Division to Second Power

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 , 53) or one that discovers a universal man down in the depths of each and every human (52).

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.