{hetero/homo/bi/no}sexuality in mydiflesh~spirit?

~*~

PAUL
never intended for a moment
to promulgate a truly "gnostic" doctrine of escape from the body and rejection of it,
with all of the social consequences
thereby entailed:

~*~
~*~


THIS
much is proven
by GAL 5:13-17 ~
"FOR YOU were called to FREEDOM,
children,
ONLY do not misuse
your freedom as an opportunity
for the flesh" ~
i.e., DO NOT
misuse
your Christian freedom
to allow yourself
hedonistic
pleasures.



NOR
did he ever imagine
a social eradication
of the hierarchical deployment
of male and female bodies
for married
people.



While it was possible for him to conceive of a total erasure
of the difference between Jew and Greek on the level of the body -
all he had to do was to eliminate circumcision, and Jews were just like Greeks;
female Jews and Greeks
having always been bodily alike -,
he,
no more
than anyone else of his time, could NOT imagine
that male and female bodies would be in any condition OTHER
than dominant and dominated when they were in sexual relationship
with each other, that is, when they were living
"according to the flesh."



It is
[hetero]sexuality, therefore,
that produces gender, for PAUL as for PHILO and,
we shall see, within crucially paradigmatic texts
of the Christian cultural
tradition.


~*~


There
is THUS
NO contradiction between Galatians and Corinthians
on the question
of gender.



As I
have suggested,
Paul's preaching & teaching always intended a MODERATE pneumaticism -
but not more, a spirit~flesh hierarchy in which SPIRIT was,
of course, higher than the flesh
but the flesh, that is, sexual morality,
propriety, and ethics,
was NOT thereby
CANCELED
[as the end of GAL
makes entirely
clear!]!



ASSUMING
that Paul's original teaching of the Corinthians was SIMILAR to the doctrine of the FIRST four chapters of Galatians,
it is EASY TO SEE where they could have gotten their ideas:
NO MALE AND FEMALE
INDEED!



GAL 5:25-6:10 shows
HOW CLEARLY Paul anticipated THIS DANGER,
which seems to have been realized
in Corinthos?



IF
Paul
was NOT troubled in Galatians by the implications
[misreadings, from HIS point of view!]
of the quoted ancient formula,
it was because the "error" in the UNDERSTANDING of Christianity
that concerned HIM there was in the direction of TOO MUCH physicality,
so the pneumatic, gnostic implications of "THERE IS NO MALE~and~FEMALE"
were NOT a stumbling
block!



In Corinthians,
however, where his problem is with Christians who have gone TOO FAR
[from Paul's ideological standpoint]
in the pneumatic direction and he must emphasize, therefore, the theology and ethics of the body,
"no-male-and-female" would be exactly antithetical
to the message he WISHES
TO PROMOTE.



And SO
it is dropped,
because Paul perceived
that it WAS open to SERIOUS misunderstanding
as being applicable to life
"according to the flesh"
AS WELL AS
"according to
the spirit."



There is THUS
NO contradiction in Paul's thought
AT ALL!



He
held out
the POSSIBILITY
of a momentary ecstatic androgyny but ONLY THAT;
on the corporeal level of human society,
sex/gender difference was
maintained?



PAUL
on gender,
it seems to me,
represents then NEITHER the more misogynistic trend
of such thoroughly Hellenized Jews as PHILO
NOR a breakthrough
in the politics of gender
as SOME Christian feminists
would have
"IT"!



HIS picture
of the relations
of married people
seems most like that
of Palestinian Judaism in general,
a moderate, "benevolent" domination of women by men,
or rather wives by husbands, one which neither permits CRUELTY
to women NOR entirely suppresses
the subjectivity
of women.

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07 aug 2005 - bewerkt op 17 mrt 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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