On Partisanship: The View across the Barricades
At this stage, it is important to comment on partisanship. It has already been asserted that neoclassicism is partisan, in that it favours the few over the many.[17] This assertion directly contradicts the claims that neoclassicism benefits everyone and favours no one.[18] However, in actuality, the neoclassical vision coincides precisely with the interests of large multinationals and turns the wealthy into the super-rich, and the working class into the disposable poor.[19] Herein one discovers an economic order premised upon looting, full of winners and losers, victors and victims.[20] To this, neoclassicists often respond with some variant of the ‘trickle-down’ argument, but this is essentially giving the poor (i.e. the ‘losers’) the option of trading one form of misery for another.[21] Consequently, one quickly learns that the partisanship of neoclassicism results in “[the] freedom of the powerful to rob, and [the] freedom of the dispossessed to live in misery.”[22]
However, it is essential to realize that Christianity is also partisan – but in the opposite direction. Neoclassicism favours the rich while plundering the poor, but Christianity advances God’s ‘preferential option for the poor’.[23] Consequently, Christians and neoclassicists end up opposed to one another. Here one must realize that partisanship and objectivity are not rivals but allies, because, as Terry Eagleton notes, “true judiciousness means taking sides.”[24] Christians side with the poor and against those who oppress them, precisely because the poor suffer unjustly. For this reason, Christians must abandon the myth that, in order to maintain one’s perspective, one should not take sides.[25] Maintaining perspective means taking sides.
This, then, has implications for the methodology employed by those Christians who seek to write in response to neoclassicism today. First of all, it is important to recall, and dialogue with, the witness of Christians who have come together and written from such partisan places.[26] Secondly, this means that Christians should also listen to other subversive voices – to revolutionaries, (post-)Marxists, and others who end up on the “same side of the barricades.”[27] For, as Eagleton notes: “Marxist ideas have stubbornly outlived Marxist political practice… We do not dismiss, say, feminist criticism just because patriarchy has not yet been dislodged. On the contrary, it is all the more reason to embrace it.”[28] Thirdly, it means that Christians should write from a place of embodied partisanship. A Christian theology that responds to neoclassicism must follow from action, it must be “critical reflection on Christian praxis.”[29]
Therefore, because Christians hold contradictory allegiances to those held by neoclassicists, one should expect Christians to offer another way of structuring life together, a way that opposes the fascist-imperialist structures imposed by neoclassicism.
____________
[17] That such partisanship is often overlooked in public discourse should come as no surprise once one comes to understand that all the (significant) communication media are owned by the same oligarchies that benefit from the partisanship of the system; cf. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002), xi, 298-303; Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies (Boston: South End Press, 1989), 8.
[18] Cf. Hayek, xi-xiv, 262; Friedman, 5-6.
[19] Cf. Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 66, 101, 534. This point has also been explored by many others; cf. Chomsky, Profit Over People, 34; Jon Sobrino, Where is God? Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope, trans. by Margaret Wilde (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004), 99; Jim Wallis, The Call to Conversion: Recovering the Gospel for These Times (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), 45-46; Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. by Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1973), 84; Barber, 28; William Cavanaugh, “The Unfreedom of the Free Market,” in Wealth, Poverty & Human Destiny, ed. Doug Bandow and David L. Schindler (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2003), 103-28. Accessed 3 November 2007. Online: www.jesusradicals.com/library/cavanaugh/unfreedom.pdf.
[20] On an economics of looting, cf. Wallis, 42. This is especially evident in the recent Bush administration wherein those in power refused to divest stock holdings that were directly impacted by their roles in office (an illegal act): Rumsfeld kept his shares in Gilead Science, Cheney, his shares in Halliburton (while his wife held shares in Lockheed-Martin), Perle, his shares in Trireme Partners, Baker his shares in Carlyle Group and Baker Botts, Schulz, his shares in Brechtel (Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 377-84). Some would take this to be evidence of a State-imposed imperialism, but it is better understood as evidence of the neoclassical conquest of the State.
[21] For example, multinationals have argued that sweatshops in the two-thirds world provide women and children the opportunity to escape from prostitution – often considered the only other job alternative. Of course, working long hours within a sweatshop, and breaking one’s own body for less than a living wage, is hardly a true alternative – it is simply another form of misery and prostitution. It should be noted that this argument emerged with capitalism itself, as Adam Smith argued that it would be a ‘philanthropic gesture’ to allow poor children to work in factories (cf. Heilbroner, 45).
[22] Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, Our Word is our Weapon: Selected Writings, ed. By Juana Ponce de Leon (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001), 65.
[23] A point first made by Latin American liberation theologians, and now widely accepted within global Christianity. Cf. Jurgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, trans. by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), xii, 75; The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions, trans. by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 101-102.
