we face a common case of the “peril of modernizing Paul,” as his world was “thick” with unseen forces, demonic and divine, and he shared the common view of a cosmos fraught with spiritual dangers as one ascended up through the heavenly spheres. Those who want to separate Paul from this world of magic and mysticism, either chronologically or theologically, operate with what Robert Wilken called, in another context, a “Eusebian” view of the past—that is reading our own values and ideals into ancient texts from another time and place.
