Becoming a Man: The Apostle Paul and Masculinity

Grace Emmett, “Becoming a Man: Un/Manly Self-Presentation in the Pauline Epistles.” PhD diss., King’s College London, 2021.

The apostle Paul’s letters are no stranger to gender criticism. Feminist interpreters have long attended to the women present in the Pauline epistles, whether named or unnamed, as well as to what Paul’s gospel meant for the lives of women in the first-century Mediterranean world (and indeed in contemporary Christian communities today). More recently, analysis of masculinity has been gaining traction within New Testament and early Christian studies. My doctoral thesis intervenes in this discussion by focusing this relatively new analytical gaze on Paul’s self-presentation in his undisputed letters to argue that the apostle evades straightforward classification as either disrupting or conforming to masculine norms.

I begin by taking Paul’s seemingly straightforward claim to have “become a man” (gegona anēr) in 1 Cor 13:11 and turn this into a question: what sort of man has Paul become? At the end of 1 Corinthians, Paul also tells the Corinthians to “man up” (andrizomai, 16:13). But we might turn this exhortation around and wonder if, for the Corinthians, Paul himself has sufficiently “manned up.” Framing my study in this way enables me to ask what type of masculinity Paul embodies, how he negotiates this performance of masculinity through his letters, and to what extent Paul’s masculinity would be compelling to the first readers and hearers of his letters.

Generally speaking, recent work on New Testament masculinities has tended towards identifying individuals along a scale from unmanly to manly, in comparison with first-century Greek and Roman ideals of masculinity. This often (though by no means exclusively) happens in conjunction with using the theory of hegemonic masculinity, first developed in the social sciences and primarily associated with Raewyn Connell and James Messerschmidt. “Hegemonic masculinity” is thus usually equated with ideal masculinity, whether that’s understood as a singular entity, or better expressed as hegemonic masculinities. This dominant expression of masculinity is the benchmark against which biblical figures are measured. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, within this framework biblical figures rarely manage to exhibit the necessary qualities for demonstrating ideal masculinity.

Yet as Colleen Conway has recently noted, drawing on the work of historian Ben Griffin, there is a risk that this type of comparative approach fails to sufficiently interrogate power dynamics within New Testament texts. To put it differently, a particular biblical figure might fail to fully embody the ideals of elite masculinity, but what does this failure actually indicate? In what ways do New Testament masculinities institute their own patterns of hierarchy? Taking heed of these reservations, I seek to demonstrate the complexity of Paul’s masculinity by concentrating on four themes in his letters that could, on a surface reading within the existing comparative framework, be characterized as displays of “unmanly” behavior. I argue that in each case Paul’s self-presentation problematizes a strict manly/unmanly binary. To that end, my analysis is less focused on whether or not Paul conforms to dominant masculine ideology in antiquity, but rather to what extent, and by what means, he appears to appropriate, rework, or resist various masculine ideals in his writings. With each theme, I also consider what this mode of self-presentation might communicate in terms of expectations of gendered hierarchies within the Pauline churches. By exploring seemingly “unmanly” aspects of Paul’s self-presentation, I demonstrate that the gender dynamics of the texts under examination are often more ambiguous than previous scholarship has allowed for. In particular, they are liable to being read in multiple ways, dependent on the perspective of the person doing the reading.

The first theme I explore is bodily weakness, mobilizing disability studies to illuminate additional dimensions of masculinity. This chapter concerns itself with three particular “somatic stories,” as described in 2 Cor 10:10, 12:7b–10, and Gal 4:13–15. I consider the way that masculinity emerges in these texts as a way of redefining bodily weakness because for Paul weakness can, paradoxically, be the site of strength. The first text invites consideration of the connection between speech and masculinity, as Paul responds to a charge of weakness, but in doing so has to rely on someone else reading aloud his response to the Corinthians. In this respect, he can only manage how he is perceived in a limited manner, dependent on the letter-reader performing masculinity on his behalf. In 2 Cor 12:7b–10, failure to protect his bodily boundaries results in Paul’s penetration by the “thorn,” but this weakness is used rhetorically to have a prosthetic effect on the narrative of the heavenly ascent: it is the thorn’s penetration that brings greater intimacy with Christ. And in Gal 4:13–15, the Galatians themselves can be read as living prostheses for Paul, accepting his apparently despicable body. Yet the Galatians’ past acceptance of Paul, contrasted with their current wavering over his instructions to them, indicates a complex relationship between the apostle and the Christ-followers in Galatia.

