Barbara Beyer. <i>Determined by Christ: The Pauline Metaphor of “Being in Christ”</i>

Few topics have proved so perennially interesting and frustrating to Pauline scholars over the last century than Paul’s challenging language related to participation in Christ—especially on how best to read Paul’s “in Christ” phrases and related language (“in Christ Jesus,” “in him,” “with Christ,” “through Christ,” “of Christ,” etc.). What more can be said about this extremely well-trodden set of topics and texts in Paul? Barbarba Beyer’s recent book, a revision of her 2020 dissertation at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, charts an interesting path forward. Beyer’s thesis is clearly stated at several points and amply supported throughout:Being in Christ is thus neither unintelligible today (pace Sanders), nor corporeal mysticism (pace Schweitzer), nor reducible to a new self-understanding (pace Bultmann). Rather, Paul’s coining of the phrase “to be in Christ” is analogous to similar usages of the dative in the Greco-Roman world, which meant to be determined by another person, or under their care or power; Beyer’s reading of Paul thus has close affinities with Teresa Morgan’s encheiristic reading of “in Christ” in Paul.The opening six chapters of Part I orient the reader to the history of research on this topic, develop Beyer’s proposed method of applying cognitive metaphor theory to Paul’s “in Christ” language, and sketch the context of Paul’s ancient linguistic background. Chapter 2 is an erudite narration of the history of critical scholarship on “in Christ” in Paul, which especially focuses upon, but is not limited to, German language scholarship. Beyer makes a provocative metacritical claim that “previous studies on ἐν Χριστῷ have not considered the phrase as a metaphor, or if they did, then by use of the definition I have shown to be insufficient” (pp. 72–73). That is a challenging claim to evaluate; on one hand, numerous studies have explored a wide range of Pauline metaphors related to being in Christ (such as several books and articles Beyer is aware of by Constantine Campbell, Richard Hays, and many others), and they are hardly unreflective on metaphor theory. But, on the other hand, Beyer is perhaps correct in two ways: Prior scholarship does not appear to have applied her approach to cognitive metaphor theory to ἐν Χριστῷ in Paul; also, much prior scholarship on metaphor and ἐν Χριστῷ has focused on broader or related participatory concepts or language in Paul, but not necessarily the phrase ἐν Χριστῷ itself. A key moment in Beyer’s overall argument is chapter 4, which establishes the varied ways that the preposition ἐν was used in Ancient Greek literature, categorized into successive eras of linguistic development. Beyer concludes that to be in someone/thing else (ἔν τινι εἶναι) in classical Greek literature is far from an incomprehensible or mystical idea but rather straightforwardly “expressed that the outcome of an event, a decision, an action, or even a group of people (the sentence subject) depended on someone or would be determined by an event or circumstance (the dative object of ἐν). Thus, the dative object of ἐν was in some kind of position of power or ability on which the subject relies, often in a pressing situation of need” (pp. 102–3).The heart of this book is chapters 7–12 of Part II, which provides close readings of Paul’s “being in Christ” language in Gal 3:26, 28; 1 Cor 1:30; Rom 6:11 and 8:1–2; Rom 16:7, 11; 2 Cor 5:17; and Phil 3:9. Then, in chapters 13–15 of Part III, she provides further analysis of phrases similar to “in Christ” such as “with” or “through” Christ. She also explores how “in Christ” is used in Ephesians and Colossians, which Beyer concludes are definitely post-Pauline adaptations of Paul’s catchy “in Christ” phrases. Part IV contains the final chapter 16, which summarizes her findings.Overall, Beyer demonstrates in the context of the ancient Greek-speaking world how Paul’s language could have been readily intelligible as meaning determined by Christ, and her exegetical chapters demonstrate some of the foremost ways that believers are determined by Christ. Beyer’s encyclopedia-like analysis of all the key prepositional constructions related to “being in Christ” in Paul’s epistles is replete with insightful, exegetical gems. For example, Beyer provides helpful language and categories for themes and texts that I have not known how to characterize before, such as “abstract nouns in Christ” and “goods owned in Christ” (pp. 284–85) in texts such as 1 Cor 4:17; 9:1; Phil 4:7; Gal 2:4; and 2 Cor 1:19–20. Moreover, Beyer’s command of both German-language and English-language scholarship on “in Christ” in Paul is a world-class model of international scholarship. But there are also at least three questions prompted by her study that I raise as invitations for further clarity and investigation of related areas of study on “in Christ” in Paul.First, reviews should not fault an author for failing to take up a matter outside his or her stated purview. Nonetheless, the past century of scholarship on Christ-mysticism/union with Christ/participation in Christ/”being in Christ”/etc., has significantly concerned metaphysics; further, metaphysics played not a small role across two millennia of reception history among ecclesial interpreters of Paul’s “in Christ” phrases. While there is certainly more to exploring participation in Christ than metaphysics, there is surely not less, which made me surprised to find little to no discussion from Beyer of what it means ontologically to be determined by Christ. Some interpreters of Paul on participation focus on messianism, “Christ,” in exploring what it means to be in Christ; others focus on ancient prepositional phrases, “in,” in exploring what it means to be in Christ; but what notion of “being” is involved for someone to be in Christ? For instance, pneumatology is indeed an important part of Beyer’s account of what it means to be determined by Christ, with the index devoting dozens of