Towards a Communal Reading of Paul: Galatians As a Test Case”
“Towards a Communal Reading of Paul: Galatians as a Test Case” Johann D. Kim Colorado Christian University “What life have you if you have not life together? There is no life that is not in community, And no community not lived in praise of God.”1 Introduction There is no doubt that American society is deeply individualistic. Modern American individualism has been celebrated by some to be the source of individual freedom, self- development, and dignity.2 However, it has increasingly been criticized by sociologists and political scientists who view it as a danger to American society and democracy.3 It has also been accused of hindering American Christians from seeing a communal nature of Christian faith.4 It is generally acknowledged that the Enlightenment brought individualism to the western world. Darrel Guder, however, argues that the roots of western individualism go deeper than the Enlightenment itself: “The reductionism of the Christian understanding of salvation… prepares the way for modern individualism”5 What he means by the “reductionism” is a narrow 1 From T. S. Eliot, “Choruses from ‘The Rock,’” in The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952), 101. 2 Steven Lukes, “Types of Individualism,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, ed. Philip P. Wiener, vol. 2 (New York: Scribner, 1973), 594-604. It was Alex de Tocqueville’s observations on American life that made American individualism well known (Democracy in America, 2 vols., [New York: Knopf, 1966). 3 See Robert N. Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: Harper and Row, 1985); Robert D.
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