Daniel Patte’s Response to

Alain Gignac, “Taubes, Badiou, Agamben:  Reception of Paul by Non-Christian Philosophers Today”

Romans Through History and Cultures Seminar,  SBL  Toronto 2002

 

Nine months ago, when I accepted to respond to Alain Gignac’s paper, I put on my desk three books -- the interpretations of Paul and of Romans by these three philosophers --  and I started reading them, even before receiving and reading Gignac’s paper.  I began with Alain Badiou, then Jacob Taubes, then, more rapidly, because his style is so fluid, Giorgio Agamben.  Saying that I was “reading” them is not strong enough.  I should say that I was meditating upon these books, … because for me, and I suspect, for most biblical scholars and theologians, making sense of these books, that is, learning from them and from their interpretations of Romans requires from us to bracket out our reading habits. 

 

The more I read, the more it became clear to me that their greatest contribution was to offer us models for a critical practice of reading Romans – a critical practice of reading Romans, which also revealed many things in Romans.

 

[[Badiou, Taubes, and Agamben demanded from me to envision Romans in a different way by inviting me to take different starting points for my reading of Romans.  When I accepted their challenge, I began to learn from them.   I am far from finished learning from these three philosophers about Romans and about interpreting Romans.  I will need to go back to their books again and again.]]

 

Alain Gignac’s first goal was to call our attention to the importance of these three non-Christian philosophical interpretations of Paul and Romans.  Un grand merci.  You have amply succeeded in doing so for me.  I now join Alain Gignac in calling those of you who have not yet done so to read these three books.

 

Read them in German, in Italian, or French.  And I hope several of these will quickly be translated in English.  (There is hope for this:  Amazon.com list no less than 23 books by or about Alain Badiou, and 19 books by or about Giorgio Agamben;  yet, Jacob Taubes is much less published.)  

 

Furthermore, without Gignac’s paper, I would not have paid attention to what he calls the hermeneutical implications of their interpretations and appropriations of Romans.  By my response I would like to push him on this particular point.

 

When I finally read Alain Gignac’s paper I was just amazed by the clarity of his analysis and the clarity of his presentation of these three philosophical interpretations of Paul.  Indeed, an amazing paper.  The handout cannot do justice to it.  The presentation of each philosophers and their interpretations is very clear and to the point. 

 

Gignac mentions the erudition of Agamben.  It is my turn to underscore and admire the erudition of Gignac’s paper.  This is scholarship at its best. 

Of course, in order to understand these three books, Gignac reviewed the many other publications of these philosophers and the secondary literature on them; he also reviewed how their respective philosophies are positively or negatively related to philosophical movements and traditions --  ranging from Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, Simon Mimouni, Spinoza, Freud, and the Talmud  when tracking the intertextual trajectories of Taubes and Agamben to Louis Althusser, Lacan, de Certeau, Lyotard, Zizek, and  Nietzsche, when tracking the intertextual trajectories of Badiou.

 

Gignac’s paper provides a very clear presentation of the interpretations of Paul by these three philosophers.  He underscores and applauds the fact that none of these philosophers would dream to claim that they present a comprehensive interpretation of Paul.  Very self-consciously, they read Romans from the perspective of their respective philosophical systems, and deliberately bring to Romans today’s questions that concern them.  

 

This also means that we do not need to consider whether or not they contradict each other, etc.  Rather, we can see them as participants to a round table, who enter in dialogue with the text about different theological or philosophical issue (their hermeneutical frames)s, who seek to address contextual issues in their present with the help of the text (their contextual frames), and who, in so doing, point to different parts of the text (the analytical frames of their interpretations). 

 

Gignac successively elucidates first their philosophical system (their hermeneutical frame), then the problem with which they were concerned (their contextual frame), and finally their analytical frame, presented in the form of a series of clear theses their respective conclusions, how they reached these conclusions (their analytical frames). 

