Paul as Reparative Reasoner: Group Rivalry in
Galatia
Susannah Ticciati,
King�s College London
Introduction
One of the most significant things I gained as a
student of David Ford was community. It is no
accident, then, that the initial thoughts for this
paper were generated in a reading group made up of
three of David�s former students. Rachel Muers, Chad
Pecknold and I met frequently over the course of
several months to wrestle with and puzzle over Paul�s
letter to the Galatians.[i] It was in this
laboratory that the letter became both more puzzling,
but also for the first time genuinely significant for
me. The following, as well as offering a reading of
the letter, is also an attempt to begin to theorise
about the hermeneutics involved in this discovery of
significance. It does so with the aid of categories
suggested by another member of David�s wider
community, Nicholas Adams, who himself developed
these categories in the context of the practice of
scriptural reasoning, drawing in particular on the
work of Peter Ochs. My reflections are an attempt to
work through, tease out and clarify this communal
labour. My approach, which draws on
historical-critical insights as part of a broader
endeavour to read scripture for its theology, is
something which has principally been fostered by
David, who has always sought in his work to hold
together theology and exegesis.
By way of anticipation, it is also no accident
that the focus of my interpretation is itself
community: Paul is addressing problems that have
arisen within his Galatian congregations, which is
tearing the community of Christ followers apart, and
his letter has as its purpose the healing of the
suffering caused, by way of reflection on what it
means to belong to the community of Christ. What is
the identity of this community?
Before turning to these issues, I will set my
interpretation in its hermeneutical context.
Pauline scholarship today seems to me to be
describable in terms of two opposing tendencies. My
bold claim in this paper will be that it is the
inability to bring these two tendencies into proper
relation with one another that has resulted in the
dearth of current theological readings of Paul
— readings of Paul as the living word of God for
us today.
These two tendencies are the following. 1. Paul is
read as speaking for his particular context, with
particular categories which are appropriate for this
context. For instance, he is not concerned with the
human being in general, but with Jews and Gentiles;
he is not concerned with human deeds in general, but
with the Jewish law and its particular prescriptions.
2. Paul is read as delivering universal principles:
How the generic sinful human being is to be saved? Is
it by his own deeds or by the grace of God? The
argument is about a dynamic or pattern which is
universally applicable, not contextually specific.
Works of the law signify human deeds in general; the
problem of the salvation of the Gentiles becomes the
problem of the salvation of humankind in general.
The problem with the former is that it entirely
prevents Paul from speaking beyond his own context;
his categories become by definition ungeneralisable,
such that no pattern or logic can be discerned in his
distinctions. What meaning, then, can his words have
for us? They can be of antiquarian interest only. The
problem with the latter is that it irons out all
difference between Paul�s categories and the
reader�s, overlooking the contextual nature of his
claims and so failing to understand how their meaning
depends on and derives from this context. Supposedly
universal, they will in fact be interpreted according
to the reader�s context, a context which will be
mistaken for that which is universally valid. To read
Paul for universal principles, moreover, overlooks
the irrevocably historical nature of God�s
revelation.
We might initially map these divergent tendencies
onto the divergence between the New Perspective in
Pauline scholarship on the one hand (which has so
admirably brought our attention again to the
historical specificity of Paul�s claims), and
readings of Paul labelled as �Lutheran� on the other
hand (with their all-encompassing anthropological
claims regarding salvation). And this would not be
too far off the mark. However, the situation is more
complicated. It is true that in Luther�s hands Paul�s
historically specific polemic is turned against the
Catholic Church of his day, as well as others whom he
tars with the same brush (Jews and Muhammedans). It
becomes applicable across the whole of the spectrum
of the human race to the extent that it is united in
its sinful attempt to justify itself before God.
However, it would be too quick to say that this
�universalism� has a timelessness which evacuates
God�s revelation of its historicity, because Luther�s
polemic must also be seen in its very specific
historical context, and is not meant as a timeless
statement about the human race. But it may be fair to
say that when Luther is absorbed into �Lutheranism�,
or any rigid repetition of Luther�s formulae, then
such timeless, bland universalism is the result.
