It is finished! Moral Transformation in Greco-Roman Philosophy of Mind (Part 1)

Pre-Print Graphic. The WUNT2 monograph

is forthcoming in June 2020

After 15+ years of off-and-on research time, trying to find gaps in a hectic teaching schedule, two sabbaticals, and every summer and winter break spent writing, and many nights of solitude typing away and increasing my caffeine tolerance, finally I can announce: "It is finished!" (John 19:30). By God's grace, I submitted the manuscript Moral Transformation in Greco-Roman Philosophy of Mind to Mohr Siebeck back in September 2019. With some back and forth with an excellent editorial and production team (thanks Tobias Stäbler and Jana Trispel!), my work with the corrections/editions plus indices is done. The book is in production and will likely be in print this coming April 2020. Many thanks to Megan Herrold, my research assistant, who help me edit the entire manuscript + indices. Words cannot express how much I owe to my doctoral supervisor Dr. Judy Gundry and second Doktorvater Dr. Seyoon Kim for their support and encouragement in seeing this book through to the end.
     The book's primary audience is for other scholars and doctoral students doing research on the moral traditions of early Christianity's Greco-Roman environment. It attempts to map the moral universe of the ancient Mediterranean world during the late Republic to early imperial period of Rome from which both Diaspora Judaism and early Christianity emerge. Troels Engberg-Pedersen (2017) calls this era "the Transitional Period" during which Stoicism and Platonism dominated the moral and intellectual environment of the Roman Empire. The intellectual culture during this era shifted from the traceable influence of Stoicism (i.e., the Middle Stoa and Neostoicism) in the 1st century B.C.E. towards the documented dominance of Middle or Imperial Platonism by the end of the 2nd century C.E. 
      This monograph contributes to the synoptic picture of Greco-Roman antiquity by defining the moral transformation systems of the Platonists and Stoics so that the historian can have a starting point for what constitutes Platonist doctrines and what constitutes Stoic ones, including the latter’s Neostoic innovations. In my study of Middle Platonism, I analyzed mainly the works of Plato, Plutarch, Alcinous, and Galen and for Stoicism, Zeno, Chrysippus, Musonius Rufus, Seneca, and Epictetus.
     Here I develop systemic models for a given philosophical school's teaching on emotional control, ethical action and habit, character formation, and the role of communities and the divine. These models demonstrate that the internal logic and interconnectedness between seemingly disparate moral topoi (or topics of ethical concern) which were shared between the major philosophical schools of this era find their coherence as distinct systems of moral transformation. This is the primary thesis that the monograph defends.
    Secondly, the book also functions as a type of handbook which gives a "big picture" of Platonism and Stoicism as systems of philosophy. The teachings of every philosopher are read in their contingent, historical particularity and for how they cohere with the overall tenets of a given philosophical school. This project thus develops independent models of contingency and coherence for each Greco-Roman philosophy of mind. The method has been applied by J. Christiaan Becker to Pauline theology (1980), and I have modified it for ancient philosophy of mind. Though, as Abraham Malherbe has argued, every philosopher should be examined independently in their own right (i.e., lex Maherbe), because every philosopher of a particular school (i.e., Stoicism and Platonism) is united in one's fidelity to the teachings of the founder (i.e., Zeno/Cleanthes/Chrysippus and Plato, respectively), we can also talk about 'systems' of a school based on the interpretation of the founder's texts and a coherence between different members of a given sect based on their fidelity to the founder.
    The relevance of the book for New Testament studies lies in its foundational role for a further research on how the Apostle Paul engaged, appropriated, and modified the moral traditions of his day to explain the gospel of Jesus Christ to Gentile audiences in terms which the latter could understand. If the moral traditions of the Greco-Roman world were dominated by Stoicism and Platonism, or rather, by the interactions between these two intellectual movements (i.e., the thesis of Troels Engberg-Pedersen and other contributors to From Stoicism to Platonism), then a systemic study of Stoicism and Platonism is needed in order to situate the moral exhortations of Paul to his Gentile churches within their Greco-Roman cultural environment. At heart, Paul was a missionary. He would know how to engage and modify the moral traditions of his day to explain better to his Gentile recipients the major tenets and distinctions of the gospel he preached. 
    In sum, a short epitome of the book's major contributions to both classical studies and New Testament research are listed as follows: 

