Table of Contents 3. Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie Paul thru... · “Wilhelm Dilthey’s...

“Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie” Kang-Yup Na — 1

Copyright © 2001 Kang-Yup Na. All rights reserved.

Chapter 3 from Kang-Yup Na’s dissertation:

Caveat: There are portions of this chapter that deal specifically with the interpretation of Paul

and his letters in the New Testament. But the chapter as a whole is a summary of the significant

elements of Dilthey’s hermenteutical theory.

The Meaning of Christ in Paul

A Reading of Galatians 1.11–2.21 in the Light of Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie

Table of Contents

3. Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie ................................................................................. 4

3.1. Leben (life) .............................................................................................................................. 5 3.2. Erlebnis (lived-experience) ..................................................................................................... 8

3.3. Ausdruck (expression) .......................................................................................................... 12 3.4. Verstuehen (understanding) and hermeneutics .................................................................... 16

3.5. Dilthey’s theory of categories ............................................................................................... 22 3.6. The erworbener seelischer Zusammenhang (the acquired psychic nexus) and the objektiver

Geist (objective spirit) .......................................................................................................... 26 3.7. Autobiography as an access to experience ........................................................................... 34

3.8. Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie and Paul’s letters ................................................................... 37


The history of culture shows that originality of expression is not a process of continuous development. There are antecedent periods of slow evolution. Finally, as if touched by a spark, a very few persons, one, two, or three, in some particular province of experience, express completely novel intuitions. Such intuitions can be responded to, analyzed in terms of their relationships to other ideas, fused with other forms of experience, but as individual primary intuitions within their own province of experience they are not surpassed.

Alfred North Whitehead*

Although Alfred North Whitehead does not number Paul among the great notables in

western history like Dante, Shakespeare, Socrates, or the Greek tragedians—whom he lists from

the “circle of literature merely for the sake of easy intelligibility”1—it can be argued that on the

heels of Jesus of Nazareth, none other has had a greater impact on the history of Christianity than

the apostle from Tarsus. Whitehead believes there are two things to notice about such figures in

human history:

In the first place, they are associated with a small state fitted for their peculiar originality. … Goethe surveyed the world, but it was from Weimar; Shakespeare is universal, but he lived in Elizabethan England. We cannot think of Socrates outside Athens. … The second characteristic is that their peculiar originality is the very element in their expression which remains unformularized. … They do not bring to the world a new formula nor do they discover new facts, but in expressing their apprehensions of the world, they leave behind them an element of novelty—a new expression forever evoking its proper response.2

These remarks are helpful to keep in mind when we approach the seemingly ordinary letters of

Paul—ordinary at least in the sense that they were never meant to become the center of the New

Testament canon or the focus of a Society of Biblical Literature seminar.

* Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making (New York: Macmillan, 1957), 134.

1 Whitehead, Religion in the Making, 135.

2 Whitehead, Religion in the Making, 135–36.


In light of the previous chapter, we should be cautious in discerning Paul’s experience

from the many things he wrote, particularly those that are bound in time and space by

circumstances peculiar to Paul. As long as we examine his letters without taking them as

doctrinal documents, we ought not to worry that some expressions are more formulaic and

confessionally doctrinal (e.g., the hymn in Phil 2.6–11) than other more ad hoc statements (e.g.,

Paul’s comments about the veiling of women in 1 Cor 11.1–16). Here also, Whitehead offers

some helpful reminders:

Some original men do express themselves in formulae: but the formula then expresses something beyond itself. The formula is then secondary to its meaning; it is, in a sense, a literary device. The formula sinks in importance, or even is abandoned; but its meaning remains fructifying in the world, finding new expression to suit new circumstances. The formula was not wrong, but it was limited to its own sphere of thought.3

What Whitehead claims is akin to Bultmann’s approach in that what becomes formulated

is more important than the formulation itself. In other words, the mythological formulations are

secondary to their meaning. Whitehead’s claims are also like what we find in Paul’s own

testimony, for instance, in 1 Cor 9.20–23:

ejgenovmhn toi'~ ÆIoudaivoi~` wJ~ ÆIoudai`o~, i{na ÆIoudaivou~ kerdhvsw: toi`~ uJpo; novmon wJ~ uJpo; novmon, mh; w]n aujto;~ uJpo; novmon, i{na tou;~ uJpo; novmon kerdhvsw: toi`~ ajnovmoi~ wJ~ a[nomo~, mh; w]n a[nomo~ qeou` ajllÆ e[nnomo~ Cristou`, i{na kerdavnw tou;~ ajnovmou~: ejgenovmhn toi`~ ajsqenevsin ajsqenhv~, i{na tou;~ ajsqenei`~ kerdhvsw: toi`~ pa`sin gevgona pavnta, i{na pavntw~ tina;~ swvsw. pavnta de; poiw` dia; to; eujaggevlion, i{na sugkoinwno;~ aujtou` gevnwmai.

That is to say, Paul’s fundamental gospel can don many different costumes in order to make the

appropriate appeals and persuade a particular audience. But he would do this only because of his

unshaken commitment to the gospel of Christ: pavnta de; poiw` dia; to; eujaggevlion (1 Cor

9.23).

As we have seen in the previous chapter, this was the focus of Beker’s quest for the

coherent center which could interact flexibly with contingent situations as they arose—what we

3 Whitehead, Religion in the Making, 136.


may more correctly formulate as a quest for Paul’s continually renewed experience of Christ in

contingent situations. This flexibility provides us with the insight that the formulated expressions

in the letters are not to be mistaken for the meaning they were meant to convey. In Whitehead’s

terms, the contingent expressions are limited to their own sphere of thought while their meaning

remains “fructifying in the world, finding new expression to suit new circumstances.” In order to

take Beker’s project further, beyond the level of apocalyptic, the proposal here is to read Paul’s

letters in the light of Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie. Even after so many methodologies

have been tried in the field of biblical studies, there are various reasons for trying yet another

way of looking at Paul. The main advantage is that Dilthey places a fundamental hermeneutical

connection between human expressions and experiences.

3. Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie

Methodology, broadly understood, searches for a theoretical framework within which

individual phenomena can be perceived, analyzed, and understood. To choose a methodology

means to commit oneself experimentally to a general philosophical orientation regarding a

particular method and its potential for yielding results. In the case of ancient texts, such as those

contained in the New Testament, we seek methods that can lead us to understand their meanings.

With this in mind, I appeal to Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie as an aid in examining the

expressions in Paul as we wrestle with the question of the meaning of Christ in Paul. This

chapter will cover components of Dilthey’s approach that can contribute to our understanding of

Paul’s letters as well as of Paul the person, whose expressions the letters are. The three central

tenets of Dilthey’s hermeneutical theory are 1) human beings experience life as meaningful, 2)

they tend to express that meaning, and 3) the expressions can be understood. Dilthey formulates

these in the tripartite structure of Erlebnis (experience or, more accurately, lived-experience),

Ausdruck (expression), and Verstehen (understanding). The fundamental apprehension of these

facts is what led Dilthey to develop his Lebensphilosophie, which I believe can be useful in our


attempt to understand Pauline texts. Our task will be to interpret and understand the statements in

Paul’s letters as expressions that arose from his experience of life.

3.1. Leben (life)

One of the principal components of Dilthey’s hermeneutics is the notion of Leben or life.

For Dilthey this is not mere biological life, but essentially human life. Only when we have a

sense of what is meant by life can we also understand what lived-experience (Erlebnis) is and

what it means to understand (Verstehen) the expressions (Ausdrücke, Lebensäußerungen4) which

emanate from the experience of life. In line with his empirical predilection, Dilthey claims that

thinking cannot get behind life5 and that it can only understand itself from within: “Leben erfasst

hier Leben.”6 We should always be aware of this sobering, historical position as we try to grasp

Dilthey’s understanding of life.

Leben ist der Zusammenhang der unter den Bedingungen der äußeren Welt bestehenden Wechselwirkungen zwischen Personen, aufgefaßt in der Unabhängigkeit dieses Zusammenhangs von den wechselnden Zeiten und Orten. Ich gebrauche den Ausdruck Leben in den Geisteswissenschaften in der Einschränkung auf die Menschenwelt; er ist hier durch das Gebiet, in dem er gebraucht wird, bestimmt und keinem Mißverständnis ausgesetzt. Das Leben besteht in der Wechselwirkung der Lebenseinheiten. … zugleich ist aber dieser [psychophysische] Verlauf durch den merkwürdigen Sachverhalt, daß jeder Teil desselben im Bewußtsein mit den andern Teilen durch ein irgendwie charakterisiertes Erlebnis von Kontinuität, Zusammenhang, Selbigkeit des so Ablaufenden verbunden ist, charakterisiert. 7

4 I am grateful for Rudolf Makkreel’s suggestion that Lebensäußerungen be translated as “life-manifestations,”

thereby distinguishing it from “expressions of lived-experience” or simply “expressions of life” as a translation for Erlebnisausdrücke.

5 Wilhelm Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften, VIII (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1921–1982), 184; hereafter, GS.

6 Dilthey, GS, VIII, 121: “Life apprehends life.”

7 Dilthey, GS, VII, 228–29 (italics mine): “Life is the nexus of interactions between people, which take place under conditions of the outer world; it is understood independent of varying times and locations. I use the expression ‘life’ in the human studies with reference only to the human world; it is determined by the sphere in which it is used and is not open to misunderstanding. Life consists of the interaction of the units of life. … at the same time, this [psychophysical] course of life is characterized by the peculiar fact that each part of life is consciously linked to the other parts by some kind of experience of continuity, coherence, and identity.”


At the outset, there are several pivotal concepts which need to be grasped. Because of

Dilthey’s strong sense of the inter-connectedness of life, he constantly uses the word

Zusammenhang. The word, which literally means “hanging together,” can generally be translated

with “nexus” or even “coherence” to convey Dilthey’s emphasis on continuity and

connectedness. The concept will prove critical when we look at the variety, or even

inconsistencies, of Paul’s statements expressing the meaning of Christ. What I will argue is that

all of Paul’s statements are expressions which hang together in his person, in his life, even if they

do not hang together in the sense of being systematically organized on the level of the text.