[24] After Theory (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 137; cf. 131-37.
[25] As Walter Brueggemann notes, it is the powers-that-be that benefit from those who “understand both sides” (The Prophetic Imagination [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1978], 24-25). Consequently, it is for this reason that Donald A. Hay’s advice that “Christians should be particularly circumspect in their policy prescriptions, and cheerfully tolerant of other Christians who take different lines” is so misguided (Economics Today: A Christian Critique [Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1989], 312; emphasis added).
[26] One thinks, for example, of the witness that came out of an illegal ‘Confessing Church’ Seminary at Finkenwalde, Germany, during WWII – Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, trans. by John W. Doberstein (London: SCM Press, Ltd., 1954). A second example would be the writings of the liberation theologians, and a third example would be the writings that came out of the Sojourners community in Washington, D.C. – Wallis’ Call to Conversion.
[27] The reference is to a comment made by Zizek on the relationship between Christians and Marxists (The Fragile Absolute, 2). Moltmann’s comments on Ernst Bloch, a Marxist atheist, are significant in this regard. He writes: “God’s defenders are not necessarily closer to God than God’s accusers. It is not Job’s theological friends who are justified, but Job himself. In the Psalms, protest and jubilation ring out in the same voice. Wherever in history [that] combination ceased to work, the theologians would learn as much about God from atheists as the atheists could perhaps learn from the theologians” (Ernst Bloch, Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion, with an introduction by Jurgen Moltmann, trans. by E. B. Ashton (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), 28.
[28] Marxism and Literary Criticism, Routledge Classics (New York: Routledge, 1976), viii-ix. Of course, as noted above, this does not mean that Christians should wholeheartedly accept the Marxist agenda.
[29] This is the definition of liberation theology’s methodology (Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 11-13; cf. On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent, trans. by Matthew J. O’Connell [Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987], 103).

[Over the next little while I'll be posting a series of entries on 'The Church and Capitalism', which is a paper that I have been working on for quite some time. I'll repeat a few of the points I made in my earlier series on 'Christianity and Capitalism' but I trust that there is much greater detail, and much that is new, in this series.]
I. The Confrontation
I.1 — Neoclassicism and the Triumph of Capitalism-as-Fascism
Whither Capitalism?
In 1776, Adam Smith gave birth to the modern science of economics by predicting that the liberation of the market from various forms of state control would lead us into the best of all possible worlds.[1] In 1848, Karl Marx challenged Smith and predicted that capitalism would be overthrown in the inexorable rise of socialism.[2] Since then, there have been endless competing prophecies about where capitalism is leading our life together. However, from the vantage point of the early twenty-first century, we can see that what has arisen is the global dominance of neoclassicism.[3] What, then, are we to make of the various predictions about capitalism?
To begin with, it is clear that capitalism has not developed into the utopia foreseen by Smith. Rather, we now live in a time when inequality, famine, and economic oppression affect more people around the world than ever before.[4] Consequently, it is necessary to emphasise that Smith’s vision was, in fact, utopian (in the worst sense of that word). Smith’s vision promised us that which could not be attained by the means provided.[5]
Secondly, the triumph of neoclassicism has made it clear that capitalism does not lead to socialism, as predicted by traditional Marxists and others.[6] In fact, we have seen exactly the opposite occurrence: the majority of socialist nations have converted to capitalism, and even so-called ‘communist’ nations, like China, espouse what is, by and large, a neoclassical form of economics. Why has this happened? There are a number of reasons for this (not the least being the greater military power of the capitalist nations, who were able to destroy many socialist governments in their infancies), but the primary reason for this was that socialism was too closely wed to capitalism. Slavoj Zizek makes this argument:
Marxian communism, this notion of a society of pure unleashed productivity outside the frame of capital, was a fantasy inherent to capitalism itself… ‘Socialism’ failed because it was ultimately a subspecies of capitalism, an ideological attempt to ‘have one’s cake and eat it’, to break out of capitalism while retaining its key ingredients.[7]
Socialism represents a failed utopianism, precisely because it simply continues the utopianism of capitalism (i.e. instead of arguing that capitalism leads us directly to utopia, it argues that capitalism leads us indirectly, through socialism, to utopia).
Thirdly, others who have predicted that capitalism will lead us to anarchy have also been mistaken.[8] Certainly, capitalism has lead to the fracturing of most social bodies, but the result has not been chaos. Rather, within neoclassicism we have seen the birth of massive oligarchies that hold power over an increasingly fractured public.