1. The book argues and defends the thesis that moral transformation is one important and effective way to find internal coherence and interconnectedness between disparate moral topoi, a project that Johan Thom (2003) has called "mapping the moral universe" of Greco-Roman antiquity. 
2. It constructs models for the moral transformation systems of Stoicism and Platonism and therefore enables scholars to contextualize any study of specific moral topos from the broader perspective of an entire school of thought
3. The models differentiate for the reader areas of continuity and innovation between orthodox or early Stoicism and their latter Greco-Roman Neostoic heirs; the same has been done for distinguishing Plato's teachings and Middle Platonism
4. The types of interactions between Stoicism and Platonism have been mapped and organized in a way to help the interpreter detect Greco-Roman allusions in the New Testament and sets up possibilities for how the NT author engages, appropriates, and modifies the moral traditions of the ancient Mediterranean world. The concluding chapters argue for 6 interaction types between rival sects: eclecticism, refutation, competitive appropriation, irenic appropriation, concession, and common ethical usage. Paul and his Diaspora Jewish contemporaries may not have employed all of these interactions types in their engagement with Greco-Roman moral traditions but this taxonomy of interactions lays out the possible ways they have may have engaged and modified a common encyclopedia of knowledge intrinsic to their cultural environment. 

Below are screen shots of the Table of Contents. I plan on giving separate expanded blog posts for each of the major contributions described above. Stay tuned for further posts. MJL

CLICK TO ENLARGE

CLICK TO ENLARGE

CLICK TO ENLARGE

CLICK TO ENLARGE

CLICK TO ENLARGE

CLICK TO ENLARGE

      ** Postscript: Originally I had hoped to publish the book way back in 2015/16. In fact, some book sellers like Amazon or Book Depository surprisingly list the monograph as having been published already. This is incorrect. The book's publication date is officially 2020. Nothing was released in 2015/16.

Highlights from Philo, Plutarch, and Paul (Nov 21-22)

Here in this post, I'm going to cobble together highlights from papers read from Saturday through Sunday (Nov 21-22) from various different sessions. Again, I won't be discussing every paper but just the ones of personal or wider interest. 

