Everybody knows that the relation between Paul's beliefs and expectations about life beyond death and those of his contemporaries is obscure and hotly disputed. Everybody knows, too, about the debate over the origins of gnosticism and the extent to which Paul shared its dualism; and I am not so simple as to imagine that I can provide clarity and precision where great scholars, past and present, have confessed to bewilderment. In discussing Paul's attitude to the material world, all that I shall attempt is, after defining certain areas of the problem, to defend Paul's basic consistency on certain particular issues; and, in this connexion, to suggest an interpretation of certain parts of II Cor. v which,1 as I believe, throws light on his degree of consistency.

Before I outline my thesis about Paul's basic consistency, then, I must briefly attempt to define certain areas within dualism. W. Schmithals holds that Paul inherited and accepted the sort of dualism that had already deeply penetrated Judaism, but he adds that this was, of course, not a primal, metaphysical dualism. No Jew, he points out – not even a gnostic Jew – entertained a primal, metaphysical dualism: at the beginnings of things, God stands alone.