So who has correctly predicted the movement of capitalism into its neoclassical form? Surprisingly, it was those Marxists, who rejected the fatalistic element of Marxism, who were able to foresee where capitalism was leading us.[9] It was the likes of Bukharin, Lenin, and Trotsky who were able to see that capitalism, if left to its own devices, would develop into a fascist form of imperialism.[10] To be clear: the global conquest accomplished by neoclassicism, with its focus on privitisation, deregulation, and cuts to social spending, is the conquest of the globe by capitalism-as-fascism.[11] It is important to define what is meant by ‘fascism’ here. Traditionally, fascism has been understood as the subordination of individuals, and all other corporate bodies, to the State. What has occurred within neoclassicism, however, is the subordination of individuals, and all corporate bodies, including the State, to the regnant economic powers – the oligarchies, the multinational corporations, and those who serve them (like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund). With this distinction in mind, the other elements of traditional fascism hold for our contemporary experience of capitalism-as-fascism (also referred to as ‘corporatism’): (1) it assaults all forms of collectivity, and all public bodies; (2) it is, therefore, defined by the drive for conquest; (3) it favours the interests of a few over the interests of the many; and (4) it makes the many favour their own repression.[12] The damning proof of this is in the specific examples of the ways in which neoclassicism has played out at ground level in the various countries to which it has been applied.[13]
Furthermore, it is important to realize that the neoclassicism does not appear as a perversion of ‘capitalism proper’; it develops from the root of capitalism itself.[14] Consequently, the question is not ‘where did capitalism go wrong?’ because it was wrong from the very beginning – as George Weissman says: “The germ of fascism is endemic to capitalism”.[15] Therefore, it is a mistake to try to redeem or rectify capitalism. The effort to return to the form of capitalism that preceded neoclassicism is akin to trying to escape Germany in 1945 by returning to Germany in 1934! Here the words of Simone de Beauvoir are quite apropos: “To protest in the name of morality against ‘excesses’ or ‘abuses’ is an error which hints at active complicity. There are no ‘abuses’ or ‘excesses’ here, simply an all-pervasive system.”[16] Consequently, the challenge for Christians is not the pursuit of ‘capitalism with a human face’ or ‘moral capitalism’; rather, the challenge is to move out of capitalism into an altogether different system.
_________________
[1] Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 1, ed. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, and W. B. Todd (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1981), IV.i.11, et passim.
[2] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: International Publishers, 1948), 9-21.
[3] The term ‘neoclassicism’ as it is applied throughout this paper is intended to refer to both the theory and the practice of those who are both committed to, and participate within, the structures of the laissez-faire form of capitalism championed by Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and the ‘Chicago School’ (cf. Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, with an introduction by Milton Friedman [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994]; and Milton Friedman with Rose D. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1962]).
[4] Cf. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, Routledge Classics, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1992), 106.
[5] However, because the neoclassicists continue to promise us this same utopia, further discussion of this point must be deferred until our evaluation of neoclassicism itself. Here, it is worth noting Naomi Klein’s comment that, whereas the Marxists envisioned a “workers’ utopia,” the neoclassicists envision an “entrepreneurs’ utopia” (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism [Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2007], 60).
[6] A notable other being Joseph Schumpeter (cf. Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy [New York: Harper & Row, 1947]).
[7] The Fragile Absolute – or, why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for? Wo Es War (London: Verso, 2000), 19. Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Workers’ movement, also makes this point: “The Bolshevist Socialist is the son of the bourgeois capitalist, and the son is too much like his father. All the sins of the father are found in the son” (Easy Essays, illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg [Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1977], 115; cf. 116-17, 174).
[8] Cf. John Gray, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (New York: The New Press, 1998), 207, et passim.
[9] However, it is quite possible that Marx himself abandoned the fatalistic approach later in life. When, shortly before his death, he stated “I am not a Marxist” it is not likely that he was then saying that he was abandoning the struggle on behalf of the proletariat. Rather, it is more likely that he realized that socialism would not necessarily replace capitalism, but would only come by the means of a sustained struggle. If this is the case, then the true legacy of Marx is not his fatalistic theory, but his lifestyle of solidarity and his action on behalf of the proletariat. This, then, goes against Robert L. Heilbroner’s understanding of Marx’s legacy, which by pretending to take Marx seriously, ends up not taking him seriously at all (The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives Times & Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963], 142).
[10] Cf. Leon Trotsky, Fascism: what it is and how to fight it, with an introduction by George Lavan Weissman (New York: Pathfinder Press, Inc., 1969), 6-7, et passim; Nikolai Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy, with an introduction by V. I. Lenin (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1929), 10, 107-108, 112-15, 140.
[11] The irony here is that it was Hayek’s fear of fascism that prompted him to write The Road to Serfdom in the first place (cf. The Road to Serfdom, 4).
