The following is an excerpt from the book A Jewish Paul by Matthew Thiessen (2023 Edition), from chapter 8 "Pneumatic Gene Therapy" (words in brackets are my own words, except the footnotes; the web links were also added):
... Paul’s writings demonstrate his abiding commitment to ancient ethnic reasoning. Gentiles need to become connected to Abraham so that they can inherit God’s promises to him and his seed. Paul argues against gentile circumcision not because he is trying to break down ethnic boundaries but because he does not think that circumcision has the power to bridge the genealogical gap between Abraham and the gentiles. For Paul, only the divine power of the pneuma [pronounced "nooma"] (often translated into English as “Spirit”) can truly connect gentiles and Abraham. Gentiles, in short, need to undergo pneumatic gene therapy in order to inherit the many things God promised to Abraham. ...
... Paul argues that circumcision and adoption of the Jewish law in its entirety will not work for gentiles because Israel’s God never intended for non-Jews to undergo circumcision and adoption of the Jewish law. [2] ... a circumcised gentile has not addressed the underlying condition: he has dealt only with the flesh, not the pneuma [from now on nooma for ease of reading and pronunciation]. ...
... Romans and Galatians speak about Abraham and Abraham’s seed at some length (Rom. 4 and Gal. 3– 4). Abraham is the father of all who believe, and those who trust in the Messiah are Abraham’s seed (Rom. 4: 11, 13; Gal. 3: 6, 29). These passages show that Paul believes that gentiles do indeed need to become related to Abraham in order to inherit what God promised. But if circumcision and law are unable to make gentiles into seed of Abraham, what can? ... in both Romans 4 and Galatians 3 Paul sets out to show how one becomes a seed of Abraham. Galatians 3: 29 provides the clearest distillation of Paul’s thinking on this point: “If you are [part] of the Messiah [ei hymeis Christou], then you are the seed [sperma] of Abraham.” For gentiles to become Abraham’s seed, they only need to belong to the Messiah. One does this by being immersed into and being clothed in the Messiah. Paul uses the language of containment—entering into (eis) and becoming wrapped by or clothed in (enduō) the Messiah (Gal. 3: 27). Such statements encourage us to think in very spatial categories. The Messiah is a location or a container or a sphere into which gentiles must enter in order to be related to Abraham. [6] ...
... By receiving with faith the good news that Paul proclaimed, the gentiles became recipients of this powerful [nooma] (3: 1– 5). Paul goes on to compare this gentile faith to Abraham’s faith in Genesis 15: 6, concluding that those who are born out of faith are Abraham’s sons (Gal. 3: 6). 7 The logic, then, of Galatians 3: 1– 7 is that through faith one receives the [nooma] (cf. 3: 14). Simultaneously, the one born out of faith becomes a son of Abraham. ...
... It is not faith itself but what faith brings that makes one Abraham’s son. Faith brings the nooma, and it is the nooma that creates a connection between Abraham and the gentile believer. Why? Because of the identity of the nooma that these gentiles receive. According to Galatians 4: 6, God sends the nooma, which he identifies as the nooma of his son, the Messiah, into the hearts of these gentiles in Galatia. ...
... I recall a pastor telling me as a teenager that the thought that Jesus enters into someone’s heart was laughable—that this was nothing but a mere symbol or metaphor. I think Paul would disagree. Jesus the Messiah invades the flesh-and-blood bodies of those who trust in him via his own nooma. When gentiles receive the nooma by faith, when this nooma enters into their hearts, they have been infused with the stuff of the Messiah, which now permeates their bodies. Simultaneously, these gentiles are clothed in the Messiah. The Messiah, then, both envelops them and indwells them [compare the 1835 LDS Lectures on Faith #5 and #7]. ...