Leben ist nun der Zusammenhang, in welchem diese Wechselwirkungen unter den Bedingungen des Zusammenhangs von Naturobjekten, die unter dem Gesetz der Kausalität stehen und auch eine Sphäre des psychischen Verlaufs und Körpern mitumfassen, stehen. Dieses Leben ist immer und überall örtlich und zeitlich bestimmt—lokalisiert gleichsam in der raumzeitlichen Ordnung der Abläufe an Lebenseinheiten. Hebt man aber das heraus, was überall und immer in der Sphäre der Menschenwelt stattfindet und als solches das örtlich und zeitlich bestimmte Geschehen möglich macht, nicht durch eine Abstraktion von diesem letzteren, sondern in einer Anschauung, die von diesem Ganzen in seinen immer und überall gleichen Eigenschaften zu den räumlich zeitlich differenzierten hinführt—dann entsteht der Begriff des Lebens, der die Grundlage für alle einzelnen Gestalten und Systeme, die an ihm auftreten, für unser Erleben, Verstehen, Ausdrücken und vergleichendes Betrachten derselben enthält. … Leben steht zur Erfüllung der Zeit in einem nächsten Verhältnis.8

The interaction between people mentioned here will play a key role as we attempt to

interpret Paul’s christological statements. Here I have in mind, among other issues in Paul’s

churches, the interaction between Jews and Gentiles in the Roman empire and the relationship

between Jews and Gentiles in Christ. We want to interpret the Christ-expressions, especially

those that make metaphysical claims about Christ or are mythological in character, as

8 Dilthey, GS, VII, 228–29 (italics mine): “Life is the context in which these interactions, conditioned by the

causal order of natural objects including the psychological events in bodies, take place. This life is always and everywhere spatially and temporally determined—localized, as it were, in the spatio-temporal order of the courses of people’s lives. But if we emphasize what is constant in the human world and makes spatially and temporally determined events possible—not by an abstraction from the latter but an intuition which leads from the whole with its unvarying characteristics to its spatially and temporally differentiated instances—then the concept of life arises which forms the basis for all its individual forms and systems, for our experience, understanding, expressions and comparative study of them. … Life is very closely related to the filling of time” (modification of the translation by Rickman in his Dilthey: Selected Writings, 232).


expressions which arise from Paul’s experience of life—more so than from discursive

systematizing of propositions concerning Christ. More concretely, that means we will look at the

sociological, anthropological, and psychological dimensions of the Christ-expressions—this, I

hope, will become clearer below as we use the theoretical framework to look at the Jew-Gentile

dilemma, for example, as it emerges in Paul’s letters.

Although Dilthey’s thinking was influenced by Schleiermacher, he abandoned

Schleiermacher’s contention that understanding was primarily rooted in language and the

linguistic nature of human beings; in Dilthey’s view, understanding (Verstehen), as a

methodological concept, has its roots and its origin in the process of human life itself: it is

primarily a “category of life” (Lebenskategorie).9 What Dilthey means by “category of life” is

that in daily life human beings find themselves in situations in which they have to “understand”

what is happening around them so that they may act or react accordingly.10 Thus their actual

behavior reflects their lived understanding of their social or cultural environment.11 Dilthey

claims that all “higher” or complex manifestations of understanding, including those found in the

human sciences, derived from those “lower” or primitive forms of comprehension.12

Before we proceed further, we should first look at Dilthey’s tripartite formula of

experience (or life), expression, and understanding. In the process of paying closer attention to

these three hermeneutical aspects or structures of life, Dilthey’s concept of Leben—i.e., not

biological, but historical life—should emerge with greater clarity.

9 Mueller-Vollmer, ed., The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to

the Present (New York: Continuum, 1985), 25.

10 Mueller-Vollmer, Hermeneutics Reader, 25.


12 Mueller-Vollmer, Hermeneutics Reader, 25. He points out that “we can detect in Dilthey’s position a definite affinity with the views of the later Wittgenstein, according to whom the meaning of words and statements rests ultimately on a specific practice or ‘form of life’ (Lebensform)” and cites Wittgenstein’s claim, “Und eine Sprache verstehen, heißt, sich eine Lebensform vorstellen” (To understand a language means to comprehend a form of life). (Philosophische Untersuchungen [Schriften; vol. 1; 1960], 296)


3.2. Erlebnis (lived-experience)

One of the greatest breakthroughs of Dilthey’s work was in distinguishing the human

sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) from the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften), and validating

a methodology for the former which is unlike that of the latter.13 What he claimed was that

whereas connectedness or order is a product of hypotheses in the Naturwissenschaften, it is a

given for the Geisteswissenschaften and for psychology in particular. What that means is that life

is apprehended as already having a unity. Whereas in the natural sciences we perceive isolated

phenomena and try to grasp and explain their relationships through hypotheses (e.g., causal

explanation), in the realm of the Geisteswissenschaften there is a unity of experience. That is to

say, life is experienced as meaningful.14 Life does not require causal explanation, because its

coherence is always present in the human experience of life. In a nutshell, “Die Natur erklären

wir, das Seelenleben verstehen wir.”15

13 Dilthey’s insights into this distinction and the concept of history anticipates or even leads to the recognition

in the middle of the twentieth century that the historical researches that produced the lives of Jesus in the nineteenth century were methodologically flawed. James M. Robinson (A New Quest of the Historical Jesus [London: SCM Press, 1959], 28–29) summarizes the situation thus: “we have come to recognize that the objective factual level upon which the nineteenth century operated is only one dimension of history, and that a whole new dimension in the facts, a deeper and more central plane of meaning, had been largely bypassed. The nineteenth century saw the reality of the ‘historical facts’ as consisting largely in names, places, dates, occurrences, sequences, causes, effects—things which fall far short of being the actuality of history, if one understands by history the distinctively human, creative, unique, purposeful, which distinguishes man from nature. The dimension in which man actually exists, his ‘world’, the stance or outlook from which he acts, his understanding of his existence behind what he does, the way he meets his basic problems and the answer his life implies to the human dilemma, the significance he had as the environment of those who knew him, the continuing history his life produces, the possibility of existence which his life presents to me as an alternative—such matters as these have become central in an attempt to understand history. It is this deeper level of the reality of ‘Jesus of Nazareth as he actually was’ which was not reached by ‘the reconstruction of his biography by means of objective historical method’.”

14 Even if an experience is thought to be incomprehensible or absurd, it can only be considered so in relation to what we consider meaningful. Because life as a whole is experienced as meaningful, we can say that an experience is meaningless only in the sense that it does not cohere within the larger scope of what we already understand to be meaningful in life. To that extent, even a meaningless experience is meaningful; it conveys something significant about how we experience our life.

15 Dilthey, GS, V, 144: “We explain nature, but understand psychic life.” In this connection, christological studies such as Charles F. D. Moule’s Origin of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) or Seyoon Kim’s Origin of Paul’s Gospel (WUNT 2/4. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck] 1981; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982) may be seen as accounts that are, on the whole, preoccupied with merely trying to explain the


This Seelenleben consists of what we commonly know as experience or experiences. The

longer a person lives, the more experience he or she gains. Or so goes the conventional wisdom.

Also, experiences in life constitute what we call memory. On this common sense level, we can

already see how experiences in the course of life shape a person. This universal process in

human life is something that interested Dilthey as he distinguished the Geisteswissenschaften

from the Naturwissenschaften.

When Dilthey refers to an “experience” in life he distinguishes between Erlebnis (lived-

experience) and Erfahrung (or äußere Erfahrung). In Dilthey’s work, the more significant and

encompassing of these is Erlebnis, which suggests the immediacy of life itself as we encounter

it; it should be distinguished from the more ordinary Erfahrung, that is, experience of the outer

world.16 According to Dilthey,

Was so im Fluß der Zeit eine Einheit in der Präsenz bildet, weil es eine einheitliche Bedeutung hat, ist die kleinste Einheit, die wir als Erlebnis bezeichnen können. Und wir nennen dann weiter jede umfassendere Einheit von Lebensteilen, die durch eine gemeinsame Bedeutung für den Lebensverlauf verbunden sind, Erlebnis, selbst wo die Teile durch unterbrechende Vorgänge voneinander getrennt sind.17

possible sources of christological terms and concepts. They are not accounts that present an understanding of what (human experience) comes to expression in them, but only explain what is there on the textual surface. Over against this is the insight of Wrede (“Task and Methods,” 107) who believes we “must also analyse his conversion experience psychologically. I do not say, explain it. All that matters here is what content and significance the experience, however it is explained, had for Paul’s world of thought. … All that is being stressed is that Pauline theology must not be seen as static and complete, but as something which has come into being.”

16 Richard E. Palmer, Hermeneutics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969), 107. Cf. Makkreel: “Instead of considering experience as a conceptual ordering of inert sensations, as Kant had defined Erfahrung, Dilthey claims that the basic unit of consciousness is itself already experiential, namely, an Erlebnis (a lived-experience). Whereas Erfahrung is a phenomenal construct, Dilthey claims that Erlebnis is ‘real’ in that qua consciousness there is nothing more ultimate behind it.” (Dilthey: Philosopher of the Human Studies [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992], 8)

17 Dilthey, GS, VII, 194: “What forms a unity in the present in the stream of time—because it has a unitary meaning—is the smallest unit which we can designate as an experience. And we can go further to call each encompassing unity of the parts of life, which are bound together through a common meaning for the course of life, an experience, even when the parts are separated from each other by interrupting events.”


For Dilthey Erlebnis refers to a unit held together by a common meaning. So, for

example, an experience of romantic love is not based on one encounter, but brings together

events of various kinds, times, and places; their unity of meaning as an “experience” lifts them

out of the stream of life and holds them together in a unit of meaning, i.e., an Erlebnis.18 In

contrast to life (Leben) as a flow of ephemeral moments, Erlebnis is inherently structural and

forces us to see the larger whole.19 The temptation is that because Dilthey also uses the term

Innewerden (reflexive awareness) to designate the intimate mode in which we appropriate

Erlebnis, we may sometimes understand Erlebnis as simply “inner experience” (innere

Erfahrung) in contrast to outer or external experience (äußere Erfahrung).20 However, Erlebnis

generally contains a relation of both inner and outer experience.21

It is from this way of approaching human experience that we can understand what various

scholars refer to as the “Damascus event,”22 “conversion,”23 or “call”24 in Paul’s life. It is from

this perspective that we can construe the Christ-experience not only as that particular, singular

encounter with Christ, but also as the experience of Christ within the totality of Paul’s life.25 And

it is from the same perspective that we can relegate the chronological order of the letters to a

secondary role in assessing the way Paul’s various statements cohere at the fundamental level of

experience (of life in general and of Christ in particular). The underlying coherence of Paul’s

experience of life and the sum of all his experiences, not chronology, provide a deeper, more

significant understanding of the expressions which appear in his letters.

18 Palmer, Hermeneutics, 107.

19 Makkreel, Dilthey, 388.

20 Makkreel, Dilthey, 147. Although this temptation exists, Makkreel is correct to emphasize that for Dilthey Erlebnis relates both inner and outer experience.