[12] All of these points will be developed in more detail later within this paper. For further comment on neoclassicism as fascism cf. Noam Chomsky, Profit Over People: neoliberalism and global order, with an introduction by Robert W. McChesney (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999); Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 12, 17, 369; Brian Massumi, A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992), 64, 106, 116, 125-26; and, especially, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol. 1, Anti-Oedipus, trans. by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983; Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol. 2, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).
[13] The devastating impact of neoclassicism upon country after country, and the ways in which it operates as fascism, have been documented by Klein in The Shock Doctrine. Significantly, it is not only outsiders who have made this observation but those who have worked within the heart of institutions responsible for spreading neoclassicism have come forward and said the same thing (cf. John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man [London: Penguin Books, Ltd., 2004]; and Davison L. Budhoo, Enough is Enough: Dear Mr. Camdessus… Open Letter of Resignation to the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, foreward by Errol K. McLeod [New York: Horizons Press, 1990]).
[14] Grey’s argument that ‘bad capitalism’ naturally drives out ‘good capitalism’ is helpful in this regard (Grey, 78-87), as are Lenin’s comments on Bukharin’s argument that fascist imperialism is the direct development of a system that relies on continual growth (Bukharin, 10).
[15] In Trotsky, 7. This is where those like John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith, Daniel Bell, and Benjamin R. Barber end up going wrong. Each of them is aware that capitalism can lead to fascism, but each of them does not believe that capitalism necessarily leads to fascism and so, each proposes some form of State, democratic, or civil control that they believe will both save capitalism and save us from capitalism (cf. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money [New York: Harvest/Harcourt Inc., 1964]; Galbraith, The New Industrial Society [Boston: Mentor, 1967]; Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism [New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1976]; and Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World [New York: Ballantine Books, 1996]).
[16] Quoted by Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 150.

For those who don't know, there is a fantastic website called postsecret.blogspot.com, run by a fellow named Frank Warren, who had the brilliant idea of asking people to (anonymously) send him postcards that contained secrets — secrets that the senders of the postcards had never told anybody else. The website is updated every Sunday, and today, when I was looking at the new postcards, I was struck by one in particular. It said this:
I am tired of waiting for God to find me. So I'll find myself. I started looking last night.
What struck me was a comment that a reader had posted in response to this postcard. The comment was this:
Once I found myself, I realized God was there all along.
Now, granted, this is all pretty standard pop-spiritual language these days. The whole notion of discovering yourself, and thereby discovering the 'divine spark' (or whatever) that already exists within yourself, is close to being the dominant spirituality in Vancouver.
(Of course, such thinking also has a long history and dates as far back as the pop-spiritual language espoused by the serpent in Genesis 3, when he assures the man and the woman that they will 'be like gods' if they choose to heed his advice. Isn't this contemporary spirituality just another expression of our age-old desire to take the place of God?)
However, I was struck with a particular thought tonight as a few things came together with some clarity. Essentially, my proposition is this:
That which promises us that we will discover the divine within ourselves, is that which hides from us our bondage to other gods.
Let me try to explain what I mean by this by providing some context for this thought. A few years ago, I began to ask myself this question: “who, today, is being worshiped by the members of our society?” For awhile, struck by the dominance of this 'the divine is within me' discourse, I thought that we were worshiping ourselves. As society has becoming increasingly fractured, as the 'rugged individual' has increasingly become the model to emulate, I began to think that we had all become gods in our own eyes and were, thus, actively involved in worshiping ourselves.
I have since grown suspicious of this analysis, and believe that it does not go deep enough.
You see, although society has become fractured, and although the individual appears to have been elevated to sovereignty, there are other Powers at work that are actively involved in fostering the division of society into isolated individuals. Isolated individuals can be told that they are sovereign but, precisely because they are isolated, they are also unable to create any sort of significant change. Consequently, even though society has been fractured, one is able to see a great deal of conformity around key issues — issues of values, of priorities, and of goals. Why is it that, in a society where the individual is supposed to be sovereign, where we are supposed to be fractured from one another, everybody ends up looking and acting almost exactly like everybody else? Because the individual is not sovereign. Because we are not fractured. Granted, we are fractured from one another (from our 'neighbours'), but we are all, one and all, united in our bondage and subservience to Powers greater than ourselves. Indeed, it is these Powers that spread the ideology of finding the divine within ourselves. “Look,” they tell us, “the divine is within you!” and in this way they hide the fact that they have become like gods over us.
(Wasn't this exactly the objective of the Serpent in Genesis, who is later revealed as the Dragon in Revelation? 'You will be like gods,' the Serpent said, but really his goal was to become like a god over the man and the woman. Hence, we see the same thing occurring in the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. The Satan promises to make Jesus like a god ruling over the earth… if only Jesus will bow down and worship him!)
