostolate, Part 1, idem., “Paradise Revisited (2 Cor 12:1-12): The Jewish Mystical Background of Paul’s Apostolate, Part 2; P.R. Gooder, Only the Third Heaven?.

[24] With F.F. Bruce, Commentary on Galatians, NIGTC, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982, p. 89; R.Y.K. Fung, The Epistle to the Galatians, NICNT,Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988, p. 54; F.J. Matera, Galatians, Sacra Pagina, Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1992, p. 56, 59.

[25] As Fee notes, if Paul wished to convey the sense of ‘to’ he would have utilized the dative. G.D. Fee, Galatians,Pentecostal Commentary,Dorset, UK: Deo, 2007, p. 46, fn. 27. A. Segal further identifies this as a reference to Paul’s reception of the Spirit: “Paul can say, as he does in Gal. 1:16 that ‘God was pleased to reveal His Son in me [en emoi].’ This is not a simple dative but refers to his having received in him the Spirit, in his case through his conversion.” A. Segal, Paul the Convert, p.64.

[26] Fee, Galatians, pp.45-46.

[27] That Paul grounds his entire argument from 1:11-2:21 on the basis of this experience of Christ remains a confounding recognition for modern readers who are suspicious of the role of experience, particularly in the field of theology.

[28] Matera, Galatians, pp. 62-63; cf., Segal, “Conversion is an appropriate term for discussing Paul’s religious experience, although Paul did not himself use it,” Paul the Convert, p. 72.

[29] But see 1 Cor 15:24-25, 51-52, particularly Paul’s use of μυστήριον.

[30] Cf., Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987,pp. 725-726.

[31] In the same way that Peter, the twelve, James, the 500 and all the apostles saw Christ (15:5-8). Cf., Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 728, fn. 73.

[32] Cf., A.C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC, Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, pp. 1197-1203.

[33] Cf., F. Philip, “The Damascus event for Paul was an experience of the Spirit. What is disturbing for the present research is Paul’s silence on the role of the Holy Spirit in his autobiographical statements, particularly when he refers to his conversion/call experience,” Philip, The Origins of Pauline Pneumatology,p. 166.

[34] Recent scholarship, represented by the work of G.D. Fee (“Paul’s Conversion as Key to His Understanding of the Spirit,” in The Road From Damascus: The Impact of Paul’s Conversion on His Life, Thought and Ministry, R.N. Longenecker (ed.), Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997, pp. 166-183; G.D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994) and F. Philip (The Origins of Pauline Pneumatology, pp. 166-168), follow the syllogistic line of reasoning that a) since Paul demonstrates that his converts experienced the Spirit at conversion, and b) since Paul also includes himself in reference to his converts’ experience of the Spirit at conversion, then c) Paul himself must have experienced the Spirit at conversion. While this deductive reasoning is valid and the result statement (c) surely correct, this paper will attempt to arrive at the same conclusion through a fresh proposal in order to develop the discussion.

[35] M.M.B. Turner, The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts: Then and Now, Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 1996, pp. 7-20, idem., Power from on High: The Spirit in Israel’s Restoration and Witness in Luke-Acts, JPTSupS 9, , Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996; J.R. Levison, The Spirit in First-Century Judaism, Leiden, UK: Brill, 1997.

[36] Kim confirms this reading of 1 Cor 2:10: “Although Paul does not refer to the mediating role of the Spirit for the Damascus revelation elsewhere, we are to think that he presupposes it when he describes his Damascus experience as God’s call of him analogous to the calls of the prophets of the OT and as God’s revelation (Gal 1:12, 16). For in the OT and Judaism the prophetic and apocalyptic revelations are regularly attributed to the mediating agency of the Spirit,” S. Kim, The Origins of Paul’s Gospel, WUNT 2.4, Tübingen, DE: Mohr Siebeck, 1981, p. 78-79. See p. 79, fn. 2 for references to the Spirit’s agency. Cf., D. Aune, Apocalypticism, Prophecy and Magic in Early Christianity: Collected Essays, WUNT 199, Tübingen, DE: Mohr Siebeck, 2006, p. 295.