... Understandably, this strikes us as odd. The best analogy that I can come up with is a sponge that one immerses in a pail of water. If held underwater long enough, the porous body of the sponge is filled with water while also being surrounded by it. The water simultaneously enters into the sponge and “enclothes” the sponge. This is close to, if not quite the same thing as, what Paul envisages. I have argued elsewhere, following the lead of Caroline Johnson Hodge and Stanley Stowers, that Paul depends here on the ancient science of his day to depict what happens to Messiah [8]. [Footnote 8 reads: Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs; and Stowers, “‘ Pauline Participation in Christ.’” ... According to Stoic philosophers, [the mixture of two substances was] called krasis. This is where this philosophical discussion becomes relevant to Paul (and others): the Stoics thought the supreme example of krasis was the mixture of an element they called nooma with other, coarser substances that were made out of the four lower elements of air, fire, earth, and water. So, for instance, the Stoics believed that the soul was made from the material of nooma and that this material perfectly combined (krasis) with the elements that made up flesh-and-blood bodies to make an organic unity. Nooma continues to exist as nooma, and flesh as flesh, but they share the same space. The Stoics called this the interpenetration of two substances. ... note how well this description fits what Paul says in a dense section of Romans 8 that talks about the very substance of the nooma: “But you are not in the flesh; you are in the nooma, since the nooma of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the nooma of the Messiah is not part of him. But if the Messiah is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the nooma is life because of righteousness. If the nooma of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised the Messiah from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his nooma that dwells in you” (8: 9–11). The first sentence parallels Stoic thinking about krasis (whether Paul knows it or not): the Messiah follower is in the nooma; simultaneously, the nooma is in the Messiah follower. Again, the best example I can think of is a sponge (the person) both saturated and surrounded by water (the nooma). Via his nooma, then, the Messiah dwells in his followers, and they dwell in him. They are in him and of him, and he is in them. This is no mere external relationship to or with the Messiah; it is full and intricate and intimate participation in the Messiah.
I have been convinced by other scholars that the nooma, God’s nooma, the Messiah’s nooma, in Paul’s mind is not something immaterial but the finest, most perfect form of matter. [Footnote 10: See especially Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self.] These arguments depend on ancient Stoic thinking again. Yes, this is controversial to many Paul scholars, not least because classical Christian theology has insisted on the immateriality of God. Such theology insists that God cannot be made up of matter because that would mean God is divisible and subject to change and decay. But that is not how some ancient people thought about the stuff of nooma. Philosophical and scientific reflection on nooma goes back at least to Aristotle, who argued that it was in some way related to a fifth element that made up the cosmos. Whereas previous philosophers had proposed four elements— fire, air, earth, and water— Aristotle conceived of one more element, a heavenly one called aether. ... Aristotle believed that aether was unlike the other four elements. It alone was unchanging, eternal, and divine. [11]. ... Aristotle had no problem speaking of nooma both as a body and as matter. [12] [Compare D&C 131: 7-8]. ...
... Paul was neither a Stoic nor a highly trained philosopher. But the basic elements of Platonic and Stoic thinking were the conceptual air that most people in the Greco-Roman world breathed. One would surely be wrong to think that all people today know what quarks and hadrons are, but many of us have a basic understanding of what gravity is or what atoms, protons, and neutrons are. So too, it is hard to believe that someone like Paul would not have known how the term nooma was being used more broadly in his day. And, if we can trust Acts on this point, Paul came from the city of Tarsus, a known hotbed of Stoic philosophy. This was his world, even if it is not ours. ... unless he unmistakably signaled that he meant something quite different, his readers would inevitably have heard nooma as those around them were commonly using it: to refer to a type of matter that was eternal and divine. While we cannot know what was in Paul’s mind, I would suggest that unless he was a very poor communicator, he would have known he needed to clarify what he meant by nooma if he meant something dramatically different from what most others around him would have meant by the term. Otherwise he would have opened himself up to inevitable misunderstandings. ...
... when Paul speaks about the nooma entering into people’s hearts, as he does in Galatians 4: 6 and Romans 5: 5 and 2 Corinthians 1: 22, or more broadly about those who follow the Messiah receiving the nooma (1 Cor. 2: 12; 2 Cor. 5: 5), modern readers should take this as materially as possible. The nooma is the material gift from God—it is the presence of God and God’s Messiah—that enters into human hearts, the epicenter of human bodies. The holy nooma materially inhabits human bodies (Rom. 8: 11; 2 Cor. 6: 16, quoting a modified form of Lev. 26: 11; cf. 2 Tim. 1: 14). [13] ...
... gentiles have been infused, therefore, with the unchanging and eternal stuff of the Messiah, who himself became nooma at his resurrection (1 Cor. 15: 45; 2 Cor. 3: 17– 18). By infusing gentiles with the Messiah’s nooma, God has intervened in the gentile condition by editing their genetic code, modifying gentile DNA, so to speak. The nooma is a vector inserted into the bodies of gentiles so that they now contain the Messiah’s genetic code: anyone united to the Lord is one nooma with him (1 Cor. 6: 17).
Note how this supports my thesis in my blog series on restoring true theosis. Josh Gehly, in a Dec. 8, 2023 video presentation titled BOM 1 The Gospel comparing the New Testament with the Book of Mormon", at the 32-33 minute mark indirectly confirms this idea of LDS Scripture teaching that the nooma infuses into Christians God's DNA. Gehly references 3 Nephi 27:20, which states, "... come unto me and be baptized in my name, that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me at the last day." If "Holy Ghost" here can be thought of as synonymous with the Holy Spirit (as explained in the Fifth Lecture on Faith), and according to LDS apostle Parley Pratt the Scared Nooma is a fluid substance; then this would align with Matthew Thiessen's explanation in his chapter of his book excerpted herein. For, the Holy Spirit (Sacred Nooma) would sanctify the Christian by making him or her spotless and thus unable to "sin" to the Mosaic Law (like circumcision) because God's sperma abides in them changing their DNA per 1 John 3:9. In other words, by replacing their Adamic (fallen) nature (seed of Adam) with Christ's seed, they partake of the divine nature (seed) through the nooma.
