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Paul as Political Theologian: How the “New Perspective” Is Reshaping Philosophical and Theological Discourse

  • Carl Raschke
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Saint Paul and Philosophy
This chapter is in the book Saint Paul and Philosophy

Abstract

This essay explores how the so-called “New Perspective on Paul,” focusing on the Jewish context of the apostle’s writings and exemplified in the Biblical scholarship of N.T.Wright and others has profound implications for contemporary “political theology.” It considers carefully an important book by Theodore Jennings entitled Outlaw Justice and compares his approach to key contemporary European philosophical ventures in recent decades that aim to reinterpret Paul and Jewish eschatology in political terms. The essay argues that the central term δικαιοσύνη in Pauline “soteriology” is also a fundamental concept for the ancient theory of the πόλις.Whereas in the Republic Plato sought to explicate the integral relationship between ψυχή and the well-ordered πόλις in accordance with the notion of δικαιοσύνη, so Paul follows a comparable trajectory in setting forth the theme of participation “in Christ” as an “existential” as well as a socionormative project. It is this unique, tensive relationship between the two meanings of the word δικαιοσύνη (both “ethical” and “political”) that not only makes Paul intelligible in a whole new way within his own historical setting, but also recontextualizes him as an important figure for political thinking down through the ages. We can thus begin to reconceive Paul’s Romans especially not only as an ongoing polemic against Judaism and paganism, but as a “radical political theology” that confronts and critiques the apparatus of the imperial state itself.

Abstract

This essay explores how the so-called “New Perspective on Paul,” focusing on the Jewish context of the apostle’s writings and exemplified in the Biblical scholarship of N.T.Wright and others has profound implications for contemporary “political theology.” It considers carefully an important book by Theodore Jennings entitled Outlaw Justice and compares his approach to key contemporary European philosophical ventures in recent decades that aim to reinterpret Paul and Jewish eschatology in political terms. The essay argues that the central term δικαιοσύνη in Pauline “soteriology” is also a fundamental concept for the ancient theory of the πόλις.Whereas in the Republic Plato sought to explicate the integral relationship between ψυχή and the well-ordered πόλις in accordance with the notion of δικαιοσύνη, so Paul follows a comparable trajectory in setting forth the theme of participation “in Christ” as an “existential” as well as a socionormative project. It is this unique, tensive relationship between the two meanings of the word δικαιοσύνη (both “ethical” and “political”) that not only makes Paul intelligible in a whole new way within his own historical setting, but also recontextualizes him as an important figure for political thinking down through the ages. We can thus begin to reconceive Paul’s Romans especially not only as an ongoing polemic against Judaism and paganism, but as a “radical political theology” that confronts and critiques the apparatus of the imperial state itself.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments V
  3. Table of Contents VII
  4. List of Abbreviations 1
  5. Introduction: On the Philosophical Affiliations of Paul and Πίστις 3
  6. Part I. Philosophical Portraits of Paul and Πίστις
  7. Reading, Seeing and the Logic of Abandonment: Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul 21
  8. The Invention of Christianity: Preambles to a Philosophical Reading of Paul 47
  9. Heidegger’s Hermeneutics of Paul 67
  10. The Philosophers’ Paul: A Radically Subversive Thinker 81
  11. Disillusioning Reason—Rethinking Faith: Paul, Performative Speech Acts and the Political History of the Occident in Agamben and Foucault 95
  12. On What Remains: Paul’s Proclamation of Contingency 115
  13. Part II. Paul and Πίστις in the Greco-Roman World
  14. Paul’s Stoic Onto-Theology and Ethics of Good, Evil and “Indifferents”: A Response to Anti-Metaphysical and Nihilistic Readings of Paul in Modern Philosophy 133
  15. Narratives of Πίστις in Paul and Deutero-Paul 165
  16. Returning to “Religious” Πίστις: Platonism and Piety in Plutarch and Neoplatonism 189
  17. The Metahistory of Δίκη and Πίστις: A Greco-Roman Reading of Paul’s “Justification by Faith” Axiom 209
  18. Paul’s Use of Πίστις/Πιστεύειν as Epitome of Axial Age Religion 231
  19. Part III. The Political Theologies of Paul
  20. The Management of Distinctions: Jacob Taubes on Paul’s Political Theology 251
  21. Paul as Political Theologian: How the “New Perspective” Is Reshaping Philosophical and Theological Discourse 269
  22. Church, Commonwealth, and Toleration: John Locke as a Reader of Paul 283
  23. Europe and Paul of Tarsus: Giorgio Agamben on the Overcoming of Europe’s Crisis 297
  24. The Invisible Committee as a Pauline Gesture: Anarchic Politics from Tiqqun to Tarnac 309
  25. Epilogue: Saint Paul and Philosophy—The Consonance of Ancient and Modern Thought 325
  26. Index of Ancient Sources 351
  27. Index of Names and Subjects 361
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110547467-015

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Acknowledgments V
  3. Table of Contents VII
  4. List of Abbreviations 1
  5. Introduction: On the Philosophical Affiliations of Paul and Πίστις 3
  6. Part I. Philosophical Portraits of Paul and Πίστις
  7. Reading, Seeing and the Logic of Abandonment: Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul 21
  8. The Invention of Christianity: Preambles to a Philosophical Reading of Paul 47
  9. Heidegger’s Hermeneutics of Paul 67
  10. The Philosophers’ Paul: A Radically Subversive Thinker 81
  11. Disillusioning Reason—Rethinking Faith: Paul, Performative Speech Acts and the Political History of the Occident in Agamben and Foucault 95
  12. On What Remains: Paul’s Proclamation of Contingency 115
  13. Part II. Paul and Πίστις in the Greco-Roman World
  14. Paul’s Stoic Onto-Theology and Ethics of Good, Evil and “Indifferents”: A Response to Anti-Metaphysical and Nihilistic Readings of Paul in Modern Philosophy 133
  15. Narratives of Πίστις in Paul and Deutero-Paul 165
  16. Returning to “Religious” Πίστις: Platonism and Piety in Plutarch and Neoplatonism 189
  17. The Metahistory of Δίκη and Πίστις: A Greco-Roman Reading of Paul’s “Justification by Faith” Axiom 209
  18. Paul’s Use of Πίστις/Πιστεύειν as Epitome of Axial Age Religion 231
  19. Part III. The Political Theologies of Paul
  20. The Management of Distinctions: Jacob Taubes on Paul’s Political Theology 251
  21. Paul as Political Theologian: How the “New Perspective” Is Reshaping Philosophical and Theological Discourse 269
  22. Church, Commonwealth, and Toleration: John Locke as a Reader of Paul 283
  23. Europe and Paul of Tarsus: Giorgio Agamben on the Overcoming of Europe’s Crisis 297
  24. The Invisible Committee as a Pauline Gesture: Anarchic Politics from Tiqqun to Tarnac 309
  25. Epilogue: Saint Paul and Philosophy—The Consonance of Ancient and Modern Thought 325
  26. Index of Ancient Sources 351
  27. Index of Names and Subjects 361
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