Signs, Wonders, and Gifts by Jennifer Eyl;

Author:Jennifer Eyl;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Baptism: The Ritual Transformation of Material Bodies Into Different Material Bodies

In 1 Cor 15:51–53, Paul writes, “Listen, I will tell you a mystery [μυστήριον]! We will not all die, but we will all be changed [ἀλλαγησόμεθα], in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable [ἄφθαρτοι], and we will be changed. For this perishable body [τὸφθαρτὸν] must put on imperishability, and this mortal body [τὸθνητὸν] must put on immortality [ἀθανασίαν]” (NRSV). This remarkable claim appears in the context of his explanation for what a resurrected human body will be like (“How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”).38 Paul explains that once the mortal body has received the divine breathy pneuma of Christ, it will be transformed into a divine pneumatic body when it is raised up again. Similar to Plato’s account in the Timaeus,39 he teaches that there are different kinds of bodies and different kinds of flesh, such as the bodies of people, the bodies of animals, and the bodies of heavenly beings (1 Cor 15:39–41). These bodies not only look different, but their flesh is ontologically distinct: Some are sarx, or dumb flesh, whereas the divine ones are pneumatic. The bodies made of sarx are perishable, as is any organic compound that returns to dust (1 Cor 15:47–48). The divine pneumatic bodies are still material in nature, but their materiality is ethereal, divine, and everlasting; they do not perish and they do not decay. The mechanism through which this material transformation occurs is the ritual of baptism, which Paul discusses fourteen times throughout 1 Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans.

Typically, baptism is viewed in light of purification, initiation rites, or both.40 Indeed, baptisms do function to initiate and to cleanse—literally and symbolically. But such approaches overlook an additional feature of Paul’s baptism practice, namely, the claim that a powerful physical change comes through channeling divine power. Thus, not every aspect of Pauline baptism can be contextualized vis-à-vis practices of so-called magic, theurgy, or “ritual power,” but the prominent feature of Pauline baptism that claims to institute a physical transformation of the gentile body is best understood in such a way.41 Paul’s claims of material transformation are not intended to be symbolic, but literal changes that turn a gentile’s regular body into something else, thereby releasing the initiate from the same eventual fate shared by all other gentiles.

He explains this physical transformation to readers in Corinth and later, in Rome (with a passing reference to the transformation in Phil 3:21). The gentile who is baptized into Christ thereafter “participates” in Christ. This means that such participants died with Christ, possess pneumatic divine bodies like Christ, and will resurrect with Christ (Rom 6:3–5). Juxtaposing a sarx-type body possessing a normal human psuchē [soul] with a pneumatic body, he writes, “It is sown in a psychic body [i.e. a regular body with a psuchē], it is raised in a pneumatic body [sōma pneumatikon].

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