So who, or what, are these Powers? They are the Powers that Paul speaks of in Ephesians 6.12 when he writes:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
These are the Powers inherent to the form of free market capitalism that has come to embrace all areas of our life together. Stated in an overly simplistic manner, in the borrowed words of Walter Brueggemann, these are the Powers of “therapeutic, technological, consumer militarism.” The truth is we by acting, by consuming, and by living in the way that we do, we are not serving ourselves. No matter how much 'fun' we have along the way, and no matter how much we 'discover' about ourselves, we are actually destroying ourselves (and one another) as we serve someone (or something) that has become like a god over us.

V. RELATIONAL BADGES: CRUCIFORM LOVE AND DIVISIVE VIOLENCE
The place in which Paul’s discussion of badges reaches its climax is in the context of internal and external relations. Over against the internal divisions and external violence of the pagans under the control of the powers, and the Jews controlled by their commitment to nationalism, Paul’s communities are united in Christ and committed to cruciform love.
That Paul sees the pagan world as under the governance of overwhelming powers is well documented in his letters.[74] Furthermore, Paul believes that all these rulers, gods, demons, elementals, and principalities, are ultimately under the lordship of two great powers: sin and death.[75] Walter Wink captures something of the all-encompassing power of these lords when he describes pagan life as “dominated existence” under the “Domination System” during the “Domination Epoch.”[76] Within this dominated existence, each person lives to satisfy his or her desires, regardless of the wellbeing of others. This is, for Paul, an ongoing embodiment of the primal sin of Adam: covetousness. Thus, Adamic, fleshy, humanity, lived under the powers, bears covetousness as a badge.[77]
This covetousness is expressed in divisiveness.[78] Paul continually identifies strife, discord, enmity, envy, gossip, and dissensions as essential attributes of the pagan communities and all of these attributes fracture community.[79] This divisive coveting leads inevitably to violence and so, with Adam (the first coveter) lingering behind Ro 7.7-12, it is quite possible that Cain (the first murderer) lingers behind Paul’s argument in Ro 7.13-20.[80] Thus, if Adamic humanity, under the powers of sin and death, is marked by divisiveness, Cainic humanity is marked by violence.
Furthermore, the powers, in Paul’s age, were never imagined to be strictly disembodied spirits; rather, they were always incarnate “in cellulose, or cement, or skin and bones, or an empire, or its mercenary armies.”[81] Thus, by emphasizing the divisiveness and violence of pagan existence, Paul is engaging in a subversive critique of the Roman Empire and its violent conquests. Although Rome claimed that she possessed the “good news” of peace, freedom, justice, and salvation, although the Emperor was viewed as “Lord,” “Savior,” and “Prince of Peace,” Paul reveals the intrinsic violence of Rome by subverting her rhetoric.[82] Over against imperial claims, Paul makes the claim that Caesar’s conquests have only heightened the divisiveness and violence of pagan existence.[83] Thus, just as Adamic humanity is marked by an animalistic existence, the pagan powers are revealed to be horrible, death-dealing beasts.
In making this judgment of life lived under the pagan powers, Paul is well within the critiques established by Judaism. However, Paul then turns the tables on Judaism and argues that Jewish commitments to the ethnic nation of Israel have, in essence, given birth to another divisive death-dealing beast. This point becomes clear in the passages where Paul describes his former way of life under Judaism.[84] Especially worth noting is Paul’s use of the words “Judaism,” “Pharisee,” and “zeal.” “Judaism” is a term coined to express opposition to “Hellenism” and it highlights Jewish separation from the other nations.[85] The word “Pharisees” is rooted in the Aramaic word “perisayya” which means “the separated ones.”[86] Further, as a Pharisee, Paul emulated the “heroes of zeal” who exhibited an unconditional commitment to maintain Israel’s distinctiveness, a readiness to use violence, and a willingness to even use violence against other Jews.[87]
Consequently, Paul’s zeal was “something you did with a knife” against both pagans and “compromised” Jews –- like the early Christian communities.[88] Therefore, the house of Israel was not only divided from the pagan nations, it was a house divided against itself, and violence and death –- although performed for the sake of self-defense and not for the sake of covetous conquest –- reigned just as much in Israel as in the pagan nations. The nation of Israel (precisely in her violent opposition to Rome!) had become a miniature version of Rome, a beastly power in the service of division and death.