On the other hand, writers within the New
Perspective are inevitably not content to remain with
purely historical claims. Thus, for instance,
although James Dunn[ii] critiques an
interpretation of Paul�s polemic in terms of the
universal �Lutheran� categories of legalism and
grace, arguing that the focus is specifically on the
�identity markers� of the Jewish law and the question
of Gentile salvation, he nevertheless goes on to
identify Paul�s attack on the works of the law as an
attack on ethnocentrism — an equally universal
category (and arguably an even more offensive
indictment of the Judaism of the day than the
�Lutheran� criticism of self-righteousness).[iii] Daniel
Boyarin makes an equivalent move in his distinction
between the particularism of the Jewish tradition and
the universalism of Pauline theology.[iv]
The problem, then, is not how to hold the
divergent tendencies of contextualising and
universalising together — indeed, the one seems
naturally to spawn the other — but how to bring them
into proper relation: how to read for a truth which
transcends historical context without resorting to a
timeless truth which undermines all historical
particularity. How, in other words, do we read the
Bible as the word of the living God whose revelation
is always irrevocably historical?
I will argue in the following that we may do so by
reading Paul as a reparative reasoner;[v] as one
who offers his arguments for the purpose of repair,
or the healing of suffering. His argument that
justification is by faith is neither simply a claim
about Gentile entry into the people of God (a
particular, purely contextual claim), nor about the
priority of God�s grace over our deeds (a universal
claim), but as Paul�s theological reflection on more
primary practical responses to suffering that has
arisen in the Galatian congregations. The healing of
the suffering is primary; the theology is secondary
and only has meaning in respect of the concrete
healing that is taking place. It cannot be abstracted
as timelessly valid.
Therefore, if Paul is to have meaning beyond his
own context and for us today, this can be discovered
only by way of the identification of analogies
between the problems being addressed in the Galatian
congregations and problems we find in our communal
and individual lives today. Once these have been
identified, we may be able to learn from Paul�s
responses. We will need to identify patterns
underlying series of his responses, and such patterns
may have a vagueness which enables them to guide our
responses in times and places remote from Paul�s.
Paul�s theologising — his moments of insight into the
deeper structures of his repair — is precisely this
identification of such patterns. Conversely, however,
the theological principles that are generated, such
as justification by faith, are only abstractions from
a series of concrete responses, and so can only be
made sense of in relation to these. Moreover, they
may not be framed in the most appropriate categories
for another time and place. Hence the only way to
learn from Paul is to follow his own concrete
responses for ourselves, finding when appropriate our
own categories to encapsulate the patterns that
emerge, and even discovering patterns that Paul
himself does not draw attention to. Just as Paul�s
theology is specific to the situations he is
addressing, so will we have to develop our own
specific theologies appropriate to the situations we
are addressing.
Problems in Galatia
I will draw on Philip Esler�s social scientific
reading of Galatians to identify the specific
problems that Paul is addressing.[vi] While I will go
beyond, and perhaps in some ways against, Esler�s
conclusions in my attempt to identify some of the
theo-logic at work, Esler�s approach is congenial to
mine precisely because it remains descriptive and
does not make premature generalisations and
abstractions. It therefore leaves room for the kind
of theological reflection I hope to pursue.
Esler relocates Paul in the ancient Mediterranean
world. Reading him against this background, Paul�s
arguments can be seen to be an expression and product
of the group-oriented and conflict-ridden culture of
the Mediterranean (p. 127). His purpose, broadly
speaking, is to establish the identity and honour of
his own group over against the identity and honour of
his Israelite rivals. Honour is the primary social
value and is a limited good, and must therefore be
competed for, one group gaining it at the expense of
another in a game of challenge-and-response (pp.
127-28). Paul�s letter is precisely such a bid for
honour in response to the group that has gained
ascendancy in his Galatian congregations, a group
which is probably related to the one with which he
had already come into conflict in Antioch, and
previous to that in Jerusalem — as he narrates in
chapter 2. So this challenge-and-response already has
something of a history.
Paul must therefore establish the privileged
social identity of his own group over against that of
his opponents, which he negatively stereotypes (p.
