The Flesh

Recently I delivered a talk that I'd been invited to give at 'A Pauline Colloquium' at the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne.

I was asked to talk on 'The Concept of the Flesh in the Letters of St Paul'.

I thought that I may as well put it up here. So:

The concept of flesh in the Letters of St Paul

‘When you’re reading a passage from the Bible, get the image. Because if you get the image, if you can see what the biblical writer is picturing, then you’ll get the words’.

This was the advice given to me at seminary as I began my formal studies of Sacred Scripture. It’s advice that came back to me with great force as I read afresh St Paul’s letters in preparation for this colloquium, and especially the letters of Romans and Galatians. And it’s advice that I will be putting into practice in this paper.

So up front, here’s what I’ll be doing: I’ll be focusing in on St Paul’s most characteristic use of the Greek term sarx, - a term that is translated into English as, ‘flesh’ or, in the NIV as ‘sinful nature’. I’ll be interpreting the term ‘flesh’ in light of one dominant image that St Paul has in mind in the passages in Romans and Galatians where the term is most frequently used.

What is that image? It is the image of a slave, especially the image of a slave in contrast to that of a free son of the family. Both the image and the contrast are important: sometimes St Paul can contrast slavery to sin with slavery to God (Romans 6:22). But in the passages that we will be looking, where the term flesh is used with great frequency, the contrast is between the slave and the free son.
I will argue that if we can get in our mind’s eye the image of a slave toiling in a household, and if we can get in touch at an imaginative level with what it must be like to live as such a slave, then we will be in a good position to understand what St Paul means by the term ‘flesh’ in key passages of his letters.

I mentioned that it is the image of a slave, especially the image of a slave in contrast to that of a free son of the family. This contrast has special significance when we consider the way St Paul holds all Christians to be in fact true ‘sons’ of the Father, who are led by the Holy Spirit – and I’ll attend to this important contrast at the beginning of my argument.

At the conclusion of the talk, I’ll look at why there’s a good pastoral reason for attending to the concept of flesh understood this way in the letters of St Paul: I’ll argue that as we understand what St Paul means by ‘flesh’ in these passages, we can come to a deeper understanding of what out status as baptized children of God means in the way we live our embodied life, led by the Holy Spirit.

I am not going to present an exhaustive presentation on St Paul’s use of the term ‘flesh’. Instead I will be narrowing my focus on Romans and Galatians, where all but one of St Paul’s uses of ‘flesh’ to mean something like ‘sinful nature’ occur (the other is 1 Corinthians 5:5). I will be attending to imagery that St Paul employs when the term ‘flesh’ is used, and in attending to this imagery, I will show how it acts as a key to understanding what St Paul means by this particular use of the term .
For those interested to pursue this topic further, there are already thorough treatments on St Paul’s use of the term ‘flesh’ available in English: you will find easy to access articles on this in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, and in the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters.

OK, now to the matter at hand.

In Romans 8, a chapter in which the term ‘flesh’ repeatedly appears, we hear words that the Apostle wrote to the Christians at Rome:
14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" 16 it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

At this point I want to make a comment on something that is so obvious that it seems almost redundant to say it. But since the obvious can be most easily missed, I think it’s worth saying. It’s this: for St Paul, saying that his fellow Christians are brothers – what these days we might call brothers and sisters- is more than a metaphor. For St Paul, those who are in Christ are bound more closely to each other than are brothers and sisters in the one human family. That is: Christians are bound in a deeper than biological family relationship through the Spirit of Christ.
This understanding is present also in the teaching of the Lord where he says ‘Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother’ Luke 8:19-21 (see also Mark 3:31-35; Matthew 12:46-50). It also comes out in different ways in the New Testament – for example in Ephesians, where it is written, ‘For this reason I bow my knee before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth is named (Ephesians 3:14)- , but here I want to draw your attention to the way that St Paul addresses his audience at the beginning of his letters, and the way he refers to his fellow Christians throughout his letters.

At the beginning of his letter to the Romans, St Paul writes that he and the Roman Christians have the one Father, and in the letter he repeatedly calls them ‘brothers’. Even in his letter to the Galatians, where St Paul is at his most exasperated, he makes it clear that he is writing to people that he considers true family, children of the one Father. There he writes, ‘Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.’
The imagery of Christian people as children of the one God, or, more strictly speaking, sons of the one Father, is, if you like, a meta-image. Human families are the image of the deeper reality of the church, where all those who have faith in Christ are the real brothers and sisters, with God as their Father.

