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Paul and the Philosophers: Alain Badiou and the Event

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

John M.G. Barclay
John M.G. Barclay*
Affiliation:
Durham University, Abbey House, Palace Green, Durham DH1 3RS
*
Email: john.barclay@durham.ac.uk
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Abstract

This essay discusses the reading of Paul offered by the contemporary French philosopher, Alain Badiou. Badiou's emphasis on event and unconditioned grace is supported by readings from Galatians, such that his philosophical notion of ‘event’, with its militant and universal effects, may claim real consonance with Paul. However, Paul's strong notions of divine creation from nothing, and of the benevolence of the Christ event, require that God be reinserted into Paul's theology, while Badiou's focus on the resurrection, rather than the cross, misses the social radicalism latent in Paul.

Keywords

Alain BadiouPauleventgracecross
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 91 , Issue 1032: Special Issue: Catholic Theological Association 2009 Conference Papers: The Legacy of Paul , March 2010 , pp. 171 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © The author 2010. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council.

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References

1 E.g., Žižek, S., On Belief (London: Routledge, 2001)Google Scholar; idem, The Ticklish Subject: the Absent Centre of Political Ontology (London: Verso, 1999)Google Scholar; Taubes, J., The Political Theology of Paul (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Agamben, G., The Time that Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Breton, S., The Word and the Cross (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002)Google Scholar. For discussion of some of the above, see Gignac, A., ‘Taubes, Badiou, Agamben: Contemporary Reception of Paul by Non-Christian Philosophers’ in Odell-Scott, D.W. (ed.), Reading Romans with Contemporary Philosophers and Theologians (London: T & T Clark, 2007), pp. 155–211Google Scholar.

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3 See also Chester, S., ‘Who is Freedom For? Martin Luther and Alain Badiou on Paul and Politics’, in Middleton, P., Paddison, A. and Wenell, K. (eds.), Paul, Grace and Freedom. Essays in Honour of John K. Riches (London: T & T Clark, 2009) pp. 97–118Google Scholar.

4 For authoritative analysis of Badiou, see Hallward, P., Badiou: A Subject to Truth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Barker, J., Alain Badiou: A Critical Introduction (London: Pluto Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

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6 See his central work, L’Être et l’événement (Paris: Seuill, 1990)Google Scholar.

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9 For an outline of the difference here see J.M.G. Barclay, ‘Grace Within and Beyond Reason: Philo and Paul in Dialogue’ in Middleton et al. (eds.), Paul, Grace and Freedom (see note 3), pp. 9–21.

10 Stendahl, K., Paul among Jews and Gentiles (London: SCM, 1977)Google Scholar.

11 Badiou, A., Logiques des Mondes (Paris: Seuill, 2006)Google Scholar.

12 Saint Paul, pp. 15–16 [ET: 14–15].

13 Welborn, L., ‘Extraction from the Mortal Site: Badiou on the Resurrection in Paul’, New Testament Studies 55 (2008), pp. 295–314CrossRefGoogle Scholar.