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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| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
SCM Press
[2018]
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| In: |
Concilium
Year: 2018, Issue: 1, Pages: 37-45 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Bible. Galaterbrief 3,28
/ Postcolonialism
/ Christianity
/ Differentiation
/ Unity
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| IxTheo Classification: | CD Christianity and Culture FD Contextual theology HC New Testament NBN Ecclesiology |
| Further subjects: | B
Social status
B Galatians B Postcolonialism |
| 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. |
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| ISSN: | 0010-5236 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Concilium
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