168). His use of the language of righteousness,
according to Esler, is precisely to this end. His
arguments are an attempt to wrest righteousness from
its natural context within the Mosaic Law, claiming
on the contrary that it is a prize of belonging to
his congregations of Christ-followers (p. 170). The
whole letter is as such geared towards this
establishment and maintenance of the distinctive and
privileged identity of his Galatian
congregations.
The specific problem that has given rise to this
group rivalry in the first place is, according to
Esler, the problem of table-fellowship between
Israelites and Gentiles. He argues that central to
Paul�s gospel is the freedom with which Israelites
and Gentiles can be members of the same congregation,
engaging in table-fellowship of one loaf of bread and
one cup of wine. Such table-fellowship was something
which was prohibited for Israelites, perhaps because
of the risk of idolatry entailed (it would have been
possible for a Gentile at a Eucharist meal to
�[covert] the wine into an offering for his god by
making a surreptitious libation from it, thereby
putting the Israelite in peril of idolatry� (p.
107)). The solution to this problem advocated by the
Israelite-Christian opposition to Paul (probably
backed by the wider Israelite community) was to have
the Gentile members of the congregation circumcised,
effectively turning them into Israelites.
The specific suffering in the Galatian
congregations to which Paul is responding is thus
that of the unstable and unclear identity of his
mixed Israelite-Gentile congregations, which has come
into focus around, and dispute over, the central
practice of table-fellowship. This has given rise to
fierce group rivalry, which is not only affecting
relations between the Galatian congregations and
Israelite outgroups, but is erupting within the
Galatian congregations themselves: �But if you bite
and devour one another take heed that you are not
consumed by one another.� (Gal. 5.15). As we have
seen, the Israelite solution is to have the Gentile
members circumcised. Paul�s solution is to argue for
an alternative identity for his mixed congregations
which does not require, indeed seeks actively to
dissuade, Gentile converts from becoming
Israelites.
This analysis identifies the particular problem to
which Paul is responding: the unclear identity of his
mixed Israelite-Gentile congregations, and the group
rivalry this has given rise to; it identifies further
the nature of the game which Paul is having to play:
a game of challenge-and-response in which he must bid
for the honour of his own group, establishing and
maintaining its privileged identity as he understands
it. What it does not do is ask after the logic
of Paul�s response. What is the nature of the
identity Paul is trying to establish for his
congregations, and how does he hope by its
establishment to contribute to the healing of the
suffering in the Galatian congregations?
Patterns in Paul�s Response
My argument in the following will be that Paul�s
response to the group rivalry that has broken out in
Galatia is not only to establish the identity of his
own group over against the opposition, but more
fundamentally to address the problem group rivalry
itself — by subverting it from within. In other
words, my claim will be that Paul defines his group
in a way that subverts the competitive group culture
that he is at the same time operating within. He is
at a deep level concerned with the question �what is
a group?� Trying to discern his answer to this will
lead to the identification of the following
theological pattern: communal identity in Christ is
not possessed but received; it is not a human social
construct, but a gift from God. This God is not the
possession of any one sector of humanity, but a God
who transcends human social boundaries. No group,
therefore, can claim exclusive possession of this
God. Hence identity Christ, received from God, cannot
be claimed at the expense of others. It is not
divisive but inclusive. Unlike social honour, the
primary value of the Christian community is not a
limited good, a good which must therefore be competed
for. Thus it dissipates and heals group rivalry.
Positively, identity in Christ, as that which
transcends human definition and social constitution,
is excessive identity.
How does Paul argue for this while himself taking
part in the group rivalry in Galatia? I will turn now
to look in detail at Paul�s arguments.
