Review of J. Albert Harrill “Ethnic Fluidity in Ephesians” New Testament Studies 60 (3), July 2014, 379-402.

Albert Harrill’s recent article in New Testament Studies on Ephesians is an important document that warrants analysis. Usually, reviews are relegated to books, but there is no reason that an article is not worth reviewing and one of the values of having a blog site is that one can analyze any document of any type. This particular article is an analysis of Ephesians. The interest though, is less in how one reads Ephesians and more in how Harrill has argued for a new understanding of ethnicity in antiquity moving it beyond an essential quality (that could shift) to more of a dialogical quality (that never was stable in the first place much less how it could be changed). This concept is helpful, convincing, and is an important development for understanding Ephesians, but Harrill’s further idea of simultaneous stability and fluidity of ethnic categories overreaches. The idea that there is any sense of true ethnic “stability” in Ephesians is difficult at best.

First, Harrill’s approach to use the logic of “ethnic reasoning” to understand Ephesians is helpful. He not only uses this as his hermeneutic, he properly takes the time to explain what ethnic reasoning is and the status questionis to this point. As this is central to Harrill’s argument, I will spend some time summarizing his basic presentation. Harrill points out that studies of ethnicity now see it as a constructed rather than essential category:

Most important in shaping this new conceptual model was the key innovation: boundaries of ethnic groups are socially constructed rather than biologically self perpetuating.[1]

Ethnicity is not kinship. Kinship traces bloodlines. Ethnicity, on the other hand, is in some sense cultural or better – “chosen.” One chooses to identify with a particular group and acts in a way that identifies them with that said group. Within that constraint, however, it is equally true that there are constructed imagined kinship ties.[2]

Harrill further wisely uses the term “ethnicity” and “religion” interchangeably. Given that cultural norms are the propagation of ethnicity, it would therefore stand to reason that one’s religion – the general propagation of cultural norms would be more like this than not like this. Harrill stands on the shoulders of Paula Fredriksen and Denise Kimber Buell in arguing that the two should be presented interchangeably:

On one side of this new debate (the ethnic-reasoning position), scholars such as Paula Fredriksen and Denise Kimber Buell argue, in different ways, for the equivalence of what we call ‘ethnicity’ and ‘religion’ in ancient Mediterranean societies; any separation of the two terms bring an anachronism (the modern idea of religion as a ‘faith’) that deserves mandatory retirement from early Christian studies.[3]

The idea behind Buell and Fredriken’s position is that one’s “race” and one’s religion were interchangeable. Take for example, one of the very few “conversion” schenes in the whole of the Hebrew Bible – the case study of Ruth:

¹⁶But Ruth said,
‘Do not press me to leave you
   or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
   where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
   and your God my God.
¹⁷ Where you die, I will die—
   there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
   and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!’[4]

Ruth proclaims that in following Naomi’s god, in moving into that territory of that people, and adopting the customs of the people, Ruth has become an Israelite. Consequently she is no longer a Moabite. This is thematically followed in the text in that Ruth is able to fulfill the leverite law for Elimelech – Naomi’s husband. This is particularly striking because the goal of the goel (kinsman-redeemer) was to produce an heir for Elimelech. The only way this could happen is if Ruth is truly an Israelite and the true daughter of Elimelech – which of course biologically she is not – she is his daughter in law to a deceased husband. This, of course, is precisely the point of Ruth where it wants to present that not only did she truly become an Israelite, she is so much so that she could be an ancestor of David with no scandal of any kind. The point here is that her ethnicity and her religious devotion are united. She does not first honor God and then later move to Bethlehem – they are contemporaneous events because the two are united.

Harrill uses this foundation of “ethnic reasoning” to make his argument about Ephesians. He argues that Ephesians uses the dialogue between fluidity and fixity in ethnicity to make a complex argument. Harrill explains this in this relatively lengthy quotation:

The early Christian author of Ephesians deploys two very different modes of ethnicity: a fixed mode and a fluid mode. Each of these modes operates with a distinct set of constructions and topoi, and each also has a distinct way of envisioning identity and difference in the world. The fixed mode identifies difference as stable, essential properties created by cosmic fate and divine determinism even ‘before the foundation of the world’ (Eph 1.4). As commentators have noted this dualism of insiders (‘children of light’) and outsiders (children of ‘darkness,’ ‘disobedience,’ and ‘the wrath of God’) (5.3-15), in which believers are exhorted never to become partakers with outsiders (5.7) are called up for battle defending the community’s holy borders (6.10-17), strongly parallels the particular Jewish sectarianism of the Qumran community.

The second mode which I call ‘fluidity’, identifies native differences as merely temporary and utterly malleable: an instability requiring constant moral exhortation (training in paideia), which occupiers the letter’s second half (Eph 4.1—6.23) and is the letter’s stated back-story (baptism changed the person ‘in which you [pl.] once lived’). The author of Ephesians reminds his invited audience that its former Gentile identity has been transformed from ‘alien’ into a single new humanity (2.11-22).[5]

First, the latter half should be considered. Harrill argues that Ephesians uses the concept of ethnic fluidity to allow all people to join the body of Christ expressed in the ekklesia as a unique ethnicity. This would make good sense of the language of adoption that riddles the text itself. Harill’s key insight is that this change of ethnicity requires further work. Precisely because ethnicity is malleable, one is not once joined to the community, assumed that they will always be there with no further work. Rather, the fluidity of ethnicity is precisely what requires one to continue to practice it. If it is possible to join the body of Christ, it is also possible to leave. The point for Harrill, is that the two things are not distinct. In antiquity, of course an ethnicity needs to be practiced. If one did not practice it, one would not be that ethnicity. Harrill parallels this to “Romanness” in the colonies with helpful categories:

