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‘Paul and “Prepositional Metaphysics”: A Brief Response to George H. van Kooten’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2025
Abstract
George H. van Kooten has recently argued that Paul’s use of ‘from him/whom’ language with reference to God the father in Romans 11.36 and 1 Corinthians 8.6, in light of the semi-technical use of this prepositional formula in the Greek metaphysical traditions, indicates that God/the father is a material cause. And this coheres, so van Kooten further argues, with other indications that Paul’s metaphysic is fundamentally Stoic. This article focuses on van Kooten’s claim that Paul’s use of ‘from him/whom’ language with reference to God the father indicates that the latter is, for Paul, a material cause. In this regard, van Kooten has mistranslated and misconstrued key data both in the ancient metaphysical traditions and in Paul and also committed the genealogical fallacy: taking individual lexemes, formulas and/or tropes to suggest that the entire metaphysical construct of one of the earlier philosophical schools (in this case, Stoicism) from which they derive should wholly govern their interpretation in a much later and different text.
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1 Thanks go to the anonymous reviewers for making this a stronger piece than it might have been.
2 Boys-Stones, George, Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250: An Introduction and Collection of Sources in Translation (CSBPHP; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) 89Google Scholar.The phrase seems to have been coined by Theiler, Willy, Die Vorbereitung des Neuplatonismus (Berlin: Weidmann, 1964) 17–34Google Scholar.
3 George H. van Kooten, ‘Mind the (Ontological) Gap! The Collateral Loss of the Pauline-Stoic Creation “From God” in the Joint Attack of the Arian-Nicene Creation “From Nothing” on the Platonic Creation “From Disorderly Matter”’, From Protology to Eschatology and Back Again: Views on the Origin and the End of the Cosmos in Platonism and Christian Thought (ed. Geert Roskam, Gerd Van Riel and Jos Verheyden; STAC; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022) 161–231, at 171. I note my deep appreciation of Prof. van Kooten’s work, which continues to set the agenda for so many of us.
4 On the use of prepositional shorthand to articulate metaphysical causation in the philosophical traditions, ancient Judaism and early Christianity see esp. Chris Kugler, ‘“Judaism/Hellenism” in Early Christology: Prepositional Metaphysics and Middle Platonic Intermediary Doctrine’, JSNT 43.2 (2020) 214–25; Orrey McFarland, ‘Divine Causation and Prepositional Metaphysics in Philo of Alexandria and the Apostle Paul’, Paul and the Greco-Roman Philosophical Tradition (ed. J.R. Dodson and A.W. Pitts; LNTS 527; London: Bloomsbury, 2017) 117–33; idem., ‘Philo’s Prepositional Metaphysics within Early Christian Debates about the Relation of Divine Nature and Agency’, SPhilA 27 (2015) 87–109; and Gregory Sterling, ‘Prepositional Metaphysics in Jewish Wisdom Speculation and Early Christian Liturgical Texts’, SPhilA 9 (1997) 219–38. Though this will not be the focus of this essay, van Kooten, ‘Mind the (Ontological) Gap!’, 178, wrongly infers, almost solely on the basis of Paul’s use of ‘into God/him’ (εἰς αὐτόν) language in 1 Corinthians 8.6 and Romans 11.36, that ‘at least so far as Paul is concerned, it is incorrect to say that the Christian understanding of time is linear; his understanding of time is cyclical, in the sense that the cosmos returns to its beginning – to God’. Paul indeed thinks in terms of a teleology in which the eschatos of a Spirit-filled, resurrected, and glorified humanity patterned after the image of the incarnate, crucified, resurrected, and glorified son is the telos toward which the prōtos of Genesis 1.26 was always pointing. But this is not the same thing as saying that Paul envisages the eschatos as a simple cyclical return to the prōtos. On this teleological dynamic in Paul’s thought, see e.g. Chris Kugler, ‘Adam and Christ’ and ‘Creation and New Creation’, Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (2nd edn; Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023) 8–11, 212–14.
5 See Aristotle, Phys. 2.3–9; Metaph. 1.3.1; and 5.2.1–3.
6 Alcinous, The Handbook of Platonism (trans. and ed. John Dillon; CLAP; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), Ep. 9.3 (p. 16).
7 Seneca, Ep. 65.2, (Gummere, LCL).
8 Seneca, Ep. 65.8 (Gummere, LCL, slightly revised).
9 Philo, Cher. 125 (Colson and Whitaker, LCL).
10 (E.S. Forster and D.J. Furley, LCL, slightly revised).
11 (E.S. Forster and D.J. Furley, LCL).
12 (C.R. Haines, LCL).
13 Philo, Spec. 1.208 (F.H. Colson, LCL).
14 van Kooten, ‘Mind the (Ontological) Gap!’, 173–4, who admits to making ‘minor changes’ to R.D. Hicks, LCL, at Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 7.147, the latter of whom had translated thus: ‘They give the name Dia (Δία) because all things are due to (διά) him.’ In other words, Hicks recognises that this is διά with the accusative rather than with the genitive, the latter of which formulations could be taken to refer to intermediary agency. See also ibid., 174, where van Kooten takes ‘διὰ θεοῦ’ (genitive construction) in Pseudo-Aristotle, On the Cosmos 397b14–15 as though it were ‘διὰ θεὸν’ (accusative construction).
15 In this connection, ibid., 174, notes Sterling, ‘Prepositional Metaphysics’, 227, who is correct on this point: ‘According to Gregory Sterling, however, the preposition “through” should be taken not so much in a Stoic sense, but in a Platonic sense.’
16 On this, see esp. Bauckham, Richard, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies in the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009 [2008]) Google Scholar; and Chris Kugler, Paul and the Image of God (Lanham: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020) 31–60.
17 Michael Frede, ‘Epilogue’, The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (ed. Keimpe Algra, Jonathan Barnes, Jaap Mansfeld and Malcolm Schofield; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) 790, 792.