Paulinian Cut

The "Paulinian cut" names a specific universalizing operation that does not work by dissolving or transcending particular group identities but by introducing a division within every particular identity. Rather than drawing a line between one tribe and another — the logic of particularism, which defines belonging through external exclusion — the Paulinian cut relocates the axis of division so that it runs through each group from the inside. The operative criterion of the new partition is not ethnicity, creed, nationality, or any positive content, but one's relation to one's own identity: those who hold identity lightly (accepting its contingency, dwelling in unknowing) are separated from those who cling to identity absolutely (treating it as a substantial, non-negotiable ground). The cut is thus not between identities but between two modes of inhabiting identity.

This move is theoretically significant because it produces universalism without demanding the erasure of difference. The universalist community that results is not a homogeneous whole from which particulars have been subtracted; it is rather a set constituted by the shared structural posture of holding one's particular identity under the sign of lack and incompleteness. In Lacanian terms, this corresponds to accepting the constitutive split of the subject — acknowledging alienation rather than foreclosing it through an imaginary identification that promises wholeness. Those who "cling to identity at all costs" are enacting a fetishistic disavowal of the subject's fundamental non-coincidence with itself; the Paulinian cut exposes and leverages that disavowal as the real line of division.

The concept appears in Peter Rollins's The Idolatry of God (slug: rollins-peter-the-idolatry-of-god-breaking-our-addiction-to-certainty-and-satisf, p. 114) and functions as a political-theological application of several Lacanian structural concepts. Its most direct anchor is Identity: the Paulinian cut presupposes that identity is never self-coincident but is constituted through difference and lack — a finding foregrounded across the corpus in Hegel, Lacan, and McGowan. The cut operates precisely on the subject's relation to this non-coincidence: those who acknowledge identity's contingency versus those who disavow it. This connects it directly to Fetishistic Disavowal: the "clinging" pole of the cut enacts the structure of "I know very well (that my identity is contingent) but nevertheless (I defend it as absolute)." The Paulinian cut names the site where that disavowal is rendered visible and made the basis of a new partition.

The concept also bears on Ideology, Alienation, Lack, and Particularism. Ideologically, the cut challenges particularist identity-politics by exposing how the real division is not between groups but within the psychic-political structure of group-membership itself. In Alienation's terms, those who "hold identity lightly" are those who tolerate the vel of alienation — who accept that entry into the symbolic order necessarily sacrifices a part of being. Those who cling to identity "at all costs" are refusing this loss, seeking to fill the Lack. The Paulinian cut thus functions as an extension and specification of these canonical concepts: it takes the structural Lacanian insight that the subject is always split and translates it into a criterion for a universalism that is not the bland erasure of difference but a community constituted by shared acknowledgment of the subject's constitutive incompleteness.

The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and SatisfactionPeter Rollins · 2013 (p.114)

This new cut divides those who are willing to hold lightly to their identity from those who wish to retain it at all costs… a sword that would make a cut within groups

The phrase "a cut within groups" is theoretically loaded because it names the geometric relocation of the exclusionary line from the between (the logic of particularism, tribal borders) to the within (the interior of every identity-formation); while "hold lightly" versus "retain at all costs" maps directly onto the psychoanalytic opposition between tolerating lack and fetishistically disavowing it, making the sword a structural rather than merely ethical instrument.