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  • From: "Tim Gallant" <tim AT rabbisaul.com>
  • To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] The Symbolic Paul
  • Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 12:59:53 -0600

----- Original Message ----- From: "Loren Rosson" <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>
To: <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 11:01 AM
Subject: [Corpus-Paul] The Symbolic Paul

Loren, thanks for your post. I do not plan on evaluating the whole, but will just offer a few comments in connection with the Arnal quotation near the end.

I'm simply noting the agendas themselves, often
clearly and candidly stated, often surfacing in the
heat of debate, and wondering if not said agendas end
up coloring an overall portrait of the apostle which
has been predetermined in advance.

I can't help but agree with Arnal when he writes:

"Until and unless Christianity is able to find a mode
of self-definition that does not require a
supersessionist theology or a strong contradistinction
to Judaism it will never be able to shed its intrinsic
tendency to anti-Judaism. We will not -- cannot --
save Christianity from anti-Semitism, nor agguage our
guilt, by making [Jesus or Paul] into an honorary
Jew." (p 53)

As one named in your post, I can scarcely avoid taking a side here. And the fact of the matter is: it is impossible to operate without presuppositions, no matter how "objective" one may claim to be. No one demonstrates this more eloquently than Arnal himself in the quotation you cite so favourably.

In response to that quotation, let me observe a few things:

1) There is *no need* to make Jesus or Paul "honorary Jews," since after all, they *were* Jews. Now, we may consider ourselves free to redefine the meaning of the term "Jew." But then we'd better be self-conscious of what we are doing.

2) The above also raises all sorts of questions: For example: What is "Judaism"? The faith of Jews? The faith of Jews, except those who became Christians? Just what?

3) What is "anti-Semitism"? Jesus and Paul were Jews, as I noted. I'm not denying that there is a horrible legacy of *real* anti-Semitism in the history of the Christian Church. But claiming that "supersessionism" (undefined) is the problem begs a whole raft of questions.

4) What does "strong contradistinction" mean, and again, over against *what*? Arnal is implying that any form of Christianity that distinguishes itself clearly from Judaism is intrinsically anti-Semitic. This suggestion is fraught with all the definitional difficulties noted above. It also presupposes that the only solution to anti-Semitism is relativism. I and many others simply refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the presupposition, which would not have been plain to most Jews in history, quite aside from whether they were Christian or not. It seems to me that the very thing you attribute to others (agendas colouring a predetermined portrait) is doubly apropos to Arnal's assessment. The radically-postmodern agenda of having all claims to truth flattened out never could have been the agenda of Paul or Jesus or virtually any other figure of 1st-century Judaism and/or Christianity. Thus if there is a danger in the "real Paul" being hijacked, the danger is far greater in the hands of Arnal than in the hands of "supersessionists" (leaving aside what on earth *that* term means).

Whatever the errors we may attribute to the Christian Church (and there are many), let us be clear: the apostle Paul was more than ready to carry out his apostolic task with "a mode of self-definition" that was in "strong contradistinction" to what is *now* generally called "Judaism" - not to mention, in strong contradistinction to all the sundry religions that populated the ancient world, whether the emperor cult, the mystery religions, or those of the traditional Greco-Roman gods. If "strong contradistinction" means anti-Semitism, then Paul was not only anti-Semitic; he was anti-Caucasian, anti-Oriental, and anti-virtually-everything. In short, he was horrible bigot.

Discussions that are based upon shifting or misleading terminology ("anti-Semitism", "Judaism," and other terms are no longer employed in the way they once were, and in fact, are scarcely employed in a definable fashion at all) are not going to lead us very far. And when it is done from the assumption as self-evident that only relativism is right, because it says everyone is pretty much right (well, except people who think others are wrong - oops! but no need to be consistent), there is a rapidly-diminishing chance of understanding Paul.

tim


Tim Gallant
Pastor, Conrad Christian Reformed Church

http://www.timgallant.org
tim | gallant site group





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