Albert Schweitzer made the classic case for the idea that participation in Christ is the central or most basic or most important element in Paul's thought. But it is due to Ed Sanders’ incisive critical reassessment of Schweitzer's position in Paul and Palestinian Judaism that the centrality of participation has been widely accepted in New Testament scholarship. Among other things, Schweitzer and Sanders showed decisively that in forming arguments for moral advice, Paul draws these arguments from facts about participation in Christ and not justification by the believer's faith. If there has been wide acceptance of the centrality of participation, the agreement has ended on how to characterize the phenomenon indicated in Paul's discourse. From incomprehensible mystery to a form of corporate personality, the proposals have varied greatly and failed to win wide assent. As argued in Chapter Six, I understand participation as assimilation to Christ by way of God's pneuma. Here I want to focus on one aspect that features Gentile paternity.

Schweitzer's answer was clearer than most. He proposed a historical explanation of sorts for the origins of the idea and a broad cultural context. The context was a rather uniform Jewish eschatology, or as New Testament scholars might say today, apocalypticism, that he posited. Jews, including Paul, held to a series of strict and logically interrelated doctrines about their own age, past ages and the world to come. Paul created the idea of participation in Christ as a solution to the dilemma caused by his belief that the Messiah had come and been raised from the dead well ahead of the end time and its general resurrection. Paul had to make the elect mystically share in the death and resurrection of the Messiah already in this natural age. He writes: