The spirit Paul speaks of is Stoic substance, not Platonic void
Paul himself never distinguished the material world from immaterial "spirit"—this dichotomy was imposed only after Platonism took over Christianity later. In Paul and Stoic philosophy, "spirit" is real, physical matter.
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Three layers of evidence show Paul understood Stoic philosophy deeply
Judgment of Paul's grasp requires examining evidence in three strata. First: Stoic terms he directly borrowed, such as "appropriate action" and "progress" (prokope). Second: the recurring method of moral exhortation (paraenesis) in his letters matches contemporary Stoics like Seneca's epistles nearly exactly. Third and most crucial: using Stoic concepts to illuminate what Paul himself wanted to express but left opaque—Romans 7's account of struggling under Mosaic law uses the Greek philosophical framework of "weakness of will" (akrasia), precisely what Stoics taught should be entirely overcome as a passion.
— Troels Engberg-PedersenChristian conversion replicates the Stoic sage's cognitive transformation exactly
The Stoics held that initially humans regard food, shelter, and social standing as goods, until recognizing that only "living according to nature" is truly good, making everything else "indifferents"—a purely cognitive shift. Paul describes Christian faith through the identical structure: trust in the fact that God sent his only son Christ from heaven, died on the cross, and rose again triggers the same type of cognitive transformation—not emotional but cognitive, though driven not by reason but by the Holy Spirit.
— Troels Engberg-PedersenThe church is Stoic cosmopolitanism made concrete through letters and gathering
Paul calls believers in Philippians "citizens of heaven," echoing Zeno's vision in the Stoic *Republic* of a shared community of sages—belonging to no particular city-state yet constituting a genuine parallel commonwealth. The difference: Stoic cosmopolitanism remains nominal, while Paul's church is tangible—actually writing letters, actually convening, addressing Corinthians and Philippians individually. This groundedness stems from the epistolary form; Stoic philosophical works contain no such specificity.
— Troels Engberg-PedersenStoic flourishing embeds concern for others within individual virtue itself
Some charge Stoic ethics with being self-centered happiness doctrine, yet this reflects post-Kantian misreading. Aristotle's flourishing merely denotes the state where all one's action-targets are realized; what those targets are is the answer: the virtues regarding others, like justice. Paul's maxim in Philippians—"let each regard not only their own affairs but also those of others"—mirrors this structure exactly: individual flourishing already contains other-regarding content; no separate justification is required.
— Troels Engberg-PedersenPaul's believers already are sages, not striving toward sagehood
Stoics theoretically admitted a perfect sage might exist but claimed never to have met one, rare as the mythical phoenix. Paul instead asserts that believers are not working toward the sage ideal but have already reached it—what Aristotelian ethics asks, "How are virtue and practical wisdom actualized," stands already actualized in Paul's believers. Why then continued exhortation? Because exhortatory discourse itself presumes its audience has already witnessed that ideal, already entered "Christ's circle"; exhortation only reminds rather than persuades from nothing.
— Troels Engberg-PedersenStoic indifference becomes Paul's instrument to obliterate all status hierarchies
Stoic "indifferents" originally designated worldly values like wealth and family as intrinsically valueless; Paul applies it in two registers. First, to race and station: in Christ Jesus, circumcision and uncircumcision are indifferent, Jew and Greek are indifferent, slave and free are indifferent, male and female are indifferent. Second, to daily living: whether to marry, whether to remain enslaved—all indifferent provided one clings to neither state, because "the form of this world is passing away." This grafts Stoic philosophy onto Paul's own Jewish apocalyptic eschatology.
— Troels Engberg-PedersenThe pneuma in Paul is matter, not Platonic abstraction or void
Modern ears hear "Holy Spirit" and default to Platonic immateriality, but that understanding is a later development—when Platonism absorbed Christianity in the 2nd–3rd centuries, the split between material world and immaterial realm crystallized. That distinction is wholly absent in Paul; Stoicism itself is monist, developed precisely against Platonic (and partial Aristotelian) dualism. When Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 compares resurrection bodies to sun, moon, and stars, he concludes a kind of "spiritual body" exists—to be read literally, materially, not as figure.
— Troels Engberg-PedersenAsking if Paul was theologian or philosopher misconstrues ancient categories
Against the claim that Paul is a theologian not a philosopher and belongs nowhere in philosophy's history, the reply is: Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics all discussed God and ethics together—both fell under philosophy's single umbrella then. The sharp opposition between theology and philosophy is a later categorical distinction. While Paul nowhere claims to philosophize directly, in 1 Corinthians 1 he contrasts the cross's message with Greek wisdom-seeking and Jewish seeking of divine power, yet declares: "Among the mature, we speak wisdom." He is not another Greek philosopher but an anomaly, expressing his message in Greek philosophical terms.
— Troels Engberg-PedersenIn their own words · checked verbatim
God has sent his son Jesus the Christ from above to die on a cross and then to come alive and be resurrected again.
Troels Engberg-Pedersen11:21
live here and now as citizens in a manner that is worthy of the gospel about Christ.
Troels Engberg-Pedersen15:26
let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, namely when he died and was resurrected for the sake of human beings.
Troels Engberg-Pedersen23:34
in Christ Jesus neither circumcision that is being a Jew nor uncircumcision that is not being a Jew counts for anything. The only thing that counts is faith working through love.
Troels Engberg-Pedersen27:38
the appointed time has grown short. From now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.
Troels Engberg-Pedersen28:40
That distinction is not found in Paul nor is it at all in stoicism which to a large extent was developed precisely in reaction to the dualism of Plato and to some extent also Aristotle.
Troels Engberg-Pedersen31:41
I'm not saying that Paul was just another great philosopher. I'm asking people to see him as, if you will allow me, an odd man out who, in addition to everything else he does, also employs Greek ways of thinking and quite centrally so to articulate his own message.
Troels Engberg-Pedersen38:45
Figures
| Paul wrote his epistles | 49–55 CE | 1:10 |
| These predate the Gospels by | 15–30 years | 1:10 |
| Authentic Pauline epistles | 7 | 1:10 |
| Badiou's *Saint Paul and the Foundation of Universalism* published | 1997 | 2:10 |
| Modern philosophers returned to Paul during | 1995–2020 | 2:10 |
Glossary
- paraenesis
- Moral exhortation through repeated epistolary urging toward already-known virtues
- adiaphora
- Morally indifferent things that lie outside the good-evil binary
- pneuma
- The spirit understood as material substance rather than immaterial essence
- akrasia
- Inability to act on what one knows to be right
- politeuma
- Citizenship understood as membership in a spiritual commonwealth rather than a city-state
- eudaimonia
- The human state of flourishing where all one's action-targets are achieved
How to listen
Listeners concerned with early Christian intellectual history, Stoic ethics, or the boundary between philosophy and theology.
The opening remarks on why the podcast series previously skipped Paul (0:09–1:10) can be skipped.