entries to extended treatments (p. 437). However, it would be helpful to more precisely clarify how the Spirit is understood, or the role the Spirit plays in relationship to being in Christ. Recent Pauline scholarship unanimously agrees pneumatology is integral to being in Christ, but there have been significantly different articulations of what that entails, such as the materialist and Stoic readings of pneuma in Paul by scholars such as Stowers, Engberg-Pedersen, Thiessen, Johnson-Hodge, and many others, while others such as Volker Rabens and John Barclay read pneuma differently, but as nonetheless integral to participation in Christ. However precisely Paul’s theology and metaphysics are construed, the scope and significance of Beyer’s case could be strengthened in future research by further clarifying something approximating the theological metaphysics of what it means to be determined by Christ.Second, and closely related, Beyer’s account throughout places a significant priority on baptism and the spatial metaphor of ἐν + dative as locative. Those are unquestionably crucial to understanding what it means to be in Christ. But why are those two strands foregrounded when providing a cumulative, synthetic account of what it means to be determined by Christ, given that there is a vast range of further, interrelated themes and metaphors in Paul? For only one example, Paul wrote “τὸ ποτήριον τῆς εὐλογίας ὃ εὐλογοῦμεν, οὐχὶ κοινωνία ἐστὶν τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ; τὸν ἄρτον ὃν κλῶμεν, οὐχὶ κοινωνία τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐστιν” (1 Cor 10:16), and recounts the eucharistic tradition wherein Christ refers to his own blood as “the new covenant” (1 Cor 11:25). If we are strictly pursuing the lexical meaning of discrete “in Christ” expressions as used in their respective contexts, then such passages would understandably be outside the scope of our analysis. A commendable feature of Beyer’s approach is that her attention to varied, contextual usages offers correctives to the arbitrary imposition of anachronistic, a priori ideas or doctrines of participation onto Pauline texts. However, our reading of each of Paul’s usages of “Christ language” can also become disproportioned if we do not attend to how the various instances relate to one another and also relate to Paul’s coherent theological assumptions, abstracting usages of this language that arguably have a discernible, real relation to one another. Whatever Paul has to say about being determined by Christ through baptism and as entering the new space of being in Christ has inextricable conceptual links with several other themes in the Pauline corpus, from the eucharist, to Body of Christ metaphors, to temple imagery, and much more. How do themes such as “covenant” or language such as κοινωνία inform the sum total of what it means “to be in Christ” in Paul’s epistles? Differently, given Paul’s stark identification of the human bodies of Christ-participants as a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 3, 6), and similarly strong language about being indwelt by the Spirit of the risen Christ elsewhere (Rom 8:9–11; Gal 2:20), could the Spirit and/or temple more specifically characterize what kind of “space” is entered “in Christ”? As helpful as I find the analogues Beyer identifies between Paul and his ancient Greek-speaking context on something or someone being “determined by” another, it would be helpful to further pursue how to identify similarities and differences between Paul and additional traditions and contexts that recent scholarship has focused upon for understanding of what it means to be in Christ. How do motifs, images, symbols, texts, and traditions from Paul’s context in the ancient Greco-Roman world (such as recent work on divinization and/or deification, or Stoic krasis, or Middle Platonic philosophy) and early Judaism (such as covenant, temple, kingship, priesthood, prophet, messianism, Passover, and much more) inform what it means to be determined by Christ?Third, methodologically, Beyer’s proposal that cognitive metaphor theory illuminates “being in Christ” needs further dialogue with criticism of metaphorical approaches. Beyer notes that Richard Hays responded to Sanders’s dilemma on how to under the realism of participation in Christ with a metaphorical proposal (p. 63). But Hays’s 2009 essay was published in the same 2009 festschrift for E. P. Sanders alongside an extremely strong criticism by Stanley Stowers entitled “What Is Pauline Participation in Christ?,” which charged Hays with a linguistic idealism as modernistic as Bultmann’s existentialism but is actually worse for lacking Bultmann’s critical reflexivity. With Beyer, I conclude that metaphorical approaches are necessary for reading Paul’s participatory language well, but in so doing we must avoid the idealist pitfalls Stowers is concerned about, while also clarifying how metaphor relates to the realism of Paul’s language. For instance, if entering into conversation with Hans Boersma’s Christian-platonic, sacramental ontology, or John Betz or Andrew Davison’s respective accounts of theological analogy, an interpreter could be pressed to further clarify the extent to which cognitive metaphor theory actually clarifies a real relationship between the signs in Paul’s epistles and the transcendent and heavenly realities sacramentally present therein, or whether cognitive metaphor theory merely determines how words are used without any connection to the real, like pura natura in Medieval nominalism. Metaphor, understanding one thing in terms suggestive of another, is indeed basic to Paul’s language as part of all human understanding, but the particular realism in texts such as Gal 2:19; 6:14; Rom 6:1–5; Col 3:1–4; Eph 2:4–10; etc., are extraordinarily idiosyncratic instances of metaphorical language.Dr. Beyer is to be commended for writing not only such a learned and insightful analysis of a central Pauline theme but one that is such a joy to continue thinking with and alongside of.