Over against the divisive covetous violence of the pagans, and the divisive defensive violence of the Jews, those who are in Christ bear love as their primary relational badge. It is this badge that climactically identifies the Christian community; for, in the praxis of love both the freedom of those who are motivated by the Spirit, and the glory of God’s true children, come to their fullest expression. Love is that which ensures that the other badges of membership in Paul’s communities do not simply deteriorate into “little lapel buttons.”[89]
For this reason, love could have been explored in prior sections.[90] However, because being “in Christ” or “with Christ” is the most frequent title Paul uses to describe the status of his community members, and because love is the most common badge that Paul applies to his community members, it is best to tie love and being in Christ closely together.[91] Furthermore, this connection is strengthened because, for Paul, love is always a Christlike form of love. Therefore, it is the type of love exhibited by those in Christ that most radically distinguishes Paul’s communities from both pagans and Jews.[92]
This is why Michael Gorman is essentially correct in reading Phil 2.5-11 as “Paul’s master story.”[93] In Phil 2, Paul contrasts the covetous self-exaltation of Adam with the self-giving love of Jesus, and emphasizes that it is this form of love that reveals Jesus’ equality with God.[94] Therefore, those who live as God’s restored image-bearers must also bear this badge for, as Wright says, “as God endorses Jesus’ interpretation of what equality with God meant in practice, so he will recognize self-giving love as the true mark of the life of the Spirit.”[95]
Because this love is an embodiment of Christ’s love, it is further demarcated by two essential attributes: its suffering and its redemptive impact. That the love Christ exhibited was a suffering love is most fully revealed on the cross. Therefore, Christian existence, which is lived by those who (continually) die with Christ, is expressed in cruciform love – in suffering.[96] Indeed, this suffering, which might appear to be weakness, becomes, for Paul, the fullest expression of the glory possessed by God’s renewed humanity. Thus, Paul boasts (i.e. finds glory) in his weakness and his sufferings because they mark him as a member of those in Christ.[97] Of course, for Paul this is not simply the glorification of suffering qua suffering; suffering becomes a manifestation of glory because it becomes the means by which the victory won by Christ becomes effective within the world. As Rudolph Bultmann argues, to simply limit suffering to “an affliction that will one day be followed by happiness… deprives suffering of its existentiall [sic] meaning.”[98] Suffering is the means by which the benefits of Christ’s death are extended to others.[99] Therefore, Paul’s communities are marked by the willingness to “bear the pain and the shame of the world in its own body, that the world may be healed.”[100]
Consequently, this redemptive suffering love is expressed in the peaceable nature of Paul’s communities. God is, for Paul, the “God of peace,” Paul opens all of his letters wishing peace upon the recipients, and he consistently exhorts his communities to be defined by peace.[101] Inwardly, this peaceable love is expressed through unity. Over against the internal divisions of both pagans and Jews, Paul is adamant that his communities must be marked by an all-embracing unity and the absence of divisions.[102] Although Paul most commonly speaks of this as the unity of Jews and Gentiles, he is also clear that this is a unity that spans social boundaries between slaves and free, economic boundaries between the poor and the rich, and gender boundaries between men and women. Indeed, it is this unity that proclaims to the powers that Jesus is the true Saviour and Lord.[103] Furthermore, it is this emphasis upon unity that reveals that Christian freedom is also cruciform –- it is the freedom to serve and love all of those who are in Christ.[104]
However, the outward expression of Paul’s call to peaceable love is even more radical. Over against pagans who are marked by violent conquests, and Jews who are marked by violent self-defense, Christians are to be identified by their nonviolent love of enemies. These, “enemies” are those -– both pagans and Jews –- who violently persecute Paul and his communities.[105] In response to these enemies, Paul regularly asserts that his communities must love their enemies, and thereby suffer violence without returning violence. The response to violence, which identifies Paul’s community, is, negatively, a refusal to repay evil for evil or to enact vengeance, and, positively, a willingness to bless instead curse, to return good for evil, to conciliate, to persevere, and to forgive.[106] Here a radical shift has occurred as Saul the Pharisee has been transformed into Paul the Apostle. Paul’s prior zeal, which manifested itself in violent self-defense, has now been transformed into the zeal of “agape-love,” and his zeal to kill has become a zeal to die.[107] In this way, Paul thoroughly dethrones all attempts to justify sacred violence, as he elevates love, which comes to its most glorious expression in the love of enemies.[108] Further, as Wink suggests, it must be noted that the very unity of Paul’s communities, as Jews and Gentiles together, points to a radical outworking of this love of enemies.[109] Having begun with this unity, Paul’s communities must persevere and continue to show love to those who still persecute them.
Therefore, over against the pagans, whose service of the powers is identified by their covetous divisiveness and violence, and over against the Jews, who have turned the nation of Israel into another beastly power through their internal divisions and violent self-defense, the communities of those who are in Christ are identified by the praxis of cruciform love, which is expressed in peaceful unity and the nonviolent love of enemies.
VI. CONCLUSION
Rudolph Bultmann once asserted that Paul describes no unmistakably distinguishable Christian action; rather, he argued, Paul simply adopted the ethics of “popular philosophy” and “bourgeois morality.”[110] This paper, having demonstrated that Paul provides clear distinguishing identity-markers between Christians, pagans, and Jews, at the levels of worship, inspiration, ontology, and relationship, can only conclude that Paul would be shocked by such an assertion. Perhaps, when divided and taken individually, evidence of these badges can be found in other communities. However, Paul is clear that it is only the Christian community that exhibits these badges in toto. Furthermore, Paul is adamant that the Christian community must exhibit these badges in toto. The contemporary Church would do well to reflect upon these things as she continues to engage in Paul’s mission amongst both Gentiles and Jews.
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[74] 1 Cor 10.20; 15.26; 2 Cor 4.4; Gal 4.8-9; Eph 6.12; Col 1.13; 2.15, 20. On the language of the powers in the New Testament cf. Walter Wink Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (The Powers Series Vol 1; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 13-96, 151-65; Unmasking the Powers (The Powers Series Vol 2; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), passim.
[75] Cf. Ro 5.4, 17, 21-6.23; 7.7-8.11, 38; 1 Cor 15.54-56; Dunn, Christian Liberty, 56; Ridderbos, 95-99.
[76] Wink substitutes these phrases for Paul’s usage of “sarx,” “kosmos,” and “aion” in order to engage in some rather provocative exegesis; cf. Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (The Powers Series Vol 3; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 52-62.
[77] Ro 7.7-8; 13.9; 1 Cor 5.10-11; 6.10; 2 Cor 9.5; Eph 5.5.
[78] Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 635-36; Marshall, 288-90; Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 29.
[79] Ro 1.29-30; 1 Cor 5.9-11; 6.9-10; 2 Cor 12.20; Gal 5.20-21; Col 3.5-8.
[80] Cf. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, 226-30.
[81] Wink, Unmasking the Powers, 5.
[82] Cf. Neil Elliott, Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle (The Bible and Liberation Series; Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994), 189-90; Wright, Paul, 63, 74; What Saint Paul Really Said, 88; “Paul and Caesar: A New Reading of Romans” in A Royal Priesthood? The Use of the Bible Ethically and Politically: A Dialogue with Oliver O’Donovan (Scripture and Hermeneutics Series Vol 3; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 173-93.
[83] For two commentaries that develop this theme in some detail cf. Peter Oakes, Philippians: From People to Letter (Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Brian J. Walsh & Sylvia C. Keesmat, Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire (Downers Grove: IVP, 2004).
[84] Cf. Ro 10.2-3; 1 Cor 15.9; Gal 1.13-14; Phil 3.4-6.
[85] Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 147-48.
[86] Bruce, 46.
[87] Bornkamm, 12-15; Bruce, 45-48; Donaldson, 285-86; Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 350-53; Gorman, Apostle of the Crucified Lord, 53-54; Hurtado, 94; Willi Marxsen, New Testament Foundations for Christian Ethics (trans. O. C. Dean, Jr.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 147-49; Matera, 181-82; Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 26-27. The divisions within Second Temple Judaism (divisions between, for examples, Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, Diaspora Jews, and the “people of the land”) have been well documented and have led some to speak of Second Temple “Judaisms” and others to speak of “variegated” nomism.
[88] Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 27.
[89] Cf. Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 55-56.
[90] Indeed, a neatly systematized theology would not reflect Paul’s theology which is occasional and not systematic. Thus, the categories employed in this article are, inevitably, somewhat arbitrary.
[91] Taken together “in Christ” and “with Christ” are used over 90 times in Paul’s epistles, and “love” is referenced just as many times.
[92] Cf. Dewar, 127, 133; Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 495, 653-57; Gorman, Cruciformity, 156-57; Matera, 142-43; Ridderbos, 293-301; Schrage, 212; Schweitzer, 307. Some have argued that being in Christ is an essential badge of membership in Paul’s letters (cf. Donaldson, 236-48, 171-73, 284; Matera, 166, 175-83; Schweitzer, 123; Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, 196-97); however, it is the contention of this article that it is the love exhibited by those in Christ that functions as a badge in Paul’s communities.
[93] Gorman, Cruciformity, 164-68. Gorman argues that Phil 2.5-11 is the story that underpins all of Paul’s theology: “[t]he narrative of the crucified and exalted Christ is the normative life-narrative within which the community’s own life-narrative takes place and by which it is shaped” (44, emph removed); cf. Hays, 27; William S. Kurz, S. J., “Kenotic Imitation of Paul and Christ in Philippians 2 and 3” in Discipleship in the New Testament (Ed. Fernando F. Segovia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 103-26.
[94] Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, 58-88.
[95] Ibid., 87.