Subversion of human rivalry
Paul�s opening chapter headlines the issue of
human rivalry. Paul is concerned to show that
the gospel he preaches is not just another human
gospel, in competition with the others on offer in
Galatia. It is �not from men nor through man, but
through Jesus Christ and God the Father�� (1.1); it
was not received from man, but came through a
revelation of Jesus Christ (1.12). On this reading,
Paul is not merely trying to establish the authority
of his message as something which has God�s direct
sanction. Insofar as it addresses the rivalry
question head on, his argument here is not merely
preliminary or extraneous to the message itself. It
encapsulates what is to come: �Paul�s� gospel, as
God�s, is not one rival gospel among others; it
transcends and subverts such human rivalry. It is not
�man�s gospel� (1.11) — not even Paul�s (he
acknowledges hypothetically in 1.8 that even he could
preach something else) — constructed according to
human traditions (1.14). In other words, it does not
delineate a humanly defined group (definable
according to human social boundaries) which competes
for honour with its rivals. As the gospel revealed by
God it is not owned by any human being, Paul
emphatically included. Any attempt to possess God in
this way is antithetical to the message of this
gospel, which proclaims a God who cannot be
possessed. But what this means, as will emerge more
clearly in what follows, is that any claim to be the
people of God must be self-subverting.
The subversion at work in Paul�s bid for the
honour and status of his congregations can be
discovered in his readings of Abraham in chapters 3
and 4.
Abraham as man of faith: faith and law
��Thus Abraham �believed in God, and it was
reckoned to him as righteousness.� So you see that it
is men of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the
scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the
Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to
Abraham, saying, �In you shall all the nations be
blessed.� So then, those who are men of faith are
blessed with Abraham who had faith.� (3.6-9; quoting
Gen. 15.6, then Gen. 12.3/18.18)
Key to the identity that Paul is trying to
establish for his congregations is faith, in keeping
with Abraham who had faith. Earlier, faith has been
contrasted with the law, or the works of the law.
�[We] know that a man is not justified by works of
the law but through faith in Jesus Christ�� (2.16).
In keeping with Esler�s reading, Paul is clearly
attempting to establish the identity of his
Jewish-Gentile congregations, defined by faith, over
against that of his rival Jewish Christians, who seek
to maintain an Israelite identity, defined by law. He
seeks to show that it is his Jewish-Gentile
congregations, characterised by their faith in
Christ, who comprise the true sons of Abraham — for
Abraham was singled out for his faith, not for his
keeping of the law. And it is they, as a result, who
attain the fruit of righteousness — the blessing
promised to Abraham�s descendants. This is his bid
for the honour of his congregations over and above
his rivals. But can Paul�s argument be reduced to
this group rivalry? If not, then how does it
transcend such rivalry? How, more strongly, does it
subvert it?
That we are not dealing simply with a positivistic
opposition between faith and law is suggested by the
fact that Paul�s supposedly law-free congregations
are not so obviously law-free. Or better put, they
continue to have some relationship with the law.
�Now before faith came, we were confined under the
law, kept under restraint until faith should be
revealed. So that the law was our custodian until
Christ came, that we might be justified by faith.
But now that faith has come, we are no loner under
a custodian; for in Christ Jesus you are all sons
of God, through faith.� (3.23-5)
The extraordinary thing here is that not only are
Paul�s congregations not free of all relationship to
the law, but the Gentile members have gained a
relationship to the law by virtue of their joining of
this community. This verse asserts only a
relationship to a law in their past; but even this is
very different from being law-free: they have gained
a history in which the law plays a central part. They
are defined as ones who used to have the law as their
custodian. But this relationship to the law also
extends into their present. 4:21: �Tell me, you who
desire to be under law, do you not hear the law?�
Paul, explicitly here in Galatians 4, but also in
chapter 3 and elsewhere, makes his case by arguing
from the law; the law, that is, as Israel�s
scripture. Indeed, by arguing that his congregations
are sons of Abraham, he seeks to establish for his
community a scriptural identity. They are the
ones that scripture spoke about beforehand (3.8);
scripture tells of their history. This is now
their scripture. That they are no longer under the
custodian of the law does not rule out this
relationship to the law as scripture. Faith, one
might say, involves a different way of relating to
the law: might we say relation to the law as
scripture but no longer as legal code?
We must wait to see how this unfolds below.
