Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [252]
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God. For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Christ.
Paul began this passage by reference to the spiritual nature of the Christ, calling him both “Lord” and “Spirit.” He ended this passage by identifying “the Glory of God” with Christ. The question is, how literally did he mean it? There is reason to think that he was being fully literal and candid, since transformation was a sensible expectation of apocalyptic Jews in the first century. Paul used these terms in their Biblical technical sense to identify the Christ with the human manifestation of God and then suggested that this was the same as his spiritual visions of Christ. For now, the main point must be the usually unappreciated use of the spiritual language of transformation in Paul’s works. Paul’s entire description of resurrection is framed around his visionary experience, which in turn carried his argument that he was the equal of the fleshly disciples and apostles of Jesus.
In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul said that believers will be changed into Christ’s likeness from one degree of glory to another. He refered to Exodus 33 and 34, where Moses’ encounter with the angel of the Lord is narrated. Earlier in Exodus, the angel of the Lord was described as carrying the name of God (Exod 23:21). Moses sees the “Glory of the Lord,” makes a covenant, receives the commandments upon the two tables of the law and, when he comes down from the mount, the skin of his face shines with light, as the Bible states (Exod 34:29-35). Moses thereafter must wear a veil except when he is in the presence of the Lord. Paul assumed that Moses made an ascension to the presence of the Lord, was transformed by that encounter and that his shining face was a reflection of the encounter, perhaps even as a foretaste of his angelic destiny. But Paul also made a polemical point about the fading of Moses’ halo of light (2 Cor 3:13) that implied Christians have a more lasting glory (2 Cor 4:4) because they have accepted the Gospel.
Paul used strange and significant mystical language. But what is immediately striking about it is that Paul used that language to discuss his own and other Christians’ experience “in Christ.” Transformation becomes the possibility and goal of all believers. Paul even explicitly compared Moses’ experience with his own and that of Christian believers. Their transformation is of the same sort, but the Christian transformation is greater and more permanent. Once the background of the vocabulary is pointed out, Paul’s daring claims for Christian experience become clear. The point, therefore, is that some Christian believers also make such an ascent somehow, also share in the divine spirit, and also experience