Liberating Paul
The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle
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Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle
For centuries the apostle Paul has been invoked to justify oppression — whether on behalf of slavery, to enforce unquestioned obedience to the state, to silence women, or to legitimate anti-Semitism. To interpret Paul is thus to set foot on a terrible battleground between spiritual forces. But as Neil Elliott argues, the struggle to liberate human beings from the power of Death requires "Liberating Paul" from his enthrallment to that power. In this book, Elliott shows that what many people experience as the scandal of Paul is the unfortunate consequence of the way Paul has usually been read, or rather misread, in the churches.
In the first half of the book, Elliott examines the many texts historically interpreted to support oppression or maintain the status quo. He shows how often Paul's authentic message has been interpreted in the light of later pseudo-Pauline writings.
In Part Two, Elliott applies a "political key" to the interpretation of Paul. Though subsequent centuries have turned the cross into a symbol of Christian piety, Elliott forcefully reminds us that in Paul's time this was the Roman mode of executing rebellious slaves, a fact that has profound political implications.
Under Elliott's examination, a startlingly new image of Paul begins to emerge, liberated from layers of false interpretation, and free to speak a liberating and challenging word to our world today.
- Publisher Fortress Press
- Format Paperback
- ISBN 9780800623791
- Pages 308
- Publication Date February 6, 2005
Preface
Preface to the Fortress edition
Feast of the Holy Cross, 2005
More than a decade has passed since Liberating Paul was first published, and other participants in scholarly discussions of Paul’s theology can testify to the dramatic changes that have taken place during that period. I recall, for example, the silence that greeted one prominent scholar’s proposal, made in 1996 at the final session of the Pauline Theology Section of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), to turn attention to the Roman imperial context in which the Pauline communities emerged. The following year, Richard A. Horsley introduced his collection of essays in the volume Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1997) with the declaration that “Christianity was a product of empire,” and cited Liberating Paul as evidence that “a few recent studies of Paul have finally drawn attention to his opposition to the Roman empire.” When Dick proposed gathering a new SBL consultation on “Paul and Politics,” the small circle who responded considered our project fairly experimental. But only a few years later, in a paper given to what had become an established Section of the SBL, N. T. Wright declared the results of our work “the most exciting developments today in the study of Paul and his thought” (“Paul’s Gospel and Caesar’s Empire,” in Paul and Politics: Ekklesia, Israel, Imperium, Interpretation, ed. Richard A. Horsley [Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2000], 160).
There is more in the following pages than a reading of “Paul against empire,” however. In the first part of the book I sample the ways in which the apostle’s letters have been used to subordinate, enslave, and injure people in the modern age. I show that this baleful legacy relies at key points on ways of construing Paul’s theology that contemporary scholarship casts into doubt: in particular, the decisive weight that the pseudo-Pauline letters—Ephesians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus—are still given when some interpreters read the recognized genuine letters.
Critics have rightly observed that my arguments here are compressed, at best, and hardly conclusive. My point is not to prove that conventional readings of Paul’s “social conservatism,” “love patriarchalism,” or “acceptance of the status quo” are impossible (a task that would require a much longer book, if one could even make so comprehensive an argument successfully), but to drive a wedge of doubt into the confidence with which scholars, teachers, and clergy so routinely repeat those generalizations. My purpose is to suggest that another reading of the evidence is just as plausible, exegetically and historically, and consequently that the burden of proof should rest with readings that so clearly align Paul with the interests of late first- and early second-century Christianity. In the study of the historical Jesus, after all, the analogous “criterion of dissimilarity” is held as an essential principle (see p. 85).In the second part of this book I give an historical explanation of the apostle’s early persecution of the churches, of the “revelation” of God’s son to him, and of his conviction that he was called to be an apostle to the nations. Thanks to the work of Alan Segal, Paula Fredriksen, and others, we can give an account of these subjects within the cultural and political context of first-century Judaism, without appealing to the theological category of “revelation.” For many Christians, of course, revelation and biblical authority are vitally important categories. Some have declared inadequate my treatment of the pseudo-Paulines, which (they remind us) remain a part of the New Testament canon. That objection begs the question, however: if these letters were included under false pretenses, by what rationale can the fact of their canonicity justify perpetuating the misconstrual of Paul’s thought that (whether deliberately or not) their acceptance first set in motion?