21 Dilthey, GS, VI, 226.

22 Kim, The Origin of Paul’s Gospel.

23 Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

24 Beker, Paul the Apostle.

25 Cf. the example above of “romantic love” as an experience.


Erlebnis should not be confused with the content of a reflective act of consciousness; it is

not something of which we are conscious, but it is the very act itself. It is something we live in

and through; it is the very attitude we take toward life and in which we live. Erlebnis is

experience as such, as it is pre-reflectively, pre-discursively given in meaning. Erlebnis can

subsequently become an object of reflection, but then it is no longer immediate experience but

the object of another act of encounter. Thus, Erlebnis can be a matter of content; yet it is more

characteristically an act of consciousness. In that respect, it is not to be construed as something

which consciousness stands over against and apprehends.26

Das Bewußtsein von einem Erlebnis und seine Beschaffenheit, sein Fürmichdasein und was in ihm für mich da ist, sind eins: Das Erlebnis steht nicht als ein Objekt dem Auffassenden gegenüber, sondern sein Dasein für mich ist ununterschieden von dem, was in ihm für mich da ist.27 Es gibt hier keine verschiedenen Stellen im Raum, von denen aus das, was in ihm da ist, gesehen würde. Und verschiedene Gesichtspunkte, unter denen es aufgefaßt würde, können nur nachträglich durch die Reflexion entstehen und berühren es selber in seinem Erlebnischarakter nicht. Es ist der Relativität des sinnlich Gegebenen entnommen, nach welcher die Bilder nur in der Relation zu dem Auffassenden, zu seiner Stellung im Raum und dem zwischen ihm und den Gegenständen Liegenden auf das Gegenständliche sich beziehen. Vom Erlebnis geht so eine direkte Linie von Repräsentationen bis zu der Ordnung der Begriffe, in der es denkend aufgefaßt wird. Es wird zunächst aufgeklärt durch die elementaren Denkleistungen. Die Erinnerungen, in denen es weiter aufgefaßt wird, haben hier eine eigene Bedeutung.28

Erlebnis can be said to be prior to the subject-object separation, which is itself a product of

reflective thought. In a sense, Erlebnis is not distinguished from reflexive awareness


27 Nevertheless, the Erlebnis can still be a lived-experience of an object.

28 Dilthey, GS, VII, 139: “The consciousness of an experience and its constitution (content)—that is, what is there-for-me and what in experience is there-for-me—are one: the experience does not stand like an object over against the experiencer, but rather its very existence for me is undifferentiated from what is present for me in it. Here there are no different positions in space from which to observe what is there. Different points of view from which to conceive it can only arise afterwards in reflection and do not affect its character as an experience. It is exempted from the relativity of sense-impressions according to which images of objects are only related to the observer, his position, and what lies between him and the objects. From experience, there is a direct sequence of representation (ideas) to the order of concepts, in which it is grasped through thought. It is illuminated first of all through the elementary acts of thought. Here memories, in which experience is further understood, have their own significance.”


(Innewerden) itself; it is that direct contact with life which we can describe as immediate lived-

experience.29

It would be wrong, however, to think that Erlebnis points to a merely subjective reality,

since experience is precisely the reality of what is there-for-me before experience becomes

objective (i.e., separated from the subjective). Dilthey’s insight lies in seeing Innewerden as a

realm before subject and object, a realm in which the world and our experience of it are given

together. Out of this prior unity which is experienced intuitively as meaningful (i.e., without

intervening cognitive effort) Dilthey tries to forge “categories” (Kategorien) that will contain

rather than separate the elements of feeling, knowing, and will, which are held together in

experience—categories such as value, meaningfulness, and relationship. Dilthey’s categories,

which reflect Kantian influence, are significantly different from Kant’s in that they deal with the

human world rather than the physical world. Although Dilthey encounters great difficulty in the

formulation of these categories, the task itself is of highest importance for him.30

I would contend that Paul’s experience of Christ can also be seen along these Diltheyan

lines. That is to say, we may read his letters to collect and analyze those Christ-expressions

which point us to the basic categories in which his Christ-experience can be understood. The

notion of categories and its import in interpreting Paul’s Christ-expressions will be discussed

below (section 3.5).

3.3. Ausdruck (expression)

Dilthey’s concept of expression (Ausdruck) is, as his other concepts, far more

encompassing than what our normal usage of the word would suggest. Ausdruck, or to be more

precise, Erlebnisausdruck (expression of lived-experience), is not primarily an embodiment of a

person’s feelings, but rather an expression of life that can refer to an idea, a law, a social form,

29 Palmer, Hermeneutics, 108. This pre-discursive, pre-reflective realm of consciousness is what occupies Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenology. However, for Dilthey, any subsequent reflective awareness can in turn constitute another Erlebnis, i.e., an experience of reflecting on an experience.



language, or anything that reflects the imprint of the inner life of the human being.31 It can be

understood as an “objectification” of the human mind or spirit (e.g., knowledge, feeling, and

will), whose hermeneutical significance is that, because of it, “understanding” can be focused on

a fixed, “objective” (i.e., objectified) expression of lived-experience instead of struggling to

capture it through introspection.32 Under the general rubric of Ausdruck are several terms which

Dilthey uses to refer to expressions of life: for example, Erlebnisausdrücke (expressions of lived-

experience) or Lebensäußerungen (life-manifestations). The purpose of these and other related

terms is to refer to all the products of human beings that become in turn the objects of human

understanding. We may view Paul’s statements about Christ in this light as Ausdrücke—hence

my term Christ-expressions—and use them as a vehicle for understanding the experience

expressed through them. But this does not mean that we are interested in the Christ-expressions

for their possible use in any particular Christology, but as expressions of Paul’s experience of

life.

Dilthey defines Lebensäußerungen (life-manifestations) as not only those expressions

that are intended to mean or signify something, but also those that, without being intended to

convey any mental content, make something understandable to us.33

Ich verstehe hier unter Lebensäußerung nicht nur die Ausdrücke, die etwas meinen oder bedeuten (wollen), sondern ebenso diejenigen, die ohne solche Absicht als Ausdruck eines Geistigen ein solches für uns verständlich machen.34


32 Palmer, Hermeneutics, 112. Here Dilthey’s empirical propensities are conspicuous. For him introspection could not be the basis for human studies.

33 Dilthey, GS, VII, 205.

34 Dilthey, GS, VII, 205: “By life-manifestation I do not mean only the expressions that intend to mean or signify something, but likewise those that, without being intended as expressions of something spiritual, make them understandable for us.”


In one of his later writings, “Das Verstehen anderer Personen und ihrer Lebensäußerungen”

(“The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Life-manifestations”), Dilthey classifies the

various manifestations of life into three groups.

The first group consists of concepts, judgments, and the larger structures of thought,

which are mere thought content (bloßer Denkinhalt) whose validity is independent of the

variations of its appearance and differences of times or persons.35 An example would be the

judgment “Fish live in water” since this would hold true for the person who asserts it as well as

the one who understands it. The judgment is itself the same in every context; hence we may

identify the first group with the theoretical and linguistic dimension of human life. Such

expressions form a class of hermeneutic objects that carry a meaning independent from the

individuals who produced them and whose life-manifestations they once were. Consequently,

these kinds of expressions reveal nothing of the Seelenleben (inner life or psychic-life) of those

who produce them:

Zugleich sagt es aber für den Auffassenden nichts aus von seinen Beziehungen zu dem dunklen Hintergrund und der Fülle des Seelenlebens. Keine Hindeutung auf die Besonderheiten des Lebens, aus denen es hervorgegangen ist, findet hier statt, und gerade aus seinem Artcharakter folgt, daß es keine Anforderungen enthält, auf den seelischen Zusammenhang zurückzugehen.36

Actions (Handlungen) constitute the second class of expressions and represent the

practical dimension. Actions, such as hammering a nail, do not have communication in se as

their goal. An action does, however, reveal a person’s intention37 because of its relation to a

purpose, which is given through the action. Although hammering a nail may express something,

35 Dilthey, GS, VII, 205–6.

36 Dilthey, GS, VII, 206: “At the same time it discloses to the one who understands it nothing about its relations to the shadowy background and richness of the psychic life. There is no indication of the particular features of the life from which it springs; hence, by its very nature it does not require us to refer to its psychic nexus [i.e., for understanding it].”

37 Dilthey makes a clear and useful distinction between intentions and motives: intentions are immediate goals (e.g., to put a nail through wood) and are more transparent than motives which are more ambiguous (e.g., to build something, to destroy something). (Rickman, Dilthey Today: A Critical Appraisal of the Contemporary Relevance of His Work [Westport: Greenwood, 1988], 51)


e.g., anger, it is not its main function to do so. That is to say, actions generally represent practical

concerns. In contrast to the selfsameness (Selbigkeit) of ideas, which comprise the first group,

es ist durchaus notwendig, die durch die Umstände bedingte Lage des Seelenlebens, welche die Handlung erwirkt und dessen Ausdruck sie ist, zu sondern von dem Lebenszusammenhang selber, in dem diese Lage gegründet ist. Die Tat tritt durch die Macht eines entscheidenden Beweggrundes aus der Fülle des Lebens in die Einseitigkeit.38

In contrast to these more or less impersonal types of expression, the third group of

Lebensäußerungen consists of what Dilthey calls Erlebnisausdrücke (expressions of lived-

experience) which is a rich spectrum ranging from spontaneous expressions, such as

exclamations and gestures, to consciously controlled expressions embodied in writings or works

of art, which Dilthey believed to be the highest form of expression.

Eine besondere Beziehung besteht zwischen [dem Erlebnisausdruck], dem Leben, aus dem er hervorgeht, und dem Verstehen, das er erwirkt. Der Ausdruck kann nämlich vom seelischen Zusammenhang mehr enthalten, als jede Introspektion gewahren kann. Er hebt es aus Tiefen, die das Bewußtsein nicht erhellt. Es liegt aber zugleich in der Natur des Erlebnisausdrucks, daß die Beziehung zwischen ihm und dem Geistigen, das in ihm ausgedrückt wird, nur sehr vorbehaltlich dem Verstehen zugrunde gelegt werden darf. … So entsteht in den Konfinien zwischen Wissen und Tat ein Kreis, in welchem das Leben in einer Tiefe sich aufschließt, wie sie der Beobachtung, der Reflexion und der Theorie nicht zugänglich ist.39

Hence, it is in this third class of expressions, especially those involving linguistic means, that

human experience comes to the fullest expression of lived-experience.

Dilthey uses both Ausdruck (expression) and Lebensäußerung (life-manifestation or

utterance) in his writings. And although both can generally be translated by the English word

38 Dilthey, GS, VII, 206: “It is absolutely necessary to distinguish the situation of the circumstantially-determined psychic life, which produces the action and whose expression it is, from the life-context itself, in which the situation is grounded. Through the power of a determining motive, the deed moves out of the fullness of life into particularity.”

39 Dilthey, GS, VII, 206–7: “A special relation exists between [the expression of lived-experience], the life from which it arises, and the understanding which it brings about. That is to say, the expression can contain more of the psychic nexus than any introspection can reveal. It raises [life] out of depths which consciousness cannot illuminate. At the same time, however, it lies in the nature of the expression of lived-experience that the relationship between it and the spiritual [or human] meaning which is expressed in it can be taken only very approximately as a basis for the understanding. … Thus, in the confines between knowing and doing, a sphere arises in which life is disclosed at a depth not accessible to observation, reflection, and theory.”


“expression,” we should not ignore the notable difference in nuance in German. Dilthey

distinguishes Erlebnisausdrücke (expressions of lived-experience) as the only type among

Lebensäußerungen (life-manifestations in general) that relates back to the individual. Similar in

meaning to Ausdruck, which literally means to “push or press out,” Lebensäußerung

is related to außen “outside,” “external”; its cognate verb is äußern, sich äußern, which has the basic meaning of “to externalize.” According to Dilthey, what humans “externalize” in their actions is their particular state of mind, their emotive and mental attitude. Äußern also means “to utter”; an Äußerung therefore can be an utterance. Äußerung, as Dilthey uses it, can refer to every possible mode of expression, from gesture, voice, movement, rhythmic patterns, visual forms and arrangements to verbal expressions, actions, and attitudes.40

3.4. Verstehen (understanding) and hermeneutics

In light of the above, we need to broaden any narrow understanding we may have of what

hermeneutics is. It is clear that Dilthey links hermeneutics with the interpretation of written

texts.41 But the grasping of the structure of the inner life is based, above all, on the interpretation

of works, works in which the texture of human life comes fully to expression. That is to say,

although the grasping of the structure of the inner life is based above all on the interpretation of

texts, hermeneutics takes on a new and larger significance; it becomes the theory or art, as

Dilthey puts it, not merely of text interpretation but of how life discloses and expresses itself in

anything that encounters the senses.42 Dilthey’s own definition is as follows:

Das kunstmäßige Verstehen dauernd fixierter Lebensäußerungen nennen wir Auslegung. Da nun das geistige Leben nur in der Sprache seinen vollständigen, erschöpfenden und darum eine objektive Auffassung ermöglichenden Ausdruck findet, so vollendet sich die Auslegung in der Interpretation der in der Schrift enthaltenen Reste menschlichen Daseins. Diese Kunst ist die Grundlage der Philologie. Und die Wissenschaft dieser Kunst ist die Hermeneutik.43

40 Mueller-Vollmer, Hermeneutics Reader, 25–26.

41 This does not, however, negate Dilthey’s linking of hermeneutics with non-literary objects such as gestures or actions. We saw this to be the case in Dilthey’s Das Verstehen anderer Personen und ihrer Lebensäußerungen mentioned in the previous section. We may even go as far as to say that a person or a social phenomenon may be viewed as a “text.”

