Paul and Reciprocal Subordination
Reading Galatians from a historical-critical perspective is crucial for understanding the meaning behind Paul’s entire theology, which can be summarized in one verse: “Bear one-an-other’s burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ (Gal 6:2).” Scholars generally agree that Paul wrote Galatians between 50-58 CE as a letter to the conflict-ridden “churches” in Galatia who, according to Paul, had been the recipients of illegitimate teachings. At this point in time, Paul was a central figure in the emergence of a Christ-centered movement within Judaism who was eager to gain followers (in line with his “call”), and as a result, much of the content of Galatians pertains to what it means to be a Gentile (“Other”) versus a Jewish (“Self”) follower of Christ. The tone of Galatians is one of rebuke and defensiveness centering around how converts to the new Way, both Gentile and Jewish, could receive God’s promise, and that teachings stating otherwise—clearly of human origin—were to be rejected. Paul defends his teachings as authoritative since they were revealed to him by Jesus Christ, and therefore, were not of human origin (Gal 1:10-12).
Paul’s theology is predicated upon the notion that Jews and Gentiles are both justified through faith in Christ and not by works of the law (Jewish purity law and circumcision, e.g.) (Gal 2:15-21). Through Jesus Christ, these Jewish “works” are no longer relevant in regard to finding favor with God, but rather, both Gentile and Jewish converts to the Way can inherit the promise of the covenant through belief and behavior rooted in solidarity and mutuality. Paul uses the allegory of Hagar and Sarah (Gal 4:21-5:1) as a metaphor for the Old Covenant (“slave” children of Hagar) and the New Covenant (“free” children of Sarah), proclaiming that spirit is victorious over flesh (Gal 4:29). When interpreted literally this metaphor is problematic, however, it is useful to elucidate Paul’s case for the freedom that Christ bestows upon his followers. Here, Paul emphasizes that self-directed desires—thinking with “flesh”—equates to slavery (the kind which begets strife and pain) while living by the “spirit” brings freedom.
Gal 5:13-15 stresses a “polemically parallel”* use of the term slavery: Paul calls followers not to use their freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but rather, to become slaves to one another through love. Being a “slave” in this regard, then, means loving one’s neighbors as oneself, hence the “polemically parallel” use of the term (see footnote). In the historical context, having freedom meant being a master, and therefore owning slaves; when the slave loves the master and the master loves the slave in mutuality or reciprocal subordination, deadly binaries are dissolved. The socio-political and religious context of Paul’s time demonstrates the radical nature of this call to move beyond opposing identities toward a shared identity in Christ, which could tangibly be acted out through the handshake of togetherness, the table of community and the Collection for the poor, for example.
Through Paul’s teachings and writings, the concept of reciprocal subordination thus emerges as the cornerstone of Christianity. This way of living, proposed by Jesus and perpetuated by Paul and other followers, by no means sanctioned the existing world order in order to change it, but rather, aimed to change the system by venerating that which had been historically denigrated: by emptying one’s self voluntarily of one’s status and glory, one achieves glory in the Kingdom of God. This joyful, love-originating voluntarism is a key component of Paul’s message, such as in 1 Cor 13:1, when Paul states, “If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing (NRSV).” Therefore, without love in the agape form, which incorporates recognizing the personhood of others, mutual subordination is fruitless.
The revolutionary idea, that through embracing enslavement one becomes free, was not “drawn out of thin air” by Paul, but was formed as a result of Jesus’ life, suffering, and resurrection; when one submits through faith, or belief, one becomes an instrument of God’s will –this is right and just and equates to salvation. The concept of being saved by faith through grace (Eph 2:8-9, Gal 3:6-8) must be understood alongside the call to engage in the world. Obeying the law of Christ, therefore, entails doing “works” but from a foundation of faith and spirit; the Kingdom is now (Rom 13:8-10, Gal 5:13-25). As John Dominic Crossan points out in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, there are differences between the historically constructed Jesus and the theologically accepted Christ. In modernity, the emphasis is often shifted away from the historical Jesus who accepted/healed the destitute toward Jesus, the Resurrected Christ, who is a symbol of the judgement to come. The latter dangerously overlooks Jesus’ historically radical strategy, which was “a combination of free healing and common eating, a religious and economic egalitarianism that negated alike and at once the hierarchical and patronal normalcies of Jewish religion and Roman power (Crossan, 222).”
The contemporary relevance of justification by faith is obvious. One area that urgently calls for the application of Paul’s teachings is the immigration crisis that the United States currently faces. The U.S. government undoubtedly parallels the Roman Empire of Jesus’ and Pauls’ time. Current immigration policy, permitting the actions taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), epitomizes actions taken from “flesh,” or, in secular vernacular, from a place of self-indulgence at the expense of others. The irony of this refugee crisis is that those seeking asylum in the U.S. are fleeing countries where the economic, social, and political systems were shaped by harmful U.S. foreign policy enacted in the 20th century. The legacy of these harmful policies, legislated by the oppressor upon the historically oppressed, is what drove these people to seek help from the very government that contributed to the systemic problems in the first place and permitted them to fester. The people at the US-Mexico border are not “illegals” looking for higher wages or to murder, rape or sell drugs, as the 45th President incessantly espouses with his poisonous rhetoric, they are refugees seeking asylum according to international law. Liberationist theology, such as that which is proposed in the work of Gustavo Gutiérrez and James Cone, demonstrates, through exegesis, that God is with the oppressed.
The messianic transformation of “Self-Other” hierarchies and “We-Them” binaries is the solution to the current immigration crisis, which can allow Americans/the US government to change their current relationship toward the “Other” and “OurSelves.” The notion that the United States is the “land of the free,” when its domestic and foreign policy enslaves people, is incongruous. If the people of the U.S. are indeed free, then it is their responsibility to love their neighbors (those who are seeking asylum from persecution in their countries of origin in this case) as they love themselves. Perhaps the problem here is that, in the first place, Americans do not know how to love themselves. Democratic socialism is the political answer demanded in order to achieve a society shaped by Gal 6:2; hopefully, the next US president will “fit the bill.”
*The term “polemical parallelism” is drawn from Adolf Adolf Deissmann’s work, “Light from the Ancient East.” Here the term is used with a similar meaning: 1. Parallel, implying that key terms attributed to Jesus Christ in the early Jesus movement were already used in conversation regarding the emperor and emperor religion and 2. Polemic, referring to the fact that these terms were co-opted as a form of protest, related to inverting the power structure that existed in the Ancient Roman world.
References
Coogan, Michael D, Marc Z. Brettler, Carol A. Newsom, and Pheme Perkins. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version: with the Apocrypha: an Ecumenical Study Bible. Oxford [England: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Crossan, John Dominic. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. HarperOne [San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.
Diessmman, Adolf. Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament; Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World. Forgotten Books [London: FB &c Ltd., 2012.