‘Beyond the pale’ is a well-known English phrase, generally applied to anything beyond the boundaries of acceptability. Christian theology in the west has often emphasised the doctrine of original sin, according to which every individual is inherently sinful and ‘beyond the pale’, acceptable to God only on the basis of the atoning death of his son, Jesus Christ. In his struggle against Pelagianism, Augustine sought to ground the doctrine of original sin in the writings of the apostle Paul, who portrayed sin as an active agent enslaving all humanity in its power and condemning the world to death. Accordingly the apostle is often credited with – or blamed for – a radically pessimistic assessment of the basic sinfulness of human nature.

This book endeavours to set aside Augustine's agenda and understand the apostle in the light of his own socio-cultural context. A cross-cultural model, developed by social anthropologist Mary Douglas, is employed to analyse Paul's letters and, as a result, a different picture emerges. It is argued that Paul developed the symbolism of the power of sin as a way of safeguarding the position of law-free Gentile believers within the small, bounded social groups that made up the early church. He sought to remove the ethnic boundary that separated Jew from Gentile and replace it with a new, eschatological boundary between the righteous and the sinful. In effect, Paul was seeking to redefine his readers' perception of who is and is not ‘beyond the pale’.