42 In this respect Fuchs is close to Dilthey.

43 Dilthey, GS, VII, 217: “We call the skilled understanding of permanent fixed life-manifestations exegesis.


Because the objects of inquiry for the Geisteswissenschaften are Lebensäußerungen,

hermeneutics, as a methodology of interpretation, becomes crucial for the Geisteswissenschaften.

It can be said that Dilthey thus revived hermeneutics, which had been long neglected by

philosophy, as a paradigm of legitimate cognition.44 This cognition, as we have seen before, does

not have explanation as its goal, as in the Naturwissenschaften, but rather involves

understanding, which is directed at Lebensäußerungen.

For Dilthey, Verstehen (Understanding) is the process by which psychic life comes to be

known through Lebensäußerungen given to the senses.45 As the process of grasping what is

conveyed to us by words, gestures, and the like, understanding is an essential and distinguishing

ingredient of the methodology of all the Geisteswissenschaften.46 However, as a grasping of

communication, understanding is not a method proper; hence, to be fair to Dilthey’s use of

Verstehen we should talk of a method based on, and aiming at, understanding rather than a

method of understanding.47 The notion of understanding has a technical character in Dilthey and

must be distinguished from a general use of the word as a synonym for any kind of

comprehension. It is the apprehension of some spiritual content (e.g., an idea, an intention, a

feeling) manifested in empirically given expressions such as words or gestures.

There are different types of entities that are objects of understanding: 1) immediate

objects such as verbal signs or gestures; 2) meaning of such signs; and 3) people. Understanding

words or signs is a prerequisite of other forms of understanding; it is a matter of knowing the Since it is only in language that human life finds complete and exhaustive expression, and hence expression that can be apprehended objectively, exegesis is accordingly carried out in the interpretation of that residue of human existence which is contained in the literary work. This art is the basis of philology, and the theoretical expression of this art is hermeneutics.”

44 Rickman, Dilthey: Selected Writings, 10.

45 Dilthey, GS, V, 332. Rickman correctly points out that this reference to coming to know “psychic life” as the goal of understanding does not, as such, commit Dilthey to a psychological preoccupation (Dilthey Today, 46).

46 Rickman, Dilthey Today, 44. Note the lasting influence of Dilthey in the names of academic courses and books, particularly in the Humanities, e.g., “Understanding the Old Testament.”

47 Rickman, Dilthey Today, 45. Properly speaking, hermeneutics is more fairly characterized as a method of understanding.


language, the idioms, the terms used, and the grammatical construction.48 Understanding a text

and understanding an author are inevitably interrelated, and this mutual interdependence is an

example of what Dilthey calls the “hermeneutical circle.”49

The term “hermeneutical circle” is familiar enough by now to biblical scholars.50 It is one

of the crucial components of Dilthey’s methodology. As many are already aware from doing

exegesis of the New Testament texts, the circle portrays the process of understanding complex

wholes and their parts. The larger whole, say a pericope in the Gospel according to Mark, can

only be understood with respect to its parts (i.e., words, sentences, paragraphs). Likewise, the

parts attain their contextual meaning in relation to the larger whole. It is a simple process of

elimination of the various, possible meanings of words and syntactic constructions until the

proper meanings can be determined in the light of the entire pericope. Solving the problem of

meaning, then, entails

a to-and-fro, or shuttlecock, movement, though in simple cases we are hardly aware of it. When we are confronted with more complex problems, for example understanding Plato’s philosophy in terms of his individual dialogues and, at the same time, understanding the individual dialogues by reference to the over-all context of his thought, this shuttlecock movement must become a matter of deliberate method.51

Because the hermeneutical circle provides the method through which we can zero in on the

meaning of a Lebensäußerung in the way just described, expressions themselves remain

48 Rickman, Dilthey Today, 46. This was part of the task of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule in approaching

the language world of the New Testament.

49 Rickman, Dilthey Today, 46–7.

50 But we need to be aware about the different ways the basic notion of the hermeneutical circle has been applied in biblical studies. For Bultmann’s existentialist understanding of the New Testament, for example, the circular dynamic of understanding is applied primarily between the text and the reader. This, of course, does not exclude the hermeneutical circle in its basic form, which clarifies the meaning of the text as a whole through an interplay of determinate-indeterminate parts. Bultmann’s dynamic reveals another complex level by showing that the process of zeroing in on the meaning is inseparable from the person who encounters the text in this way.

51 Rickman, Dilthey: Selected Writings, 10–11. Rickman adds that “this illustration is not chosen at random for it describes Schleiermacher’s approach to the interpretation of Plato which Dilthey considered a major advance” (11).


determinate-indeterminate throughout much of the interpretative process. But because of the

process, they become more determined as constituents of a larger whole.52 Verstehen on the purely verbal level is theoretically straightforward enough, but matters

are more complex when we consider understanding the meaning of a text and its relation to

understanding its author.53 Because texts, whether literary, legal, or religious, are purposeful

products, we try to understand the intentions expressed in them; but it is the texts we try to

understand without imposing additional biographical, psychological, or anthropological

interpretations upon them.54 Understanding an expression is primarily a matter of grasping what

is expressed, its meaning, but ultimately, we are talking about understanding people and the

human world.55 Understanding refers to the operation in which the spirit (Geist) grasps the spirit

of another person.56 It opens to us the world of individual persons, and thereby also possibilities

in our own nature.57 Thus, in Paul we are in search of what is pointed to, or revealed, in his

expressions about himself and other human beings. And we are able to understand Paul even

when his explicit communications are not about himself, but about Christ.58 Needless to say, the

knowledge we gain may be patchy and tangential considering the fact that we have to build our

understanding of Paul from only seven letters and from the many expressions culled from

different contexts of his life.

There is a number of prerequisites for understanding to take place. The basic

presupposition is that we all have some basic human features in common and that, in principle,

these common features make an expression understandable. If we were all identical,

52 We should keep this insight firm in our minds as we examine the Galatian text in ch. 5 below.

53 Rickman, Dilthey Today, 47.



56 Palmer, Hermeneutics, 114–15.

57 Dilthey, GS, VII, 145, 215–16.

58 We may even say that to some extent Christology is anthropology, which would be a variation of what Bultmann claimed for all of theology.


understanding would be unnecessary, or at least easy and infallible. On the other hand, if we had

nothing in common, no understanding would be possible. For these reasons, Dilthey considers

hermeneutics both possible and necessary.

Understanding as the mental process by which we access living human experience is the

act which constitutes our best contact with life itself. Like lived-experience (Erlebnis) it has a

fullness that escapes rational theorizing. Paul understood what Christ meant in the depths of his

experience of life and of Christ. Likewise, our understanding of Paul is not a mere act of thought

but a retrospective transposition that can lead to a re-experiencing of the world as he met it in

lived-experience. Dilthey claims that the goal of interpretation is this Nacherleben (re-

experiencing), a forward-oriented refinement of Verstehen, which, in contrast, looks backward.59

Thus, students of Paul’s Christology, such as Seyoon Kim (The Origin of Paul’s Gospel), are on

the right track by claiming experience as the origin of Paul’s thought, but by remaining on the

level of the text and its expressions they fall short of exploring the nature or structure of the

expressions (e.g., Wisdom Christology) through which Paul objectifies his lived-experience.60

Such readings either confuse the means of expression with the meaning itself or fail to go beyond

explaining the expressions (possible meanings of terms and phrases in their historical and literary

contexts) to discern the meaning behind them.

According to Dilthey, meaning is what understanding grasps in the essential reciprocal

interaction of the whole and the parts; it is a sense derived from the individual parts and is

59 Makkreel correctly notes the distinction between understanding and re-experiencing: “The highest task of understanding is to retrospectively articulate the specific dynamic context in which an Erlebnisausdruck originated. Yet when Dilthey seeks to interpret the nature of creativity he speaks of the need for Nacherleben (re-experiencing). The terms Nacherleben and Verstehen are often used sided by side in Dilthey’s final writings. Both involve the finding of an inner meaning of an external objectification. But the er-leben root of Nacherleben indicates that this term is not strictly synonymous with understanding, for Nacherleben reintroduces the forward movement of Erleben that Verstehen had reversed. … Nacherleben is a creative understanding which may go beyond the original” (Dilthey, 328).

60 With respect to Christ-expressions, it seems that Kim, like many others, has forgotten the lessons from hermeneutics. We are not in search of explanative accounts of the expressions; rather we are in search of the interpretation of the expressions in their contexts which render the expressions understandable as well as the larger patterns of meaning discernible.


something historical, a relationship of whole to parts seen by us from a given standpoint, at a

given time, for a given combination of parts; it is not something above or outside history but a

part of a hermeneutical circle always historically defined.61 In trying to understand Paul’s

statements about Christ we may understand the intended meaning, but we should not claim that

that meaning resides merely at the discursive level of his statements. In the reciprocal interaction

of the hermeneutical circle as we explore the Pauline corpus, we discover variations of Paul’s

expressions which, when juxtaposed and compared, produce tension, if not outright

contradictions.62 Dilthey’s emphasis on the connection between Ausdruck and Erlebnis goads us

to penetrate through the expressions to the experiences responsible for them.

In order to grasp the full dimensions of Dilthey’s concept of understanding, we must also

consider it within the context in which he placed it. According to Dilthey, what we as humanists

or human scientists try to understand is always a manifestation of human life, a Lebensäußerung

(life-manifestation). But understanding itself is a manifestation of life; acts of understanding are

lived by us and as such also constitute Erlebnisse, which function as the middle ground in

Dilthey’s system.63 An expression of lived-experience (Erlebnisausdruck) points back at an

Erlebnis as its source, and we may understand the expressed meaning (Ausdruck) again in the

form of a Nacherlebnis.