So, when St Paul in Romans 8 is using the imagery of Christians as ‘sons of God’, he is not simply making use of an image that is congenial to his purpose, nor is he excluding females in patriarchal sexist bias. He is reminding the Roman Christians that in Christ they have adoption as sons, and that they have the same access to the Father, and the same royal status, that the one and only eternally begotten Son has.
We can see aspects of what this means for St Paul in the words ‘When we cry, "Abba! Father!"’. This very cry shows that Christian people have a filial relationship to God. Our freedom to address God as Father – it is significant that the Aramaic Abba is used at this point – it’s presumably the word that anyone who heard the Christians in Rome praying would have heard - shows that for St Paul all those baptized into Christ Jesus are heirs of God – that what belongs to God belongs to us; it shows that our status in God’s household is assured; it shows that we receive God’s commands as commands coming out of God’s fatherly love and concern for us. I could also add that it shows that as sons and daughters of the one God we belong together – we are not in competition with each other to find a status which we ourselves must establish; rather we are free to see to each other’s interests – to honour each other as members of the royal family, gifted in different ways, and called into different vocations.

Now it’s into this basic framework of understanding of filial unity as sons in the Son, that St Paul brings in the image of a slave. I hesitate to say the imagery of slavery, because whereas slavery can be thought of as an abstraction, a slave is a reality, and considering the life of a slave is considering that which is real.
What of the life of a slave? A slave is compelled into service – he does not have ultimate control even over his own body, and certainly no freedom to leave. He has no lasting place in the household, and no legal claim to inheritance. If his master is wicked, he may be forced into actions that are especially degrading or humiliating. A female slave may be particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse and degradation. From a modern point of view we can easily understand that slavery is an oppressive institution, and that slaves must suffer in being restrained in movement, and in being driven to act against their own will.

But there is another aspect to life as a slave that is perhaps more opaque to the modern mind, and yet is well attested to in ancient literature. It is the understanding that serving as a slave can induce the development of a servile mindset. This is an attitude that is described well in one of C S Lewis’s scholarly works ‘Studies in Words’. There Lewis writes: ‘The character of eleutheros [the classical Greek word for free] …is, of course, contrasted with that of the slave. It would be dangerous in modern English to say ‘with the servile character’, for that would probably conjure up a false image. By a servile man we mean, I take it, an abject, submissive man who cringes and flatters.’ But Lewis remarks that this was not the ancient idea of the typical slave. He states that for the ancients ‘The true servile character is cheeky, shrewd, cunning, up to every trick, always with an eye to the main chance, determined to ‘look after number one’, and he concludes ‘Absence of disinterestedness, lack of generosity, is the hallmark of the servile. The typical slave always has an axe to grind’ (Lewis 111). [Patty and Selma in the Simpsons give us good examples of servile characters!]

Lewis makes the point that, of course, not all slaves had this mindset, but that the servile mindset was commonly associated with slaves in the ancient world. I think it’s fair to say that picture of a slave, at once oppressed and servile, approximates well the St Paul’s image of the slave when he uses it in contrast with that of the free son.

So we have in mind the image of a slave: a person who is bound to a household in which they have no future; a person who can be compelled to do what they find repellent or degrading; a person who develops a mindset to get out of the master’s eye, to avoid doing what is necessary, to get ahead by any means, to get revenge where possible; a person whose status in life drags them down inwardly and outwardly.

Now, with this imagery in mind, let’s go to the beginning of Romans chapter 8 and hear how St Paul lays out the two paths of life – the path of life that is lived in the flesh, and the path of life that is lived in the Spirit.
Remember – all of what St Paul says here is leading up to the contrast between that of a slave and a Son. The son is led by the Spirit. It is the slave who lives according to the flesh.

Here’s how chapter 8 begins:

1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot; 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
I expect that most of you know that when St Paul wants to mean ‘body’ he has a word in Greek that he uses: ‘soma’. On occasion he can use ‘flesh’ in the sense of body – especially when he uses such phrases as ‘flesh and blood’. Even in the passage that we have just heard, saying that the Father sent the Son ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ does bear the meaning, in the likeness of a real flesh and blood human being. But something else is going on here.

To put it most simply, in this passage the flesh refers to the bodily life of a person who is not a free son of the household of God. That is, it refers to the bodily life of the person who has no filial relationship with God; who expects nothing good from God; who experiences God’s law as arbitrary; who fears God’s punishment for work not done; who feels driven by bodily appetite into behavior that is degrading and impure; who stands without defence against the accusations of Satan; who is driven into competition with others in order to find meaning; who longs for peace that transcends this world, but has nowhere outside this world to look; who cannot call out to God as ‘Father’, but who hopes that a power, made in his or her own image, or the image of some created reality, will save.
The flesh refers to the embodied human being in a slave-driven state. It refers to life outside of the household of God’s free children. It refers to life circumscribed by death.