Joint Session of the Philo Seminar & Corpus Hellenisticum NT Section

On Sat. afternoon (Nov 21) I attended the joint session of the Philo of Alexandria Seminar and the Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti Section (S21-28). The focus of the joint session was mapping where Philo and Plutarch overlapped in their view of religion. At times, there was very little said in connection with the New Testament, despite the theme: Philo, Plutarch, and the New Testament. The papers, rather, appeared to outline the religious milieu of the New Testament rather than address NT texts themselves.
   That said, I did find a few papers of personal interest. Gregory Sterling presented on "When East and West Meet: Eastern Religions and Western Philosophy in Philo of Alexandria and Plutarch" and made the convincing case that behind the ritual observance of cultic festivals and animal sacrifice practiced by Philo (as a Jew) and Plutarch (as a priest) was a philosophical monotheism: i.e., the doctrine that there is a divine cause to all reality and this cause may not necessarily need to be referred to as "god." Sometimes addressed as the First Principle (Eudorus), other times the First Cause (Aristotle), God nevertheless was understood as completely transcendent, immovable, eternal, indescribable, unspeakable, inconceivable and providential. While differing in the details (e.g., Philo believed the Eternal Forms to be thoughts of God, while Plutarch did not), both Philo and Plutarch's philosophical monothesism are remarkably similar.
   It begs the question, then, why Philo, as an pious Jew, and Plutarch, as a priest of Delphi, would participate in cultic activity when a transcendent God should be above ritual, sacrifice, and ceremonial traditions. In an attempt to answer this question, in part, was Zlatko Pleše's paper on "Ritual, Idolatry, and the Rational Norm in Plutarch and Philo." Examining a number of treatises, including Philo's Special Laws and Plutarch's Isis and Osiris, Pleše summarizes the pedagogical, psychological and symbolic reasons why philosophers continue to observe cultic traditions even though a transcendent God does not require sacrifice. Pedagogically, philosophers, by participating in the cult, provide an example to the wider masses against the dangers of impiety. Psychologically, cultic participation alleviates fear (of what? divine punishment?) and inspires the emotion of joy among its worshippers. Lastly, though the gods are nothing but human daimons, the symbolic import of religious practice points to the real, unseen, divine cause beyond the visible and sensible world.
   What I find fascinating about the papers is the common practice among philosophers (with the exception of the Pythagoreans) to provide a philosophical rationale for continued participation in cultic events even though the religious beliefs behind such events contradicts their philosophical monotheism. I myself read a paper way back at the 2009 SBL-AAR meeting in New Orleans on the reasons why Epicureans worship the gods even though they did not believe in them at all. The practice of philosophers for continued ritual worship of the gods despite their commitment to monotheism provides an interesting analogue and point of comparison with the practices of the Corinthian wisdom group at Corinth who were monotheist yet ate idol food and participated in the pagan cult (1 Cor. 8-10). 
   It just so happens that the uniqueness of Paul's teaching on idol food was the subject of another paper at the 2nd Pauline Epistles session (S22-140) on Sun. morning (Nov 22) by Sonja Anderson entitled: "Are Idols Real? Demons, Christians and the Rabbis." In Paul's day, ambiguity among early Christians and Jews concerning idol food was common. Paul himself seemed to allow for the permissibility of idol food consumption in certain social locations (e.g., sacrificial meat sold in the market place and brought home) but not in other settings (e.g., as part of pagan veneration of idols during cultic worship). I actually wrote a short essay on Paul's ethic on idol food that understands Paul's approach as dependent on Scripture yet nuanced and applied to diverse social settings (here). By the 2nd century A.D., however, Christians and Jews had parted ways on this issue.
   For Christians (e.g., Tertullian and Tatian), any idol food consumption was wrong on any occasion and was to be avoided at all times because of an idol's association with real demons. While idols are only stone and metal, the demons or demonic reality behind idolatry are dangerous. The Christian abstains so as not to commune or provide a pathway for the demonic. 
   For Jews of the 2nd century and onward (e.g., Talmudic tractate Avodah Zarah), an idol only had a demonic hold on a person if he or she believed in the idol. If a person knew an idol was nothing mentally, then the pious Jew could handle some objects previously associated with idolatry. They practiced a mental exercise which Anderson called "idol nullification" where things or places previously unclean because of their association with idols could now be handled or entered. One intriguing example was the case where Rabbi Aqiba was found in a bathhouse where a famous statue of Aphrodite stood. When questioned why Aqiba, a Jew, could occupy the same space as an idol, Aqiba responded that even the Gentiles in the bathhouse do not treat the statue as an idol as they urinate in front of it all the time! 
   So if a Jew knows a statue or object is not an idol, there is no danger of religious compromise or ceremonial contamination. Holiness is maintained. 
   All of this is to say that these two trajectories, Christianity's absolute prohibition and Jewish nullification practices, emerged from an earlier period where there was ambiguity on how to deal with idol food during the 1st century, the latter of which Paul was a part and offered his own unique ethic. 
   In my next and final post on SBL-AAR 2015, I am going to highlight some fantastic papers read at the Intertextuality in the New Testament session (theme = Intertextuality, Paul and Rhetoric), over which I presided.

Top Picks for SBL-AAR 2015 in Atlanta (Pt 1)

SBL-AAR in Atlanta for 2015

What happened to the time? The Society of Biblical Literature and American Academy of Religion annual meeting held in Atlanta this November 21-24, 2015 is only 2 weeks way... argh! I'm not ready. Someone slow down time and give me an extra month!
   Well, as I peruse through the catalogue of sessions, I have come up with my top picks and also the dilemma: when sessions overlap but individual papers do not compete, do I try to run over to the other session to catch a paper I want to hear or just plant my seat in one session and ride it out. This year, there are few tough choices, but not as much as there were last year, thank God! 
   Typically, I fly to SBL on Friday, and attend IBR's plenary Friday evening (Nov. 20's) session: 

P20-401

---

Institute for Biblical Research
11/20/2015
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Room: Marquis A-B (Marquis Level) - Marriott

Tremper Longman, Westmont College, Welcome (10 min)
Milton Eng, William Paterson University, Scripture Reading and Prayer (5 min)
Mark Boda, McMaster Divinity College, Introduction

Annual Lecture
Craig Bartholomew, Redeemer University College
Old Testament Origins and the Question of God (40 min)

Sandra Richter, Wheaton College (Illinois), Respondent (10 min)
N. T. Wright, University of St. Andrews, Respondent (10 min)
Discussion (20 min)
Reception follows the Annual Lecture and is sponsored by Zondervan

       For Saturday Nov. 21, there are 2 sessions I'm interested in, and I'm in a dilemma on which one to attend: 

S21-136

---

Pauline Epistles
11/21/2015
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: International 8 (International Level) - Marriott

Barry Matlock, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, Presiding

David Wheeler-Reed, Yale University
Paging Dr. Paul: Reading Paul's use of Grief with Galen (25 min)