[37] With Fee, Galatians, p. 58.

[38] γνῶσις - 1:5-7, 12:8; προφητεία - 12:8, 28-29, 14:1, 37; διδαχή – 2:13, 12:28-29.

[39] γλῶσσα and ἑρμηνεία – 12:7-11; γλῶσσα – 14:1-2, 13-17.

[40] Cf. Paul’s use of μυστήριον in Rom 11:25 and 1 Cor 15:51.

[41] Whether the writer of Ephesians is Paul or a later writer in his name, the converging lines of evidence here between Spirit activity and the language of ἀποκάλυψις and μυστήρια is evidence that the Pauline tradition was read in this fashion.

[42] This furthers Philip’s recognition, The Origins of Pauline Pneumatology, p. 181.

[43] Kim, The Origin of Paul’s Gospel, pp. 5-13; 233-239;Segal, Paul the Convert, pp. 58-71; Philip, The Origins of Pauline Pneumatology, pp. 182-193.

[44] Segal, Paul the Convert, p. 59.

[45] That ἐπιστρέψῃ is best taken as an indefinite reference rather than a specific reference to either Jews, Israel, Moses, or heart[s] appears to make the most sense of Paul’s argument. See M.J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians,NIGTC, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans/Milton Keynes, MK: Paternoster, 2005, p. 308.

[46] See G.D. Fee, Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007, p. 177; M. Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Vol. 1, ICC, Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark, 1994, p. 273; Wright, The Climax of the Covenant,p. 183, fn 33.

[47] ἡμεῖς δὲ πάντες ἀνακεκαλυμμένῳ προσώπῳ τὴν δόξαν κυρίου κατοπτριζόμενοι τὴν αὐτὴν εἰκόνα μεταμορφούμεθα ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν καθάπερ ἀπὸ κυρίου πνεύματος.

[48] This supports the arguments of recent scholarship, specifically E. Wong, “The Lord is the Spirit (2 Cor 3:17a),” ETL 61 (1985): 48-72 and Thrall, Second Epistle to the Corinthians, pp. 278-282; B. Witherington III, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians, Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 1995, p. 382; Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 309-312; against I. Hermann, Kyrios und Pneuma: Studien zur Christologie der paulinischen Hauptbriefe,SANT 2., Munich, DE: Kösel, 1961 who argues that κύριος refers to Christ.

[49] Fee, Pauline Christology, pp.177-180, J. Lambrecht, Second Corinthians, Sacra Pagina 8, Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1999, pp. 54-55, P. Barnett, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997, pp. 199-201, argue that the κύριος of the phrase “The Spirit of the Lord” refers to Christ. In contrast, R.P. Martin, 2 Corinthians, WBC 40, Waco, TX: Word, 1986,pp. 70-71, Thrall, Second Epistle to the Corinthians, pp. 274-275; J.D.G. Dunn, “2 Corinthians 3:17 – “The Lord is the Spirit,” in his The Christ and the Spirit, Vol.1, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998, pp. 115-125 and F.J. Matera, II Corinthians: A Commentary, The New Testament Library, Louisville, UK: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003,p. 96, Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 312 read κύριος as YHWH. For further references, see Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, pp. 309-313.

[50] Against Thrall, Second Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 283, Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 314-315.

[51] Against Philip, The Origins of Pauline Pneumatology, p. 191.

[52] Thrall, Second Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 286.

[53] Whether Paul here refers to only the Apostolic office or all believers does not affect my argument, yet suffice to say that Paul does not give any sense of qualification to the referent. So with Thrall, it appears best to understand the phrase with the sense ‘all believers,’ Thrall, Second Epistle to the Corinthians, p. 282.

[54] Fee, “Paul’s Conversion as Key to His Understanding of the Spirit,” pp. 172-177; Philip, The Origins of Pauline Pneumatology.