 

I can only applaud Gignac’s brilliant demonstration of the heuristic value of the three frame model that emerged out of this seminar as a deliberate model for reading critically interpretations.  Yes, this model applies to all kinds of interpretations of biblical texts.  Let me summarize it in the following scheme:

 

ANALYTICAL Interpretative Frame                       

What is Interpreted:  The Text as Autonomous Entity                                   

AUTONOMY (of subject; mode of existence)                                   

 

 

HERMENEUTICAL-Theological                                                                        CONTEXTUAL- Pragmatic

Interpretive Frame                                                                           Interpretive Frame

What is Interpreted:  Readers’  Religious                                                      What is Interpreted: 

Perceptions  of Life/World Vision                                                                        Readers’ Life-Context

HETERONOMY (mode of existence)                                                                        RELATIONALITY (mode of existence)

                 

With Cristina Grenholm we proposed to name it a model for scriptural criticism, because we wanted to signal that it applies to the interpretations by simple believers such as Celia Enriquez, as well as to those by sophisticated theologians and preachers such as Augustine and the theologians among us.  Yet, we also insisted that, even though most biblical scholars do not acknowledge it, this same model also applies to the most rigorous academic – non-confessional -- exegetical interpretations.  Despite their emphasis on the analytical frame, these so-called scientific interpretations are also framed by a hermeneutical vision (even if it is a secular one) and by contextual concerns.  And, as Gignac brilliantly demonstrates, these three interpretive frames are easily identified in the interpretations of non-Christian  philosophers – even though they view Romans as a Classic rather than as Scripture. 

 

With these words, I have begun responding to Gignac’s suggestion that “scriptural criticism” is inappropriate in a secularized context where the Bible is no longer functioning as Scripture.  I believe this is just a question of semantics – i.e., of vocabulary.  In our definition with Cristina Grenholm, reading a text as Scripture can be appropriately described as “thinking through today’s questions by reading Romans”  (my translation of  a phrase at the end of 1.1) “réfléchir les questions d’aujourd’hui en lisant Romains”[1] – the beautiful phrase that Gignac uses to describe what he calls “Classical criticism.”  Yes, “classical criticism” might be more appropriate for the reading of Romans practiced by these non-Christian philosophers.  They would not say that Romans is Scripture for them.   But, conversely, we might want to acknowledge that they provide us with exemplary scriptural readings of Romans – true scriptural readings, by contrast with the pseudo-scriptural readings that denominational repetitions of the conclusions of old readings of Romans as Scripture are.  Joining Augustine or Luther in their reading of Romans as scripture is not repeating what they concluded, but rather doing what they did.  As they thought through the questions of their days by reading Romans, so should we read Romans as a way of thinking through the questions of our own days. And this is exactly what these three philosophers are doing, by reading Romans in terms of their world visions and their world visions in terms of this text (hermeneutical frame), as well as reading the text in terms of the problems that concern them in their context, and these problems in term of the text (contextual frame).  

 

THE CONTEXTUAL FRAME OF MY READING OF GIGNAC AND THESE PHILOSOPHERS READING ROMANS.

 

The contextual problem that frames my reading of Gignac, of Taubes, Agamben, and Badiou, and with them my reading of Romans -- my problematics -- is OUR COMMON CONCERN TO DISCERN WHAT IS THE ROLE OF BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP TODAY.   This is a question concerning our practice of biblical scholarship, and our ethical responsibility in this practice.   As compared with Gignac’s concern,  I simply want to suggest that it might be helpful to broaden the context.  Remembering that Quebec is part of a much broader world.