Abraham�s excessive identity: law and
promise
Paul�s argument concerning Abraham in chapter 3
continues in vv. 15-18 with the distinction between
promise and law. The law that comes 430 years after
the promise made to Abraham is clearly to be
identified as the Sinaitic Law, the law as legal code
(and not as scripture as a whole). It is this which
the promise predates and exceeds. Israel�s identity,
as it is traced back to Abraham, thus exceeds its
identity as specified in and constituted by the legal
code. Paul�s Israelite rivals, so we infer, want to
restrict God�s people to those who live by the law —
whose lives are regulated by the legal code. It is
for this reason that they seek to compel the Gentiles
in Paul�s congregations to be circumcised. Paul, by
contrast, argues that the identity of God�s people
goes deeper than its legal identity, being rooted in
God�s promise to Abraham. This transcends any legal
identity and so cannot be made conditional on
obedience to the law.
How might such an argument be intended to subvert
the culture of group rivalry which Paul inhabits? The
legal code might be said to be that which identifies
a natural, inner-worldly community, defined by
politics and cult, and therefore a community limited
to one sector of humanity. Paul�s argument is that
the identity of the people of God, as sons of
Abraham, exceeds any such limited community. It
exceeds, more broadly, its identity as humanly
defined — its social and political constitution.
Mapped onto Paul�s contrast in chapter 1, the legal
code (when detached from the promise) characterises
man�s gospel — a gospel of human construction; and
the promise characterises the gospel which cannot be
owned by any particular human community, pointing to
the God who cannot be possessed.
This would suggest that the Abraham of faith is an
Abraham of excessive identity: Abraham cannot
be claimed exclusively by any group. He has an
identity which transcends any humanly constructed
identity. But this means that any group claiming
Abraham as their ancestor must be self-subverting as
a humanly constructed group — as a group over against
others. This is what it means to say that they are
justified by faith and not by works. To be
justified by works would be to claim righteousness on
the basis of one�s social identity: �I belong to this
group, therefore I am justified.� To be righteous by
faith means, by contrast, to be constituted by God�s
promise, which exceeds group identity; and so to have
an excessive identity, an identity which
transcends any human definition. More concretely,
this identity is to be the recipient of God�s
promise. Such an identity is received but not
possessed.
A subversive reading of Abraham�s
genealogy
Paul elaborates his argument that Abraham cannot
be claimed exclusively by any group by way of a
reading of Abraham�s genealogy.
�Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a
free woman. But the son of the slave was born
according to the flesh, the son of the free woman
through promise. Now this is an allegory: these
women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai,
bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now
Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to
the present Jerusalem; for she is in slavery with
her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and
she is our mother.� (4.21-26)
Paul identifies his rivals as sons according to
the flesh (cf. vv. 28-29). Moses and the law, here
represented by Mount Sinai and the present Jerusalem,
are associated with Hagar and slavery. Paul�s own
congregations, by contrast, are identified as sons
according to the promise, and so sons of the free
woman, the Jerusalem above. Is this just another
rivalrous bid for honour? It might seem so until we
notice that the opposition is asymmetrical: whereas
the slave woman is assigned both a name and a place,
the free woman is assigned neither (other than the
Jerusalem above, which serves simply to exacerbate
the contrast by not being locatable). The genealogies
would seem to follow different logics. That from the
slave woman can be traced through name and place; it
is a genealogy of natural descent, issuing in a
humanly defined identity. It is predictable and
closed. The promise, by contrast, cannot be confined
to the humanly predictable; it instantiates a
genealogy, not of natural descent, but of unexpected
non-sequiturs.
The quotation of Isaiah 54.1 in 4.27 serves to
intensify the oddity of the genealogy of the promise:
the many children of the barren and desolate one
exceed the children of her that is married. Just as
in Romans chapter 11, where contrary to nature
Gentiles are grafted into the olive tree, so does
Abraham�s genealogy multiply �contrary to nature�.
Grace reaches to places where it was not expected,
exceeding natural boundaries. The pattern of God�s
election is to confound human expectation, such that
the promise cannot be confined to the humanly
imaginable. Thus to claim Abraham as one�s father is
not to exclude others from one�s family. If God�s
promise extends even to the Gentiles, then who does
it not extend to? Thus to claim to be a son of
Abraham is not to claim a privileged human identity,
but to point to one�s reception, beyond this, of a
promise which is in principle extended to all. It is
therefore not to claim possession of anything, but
rather to subvert the claim that Abraham as father
can be possessed by any one group over against
another.
