We can all be like Paul

The years are 1938-1944, the Second World War. In Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film, Paulus turns from being a reactionary conservative fascist in Philippe Pétain’s Paris to joining the anti-fascist resistance movement. Before turning anti-fascist, Paulus was an ardent SS collaborator, someone who, in Pasolini’s account, killed communists and resistance fighters with a vicious smile on a fanatical face.

Žižek and Badieu

By placing Paul in such a context, Pasolini shows how the figure of the apostle can have a transformative power in contemporary reality. This is something that several philosophers and theologians have done before the director. At one point, Slavoj Žižek writes that if Marx was Jesus, Paul was Lenin: Paul represents the practical figure who lives out and revolutionises world history through the message of Christianity and the formation of church communities. Žižek believes that Lenin had done the same with Marx a few decades later in the October Revolution. Whether the messages were realised is debatable, but there is no doubt about using the figure of Paul as the very example of putting revolutionary ideas into practice.

In his book Saint Paul (2003), Alain Badiou describes the apostle as a realisation of his own teachings. Badiou asks us to imagine Paul in his own time, a time when it was still ridiculous to claim that a man called Jesus had risen from death after being crucified. Many people believe this today, but it was not established at that time. Nevertheless, Paul went from town to town, writing letters and unwaveringly insisting on something that was meaningless to most people: that a man who had been crucified and killed a few years earlier was God and that this man, who is God, has set us free from death. Badiou emphasises Paul’s unreasonable message and admires the revolutionary power of fighting for a cause that defies the usual course of contemporary life.

Paul, therefore, becomes the symbol of creating a new reality, defeating hegemonic power and replacing it with a new and more just one. If Marx formulated the framework Lenin wanted to put into practice, Pasolini’s Paul film (which, incidentally, was never produced) wanted to complete and complement his earlier film about the life of Jesus, The Gospel of Matthew (1964). Like Lenin, Paul is the one who finally wants to turn the world upside down by being faithful to the message of his work. Paul’s faithfulness thus exemplifies everyone’s struggle.

using the figure of Paul as the very example of putting revolutionary ideas into practice.

To suffer, trial, and victory

What we have left of Paul is primarily his letters to the various churches he helped to establish – in Corinth, Rome, Philippi, Thessalonica, and Galatia. Paul is the author of most of the texts in the New Testament. This is even though he neither knew Jesus personally nor was one of the twelve chosen disciples. He chose himself as an apostle, which Badiou and Žižek believe makes him someone anyone can become (anyone can see Jesus on the road to Damascus!), which further fulfils the universalist ambitions of Christianity. We can all be like Paul.

Pasolini’s actualisation of Paul attempts to show that the Pauline consists of fighting against the brutal occupying power and replacing it with a reality beyond the existing one. Paul’s event, therefore, becomes something we can fill with the struggles of our own time.

We can all recognise ourselves when Paul writes that «[s]ometimes I have had to travel about, in danger on rivers and in danger among robbers, in danger among countrymen and in danger among outcasts, in danger in cities, in danger in the desert, in danger on the sea and in danger among false brothers and sisters, in toil and hardship, often in night watches, in hunger and thirst, often fasting and unclothed in the cold» (2 Corinthians 11:26-27). Paul represents all people when they are in the struggle and hopes to turn their suffering and trials into a future victory. By placing Paul in the French resistance struggle against Pétain’s fascist government, Pasolini simultaneously places him in today’s resistance struggles against other occupiers.

We can imagine that there could be a Paul in Israel or an American Paul – a Paul in any context where the abuser realises his role as abuser and turns around. We can imagine the same in our own lives, in situations where we have hidden behind lies and hypocrisy for far too long. Then we need to recognise the truth about the state of things, not just on the road to Damascus or Barcelona, but on every road to our next assault.

By replacing Rome with New York, Damascus with Barcelona, and Jerusalem with Paris in the script, Pasolini opens the door to further translating Paul’s life and applying it to our own. In this sense, everyone has a struggle they grapple with through Paul – whether personal or political.