 

We agree on what our biblical scholarship should NOT and canNOT be.  With Gignac I want to say:  “I cannot read Romans as if this text were insignificant and powerless to fuel the quest for meaning in our context” (3).   This is also the starting point of a powerful article by Musa Dube, where she writes: ATeaching Synoptic Gospels in an HIV/AIDS context [she refers to Bostwana, where she teaches] Aforces me to rethink the purpose of the academy.  I am forced to ask myself what good does my teaching do if it cannot address the most pressing needs of my students and society.@[2]  

 

Indeed!  All of us should ask ourselves the same question.  Although these pressing needs differ from context to context, none of us can ignore the contexts of the vast majority of the readers of the Bible -- I refer to almost 2/3 of the Christians today --  1.178 billion Christians[3] who are in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania and who live in abject poverty due to many factors, including drought, colonialism, neo-colonialism, globalization.   Now, one of the things which characterize this vast majority of the readers of the Bible is that they live in  “poverty” – and this poverty is massive, omnipresent, overwhelming.[4]   As wealthy people, we readily conceive of poverty as “lacking”… lacking not only the many things we take for granted that are in fact  luxuries – a car, CD player, music, a computer, a spacious house – but also lacking basic necessities of life, lacking food, clean water, a warm place to say during cold weather, lacking proper healthcare.   Yet, when I had the privilege of being welcomed by people in a squatters’ camp in the Philippines, these persons who, day in and day out, struggle with poverty exemplified for me what poverty is all about:  a total lack of control over one’s life, a total powerlessness to feed one’s children.  [[ By organizing their squatter camp and by keeping it amazingly clean, they struggled to regain control over their lives, at least to some extent.]]  As a total lack of control over oneself, poverty is also a state of being under the control of powers, of evil powers that have many different concrete manifestations.  Therefore, poverty engenders a tremendous anguish in the depth of the poor persons.  The same tremendous anguish that there is about HIV/AIDS in a context where every one is directly or indirectly affected by it.   Regarding all these situations, I want to repeat Dube’s words:  “I am forced to ask myself what good does my teaching do if it cannot address the most pressing needs of my students and society.”   

 

I want to argue that thinking through today’s context when reading Romans with these three philosophers, in order to assume our responsibility as biblical scholars and theologians, we must practice a study of biblical text 1)  that first identifies the nature of evil in our contexts (as Taubes underscores),  2) that secondly, and only secondly, clarifies the vision that the text offers of a life freed from this evil (as Agamben does), and 3) that, thirdly, elucidates what kind of transformation is necessary to move from the one to the other (a point underscored by Badiou). 

 

THE HERMENEUTICAL FRAME OF MY READING OF GIGNAC AND THESE PHILOSOPHERS READING ROMANS.

 

Regarding the hermeneutical frame, that is, the philosophical and theological issues about which each of the three philosophers enters in dialogue with Romans, I can be very brief:  Gignac has provided us with an excellent presentation of the philosophical system with which they approach Romans.  For Taubes, it is political theology.  For Agamben, it is also political theology, but now with an emphasis on the new experience of time, of messianic time.  For Badiou, it is the relationship between subject and event and the foundation of universalism.   Beyond what Gignac says about all this, it is enough for me to call attention to another aspect of the hermeneutical frames of these philosophers’ interpretations of Romans and also of ours.

 

Indeed, if, as Gignac suggests, our contextual quest is for a way to think through today’s questions by reading the biblical text, another kind of hermeneutical presuppositions appears:  we presuppose a mysterious relationship between the biblical text and the most pressing issues of our day.  Somehow the biblical text is good to think through our questions today.  This is what Christian believers express by saying that this text is Scripture.  Interestingly enough, the non-Christian philosophers also acknowledge this mysterious relationship.  

 

Taubes acknowledges it by insisting that Paul was Jewish; he was not merely an “apostle to the Gentiles” but rather, I quote, “an apostle of the Jews sent to the gentiles” (64, 76, 77), a messenger of the Jews sent to the non-Jews.   Thus, Taubes reads Romans in order to think through, as a Jew, today’s questions.  

 

For Badiou, Paul’s letter to the Romans is the foundation of universalism.  Paul is the inventor of the paradoxical move that is the condition of possibility of  a universal proclamation.  Thus, as an atheist championing universalism, Badiou reads Romans to think through the condition of universalism in today’s context.  