David A. Kaden, St. Olaf College
Rectifying Incongruity: Redescribing Paul and the Law with Roman Legal Fiction (25 min)

Stephen Chester, North Park Theological Seminary
Conflicting or Mutually Dependent Perspectives? Interpreting the Flesh, Sin, and the Human Plight in Paul (25 min)

Joshua Garroway, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion
Under Sin: Finding the Antecedent for Paul's Charge in Rom 3:9b (25 min)

Jee Hei Park, Fordham University
Paul, the Cosmopolitan (25 min)

I very much want to hear the first three papers, especially since my dean and colleague Stephen Chester is sure to knock a grand-slam out of the park with his paper on Reformation readings of Paul that wed both forensic and participation categories of justification rather than seeing them as competitive. However, the next section has some excellent papers as well: 

S21-137

---

Poverty in the Biblical World
11/21/2015
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: Hanover G (Exhibit Level) - Hyatt

Theme: Paul Impoverishment and Thriving

Sze-kar Wan, Southern Methodist University, Presiding

Ryan S. Schellenberg, Methodist Theological School in Ohio
Mutualism or Charity? Locating Paul's Economic Program (20 min)

Sylvia C. Keesmaat, Trinity College - Toronto
Economic Justice and Food Security in Romans (20 min)

Judith Gundry, Yale Divinity School
Where’s the Beef? Paul, Poverty, and Love in 1 Corinthians 8 (20 min)

Diana Swancutt, Boston University
Paul’s Rhetoric of Adoption and Inheritance as Israel’s Promise to the Poor and Enslaved (20 min)

Eric Gilchrest, Judson College (Marion, AL), Respondent (15 min)

Dilemma, Dilemma, Dilemma! My mentor and dissertation supervisor Judy Gundry has a paper on idol food, and that topic is particularly salient to my work (so do the first two papers that precede her). Judy is miles ahead of me as an exegete and her paper presentations have the enviable quality of being packed with information and yet a clear articulation of a complex thesis. I'll probably make my decision at the 11th hour.
    The rest of the afternoon and evening look fairly straightforward for what I'm interested in: 

S21-238

---

Philo of Alexandria; Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Joint Session With: Philo of Alexandria, Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
11/21/2015
1:00 PM to 3:45 PM
Room: A701 (Atrium Level) - Marriott

Theme: Philo, Plutarch, and the New Testament

Rainer Hirsch-Luipold, Universität Bern - Université de Berne, Presiding

Gregory E. Sterling, Yale Divinity School
When East and West Meet: Eastern Religions and Western Philosophy in Philo of Alexandria and Plutarch (25 min)

Ronald Cox, Pepperdine University
“Through Others”: The Dirty Work of Heavenly Intermediaries in Philo, Plutarch, and Early Christianity (25 min)

Julian Elschenbroich, Protestant University Wuppertal/Bethel
The Mechanics of Death: Philo’s and Plutarch’s View on the Death of the Human (25 min)

Break (10 min)

Zlatko Plese, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Ritual, Idolatry, and the Rational Norm in Plutarch and Philo (25 min)

Gretchen Reydams-Schils, University of Notre Dame
Philo and Plutarch on Philautia (25 min)

David T. Runia, University of Melbourne
Response to Papers on Philo and Plutarch (15 min)
Discussion (15 min)

To me, the above is a no-brainer, hands-down, do not miss session. Except for Julian Elschenbroich and Zlatko Plese, I have read the works of all the presenters for their contribution to ancient moral philosophy. This session is the 2nd of a 3-year series by Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti in revisiting the intertextual and conceptual connections between Plutarch and the New Testament. Last year's session on the religion and ethics of Plutarch was fantastic. I'm looking forward to hearing how Philo's and Plutarch's religious tenets meet in the world of Paul and early Christianity. 
    In the later afternoon, I have to juggle a business meeting with the Intertextuality and New Testament Interpretation Section from 4-4:30pm, but then I plan to race over to catch the last two papers, one by a former colleague who used to teach at North Park (Genevive Dibley). I'm keen to hear what Genevive has to say about the redemption of the Gentiles in Romans (9-11) in comparison with Jewish eschatologies and the vindication of the righteous. Her doctoral work was in my former almer mater U.C. Berkeley and one of her mentors was the expert on Judaism, Daniel Boyarin.

