Paul’s Transformation: A Cognitive Approach to the Contribution of Ritual and Experience to Paul’s Resurrection Theology

This thesis engages in the longstanding debate concerning Paul’s thought-development by arguing that ritual and experience contribute to the development of Paul’s resurrection ideas. Applying cognitive linguistic tools—image schema, conceptual metaphor, and conceptual blending—to resurrection ideas, I consider these ideas as fundamentally grounded in recurrent patterns of somatic experience. Thus, instead of considering ideas as only emergent from intellectual activities, I explore the way that ritual and experience can provide recurrent somatic patterns and, by these means, contribute to the formation and development of ideas. Specifically, I demonstrate three significant and related developments in Paul’s resurrection ideas. First, addressing the issue of the decomposition of the corpse, especially in death rites, Paul utilizes the reversal pattern observed in the sowing and growing of a seed to re-conceptualize resurrection (1 Cor 15). Consequently, an innovative idea of “bodily transformation occurring at resurrection” (rather than during heavenly ascent) emerges from the reversal pattern. This reversal pattern also coincides with the physical experience of baptism. Second, addressing the issue of community divisions, Paul utilizes the immersion pattern of baptism to reconceptualize the reception of the Spirit as being immersed into the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:13). He thus interprets the experience of baptism as being “bodily united with Christ” by being surrounded and pervaded by the Spirit. Third, the innovative idea of “dying and being buried together with Christ in baptism” (Rom 6:3-4) emerges since baptism provides both the immersion pattern of bodily union and the reversal pattern of death and resurrection. These two patterns would further generate the idea of “resurrection together with Christ in baptism” (Col 2:12) even though it is not Paul’s intention in Romans. By exploring the influence of ritual in thought-development, this study also contributes to a fuller picture of the early Christian movement.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD