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

Summary

Spirit possession in early Christian groups led by Paul served social and ethical functions, shaping social structures, moral agency, and individual identities. Drawing on ethnographic studies of possession, this analysis shows that possession allowed Paul and his followers to embody the spirit of Christ, making him present in a way that influenced their memory of the past, moral behavior, and formation as believers. This experience of time differs from modern Western historical study, being more immediate and affective.

Study at a glance

Abstract

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.