S21-337

---

Paul Within Judaism
11/21/2015
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: International 8 (International Level) - Marriott

Dieter Mitternacht, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Hong Kong, Presiding (5 min)

Jeremy Punt, Universiteit van Stellenbosch - University of Stellenbosch
Paul the Jew, Power of Evil and Rome (25 min)

Thomas Dixon, Princeton Theological Seminary
God of Wrath and Mercy: Is Paul's God the 'Old Testament God'? (25 min)

John Kincaid, John Paul the Great Catholic University and Michael Patrick Barber, John Paul the Great Catholic University
Where the Juridical and Participatory Unite: Christ as a Hilasterion and the Cultic Dimension of Pauline Justification(25 min)

Genevive Dibley, Rockford University
Why Bother with Redeeming Gentiles? The Project of Justifying the Oppression of the Righteous in the Second Age(25 min)
Break (5 min)
Discussion (30 min)
Business Meeting (10 min)

   Whew! Good first two days. I'll write on the rest of SBL in a follow-up post. If anyone who reads this blog happens to be at SBL Atlanta, I'll be at the following two receptions. Catch me there and feel free to say "hello"! Would love to chat about all things Paul and the Greco-Roman world. 

M21-403 William B. Eerdmans Reception
11/21/2015
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Room: Westin-Augusta 1-3 (7th floor)

M21-414 Baker Academic and Brazos Reception
11/21/2015
8:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Room: Westin-Chastain1-2 (6th floor)

The Souls of the Saints Unstained by Sin

Sometimes mistaken to be Plutarch himself,
the above is a statue of an unknown philosopher or priest (ca. 270 BC)
Photo taken by Max Lee © 2014 Museum of Delphi

Sometimes an ancient text does not have any direct literary (intertextual) parallels with the New Testament, and such is really the case for the passage from Plutarch's On the Delays of Divine Vengeance (De sera 565B-D), about which I wrote in my last post (here). Nevertheless, there are broad conceptual interactions between the symbolism of the soul stained by vice in Plutarch's account and the (deutero-)Pauline text of Ephesians 5:25b-27. Here are some thoughts.

• For in the world below, vice puts forth colors (ἐκεῖ γὰρ ἡ κακία... τὰς χρόας ἀναδίδωσιν), as the soul is altered by the passions (τῆς τε ψυχῆς τρεπομένης ὑπὸ τῶν παθῶν) and alters the body in turn (καὶ τρεπούσης τὸ σῶμα), while here [=subluminary regions], the goal of purification (καθαρμοῦ) and punitary justice is reached when the passions are purged away (ἐκλεανθέντων) and the soul becomes luminous in consequence and uniform in color (τὴν ψυχὴν αὐγοειδῆ καὶ σύγχρουν γίνεσθαι - Plutarch, De sera 565C)

• Eph 5:25b-27: ... Christ loved the church and gave himself up on her behalf in order to sanctify her, by  purifying her in the washing of water by the word (ἵνα αὐτὴν ἁγιάσῃ καθαρίσας τῷ λουτρῷ τοῦ ὕδατος ἐν ῥήματι), with the result that He might present to himself the church in glory who has no stain or wrinkle or anything of the kind (ἔνδοξον τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, μὴ ἔχουσαν σπίλον ἢ ῥυτίδα ἤ τι τῶν τοιούτων), but is instead holy and unblemished (ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα ᾖ ἁγία καὶ ἄμωμος). 

In the texts above, I tried to color code the conceptual ties (the lexemes are not the same though arguably they belong to the same semantic and cognitive domains) between Plutarch's and Paul's discourse as follows: 

1. how vice alters/stains the soul is shown in red
2. how the soul/church is purified and cleansed of vice/sin is shown in blue
3. the purified soul/church symbolized as a kind of illuminescence is shown in orange

First the conceptual similarities: Both accounts speak to the reality that vicious or immoral action color/tarnish the soul. While there is nothing like Plutarch's multi-colored correlation of specific vices to a particular color, Paul nevertheless employs the metaphor of staining (σπίλον) to describe the effect of sin and like Plutarch likens moral transformation to a kind of purgation or cleansing of sin/error, though Paul does use a different set of lexemes (ἁγιάσῃ καθαρίσας τῷ λουτρῷ) to describe the process known as sanctification. The purified person is depicted in the language of illuminescence (αὐγοειδῆ) for Plutarch, and glorification for Paul (ἔνδοξον).
   However, beyond these broad strokes is a striking difference. The (religious) purging of vice, for Plutarch, does not happen while a person is alive. It takes place in the afterlife, as a disembodied soul, and only through a series of punishments by divine judges to purge wickedness by beating the evil out of a person. But Paul's gospel talks about the work of Christ, whose sacrifice and blood atonement, makes the cleansing of sin, evil, and vice an inaugurated reality now, in the present, which culminates in its fullest expression at a future resurrection. The reversal of sin's corrupting effect, though not complete until Christ's return, is nevertheless experienced immediately in the life of church as a condition made possible by atoning death of God's Son. And Christ did it out of love for the church. The purging of evil is not torturous punishment from the gods, but a gift of redemption by the One who gave himself up for us. 

