It should also be emphasized that Even though it creates the perception that it is something “immaterial” for us moderns living in the Cartesian Dualist paradigm because it is translated as soul, pneuma (πνεῦμα) was a very material thing for the people of that period. The most “refined” form of matter, but still matter.

Although we define matter dichotomously as material/immaterial, in the Greco-Roman antiquity, matter was classified as a hierarchy. Pneuma is the most refined form of matter and its natural area is the upper layers of the sky. Celestial bodies are not always made of pneuma.

For Paul, pneuma causes a very material and real change in the gentiles. For Paul, what occurs with pneuma is not a symbolic “fictive kinship”. In fact, gentiles are connected to the lineage of Abraham in a way that can be compared to gene therapy in our country.