Gehly's noting that we are "sealed unto salvation" by referencing Ephesians 4:30 and 2 Tim. 2:19, adds support to my blog post on Christ as the seal of Jehovah, as Jehovah's duplicate genome (DNA); so that when the seed (DNA) of Christ is sealed into us through the nooma, we receive the divine DNA of Jehovah by adoption through Christ as co-heirs with Christ, as his literal noomatic children; which is the genetic inheritance of having the ability to resurrect (among other things). In other words, just as Christ is the literal seal of Jehovah (his duplicate genome), the nooma as a fluid essence carrying the divine sperma (DNA) infuses the divine seed/nature into Christians: so that they are "sealed unto salvation" by noomatic adoption through the seed of the Messiah, thus becoming the seed of Abraham as well (as Thiessen explains below).
Mathew Thieseen continues, giving more support to my thesis:
... Just prior to Galatians 4: 6, Paul outlines an argument that the Messiah is the seed of Abraham (Gal. 3: 16). ... Immediately before Abraham trusts God’s promise, he complains to God that all God’s promises seem to be oblivious to the fact that Abraham still has no child to inherit what God promises to give him. As Abraham puts it, “You have not given to me a seed [sperma]”(Gen. 15: 3). God responds with yet another promise: “The one who comes out of your belly will inherit you”(15: 4). [14] Genesis 15 defines Abraham’s seed (sperma), therefore, as “the one who comes out of your belly.” This phrase occurs in only two other places in Jewish scriptures, both of which refer to David’s offspring. Once it refers to one of David’s sons, who seeks to kill David (2 Sam. 16: 11). The other is 2 Samuel 7, where through the prophet Nathan, God promises to David that he will raise up David’s seed (sperma), “the one who comes forth out of your belly” (7: 12). The Hebrew in both passages is the same, potentially creating in Paul’s mind a connection between Abraham’s seed and David’s seed. [15]
If Jesus is the Messiah, then he is not only the seed of David but also the seed of Abraham, whom God promised in Genesis 15. And if gentile believers have the Messiah’s nooma, then they have his material in them and are, at the same time, clothed in the Messiah. They are in the Messiah, and the Messiah is in them. They have received an infusion of the Messiah’s DNA, so to speak. Consequently, they are now materially, genetically, and genealogically connected not just to the Messiah but also to Abraham. They have undergone divine, noomatic gene therapy to address the fact that they were previously unrelated to Abraham. ... Through the nooma and in the Messiah, gentiles have become Abraham’s sons and seed.
... [Paul was arguing that] Gentiles had not received the nooma through works of the law [like circumcision], so why would works of the law address something that the nooma had not already? By adding works of the law to the nooma, such people were in effect (although presumably not intentionally) implying that works of the law could do something that the nooma could not, which is, of course, to imply that the Messiah had not fully addressed the gentile condition.
Paul again depends on the physics of his day when he makes this argument. Human flesh was made up of a combination of the four lower elements, and so it was mutable and non-eternal. To place confidence in a practice such as circumcision, then, was to place confidence in something that was passing away. If the Galatians tried to forge a connection to Abraham via circumcision, whatever connection they made, being merely skin deep, would simply not stand up to the test of eschatological time. They were making themselves Abrahamic sons according to the flesh (Gal. 4: 29), at best citizens of the “now Jerusalem,” a terrestrial [earthly] and therefore non-eternal citizenship in a Jerusalem that would not exist in the eschaton [end-times (the new earth)] (4: 25). In contrast, gentiles who became connected to Abraham through the Messiah’s nooma were Abraham’s sons according to the nooma (4: 29), connected to Abraham via an unchanging, indestructible, eternal material, and therefore were citizens of the Jerusalem above, the celestial and eternal Jerusalem (4: 25). To outline Paul’s argument succinctly:
Gentiles need to become Abraham’s sons and seed to inherit God’s promises.
The Messiah is Abraham’s son and seed.
Gentiles, through faith, receive the Messiah’s essence, his nooma.
Through faith and nooma they have been placed into the Messiah.
The nooma of the Messiah also infuses their bodies.
They have the Messiah’s essence in them, and they exist in the essence of the Messiah.
Gentiles have become Abrahamic sons and seed.