Plutarch on the Soul Scarred by Many Colors

I've been reading through Plutarch's treatise De sera numinis vindicta (= On the Delays of Divine Vengeance) which features the character Thespesius experiencing an out-of-body vision. 
   Thespesius narrαtes how the rational part of his soul walks through the subluminary regions of the (Platonic) cosmos and encounters several disembodied souls in the afterlife who are awaiting a kind of purification before they can escape the lower regions towards a higher level of existence, although some souls regress, sink down, and get reincarnated as animals (Plutarch, De sera 563D-568A). 
   Though a person might be able to conceal his passions and vices from others while alive and embodied, the disembodied soul is completely exposed for its true condition. If a person somehow committed wrongs and was never brought to justice in the earthly life, there is a reckoning after death. Thespesius so explains: 

• But whoever comes here from the world below unpunished and unpurged, is seized by (the goddess) Justice (ἡ Δίκη), with the soul exposed and naked, having nothing by which to sink out of sight, or hide, or cover one's shame.... The scars and welts left by the different passions are more persistent in some, less so in others. Observe - he said - the mixture and diversity of colors in the souls (χρώματα τῶν ψυχῶν; 565B) * 

Apparently, according to this myth recorded by Plutarch, souls are scarred by the passions and vices (οὐλαὶ δὲ καὶ μώλωπες ἐπὶ τῶν παθῶν) and the scars/welts show up as various colors depending on the type of passion or vice that a person committed. Plutarch gives quite an extensive list in 565C on the correlation of a soul's color with the corresponding vice:  

• So if the soul is a dirty brown (τὸ ὄρφνινος καὶ ῥυπαρόν) color, this stain is caused by greed (πλεονεξία)
• A fiery-red (τὸ αἱμωπὸν καὶ διάπυρον) comes from savagery and bitterness (ὡμότητος καὶ πικρίας)
• A blue-grey (τὸ γλαύκινον) signals some kind of incontinence in pleasure (ἀκρασία τις περὶ ἡδονάς)
• A green (τὸ ἰῶδες) is from spite with a begrudging envy (κακόνοια μετὰ φθόνου)

Plutarch further describes how the souls are punished with pains and torments far beyond any physical whipping. However, the result of such chastisement is the purification or purging of the soul of all vice and passion so that eventually "the soul becomes luminous in consequence and uniform in color (τὴν ψυχὴν αὐγοειδῆ καὶ σύγχρουν γίνεσθαι)" (565D). 

Temple of Apollo at Delphi where Plutarch (ca. 40-120 AD) was a priest
Photo by Max Lee © 2014 Delphi

   There are so many fascinating observations that can be made from this passage. For one thing, again, the idea that the afterlife was a place where final justice was exercised is illustrated by the scene where the goddess Δίκη seizes souls and punishes them according to what their scars reveal about past crimes, vices, and passions. When Justice puts the souls on trial, they stand naked and exposed, unable to hide the scars left by their passions.
   Secondly, moral and immoral action shapes who we are and what we become. They leave a scar or welt on our souls. Almost like an ancient version of the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), Plutarch's narrative tells the tale of souls who are seen for what they really are. Forgive the pun, but their 'true colors' are shown in all their drab, dirty, ugly hues. We might undergo the illusion that pursuing vice has no effect on us as Dorian Gray thought, but as soon as the veil is uncovered, behind the curtain lies a vivid portrait of how greed, violent savagery, wanton pursuit of pleasure, and bitter spite has scarred our inner selves.
   Third, purity or perfection is symbolized as luminescence. It is such an interesting scene that the soul, once colored with vices, could through divine discipline be purged of evil and shine forth like the sun.
   I'm not sure if this text finds any parallels in Paul's thought or other NT texts. I just enjoyed reading this narrative for its own end. Give me a week and I'll post on any intertextual connections the Plutarch passage might have with the Pauline corpus. In the meanwhile, guard your soul and don't color it with vice. Peace!

* The Greek text and English translation (with some modifications) comes from Philip De Lacy and Benedict Einarson, Plutarch: Moralia (vol. 7; LCL; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959), 281.