 

Agamben also envisions a mysterious relationship with Romans, a relationship that he calls (see back cover)  “une sorte de rendez-vous secret [que nous ne devons à aucun prix manquer,]”  a phrase with many connotations.  We in our time and Romans have a date, as two lovers have a secret date for a meeting that the lovers so desperately long for and need.  More prosaically, Agamben underscores that there is a mysterious convergence, a mysterious encounter between Romans and our time, that we do not want to miss.    

 

So, strangely enough, the three philosophers read Romans as Scripture – presupposing a mysterious relationship between their present and this letter.

 

My own hermeneutical issue concerns the discernment of the most important questions in our time.  Can Romans -- as Scripture and as read by these philosophers – help us discern what are these questions and their theological significance?  I need this theological vision to think through our role as biblical scholars and theologians today while reading Romans.   This concern leads me to focus my attention on certain features of Romans and of the philosophers’ interpretations that, from this perspective, appears to be most significant. 

 

THE ANALYTICAL FRAME OF MY READING OF GIGNAC AND THESE PHILOSOPHERS READING ROMANS.

 

Choosing certain features of a text as particularly significant is choosing an analytical frame for my interpretation . . . as any reader necessarily does.

 

Following Taubes, with Gignac I learn to see as most significant three features of Romans. 

 

1)  First, the messianic sense of time – time and history as a delay and its urgency – as directly expressed in Romans 13:11-14. This text leads me to ask with Taubes:   “In which period do we live?  What is the present time all about?” (Taubes, 83). 

 

The answer that Romans gives, as Taubes and Agamben emphasize, is:  this is the messianic time. 

 

2)  From this perspective, Paul’s discussion of the Law takes very distinct ;political connotations.  The messianic time is a time when the theology of the Nomos that “brought law and order to the Roman Empire” and is reflected in the Nomos of religious communities must be denounced as that which is passing away.  Romans is to be read as a declaration of war against Cesar; the proclamation of a subversive political theology, literature of political protest (Taubes 37; also already Bruno Bauer,[5] and now Elliott, Horsley, etc.).  

 

The contextual question is:  What is the “nomos” in the present time?   In this seminar, we have heard a few years ago the paper of Monya Stubbs that underscored that it is the nomos of the free market economy….  A Western imperialistic power.

 

3)   The reversal of values represented by the proclamation of the one who has been Crucified by this power (Taubes, 47; 117-130) is then another point that is particularly significant and must be traced through Romans.   But in order to understand it appropriately for our context and so that it does not become another form of anti-Semitism, with Taubes, we must find in Romans 8 the key for reading the rest of Romans; this “decisive passage” as Taubes calls it (50), is Romans 8:37-39 

 

“in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  

 

Yes, we find in these verses a grand jubilation, a glorious jubilation.  It is because it is messianic time.  But Taubes asks: Why such a jubilation?  It makes sense only when one recognizes that “it is tremendous fear that is the source of this cry of jubilation.” (50). 

 

Throughout his book, Taubes comes back to this “tremendous fear.”  

 

For instance, p. 112, when he discusses Benjamin;  pages 124-125, 129, when discussing Nietzsche’s recognition of the forces that make the human subjects powerless and denunciation of Christianity for its cruel  hypostasization of this powerlessness into moral guilt; and then of Freud who plays the role of Paul who brings redemption from this enormous fear and from subsequent sense of guilt.  But as Taubes insists (pace Gignac), Freud is not merely the physician of individuals;  Freud is also a physician of the culture and of the civilization.  And so is Paul (139).

 

This “tremendous fear,” which extends to Paul’s fear for Israel, his deep anguish for Israel (Rom 9:1-3), is a fear of all the powers – earthly and heavenly powers, the powers of the heights and the powers of the depths – that have complotted together to separate Paul from God’s love manifested in Christ.

 

Why this tremendous fear?  [[Romans is a great fugue, that begins with 1:18, the revelation of the wrath of God, continues until the end of Chap 8, when Paul can express triumph over this remendous fear, and then start again in Rom 9 through 13.  Why this tremendous fear?]]  Because Paul looks at the world from a nihilist perspective, at the Roman empire from a nihilist perspective, at the global political situation from a nihilist perspective,  at all of society and of community life, at the relationship between Jews and Gentiles, from a nihilist perspective (110-111).   The messianic mystical experience of Paul (in Rom 8:37-39 and elsewhere) is first the experience of this tremendous fear, the experience of evil that makes Paul tremble and tremble, it is the experience of evil  powers at work – such as the evil of the Roman Empire (112), such as the evil which deprives the poor of any control over their lives.  And it is out of this experience that Paul proclaims the true Kurios, the converse of Cesar.

 

Benjamin is the heir of Paul. Benjamin shares Paul’s nihilistic perspective on history.  As such Benjamin trembles and trembles, in 1918, before the manifestation of evil in a political order that brought about the massive destruction and death of World War I.  This is the key messianic experience because this awareness, this knowledge of the reality of total negativism, of total evil, is the condition for becoming aware of another reality (pace, Adorno), the messianic reality.  The jubilation of Romans 8:31-39 before the reality of the messiah and of the messianic experience is possible only when one recognizes the evil of the powers of this world, the evil of the existing law and order.

 

This is “thinking from the bottom up” (from the existing evil political order to the messianic kingdom), rather than “thinking from the top down” as Carl Schmitt and all those good Christians did, when they condoned anti-Semitism and all the horrors of Nazi Germany by starting with a vision of the messianic kingdom and seeking to establish it and/or looking for its manifestations in the present law and order setting.  

 

For Taubes, we completely miss the messianic, apocalyptic teaching of Romans – we completely miss Christ in the teaching of Romans -- as long as we do not tremble before the existing order and the evil political powers it manifests.  We Christians miss Christ and the messianic time when we affirm the existing order, assuming that this order is basically good, instead of recognizing that this order needs to be reversed.  Then, we have joined the rank of the Carl Schmitt’s and condone anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and all other forms of oppression.  In a biting criticism of common Christian practices, Taubes denounces the stakes that Christianity has in the power of the state.  He writes:  “Christians pray for the preservation of the State, because if the State is not preserved, God forbid!, then it is the beginning of chaos, or worse, it is the beginning of the kingdom of God!  This would truly be the worst of things!” (106).

 

From this reading of Romans that is centered on Romans 13: 11-14 and 8:31-39, it appears that our role as biblical scholars and theologians must begin by discerning what are the powers that generate tremendous fear as they make people powerless, without control over their lives.  Are these powers those of fundamentalist terrorists who, out of their Nomos, generate so much anxiety in the Western world these days?  Or are these powers those of a Nomos, of the law and order of the empire, including as Monya Stubbs has suggested, the law of the Free Market Economy?  A Nomos on the basis of which the Empire demonizes an axis of Evil?  A complex question that Romans invites us to explore in a very different ways  

 

I am already running out of time and space.  And I have barely began. Let me therefore be brief on Agamben and Badiou.

 

In many ways AGAMBEN prolongs Taubes’s interpretation.  Once again Gignac provides us with an excellent summary of his main theses and their grounding in his reading of Romans.  What is important once gain is the rupture with the present order of things, the fracture.   Yet, as I read Agamben with the question:  what is our role as biblical scholars and theologians, beyond the starting point that Taubes’ interpretation of Romans has allowed us to perceive?   In one word, faith, pistis, fides.  With Gignac, we find Agamben underscoring a political understanding of faith that is most helpful.

 

The primary text becomes Rom 10:6-10, read in connection with Deut 30:11-14.  I do not need to repeat what Gignac says on this point.

