Abstract of “Gaining Virtue, Gaining Christ: Moral Development in the Letters of Paul,” by Laura B. Dingeldein, Ph.D., Brown University, May 2014 Inhabitants of the ancient Mediterranean operated with robust notions of moral development, promoting various ideas about the goals, mechanisms, and stages involved in humans’ cultivation of virtue. Among those concerned with articulating theories about moral progress stands the apostle Paul. Attempting to form communities of Christ followers in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea during the first century CE, Paul describes in a series of letters preserved in the New Testament a program of moral development for non-Jews who desire to inherit immortality from the God of Israel. In this dissertation I reconstruct and historically contextualize Paul’s program of moral development for non-Jews by means of a detailed, critical comparison with the systems of moral progress espoused by ancient Mediterranean philosophers. The prevailing scholarly approach to the study of Paul’s letters maintains that Paul neither conceives of Christ followers as participating in virtue acquisition nor differentiates among Christ followers with respect to their moral abilities. Moreover, studies of specific aspects of Paul’s program of moral development often compare Paul’s thought exclusively with “Hellenistic Jewish” philosophy, rather than with ancient Mediterranean philosophy more broadly. In this dissertation I argue that this standard approach is untenable: it fails to take seriously evidence derived from Paul’s own letters, and to securely locate Paul within his historical context. I argue that Paul’s program of moral development cannot be fully understood without recourse to ancient Mediterranean philosophy and that Paul’s thought aligns best with Middle Platonic understandings of moral progress. I also use my reconstruction of Paul’s program of moral development to overturn the standard interpretation of 1 Cor 2:6-3:4, arguing that Paul describes in this passage a hierarchical schema of moral differentiation into which he categorizes Christ followers. Ultimately, by reconstructing and historically situating Paul’s program of moral development in this manner, I aim to elucidate some of the ways in which Paul’s vision of non-Jewish Christ followers’ moral development would have been recognizable to Paul’s audiences in the first century CE.
Dingeldein, Laura Beth,
"Gaining Virtue, Gaining Christ: Moral Development in the Letters of Paul"
(2014).
Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0DZ06NF