The ecclesiology of Ephesians – the church as ‘one new humanity’ of Jews and Gentiles (2.15) reconciled already at baptism (4.5; 5.26) and maintained by conventional household duty codes (5.21-6.9) – is not just ‘parallel’ to this development of a Roman ethnic discourse among provincial populations, but an instance of it. As ancient diplomatic correspondence presented Romannness as a new, blended (transnational) ethnicity in which former foes became reconciled in a new peace mediated by the work of designated ambassadors, so too the author of Ephesians presented the universal ecclesia as a new, blended (transnational) ethnicity in which the former foes of Jews and Gentiles became reconciled in a ‘peace’ (Eph 2.17) proclaimed by Paul’s appointed ‘ambassadorial work’ as the designated apostle of the entire church (Eph 6.20).[6]

Here Harrill argues that the ekklesia was a ethnicity in itself with a good pattern in Roman ethnic identity. The rhetoric is striking and certainly has much merit.

Harrill’s argument at this point is quite strong. What is not as strong is his former point about the stability of ethnicity. He argues once again:

The fixed mode identifies difference as stable, essential properties created by cosmic fate and divine determinism even ‘before the foundation of the world’ (Eph 1.4). As commentators have noted this dualism of insiders (‘children of light’) and outsiders (children of ‘darkness,’ ‘disobedience,’ and ‘the wrath of God’) (5.3-15), in which believers are exhorted never to become partakers with outsiders (5.7) are called up for battle defending the community’s holy borders (6.10-17), strongly parallels the particular Jewish sectarianism of the Qumran community.[7]

Harrill here wants to leverage the language of an eternal plan to create an ethnic fixity. Ephesians does use language of eternal determinism as expressed in the passages Harrill quotes above. To highlight a few, consider the following passage:

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, ⁴just as he chose us in Christ^* before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. ⁵He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, ⁶to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. ⁷In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace ⁸that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and insight ⁹he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, ¹⁰as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.[8]

Here the language of adoption is used to suggest that these figures are very much part of the ethnicity of God through Jesus. Further, the author wants to firmly establish that this was not some later change, but was the plan the entire time – the only change is that now we understand what was previously hidden in mystery.

The problem with Harrill’s interpretation is that he sees this idea of a plan as ethnic fixity. It is hard to believe that God’s having a purpose for people and a plan meant that they were already “fixed” in the ethnic identity of Jesus before they joined the movement. For this to be “fixed,” it would necessitate that this is the eternal race that cannot be changed rather than other things that can. However, the rest of the book revolves around the importance of being able to join the movement which makes it sound far less fixed in any sense. Here, it seems that Harrill’s good insight brought along a bad one. The value of ethnic reasoning was that it explained well the relationship between identity and practice. The problem was that ethnic argument should not be considered a magic bullet. This sense of eternal adoption seems to be far more about the consistency of God and his plan for the world acting in the way that he intended than about ethnicity as such.

Despite this weakness, Harrill’s argument is sound. Harrill’s most helpful contribution – and the one that should be taken very seriously for all studies of ethnicity in antiquity – is the concept of ethnicity as less of a substance and more of a dialogue. Harrill presents it as follows:

“This apparently paradoxical oscillation between fixity and fluidity becomes intelligible if we relocate the ecclesiology of Ephesians away from the question of whether ethnicity is a fixed or mutable thing (the old primordialist/constructivist debate) to analysis of ethnic reasoning as a discourse.[9]

While I disagree with Harrill that fixity – in the sense he provides above – is the fixity that is necessary, I do think he is absolutely right that the dialogue between the two is the fundamental characteristic of ethnicity at all. The fact that we can see these things as mutable does not mean an adherent can. To go back to Charles Keyes’s original concept of ethnicity, it is a social group with an imagined kinship. Ethnicity is something that is imagined to be fixed. While it is not truly fixed, it always dialogues with the rhetoric that it is.

The value of the idea of ethnicity as discourse is that perfectly addresses both sides of ethnicity – the idea of fixity (and therefore the norms that can come from that) with the very real idea that it can be joined through action. Consider Harrill’s point about ethnicity in regard to Ephesians:

The author infantilises the audience in order to build it back up as a new people, teaching that a specific ‘way of life’ can and must serve as an ethnic line of demarcation around the impermeable borders of the church (4.17-19)…This rhetoric repeats ancient discursive constructions of ethnic flexibility by stressing the capacities of paideia to change native identity.[10]

The idea that ethnicity and paideia are related is helpful and should be more emphasized. There is always tension between action and identity and thinking of ethnicity as always in dialogue helps highlight this reality.

In all, Harrill’s article is very interesting and provides new ways of thinking about ethnic reasoning which should be taken more seriously in any serious study of ancient identity and ancient texts.

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[1] Harrill “Ethnic Fludity”, 383.

[2] Charles Keyes “Ethnic Groups, Ethnicity” The Dictionary of Anthropology Thomas Bartfield (ed.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 152-153.

[3] Harrill, “Ethnic Fluidity” 386.

[4] Ruth 1:16-17.

[5] Harrill, “Ethnic Fluidity” 389-390.

[6] Ibid. 394.

[7] Ibid., 389.

[8] Ephesians 1:3-10.

[9] Ibid., 402.

[10] Ibid., 399.