 

Agamben intends to show that the confession of faith does not designate a truth—I believe that Jesus is the Messiah—or an attitude—I believe in the same ways as Jesus did. In other words, the opposition between faith in Jesus and the faith of Jesus can be overcome. The confession of faith is rather a performative act going beyond essence and existence: it produces a salvation. “It is not between words and things that homologia comes into play, but within the language itself” (210) around a still unresolved tension between law and faith. The messianic is that grace, that excess which prevents faith and law from coinciding or separating (187.212) and which makes it possible to disarm the law. Any politics or religion that forgets this tension in favour of one of the two terms—generally the law—will generate a state of crisis.

 

It is enough for me to underscore what precedes and what follows this confession of faith.  First, what follows – the effect of this performative speech act -- is expressed in Rom 10:10:  “For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.” kardi,a| ga.r pisteu,etai eivj dikaiosu,nhn( sto,mati de. o`mologei/tai eivj swthri,a.  This confession of faith results in salvation, that is, I quote “in an experience of parole (in a speech act experience)… that presents itself as a pure and common power to say, a power to say that enables one to freely and liberally use both time and the world”  (Agamben, 212).  By confessing one’s faith, one is no longer submitted to time and the world -- one is no longer under the power of time and the world.  On the contrary one is freed to make use of them, and  using them is free, no longer costly.  One can begin living in the messianic time and world as time and world that are for us rather against us.  (Agamben begins discussing the messianic age, tornado, in the very next paragraphs (when one brackets out a digression, as Agamben invites us to do).  In terms of our discussion of Taubes’s of Rom 8: 31-39:  jubilation of the messianic age is possible, because one is freed from the powers of time (the tension between the present and the future, in 8:38) and of the world.

 

But now, what is before this confession of faith?  What is having faith?  What is believing?  Agamben discusses it in more than 25 pages that cannot be easily summarized.   Let me simply cut to the chase and underscore that, for Agamben, following the great linguiste Emile Benveniste and Michel De Certeau, underscores that  pistis has the legal origin – or exactly, pre-legal, or contractual;  it is related to taking an oath, it is what one gives as a pledge – a guarantee -- of the truthfulness of what one has said;  also as a guarantee of one’s commitment to a contract, of one’s submission to a contract.   This is why faith is neither believing a truth —I believe that Jesus is the Messiah—nor an attitude—a faithfulness comparable to Jesus’ faithfulness.  Faith is beyond or prior to both of these.  As Agamben underscores it involves one’s submission to another, in a contractual relationship (177-80).   Furthermore, as he also notes following S. Calderone,[6] pistis, or especially, fides, its Latin counterpart that might be very relevant in a letter to the Romans – Pistis-Fides is also a political term designating the submission of the vanquished to the victorious Romans, the deditio in fidem (181-82).  An essential point that is also made by Momigliano.[7]   Thus, Agamben concludes:  “In Paul’s letters, pistis has connotations related to deditio, connotations about totally abandoning oneself to the power of someone else who, in turn, is under obligation” (182).

 

Faith involves “heteronomy”;  the confession of faith presupposes an experience of heteronomy… an issue that Agamben does not unpack.  He does not explain the importance of believing in the resurrection as expressed in Rom 10:9, “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

 

But BADIOU does. 

 

I read and re-read BadiouÂ’s book, meditating it, first because I had much suspicion about his reading of Romans, and then because he clarified for me the importance of faith as a heteronomous experience.

