Solidarity and Difference: A Contemporary Reading of Paul's Ethics

Solidarity and Difference: A Contemporary Reading of Paul's Ethics. By David G. Horrell. London: T & T Clark International, 2005, xvi + 339 pp., $49.95 paper.

David Horrell's work has two major, interrelated aims. The first aim is to provide an exegetically informed reading of Paul's ethics guided by issues and questions raised by contemporary ethical debate, specifically the debate between liberals (represented by Jurgen Habermas) and communitarians (represented by Stanley Hauerwas). The second aim is to investigate how Paul's ethics might inform the aforementioned debate.

Because the contemporary ethical debate forms the context in which Horrell reads Paul, his work is "a study of Paul's ethics as social or political ethics, by which I mean ethics concerned with the formation and maintenance of human community, and with reflection on the ways in which this human sociality should rightly be sustained" (p. 2). Therefore Horrell is less concerned with what he labels "moral quandaries" (e.g. Paul's views on homosexuality, marriage and divorce, or slavery) and more concerned with the formation of the communities in which these issues are to be debated and resolved.

Horrell begins with a survey of the field of Pauline ethics, touching on issues commonly thought central to Paul's ethics: the indicative and imperative in Paul, Paul and the Mosaic Law, Paul's relationship to the teachings of Jesus, and the social context of Paul's ethics. Above all, it is the work of Daniel Boyarin in A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994) that sets the agenda for Horrell's work by presenting him with his fundamental question: "How did Paul-and how might we-conceive of human communities as places of solidarity and difference?" (p. 44).

The second and third chapters of the book set the stage for the analysis that follows. In the second chapter, Horrell examines the contrasting approaches of Jurgen Habermas and Stanley Hauerwas in order to develop the contemporary context in which he will read Paul's ethics. This context provides the questions that Horrell will ask of Paul in chapters 4-8, such as: What are the metanorms of Pauline ethics? How does Paul conceive of the distinctive identity of the Christian community? Is there any appeal in Paul to a universal rationality? How does Paul handle difference of conviction in the community? In the third chapter, Horrell lays out his methodology for handling Paul's letters with regard to ethics. Drawing on social-scientific approaches, he argues that "Paul's letters are to be seen as reflecting, and contributing to, a narrative myth which constructs a particular symbolic universe, giving meaning and order to the lives of those who inhabit it" (p. 97). Paul's ethics are his thoughts on how this mythology, which is enacted in ritual, should shape the lives of his readers.

The bulk of the book (chaps. 4-8) is devoted to constructing a reading of Paul's ethics. In chapter 4 Horrell argues that "the first and most fundamental moral value, a metanorm, in Pauline ethics is that of corporate solidarity, a form of human solidarity with egalitarian impulses" (p. 99). In chapter 5 Horrell explores Paul's rhetoric of holiness and the ways in which this rhetoric is designed to create a sense of distinction between the believing community and the world. Chapter 6 examines 1 Corinthians 810 and Romans 14-15 and argues that the idea of "other-regard" (what Paul often calls "love") constitutes the second fundamental metanorm of Pauline ethics. Chapter 7 builds upon chapter 6 by investigating the ways in which Christ functions for Paul as the paradigm for believers' attitudes and actions. Whereas in chapters 4-7 Horrell focused on Paul's "insider" ethics, in chapter 8 he expands his focus to Paul's thinking regarding relationships with outsiders and the extent to which Paul appeals to "universal" moral standards. Horrell summarizes his reading of Paul's social ethics under seven theses which he presents in chapter 9 along with a summary of possible ramifications of this reading of Pauline ethics on the contemporary ethical debate between liberals and communitarians.

This work is quite commendable in many regards. First, Horrell has identified a gap in scholarship (the need for more synthetic studies of Pauline ethics, taking into account how Pauline ethics might be relevant to today) and has gone about admirably addressing that gap. second, the exegesis that Horrell engages in is balanced and quite detailed in places for a work of this nature. Third, the argument is clearly laid out. Although there are some holes-his claim that solidarity and other-regard are the two most important and fundamental metanorms of Pauline ethics is more assertion than argument, for he fails to show why his metanorms are more fundamental than those other scholars have proposed-the work is well organized and very lucid. Fourth, I found Horrell's reading of Paul to be thought-provoking, even when I disagreed with him. In addition, his reading opened up to me fresh insights into Paul's letters. This was especially true in chapter 8, where Horrell addresses "outsiders" and Paul's appeal to universal standards. Fifth, Horrell's work continues the important move away from Bultmann's overly individuallyoriented reading of Paul toward a more communally-oriented one (though this work may be guilty of overcorrection).