Striking much closer to home, some feminist critics have objected that my talk here of “recovering the genuine voice of the apostle” comes too close to privileging “the ‘masculine’ hegemonic voice inscribed in kyriarchal Pauline or other ancient source- texts,” rather than relativizing Paul as one voice among many in the early assemblies (Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1999], 187). Although this objection arises, in part, from an honest disagreement regarding the rhetoric of First Corinthians (see pp. 52-54, below), it is also an important and salutary warning that stands against everything that follows. Indeed, I welcomed just such liberationist critiques of my effort to “recover the voice of Paul” when I wrote (p. 24) that any claim to understand the apostle, including my own, “can only be liberating if it is put in the larger context of a hearkening to the Spirit that attends to the cries of victims. In this sense, ‘liberating Paul’ must be seen as one small part of the much broader liberating work of the Spirit.”
Other reviewers have been scandalized that so much of this book goes beyond historical reconstruction to draw theological and political connections regarding the imperial order in our own day. It is important to bear in mind that this book had its origin in a very specific historical moment: a president named George Bush had launched a catastrophic and virtually unilateral war in Iraq; his administration had supported a bloody coup d’état that had removed the democratically elected president of Haiti, a fiery priest named Jean-Bertrand Aristide; his tax breaks for the richest Americans fueled budget deficits and accelerated the growing divide between rich and poor. If any of this sounds familiar to readers at the beginning of the twenty-first century, perhaps the connections I sought to make more than a decade ago still bear consideration.
I am grateful to Scott Tunseth, Publisher, and Michael West, Editor-in-Chief at Fortress Press, for their enthusiastic confidence in this work. I also owe a debt of thanks to my colleagues and to the numerous students, in my classrooms and elsewhere, who have shared praise, criticism, and most important, further questions after using this book.
To Mary Ellen, gnesiē syzyge, and to Austin and Jeremy, splendid sons, I owe my enduring gratitude and love.
Neil ElliottFeast of the Holy Cross, 2005
Table of Contents
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Preface
- Paul in the Service of Death
- The Canonical Betrayal of the Apostle
- The Mystificatino of the Apostle Paul
- Paul and the Violence of the Cross
- The Apocalypse of the Crudivied Messiah
- Apostolic Praxis: Living out the dying of Jesus
PART ONE PAUL IN THE SERVICE OF DEATH
South Carolina
The Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1637
The "New World Order": Guatemala, 1982
The Pauline Legacy as an Ideological Weapon of Death
The Dynamics of Paul's Enslavement
Toward the Liberation of Paul
Paul in the Service of Liberation
Facing the Facts of Pseudepigraphy
Reexamining Paul's "Social Conservation"
Paul and Slavery (I) 1 Corinthians 7:21
Paul and Slavery (II): Philemon
The Pauline Gospel and the Redemption of Slaves
Paul and women: The Curious Persistence of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35
The Gentrification of the Apostle
The Question of Paul's Social Location
The Problem of Explaining Paul's "Conservatism," Again Paul's Dejudaization
The Classical Reading of Paul-against-Judaism
The Inadequacy of the "New Perspective on Paul"
A Third Way?
The Theological Marginalizatino of Paul's Politics
The Babylonian Captivity of the Letter to the Romans
Paul's Deployment in the Struggle against Liberation Theology
Toward a New Approach
A "Quest for the Historical Paul"
Reading Paul in a Confessional Situation
Paul's Preferential Option for the Poor and Oppressed
A Personal Angle of Vision
PART TWO: FROM DEATH TO LIFE
The Political Significance of Crucifixion
The Politics of Jesus' Death
Mimetic Conflict, Violence, and Christian Origins
Paul and the Mythologizing of the Cross
Did Paul Obscure the Political Character of Jesus' Death?
Paul and "the Powers"
Did Paul Mystify Jesus' Death within the Logic of Sacrifice?
Did Paul Think the Torah Killed Jesus?
The Cross and the Justice of God
Apocalyptic Mysticism and Paul's "Conversion"
Saul the Pharisee's Motives in Persecuting the Church
Apocalypticism and Resistance in Roman-Occupied Judea
The Fourth Philosophy
An Apocalyptic Rationale for Resistance: 4 Maccabees
The Book of Biblical Antiquitties and the Psalms of Solomon
Apocalypticism and "Political Realism" among the Pharisees
Sacred Violence and Paul's Conversion
The Apocalyptic Contours of Paul's Apostolate
The Ideological Context: The Theology of Empire
Communities of Discernment
Discerning the Lie: "Peace and Security"
Discerning the Lie: "Justice and Faith"
Communities of Resistance
Communities of Solidarity with the Crucified
Challenging the Ideology of Privilege: 1 Corinthians
Discerning and Resisting the Ideology of Privilege
A Holy Solidarity with Those Not Yet Free
Confronting the Ideology of Power (Romans)
The Theological Offense of Romans 13:1-7
The Historical Problem of Romans 13:1-7
An Exhortation against Rivalry
Liberating Paul
Notes
General Index
Index of Names
Index of Citations of Ancient Literature