Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition.  I have often, in the deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath, stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean.  The sight of these always affected me powerfully…with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul’s complaint… ‘You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip!  You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly round the world; I am confined in bands of iron!  O that I were free!  O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting wing!  Alas! Betwixt me and you, the turbid waters roll.  Go on, go on.  O that I could also go!  Could I but swim!  If I could fly!  O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute!  The glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim distance.  I am left in the hottest hell of unending slavery.  O God, save me!  God, deliver me!  Let me be free!  Is there any God?  Why am I a slave?[1]

Notes

The famous parable of the Good Samaritan is also worth considering.  Here Jesus, in response to a lawyer’s question, “who is my neighbor,” replies with a parable which presents a Samaritan as the moral hero (in contrast to the villains—a priest and a Levite).

Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.  Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.  But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.  He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.  The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’  Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise’” (NRSV, Lk 10:30-37).

It is highly likely that the man who fell into the hands of robbers was a Jew.  He was after all, “going down from Jerusalem to Jericho.”  So the Samaritan is not only helping some stranger in need, he is showing mercy to an “enemy.”  The priest and the Levite in order to avoid becoming unclean choose to ignore the man in need.  As N.T. Wright puts it, “it was better that they remain aloof, preserving their purity at the cost of obedience to God’s law of love”—a law which was, by the way, an OT law and not simply something that emerged with the NT (Luke for Everyone, p. 127).

The lawyer in the story is disingenuous and poses his question in order to test Jesus.  The lawyer wants to know whom he should consider as his neighbor.  Again, Wright offers helpful commentary on the exchange.  Pointing out that the lawyer’s question and Jesus’ answer don’t exactly correspond, Wright goes on to say,

For him [the lawyer], God is the  God of Israel, and neighbours are Jewish neighbours.  For Jesus (and for Luke, who highlights this theme), Israel’s God is the God of grace for the whole world, and a neighbour is anybody in need.  Jesus’ telling question at the end isn’t asking who the Samaritan regarded as his neighbour.  He asked, instead, who turned out to be the neighbour of the half-dead Jew lying in the road.  Underneath the apparently straightforward moral lesson […], we find a much sterner challenge, exactly fitting in with the emphasis of Luke’s story so far.  Can you recognize the hated Samaritan as your neighbour? (Ibid., pp. 127-28).

I suppose the question to ask is, can you, can I, can we recognize ____________ as our neighbor/s?

Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free.  By this we mean individual or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments, may be realized.  Where the determining factors saturate the whole, there is no relationship of power; slavery is not a power relationship when man is in chains.  (In this case it is a question of a physical relationship of constraint) (“The Subject and Power,” 790).

Power relations presuppose relations among free subjects.  One cannot have a power relation with an inanimate object or with a non-human animal.  Thus, it seems that power relations can obtain only among human beings because they possess volitional and rational capacities that set them apart from other animals.  However, Foucault recognizes that certain social configurations (e.g., chattel slavery) create a situation in which human freedom is so constrained that for all practical purposes it does not exist.  However, because Foucault qualifies the kind of slavery he has in view, his position on slavery and power relations is more complicated than it appears on the surface.  Foucault’s claim is that “slavery is not a power relationship when man is in chains.”  When a slave’s body is bound, and the possibilities for basic physical mobility much less resistance and creative responses are so restricted, he is no longer considered free.  Since the (physical) freedom of the slave has been annulled, the relationship is not one of power but of physical constraint.  If this is correct, the description does not seem to correspond to historical instances of slavery.  Slaves in the antebellum period were of no use to their masters unless they were “free” to work.  That is, the slaves were not confined to prison cells or bound in chains for the duration of their enslavement; rather, they were forced to work in the fields for sixteen hours days, to manage the master’s household, and to do numerous other tasks that required physical mobility.  Thus, it seems that American slaves were involved at least intermittently in something like a power relation with their masters.  This is not to deny that they were at times bound physically (e.g. for beatings); however, the majority of their service for the master necessitated an unbound (physical) existence.  In addition, as many slave narratives attest, various forms of resistance were possible within these the constraints of the slave system.  For example, slaves often interrupted work routines, stole from their masters, had love affairs with the mistress, attempted to escape, and even physically confronted their masters.  Though these and other forms of resistance and response were incredibly risky and could cost the slave his or her life, they were genuine possibilities of action which the slave could choose.  One wonders, however, how effective the majority of actions were in terms of social (racialized) structure as a whole.  Did interrupting work routines really change the way a slave was viewed in the society?  No.  These actions, though no doubt important for the slave’s psychological well-being, did not overturn the racial and other mechanisms embedded within the society.  These kinds of actions and responses for the most part seem analogous to what Foucault describes in “The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom,” as “tricks which never brought about a reversal of the situation” (12).

Continuing the passage above and having just described a physical relation of constraint, Foucault says,

Consequently, there is no face-to-face confrontation of power and freedom, which are mutually exclusive (freedom disappears everywhere power is exercised), but a much more complicated interplay.  In this game freedom may well appear as the condition for the exercise of power (at the same time its precondition, since freedom must exist for power to be exerted, and also its permanent support, since without the possibility of recalcitrance, power would be equivalent to a physical determination (“The Subject and Power,” 790).

What is unclear to me about this passage is why Foucault says that “freedom disappears everywhere power is exercised.”  His conclusion seems to apply to the situation of the slave in chains.  That is, power and freedom have no possibility for confrontation because the bound slave is not free; there is no freedom to confront.  But why then does he add that freedom and power are “mutually exclusive” and that “freedom disappears everywhere power is exercised”?  Repeatedly, he emphasizes that both sides of a power relation must be free (at least to some degree).  Thus, freedom is the condition for the possibility of power relations to obtain; freedom makes possible the maintenance of power relations.  Perhaps what he means is that in power relationships, e.g., a pedagogical relationship, one side has to willingly take the subordinate role (the student).  The student is not forced to learn from the professor, but places himself willing under the professor’s direction.  Thus, from the student’s side, when the professor has the “lead” role, the student’s freedom is necessarily limited—but limited by choice.  Such a relationship, if it remains positive and productive, does not translate into a dominating relationship, as the student could at any time decide not to listen to the professor’s advice, or s/he could choose to stop attending the professor’s lectures.  Also, it seems that the professor must be open to correction by the student.  When the professor accepts the correction or challenge to his/her argument, thesis, etc., the student then exerts power (in the Foucauldian sense), which results in a reduction of the professor’s freedom.  If this is what Foucault is saying, are we then dealing with a kind of zero-sum game between power and freedom?  Foucault does describe the reciprocal relationship between power and freedom as a kind of ongoing provocation and struggle.

The relationship between power and freedom’s refusal to submit cannot, therefore, be separated.  The crucial problem of power is not that of voluntary servitude (how could we seek to be slaves?).  At the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly provoking it, are the recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom.  Rather than speaking of an essential freedom, it would be better to speak of an ‘agonism’[1]—of a relationship which is at the same time reciprocal incitation and struggle, less of a face-to-face confrontation which paralyzes both sides than a permanent provocation (790).

Notes

While the decision to exercise power is always intentional, the mechanisms of power that individuals use to exercise power are inherently non-subjective, because they do not depend on the existence of those individuals for their own existence.  Power mechanisms, because they are structured and reproduced by a multiplicity of power-relations that are not reducible to the individuals who exercise them, are necessarily incapable of being controlled by any particular individual (“Power, Subjectification, and Resistance in Foucault,” 85).

Because the complex interplay of power relations which form power mechanisms cannot be reduced to the individual subjects who exercise power through them, they in effect take on a life of their own.  In this sense, we are all caught in the power-diagram machine and no one individual (or group) can possibility control or direct the flow of power in a particular power-diagram.  This state of affairs, however, does not rule out the fact that some individuals and groups within a power-diagram do “control more of a diagram’s mechanisms of power than others.”  Nor is it the case that subjects, because they are “located” within the machine, are unable to execute intentional and volitional actions.  In light of their function and weight within a particular societal formation, certain groups do occupy more influential positions within the whole.[1] Thus, it is incorrect to label Foucault’s theory of power “pluralist.”  As Heller observes, “[p]ower may indeed be everywhere, but that does not mean power is equally distributed—it means only that absolute power (economic, political, cultural, etc.) is a structural and thus a practical impossibility” (86).  In short, Foucault claims that power is “the value-natural medium of social-change” (Heller, 87).  The exercise of power can of course be oppressive, but it can also be utilized for social reformation and to achieve other positive collective goals.

Non-subjectivity arises not only as a result of the irreducibility of the various mechanisms of power to the individuals within a society, but an “individual’s use of power can be non-subjective” as well due to the “inevitable disjunction between an action’s intention and its actual effect” (87).  For example, I may have a clear understand of my own intentions in connection with a particular action—supporting an international humanitarian group which aids the poor.  However, I have no control whatsoever over how this organization applies my gift and how their actions “on the ground” impact the community as a whole, as well as how the recipients’ perception of Western humanitarian endeavors are affected by the activities carried out by this particular organization.  In short, my intentional action—giving money to an organization to help the poor—bears within itself a number of potentially positive or negative unintentional social and political consequences.  According to Heller, Foucault uses the terms “tactics” and “strategies” to highlight whether or not an action is intentional.

“[T]actics” are the intentional actions carried out in determinate political contexts by individuals and groups; “strategies” are the unintentional—but institutionally and socially regularized—effects produced by the non-subjective articulation of different individual and group tactics.  Both tactics and strategies involve power, because both create social change; only strategies, however, involve non-subjective power (87-88).

So why do certain institutions whose unintentional effects are clearly out of sync with the original intentional aims continue to exist (e.g., the modern prison system)?  Foucault’s answer:  because certain groups within a particular diagram benefit (economically and otherwise) from the institution.

Notes

Heller begins by unpacking Foucault’s seemingly paradoxical statement that “power relations are both intentional and non-subjective” (79).  As Heller explains, many scholars have focused exclusively on the latter part of his statement and have failed to take seriously that Foucault acknowledges intentional, conscious actions on the part of subjects involved in various power relations.   Anthony Gidden, whose conclusion is shared by many of Foucault’s critics, claims that for Foucault Power is the real subject of history (80).  Interestingly, as Heller points out, the statements that follow Foucault’s aforementioned statement make clear that he does not see power as the real agent of history.  For example, Foucault says,

If in fact [power relations] are intelligible, this is not because they are the effect of another instance that “explains” them, but because they are imbued, through and through, with calculation:  there is no power that is exercised without a series of aims or objectives (History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, 94-95).

For Foucault, individuals can function as either subjects who exercise power or objects upon which power is exercised.

According to Heller, in Foucault’s genealogical accounts of disciplinary practices and bio-power as presented in Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, he provides numerous examples of subjects exercising intentionality to accomplish various aims and goals.  For instance, in Discipline and Punish, he explains how capitalists devised new surveillance techniques in response to the need to supervise an ever-growing labor force (DP, 174-75).  Likewise, Foucault describes how new, modern “economies” of punishment were developed.  In contrast to the ancient regime in which the exercise of power was centralized and explicitly linked to a personal monarch, the new economy of punishment created diffusive power networks, allowing the flow of power a more extensive reach as well as a more intensive impact upon the social body.  In The History of Sexuality, Foucault explains how in the 18^th century sex gradually became a discourse and how this “led to the intentional transformation of pedagogical institutions”—transformations that extended even to the architectural design of dormitories, classrooms and classroom facilities (Heller, 82).   Given these and other similar examples, Heller states,

None of these 18^th-century transformations—in factories and workshops, in the legal and police apparatuses, in military and naval hospitals, in educational institutions—can be understood without taking seriously the idea that power-relations change, for Foucault, as a result of the intentional exercise of power by specific, historically-situated individuals and groups.  Those transformations did not take place behind the backs of the capitalists, magistrates, police officers, architects, and educators whose interests they promoted; those individuals were the subjects of those transformations, not their passive objects.  Intentionality is not, for Foucault, simply an anachronistic humanist illusion (83).

Next, Heller addresses the question, what is power?   Foucault gives a helpful, multifaceted answer to this question in his essay, “Subject and Power.”  As he explains,

The exercise of power is not simply a relationship between partners, individual or collective; it is a way in which certain actions modify others.  Which is to say, of course, that something called Power, with or without a capital letter, which is assumed to exist universally in a concentrated or diffused form, does not exist.  Power exists only when it is put into action, […] In effect, what defines a relationship of power is that it is a mode of action which does not act directly and immediately on others.  Instead it acts upon their actions:  an action upon an action, on existing actions or on those which may arise in the present or the future. […]  A power relationship can only be articulated on the basis of two elements which are each indispensable if it is really to be a power relationship:  that “the other” (the one over whom power is exercised) be thoroughly recognized and maintained to the very end as a person who acts:  and that, faced with a relationship of power, a whole field of responses, reactions, results, and possible inventions may open up (788-789).

Heller summarizes Foucault’s notion of power as “transformative capacity, the ability of an individual to influence and modify the actions of other individuals in order to realize certain tactical goals” (83).  Power relationships are the condition for the possibility of change, whether personal or societal.  If the relationship is one of total domination or controlled by violence such that one side has no freedom and cannot act in any way upon the dominating partner—then it is no longer a power relationship.  Thus, for Foucault, power and resistance, as Heller discusses later, are correlative concepts.  Heller links the misreadings of Foucault’s understanding of power to the inability of scholars to “free themselves from the conceptual paradigms of conventional social theory (mainstream or Marxist), which has always equated power with ‘repression’” (83).  For Foucault, who simply follows the meaning of the French verb, pouvoir (to enable), from which the noun form is derived, power has a positive aspect and creates possibilities for change.  Of course, change can be for the better or the worse; however, Foucault’s use of the term should not be reduced only to the negative aspect.

Having explained what Foucault means by power, Heller then turns to the issue of how an individual exercises power.   All the various economic, political, institutional and other structures that constitute a particular society make possible the exercise of power.  As Heller notes, “Foucault’s term for the totality of these structurally-determined differentiations—what he normally calls the ‘mechanisms’ of power (DP, 28; SP, 786)—is the ‘diagram’ (DP, 28)” (85).  For Foucault, mechanisms of power and the exercise of power exist in a dialectical relationship.  “[T]he exercise of power continually transforms a diagram’s mechanisms of power, yet is only possible through the utilization of those same pre-existing mechanisms” (85).  As power is exercised by intentional subjects or as it operates through unintended consequences arising from the overlap and interplay of complex, dynamic mechanisms within the totality, the various mechanisms themselves which constitute a particular diagram are modified.  From the other side of the dialectical relation, social change and other transformations, which involve the exercise of power, presuppose the specific pre-existing networks or mechanisms.  With these things in view, we can better understand Foucault’s statement, “[e]very relationship of power puts into operation differentiations which are at the same time its conditions and its results” (“The Subject and Power,” 792).

In part II, I shall discuss further Foucault’s idea of a power-diagram, as well as, his distinction between tactics and strategies and how intentionality relates (or doesn’t relate) to each.

When Douglass’s former owner, Thomas Auld, could no longer deal with Douglass, he sent him to Covey.  Douglass describes his time with Covey as follows:  “the first six months, of that year … scarce a week passed without his whipping me.  I was seldom free from a sore back” (p. 56).[1] He then recounts how Covey worked him day and night and in all weather conditions and how at last Covey’s “discipline” broke him.

I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this discipline tamed me.  Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me.  I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute! (p. 58).

Although Douglass had attained a level of freedom through literacy—an accomplishment that was itself an “argument” against the white hegemonic discourse which claimed that blacks were subhuman, incapable of “higher” rational reflection, and thus in need of (white) masters—and thus had within himself moved from an animal-like existence to a more human existence, he as an embodied being was still in bonds and subject to the (irrational) whims of  white society.  In fact, Douglass indicates in the passage above, that Covey’s “disciplinary regime” (i.e. torture and inhumane work routines) transformed him back into a beast-like existence.

After one particularly brutal and near-death beating at the hands of Covey, Douglass decides to flee.  He returns to his former owner, Mr. Auld, who rather mercilessly commands him to go back to Covey.  As Douglass’s “dark night of slavery” continues, he contemplates suicide, living in the woods until he eventually dies for lack of food etc., or returning to Covey.  At last he decides to go back to Covey’s plantation, knowing that a bloody beating awaits him.  As Douglass is climbing over a fence to enter Covey’s field, Covey runs out to meet him with whip in hand.  Douglass manages to escape again and hides in the woods where he meets another slave named Sandy.  He and Sandy discuss his situation, and Sandy convinces him that he must return to Covey’s house.  However, before Douglass departs, Sandy gives Douglass a root with supposed magical, protective powers.  Sandy claims that if Douglass carries this root on his ride side, Covey will not come near him.  Douglass is highly skeptical but takes the root to please Sandy.  Douglass heads out a second time, this time returning on Easter Sunday.  Once Douglass enters his master’s property, he passed Covey, who, as a good Southern “Christian” is on his way to church.  To Douglass’s surprise, Covey interacts positively with him, which makes Douglass think that there might be something to Sandy’s root.  However, Monday is a different story; with Monday, we’re back to business as usual.  While laboring that morning in a stable, Douglass catches sight of Covey approaching with a long rope in hand.  Covey tackles Douglass and attempts to bind him with the rope.  Rather than remain a docile slave, Douglass decides to resist and fights back.  “At this moment—from whence came the spirit I don’t know—I resolved to fight; and, suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose” (p. 64).  Douglass’s response took Covey by surprise, and Douglass could see for the first time fear in Covey’s eyes.  The two struggled for over two hours until Covey finally gave up.

If we bring Douglass’s narrative (as a hermeneutical “tool”) into conversation with Hegel’s master/slave dialectic, some rather interesting insights surface.  After Douglass’s act of physical resistance or more strongly put, his act of violence, Covey never again physically abuses Douglass.  Here contra Hegel’s account of the docile slave who cared more for his life than his freedom, the slave is willing to risk his life for freedom.  Douglass himself interpreted the fight with Covey as a decisive moment in his struggle for freedom.

The battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave.  It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood.  It recalled the departed self-confidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free.  The gratification afforded by the triumph was a full compensation for whatever else might follow, even death itself.  He only can understand the deep satisfaction which I experienced, who has himself repelled by force the bloody arm of slavery.  I felt as I never felt before.  It was a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom.  My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form, the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.  I did not hesitate to let it be known of me, that the white man who expected to succeed in whipping, must also succeed in killing me (p. 65).

Here it seems that something beyond intellectual freedom (i.e. literacy and what I’ve called “inner freedom”) was required for Douglass’s “resurrection.”  As an embodied, political being, Douglass’s experience of freedom was necessarily limited so long as Covey and the socio-political slavery apparatus had dominion over his body.  According to Douglass’s account, some kind of physical resistance or force was needed not only for his own sense of freedom but also so that Covey might recognize him as an Other with volitional and rational faculties capable of producing deliberate and purposeful acts of resistance.    (Though my knowledge of Marx is quite limited, I suppose that a Marxist would be delighted with this reading).  My final point is to highlight the fact that in Douglass’s narrative, the slave does not gain freedom or bring about a reversal in the master/slave relationship through his labor (The Marxist would not, however, find this point delightful). To the contrary, Douglass says that the excruciating labor he endured under Covey’s supervision crushed his spirit—“ I was broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!” (p. 58).   Although acquiring skills through labor does not bring about a reversal in the master/slave relationship, the master’s identity is (as Hegel claims) dialectically related to the slave’s.  How so?  Covey chooses not turn Douglass in for a public “whipping.”  Douglass’s explanation for Covey’s seemingly inexplicable decision is that Covey’s reputation as a slave-breaker was on the line.  He failed to break Douglass, and to turn Douglass in would be to admit that failure and lose his reputation. In short, Douglass worked within the power mechanisms of an oppressive slave society, and his resistance proved successful on multiple counts.  Power relations, as Foucault emphasizes, are not merely oppressive.  Rather, when power relations obtain, genuine resistance is possible.

Notes

As current Pauline scholarship emphasizes, St. Paul’s eschatological orientation was rooted in his Jewish, Pharisaic past.  Christians were not the only ones who looked forward to the resurrection of the dead and a final judgment—the Pharisees did as well.  Their position was rooted in the OT, in God’s promise of a glorious future (e.g., 2 Sam 7, Isaiah). St. Paul, already operating within this Jewish eschatological, apocalyptic framework, reinterprets the schema in light of the Christ-event.  That is, with the death and resurrection of Christ—the key Christian eschatological event and new “hermeneutical lens”—the future age is in part brought into the present.  Put slightly differently, in the Christ-event and the experience of the Holy Spirit, God’s followers experience prolepticly the future age.  So the eschaton of Jewish expectation had already arrived, but it is arriving in two stages:  stage one is the Christ-event, the first coming, and the second coming is the second stage.  Hope then becomes the fundamental virtue connected with the Christian eschatological vision.  This hope is not a fleeting, sentimental hope, but a hope grounded in the reality of the Christ-event.  In short, St. Paul has transformed a traditional Jewish eschatological schema Christologically—the eschaton has become partially present now, and the gift of Spirit is God’s assurance of better things to come (2 Cor 5:5).

With this brief background in mind, I can return to my claim of development or a revised eschatological view within the NT, particularly in St. Paul (the undisputed letters) and other “Pauline” texts.  Most NT scholars today consider 1 Thessalonians to be the first of St. Paul’s epistles (c. 50-1 A.D.).  An interesting way to read the letter—not “the” way but a way—is to focus on the triad of theological virtues mentioned twice in the letter.  The triadic order in this letter, in contrast to, 1 Corinthians 13 where we have faith, hope and love, is faith, love and hope.  The last item in the list becomes thematic and is related to the specific epistolary occasion of the letter.  (For example, the Corinthians had all kinds of divisions within their community; they were puffed up with pride etc. and needed to be reminded about the importance of love).  The situation is quite different in 1 Thessalonians.  In this letter, hope is thematized and is closely related to eschatology, as eschatological themes permeate the letter.  As a pastor of a newly formed (mostly) Gentile flock, St. Paul wanted to communicate to this fledgling Christian community the importance of eschatology to the Christian life.

There are many examples from the epistle that I could cite to show that eschatology  is a major theme of the letter.  However, let me mention two very important passages.  First, 1 Thess 1:9-10, which reads:

For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming (NRSV).

Here we may infer that St. Paul was likely addressing a largely Gentile Christian audience, as he states that they “turned to God from idols.”  This, of course, would not apply to monotheistic Jews who had “converted,” as they already worshiped the true and living God, YHWH. Then St. Paul mentions the second coming (“to wait for his Son from heaven”) and the “wrath” to come—again, eschatological themes.  Scholars have postulated that verses 9-10 are perhaps a summary of what St. Paul preached when he first visited Thessalonica.  So he is reminding these new Gentile converts of what he taught them previously.  Since they did not have an eschatological framework (as the Jews did), they needed to be reminded of the significance of eschatology for Christian existence.

Second, we have 1 Thess 4:13-5:11, which is the eschatological “heart” of the letter.  Here St. Paul is addressing concerns of the local community.  Because some within their community have died, questions have arisen regarding the status of dead Christians.  Was there something wrong with them?  Are they second-class? Etc. These questions then naturally raise concerns about the parousia.  Perhaps this early group did in fact have an imminent expectation of the parousia.  If so, they were now unsure as to the status and meaning of fellow Christians who had died prior to the parousia. St. Paul has been made aware of their concerns and is responding to their questions in this letter.

The literary framing of the letter is by way of the aforementioned triadic inclusion of faith, love and hope (the first instance occurs at 1:3 and the final instance at 5:8).  Then if you turn to the middle, exhortation part of the letter, you find an incomplete triad at 3:6.  Here St. Paul encourages the Thessalonians regarding their faith and love, but hope is not mentioned.  Why?  The Thessalonians are struggling with this Christian virtue, and St. Paul as a pastor wants to encourage them.  He tells them specifically grieve, but don’t “grieve as others who have no hope.”  The resurrection and the coming parousia[1] are sources of Christian hope, and St. Paul wants them to draw from these sources and to encourage one another with them.

Here I enter into highly “problematic” territory, but philosophers tend to do this, so here I go!  The authorship of 2 Thessalonians, of course, is disputed.  There are, in my opinion, very good arguments on both sides.  Given that I am not a NT scholar etc. etc., my personal view regarding the authorship is open—perhaps it was St. Paul, or perhaps it was written by a later Pauline follower under the pseudonym, “Paul.”  Either way, what interests me is the development of the eschatological views presented in 2 Thessalonians.  Here, particularly in chapter two, “Paul” addresses concerns of false reports that “the Day of the Lord” has already occurred.  “Paul” denies that it has come and says that certain signs must happen prior to the end (2 Thess 2:2-9).  (How does one reconcile this claim with the statement in 1 Thess 5 that the day of the Lord will come like a “thief in the night?”).  Likewise, in 2 Thess “Paul” exhorts rather sternly those in the community who have stopped working (3:6-15).  Why have they stopped working and are now idle?  Presumably, because they believe that the end is near; thus, “furthering” their career is pointless.  There is, however, no clear indication in the text for that inference.  Nonetheless, given the eschatological themes linking 1 and 2 Thess, it is a plausible suggestion.  At any rate, it does appear that some kind of revision has taken place regarding the imminent return of Christ.  The parousia could still happen at any time (now only following certain “signs”), but a space has opened for the possibility that the event may occur in the distant future, a future beyond the life-span of the early Christians.

I’d really like to hear from my NT scholar friends and readers.  Please send your thoughts/comments!

Notes

To engage with the Church’s past is to see something of the Church’s future.  If we relate to the past as something that settles everything for us, something whose meaning is utterly and finally plain, it is to treat the texts of the past as closing off history, putting an end to our self-awareness as historical persons involved in unpredictable growth.  If we dismiss the past as unintelligible, if we read its texts as closed off from us by their alien setting, we refuse to see how we have ourselves been formed in history; we pretend that history has not yet begun.  And in the specifically theological context, we shall on either count be denying that we can only grow in company, can only develop because summoned by a word that is not ours.  That word is made concrete and immediate for us in the human responses that have constituted the Church’s history; all of this has made our present believing selves possible.  T.S. Elliot, faced with the glib modern claim that ‘we know so much more than our ancestors’, riposted, ‘Yes; and they are what we know.’ As was said in the first chapter, we must become aware of our hidden debts for who we now are (94-95).

If only Williams’ critics would actually read his works with care.

Silence itself–the thing one declines to say, or is forbidden to name, the discretion that is required between different speakers–is less the absolute limit of discourse, the other side from which it is separated by a strict boundary, than an element that functions alongside the things said, with them and in relation to them within over-all strategies.  There is no binary division to be made between what one says and what one does not say; we must try to determine the different ways of not saying such things, how those who can and those who cannot speak of them are distributed, which type of discourse is authorized, or which form of discretion is required in either case.  There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, p. 27).

I assume you have in mind Kant’s formulation of the categorical imperative which states that we must always treat human beings as ends and never as means.  On the surface, of course, this sounds great. However, when you place it within Kant’s larger philosophical schema, it is problematic (at least for the Christian who rejects racism and all forms of racialized essentialism). As Robert Bernasconi has shown, Kant’s hierarchical view of race, in which whites are superior and all other “races” inferior to various degrees, does not sit well with his cosmopolitanism, unless one is willing to admit that the only true, fully autonomous and hence free individuals are a particular group of white males. Also, the Christian claims that humans ought not to be instrumentalized because they are created in God’s image, which is of course a claim based on divine revelation. Neither in prelapsarian paradise nor in the eschaton are human relationships characterized by domination.  Slavery, then can be understood as something that comes about due the Fall.   In his text, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant speaks of the “kingdom of ends,” which refers to the moral universe created by rational humans willing the moral law. (The moral law is willed from “pure reason”). Kant claims that in this moral universe/kingdom of ends, each rational person is equal and sovereign. People are equal in so far as they will the moral law in accordance with reason, and they are sovereign because by doing so, they each contribute to the building of this “kingdom” or “moral universe.” From this idea of a kingdom of ends, Kant comes up with a variation on his first formulation of the categorical imperative. This version reads as follows, “For all rational beings come under the law that each of them must treat itself and all others never merely as means, but in every case at the same time as ends in themselves.”  Here Kant explicitly articulates the sovereignty and dignity of the (rational) individual, and he states that we are always to treat others as ends not as mere means. Again, on the surface this sounds great.  After all in this formulation of the categorial imperative, Kant declares that we must never use other people or treat them as tools for our purposes because to do so is to disallow their participation as equal, sovereign individuals in the moral universe and likewise to deny their dignity. Yet, in Kant’s writings on race he indicates that Indians, Africans and more or less any non-European (white) ethnic group can in fact be used as tools. According to Kant’s estimation, American Indians are “uneducable,” the “race of Negroes can educated, but only to the education of servants,” Hindus are “educable to arts and not to sciences. They will never achieve abstract concepts”; however, “the race of whites contains all motives and talents in itself” (of course he means white males of a certain sort) [Menschenkunde 1781/82].  In short, Kant’s problematic views on race are in serious tension with his cosmopolitanism and his ethical views, and the more I study the literature “from the underside of modernity” the more I believe his position as a whole to be un-salvable.  For an excellent theological critique of Kant’s view of race, see chapter two of J. Kameron Carter’s book, Race: A Theological Critique.