This is a study in the academic field of reception history of the Bible, delimited to the reception of Pauline epistles in the philosophy of Slavoj Žižek. It is an attempt to trace how specific ideas and aspects of the Pauline epistles took on special significance in the writings of this particular philosopher. This study of reception, however, also depends on readings of Paul that will be used to discuss the legitimacy of Žižek’s Paulinism—historically and philosophically. As such discussions cannot but lead into questions of normativity and result in selectively construed readings with normative bias, particularly when confronted by Žižek’s political Paulinism, they unavoidably—and hopefully—contribute to discussions about the significance of the current turn to Paul within continental philosophy.
The premise for this study is that one cannot make efforts to describe the reception of biblical texts without discussing what is being received. Hence, reception of Paul cannot be described without taking somehow into account how the Pauline epistles texts can be read in different ways. When some of these multiple possibilities of reading the texts are made manifest, new layers of their reception are produced. Through this maneuver, new knowledge is gained about how we might understand the texts. Hence, such a study rewrites our understanding of the texts and the potential meaning and possible function they might have for philosophical and theological reflection.
1.1 The Problem Stated
Paul’s epistles have indeed a long history of interpretation, and the contemporary philosophers’ use of these texts may be regarded as only one episode in their journey through 2000 years of history. Nonetheless, the turn to Paul within contemporary continental philosophy stands out as a particularly significant episode in this history.1 Paul is indeed no longer limited to what Theodore W. Jennings, Jr. has called “a confessional/ecclesiastical ghetto of doctrinal interest”,2 if he ever was. A whole range of different theorists have deliberately let their philosophies be informed and shaped by particular readings of Paul the apostle to an extent that we are yet to fully grasp. One of the presuppositions behind this work is that reception theory can be a useful tool in order to attain a deeper understanding of this contemporary turn to Paul. Sometimes, the significance of this philosophical interest in Paul in our time is produced by highlighting that these philosophers are secular thinkers who turn to a religious figure. But the impression of a nearly unified turn to Paul among these philosophers may also be created by the view that these thinkers as post-postmodern leftists are seeking an ally, even in the midst of a “return to religion”, for their anticapitalist thought. The impression of unidirectional interest these philosophers have in Paul is also strengthened by the collections of essays about their interpretations. Paul appears to unite them in a common philosophical orientation or movement.3 Why are these philosophers drawn to Paul? What is in their historical circumstances and in our present situation that could help to explain this attraction to an ancient apostle?
In recent discussions of these philosophers’ readings of Paul, much attention has been given to the works of Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben. This is understandable. Both have written books solely dedicated to Paul. Although a considerable amount of secondary literature has been produced as comments and criticisms of Slavoj Žižek’s readings of Paul, less has been written on his Paul compared to Badiou’s and Agamben’s Paul. Besides, Žižek’s Paul is often presented in relation to Badiou’s book on Paul, which is also understandable, given Žižek’s reliance on Badiou’s Paulinism. Nevertheless, one could ask: Is there not something distinctive about Žižek’s approximations to Paul, and in what does it consist? Furthermore, the academic interest in Žižek’s embrace of Paul could be further grounded in his pervasive presence as a public figure. With all his interventions in the media—for instance, in renowned European newspapers—Žižek appears as a philosopher who seems to make some political impact. To what extent is it informed by Paul and why does he draw Paul into it?
Slavoj Žižek (born 1949) is a Slovene philosopher who has written extensively on subjects such as ideological critique and cultural theory, grounded in German idealism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Within this philosophical universe, Paul becomes linked up with intellectual figures from modern philosophical thought, such as Hegel , Nietzsche, and Lacan . Since it is not obvious why Paul should be included within Žižek’s discussions of modern figures from the philosophical canon, one of the aims of this study is to explain the influence, usefulness, and attraction that the Pauline epistles have for a modern reader within a continental philosophical tradition. The usefulness of Paul within the Christian churches might be considered as obvious. But what is it that occurs between these Pauline texts and this particular reader, who at the outset, has no institutional relation to the churches? Why would an atheist read Paul at all? And by which method or presuppositions does Žižek read Paul?
