The Formula “Neither Jew nor Greek”

The Formula “Neither Jew nor Greek” is presented not as a promise that all particular identities disappear into a harmonious whole, but as a claim that universality emerges through a division running across them. Its force lies in shifting the question from who is included in a universal community to where universal truth becomes visible: at the position of those who belong to an order but have no settled place within it.

Particular Identity and Universal Truth

Paul’s formulation does not require people to be ashamed of their ethnic origins or to abandon affection and pride in them. A person may remain attached to a particular identity, while recognizing that such attachment does not determine the truth of a universal claim. The book distinguishes this engaged, particular standpoint from a universal struggle: the latter is not simply one substantial group fighting another, but an antagonism that cuts diagonally across their boundaries.

This distinction also clarifies why the formula is not merely a call to broaden an existing community. The universal dimension is not the sum of its particular members, nor a neutral background in which their differences peacefully coexist. Particular identities and institutions instead take shape around a conflict they cannot finally resolve; universality names that conflict rather than a completed settlement above it.

Exclusion and the Position of the Part with No Part

The book takes seriously the objection that Christian universalism can be exclusionary. The claim that all people are brothers may carry the converse implication that those who reject the brotherhood are not recognized as fully human. In the author’s comparison, Jewish particularity can acknowledge the humanity of people who worship other gods, whereas Christian universalism can tend to deny nonbelievers a place within humanity itself. The formula therefore cannot be treated as proof that Christianity simply includes everyone.

Its more radical meaning, however, is located not in an all-inclusive Christian identity but in the position of those excluded from the existing order. These subjects belong to the social whole, yet lack a specific place or recognized determination within it. Universality arises from this mismatch: the excluded position makes visible a division internal to the order, rather than standing outside it as a wholly separate group.

A Division That Crosses Every Community

On this reading, the decisive division is not simply between Christians and non-Christians as two self-contained populations. The distinction itself cuts through the social body: Greeks, like Jews, are divided between Christians and non-Christians. No substantial ethnic identity remains internally uniform or untouched by the antagonism. The formula thus makes universality and partiality interdependent: universal truth is accessible only from a committed position within a particular conflict, not from a view that claims to stand above every position.

This account also frames the book’s discussion of Ernesto Laclau and Hegel. Laclau’s distinction between the logic of difference and the logic of antagonism helps name the conflict, but the book argues that treating these as externally opposed logics misses their mutual dependence. At their extremes, a system of pure difference tends toward equivalence, while antagonism stripped of structure collapses into a naturalized opposition between two groups. The Pauline formula’s significance is consistent with this argument: antagonism is not a border separating intact communities, but a division that unsettles each community from within.