Alain Badiou has made much of Paul’s contribution to Western universalism, which expresses an “indifference with regard to customs and traditions” and “an indifference that tolerates difference” ( Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism , 98-99).
Agamben is rightly suspicious of this conflation of Paul with standard Western liberalism. There is no universalism in Paul, he says, if universalism implies “a principle above cuts and divisions” ( The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans 
On Agamben’s reading, Paul’s entire project is a project of division.
Paul doesn’t erase the divisions of the old world but instead subdivides, divides within the divisions, particularly by introducing the division of flesh/spirit into the main divisions of the old world.
Thus, in place of the simple old world of Jew/non-Jew, Paul proposes that there are fleshly Jews and spiritual Jews, as well as non-Jews who are fleshly and non-Jews who are spiritual. This is not universalism but “separation to the second power” (46), an odd kind of separatism that surpasses the separatism of the Pharisees and scribes. It’s a hyper-Pharisaism.
But these divisions also produce another category, Agamben says, the negation of the negation. Those who are Jews according to spirit are not non-Jews, just as those Gentiles who have the spirit are not non-Jews. This non-non-Jew group is the Pauline remnant, the fulfillment in the present of the promises of Israel’s prophets. This remnant is the people who are divided within themselves: Jews divided to be non-Jews, Greeks to become not-Greek (53).
He’s got a lot right here, except (once again) that the doubly-negated category is left as a formless wisp. Stick “church” in all its concreteness in there, and you’re very close to the actual Paul.