The temptation is at this point to push the analogy, to push the imagery, and to ask: ‘Then who is the slave driver? Is it God? The Devil? The World? Our Appetites? Death?’ I don’t think this line of questioning should be pushed too far in relation to St Paul’s use of imagery – at least I don’t think there is only one contender for the role of slave driver – although as we will hear in Galatians, St Paul is not shy of naming names. Rather St Paul’s use of the term ‘flesh’ seems to me a bit like New Testament talk of ‘ransom’ (Matthew 20.28; Mark 10.45; 1 Timothy 2.6; 1 Peter 1.18; Revelation 5.9) – it can be theologically stimulating to consider who receives the ransom – but the chief point is how the imagery works pastorally.
And in Romans 8 St Paul goes on directly to make pastoral use of the imagery behind the word ‘flesh’:

9 But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you. 12 So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh-- 13 for if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.

Note how in this passage St Paul contrasts bodily life with living according to the flesh. While it is true that sin brings a bodily penalty – death – and that fleshly deeds – which can include apparently spiritual things like conceit and unbelief – are done in the body, it is also true that for the sons of God there is bodily hope – the resurrection. So the body is not the problem, in fact bodily human life is the subject of God’s saving work. Rather, St Paul is bringing to one conclusion an argument that started back in chapter 6 – that Christian people, who through baptism in Christ share in Jesus’ death and resurrection, are set free by God, and do not have to live as slaves (at least as slaves contrast with free sons) any more. They have no obligation, no debt, to live bodily life with a servile mindset. St Paul is saying that if Christian people live as slaves, if they willingly bind themselves even though God has freed them, they will suffer the consequences of this choice. They will die. But that is not their calling from God; it is not who God has made them.

I can hear St Paul’s fatherly heart in passages such as this: it is sheer sorrow to see children acting as slaves; it is tragedy to see free sons of the household starving while feeding the pigs, when they could be at home, robed and welcomed, and sharing in the good things of the Father.

At this point I want to move across the Galatians, and show how St Paul uses the term ‘flesh’ in the same way as in Romans, and appeals to the same imagery of the slave in contrast to the free son, but how he does this from a different emotional place, and with different methods of explication.

Even a cursory glance at Galatians will give you the idea that St Paul was deeply frustrated and disappointed –to the point of flabbergastation -with a group of Christians that he saw willingly throwing away the gospel. Let’s hear some of this frustration from Galatians 3:

1 O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? 2 Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?

One of the great themes of Galatians, apparent even in this short quote, is that the life of the Spirit, the life of the free son of the Father, the life of the true heir of Abraham, is the life of faith –of trust in God’s Fatherly goodness and mercy embodied most clearly in the crucifixion of Christ. And that the life of the flesh is the life of unbelief, of slavery, of death.

Let’s hear how St Paul builds his argument at the conclusion of Galatians 3:
Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. 24 So that the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian; 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

Again St Paul is making the case that the Christian people to whom he writes are not simply people who hold a common ideology, or who have experience a unity that comes from intellectual commitment to a set of religious propositions. He is making the case that through holy baptism the Christians of Galatia are one family – that they have a deeper than biological family relationship to Abraham and to each other. That they are sons of God in Christ Jesus.

St Paul goes on to spell out what he means:

1 I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no better than a slave, though he is the owner of all the estate; 2 but he is under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. 3 So with us; when we were children, we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe. 4 But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" 7 So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir. 8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods; 9 but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves you want to be once more?

In this passage we have the same theological outlook that we find in Romans 8, an outlook that St Paul explicates in Galatians by an allegorical interpretation of the Genesis narrative concerning Hagar and Sarah.
21 Tell me, you who desire to be under law, do you not hear the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman. 23 But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise. 24 Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother…Now we, brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now. 30 But what does the scripture say? "Cast out the slave and her son; for the son of the slave shall not inherit with the son of the free woman." 31 So, brethren, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.

St Paul, in this allegorical interpretation of Genesis, has been encouraging his hearers to understand their place as offspring of Abraham –as being inheritors of the promise given to Abraham – a promise that the patriarch received in faith – and a promise – brought to fulfillment in Christ – which the Galatian Christians were called by God to receive in trust – with the gift of Holy Baptism as the embodied object of this trust. For St Paul to live by faith is to live as free people – as sons, heirs, as children of Abraham – as baptized people. To live without faith is to live as slaves, as paupers, as children of Hagar – as people who put their trust in the marks of what they can do – which in the case of the Galatian Christians, was circumcision.

