III.2
First, however, I will yield to Breton’s own stated
intentions. Breton’s four-page preface immediately disturbs the historical and
contemporary construction of disciplinary boundaries. Breton’s reading of Paul
is not, by his own insistence, simple exegesis or theology, but an attempt to “identify
a set of elements that might be of interest to the philosopher”—a gesture that
frees Breton from responsibility toward the “immense literature” (scholarly and
otherwise) on the Apostle, though he is clearly familiar with much of the
then-recent debates on Paul’s identity (33). Breton’s perspectival difference
also allows him to conduct his search with a wider field of textual support—in
addition to the seven universally accepted letters, Breton sees no reason not
to make use of the six others, of which Ephesians especially will be central to
several arguments (Acts and even Hebrews will prove useful as well, though he
does not say as much in the preface). By way of explanation, Breton writes, “In
a work intended for philosophers, less concerned with the authenticity of a
signature than with the authenticity of a thought, I permit myself access to
all the letters of Saint Paul [as defined by the canon]. At the risk of
systematic excessiveness, I thus take the
liberty of recreating the message of man who was nothing less than a
philosopher by trade” (35-36; italics added). Breton’s reading, to put it
plainly, purports to be an archaeological discovery on the order of a
transitional fossil that exposes the apostolic origin of the last two millennia
of Western philosophy—and, at the same time, the philosophical origin of the
last two millennia of Christian theology and practice.
The first chapter, “Biographical Outline,” focuses on the
making of this long sought after “missing link,” the philosopher/apostle Paul.
Focusing on the “rhapsodic data” of Acts and the assorted letters, Breton
attempts to reconstruct Paul according to his own “autobiographical
confessions” (37). Two decisive events present themselves for close inspection:
Paul’s so-called conversion on the road to Damascus and the Jerusalem assembly.
The Damascus experience is a reorientation rather than a revocation of Paul’s
militant passion, a “rupture” that, with its implications of eternity,
transcends itself as a mere temporal marker. The function of the Damascus experience
in the Pauline autobiographical confessions is to bear witness to a “primary
difference” between one’s earthly calling and the impossible-to-articulate
splendor of one’s preexisting essence (39).
The Jerusalem assembly is a similarly decisive, even “paradigmatic,”
event in Paul’s life, which, though he would later reject the validity of the
council’s provisionary synthesis, recognized his divinely ordained mission and
provided him with an objective framework with which to respond to his opponents
(40-41).
For all their decisiveness, what these two events
fundamentally have in common is their divisiveness. According to Breton, they
open a “schizoid” fracture between “before” and “after,” a lapse or caesura in
Paul’s identity that must be attended to for the sake of the efficacy of his
mission and for his own psychological stability (46). Paul is left with two
options: either accept the collapse into an irresolvable dualism or commit to a
fragile yoking together of past and present, a fabricated sense of continuity
that retains the essential lacuna between the Old and the New but remedies its
destabilizing effects (47). Breton’s interpretation of Paul’s “conversion” is,
of course, easily challenged by the contemporary reader, such that it is
unnecessary to rehearse the relevant insights afforded by both secular and
theological studies of the Apostle that seek to affirm the apostle’s Jewishness
against centuries of anti-Semitic histories. It is therefore disappointing that
resolving this contentious tension becomes, for Breton, the central motivation
of Paul’s mission. However, following Blanton’s skillful reading of Strauss,
one should interrogate Breton’s text not just for the veracity of its arguments
but to search for clues about the primary social and technological conflicts
that find their way into his writing.
