What Does It Mean to ‘Learn Christ’ (Ephesians 4.20)? A Comparison of Paul and Plutarch on Learning Virtue

In Ephesians, Paul has an interesting turn of phrase when he speaks of ‘learning’ (manthanō) Christ and being ‘taught’ (didaskō) ‘in’ Him:

Ephesians 4.20-24 "But that is not the way you be  learned Christ!— 21assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness."

The power of Paul’s language can be better appreciated when we see how he is using it over against the alternative in Greek philosophy.  When Paul speaks of learning Christ, his concern is ethical.  His ethical concern involves not only what the righteous and holy life should involve; it also concerns how a corrupt person with deceitful desires might be renewed and put on the new self.  Thus, his topic, as Greek philosophers would say, is, ‘How can we be taught virtue?’

The near-contemporary of Paul, the Greek philosopher and author, Plutarch (born before 50, died after 120), wrote a work entitled ‘That Virtue May Be Taught’.  Plutarch’s language is more natural than Paul’s: we learn and are taught subjects, such as philosophy.  Paul, on the other hand, speaks of learning a person, Christ.  Thus, the subject matter of education is radically different. 

Furthermore, both Plutarch and Paul are interested in how people might overcome certain obstacles to learn virtue.  They even phrase the obstacles similarly.  Paul speaks of corrupt ‘deceitful desires’, and Plutarch speaks of ‘bad passions and affections.’  Yet they understand the obstacle of desires or passions differently.  The difference lies in Plutarch’s philosophy versus Paul’s Christian faith.

Plutarch's 'Middle Platonist' philosophy interacted with other philosophical systems, including Stoicism.  The core belief of Stoicism was that people should live according to nature.  If so, then one may well ask why one would have to be taught to do something that came naturally.  Plutarch, however, observes that people learn all sorts of things that they cannot do naturally.  Such learning makes sense.  Yet he then asks, should not the ‘skill of ordering one’s life well’ also be taught?  There appear to be two reasons that a philosopher such as Plutarch argues that virtue can and must be taught.  First, somewhat challenging Stoic thought, he argues that ‘so many things of a foreign nature’ have been mixed with nature that they have to be sorted.  Second, agreeing with the Stoics, he argues that, if virtue has to do with the right ordering of one’s life, then one of the other core convictions of Stoics also comes into play: reason is essential for the well-ordered life.  Plutarch says that, when prudence ‘is the governess, ranking all things in due place and order, everything is assigned to become useful.’  Reason, or prudence, needs to rule or order the passions of the soul and the appetites of the body.

How would Paul respond to this understanding of the human condition?  He would agree that there is confusion in understanding, although he would say that the problem has a deeper and more sinister dimension to it than the poorly ordered self.  He can speak of the need for the renewal of the spirit of the mind (v. 23), yet, as he had earlier stated in Romans 1.28, the problem is a ‘depraved mind’.  While the philosopher can affirm that there are obstacles to virtue because human lives need to be ordered by reason; Paul presses deeper to the spiritual level.

Over against philosophy, Paul explains from the Old Testament that the human condition of sin is so dire that it requires a divine work of forgiveness and transformation.  Moral depravity cannot be overcome by living according to the outward Law of nature revealed in creation.  On this, Paul and Plutarch are agreed (cf. Romans 1.18-32).  Nor can the depraved mind be overcome by living according to a conscience attuned to the inward Law of God in our hearts as, I would argue, he says in Romans 2.1-16.  Nor can it be overcome by obedience to the revealed Law of God in Scripture, as Paul says in Romans 2.17-3.8.  Thus, it cannot be overcome by learning the principles of philosophy (Colossians 2.8).  Nor can ‘self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body’ overcome ‘the indulgence of the flesh’ (Colossians 2.21-23).  This is because righteousness cannot be taught at the level of transformation, only at the level of information (Romans 3.20).

What Paul argues through the first eleven chapters of Romans is that God has provided the solution to the human condition.  Thus, his solution is not, as Plutarch’s, to teach virtue but to be ‘transformed by the renewing of your minds’ because of the mercies of God (Romans 12.1-2).  Only God can bring about the transformation of the sinful mind.  And so, as Paul says in this Ephesians passage, we must learn not a philosophy for virtue but ‘learn Christ’.  In this way, he says, we can be renewed in the spirit of our minds (Ephesians 4.23).

The philosophers, then, underestimated the problem humans faced because they saw it as the disordered life, where passions and affections held sway over reason.  They also overestimated the power of reason to set things right.  Paul follows Jewish teaching from Scripture that the problem is the sinful heart and the solution is God’s provision of redemption to deal with sins and to bring change (as Isaiah 59 already stated and as Paul argues, I believe, using this text, in Romans 3.9-26).  

To ‘learn Christ,’ then, is not only a curriculum but also a relationship.  Much of what 'right living' entails for Paul in Ephesians 4.20-6.9 would be affirmed by Plutarch.  Where they differ most, and fundamentally, is Paul's relational solution to the human condition.  The solution that Paul offers is the person, Jesus Christ, whose life brought transformation to those ‘in Him.’  Jesus was no great man of history, a kind of Hercules who accomplished great things and sets the example for others.  He was, as Matthew puts it, God with us (Matthew 1.23).  Only God could accomplish what sinful humans never could: the removal of sin and the transformation of human minds.  The believer does not simply follow Christ’s example; He participates in the power of transformation that Christ’s life—His death, resurrection, exaltation, and return (Paul unpacks what he says in the Ephesians passage in Colossians 2.20-3.4)--provides.  Each key stage of Christ’s life involves transforming power to put off the old self and to put on the new self.