The foregoing structure, though not an analytic fact, is the way life intuitively becomes

intelligible to the experiencing and expressing human being. This tripartite structure of Erlebnis,


62 E.g., the mythological language of 1 Cor 8.6 (ajllÆ hJmi`n ei|~ qeo;~ oJ path;r ejx ou| ta; pavnta kai; hJmei`~ eij~ aujtovn, kai; ei|~ kuvrio~ ÆIhsou`~ Cristo;~, diÆ ou| ta; pavnta kai; hJmei`~ diÆ aujtou`) and the historical language of Rom 1.3 (peri; tou` uiJou` aujtou` tou` genomevnou ejk spevrmato~ Daui;d kata; savrka). With respect to the latter, Paul’s “Christology” is absolutely not a quest of the historical Jesus as it is represented by the liberal theological essays of the nineteenth century, or by the so-called “new quest” initiated by Käsemann, or even by the renewed vigor with which some are even now using the latest findings and technology to correct and embellish the historical portraits of years past (e.g., James Charlesworth, E. P. Sanders, Jesus Seminar). Departing from the textual level, we are dealing with the hermeneutical phenomenon of Paul’s Jesus as the Lord Christ who he knows has irrevocably changed his Jewish Weltanschauung.



Ausdruck, and Verstehen64 may seem at first glance to be quite remote from an inquiry into

Pauline Christology, but Dilthey’s insights can help us read the letters in a different light. At the

least, it allows us to construe Paul’s letters not so much as documents containing theological

doctrines, but rather as Erlebnisausdrücke which emerge first and foremost from his

understanding (Verstehen) of Erlebnisse. The structure of Erlebnis-Ausdruck-Verstehen also

keeps our focus firmly on the crucial fact that Paul’s letters should never be read without

considerations of their particular, historical contexts, a point which Beker emphasized through

the contingency-coherence model of interpretation in Paul the Apostle.

3.5. Dilthey’s theory of categories

Even though Dilthey’s thinking was influenced by Schleiermacher, he modified, if not

abandoned, Schleiermacher’s contention that understanding was primarily rooted in language

and Schleiermacher’s conception of the linguistic nature of human beings. According to Dilthey,

understanding, as a methodological concept, has its roots in the process of human life itself: it is

primarily a “category of life” (Lebenskategorie).65 By Lebenskategorie Dilthey that in ordinary

life we find ourselves having to “understand” what is happening around us, so that we may

respond accordingly.66 Thus, our behavior reflects our lived understanding of our social or

cultural environment.67

64 Dilthey, GS, VII, 131: “Die Geisteswissenschaften beruhen auf dem Verhältnis von Erlebnis, Ausdruck und

Verstehen. So ist ihre Entwicklung abhängig sowohl von der Vertiefung der Erlebnisse als auch von der zunehmenden Richtung auf das Ausschöpfen ihres Gehaltes, und sie ist zugleich bedingt durch die Ausbreitung des Verstehens auf die ganze Objektivation des Geistes und das immer vollständigere und methodischere Herausholen des Geistigen aus den verschiedenen Lebensäußerungen.” (The human sciences rest on the relationship of lived-experience, expression, and understanding. Thus their development depends on the deepening of lived-experiences as well as on the increasing tendency to reveal their content; at the same time, it is conditioned by the spread of understanding over the entire objectification of the spirit and by the ever complete and methodical extraction of the spiritual from the various life-manifestations.)



67 Mueller-Vollmer, Hermeneutics Reader, 25. As already mentioned (section 3.1), for Dilthey all “higher” or complex manifestations of understanding, including those in the Geisteswissenschaften, result from “lower” or


The method I will use in dealing with Paul’s experience of Christ borrows from Dilthey’s

theory of categories by means of which we may organize the various statements in Paul and

understand them in relation to each other. In his attempt to understand meaning in human life,

Dilthey appropriated Kant’s notion of categories of the understanding and of categorical

judgments. A category is a principle for organizing the raw materials of experience, a rule by

which we order sense impressions. But whereas Kant dealt primarily with the physical realm,

Dilthey applied Kantian principles to the experience of life. He defined a category as a concept

which expresses or establishes a relationship.68 Furthermore, he distinguished between “formal

categories” and “categories of life” or “real” categories. Formal categories, such as identity and

equality, are rooted in reason as such and designate relations which pervade the whole of reality.

The categories of life refer to “connections in life”; they are not transparent to reason and cannot

be neatly sorted out.69 Also, their number and relation to each other cannot be established once

and for all.70

Formal categories spring from the elementary acts of thought; they are concepts (e.g.,

unity, multiplicity, identity, difference, degree, relation) which stand for what becomes

comprehensible through these acts of thought.71 Formal categories are abstract expressions for

the logical acts of distinguishing, identifying, apprehending degrees of differences, combining,

and dividing.72 As such, they are the formal conditions for understanding and knowing in both

primitive forms of understanding.

68 Dilthey, GS, XIX, 360.

69 Dilthey, GS, XIX, 360; Rickman, Dilthey Today, 26–27.

70 Dilthey, GS, XIX, 361. Also GS, VII, 232: “Und wenn wir nun diese Beziehungen [eines Ganzen zu seinen Teilen] als Kategorien abstrakt herausheben, dann liegt in diesem Verfahren selbst, daß die Zahl dieser Kategorien nicht abgrenzbar ist und ihr Verhältnis nicht auf eine logische Form gebracht werden kann.” (And when we abstract these relationships [between the whole and its parts] as categories, this process itself shows that the number of these categories cannot be limited and their relationship cannot be systematized into a logical form.)




the Geistes- and the Naturwissenschaften.73 On the other hand, categories of life (or real

categories) are ways of interpreting events in terms of relationships and are derived from

empirical generalization. Accordingly, Dilthey considered the relation between inner and outer,

i.e., mental content and its physical expressions, an important category of life. As we can guess,

these categories of life are not the same for the Geistes- and the Naturwissenschaften.74

Dilthey argued for a temporal structure of human experience with categories of meaning

(past), value (present), and purpose (future).75 This temporal dimension led Dilthey to claim that

the category of time or temporality (Zeitlichkeit) formed the basis for all the others.76 Another

category of life is power (Kraft), which corresponds to the category of causality in the physical

world.77 Other categories of life are part and whole, which is one of the more comprehensive

categories like meaning,78 development, and ends and means, which also refers to the category

of purpose. Such categories operate primarily below the level of conscious deliberation, although

we use them to interpret life consciously and deliberately.

It is these categories, these basic forms (e.g., “A causes B” [category of causality] or “A

targets or intends B” [category of purpose]) that are at work when we make statements or

judgments. For instance, if we make the statement (or the specific, empirical judgment) in the

physical realm, “The endless rain flooded the Emory campus,” we are presupposing the



75 Among these categories Dilthey considered meaning (Bedeutung) the most comprehensive category, on which the others depend (Dilthey, GS, VII, 232): “Darin aber, daß der Zusammenhang des Lebensverlaufes nur durch die Kategorie der Bedeutung der einzelnen Teile des Lebens in bezug auf das Verstehen des Ganzen auffaßbar ist, daß ebenso jeder Ausschnitt am Leben der Menschheit nur so verständlich ist, davon sind alle anderen abhängig. Bedeutung ist die umfassende Kategorie, unter welcher das Leben auffaßbar wird.” (But because the coherence of a course of life, and likewise any portion of the life of mankind, can only be grasped through the category of the meaning of individual parts of life in relation to the understanding of the whole, all the other [categories] depend on this [i.e., category of meaning]. Meaning is the comprehensive category through which life can be understood.)





categorical statement or judgment “Every event has a cause.” In other words, we impose the

category of causality, i.e., the fundamental form of judgment “A causes B,” on the given data.

This is paralleled with respect to the category of purpose in the judgment (or expression) “Emory

should be an equal opportunity employer,” which presupposes the categorical judgment “All

people should be treated equal.”79 We presuppose the general judgments, and they make the

individual judgments possible and intelligible.

Another aspect of categories is that they can be applied in a multitude of ways. For

example, the same categorical judgment “All people should be treated equal” can be at the root

of particular expressions like “The Pharaoh should never have enslaved the Hebrews” and “The

sex of a fetus should not be disclosed to parents in China.” The former is a clearer expression of

the category of egalitarianism, if we may call it that for the sake of this example. The latter

involves a more complicated investigation into the sociological context in which it is uttered.

Nevertheless, it should not be too difficult to discern that the judgment expresses a repudiation of

aborting female fetuses for the sake of securing a male heir under the legal mandate of allowing

only one child per family in China. These over-simplified examples point out the multitude of

possible judgments which can flow from a single categorical judgment. This feature of categories

will be helpful to keep in mind when we approach Pauline expressions, which, we have already

noted, is driven on the whole by contingent situations.

In going through some of Paul’s statements concerning Christ, I have examined some

characteristic patterns of experience (and thought) as a means of suggesting categorical

judgments and religious categories that are presupposed by Paul, governing his experience and

providing basic forms to his expressions. As the following section will make clear, I will focus

on those expressions which seem to presuppose the category of life which we may call the

79 It would be instructive to note that this same categorical judgment can give rise to other expressions which

may be in tension. For example, the statement “Emory’s admissions office should not give preference to minority applicants.” In recent years, the debate over admissions policy in California exhibited this very peculiar tension between two groups who were driven by the common conviction of equality, yet who disagreed on the policies that would effect it.


category of unity-differentiation, or simply the category of unity. Part of the task in the

dissertation would be to show how the categorical judgments we discern in Paul may help us

understand the underlying coherence that links the variety and even inconsistency of Paul’s

expressions. This, I hope, will lead us to see how his expressions still hold meaning for us today.

3.6. The erworbener seelischer Zusammenhang (the acquired psychic nexus) and the objektiver Geist (objective spirit)

One last item needs to be mentioned: Dilthey’s notion of an acquired psychic nexus

(erworbener seelischer Zusammenhang). Although Dilthey stresses the continuity and flow of

psychic life, he also insists that it is structured and that the structural nexus of psychic life is

initially apprehended through the self-world correlation.80 In the midst of the flow of psychic

processes, only what constitutes the form of our conscious life itself is permanent: the

corelationship of the self and the objective world.81 In this schema,

the self as correlate of the world is not an independent given; its individuality is to be acquired. The real self develops especially through the valuations arising in the life of feeling and instinct.82 When we evaluate our representations of the world through our feelings, we begin to see the things around us as favorable or not to our own life. Accordingly, instinctive modes of behavior are transformed into more reflective modes. Feelings and interests are central to the structure of psychic life because they mediate the stimulus-response relation: impulsive reactions to the conditions of life can gradually be developed into more purposive forms of action.83

Normally human beings are born ready to be exposed to a world as a given. The world in

toto includes the world of nature and the world of objective spirit (objektiver Geist), which

consists of all the vestiges of human life. A brief remark on Dilthey’s notion of objective spirit

would be appropriate here since it relates to his dynamic concept of the acquired psychic nexus

and particularly since the Diltheyan concept of the objective spirit is unlike that of Hegel’s,

80 Makkreel, introduction to Descriptive Psychology and Historical Understanding, by Wilhelm Dilthey (trans.

R. M. Zaner and K. L. Heiges; The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977), 9.

81 Dilthey, GS, V, 200.

82 See Dilthey, GS, V, 205.

83 Makkreel, introduction to Descriptive Psychology, 10.


which is the better known. Whereas Hegel’s objective spirit includes nature—according to his

objective-idealistic perspective, the whole objective world needs to be informed or grasped by

the human spirit (or mind)—Dilthey’s concept incorporates only the human, historical

objectifications that can be distinguished from nature by the distinctive character of their

historical significance.84

Because Dilthey defines the peculiarity of subject matter [of history], not materially, but in terms of an embodied meaning, no ontological dualism between nature and history need be seen here. The Neo-Kantian criticism of the Naturwissenschaft-Geisteswissenschaft distinction can still be avoided if it is acknowledged that there exists a difference between subject matter (Sache) and material (Material). Dilthey continues to affirm that history receives its material from nature, but once its objects have been methodologically interpreted as the embodiment of spirit, they must be distinguished (sachlich unterscheidet) as constituting the subject matter of historical knowledge (GS, VII, 118).85

The Geisteswissenschaften have as the objects of their inquiry everything that bears the effects of

human life.86 That is to say, the objective spirit is what the Geisteswissenschaften attempt to

understand.

Thus the term objektiver Geist in Dilthey refers to the historical world of sensible

“objects” such as language, customs, gestures, laws, art, and so forth, in other words, everything

that constitutes the human world.

In diesem objektiven Geist ist die Vergangenheit dauernde beständige Gegenwart für uns. Sein Gebiet reicht von dem Stil des Lebens, den Formen des Verkehrs zum Zusammenhang der Zwecke, den die Gesellschaft sich gebildet hat, zu Sitte, Recht, Staat, Religion, Kunst, Wissenschaften und Philosophie. … Aus dieser Welt des objektiven Geistes empfängt von der ersten Kindheit ab unser Selbst seine Nahrung. Sie ist auch das Medium, in welchem sich das Verständnis anderer Personen und ihrer Lebensäußerung vollzieht.87


85 Makkreel, Dilthey, 306.

86 Dilthey, GS, VII, 147–148

87 Dilthey, GS, VII, 208: In this objective spirit the past is a perpetual and permanent present for us. Its realm extends from the style of life, the forms of social relations to the set of purposes, which society has established for itself, to custom, law, the state, religion, art, science, and philosophy. … From this world of objective spirit our self receives its nourishment from the earliest childhood on. It is also the medium in which the understanding of other persons and their life-manifestation is accomplished.


Perceived and experienced, the historical world or objective spirit provides the conditions and

data for the psychic nexus of an individual (e.g., language and social conventions). Thus we

acquire language that is bound to a world outlook and we begin to participate in the world; that

participation in turn contributes to the objective spirit to be experienced by another individual or

the succeeding generations.

The objective spirit is significant for an individual’s acquired psychic nexus since it is the

public domain in which we are continuously immersed, both consciously and unconsciously. It

provides the common language world or context for the development of the individualized

psychic nexus that a person acquires during his or her lifetime. The objective spirit contains in it

what may be acquired by an individual psychic nexus in the course of an entire life that is lived

in constant contact with the objective spirit that surrounds it, informs it, and incorporates the

individual’s own contributions. In other words, the notion of an acquired psychic nexus deals

with the cumulative, hence dynamic, experience in life within the context of a prevenient and

ever changing world.88

What Dilthey calls the erworbener seelischer Zusammenhang (acquired psychic nexus)

or erworbener Zusammenhang des Seelenlebens (acquired nexus of psychic life), is simply the

concept designed to point to the formation of the self.

This nexus constitutes a more concrete form of the structural nexus—it articulates the self-world correlation psycho-historically. The acquired psychic nexus embodies the history of the development of an individual and reveals the structural ordering of his past experience.89 Encompassing his knowledge of the world, his evaluations and dispositions to act, it controls and orients all present and future experience. As a person’s real individuality develops, this acquired psychic nexus becomes more specific and finely articulated.90

88 The acquired psychic nexus is not a fixed meaning complex but one that is dynamically engaged in the

correlation of the individual and the world. Thus, it would be misguided to conceive of a static set of meaning(s). Rather, we discern an ever-developing nexus of meaning within an individual life that is in constant, dynamic contact with the world within which the nexus is hermeneutically imbedded.

89 This will be instrumental in my interpretation of Gal 1–2 in ch. 5 below.

90 Makkreel, introduction to Descriptive Psychology, 10. See Dilthey, GS, V, 217.


This psychic nexus can be thought of as the complex interconnections of all that a person

develops from contact with the world over time. The notion of the acquired psychic nexus as the

inner human complex where the experiences of the world hang together is, despite its theoretical

guise, a natural way that human beings become individuals. It is a common denominator for

every person who encounters and engages in the world. Its constant development is something

we all undergo and is as natural as breathing. Thus the acquired psychic nexus is something we

should keep in mind when we try to understand Paul.91

For our purposes we want to use this theoretical exposition of the relationship between

the world and an individual, as well as the way in which one acquires a psychic nexus, to help us

investigate the way Paul’s individuality and creativity comes through the acquired means of

expression and communication. As we read Paul’s letters, we become aware of the particular

mode of experience and expression which he developed within his given context. We can

recognize, for instance, the complexity of Paul’s psychic nexus which he acquired as a Greek-

speaking Jew and as a Roman citizen in the Hellenistic world of the Roman Empire. Objects like

apocalyptic vocabulary, the Septuagint, Paul’s Pharisaic training, Stoicism, mystery religions, all

of which can be discerned on the textual level of his letters, help fill out his complex acquired

91 In this regard, it is no surprise that in summarizing and reconsidering the models and metaphors that were

used by members of Society of Biblical Literature’s Pauline Theology Group, Dunn makes the following, interesting observation:

We became accustomed to images like substratum, master-symbolism, basic grammar, integrative metaphor, narrative structure, and so on. The most popular one, by a short head, seems to have been that of “lens.” … For myself I wonder if such imagery is not as much a hindrance as a help: the flash of illumination which it brings to one aspect of the process of Paul’s theology can be soon lost in the qualifications and complications we have to introduce to make the image adaptable to the complex reality of that theology. Is there not a simpler and more natural model or parallel—that of our own theologizing? … our best insights into the complexity of Paul’s theology as activity may well come from reflection on our own activity in theologizing. (“In Quest of Paul’s Theology,” 709)

In a sense, Dunn’s conclusion and frustrations with the multitude of methods reflect a Diltheyan understanding, namely, that Paul’s way of experiencing life and expressing himself would not have been too unlike our own. Since the acquired psychic nexus refers to the structure for normal human life—especially with respect to individuation and individuality—it embraces or encompasses the three different levels or phases with which Dunn describes the act of theologizing: “the inherited, axiomatic level of taken-for-granted presuppositions, the transformative moments of personal insight and development, and the interaction with diverse situations and issues” (“In Quest of Paul’s Theology,” 713).


psychic nexus. Hence, we may say that Paul breathed and lived inextricably within that language

world, such that his experience of reconciliation between the Gentiles and the God of the Jews

through Christ, or between the Jews and Gentiles, i.e., the experience of unity which I would

claim is a fundamental Christ-experience, took place as an outworking of his acquired psychic

nexus within that particular configuration or realm of objects.

It should be clear that the objective spirit at large is closely connected with the acquired

psychic nexus of an individual. At the same time, we should keep in mind Dilthey’s point,

mentioned above, that the objective spirit is also the public medium in which the understanding

of other persons becomes possible.92 When we approach Paul’s letters, it will be essential to

remember how vital the objective spirit is not only to the development of Paul’s acquired psychic

nexus, but also to the capacity of his audience to understand him and his letters. After all, all the

individually acquired psychic nexus of Paul’s contemporaries developed within a shared world

of meaning. Because it was a common medium, the very same objective spirit, including the

Jewish and Greco-Roman environment that informed Paul’s lived-experience and his written

expressions, allowed him to assume that his addressees would understand him and in fact

enabled them to do so.

As an example of how the acquired psychic nexus can be seen in action, we can take the

influence of Jewish and Stoic thought on Paul’s perception of the world.93 We can identify some

passages in Paul, for instance, that can be categorized as belonging to the world of Jewish

thought or to that of Stoic philosophy in order to compare and see if a lived-experience can be

expressed through two different idioms within Paul’s acquired psychic nexus (Jewish thought

and Stoic thought). Paul uses the Stoic metaphor of the body in 1 Cor 12.12–31 and the story of

Abraham’s justification (Gen 5.16) in Rom 4.1–25 and Gal 3.6–18 to express the same

fundamental point, viz., the unity in Christ. Through such a juxtaposition of Paul’s language


93 Granted that I can only provide a superficial presentation of Stoicism for the sake of illustration, we can nevertheless appreciate how the two Weltanschauungen coordinate with each other in a single human being.


world of Judaism and that of the Stoa we can recognize that identical or similar perceptions and

experiences can be expressed through more than one symbolic structure as parts of Paul’s

acquired psychic nexus, which provides the language through which his Erlebnisse may be

expressed. No one-to-one correlation needs to be inferred between the surface level of the

concepts or vocabulary of one specific symbolic system and that which finds expression by

means of it, for even though people of different times and places may have similar experiences

of life, e.g., love, their expressions will be determined by their particular acquired psychic

nexus.94

One point of harmonious contact between Jewish and Stoic thought concerns the external

reality which was perceived to have disappointed the course of history. In a nutshell, Stoicism

was one of the responses to the demise of the idyllic Greek city-states and also to the

94 Here is where Hans Dieter Betz’s commentary (Galatians [Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979]) went

perhaps a bit too far, as Richard Longenecker would put it (Galatians [WBC 41; Dallas: Word, 1990], cxi). Longenecker points out that Betz’s rhetorical analysis of Galatians is in terms of an apologetic letter conforming closely to the ancient Greco-Roman requirements of forensic rhetoric, but too rigidly so (cix). Longenecker makes the correct observation that Paul was immersed just as much in the rhetoric of the Septuagint and that the rhetorical features that Betz identifies as Greco-Roman could just as well be construed as reflecting the Jewish influence on Paul, including his Pharisaic background:

for example, the characterization of his opponents in 1.7 as oiJ taravssonte~ (“the troublers,” see also 5.10 and 6.17) may very well be an allusion to Achar “the troubler of Israel” (cf. 1 Chr 2.7); the use of curses in 1.8–9 was an essential part of the covenant form; the appeal to revelation in 1.12, 16; 2.2 as the basis for a prophetic ministry is a common feature in the OT (cf. Exod 3–6; Isa 6; Jer 1); the characterization of persons as being “false” in 2.4, 6, 11–14 occurs often in the OT (e.g., Jer 6.13; 26.7–16; 27.9; 28.1; 29.1, 8); the recital of Israel’s history beginning with Abraham is, of course, frequent in the OT (cf. Josh 24.2–3; Neh 9.7–8; Isa 5.2); and the quotation of divine oracles and the precepts of wise men, as in 3.6–14, is an OT commonplace. And all this has not even touched on the many parallels that can be drawn from Paul’s Pharisaic background, as codified later in the Talmud and Midrashim. (cxii) Although not articulated in Diltheyan terminology, Longenecker’s sense of Paul’s expressions appears to

appreciate the crucial significance of the varieties within the objective spirit of Paul’s world that formed and informed Paul’s development. Betz focuses mainly on one of the varieties, viz., the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition, and thereby does not do justice to the high probability that Paul’s Jewish environment had equal, if not more, influence on the way Paul experienced life and expressed himself.