Žižek constructs his peculiar Paulinism with Alain Badiou’s reading in The Foundation of Universalism (1998) as his model since Badiou calls for a new philosophical Universalism as a tool for resisting what he sees as the hegemonic “ethics of difference”, which he considers to have gained widespread intellectual and political influence because of the influence of the philosophical ethics of Emmanuel Levinas. When Žižek overtakes Badiou’s philosophy of the Event as the paradigm for reading Paul’s relevance within this debate, this seems to fuel his polemic against Levinas’ ethics as well as the ethics of Jacques Derrida, which Žižek dismisses as the politically correct openness to “radical Otherness” that stands in contrast to Christianity. While it is true that Levinas maintained that his ethics had no connection to Pauline Christianity, the premise of this study is that both Derrida and Levinas share central concerns of Paul’s thought. Michael Fagenblat points in the right direction when he states the following:
Paul’s position (at least in Romans), like Levinas’s, that the radically new event that is upon us fulfills the promise of the covenant of Abraham. The Christusereignis for Paul, like the Anderereignis for Levinas, precipitates those logia entrusted to the Jews into an open address to anyone prepared to listen, harnessing their sense without renouncing Jewish law or custom. In keeping with the terms of their respective missions, Levinas’s philosophical works, like Paul’s letters, are primarily addressed to the Gentiles.4
On this ground, the present study is guided by a considerable amount of skepticism toward Levinas ’ efforts to distance himself as a philosopher and Talmudist from Christianity. Moreover, it is also colored by a suspicion of the appropriateness of Paul’s thought as a reservoir for arguments against Levinas’ and Derrida ’s ethics of the Other.5 Slavoj Žižek writes about Paul as if Judaism and Christianity are two entities that constitute a raw dichotomy. All the same, this study will perform readings of Paul that refuses such a dichotomy as a premise for understanding the reception of Pauline ideas and legacies throughout history.
On the other hand is the study written with far more openness to Žižek’s criticism of Alain Badiou’s reading of Paul as declaring a Truth-Event solely based on the event of Jesus’ resurrection and not his death.6 In this way, Badiou’s Truth-Event becomes a suprahistorical idea dislodged from the historical realities of the crucified. Moreover, this reduction of Paul’s thought results in a philosophy of the subject that is founded on a pure loyalty to the Truth-Event, unaffected by the historical reality of human suffering. While this study will highlight some strengths in Badiou’s reading of Paul (see Chap. 5), there is also a need for problematizing other aspects of the French philosopher’s Paulinism. When Žižek objects to Badiou’s reduction of the Christ-Event, he does so in the name of Lacanian psychoanalysis, with the claim that Badiou’s philosophy naively posits “a New Beginning”, a positive new order without having to assume and the death drive as a constitutive part of subjectivity, without having to incorporate the negativity of the cross as fully part of the Pauline subject. In making the negativity formalized from the event of the cross central to his interpretation of the Pauline subject, Žižek’s subject becomes less heroic and less a kind of an Overman, since the subject Žižek posits as the one that can be formalized on the model of Paul’s thought is one that undergoes the experience that Jacque Lacan’s psychoanalysis describes with the help of Romans 7, of “dying to the law”. Thereby, the element of death through Jesus’ cross is maintained as constitutive of the Pauline Truth-Event. This is a mode of understanding Paul’s view of the law that Žižek gets from one of Lacan ’s seminars, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959–1960). In this way, Žižek targets one fundamental aspect of Badiou ’s understanding of Paul with another understanding of the same figure, from Lacan. As if this was not enough, Žižek also targets Agamben’s view of Paul, when Agamben criticizes Badiou for not fully understanding the fundamental characteristic of Paul’s thought that Agamben regards as Paul’s Jewish messianism.7 In other words, Žižek reads Paul by way of adaptions and confrontations of various voices in a debate within European continental thought about the philosophical meaning and relevance of Paul’s letters. In this debate, various layers in the reception of Paul are operative at various times. To complicate this even more, what we see in Agamben’s work of Paul is partly also a reception of the works of the Jewish rabbi and philosopher Jacob Taubes.8 Through all these voices, Paul has become the object of intense debate within contemporary European philosophy. And although Badiou’s reduction of the Christ-Event may be said to lead him away from one fundamental aspect of Paul’s thought, other aspects of Badiou’s Paulinism could be seen as achieving a better grasp of the apostle’s thought.9
In order to describe what is occurring and to make sense of Žižek’s readings of Paul, this study will be guided by a genealog ical interest in the layers of reception that are at work in these readings. One of the aims here is to recognize the distinct traits and characteristics of these different layers in order to understand the reception of Paul in Žižek’s readings and to explore the possibilities that these readings provide for a deeper understanding of Paul’s epistles. But how is this to be done?
1.2 On Method: Reception Theory
There has been a tendency in the academic field of reception history of the Bible to presume that there is a clear difference between the original biblical text and its later reception. One dominant perspective has, in the words of Brennan W. Breed, been that “[o]nce a finished text leaves the pen of its author, or perhaps once a text moves beyond its original context, it enters into the world of reception history”.10 But in his Nomadic Text: A Theory of Biblical Reception History, Breed affirms that the boundary between production and reception cannot be maintained as that clear cut. William John Lyons also underlines that reception history cannot rely on the clear division between original texts of first order and later interpretations of the same texts of a second order.11 In this study, certain notions of the primary and the secondary will inevitably be put into play while searching for the function of Paul through the examples from the reception. However, one cannot simply measure the value of these philosophers’ readings of Pauline texts against Paul’s texts themselves, as if one could discern the exact difference between the copy and its original. The original simply does not exist. We should not criticize these philosophical readings on the premise that biblical originals of Paul’s epistles exist.
From the standpoint of reception history, it is necessary to contextualize the ideas a figure such as Žižek got from Paul. But this does not mean that the function of these ideas can be fully explained by Žižek’s historical context. If we are to follow Breed’s program, we need to ack...