Next I investigate the various markings on Paul’s body, comparing how such bodily marks contribute to Paul’s performance of masculinity. This chapter begins with a discussion of Paul’s presentation of his own circumcision in Phil 3:5 and his reclamation of a culturally unmanly symbol to assert his authority. His own circumcision is juxtaposed with the way that he draws on rhetoric about bodily ideals to demean other circumcised bodies, such that conflicting ideals of masculinity can co-exist in Paul’s thought, informed along ethnic lines. I then consider a more ambiguous type of bodily mark that Paul presents: his stigmata, as revealed in Gal 6:17. Here I draw on Jennifer Glancy’s work to interrogate the layers of reception history that have contributed to an overly-masculinized perception of this passage. This section shows how masculinity analysis is relevant not just to Paul’s letters in their own contexts, but also to the way in which his letters are interpreted. Both this chapter and the previous one show that the construction of Paul’s textual body is complicated: he can both be the Other while also constructing Others, showing that it is possible to use his own body to shift between conflicting masculine personas.

The third theme I analyze is Paul’s use of enslavement metaphors. Beginning with his slavish declarations in Gal 1:10, Phil 1:1, and Rom 1:1, I ask whether masculine ideals are being subverted by Paul’s alignment with the unmanly figure of the slave. By bringing Paul’s servile declarations into conversation with feminist scholarship that examines Latin love elegy, I argue that the declaration to be a “slave of Christ” functions as a statement of authority, and as such seems to be within the realms of acceptable masculine discourse because it defines dimensions of Paul’s leadership. The second part of the chapter turns its attention to Paul’s proclamations to be enslaved to others in 1 Cor 9:19 and 2 Cor 4:5. When read in conjunction with Gal 5:13, the notion of mutual enslavement mediates Paul’s authority in a way that avoids rigid hierarchies. Finally, I consider Paul’s claim that he enslaves his own body (1 Cor 9:27) and examine how this serves to intensify a rhetoric of self-control, a key masculine trait.

In the last chapter, I turn attention to the maternal imagery present in 1 Thess 2:7b–8, 1 Cor 3:1–3, and Gal 4:19. These passages are familiar candidates for gender criticism but have rarely been considered collectively from the perspective of masculinity analysis. By tracing the way in which authority is mediated through these texts it is argued that although the metaphors are unusual, they are unlikely to have “unmanned” Paul as far as his letters’ recipients are concerned. Maternal bodies, like slavish bodies, can be good to “think with.” While Paul’s performance of these identities does little for the women literally nursing and giving birth in Thessalonica, Corinth, and Galatia, it is nonetheless fascinating that masculinity is constructed through a “rhetoric of nurture” (to use Judith Perkins’ phrase in relation to other early Christian writers). Of particular interest in this chapter is how masculinity shifts in line with Paul’s “maternity,” noting the significance of the different maternal identities inhabited by Paul and how they relate to each of the three communities he writes to.

As these case studies demonstrate, it is reductive to read Paul as either “manly” or “unmanly” in relation to Graeco-Roman masculine ideals; rather, it is possible to detect localized patterns of masculinity in Paul’s letters as he exhibits a fluctuating engagement with, resistance to, and reworking of gendered norms. Furthermore, Paul’s masculinity is not static and shifts across the different themes examined. Becoming a man, for Paul, thus happens in simultaneous, conflicting ways, prompting consideration of whether this becoming is always convincing to others, from the first hearers of his letters to modern-day interpreters. This continual process of reinterpreting Paul shows that in some ways he is also a man forever in the process of becoming.

Grace Emmett recently completed her PhD at King’s College London and plans to continue researching part-time alongside her primary job working for the Church of England. In addition to masculinity studies, she is also interested in the reception of biblical texts in film and eco-hermeneutics. Further details about Grace’s current research projects are listed on her Humanities Commons page, and she is also on Twitter.