the limits of variety 193
to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept him-
self separate for fear of the circumcision faction. And the other Jews joined
him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypoc-
risy. But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth
of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live
like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the gentiles to live
like Jews?’Only in addressing a Jewish readership was Paul likely to affirm that
‘the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good’, and
to emphasize that his doctrine that ‘God is one; and he will justify the
circumcision on the grounds of faith and the uncircumcised through
that same faith’ does not ‘overthrow’ the law: ‘By no means! On the
contrary, we uphold the law.’^52
Who was it that Paul believed he had seen in his vision? His letters
are full of striking images:
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was
in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be
exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in
human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and
became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. Therefore
God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every
name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and
on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus
Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.This poetic description of Christ as Lord was probably adopted by Paul
from a pre- existing hymn. It casts Christ’s pre- existence, before incarn-
ation as Jesus, in a role similar to Wisdom in earlier Jewish texts or the
Logos in Philo. It is notable how little Paul refers to earlier texts about
the notion of the expected Messiah. His image of Christ has more in
common with the veneration of mediator figures like exalted angels in
the mystical texts from Qumran and elsewhere.
Paul’s powerful rhetoric produced a number of metaphors about the
nature and role of Christ which are difficult to condense into a single
coherent theology. Of most importance to Paul was the belief that the
death of ‘Jesus Christ our Lord’ had been a sacrifice, and that his resur-
rection was the beginning of a general resurrection for a new age. It is
all part of a divine plan of which Christ is an instrument: ‘God sent his
Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those