An Economy of Nobodies and Nothings
I recently wrote a small piece for ‘The Evolving Church’ website on Paul’s famous articulation of the ‘neither/nor’. Thought I would reprint it here,
Paul the apostle famously wrote, ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’.
This verse brings us to the heart of what can be called “Paul’s universalism”. In theological terms this universalism has been understood in two dominant ways. In the first it is argued that Paul is claiming that, compared to being a Christian, all these other differences have no meaning.
All other differences are thus subsumed under the one supreme difference: that of Christians and non-Christians. It is because of this that Christianity was originally baptised as the Universal religion par excellence. Whereas religions such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are particularistic (having a belief system that acknowledges the place of those outside their system), Christianity seeks global dominance: the only important distinction being whether you confess Christ or not.
Hence Christianity has been critiqued for exhibiting a totalising narrative that condemns those who do not embrace it to eternal death.
In contrast others interpret Paul’s universalism as referring, not to the limited scope of salvation, but rather to its operative reach. Here it is claimed that Paul is saying that all these other distinctions will eventually be subsumed into Christ. In this way Christianity is viewed as universal insomuch as its soteriological power reaches everything and everybody. At the end of the day everyone will come to see that the Christian religion was right after all.
However both these positions fail to inscribe the very difference between “Christian” and “non-Christian” into the distinction Paul makes. What both these positions agree upon is that Paul held there to be one primary identity that trumps all the others, an identity that is superior to all other identities.
What I would like to suggest, following Slavoj Žižek, is that these two positions fail to go far enough in their arguments.
Instead of raising one concrete identity above and beyond all the others should we not follow this logic to the end and place the very distinction between “Christian” and “non-Christian” alongside all the others?
In other words, when we identify as followers of Christ we are not laying down all our other identities (republican or democrat, rich or poor, gay or straight) in order to affirm only one as truly important. Rather we lay down every identity, enacting what, in theology, is called kenosis. This is where we partake in Christ who became nothing, divesting himself of everything to become a servant.
Here we do not lay down our identity only to pick up our new identity in Christ. Rather it is in laying down all our identities that we directly identify with Christ.
In this Pauline approach something truly new and beautiful arises in a world defined by who we are and what we do. Here the fundamental antagonism is not located between various distinctions but rather between those who lay all distinctions down and those who hold onto them. Christianity marks the opening of a movement where the only insiders are the outsiders, the ones without position or location.
In the economy of the world our identity is vital. What we do, what we earn, what we have accomplished. In the kingdom economy all of this is what Paul called shit (skubala).
Within the church we are to engage in a radical subtraction by which we see through these identities (no longer allowing them to define the scope and limitations of our world). In this move we lose everything, and in that moment discover our souls.
February 2nd, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Wonderful writing Peter, thank you for re-posting it here–I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.
February 2nd, 2010 at 2:12 pm
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by pluralform: There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, Christian nor non-Christian. Great post by @PeterRollins http://is.gd/7yV0y…
February 2nd, 2010 at 2:22 pm
wonderful!
…is this the “type” of agnosticism you claim a couple posts ago in your response? Furthermore, Is agnostic a safe “position” to claim, or might even this position be staking too much of a claim? I.e. At what point has one fully divested the self so that the self can be discovered?
February 2nd, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Great insights, once again.
Our identity is found in our lack thereof.
February 2nd, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Hey Spencer… I was worried about this. I am not the Pete who was commenting in the last section! It is someone who has stolen my name!!! To be honest loads of people have stolen it, there are at least a dozen Pete’s that I know of!
February 2nd, 2010 at 3:23 pm
ahhh…now i see! I was a little thrown off by that comment “you” had made in that post…actually, a bit shocked yet trying to understand where “you” were coming from.
haha. funny.
I’ll let you know when I run across one of those guys who stole your name! You gotta get those back, man!
February 2nd, 2010 at 6:42 pm
I think I understand where you’re going with this (maybe I’m wrong). Treating anyone as an outsider goes contrary to Jesus’ universal message and invitation of inclusion at God’s table of fellowship. So indeed – why should there be ANY kind of division He did not overcome, including the religious ones?
But I must confess, I’m still having trouble seeing how IDENTITY necessarily must create those walls in every instance. Jesus’ kenosis certainly did not include a forsaking of His own identity as the Father’s beloved Son. And if we are sent the same way He was sent by the Father then I’d rather conclude that only by fully embracing our identity in Christ can we fully let go of our prejudices, our suspicions and condemnations, and most importantly be used to help others find and affirm that same kind of identity as the beloved ones of the Father.
February 2nd, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Hi Pete,
The ongoing difficulty I have with this emptying of self is its functional value. It seems even too much to say that only in emptying ourselves of all identity that we identify with Christ, because as soon as that relationship is posited, even indirectly, we find ourselves in an identity-finding, meaning-making project again. I have no problem with laying down identity temporarily in order to explore the possibility of other ones, but I think we should be as authentic as possible in explaining what we are doing.
In the last bit of your article above you seem to be implying that we ought to maintain identity in our daily life, while symbolically laying it down within the church community. I agree with you that the suggestion seems very Pauline, but it also doesn’t seem to take a large enough step, theologically speaking, from the way the evangelical church operates. (I’m sure, though, that how the church “looks” is quite different.) If it does not affect our larger sense of identity, causing us to radically call into question our place in the (capitalistic, democratic, insert word here) machine, is it even ‘real,’ as you mention in a brief interview?
I am currently toying with John Carroll’s take, a la Nietzsche (and perhaps Zizek) that the only imitation of Christ is to absolutely forsake him, meaning no reference to him, no ‘other’ to form identity off of, only self-realization. Not very pleasant nor community-forming, but perhaps more authentic in terms of kenosis.
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:36 pm
This is genius – I truly like it. And I even am enjoying considering the “functional” implications of it….. people who touch others from a place of having divested their own ministerial identities, and rather come as nobodies who have no identity other than that they identify with another Nobody. I really like it.
February 3rd, 2010 at 8:38 am
This life of the radical subtraction, of the active laying down of all distinctions ends up, interestingly, exactly the same life, the same material identity in its social configuration that is never otherwise than it was.
The only change is that one’s life is lived now in the mode of the as-not.
This is the transformation of the world: Remaining, dwelling as oneself in the particular transformation that every condition called to radical subtraction undergoes in the circumstances it is in.
(If I may continue to attend to this obvious reading of Agamben alongside/against your reading of Zizek…)
The call radically puts into question every determinate life in the very act of its living. It puts the living life into question in the double movement of a nullification (”circumcision is nothing…”) and a repetition (of the conditions of the life itself, its circumstances, klesei, “remaining in the calling you were in when you were called”). It is living this as-not normal life that is the transformation of the world (tiqqun olam).
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:41 am
What do you mean “within the church?” Where does church begin and end? Isn’t the church present wherever I am?
I’m not capable of understanding half the comments above, because I haven’t studied the vocabulary, but it seems to me that if you want to become nothing, then you’ll never become nothing. I think Matt said this better than I have, and his next step seems logical enough once you start down this road.
But I must admit, as I look at your picture above, you seem to have crossed over.
February 7th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
I’m with you Andy, except for the punctuation in your reply. I would adjust it to – “Isn’t the church present wherever ‘I AM’? There we have an identity that dissolves all others into the roles we afterwards choose to wear.
February 16th, 2010 at 10:04 am
striving to drag our progressing identity in Jesus back into where we already are is to simply strip ourselves of it. Coaxing confusion in the other draws their attention out and away from the nothingness he/she is use to being.