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

KAHL’S INTRODUCTION

In the previous post, I offered comments to Professor Kahl’s presentations under three sub-headings, Galatians and the Occidental Semiotics of Combat, Pauline Binaries Revisited, The Annihilation of the Antinomies (J. Louis Martyn).

The following sub-head is The Politics of the New Creation, wherein the writer asserts (p. 21), that the image of Paul “primeval Christian warrior defending the purity of the Christian gospel against the onslaught of Jewish law and otherness begins to fade.”

I am suspicious of a polemic which acknowledges the complexity of its own perspective(s) while dismissing a counter position, which has been drawn so simplistically it is merely a caricature. 

This gambit is easily done, but is also easily dismissed in its turn as unpersuasive.

The casual dismissal of the traditional perspective on Paul (Paul is contending against those who would require circumcision of Gentiles, who adhere to a belief in Messiah Jesus) is prologue for Kahl, who moves quickly into an explanation of brand new polarities, created by Paul himself.

Kahl is unwilling to place Paul’s polarities on the same plain as the official Roman binary ideology. Nor is Kahl prepared to see these polarities as rhetorical devices merely.

Kahl sweeps all of Paul’s polarities into a pile in the middle of a paragraph, the better to sweep them aside.

Old age-new age, flesh-spirit, slave-freedom, old creation-new creation are Pauline polarities but – according to Kahl – not really. 


These contrary elements, Kahl acknowledges, function in the context of “performance power” but the real game is not Paul’s attempt to adopt a persuasive and familiar rhetoric.

For Kahl, one must come to see Paul’s “war” as actually an “anti-war” in which Paul calls for the mobilization of life’s “losers, the crippled and limping, the never victorious.” The recruitment of bottom rung dwellers amounts (p. 22) to Pauline  “erasures of the principle of enmity itself.”

Paul is challenging, Kahl asserts, “an evil order” and “not an evil Other.”

This is a pretty good rhetorical flourish in its own right.

It may also be reductionist to define Paul’s Galatians letter in this way.

It certainly is a heavy lift to attempt to persuade that Paul has been fundamentally, and indeed deliberately, misunderstood for two thousand years, by a Christianized empire that intends to reassert the old self-versus-other polarity.

The ironic transcendence of all ideologies associated with the message of Jesus followed by a crucifixion of a Jewish messianic figure certainly gains purchase in the imagery of the Gospels, but not, so far as I can tell thus far, in the letter to the Galatians.

Paul in Galatians simply is too angry and hostile for that. Paul in Galatians is strident and accusatory. He is taking on “the Other” because he must answer criticisms leveled against him.

But Kahl would see the author of the Galatians letter as embracing “the Other” – which in turn amounts to an upending of the entire Roman self-versus-other ideology of empire.

Kahl asserts that the abandonment of the old Greek-Roman polarities “does not create a new Christian binary” but rather “produces a non-binary space” wherein “the old cosmos” and “the old-Self” are “put to death and turned into Nothingness.”

Nietzsche saw this in Paul’s teachings, as Kahl again reminds her readers.

This reader responds: is Nietzsche the best you can do? Is a deliberately outrageous iconoclast, given to insults and exaggeration – the best you can do?

Kahl is bumping up against the literal words of the letter and she knows it. This is why she asserts (p. 22), “the transformation Paul perceives is difficult for us to grasp and to articulate.”  Professor Kahl states (p. 23) that Paul’s argument is “literally senseless” if one tries to understand it by “the old ways of meaning.”

Kahl invites readers to look past the words of the letter and focus on lifestyle changes. Kahl speaks (p. 23) of Paul as more interested in “a permanent discipline of self-Othering.” Earlier (p. 22) she had argued that Paul has in the Galatians letter, initiated “the practice of Selves, who no longer try to vanquish their Others.”

The gist of Kahl’s argument at this point (p. 24): “it is not an antagonism between Judaism and Christianity, however, but an antagonism between a messianic way of life and an imperial order.”

A sweeping critique of Christian ideological pretensions can be and has been made in praxis and by apologists over the centuries – along side other far less challenging critiques.

But is the most sweeping critique of all what Paul’s letter to the Galatians is all about?  I retain my doubts.

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

KAHL’S INTRODUCTION

Torah Criticism as Affirmation of Roman Nomos

The argument presenting under this sub-head strikes me as more persuasive than the preceding assertions that Nietzsche and Jacob Taubes lead the way.

Here, Kahl asserts that the Roman context was, for Paul, far more relevant than subsequent New Testament and theological developments have seen. Instead, this context has been “eclipsed” because of the centrality of “the doctrine of justification by faith” which is prominent in Galatians. (See Gal 2.16). 

Hopefully, this point will be expanded, since, superficially, the impression is left that Kahl is in a dialogue only with her Lutheran context.

Kahl adds that an important alarm about the traditional misunderstanding of Paul has been sounded by Robert Jewett in his Romans commentary (Fortress, 2007).

I think Kahl needlessly obfuscates the clarity of her argument about the importance of the Roman context, by asserting that Paul’s negative critique of nomos in Galatians required the creation of “an anti-Jewish double.”

Why? To create an explanation for Paul’s law-critical statements. Also, Kahl adds, the actual target of Paul’s critique – the Roman empire – could not be acknowledged in the subsequently developed “Christianized empire.” 

These arguments come very near to the promulgation of a conspiracy theory, which would have had to include centuries of commentators, agreeing together not to understand Paul plainly and correctly.

Kahl finds it ironical that the Rome-critical Paul was replaced in theology, by a “pro-Roman Paul” and his "anti-Jewish double.”

These arguments appear to me to be tendentious. 

Why isn’t it sufficient simply to demonstrate that the larger Roman context has been neglected? Why does this probable truth need to be expanded into an argument about conspiracies and the wholesale, deliberate misreading of Galatians?

Maybe the book itself will draw all these threads together.   

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

KAHL’S INTRODUCTION

Law As Power Construct (Nietzsche)

The material under these brief sub-heads (pp. 8-9. ff.), does not appear to be cumulative so much as different slants on the same fundamental idea, that Paul in Galatians is mounting an attack on Roman Nomos rather than Jewish Torah.

In the paragraphs under this heading, Professor Kahl enlists Nietzsche as a forerunner of her re-imagining of Paul’s Galatians. How is Nietzsche a forerunner to the new re-imagining? It is because Nietzsche asserted that the natural order places the powerful over the weak and Paul, writing under the banner of a crucified (lawfully executed) Messiah, is aligned with the weak.

Brigitte Kahl views Nietzsche as an astute historian (“profoundly knowledgeable about ancient history and the Roman empire”), but Nietzsche’s various statements can be assessed with greater nuance. For one thing, Nietzsche can be seen as sarcastic, ironic, contradictory or provocative.

  

Nietzsche’s assertion, cited by Kahl, that Paul intended to undermine the Roman empire by uniting “all who lay at the bottom . . . into a tremendous power” is unlikely to be taken as an historically precise view of the writer of the letter to the Galatians.

Nietzsche’s take on Paul may find purchase as a description of the Cosmic Saint Paul, of the much later church universal, a figure and a worldly institution never contemplated by the Apostle himself.  

I think Nietzsche gets ink here because he can be presented as a (cynical?) admirer of power and a (bitter?) critic of Paul, apostle to the weak.                

      

     

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.