Life in the flesh versus life according to the
promise
But what does the distinction between life
according to the promise and life according to the
flesh look like in practice? There are several places
from which we glean how Paul views life lived
according to a purely human identity.
�It is those who want to make a good showing in the
flesh that would compel you to be circumcised, and
only in order that they may not be persecuted for
the cross of Christ. For even those who receive
circumcision do not themselves keep the law, but
they desire to have you circumcised that they may
glory in your flesh.� (6.12-13)
They compete for their honour, seeking to bolster
their identity, by compelling the Gentiles to be
circumcised. They are dependent for their identity on
these others, without whose approval and compliance
it will remain precarious. Such a situation is
described well by Rowan Williams, who is drawing on
Ernest Becker: �Our problem is � the overcoming of
dependence by dependence. � To shore up our
sense of independence, we intensify our dependence on
those external factors which assure us of worth or
meaning, while denying more and more stridently that
we are involved in dependence at all.�[vii]
Not only is the independence achieved an illusory
good, creating a vicious circle of attempts to secure
it, but the others over against whom this
independence is achieved are turned into mere
instruments, conscripted into the projects of others.
This is captured by Gal. 4.17: �They make much of
you, but for no good purpose; they want to shut you
out, that you may make much of them.� Described here
is mutual instrumentalisation. The Galatians and the
Israelite Christians enter into relationship with one
another only in service of their respective
identities. Each is defined exclusively in terms of
the other. They are means to each others ends.
Members of each group are reduced to pawns within the
other group�s world, objects of manipulation and
abuse. In other words, the relation is not one of
embrace in which the other is accepted in all her
unpredictable otherness; she is consequently �shut
out� in her true otherness. The groups are locked in
a demeaning and self-evacuating battle. As Paul later
says of the Galatians: �But if you bite and devour
one another take heed that you are not consumed by
one another.� (5.15)
What, by contrast, does life lived according to
the promise look like? What does it mean to receive
and acknowledge one�s excessive identity? The
outworking of this identity, as Paul understands it,
is described in chapters 5 and 6. �For you were
called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your
freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through
love be servants of one another.� (5.13); �Bear one
another�s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.�
(6.2). Initially striking is the paradoxical nature
of this task: true freedom is expressed through
slavery. Having drawn a contrast between slavery and
freedom, assigning the former to his rivals and the
latter to his own congregations, Paul complicates
this simple contrast. As he plays the game he also
subverts it from within. The identity he is rejecting
is precisely the games-playing identity. But the only
way he can show this is by taking up the language and
turning it on its head. The opposition between
freedom and slavery is reconfigured, subverted and
transcended. True freedom is not set over against
true slavery or service. The opposition only exists
from the point of view of the world of slavery.
But the new kind of slavery is very different from
the old. The old involves competitive identities in
which each instrumentalises the other, reducing the
other to an object. The new involves an existence,
not in defence against the other, but for the
other. Mutual devouring is transformed into mutual
giving, where each recognises the other as
subject who addresses me: where each is loved
as oneself (5.14), as another I. Fundamental to this
shift is a recognition that we are constituted
precisely in relation to each other. Rowan Williams
again describes the crucial distinction. Following
Sebastian Moore, he suggests that �our need to
imagine ourselves as agents or givers [is] a need to
know we exist for another.This is a crucial
insight: it implies that to imagine ourselves as
agents by imagining ourselves as self-regulating
individuals is to misconceive our fundamental need,
which is for identity in relation, conversation,
mutual recognition. � To think ourselves as agents or
subjects is to think of ourselves as addressed or
contemplated.[viii]
A logic of dispossession and excess
But this shift — from envisaging others as in
competition with me to envisaging our agency and
freedom as mutually constitutive is rooted in
another, more fundamental, recognition: that of our
ultimate rootedness in God, dependence on whom is
freedom and not slavery. In the terms of Galatians,
it is God who justifies — by our faith in him (3.8).
