Paul and the Politics of Difference

A Contextual Study of the Jewish-Gentile Difference in Galatians and Romans

Lee

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781630874759
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Paul lies at the core of the constant debate about the opposition between Christianity and Judaism in biblical interpretation and public discourse as well. The so-called new perspective on Paul has not offered a significant break from the formidable paradigm of Christian universalism vs. Jewish particularism in Pauline scholarship. This book seeks to liberate Paul from the Western logic of identity and its dominant understanding of difference, which tend to identify Pauline Christianity as its ally.Drawing attention to the currency of discourses on difference in contemporary theories as well as in biblical studies, the author critically examines the hermeneutical relevance of a contextual and relational understanding of difference and applies it to interpret the dynamics of Jew-Gentile difference reflected particularly in meal practices (Galatians 2:1-21 and Romans 14:1--15:13) of early Christian communities.This book argues that by deconstructing the hierarchy of social relations underlying the Jew-Gentile difference in different community situations, Paul promotes a politics of difference, which affirms a preferential option for the socially "weak," that is, solidarity with the weak. Paul's politics of difference is invoked as a liberative potential for the vision of egalitarian justice in the face of contemporary globalism's proliferation of differences.

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Introduction

1. Revisiting the Issue of Equality between Jews and Gentiles

In his seminal essay “Paul among Jews and Gentiles,”1 Krister Stendahl declared that “the main lines of Pauline interpretation—and hence both conscious and unconscious reading and quoting of Paul by scholars and lay people alike—have for many centuries been out of touch with one of the most basic of the questions and concerns that shaped Paul’s thinking in the first place: the relation between Jews and Gentiles.”2 Stendahl particularly tried to demonstrate that the doctrine of justification by faith “was hammered out by Paul for the very specific and limited purpose of defending the rights of Gentile converts to be full and genuine heirs to the promises of God to Israel.”3

His grasp of the importance of the relation between Jews and Gentiles, however, did not provide a further investigation on the issue of equality between Jews and Gentiles beyond the effort to emphasize Paul’s commitment to the religious rights of Gentiles as equal to Jews. The social and practical meaning of equality between Jews and Gentiles and its further implications for the problems, tension, and conflicts which developed within early Christian communities were not taken into full consideration. Nevertheless, Stendahl’s approach took a major step toward liberating Pauline theology from the Occidental Christian interpretation which imposed on Paul the later Western problem of the introspective conscience4 as well as the anachronistic dichotomy between Judaism and Christianity.

Although Stendahl had substantial impact on subsequent scholarship, the full potential of this rediscovery of the “historical Paul” for post-colonial and liberation-oriented approaches to the origin(s) of the Christian movement has not yet been adequately explored. In Korean Christianity, for example, the concrete historical context of Paul’s thoughts and praxis among Jews and Gentiles has been entirely lost and replaced by the Western Christian, time-and-place-less universalism, introspective individualism, and soteriological dogmatism. This has led the majority of Korean Christians to regard Christian faith as a means for an exclusively individual and otherworldly salvation. Since Christian faith has been understood as assuming a universal identity, the “Korean” identity in its concrete socio-political and cultural context did not make much difference to the meaning of being “Christian.” As all human beings, according to the dominant interpretation of Paul’s justification by faith alone, are sinners before God, it is believed that differences in social status, gender, ethnicity, and culture do not count.

Such a universal tendency, however, has had an enormous impact on the general role of Korean Christianity in the history of Korea. Here, I want to point out some negative aspects that Western theological universalism imprinted on the general ethos of Korean Christianity. First, it has contributed less to the transformation of and resistance against the structural injustice of domination and oppression than to the consolidation and maintenance of the status quo of the Korean society. The dimension of socio-political and communal embodiment of Christian faith has been subsumed by an individualized, a-historical, and a-cultural faith. Secondly, the identity of “Korean” Christianity has been assimilated into Western cultural universalism in such a way that the particularity of “Korean” identity in its specific socio-political and cultural history has been rendered insignificant and inferior to the universal “Christian” identity, which was actually no less than an Occidental or European identity. Ironically, but not surprisingly, Christianity’s assumed superiority over Judaism was translated into and identified with Christianity’s superiority over other religions in Korea. In the Korean context, being “Christian” thus has not only been identified with being conservative toward socio-political transformation, but also with being exclusive toward traditional Korean religious and cultural heritage.

Although the social conservatism and religious exclusivism characteristic of a predominant form of Korean Christianity today requires a far more thorough investigation, the massive influence of the Western theological tradition cannot be underestimated. Especially, Western theological (soteriological) readings of Paul, more precisely of the doctrine of justification by faith, have to a great extent shaped the conservative general contour of Christian faith in Korea. Even the most progressive Christians in Korea are not quite free of the traditional interpretation of Paul. This may explain why Korean minjung theology—like most of Latin American liberation theology—while achieving a significant political reinterpretation of the praxis of the historical Jesus, has not attempted a corresponding new understanding of Paul.5

Recent New Testament scholarship has made significant contribution to the reassessment of assumptions, hypotheses, and social descriptions traditionally held especially regarding the origins of the early Christian movement and Judaism(s) of the first century Greco-Roman world. Particularly in the recent interpretation of Paul and the Christian movement associated with him, there have been some conspicuous shifts in interpretation which radically challenge the old pictures of Paul especially with respect to his relationship toward Judaism, the famous antithesis of Law-versus-Gospel, and the relationship between first-century Judaism and the Pauline Christianity.6 To put it simply, the traditional image of the “dejudaized” Paul has been seriously challenged by some efforts of “rejudaizing” Paul, although the majority of Pauline scholarship continues to insist on the former.

At the heart of these changes lies the effort to challenge the long-held traditional Lutheran legacy of Paul as a theological opponent of Judaism. Above all, the doctrine of justification by faith, which was placed at the center of Paul’s theology by the Protestant theological tradition, has been decentered and rightly contextualized. Following Stendahl’s argument, scholars have acknowledged that Paul’s main concern was not Luther’s quest for a gracious God, but his own defense for the equal status of Gentile Christians, as well as a new vision of community which subverts the basic concepts of Roman Empire.7 Furthermore, they discovered that the picture of Judaism drawn from Paul’s supposed negative statements on the Jewish Law is fundamentally wrong, with no correspondence to the ordinary Jewish self-understanding of the relationship between God’s grace and Jewish observance of law within the covenantal relationship. This discovery that first-century Judaism had nothing to do with the picture stereotyped as the religion of “legalistic work-righteousness” can be attributed to E. P. Sanders’s extensive study of Paul and Palestinian Judaism,8 which has received wide acceptance among Pauline scholars.9

While acknowledging valuable contributions to the interpretation of Paul’s theology with more attention to the historical context of first-century Judaism, I take issue with the so-called “new perspective on Paul,”10 asking how much it has brought a real shift of paradigm in the study of Paul. The new perspective on Paul basically tries to explain Paul’s stance toward the Jewish law, specifically toward “works of the Law” against the background of “covenantal nomism” which was characterized by Sanders as the generally prevailing religious ethos in Palestinian Judaism.

The main arg...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Theoretical and Hermeneutical Perspectives on Difference
• Chapter 3: Difference and Greco-Roman Meals
• Chapter 4: Difference and Table-fellowship in Antioch (Gal 2:11–21)
• Chapter 5: The “Weak” and the “Strong” at Table in Romans 14:1—15:13
• Chapter 6: Equality with Difference
• Bibliography