RESPONSE NUMBER ELEVEN To Galatians Re-imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished (Fortress 2010) by Brigitte Kahl

KAHL’S INTRODUCTION

Professor Brigitte Kahl now (p. 11 f.) marks out a major heading, Re-Imagining Justification by Faith, which is made up of several sub-heads. (As mentioned in an earlier post, keeping track of the argument in the Introduction is likely to prove important, when the exposition in the book itself is under consideration.) 

The sub-headings under this major heading are: Constructing the Protestant Other (M. Luther), “Final Solution,” Galatians and the Occidental Semiotics of Combat, Pauline Binaries Revisited, The Annihilation of the Antinomies (J. Louis Martyn), The Politics of the New Creation.

Kahl has stated already that the deliberate misreading of Paul operated as sort of a centuries-long conspiracy.

Introducing this section, Kahl states as given, matters which are subject to considerable uncertainty. Kahl declares that, by way of “a political makeover” the “pro-Roman Paul” is twinned with “the theological Paul’s opposition to Judaism” so that “eventually” Paul (“the apostle to the nations”) was made “admissible among the founding fathers of Western Civilization.” 

This appears to be the thesis of the book. But the chore that lies before Kahl is to establish the historical grounds for the new image of Paul. This is likely to be a taxing explication.

Kahl thesis is this: Paul was willfully misunderstood, so that he might become an important authority for the development of new Western imperialism(s) and the attendant exclusion of any who can be viewed as “the other.” Correctly understood, Paul offers small comfort to imperial power or to anti-Semitism, to homophobia or the millennias-long abuse of women.

In what sense is Paul to be understood, today, as a “founding father” of “Western Civilization.” No details are provided in the introduction. The book awaits.  

Constructing the Protestant Other (M. Luther)

Kahl invokes Luther, as she has invoked Nietzsche, as a kind of forerunner, who awakened Kahl to the new need to re-imagine Paul.

Nietzsche was brought on stage by Kahl, and handed the card that reads, Paul worked among the weak and the poor and we despise him for that. 

Taubes walked on, holding a card that read, In Paul’s time “nomos” meant anything you wanted it to mean. 

Martin Luther, enter stage right, holds a sign that says, Paul’s central doctrine is justification by faith and you must despise any and all who do not hold to this doctrine as we understand it.

Just as with Nietzsche, Luther’s intemperate opinions are presented flatly, for their face value. There is no attempt to qualify or to suggest there might be a more nuanced assessment.

The summary (simplistic?) presentation of the views of Luther and the others is deliberate. Kahl is introducing the reader to those who have influenced her to see Paul in a new, more compelling and more accurate – and therefore, a truer way.

I am struck by the irony of Professor Kahl invoking individuals as representatives of opinions, which may not reflect the complexity of the views held. Isn’t this the kind of distortion, Kahl argues, that has victimized the apostle?

“Final Solution”

In this sub-heading, Kahl relates the effecting story of a 2002 reunion between her aged mother and a Jewish childhood classmate. This story is inserted here, Kahl writes, because it stimulated her “to re-imagine my Lutheran heritage” and to discover, by way of Paul’s “true” story in Galatia, whether there might be a chance for peacemaking and justice seeking with the apostle.           

RESPONSE NUMBER SEVEN To Galatians Re-imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished (Fortress 2010) by Brigitte Kahl

KAHL’S INTRODUCTION

Jewish Torah or Roman Nomos?

This is the sub-heading Kahl has given her following few paragraphs, leading up to a succeeding several more subheadings, the immediately following being a reflection on the impact of Nietzsche, entitled here, Law As Power Construct (Nietzsche). There follows three paragraphs under the sub- head: Law As Imperial Compromise Formula (J. Taubes) and finally, Torah Criticism as Affirmation of Roman Nomos, all of which precedes the next major heading in this Introduction, which is entitled, in a bold font,   Re-Imagining Justification by Faith.

We pay attention to these sub-headings, since the writer wishes her readers to follow a polemic, laid out in a deliberate sequence.

Here we go.

Jewish Torah or Roman Nomos? For Kahl, the answer is: Roman Nomos. The other option is the traditional take on Galatians. This, Kahl describes as an “imagined contextuality” based on “what we had imagined is the context of Galatians” that is, “a dispute between Jews and Christians” . . . “as to whether circumcision was a religious requirement for non-Jews among the Jesus followers.”

Kahl arrives at this either-or by stating, “We all know how much our interpretation of a text depends on how we imagine its context.”

There is a rhetorical leveling going on here, with the apparent objective, to place Kahl’s own re-imagining on the same level of cogency as the traditional understanding of Galatians. This, without placing a commentary about Galatians before the reader.

Note: the ‘imagined contexts’ of Galatians – Kahl’s and the circumcision debate – are taken to be just that – imagined.

This strikes me as a de-valuation of the task of the historian, which is to explicate the actual context, not an imagined one.

There are many parts to the context of a past event, of course. But none of these parts of the context ought, subsequently, to be imagined, should they?

Maybe the problem I am having is the absence of a definition of “imagined.” Maybe this will be cleared up in the text of the book.

Kahl states that the “imagined contextuality” . . . “illuminates one isolated segment of a larger historical picture but leaves the rest in the dark, thus rendering the fuller meaning of the letter practically impossible.”

Once again, I am brought to the thought that what is missing is a set of  comments on the text of the letter. Isn’t this the most direct way to get to the letter’s meaning?  

Kahl believes that Paul and his addressees argued “in the Jewish ‘key’ of circumcision.”

Key? This phrasing is not further explained. Rather, Kahl asserts that “the polarity of law versus lawlessness” was part of “the public discourse” (including representational art) of which Paul partook.

Kahl believes the political, ideological and theological threads “interwoven in Paul’s confrontation with the Galatians and his rejection of ‘law’” will lead to insights otherwise overlooked or neglected.

Kahl presents a diagram in further explication of her point of view. She may be right, insisting that important aspects of the imperial occupation of Galatia have been neglected in the traditional reading of Galatians. 

Her confidence that she is presenting a new, valuable perspective brings her to pose this question: “What if Paul were targeting Greco-Roman imperial nomos much more than Jewish Torah?”

Can we ever know enough about the letter to give a definitive answer to this question? Perhaps working back from the abyss of not knowing is what has caused Kahl to land on the soft target of ‘re-imagining.’ If we don’t know, let’s use our imaginations.

Kahl concludes (p. 7) this sub-section with the assertion, “whatever the subject of contention” between Paul and his addressees in Galatia, “it was Roman law that ultimately defined and enforced what was licit and illicit.”

It strikes me as obvious to state that the Roman occupiers were the ultimate enforcers.

It is not as obvious that this aspect of the context of the Galatians letter clarifies the intentions of Paul in writing, or sheds much light on the concerns of his addressees.