Precise grammatical interpretation of the Pauline phrase ἐν Χριστῷ has continued to draw the attention of New Testament scholarship. Recent proposals (Morgan 2020; Beyer 2024) have suggested that Paul’s usage should be understood as an instance of a common but overlooked Greek construction, attested in all periods of ancient Greek. This use metaphorically portrays an outcome or individual as dependent upon another individual, who is grammatically presented as the object of the preposition ἐν. In this reading, Paul is not communicating any idea at all of “union with Christ.” Instead he uses ἐν Χριστῷ in a variety of ways to present believers as dependent upon Christ, or “in the hands of Christ.” Grammatical discussion of ἐν Χριστῷ until now has largely been stuck between mystical or participatory readings following Deissmann (1892), and non-participatory, instrumental readings following Neugebauer (1961). This interpretation thus has significant potential to reshape Pauline theology and deserves careful consideration.
In this paper, I will explore and test these recent interpretations. I propose that the complexities inherent to cross-linguistic apprehension of prepositional meaning require a methodology that posits clear and falsifiable criteria, especially when recourse to native speaker intuition is not possible. I employ an established method of prepositional analysis (Tyler and Evans 2003), which falls broadly within a Cognitive Linguistic theoretical framework (Langacker 2008; Goldberg 1995). This methodology allows the non-native interpreter to ascertain criteria for the identification of legitimate instances of the proposed use of ἐν.
Using this methodology, I abstract a schematic constructional pattern for the proposed use of ἐν, against which I compare the Pauline ἐν Χριστῷ expressions. My investigation concludes that this proposed reading is indeed a valid understanding of ἐν with a personal object, and its omission from NT grammars and lexicons is a deficiency which should be addressed. Such an option may provide a more precise grammatical explanation of and a greater conceptual specificity for certain uses of ἐν broadly considered as communicating “sphere.” However, this particular use of ἐν follows a highly specific constructional pattern. I determine that several crucial criterial requirements are not met by the Pauline instances of ἐν Χριστῷ, especially those of Trajector, Predicate Structure, and Frame. Thus, the Pauline uses of ἐν Χριστῷ are unlikely to instantiate this meaning.