Reframing Paul’s Anthropology in the Light of the Dichotomies of Pauline Research

The history of Pauline research has uncovered, as well as created, several dualisms, false dichotomies and cul-de-sacs that have played and still play a role in various interpretations of Paul. Susan Eastman’s Paul and the Person (2017) sets out to reframe Paul’s anthropology by opening a discursive window between Pauline scholarship and recent work in developmental psychology and neuroscience. In this article I discuss how Eastman manages to achieve this goal – by looking at her monograph from the perspective of five interpretative dichotomies: individual vs communal, Stoic vs Platonic and material vs immaterial, cognition vs emotion, relational vs ontological transformation, and human vs divine agency