"Offer up your bodies as a living sacrifice ... and stop being conformed to this age, but be transfigured by the renewing of the mind" (Romans 12:1-2).
Since sacrificial ritual is foreign to our culture, this metaphor of sacrifice means little to us, but Paul elsewhere uses another, more universal metaphor with the same meaning: death. "Consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6:11). "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ" (Colossians 3:3). "We always carry about the death of Jesus in the body, in order that the life of Jesus might be revealed in our body" (2 Corinthians 4:10). To Paul the body does not mean the extension of flesh in time and space, but the totality of human life. He is encouraging us to place our entire lives at God's disposal, to become living sacrifices, the breathing dead.
How is this paradox possible? The death that lives is the nonconformity of the Christian to this age, the transfiguration of the mind.
Christians, like all people, have been fashioned by the spirit of this age, formed by the values, assumptions, loyalties and pressures of the world, but now that they have become children of God, to prevent the age from determining their conduct. The tense of the word "conformed" in Greek suggests that the task of nonconformity is continual, never consummated, never attained. Christians must always examine how the world would enslave them to conformity (Marcuse's "one-dimensionalism"?), narrow their ethical options, pull them away from the ideal to the practical, dim their view of God's will in the world, co-opt their obedience. They must continually make themselves aware of the myths of this age.
Many translations use the less temporal rendering "the world" instead of the literal "this age" or "this aeon." This is not illegitimate, though it might be misleading: the two are similar, but not synonymous in connotation. Whereas Paul here uses this age, elsewhere he writes that one should not set his or her mind on things on the earth (Colossians 3:2), and John writes that we are to stop loving the world (1 John 2:15). These are different facets of the same diamond: this age, things on the earth, the world.
On the other hand, Paul's emphasis here is not on the spatial world, but on the temporal world order, this aeon. To render it as "the world" may prevent one from understanding Paul's idea of the two aeons, this age and the age to come, what theologians call Paul's eschatology. A clear understanding of "this age" or, if one prefers, "this world," as opposed to "the age to come" will illumine this entire passage.
To Paul, Satan is the "god of this age" (2 Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 2:2). God gave Jesus that he might rescue us from "this present evil age" (Galatians 1:4). The age to come has been inaugurated by the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus Christ, and we are those "upon whom the end of the age has come." (1 Corinthians 10:11). If Satan is the lord of this age, if Jesus died to rescue us from it (Christus Victor!), how can Christians allow themselves to be conformed to it? Have we not died with Christ to the world (Galatians 6:14; 2:19-20)? How can we who have died to sin continue to live in it (Romans 6:2)? The believer must resist conformity to this age by undergoing an intentional metamorphosis of consciousness.
The word here translated "transfigured" is metamorphoo in Greek, the origin of our "metamorphosis," meaning to change form or shape. It is used of Jesus' transfiguration in Matthew 17:2 and Mark 9:2. The word for "mind" here means not just the intellect, but the sum total of one's mental and moral state, including both knowledge and values; a good, translation might be "world view." As the ugly larva is transfigured into a butterfly, as Jesus was transfigured into his glory, so the Christian is to be transfigured into a citizen of the age to come. He or she has a new world view, or better, a new age orientation.
The renewal of the mind, standing in juxtaposition to "this age" implies that the new mind has its orientation in the world to come. It is accomplished by the Holy Spirit in order that we might be transfigured (metamorphoo) from the image of the world and to be configured (symmorphoo, Romans 8:9) to the image of Jesus, whose identity was unmistakably in the kingdom of God. This futuristic, or eschatological orientation of the mind is the key to an accurate understanding of these verses. The Christian is to present his or her body as a living sacrifice to God by standing apart from this present evil age, Satan's kingdom, because his or her mind has been claimed by the coming age, the new order, Christ's kingdom.
The age to come "demythologizes" the present. "Demythology," popular in contemporary theology, is the task of redefining the gospel for modern humans apart from its Hebrew or Greek thought forms, stripping away those elements in the New Testament foreign to our more scientific age. It looks from the vantage point of one age back into material written in another for transcultural, universal truth. Christians differ about the legitimacy of demythologizing the New Testament and its age since it is difficult to determine what parts are cultural and what universal. This difficulty approaches impossibility in that one never knows the limitations and shortcomings of his or her own age well enough to adequately criticize another. The scientific and technological age is not an absolute standard for judgment.
