Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [254]
We need to coin another new word to understand the next part of this statement, where Paul talked about transformation in a slightly different way. Paul struggled with the expression of his mystic intution. He also said that the change will metaschematize (change the structure of) our lowly body so that it will become His glorious body (Phil 3:10). Again English does not easily allow us to appreciate this unusual feature of the Greek language. But Paul was suggesting that this transformation from our lowly body to His glorious body “metaschematizes,” creates a new “metascheme,” perhaps to be understood as a new master-narrative of the history of salvation in Israel. This vision, would, in effect, produce an entirely new understanding of what salvation meant. We know that a great deal of the story is not new. But the identification of the divine figure in heaven with the crucified Messiah on earth, with whose suffering one is to be identified, is entirely new. And it clearly came not from any preexistent prophecy but from the events of the end of Jesus’ life.
Paul exhorted his followers to imitate him as he imitated Christ: “Brethren, join in imitating me, and mark those who so live as you have an example in us” (1 Cor 11:1). The followers were told to imitate Paul as he himself imitated Jesus. All of this suggests that the body of believers would be refashioned into the glorious body of Christ, a process which starts with conversion and faith but ends in the parousia, the shortly-expected culmination of history when Christ returns. It all depends on a notion of body that is a new spiritualized substance, a new body which is not flesh and blood, which cannot inherit the kingdom (1 Cor 15:42-50).
Paul’s depiction of salvation and the transformation of the believer was based on his understanding of Christ’s glorification, partaking of early Jewish apocalyptic mysticism for its expression. The basic notion of transformation into an angelic or astral form may even have survived from a pre-Christian setting because Paul did not mention resurrection here at all. Clearly glorification is doing the work of resurrection in this passage. Likewise, in Romans 12:2 Paul’s listeners were exhorted to “be transformed (metamorphousthe) by renewing of your minds.” In Galatians 4:19 Paul expressed another but very similar transformation: “My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed (morphea, morphēthēi) in you!”
This transformation, surprisingly, was to be effected by being transformed into Christ in his death (symmorphizomenos toi thanatou autou, Phil 3:10). This identification with the death of Jesus is a crucial issue for understanding Paul’s religious experience. Paul predicted that the believer would be transformed into the glorious body of Christ, through dying and being reborn in Christ. As we shall see, Paul saw the phenomenon as being related to baptism. Paul’s central proclamation is: Jesus is Lord and all who have faith have already undergone a death like his, so will share in his resurrection by being transformed into his form, spirit, and shape. As we have seen, this proclamation reflects a baptismal liturgy, implying that baptism provides the moment whereby the believer comes to be “in Christ.” Christianity may have been a unique Jewish sect in making baptism a central rather than a preparatory ritual, but some of the mystical imagery came from its Jewish past, probably through the teachings of John the Baptist.42
Paul’s conception of the risen body of Christ as the spiritual body