How Did the First Christians Perceive Their Social Identities?
A summary of recent scholarship on a complicated topic
Sometimes, you write something to clarify your own thinking—or at least I do. Over the past month or so, I’ve read a few thousand pages on the topic of ethnic identity among early Christians. To put it as simply as I can, some scholars think that Christians perceived their identity in Christ as a new identity that replaced their previous ethnic, religious, and political identities—these categories overlapped far more in the ancient world than they do now, by the way. Other scholars see identity in Christ as a new identity that fulfilled Jewish identity and, in some sense, allowed Gentiles to become Jewish. Still others see identity in Christ as a supraordinate identity that transcended but coexisted with ethnic identities.
What I’ve written the below is meant to clarify my own thinking on this. This is important—as you’ll see in what I write below—because I am using Philip Esler’s views on this topic as a basis for ethnic conciliation in the forthcoming book In Church as It Is in Heaven: Cultivating Multiethnic Kingdom Culture Wherever You are (InterVarsity Academic, 2023). Enjoy!
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Adolf von Harnack treated ancient references to Christianity as a new genus of people as the establishment of a voluntary class of religious adherents, free from ethnic and racial entanglements. Recent scholarship challenges this notion. In keeping with certain aspects of the New Perspective on Paul, Bernard Ukwuegbu sees continuity between Pauline Christianity and Judaism, but ultimately presents Pauline Christianity as a breakaway sect that reacted against certain aspects of first-century Judaism. See Bernard Ukwuegbu, The Emergence of Christian Identity in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: A Social-Scientific Investigation into the Root Causes for the Parting of the Way Between Christianity and Judaism (Borengässer, 2003) 40–85. Love Sechrest takes a very different approach, viewing Pauline Christianity in particular as an ancient racial group in which Paul became “a former Jew” as his Christian racial identity took precedence over his Jewish racial identity. See Love Sechrest, A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race (T&T Clark, 2009) 5, 123–129, 159. In this, Sechrest seems to be reacting against the ways in which some representatives of the New Perspective on Paul have situated Paul almost completely within Judaism. Sechrest rightly notes that, for early Christians, biology no longer determined primary kinship and that faith stood as the necessary and sufficient basis for kinship. However, this does not require that this new kinship constitutes a racial or ethnic identity that replaces previous racial or ethnic identities. Judith Lieu and Denise Buell similarly emphasize religion as an ethnic and racial identity marker in an era in which ethnicity and race were not distinguished and in which religion could be integral to ethnic and racial identities. Furthermore, while identity boundaries based upon birth may seem immovably fixed by biology, these boundaries could be redrawn by religious practices and rituals. At least as early as the second century, Gentile Christians were thus able to began claiming descent from Israel as an aspect of their membership among those who followed Christ. See Denise Buell and Caroline Hodge, “The Politics of Interpretation: The Rhetoric of Race and Ethnicity in Paul,” Journal of Biblical Literature (2004): 238, 249; Denise Buell, Why This New Race?: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity (Columbia University Press, 2005) 7–10, 45, 108, 165; Caroline Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul (Oxford University Press, 2007) 33; Judith Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford University Press, 2004) 118. See also Dennis Duling, “Whatever Gain I Had: Ethnicity and Paul’s Self-Identification in Philippians 3:5–6,” Hervormde Teologiese Studies 64 (2008): 614, and, David Horrell, Ethnicity and Inclusion: Religion, Race, and Whiteness in Constructions of Jewish and Christian Identities (William B. Eerdmans, 2020) 302–303.
According to Daniel Boyarin, Paul never left Judaism behind; instead, Paul saw Christian faith as a way for Judaism to include Gentiles. See Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (University of California Press, 1994) 1–2, 85, and, Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) 6–7. Some aspects of John M.G. Barclay’s view seem to be similar to Boyarin’s, but Barclay understands both Jewish and Gentile ethnicities to have been relativized in light of the gospel. See critique of Boyarin in John M.G. Barclay, “Neither Jew nor Greek: Multiculturalism and the New Perspective on Paul,” Ethnicity and the Bible, ed. Mark Brett (Brill, 2002) 211–214; see also John M.G. Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (T&T Clark, 1996) 381.
The perspective which we take and which we have applied throughout this book is that of Philip Esler. Esler applies Henri Tajfel’s social-identity theory to Pauline Christianity and argues for a distinctive, supraordinate Christian identity separate from Jewish and Gentile identities but encompassing both. Belief in Christ does not obliterate or replace previous ethnic identities. Belief in Christ redeems and relativizes ethnic identities. The believer’s identity in Christ is in addition to the believer’s ethnic identity, which is nested within his or her central, supraordinate identity in Christ. This new, supraordinate identity enables individuals from differing ethnicities, cultures, ages, and socioeconomic backgrounds to live as a family. See Philip Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter (Fortress Press, 2003) 74–76, 108, 140, 276, 335–365; Philip Esler, “From Ioudaioi to Children of God: The Development of Non-Ethnic Group Identity in the Gospel of John,” In Other Words: Essays on Social Science Methods and the New Testament in Honor of Jerome H. Neyrey, ed. Anselm Hagedorn, et al. (Sheffield Phoenix, 2007) 127; Philip Esler, “Giving the Kingdom to an Ethnos That Will Bear Its Fruit: Ethnic and Christ-Movement Identities in Matthew,” In the Fullness of Time: Essays on Christology, Creation, and Eschatology in Honor of Richard Bauckham, ed. Daniel M. Gurtner, et al. (William B. Eerdmans, 2016) 177-196; Philip Esler, “Jesus and the Reduction of Intergroup Conflict,” Biblical Interpretation 8 (2000); Philip Esler, “Judean Ethnic Identity and the Matthean Jesus," in Jesus-Gestalt und Gestaltungen: Rezeptionen des Galiläers in Wissenschaft, Kirche und Gesellschaft; Festschrift für Gerd Theißen zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Petra von Gemünden, et al. (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2013) 208. See also William Campbell, Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity (T&T Clark, 2006) 94–124; William Campbell, “Unity and Diversity in the Church: Transformed Identities and the Peace of Christ in Ephesians,” Transformation 25 (January 2008): 24; Pamela Eisenbaum, “Jewish Perspectives: A Jewish Apostle to the Gentiles,” Studying Paul’s Letters: Contemporary Perspectives and Methods, ed. Joseph Marchal (Fortress, 2012) 150; Kathy Ehrensperger, Paul at the Crossroads of Cultures: Theologizing in the Space-Between (T&T Clark, 2013) 158; Aaron J. Kuecker, The Spirit and the “Other”: Social Identity, Ethnicity and Intergroup Reconciliation in Luke-Acts (T&T Clark, 2011) 48, 66, 228–230. Stephen Louy, “The Origins of Christian Identity in the Letters of Paul” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2012).