But if there were an age characterized by the proper assumptions and values, it might serve as an objective standard for judgment. From its perspective one could isolate and reject the mythologies of all other ages, Hebraic, Hellenistic and technological. Even though one lived in one age, if he or she understood the values and attitudes of the absolute age, if his or her mind were transformed by it, he or she could begin living as though it were actually present. The task of demythologizing his or her age, not only that of the first century, would not only be legitimate, it would be inevitable.
Resisting Myths of Power
Consequently, Christians, whose primary identities are in the kingdom of God, are radical critics of the entire present temporal order, and they must take seriously the task of demythologizing it and of not being conformed to it. They must let the Holy Spirit renew their minds with this hope, revolutionize their values—they must be transformed.
This transformation produced a tension for believers: they live in the already; but belong to the not yet. They are pilgrims. This tension of being in the world, but not of it is the context of the Christian's individual ethical decisions. This is why Jesus' teachings are not so much new law as a revelation of a new order, which is to be the context for moral judgment. Teachings which would be paradoxical and impossible as laws are understandable when one understands this new context of tension between the two ages or kingdoms. Those who would save their lives must lose them (Matthew 16:25). Those who would be the greatest must become slaves of all (Mark 9:35). The first will be last and the last first (Matthew 9:30). Blessed are the poor, the meek, the hungry, the persecuted (Luke 6). The values of this age are diametrically opposed to those of the kingdom.
This age would conform us to its myth of security in insurance policies, jobs, investments and status; the age to come transforms us to trust in the provision of God (Matthew 6:33).
This age would conform us to its myth of violence; the age to come transforms us to turn our cheeks, to feed our enemies, to make peace (Matthew 5:39; Romans 12:20; Matthew 5:9).
This age would conform us to its myth of the ultimacy of its human authorities; the age to come transforms us to obey God, not humans (Acts 5:29).
This age would conform us to its myth of the rule of death; the age to come transforms us to be able to live (forever).
This age would convince us that it is ultimate; the age to come shows that it will be consummated at the return of Christ (Matthew 28:20).
This age is demythologized by the age to come.
Twentieth century humans must apply this principle to their present principalities and power structures. We have less control over our lives today than did first century humans. Technology, institutionalism, and idolatrous nationalism press in upon us with almost irresistible force, denying jobs, status, housing, amnesty, and even freedom to those who do not conform to "their" image. Nonconformity is dangerous, but only nonconformity is obedience. "The children of light" are not to be "the children of this age" (Luke 16:8). It is about time that Christians, for the sake of Christ's kingdom, expose and demythologize this age.
Perhaps for some, speaking of the Christian's transformation as demythologizing this age is hot helpful, but whether or not one uses this word, it certainly is the meaning of the passage. Christian nonconformity does not primarily mean avoiding certain activities which non-Christians practice. It has to do with challenging the myths of life as we now experience it by judging it by life as it should and will be.
The Body of Christ is comfortable today in part because it is hardly distinguishable from the larger body of humanity. We have relieved the tension between the already and the not yet by selling out to the already. "The children of light" have become "the children of this age." We are camouflaged in the myths of the world, and deceive ourselves into thinking that we are distinct, visible, not conformed because we have erected elaborate micro-ethical categories which classify us as "separated from the world" to ourselves, to our narrow Christian counterculture, and yet allow us to share in the prevailing mythologies of our times, especially in the mythologies of technology, materialism, militarism and patriotism. If the New Person remains essentially a product of his or her times, of his or her culture, of this age, and does not live in a tension with it by embodying the values of the age to come, he or she bears little witness to the lostness of humanity and brings an insipid message of salvation.
A body is a body only when it is distinguishable from its context, and one hallmark of the Body of Christ is its "age to come" orientation. Only when we Christians are known as pilgrims in this age, citizens of the age to come, dead to the world and alive to God, determining all of our conduct by this tension between the already and the not yet, can we say we have offered up our bodies as holy, approvable, sacrifices to God. This is Paul's message to us in Romans 12:1-2.
Demythology is a slippery word and it will be important for us to hold tightly to the definition above. As used here it has little to do with myth as we usually think of it—legends, folk lore, popular fiction. Instead, it recognizes the differences between cultures, and exposes those thought forms which are hot shared by our culture, in order to translate the reality spoken of in that,age into language meaningful today.
Dennis MacDonald was a frequent contributor to The Post-American, the predecessor to Sojourners, when this article appeared.
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