According to prevalent approaches to the Pauline corpus, the concepts of justification and salvation are often interpreted as constituting a believer's legal and salvific status before God in distinction from such a person's ethnic identity. In the so-called Radical New Perspective on Paul, Judaean believers in Christ are envisioned to keep their nomistic identity in distinction from gentile believers, which is then differentiated from their legal and salvific status before God. In this contribution, the relation between justification and identity is defined more closely in order to evaluate the tendency to distinguish between justification/salvation and identity. This is done especially by analysing texts in the Pauline corpus in which the concepts of justification, salvation and identity overlap.

In social identity theory, the in-Christ identity is understood as primarily a socially directed process in which people categorise themselves relative to other groups. Intergroup behaviour would cause them to discriminate against the so-called 'outgroup', favouring the so-called 'ingroup'. Although social identity complexity theory has moved beyond single ingroup-outgroup categorisation, it is a question if social identity theories can fully account for the in-Christ identity, especially within an African context. In African religious identity, identity is linked to both the community and the ruling deities, which are perceived to be real entities that intervene in human affairs and identity, presupposing a supernaturalistic epistemology. CONTRIBUTION: In this contribution, the naturalistic epistemological underpinnings of social identity theories are reconsidered in light of a supernatural aspect that is argued to be constitutive of the 1st century in-Christ identity as well as the African Christian identity. Amid current approaches to the in-Christ identity, which is mainly a Pauline concept, some of the main Pauline texts that have bearing on the in-Christ identity are revisited in light of current theories and epistemologies on identity.

Among other things, postcolonialism claims to react against western epistemology. Although postcolonial approaches react to the traditional tendency in colonialism to silence the Other by political, social and economic structures and ideologies, non-western identity is often categorised in a way in which identity formation is argued to be based on a naturalistic process of social construction and myth-making. The way in which identity is perceived in western epistemology, including the in-Christ identity, is largely influenced by a naturalistic stance, which is a prominent tendency in western epistemology. In contrast, non-western epistemologies often perceive spiritual beings and powers to be real, which are considered to intervene in human affairs. The irony within most postcolonial approaches is thus that they critique western power structures but continue to utilise western, naturalistic epistemologies to deconstruct religious experience. In this contribution, this discrepancy is explored and evaluated against the often-misunderstood flesh-Spirit dichotomy in the Pauline corpus. INTRADISCIPLINARY AND/OR INTERDISCIPLINARY IMPLICATIONS: In respect of epistemology, this research overlaps with the field of philosophy, and in respect of identity theory it overlaps with the field of social sciences. The discussion of postcolonial biblical criticism itself is interdisciplinary in that it involves New Testament exegesis, its underlying epistemology as well as its interpretative methodologies

Within the ethnic-reasoning position, which has gained momentum in recent years, it is argued that in the in-Christ identity there exists no dichotomy between natural, physical relationships and constructed, made-up relationships. Ethnicity is viewed as fluid and changeable and as including the category of religion, which is understood as involving a nation's culture and their cultic and ritualistic practices. Yet, it is a question whether these notions are compatible with the way in which the in-Christ identity is portrayed, especially by Paul. In terms of the theological way in which ethnicity and even religious practices are portrayed, they rather belong to the domain of humanness or human conduct, and thus to the anthropological domain. In contrast, believers' relation to Abraham and their new mode of identity in the S/spirit is portrayed as being in contrast with the anthropological domain or the domain of 'flesh', which includes things such as ethnicity, human conduct and even religious practices. This tension between divine identity and human or natural identity in the New Testament is accounted for and applied to the ethnic-reasoning position, which also influences the way in which the in-Christ identity finds cultural expression in the lives of present-day readers.