Another kind of criticism from Boers is that Betz’s rigidness in applying the rhetorical form of apology to Galatians precludes other possible insights into the text:

There is no place for a hermeneutical circle in the sense of Bultmann; everything moves from the theory concerning the letter’s meaning to the letter. The letter itself, the subject-matter of the interpretation, is left no opportunity to correct and refine the theory. Betz no longer appears to approach the letter with a question; all questions appear to have been answered. (Justification of the Gentiles, 49)


disintegration of the Greek ways of life. In the face of the Macedonian conquest, which

facilitated easier travel as well as communication, the barbarians’ coexistence among the Greeks

caused tensions in many dimensions of life. One of the philosophies which addressed such

tensions resulting from the new cosmopolitan reality was Stoicism. Beginning with Zeno of

Citium (ca. 335–263 BC), himself an outsider to Athens who learned from the Cynic way of life,

the alternative to the unreliable flux and fear of external experiences became popular in the

Hellenistic world. Adopting a bold attitude armed with such concepts as aujtavrkeia

(contentment or self-sufficiency), ajpavqeia (insensibility to suffering; ajtaraxiva [freedom from

passion] in Epictetus), and ajdiavforon (indifference), the adherents of the Stoa could find an

inner security amidst fear and disturbance in the world (i.e., their Sitz im Leben) and thus lead

lives of contentment and hope of perhaps dissolving into the universal lovgo~.95 Likewise, the

termination of Jewish independence and the rise of Rome, although more benevolent than the

Seleucid empire, heightened the eschatological expectations of the Jewish people as they, too,

sought for a resolution in an apocalyptic Messiah and the arrival of God’s kingdom. In both

Stoicism and Jewish apocalypticism, the response is to a world gone awry and the hope is for the

establishment of order. Both kinds of Weltanschauungen aim to help people persevere and

transcend perceived, external circumstances.96

For now, the point of this juxtaposition of Paul’s Jewish language world and that of the

Stoa is to recognize that identical or similar realities can be experienced and expressed through

more than one symbolic structure. That is to say, both Judaism and Stoicism, as parts of Paul’s

acquired psychic nexus, provide the language through which Paul’s lived-experience may be

expressed.

95 E.g., Epictetus, Discourses 3.24.116.

96 By way of quick illustration, this Stoic-Jewish merger may be gleaned from Paul’s catalogues of suffering (e.g., 1 Cor 4.10–13; 2 Cor 4.8–12; 6.4–10; 11.23–29; 12.10), which themselves are formally related to the diatribe. In response to present conditions, generally negatively experienced, both Jewish apocalyptic expectation and Stoic philosophy could function as positive ways to understand and exist in a world which is not in human control or even out of control (see, e.g., Epictetus, Encheiridion 1.5).


Dilthey’s way of viewing an individual’s acquired psychic nexus holds a particular

significance in the current debates concerning what we may generally refer to as coherence and

contingency in Paul. In a recent Society of Biblical Literature seminar paper, Paul Meyer offers a

retrospective appraisal and discussion of the work of the Pauline Theology Group begun in 1985.

Meyer describes the situation as follows:

Instead of assuming most of the time that Paul’s “theology” or “convictions” are the resource or starting point from which he addresses the issues placed before him, may one rather, as kind of “experiment in thought,” think of them more consistently as the end-product and result, the outcome to which he arrives in the process of argument, his “hermeneutic,” or his “theologizing”? Many features of Paul’s letters that have come under scrutiny in the course of these discussions recommend such a shift.97

From Dilthey’s vantage point this shift is only natural and to be expected. Dilthey’s

understanding of the acquired psychic nexus could have given New Testament scholars this

insight long ago. In fact, according to Dilthey’s concept of the nexus, the reversal of direction

which Meyer describes above needs to be reconfigured, such that the fundamental dynamic is not

one-directional but reciprocal at all times during the course of human life. That is to say, the

relationship between the self and the world, and between the coherence of Paul’s gospel and the

historical contingencies, forms a hermeneutical circle.98 Paul’s impact on the situations he dealt

with and the way that the situations shaped him and his responses to them should be seen

comprehensively as forming his acquired psychic nexus.

97 P. Meyer, “Pauline Theology,” 697.

98 Although this formulation seems to echo Beker’s approach (see ch. 2), a distinction should be made. Beker’s analysis has as its coherence the apocalyptic worldview of Paul, which in the light of my analysis would be a part, no matter how significant, of the objective spirit from which Paul drew and in which he participated. From my Diltheyan perspective, the coherence can be seen as the totality of Paul’s acquired psychic nexus. Or to put it more simply, the coherence (pace Beker) is Paul himself.


3.7. Autobiography as an access to experience

According to Dilthey, meaning arises from the interplay between individuals and their

environment, and from the relationship which the parts of one’s life have to each other.99 In that

light he finds autobiographies, above all other kinds of texts to be the most helpful sources in his

exploration of the categories since they are the most direct expressions of reflection about life.100

Welcher ist nun aber dieser eigene Sinn, in welchem die Teile des Lebens der Menschheit zu einem Ganzen verbunden sind? Welche sind die Kategorien, in denen wir uns verstehend dieses Ganzen bemächtigen? Ich blicke in die Selbstbiographien, welche der direkteste Ausdruck der Besinnung über das Leben sind. Augustin, Rousseau, Goethe zeigen ihre typischen geschichtlichen Formen. Wie erfassen diese Schriftsteller nun verstehend den Zusammenhang der verschiedenen Teile ihres eignen Lebensverlaufes?101

So, for example, in discussing Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, an autobiography

published in 1782, Dilthey notices that the outer events (or different parts) of a life have been

interpreted by a nexus (Zusammenhang) other than cause and effect, as in the

Naturwissenschaften, one that is constituted by such words as value, purpose, significance, and

meaning. That is to say, human experiences are related in terms of the categories of life.102

Dilthey further notes that interpretation takes place through a special combination of these

categories of life.103 Our understanding the world or other people or their productions involves

the fundamental apprehension of these real categories, but when one examines one’s own life

and its various parts, the process of understanding takes on a very intimate, unique character

which makes autobiography a particularly interesting way of understanding life.


100 Dilthey, GS, VII, 198–202.

101 Dilthey, GS, VII, 198: “But now what is this sense, in which the parts of human life are connected to a whole? What are the categories with which we can understand this whole? I look at autobiography, which is the most direct expression of the meaning of life. Augustine, Rousseau, and Goethe provide its typical, historical forms. How do these authors grasp the nexus of the various parts of their own life?”

102 Dilthey, GS, VII, 199, 201.



Because what Dilthey says about autobiography is especially relevant to the method we

will follow in examining Paul’s letter to the Galatians, it is worth reflecting on the following

extensive excerpts from the Gesammelte Schriften, volume VII.

Die Selbstbiographie ist die höchste und am meisten instruktive Form, in welcher uns das Verstehen des Lebens entgegentritt. Hier ist ein Lebenslauf das Äußere, sinnlich Erscheinende, von welchem aus das Verstehen zu dem vorandringt, was diesen Lebenslauf innerhalb eines bestimmten Milieu hervorgebracht hat. Und zwar ist der, welcher diesen Lebenslauf versteht, identisch mit dem, der ihn hervorgebracht hat. Hieraus ergibt sich eine besondere Intimität des Verstehens. Derselbe Mensch, der den Zusammenhang in der Geschichte seines Lebens sucht, hat in all dem, was er als Werte seines Lebens gefühlt, als Zwecke desselben realisiert, als Lebensplan entworfen hat, was er rückblickend als seine Entwicklung, vorwärtsblickend als die Gestaltung seines Lebens und dessen höchstes Gut erfaßt hat—in alledem hat er schon einen Zusammenhang seines Lebens unter verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten gebildet, der nun jetzt ausgesprochen werden soll.104

What Dilthey describes as a special intimacy of understanding (besondere Intimität des

Verstehens) refers to the privileged position of the interpreter in the case of autobiography, since

what he interprets is his own life. In other words, an autobiography gives us an “inside scoop” on

a person’s life which no one else can attain. As Dilthey goes on to explain, this intimacy gives us

an advantage in understanding the author since much of the hermeneutical task is done by the

writing of the autobiography, or as Dilthey puts it, by life itself.

Er hat in der Erinnerung die Momente seines Lebens, die er als bedeutsam erfuhr, herausgehoben und akzentuiert und die anderen in Vergessenheit versinken lassen. Die Täuschungen des Momentes über dessen Bedeutung hat dann die Zukunft ihm berichtigt. So sind die nächsten Aufgaben für die Auffassung und Darstellung geschichtlichen Zusammenhangs hier schon durch das Leben selber halb gelöst. Die Einheiten sind in den Konzeptionen von Erlebnissen gebildet, in denen Gegenwärtiges und Vergangenes durch eine gemeinsame Bedeutung zusammengehalten ist. unter diesen Erlebnissen sind diejenigen, die für sich und den Zusammenhang des Lebens eine

104 Dilthey, GS, VII, 199–200 (italics mine): “Autobiography is the highest and the most instructive form

through which the understanding of life encounters us. Here a course of life is the external, the sensible phenomenon, from which understanding penetrates to what produced this life within a particular environment. In fact, the person who understands this course of life is the very same one who produced it. This results in a special intimacy of understanding. The same person who seeks the nexus in the history of his life has, from various points of view, already established a nexus which is now being articulated. He has established this nexus in what he has sensed as values, realized as purposes, and conceived as a plan for his life, as well as in what he has understood retrospectively as development and prospectively as the shaping of his life and as its highest good.” This understanding of autobiography, as well as the one articulated in the next excerpt (see footnote 105), will play a critical role in my interpretation of Gal 1–2 in ch. 5.


besondere Dignität haben, in der Erinnerung bewahrt und aus dem endlosen Fluß des Geschehenen und Vergessenen herausgehoben; und ein Zusammenhang ist im Leben selber gebildet worden, von verschiedenen Standorten desselben aus, in beständigen Verschiebungen. Da ist also das Geschäft historischer Darstellung schon durch das Leben selber halb getan. Einheiten sind als Erlebnisse geformt; aus der endlosen, zahllosen Vielheit ist eine Auswahl dessen vorbereitet, was darstellungswürdig ist. Und zwischen diesen Gliedern ist ein Zusammenhang gesehen, der freilich nicht ein einfaches Abbild des realen Lebensverlaufs so vieler Jahre sein kann, der es auch nicht sein will, weil es sich eben um ein Verstehen handelt, der aber doch das ausspricht, was ein individuelles Leben selber von dem Zusammenhang in ihm weiß.105

Following Dilthey’s insights into autobiography when we look at Paul’s letters, we

should pay special attention to passages which indicate autobiographical reflections by Paul

since they would provide good testing ground for Dilthey’s theory, as well as a good starting

point for exploring how Paul saw the different parts of his own life within a comprehensive

whole. With Paul’s letters, however, we must keep in mind that they are in responses to specific

situations in his life, not deliberate attempts to write an autobiography. With this proviso, if

Dilthey is correct, it would be in passages where Paul lifts out experiences from his past, more so

than elsewhere, that we can discern what was meaningful for his life.

