And if I feel the need to describe at least in general terms the peculiarity of this interdependence established by Paul, it is precisely because today it shows us its ultimate work in all directions, because today it is looking for a new militant figure to replace the previous one. In her place at the beginning of this century, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were visible, and it can be said that at that time she was a figure of a party activist. Today, when the task of taking a step forward is on the agenda, it is possible to take a big step back to achieve this goal, at least to look back. For this, I believe, we should turn to Paul. I am not the first to dare to compare him with Lenin (whose Christ was the dubious Marx).

My goals are neither historical nor exegetical in nature. At the same time, I have strictly adhered to Paul's texts, verified by modern scholars, and strictly correlated my conclusions with them.

For the Greek original, I used the Novum Testament Graese, a critical edition of Nestle-Aland, in Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1993.

As the main French text, I have repeatedly revised Le Noveau TestamentLouis Segond, in the Trinitarian Bible Society, 1993 edition.

In referring to the epistles, I have followed the traditional arrangement of chapters and verses. Thus, the designation Romans 1:25 means the Epistle to the Romans, chapter 1, verse 25. The same designations were used for other epistles: Gal. —for Galatians, 1 Cor. and 2 Cor. — for the two Epistles to the Corinthians, Phil — for the Epistle to the Philippians, 1 Thess. —for the First Epistle to the Thessalonians.

For those who wish to study this topic on their own, I would nevertheless point to two works (taking into account the colossal bibliography relating to Paul). These are a good book by Stanislas Breton, Saint Paul (PUF, 1988) and a book by Gunther Bornkamm, Rail, àrotre de Jesus-Christ (French translation by Lore Janneret, Labor & Fide, Genève, 1971).

Catholic and Protestant. Let them make a triangle together with an atheist!

Chapter I. Paul's Modernity

Why the Apostle Paul? Why turn to this dubious "apostle," especially since he proclaimed himself an apostle, and his name is usually associated with the most institutional and least open dimensions of Christianity: the church, moral discipline, social conservatism, distrust of Jews? How can this name fit into our attempt to rejustify the theory of the Subject, which makes existence dependent on the problematic significance of an event, while presenting the latter as a pure possibility of a multitude being, without sacrificing the motive of truth?

Perhaps we may also be asked how we intend to deal with the tenets of the Christian faith on which it seems inadmissible to distinguish between the person of Paul and his texts. Why refer to this fable and analyze it at all? After all, in fact, everything is quite clear: we are talking about a fable. This is especially true of Paul, who, as we shall see later, was able to reduce Christianity more thoroughly than others to one single statement: Jesus was resurrected. But that is what fabulousness consists of, for everything else — birth, preaching, death — may in the end look quite realistic. A "fable" is something whose narration has nothing to do with the real for us (except perhaps due to invisible associations), and the roundabout access to which is adjacent to everything that is clearly imaginary. The point, however, is that although Paul reduced the entire Christian narrative to this one point of the fable, he was able to incorporate it into the real one, freeing it from all the imaginary that surrounds it. As a result, we are able to talk about faith (and faith itself, or belief, or what is meant by the word pistis, is Paul's problem), while asserting that it is absolutely impossible for us to believe in the resurrection of the crucified.

Paul is a distant figure in at least three respects: in his historical position, in his role as a church planter, and in the way in which thought is centered on the fabulous element that we can identify as provocative.

We are compelled to explain why we are moving the burden of philosophical consideration so far, why the fabulous forcing of the real is conducive to reflection when it is a question of reconstructing the universal in its purely secular sense, here and now.

In this we will be assisted by such thinkers as, for example, Hegel, Auguste Comte, Freud, Heidegger, as well as the philosopher of our days, Jean-François Lyotard. All of them considered it necessary to study the figure of Paul, always, however, in accordance with extreme dispositions (fundamental or regressive, fateful or forgotten, normative or crisis), and always in order to regulate their own speculative discourse.

The focus of our attention will be on a peculiar relationship that can be formally separated from the fable and which, in fact, Paul discovered: the relationship between the statement about the subject and the question about the law. Let's put it this way: Paul found that the study of a law can structure a subject that is devoid of any identity and "suspended" on an event whose only "evidence" is precisely that the subject declares it.