Introduction

William Campbell and J. Brian Tucker have devised an interpretation of Paul as someone who favors a particularistic approach to different ethnic and civic identities in Christ. According to this view, Paul is consistently invested in supporting the existence of various ethnic and civic identities within a superordinate identity in Christ. This means that Jews are, for Paul, saved as Jews and Gentiles as Gentiles. Besides ethnic identities, Paul is also considered to have an interest in protecting the Roman civic identity of the Christ-believers. Such a Paul can, with good reason, be described as tolerant towards different identities.

The purpose of this article is to assess Campbell's and Tucker's position with an eye on social identity and tolerance in particular. The article will first introduce Campbell's and Tucker's position and terminology, then critically take up some internal discrepancies in the approach. While Tucker has already expertly applied the social identity approach formulated by Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner in his work, this article will extend the analysis by assessing Paul's tolerance in the light of Amélie Mummendey and Michael Wenzel's observations concerning the role of prototypes in creating tolerance.

Finally, the article will take up two problematic issues in the modern quest for Paul's identity and tolerance. The first one has to do with the assumption that Paul can only be ascribed a singular identity and attitude. Both the social identity approach and the mere diversity of the scholarly solutions suggest that the matter is not so simple. Paul, like any other person, should be viewed as exhibiting various contextual identifications.