In Dilthey’s discussion of autobiography above, we note again his way of construing the

meaning of life in relation to the temporal structure (past-meaning, present-value, future-

purpose), which gives us a clue as to how we may systematically approach Paul’s letters as the

texts from which we may infer the deeper structures of his thought concerning Christ and what

Christ meant in his life. For example, we may estimate what meaning or value (in a categorical

sense) Christ had in Paul’s life from the way he responded to the contingent situations revealed

105 Dilthey, GS, VII, 200 (italics mine): “In remembering, he has lifted out and accentuated the moments of his

life which he experienced as important, and allowed others to sink into forgetfulness. The future has corrected for him the illusions of the significance of some moments. So the immediate tasks of understanding and presenting the historical nexus are already half solved by life itself. The units are formed in the conceptions of experiences in which the present and past are held together by a common meaning. Among these experiences are those which have a special dignity in themselves and for the nexus of his life, and have been preserved in memory and lifted out of the endless stream of past and forgotten events; and from different standpoints of life a nexus has been formed in life itself amidst constant fluctuation. Thus, the work of historical presentation is already half accomplished by life itself. Units have been formed as experiences; from an endless, countless multitude a selection of what is worth presenting has been prepared. And between these parts, a nexus is seen which certainly cannot be a simple likeness of the real course of life of so many years—nor does it intend to be such, precisely because understanding is involved—but does indeed express what an individual life itself knows about the nexus within it.” See also footnote 104.


in his letters. We may also glimpse into Paul’s past through his own understanding of his past

experiences (e.g., in Gal 1.11–2.21 or Phil 3.4–9). Likewise, we may see his purposes (in the

categorical sense) from the way he anticipates the future.

By sifting through the letters to see what Paul thought about Christ, we can find the

relational categories which inform his experience of Christ and of life itself. That is to say, we

should be able to find the deeper structures of his experience of life that function as a grid onto

which we can map out the variety of expressions in Paul, even those that do not cohere

systematically at the textual level. Taking our cue from Dilthey, we should look beyond the

specific experiences to their characteristic patterns.106

3.8. Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie and Paul’s letters

From Dilthey’s point of view, we should approach Pauline texts as phenomena not to be

examined as we would natural phenomena, but as expressions that arise from experiences in

Paul’s life. According to this orientation toward Paul’s letters, we should begin by assuming a

unity of experience, in the sense of a Zusammenhang, which embraces the variety of experiences

prior to what Paul wrote. That is to say, his various experiences cohered and formed a nexus of

meaning for him before the occurrence of intentional reflections precipitated by particular

situations that demanded his response. This move spares us the difficult, if not impossible, task

of reconstructing a unity or harmony in Paul’s expressions or statements by systematically

reconciling all of what he wrote, a procedure that would be more akin to the methods of the

natural sciences. Thus, for our initial methodological step, we can accept that a fundamental

unity is not contradicted by inconsistencies that appear on the level of expressions. The unity of

Paul’s experience in his acquired psychic nexus does not necessitate a uniformity of expression.

Dilthey, a rough contemporary of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, would agree that

what Paul tried to bring to expression was primarily his experience of Christ and that the

expressions on the textual level do not in and of themselves have to constitute a coherent,



systematic set of ideas. We already noted in chapter two that Wrede challenged interpreters who

analyzed concepts like pivsti~ or savrx as if Paul had “developed his concepts systematically and

applied them precisely and with full awareness of their content and range of meaning.”107 Wrede

saw that approach as preventing the thought of the New Testament writings from “reaching us in

the living freshness which belongs to it.”108 For Wrede and the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule

the task of interpretation was to restore this “living freshness” to the experiences of the

developing religion. At this point, more than others, we see the concerns common to the School

and to Dilthey. Erlebnis in Dilthey’s theory speaks of such living freshness—hence the preferred

translation “lived-experience.” Through understanding the expressions which arose from such

Erlebnis(se) Dilthey hoped to reach an interpretation that was a Nacherlebnis, which corresponds

to Wrede’s goal of restoring the living freshness to the original experience.

In order to understand Paul, we may assume that his expressions of what Christ meant for

him arose from a continually expanding unity of experience. But we may also assume that his

expressions of that meaning were conditioned by his readers, as he himself states in 1 Cor 9.20–

23. We have also noted that there are no signs of a logical or systematic arrangement of the

variety of expressions of that experience in the extant writings. Or, in other words, what the

expressions represent is a religion, not a theology. As I argued in chapter two, the crucial

interpretative move for this realization is the distinction, though not separation, between

expression and experience. Understanding, in the Diltheyan sense, can be attained only if we

have clarity about the nature of the expressions in relation to the experiences to which they refer.

The statements concerning Christ in Paul do not point to an underlying system of thought

about Christ, but are expressions of what Christ meant for him and spring forth from the totality

of his experiences of Christ from the past in ever changing situations. Such changing situations

107 Wrede, “Task and Methods,” 77. We also noted that Wrede reacted against “dogmatic” interpreters who

tried “to squeeze as much conceptual capital as possible from every single phrase and every casually chosen expression used by an author” (“Task and Methods,” 77).

108 Wrede, “Task and Methods,” 78.


offered him new ways of experiencing Christ, resulting in new ways of expressing the meaning

of Christ for himself and for his readers. So, for example, in Phil 3.10 his opposition to

justification through the law arises from what it means “to know Christ and the power of his

resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.” The self-

criticism concerning his past justification under the law is a theological statement which flows

from, and is generated by, his experience of Christ and the resulting understanding.

The insights Dilthey provides into human life, history, texts, etc. can help us address

problems in the letters of Paul, in particular what appear as contradictions. When Paul makes

statements which do not cohere, sometimes within the same letter, we do not need to seek to

harmonize them. Rather, taking his expressions as arising from his experience of Christ in

successive events in his life, we may assume that coherence can be found, not on the level of the

text, but on the level of the totality of his experience, i.e., in the person of Paul. Although his

statements, when juxtaposed, are frequently in tension, it is always Paul who utters them from

his deepest conviction concerning Christ. The first Diltheyan methodological step is to accept

without anxiety the fact that there need not be a propositional or doctrinal coherence in the texts

themselves, but that everything coheres in the person of Paul.

With the recognition that Paul’s expressions arise from experience, the task becomes to

search out those experiences which allow the variety of his expressions to cohere in a

Zusammenhang. More specifically, the task is to survey Paul’s letters to see what fundamental

experience(s) in his acquired psychic nexus (erworbener Zusammenhang des Seelenlebens) can

account for the flexibility of his expressions and help us understand the variety of his statements

more clearly. It would go beyond the limits of a dissertation to do this comprehensively in all of

Paul’s letters. What I will do in the next two chapters is to focus on Gal 1.11–2.21 from a

Diltheyan perspective to see how we might configure Paul’s expressions to arrive at a new way

of understanding this text. My investigation of this particular text can, and should, extend in

further studies to other texts as well for a comprehensive understanding of his thought.


I will begin my investigation in section 4.1 with a brief history of interpretation of Gal

1.11–2.21 with a focus on the major issues involved in the interpretation of the passage. The use

which has been made of Gal 1.11–2.21 in establishing a chronology of Paul’s life is not very

relevant for my work. More important for my investigation are the debates which surround the

meaning of the passage in relation to the rest of Galatians and to Paul’s other letters in the works

of Ernest De Witt Burton, Jack Sanders, Hans Dieter Betz, George Lyons, and Beverly Gaventa.

In section 4.2, I will investigate the data Paul provides in the passage in terms of his

acquired psychic nexus, as discussed earlier in this chapter (section 3.6). More specifically, I will

investigate 1.11–2.14 as it reveals the psychic nexus which Paul shares with his readers as the

means by which he expects them to realize what their desire to be circumcised means in the light

of their experience of Christ (Gal 3.1–5). I will do this by focusing first, in section 4.2.1, on the

Jewish and Greco-Roman world in which the fledgling Christian religion emerged. Here we will

take note of the world in which there was a status quo differentiation between Jews and Gentiles,

at least from the Jewish point of view, which strove to enforce the biblical worldview in terms of

election, purity, etc., as reflected in Gal 1.13–14, 23; 2.3, 7–9, 11–14, as well as in other

passages throughout Galatians. Given this general socio-religious environment into which Paul

set foot, we will then, in section 4.2.2, turn our attention to the particularity of Paul’s personal

experience of Christ within that world in which his personal acquired psychic nexus developed

and posed a potential conflict with the emerging religion, of which he had become a part. The

events of his life which Paul reports in 1.11–2.14 reveal not only the significance of his personal

experience of Christ, but also the significant directions in which his acquired psychic nexus

developed, leading to the way he experiences Christ with respect to the problems in Galatia.

Read within the framework of Paul’s acquired psychic nexus, the data he provides in Gal

1.11–2.14 can be understood not as mere apology, but as an articulation drawn from past

experiences in his acquired psychic nexus through which he clarifies his experience of Christ in

2.15–21 in view of the new situation with the Galatians, a situation through which he

experiences Christ anew. In Gal 1.11–2.14 Paul clarifies his stance over against the Galatians on


the issue of circumcision and the Torah based on his experience of Christ (2.15–21). The

autobiographical material in 1.11–2.21 illustrates the Zusammenhang of Paul’s experiences.

Within that passage, we will see an intimate interrelationship between 1.11–2.14 and 2.15–21 in

the seamless transition from his former experiences to the way he experiences Christ in the

present situation, in which he was confronted by the Galatians’ desire to be circumcised,

culminating in 2.14 in his rebuke of Cephas for his inconsistent behavior, which flows almost

imperceptibly into Paul’s expression of his experience of Christ in 2.15–21 in terms of his

psychic nexus articulated in 1.11–2.14.

This experience of Christ and the way in which Paul expresses it anew in Gal 2.15–21

will be the focus of chapter five. I will argue that these verses provide the key not only to Paul’s

existential raison d’être, but also to understanding the verses preceding them (1.11–2.14), as

well as those which follow in which he initiates his reasoning with the Galatians (3.1–5). By

means of a Diltheyan approach, which focuses on Paul’s experience rather than the discursive

formulations, we can follow Paul’s reasoning in the first two chapters of Galatians from the

vantage point of his experience as it comes to expression in 2.15–21. Gal 1.11–2.14 prepares for,

and in that way clarifies Paul’s experience of Christ in 2.15–21, the goal of his presentation in

the preceding verses. Their purpose is not to provide his readers with autobiographical

information about his past as such, but to present a framework within which his experience of

Christ in 2.15–21 must be understood. In turn, Gal 2.15–21 prepares for what Paul wants to

achieve among his readers in 3.1–5, in which he insists on their reflecting on their own

experience of Christ.109

Seen in this way, the somewhat enigmatic nature of the lengthy details of Paul’s

curriculum vitae in 1.11–2.14 come to light as a means of conveying to the Galatians what Christ

means to him as it relates to the issues of circumcision and the Torah in Galatia. The fact that the

data may not be accurate in detail, which could be considered as evidence that Paul was not

109 I will not be able to discuss 3.1–5 in great depth in the dissertation, but it is reasonable to ask what the purpose of 3.1–5 is in the light of the interpretation we will reach through this methodology.


concerned with historical accuracy, supports the understanding that what drives the narration is

not chronology but the Sache disclosed in 2.15–21, which is the meaning of Christ as understood

not through doctrinal formulations but personal experience, the experience which Paul argues the

Galatians themselves have understood. It is an experience, the expressions of which we as

interpreters should strive once again to understand, according to Wrede, in its living freshness.110

As he reminded us a century ago:

Paul is not, of course, a theologian or systematician in the modern sense. He never writes treatises with formal sections, and it is important in his case also to do justice to the movement and liveliness of a spirit which cannot be forced into the fetters of technical theological language.111

110 Wrede, “Task and Methods,” 78.

111 Wrede, “Task and Methods,” 76 (italics mine). Cf. Paulus, 47 (see footnote Error! Bookmark not defined. for the text).

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