“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
“Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie”
Kang-Yup Na — 2
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.
“Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie”
Kang-Yup Na — 3
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.
“Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie”
Kang-Yup Na — 4
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
“Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie”
Kang-Yup Na — 5
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.”
“Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie”
Kang-Yup Na — 6
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).
“Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie”
Kang-Yup Na — 7
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.
11 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)
“Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie”
Kang-Yup Na — 8
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
“Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie”
Kang-Yup Na — 9
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 (livedexperience) 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 livedexperience). 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.”
“Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie”
Kang-Yup Na — 10
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.
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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
26 Palmer, Hermeneutics, 108.
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.”
“Wilhelm Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie”
Kang-Yup Na — 12
(Innewerden) itself; it is that direct contact with life which we can describe as immediate livedexperience.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.
30 Palmer, Hermeneutics, 109.
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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 livedexperience) 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
31 Palmer, Hermeneutics, 112.
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.”
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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)
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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 livedexperience) 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.”
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Kang-Yup Na — 16
“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.
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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.
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Kang-Yup Na — 18
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).
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Kang-Yup Na — 19
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.
54 Rickman, Dilthey Today, 48.
55 Rickman, Dilthey Today, 48.
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.
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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 (reexperiencing), 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.
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Kang-Yup Na — 21
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,
61 Palmer, Hermeneutics, 118.
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.
63 Mueller-Vollmer, Hermeneutics Reader, 25.
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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 livedexperience, 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.)
65 Mueller-Vollmer, Hermeneutics Reader, 25.
66 Mueller-Vollmer, Hermeneutics Reader, 25.
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
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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.)
71 Dilthey, GS, VII, 196.
72 Dilthey, GS, VII, 197.
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Kang-Yup Na — 24
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
73 Dilthey, GS, VII, 197.
74 Dilthey, GS, VII, 197.
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.)
76 Dilthey, GS, VII, 192.
77 Dilthey, GS, VII, 202.
78 Dilthey, GS, VII, 195.
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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.
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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.
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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
84 Dilthey, GS, VII, 147.
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.
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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.
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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 Greekspeaking 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).
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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
92 Dilthey, GS, VII, 208.
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.
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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)
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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).
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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.
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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.
99 Rickman, Dilthey Today, 26.
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.
103 Dilthey, GS, VII, 199.
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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.
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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, futurepurpose), 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.
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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,
106 Rickman, Dilthey Today, 96.
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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.
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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 selfcriticism 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.
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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
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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.
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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).