It is God�s promise to Abraham and God�s blessing of
the nations in Abraham (3.8) that establishes an
alternative genealogy and alternative logic. It is
only in the light of this promise that we may come to
recognise the other as having an identity which is
not in competition with mine. It is the excessive
nature of the promise, overflowing into the
unlikeliest of places, which subverts the competitive
group culture by overcoming the either/or of human
identity and establishing instead a principle of
abundance and non-exclusivity.
In other words, it is only because I first receive
my identity from God, before I even begin the search
for it, that I do not need to guard my identity
against conscription into the projects of others. For
in transcendence and excess of these human
negotiations and constructions of identity is my
non-negotiable identity rooted in God. As Williams
says: �[b]efore we are looked at, spoken to, acted
on, we are, because of the look, the word, the
act of God. � [Our] reality is not and cannot be
either earned by us or eroded by others.�[ix] God
alone is the guarantor of my own identity in excess
of these creaturely negotiations, because �God alone
is beyond the precarious exchanges of
creatures who need affirmation. With God alone, I am
dealing with what does not need to construct or
negotiate an identity, what is free to be itself
without the process of struggle.�[x]
The logic of non-competition goes hand in hand
with the logic that has been gradually emerging in
the course of this paper: that of dispossession and
excess. My possession of something means that someone
else doesn�t possess it: it is always at the expense
of others. An identity which I receive, by contrast,
is a gift which may also be given to others. It
therefore exceeds boundaries. More than this, it
subverts such boundaries, dispossessing me of that
which I claimed as mine at the expense of others. In
the present connection, just as I cannot claim
exclusive possession of Abraham, so I must recognise
that God is not just my God; he is not just the God
of �his people�. As this God he is also the God of
others, his promise extending beyond and exceeding
any humanly constructed bounds. To be the people of
God, therefore, means precisely to be dispossessed of
this God, to �be prepared to lose the God who is
�our� God�, as Williams puts it.[xi]
But this may allow us to draw some conclusions
about this people�s relationship with the law. Could
it be that Israel�s vocation as the people of God is
ultimately worked out in terms of its being
dispossessed of the law? This would not mean cut off
from all relation to the law; but it would mean
relating to the law differently. The law has up to
this point acted as a boundary marker, precisely to
separate Israel off from the nations. But the law
also points to the God who is also God of the
nations. How can this law be read in a way which
recognises that it may also be read by others; that
it may signify differently for these others? How, in
other words, can the law be a sign of excess? I have
suggested above that Paul�s solution to this is to
suggest that the law is no longer operative as legal
code, but is nevertheless still operative as
scripture. It is no longer prescriptive; but it may
serve as a narrative and ethical resource, with the
potential for multiple signification.[xii]
This logic of dispossession and excess is worked
out by Paul in terms of identity in Christ. �I have
been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who
live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now
live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me.� (2.20). Being
crucified with Christ, on this interpretation, is to
die to the antagonistic struggle between creatures.
It is to die to the logic of competitive agency and
to discover a deeper mutuality in Christ. In Christ
one is no longer set in opposition to different
others, but discovers there a deeper unity. �There is
neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor
free, there is neither male nor female; for you are
all one in Christ Jesus.� (3.28) Christ is the
excessive identity of both the Jew and the
Gentile, transforming self-enclosed, mutually
exhaustive relations into relations in which each
party, in its true otherness, always signifies more.
Christ is this excessive significance.
Paul�s �solution�
This identification gives us the key to Paul�s
�solution� to group rivalry in Galatia. At base, this
rivalry is being caused by the way in which the
Jew/Gentile distinction is being conceived and
enacted. Paul�s �solution� is intrinsically bound up
with the �overcoming� of this fundamental division in
Christ. However, all that has already been said by
way of explication of Paul�s arguments should prevent
us from reading this �overcoming� as the replacement
of the particular, distinctive identities of the Jew
and the Gentile by a �universal identity� in which
all particularities are ironed out.[xiii] The unity of
Jew and Greek in Christ is not the unity of sameness;
it is rather a unity in which difference no longer
means opposition.
