The Mind of the Spirit

Paul's Approach to Transformed Thinking

Craig S. Keener

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781540961136
• eBook ISBN: 9781493404605
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Leading Scholar Explores Paul's Teaching on the Mind

This major work by a leading New Testament scholar explores an important but neglected area of Pauline theology, Paul's teaching about the mind. In discussing matters such as the corrupted mind, the mind of Christ, and the renewal of the mind, Paul adapts language from popular intellectual thought in his day, but he does so in a way distinctively focused on Christ and Christ's role in the believer's transformation. Keener enables readers to understand this thought world so they can interpret Paul's language for contemporary Christian life. The book helps overcome a false separation between following the Spirit and using human judgment and provides a new foundation for relating biblical studies and Christian counseling.

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The Corrupted Mind (Rom. 1:18–32)

Just as they did not judge it fitting to have God in their cognitive purview, God delivered them over to a mind that was unfit, so they would do things that should not be done.

—Romans 1:28

In the first chapter of Romans, Paul addresses the corrupted mind of the Gentile world; he will address the more knowledgeable Jewish mind in Romans 7:7–25. Ancient thinkers regularly opposed reason to the passions: the wise would overcome passions through truth. In Romans 1:18–32 Paul paints a more complicated picture of reason and passions, one that fits Jewish condemnations of paganism.1

In this passage Paul argues that humanity irrationally distorted God’s image through idolatry and that God in turn expressed his wrath against this idolatry by handing them over to their own irrational desires. Unreasonable thinking led to humanity’s subjection to passion. People’s unfit ways of thinking are the consequence of their rejection of God’s truth.2

The Pagan World’s Corrupted Mind

To establish that all humanity needs Christ, Paul first establishes what was probably not actually in dispute among believers in Jesus: that the Gentile world (i.e., unconverted non-Jews) did not know God (cf. Gal. 4:8; 1 Thess. 4:5). This premise will prepare for Paul’s argument that the possession of the Torah, a revelation far superior to what the Gentiles possessed, does not guarantee that Paul’s own Jewish people know God adequately either (cf. Rom. 2:1–29). Indeed, it merely makes them more culpable, so that all humanity stands under sin (Rom. 3:9–20).

Summary of Paul’s Likely Argument

Paul’s argument in Romans 1:18–32, in summary, appears to run as follows: God judges humanity for their wicked action of suppressing and perverting the truth about him through idolatry (1:18, 23). Humanity is culpable for their false images of God because in creation—especially in humans, created in God’s image—God has revealed what he is like (1:19–20). God therefore judges humanity by handing them over to their own corrupted thinking (1:24, 26, 28). This wrong thinking probably includes distorting the image of God in themselves (1:24–27). As they have dishonored God (1:21), God has allowed them to dishonor each other (1:24) with what Paul calls “dishonorable” and “shameful” passions (1:26–27). In the end they have committed all kinds of sins, even though they ultimately know better (1:28–32).

Although worded in various ways, the language of reason, knowledge, and truth pervades this passage, explaining that pagans’ current irrationally immoral “mind” or “way of thinking” (1:28) stems from humanity’s own sinful choices. Such language includes the following elements: Humanity originally had enough knowledge about God to honor him (1:19–21); by finding imaginative ways around that truth, they willfully distorted it (1:21, 25). Their reasoning became void and empty, like the idols they made; their hearts, now lacking understanding, were darkened (1:21). They became foolish—even while claiming to be wise (1:21–22; cf. 1:14). They no longer approved true knowledge about God, so God gave them disapproved minds so they would do what was improper (1:28). Just as humanity initially knew enough that they should have honored God, they also knew enough to understand that their wicked treatment of God and others—who, like themselves, were all created in God’s image—merited judgment (1:32). Nevertheless, they chose to justify rather than to reject such behavior (1:32).3 Thus they rejected truth, and God punished them by allowing them to become incapable of discerning truth, not only theologically but morally as well.4

Paul’s depiction of the culpable Gentile world under sin fits one line of Jewish thought about Gentiles5 and prepares for his larger argument about all of humanity being under sin (2:1–3:31).6 Gentiles lack the fuller moral truth of God’s Torah; Paul will argue in chapter 7 that even that knowledge cannot transform fully. My focus in this chapter, however, is more specifically on Paul’s depiction of Gentile thinking ruled by, and sometimes justifying, passion.

An Early Jewish Analogy

The intellectual elements of Paul’s argument should have been intelligible to a Diaspora Jewish audience and therefore probably to an early Christian audience, whether Jewish, Gentile, or mixed, many of whose inherited beliefs had been formed in a Diaspora Jewish milieu. Most scholars acknowledge that Paul develops existing Hellenistic Jewish arguments in this section.7

Paul’s argument follows most closely the popular Wisdom of Solomon.8 Wisdom declares that truth about God is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• 1. The Corrupted Mind (Rom. 1:18–32)
• 2. The Mind of Faith (Rom. 6:11)
• 3. The Mind of the Flesh (Rom. 7:22–25)
• 4. The Mind of the Spirit (Rom. 8:5–7)
• 5. A Renewed Mind (Rom. 12:1–3)
• 6. The Mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:15–16)
• 7. A Christlike Mind (Phil. 2:1–5; 3:19–21; 4:6–8)
• 8. The Heavenly Mind (Col. 3:1–2)
• Conclusion
• Postscript: Some Pastoral Implications
• Appendix A: The Soul in Ancient Mediterranean Thought
• Appendix B: Some of God’s Wise Plan in Paul’s Bible
• Bibliography
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Authors and Selected Names
• Index of Scripture
• Index of Other Ancient Sources
• Back Cover