Making Paul Religious

Paul, writes Theodore Jennings in Outlaw Justice, “is concerned with the most basic issues of political thinking, law and justice” (3).

Translations, though, often obscure this interest, minimizing the political dimensions of Paul’s vocabulary and arguments by turning his letters into “religious” teaching, teaching concerned primarily with the salvation of individual souls:

“the political and philosophical character of Paul’s argument has receded from view. The result is that the text is read as a book of the church that concerns narrowly religious issues. Indeed, in English this process has been exacerbated by the disappearance of ‘justice’ (and ‘injustice’) from the translation of the text. Terms like ‘righteousness,’ ‘unrighteousness,’ and ‘wickedness’ have been substituted to make the political significance of what Paul is up to disappear behind a fog of religiosity” (2).