Paul�s response to group rivalry in Galatia, in
other words, is not simply to step outside of it,
constructing a harmonious alternative from scratch.
Rather, he subverts it from within. But this has
significant ramifications for his relationship with
his own Jewish tradition. He does not step outside of
it and start again from scratch — in Christ. Instead,
he understands Christ as an agent of repair — one who
has come to heal this tradition from within. While
this healing may involve radical disruption,
reconfiguring the tradition�s most fundamental
categories, it does not involve jettisoning and
starting again. Thus, Paul proceeds, not by rejecting
Israelite particularity, but by arguing that Israel�s
identity is not confined to a natural, inner-worldly
community, defined by politics and cult, by law as
legal code; by arguing that the true Israel is not
confined to one sector of humanity, whatever the
disputes over how to define this one sector.
We see how particularity is retained in the
following ways. His new community has Abraham as its
father; it has a specific genealogy. In this
community the Israelite law is not simply replaced by
faith, but is transformed into a sign of excess. More
specifically, the community�s self-understanding is
worked out by a continued grappling with the law as
scripture. Paul seeks to show that his community is
the true continuation and outworking of the people of
Israel — even if this continuation and outworking
involves subversion. Instead of shedding
particularity, this community transcends from within
its particularity the distinction between Israel and
the nations, between Jew and Gentile. It does so,
however, not by wiping out the distinction between
Jew and Gentile, but by setting in motion a dynamic
crossing of the boundaries.
In sum, the logic of dispossession is not a logic
of replacement, and the logic of excess is not a
logic of universality. Paul�s logic is a logic of
repair, rooted in Christ, the healer of the
people of Israel and the healer the nations. My
reading of him as reparative reasoner has sought to
do justice to this by being attentive to the
particular problems he is addressing and the
particular ways in which he responds, seeking the
deeper theological patterns of his reasoning only as
they emerge out of these particulars.
Ways forward
I have not attempted in this paper to move from
the problems Paul was facing in Galatia to analogous
problems faced by us today. However, the particular
categories I have used to delineate his theology
already contain within themselves implicit attempts
to identify such analogies. To read Paul according to
categories not his own — i.e. to read Paul at all
with interpretive understanding — already presupposes
analogies between his situation and ours. The ability
to identify in Paul�s arguments concern over
boundaries is no doubt linked with our inhabiting of
a pluralist culture which in its own way is also
concerned with boundaries. Thus it will not be
surprising if Paul has something to say to us about
something like inter-faith dialogue, a concern which
was not his own but may be found to have analogy with
his own concerns. Perhaps even more obviously, our
reading of Paul in terms of the relation between
particularity and universality will have
ramifications for the problem of supersessionism
today. It is for the purpose of tackling such current
problems that Paul must be read: as the living word
of God for us today.
ENDNOTES
[i] I draw in this paper on an
unpublished piece produced from these meetings by the
three participants, entitled ��For Freedom Christ has
Set Us Free�: Galatians, Semiotics and Abusive
Relations.�
[ii] See, among other works,
James D.G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians
(London: A. & C. Black, 1993).
[iii] Cf. Stephen Westerholm,
Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The �Lutheran�
Paul and His Critics (Grand Rapids, Michigan:
Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 250-51.
[iv] See Daniel Boyarin, A
Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
[v] I owe this concept to
Nicholas Adams.
[vi]Philip F. Esler,
Galatians (London: Routledge, 1998).
[vii]Rowan Williams, �On Being
Creatures�, in On Christian Theology (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2000), p. 70.
[viii]Ibid., p. 71.
[ix]Ibid., p. 72.
[x]Ibid., p. 72.
[xi] On Christian
Theology, p. 99.
[xii]One potentially
interesting corollary of this understanding of law —
as scripture which is also read by others, and read
differently — is that it has to acknowledge the
ongoing possibility of reading it as legal code. The
route that Rabbinic Judaism took is different from
Paul�s, but it may have been an attempt to repair the
Jewish tradition analogous to Paul�s, resulting also
in an understanding of the law as sign of excess.
[xiii]Contra Boyarin, A
Radical Jew.
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