If One Does Not Have the Spirit of Christ, One Does Not Belong to Him

This chapter attends to the social and ethical functions of the religious experience of possession in the Pauline groups. Recent ethnographic literature has illustrated how spirit possession can have a truly “productive” role in shaping social structures, ways of knowing, moral agency, and even the formation of individual subjectivities. This chapter shows that these same traits are recognizable in the Pauline Christ groups. Specific attention are given to the forms in which possession enables a poiesis of the past. The sense of temporality underlying such an experience is remarkably different from the archival and academic study of history typical of western modernity. Through his very embodiment of the πνεῦμα‎ of Christ, Paul (and arguably the other members of his groups) could make the person of Christ present in a way that affectively and effectively informed not only their remembrance of and interaction with the past but also their moral agency and even their subjectification as Christ believers.

Introduction

This introductory chapter rereads some well-known texts in light of a more sophisticated notion of possession. This would emphasize the cultural and religious productivity inscribed in it as well as the significance of its performative nature. A fundamental aid in achieving such a goal may emerge from a sustained dialogue with contemporary ethnographies of “spirit possession.” Indeed, anthropological writing on this subject matter has succeeded in overcoming many biases thanks to direct interaction with possessed individuals and observation of their rituals. To speak of “cultural productivity” with respect to possession does not mean to overlook the painful nature of this experience or to hide the fact that possession can become an instrument employed in order to oppress and abuse subordinate and marginal individuals both in the so-called First World and elsewhere. However, a less reductionistic understanding of the phenomena will not only produce a more adequate historical account. It will also help provide solutions for real and current problems, solutions that would not be hindered by orientalism or sensationalism and are better attuned to specific cultural and personal conditions.

The Last Adam Became a Life-Giving Spirit

This chapter looks at the fundamental role played by spirit possession in the religious experience of Paul and of his Christ groups. It begins with their doctrinal and specifically christological elaborations. Being “in Christ” is the idiom through which Paul expresses the experience of possession by a πνεῦμα‎, which is identified with the risen Christ and which, through its presence in them, grants to believers salvation from the eschatological wrath and the expectation of eternal life. For Paul, Christ has achieved the state of existence designated as πνεῦμα‎ through his death and resurrection. This was an idea that was also shared by other early Christ groups, as is confirmed—albeit not without negligible difference—by an examination of a key section in the Shepherd of Hermas.