 

But first I read him with suspicion.  How could I not be suspicious of his reading of Romans as a foundation of universalism, since for the last 10 years I feel I must emphasize the contextual character of any interpretation and teaching, because of concerns with anti-Semitic, patriarchal, racist, and colonialist readings of the Bible (as I expressed in Ethics of Interpretation).  And my suspicions were partly justified.  Gignac has noted the anti-Judaism, and latent anti-Semitism of Badiou.  Similarly, what he has to say about love, and about crossing the differences (traverses des différences) is under-girded by patriarchal and colonialist perspectives; indeed, the way in which Badiou’s interpretation is framed necessarily engenders and condones anti-Semitism, patriarchalism and colonialism.  Badiou denies it (117-119); he just cannot understand why an interpretation of Paul in quest of Paul’s universal and universalistic message is problematic, and how it might condone the kind of anti-Semitism that engendered the Holocaust.  He just cannot understand why a feminist critique of such biblical interpretations and of many aspects of Paul’s letters is warranted and necessary.  He cannot understand it, because what is anti-Semitic, patriarchal, or colonialist in his interpretation is NOT primarily in his conclusions about Paul’s universalism, but rather in his [Badiou’s] truncated practice.  

 

With Gignac I do find in his book the three interpretive frames.  He actually underscores most strongly the three poles of the interpretation:   

 

From the start, his reading template is obvious: “The philosophically reconstituted debate covers three concepts. Interruption: What does an event interrupt, what does it preserve?  Fidelity: What does being faithful to an event-based interruption imply? Marking: Are there visible marks or signs of fidelity? At the intersection of these three concepts the fundamental inquiry builds up: Who is the subject of the process of truth?” (24)

 

For me this makes a great deal of sense:  Interruption = HETERONOMY;  Fidelity: AUTONOMY;  marking = RELATIONAL.

 

Badiou’s interpretation of the relationship of the subject to the Event in terms of this three poles is simply genial.   That the event of the resurrection as heteronomous experience is necessarily an interruption both of the autonomous subject and of the relational law.    Yes, he is right:  this is an amazing gesture that Paul accomplishes.  Truth, heteronomous truth, mystical truth, the truth of contemplative religious experience (see Sarah Cokley) is freed from the constraints of the community, be it a people, a city, an empire, a territory, or a social class (6).  Believing in the resurrection is then a political act:  it is acknowledging Christ as Lord, instead of Cesar, it is challenging, reversing or relativizing all of the relational realm, its law and order, its powers and its power plays.

 

Wow!  What insights!  This is what was missing in Taubes and Agamben; a clear understanding of the passage to the mystical view of time, of history, and the overcoming of the powers, that might lead to this grand jubilation and celebration of salvation.  Then, Rom 10:9 makes sense.  Then, Rom 1:4, makes sense, both as a subversive political statement but also as a religious interruption of the believer.

declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, tou/ o`risqe,ntoj ui`ou/ qeou/ evn duna,mei kata. pneu/ma a`giwsu,nhj evx avnasta,sewj nekrw/n( VIhsou/ Cristou/ tou/ kuri,ou h`mw/n(

 

Then,  Badiou comes back to the subject, and to the division of the subject and the antidialectic of death and resurrection, that reflect this interruption by the event (59-78).  The autonomous subject is positively transformed:  in the same way that the resurrection establishes Jesus as Son, so it establishes the individual subject as “Son.”  Great – although I would prefer an inclusive formula.  Badiou continues with the effect of this interruption upon the law, the relational law (79-89).  But this time, the law is posited as antithetical to the event, to the universal….

 

The balance among the three poles is broken.  The contextual – time, the world, the law – is not transfigured or reversed;  it  is rejected as antithetical to the universal truth.  Then, Badiou’s interpretation becomes very problematic for me, as I said above.

 

Yet, it remains that, for me, Badiou’s interpretation of Romans remains essential, in his very insightful analysis of the role of the resurrection in Paul’s message.  But, as is now clear, it is only as a third step in our interpretation that we can attend to it:  after reading Romans in order to think through the powers in front of which we should tremble because they control people around us, making them poor; after reading Romans in order to think through the way a confession of faith as performative political act can be salvation for us and those around us. 

 

Once again, we owe a great “thanks” to Alain Gignac.  We are greatly indebted to him for having so masterfully introduced us to these three philosophers through a very perceptive analysis and clear presentation of these three books.