[96] Cf. Ro 5.3; 6.3-8; 8.17-38; 1 Cor 4.9-16; 12.26; 13.5; 2 Cor 1.3-7; 4.7-18; 6.3-13; 7.4; 8.2; 11.18-33; Gal 2.19-20; 3.4; 5.11, 24; 6.12-14. 17; Phil 1.7; 3.8, 10; 4.12, 14; Col 1.24; 2.20; 3.3; 1 Thes 2.2, 14; 3.3-4, 7; 2 Thes 1.4-6. Therefore, Bornkamm concludes that suffering, for Paul, “was not exceptional but exemplified what life in Christ meant” (172); cf. Schweitzer, 141-54.
[97] Cf. Ro 8; 1 Cor 1.26-28; 2 Cor 4.7-18; 6.3-10; 11.18-33; Becker, 278-83; Bornkamm, 169-70, 181; Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 438; Gorman, Cruciformity, 301; Hays, 25-26; Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, 190; What Saint Paul Really Said, 143-45. Thus, Kasemann concludes that, “[w]e cannot share in Christ’s glory except by bearing his cross after him on earth” (Jesus Means Freedom [trans. Frank Clarke; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968], 71) and Gorman concludes that “the very thing (suffering) that suggest that glory is distant is, in fact, the proof of its proximity” (Cruciformity, 347; emph removed).
[98] Rudolph Bultmann, “Man Between the Times According to the New Testament” in Existence and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolph Bultmann (Ed & trans. Schubert M. Odgen; The Fontana Library of Theology and Philosophy 10/6; London: Collins Clear-Type Press, 1964), 315.
[99] Gorman, Cruciformity, 203.
[100] Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, 256.
[101] On the God “of peace” cf. Ro 15.33; 16.20; 1 Cor 14.33; 2 Cor 13.11; Eph 2.14; Phil 4.9; Col 1.20; 1 Thes 5.23; 2 Thes 3.16. For Paul’s openings cf. Ro 1.7; 1 Cor 1.3; 2 Cor 1.2; Gal 1.3; Eph 1.2; Phil 1.2; Col 1.2; 1 Thes 1.1; 2 Thes 1.2; and on Paul’s more general references to peace as an essential element of his communities cf. Ro 2.10; 3.17; 5.1; 8.6; 12.18; 14.17, 19; 15.12; 1 Cor 7.13; 2 Cor 13.11; Gal 5.22; Eph 2.15, 17; 4.3; 6.15, 23 Phil 4.7; Col 3.15; 1 Thes 5.13.
[102] Cf. Ro 3.29-30; 12.4-5, 10, 16; 14.1-15.7; 1 Cor 1.10; 3; 6.1-11, 17; 8-10; 11.23-34; 12-14; Gal 3.26-29; 5.13-15; 6.2, 10; Eph 2.11-22; 4.1-6, 14-16, 31-32; 5.21; Phil 1.27; 2.1-5; Col 3.8-15; 1 Thes 3.12; 4.9; 5.11-15; 2 Thes 2.3; Philem. To fracture unity is to move outside of those who are in Christ, which is why, in 1 Cor 11, Paul argues that those who have done so are falling ill and dying. To be divided is to come, once again, under the power of death.
[103] Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 146; cf. Donaldson, 82-86.
[104] Cf. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 159-60; Kasemann, Jesus Means Freedom, 66, 73, 80; Stendahl, 61.
[105] Cf. Ro 8.35-36; 12.10; 2 Cor 6.4-5; 11.23-27; 12.10; Phil 1.29-30; 1 Thes 1.6; 2.14; 2 Thes 1.4; Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, 449.
[106] Cf. Ro 12.14-21; 1 Cor 4.12-13; 13.4-7; 2 Cor 6.4, 6; 11.19-20; Gal 5.20-22; Phil 4.5; Col 3.22-25; 1 Thes 5.15. Gordon Zerbe traces these themes in Paul’s letters and concludes that Paul upholds an “ethic of nonretaliation and peace” (“Paul’s Ethic of Nonretaliation and Peace” in The Love of Enemy and Nonretaliation in the New Testament [Ed. Willard M. Swartley; Louisville: WJKP, 1992], 179-80).
[107] Cf. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 135; Gorman, Cruciformity, 27-28. This then makes good sense of the passages where Paul speaks positively of zeal; cf. Ro 10.2; 12.11; 1 Cor 14.12; 2 Cor 7.7, 11; 8.22; 9.2; Gal 4.18.
[108] Cf. Elliot, 169-74; Schrage, 213.
[109] Wink, Engaging the Powers, 117. Wink is commenting on Eph 2.15.
[110] Rudolph Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament: Volume 2 (trans. Kendrick Grobel; London: SCM Press, 1955), 225-26. Others, like Willi Marxsen, have continued the trajectory of Bultmann’s thought and insist that “we can speak of authentic Christian action only when it is performed by authentic Christians (Marxsen, 225).