A Postcolonial Reading of Galatians 3:28

Paul makes a plea for 'unity in Christ', over and above the factors of ethnicity, social status and gender that tended to divide the Galatians. Did he understand this 'unity' to mean the abolition of all ethnic, cultural, religious and other forms of differentiation? Is not Chris...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: David, Pablo Virgilio S. 1959- (Author)
Format: Print Article
Language:English
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Published: SCM Press [2018]
In: Concilium
Year: 2018, Issue: 1, Pages: 37-45
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Bible. Galaterbrief 3,28 / Postcolonialism / Christianity / Differentiation / Unity
IxTheo Classification:CD Christianity and Culture
FD Contextual theology
HC New Testament
NBN Ecclesiology
Further subjects:B Social status
B Galatians
B Postcolonialism
Description
Summary:Paul makes a plea for 'unity in Christ', over and above the factors of ethnicity, social status and gender that tended to divide the Galatians. Did he understand this 'unity' to mean the abolition of all ethnic, cultural, religious and other forms of differentiation? Is not Christianity rather founded on a genuine appreciation of differentiation, before it can serve a factor for unity at all? The differentiation of Jesus as male, a Jew, a Galilean, a carpenter, etc. is part of the very mystery itself of the incarnation. It is a mystery that the Church itself has to learn to embrace at each time the faith is appropriated by peoples of new religious, cultural, economic and political world views. A colonial reading of Gal. 3:2 can conveniently serve to justify the religious, cultural, political and economic hegemony of Western Christianity into non-Christian civilizations as a 'manifest destiny'. This sort of triumphalism, of thinking one's own worldview as superior, of patronizing those who are deemed culturally inferior, of forcing one's civilization on the rest of the world, as pedagogy for unity, is neither in keeping with, nor a sound exegesis of Gal. 3:2.
ISSN:0010-5236
Contains:Enthalten in: Concilium