Apostle Paul and the Profanation of the Law

Abstract

On the one hand, this article deals with the recent adoption of the theology of Apostle Paul in radical political philosophy by John Milbank, Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben. According to these interpretations, Paul's theology offers us elements to resist the nihilist utilitarian instrumental reason that prevails today, the reason that has transformed all politics, all human praxis, into what Agamben and Milbank call biopolitics. On the other hand, the aim of the article is to present an alternative interpretation of Pauline theology, based on the view that Paul, in fact, is one of the most important genealogical sources of the alleged contemporary nihilism. The principal argument is that by relativizing the fundamental distinction between the sacred and the profane, Paul paves the way for a purely instrumental view of the world in which the category of usefulness replaces the sacred as the measure of value. The focus of the analysis is on Paul's critique of the law (nomos). The aim of this critique, as Agamben correctly points out, is neither the abolition of the law nor an invention of a new law but the profanation of the law. Yet this profanation does not open up a ‘messianic’ dimension which would surpass the contemporary biopolitical constellation, as Agamben suggests. Through the Lutheran adoption of the original Pauline perspective, it has instead paved the way for the modern view of the law as a mere rational technical apparatus devoid of all sacredness of content.