Monday, June 5, 2023

Sarah Whittle on the Clothing Imagery being a Metaphor for an Internal Transformation

  

The nature and scope of the transformation

 

Further evidence for the nature and scope of Paul’s transformation language may be found by investigating his use of the concept of ‘putting on [clothing]’ (ενδυω). . . . There are certainly similar themes at work here and in the writings of Paul, where it seems to be significant for Paul that humans ‘go beyond the boundaries of the earthly world, and transcend the limits of their human condition’.

 

To put on [clothing] (ενδυω), appears in Paul as a transformative event, as well as in the language or process. At conversion, the term describes how believers put off the old and put on the new (Colossians 3:9-10). It also occurs in Paul’s baptism language (Galatians 3:27), where it is specifically related to the Galatians’ death and resurrection life in Christ. Furthermore, it is used in the sense of a future transformation to an incorruptible body: the mortal puts on immortality and the corruptible puts on incorruption. There are four occurrences in 1 Corinthians 53:53-54, where the believer will gain a heavenly body, bearing the image of the man of heaven (1 Corinthians 15:49).

 

But Paul’s use of ενδυω also has present, ethical implications, and any interpretation that fails to take this into account does not do justice to Paul here. The term is also used to describe putting on virtues—compassion, kindness, humility (Colossians 3:12); faith and love (1 Thessalonians 5:8); and in Colossians 3:9-10 believers are to put off the old self with its deeds and put on the renewed self (τον νεον τον ανακαινουμενον), which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator, a passage resonating with Romans 12:2. Believers are also required to ‘put off the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light’ (Romans 12:13). Where the concept relates to putting on Christ himself (Romans 13:14; cf. Galatians 3:27), we perhaps have the climax of Paul’s thought.

 

Betz says the term ‘put on Christ’ (Χριστον ενεδυσασθε) describes the Christians’ incorporation into the body of Christ as an act of clothing, where Christ is understood as a garment. This ‘presupposes the Christological-soteriological concept of Christ as the heavenly garment by which the Christian is enwrapped and transformed into a new being’. Yet having determined this aspect of divine transformation, Betz does not draw any moral implications. Finding the categories exclusive, Betz comments that we must differentiate between the saying used in baptism, in Christian parenesis and as future hope. But that we should, or even can, keep our categories separate does not seem to be supported by the evidence. (Sarah Whittle, Covenant Renewal and the Consecration of the Gentiles in Romans [Society for New Testament Monograph Series 161; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015], 98-99)

 

 

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