Most of you already know that the fleshly, servile temptation to which the Galatian Christians were drawn was, surprising as it may seem to us, the bodily act of circumcision. St Paul’s heartfelt pleading with the Galatians was for them not to enslave themselves by placing their trust in that which could not bring life – in circumcision. In fact when St Paul says at the beginning of Galatians 5, ` For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ he understands the primary mark of slavery to be the mark of circumcision (insofar as it is received as a mark understood to confer true righteousness before God).

The whole attitude of desiring to receive the mark of circumcision as a mark of righteousness is, for St Paul, fleshly and servile. It is treating God as a slave driver whose capricious whims can be placated by fulfilling a command, rather than as a Father who desires that his children show love for each other.
As an aside: The contrast between circumcision and baptism is analogous to the contrast between flesh and Spirit, and the contrast between the salve and the free son. The Galatian Christians were tempted to receive the mark of circumcision as a way to fulfill a command that they understood would mark them as righteous – to receive the mark of circumcision as a servile act. In fact the Galatians had already received an adoption in which God marked them as righteous – an adoption effected through Holy Baptism, which was the means of their adoption, and not simply an outward act of conformity to a command.

It’s no surprise that St Paul closes his denunciation of the fleshly, servile attitude to circumcision with these words:

13 For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." 15 But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another. 16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.

St Paul here exhibits a clear anxiety that the people would forget who they were – that by acting in servile ways they would lose their identity and descend into an anti-community; that rather than growing in love as brothers and sisters in the household of God, they would in sheer servility consume each other. What this means becomes clearer as St Paul goes on to restate the contrast between the freeborn son and the slave in terms of Spirit and flesh:

17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.

In terms of the dominant imagery, St Paul is saying that the mindset of the son and the mindset of the slave are opposed to each other: the son loves the brothers and sisters of the household, the slave looks out for his own interests; the son acts in freedom, the slave under compulsion. It is only by the leading of the Spirit, only by calling on God as Father, only in trusting that one is a son of the household that one can move from receiving God’s law as burden, to receiving God’s mercy as the power for the life of love.

In Galatians St Paul spells this contrast out in clearly discernable human behaviours:

19 Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, 21 envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

It is noteworthy that some the works of the flesh that St Paul lists here are not all what we would consider bodily. But all of them represent aspects of the servile mindset at work in the embodied life of the person who does not trust God. St Paul contrasts these works with the fruit of the Spirit, with that which is grown by the Spirit at work in the life of the believer:

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. 26 Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another.

Now to make some remarks in conclusion.

In this talk I have focused in on one main meaning of St Paul’s use of the term flesh, and I’ve interpreted his use of this term in relation to a dominant image that St Paul uses in the context of his discussion of the flesh – the image of a slave, especially as it contrasts with that of a freeborn son. While this paper has been a far from exhaustive treatment of the concept of flesh in the writings of St Paul, I think that by focusing in on the imagery St Paul uses I have provided one interpretation that highlights the importance of attending to the term flesh for us today.

Of course St Paul wrote not simply to impart information, but to exercise his apostolic authority in calling people to repentance and to the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus. This authoritative word continues to sound especially in the liturgy of the church, in which, gathered as the baptized children of God, we receive the gifts of the risen Christ, so that we may be transformed from glory to glory, and so that we may grow in love for each other. By taking stock of the imagery that St Paul uses, we are helped in interpreting our own status as people who have a royal freedom to love each other as brothers and sisters. This is especially important in the context of ecumenical study of the Bible, in which the baptismal unity we have stands in tension with the imperfect communion that we experience.

Finally, a story: In Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim, there is the account of Rabbi Shelomo, who in true Hasidic style asked and answered his own question. He asked: “What is the worst thing the Evil Urge can achieve?” And he answered: “To make a man forget that he is the son of a king.” (Buber 282). St Paul, I think, would have said his Amen, but would have added that the best thing that the Holy Spirit can do is to lead us to call out to the Father, in full confidence that we are dearly loved children.

Who would have thought...

...that in 2009 someone would publish the Latin edition of the Small Catechism, and that they would have the patience to get together grammatical and theological notes to be included at the bottom of every page?

Not me.

But someone's done it.

I ordered it today from Amazon.

Now all I have to do is find a confirmation student who knows Latin.

OK So this isn't everyone's cup of tea

But it is remarkable.

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The older I get, the more remarkable I find Bach's music.

I first remember loving Bach's stuff as a kid - when I was a five year old I heard 'Jesu, joy of man's desiring'. I didn't know who wrote it, but I knew that I loved it.

It's taken me a while to get into his organ music. It is something else.

Yes, I know it's another blog post on this theme.

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