GALATIANS #16?

GALATIANS # 16
11/15/10
What prompted Paul to write a letter to the Galatian churches?

With the baptism of Cornelius, (Acts 10), the question of whether Christians must adhere to the Mosaic Law had arisen (Acts 11; 1 – 3 (KJV) And the apostles and brethren that were in Judaea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God. And when Peter was come up to Jerusalem, they that were of the circumcision contended with him, Saying, Thou wentest in to men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them.) ). Now, about 15 years after Christianity had come into being, the issue had exploded into a full scale crisis!

There is no record of anyone other than Paul having given much, if any, thought to how the coming of the Messiah had changed things.The church was in danger of becoming a cult within the Jewish religion, or disintegrating; in either case fading into oblivion: were the Judaizers right and we must first be Jews and then, secondarily, almost as an afterthought, Christians? Or was Paul’s gospel of grace right, declaring the Mosaic Law fulfilled with the “works” of Christ? Or, are there two gospels - one for the Jews and one for the gentiles? One gospel of works plus grace; countered by one of grace only? Did Jesus complete his work (John 19: 30) or was there some things left undone which we humans must complete? These two doctrines are mutually exclusive – it’s either one or the other, it cannot be both!

Paul had been preaching the gospel of grace throughout the gentile Christian community for several years, converting gentiles and Jews alike; although emanating exclusively from him, his teaching was accepted as THE gospel by these folks.

Paul had taught this doctrine on his and Barnabas’s missionary trip that had established the Galatian churches: now he has received word that some “troublemakers” had gone behind his back to these people, telling them that to complete their salvation they must be circumcised; which then implies that one’s salvation requires keeping the entire Mosaic Law. Our salvation is contingent on whether or not we perform these “works”: we humans, by our own efforts are able to save ourselves…in which case, what was the point of Jesus death?

If these “Judaizers” are right, the entire Gospel comes unraveled!

Paul’s angry re-action, declaring that any one preaching “any other gospel” than his was to be cursed (Gal 1: 8 – 9), shows how heated the issue had become. Paul was adamant that our only hope of salvation is the Grace of God; all Christians were freed from the “yoke of the Law” by what was accomplished by Christ’s “Penal Substitution” on the cross. This “work” of Christ was complete, there is/was/will never be, anything further required; there is only one way; there is nothing we humans can, or must, do to be justified; Jesus was/is the only way it can/could be done, He did it all (Jn. 19: 30) !

There is disagreement among modern biblical scholars over how deep this division was: did the leaders of the Jerusalem church support the “Gospel of circumcision” (I’m paraphrasing here)? How high up in the Jerusalem hierarchy did this belief go, all the way to the top? There is quite a bit of evidence that it did, many certainly leaned that way…note the lengthy, heated, discussion on Peter’s return from Cornelius (Acts 11: 1 – 3) and the passionate debate at the Jerusalem council (Acts 15: 6 -7).

Here’s an example of a scholar who believed it was prevalent not only among “false prophets” but possibly included even the “pillars” in Jerusalem:

Luther begins his preface to the epistle thus:
The Galatians had been brought by St. Paul to right Christian belief, from the law to the gospel. But after his departure there came the false prophets, who were disciples of the true apostles, and turned the Galatians back again to believe that they must attain blessedness through the work of the law, and that they were sinning if they did no hold the work of the law, as according to Acts 15 certain highly–placed people in Jerusalem insisted. 7

This is expanded as follows in his commentary on the epistle:
St. Paul goeth about to establish the doctrine of faith, grace, forgiveness of sins, or Christian righteousness, to the end that we may have a perfect knowledge and difference between Christian righteousness and all other kinds of righteousness…. For if the article of justification be lost, then is all true Christian doctrine lost….
Christ [says Paul] hath mercifully called you in grace, that ye should be freemen under Christ, and not bondmen under Moses, whose disciples ye are now become again by the means of your false apostles, who by the law of Moses called you not unto grace, but unto wrath, to the hating of God, to sin and death….
Hereby it may easily be gathered, that these false prophets had condemned the Gospel of Paul among the Galatians, saying: Paul indeed hath begun well, but to have begun well is not enough, for here remain yet many higher matters; like as they say in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts: It is not enough for you to believe in Christ, or to be baptized, but it behoveth also that ye be circumcised; ‘for except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved’. This is as much to say, as that Christ is a good workman, which indeed begun a building, but he hath not finished it; for this must Moses do. 8

….Luther goes on to draw a parallel with the ‘fantastical spirits, Anabaptists and others’ of his day as well as with the ‘Papists’ (Bruce, the epistle to the Galatians, a commentary on the greek text). 9

And then Calvin puts a “happy face” on it, putting the blame on “false apostles”:

According to John Calvin (1548), Paul
…had faithfully instructed them [the Galatians] in the pure gospel, but false apostles had entered in his absence and corrupted the true seed by false and corrupting dogmas. For they taught that the observance of ceremonies was still necessary. This might seem trivial; but Paul fights for it as a fundamental article of the Christian faith. And rightly so, for it is no light evil to quench the brightness of the gospel, to lay a snare for consciences and remove the distinction between the old and new covenants. He saw that these errors were also related to an ungodly and destructive opinion on the deserving of righteousness….
The false apostles, who had deceived the Galatians to advance their own claims, pretended that they had received a commission from the apostles. Their method of infiltration was to get it believed that they represented the apostles and delivered a message from them. But they took away from Paul the name and authority of apostle…. In attacking Paul they were really attacking the truth of the gospel. (Bruce, the epistle to the Galatians, a commentary on the greek text) 10

Calvin’s position held until the early 19th century when it was analyzed by the founder of the Tubingen school, F. C. Baur who arrived at a dramatically different conclusion:

This understanding of the situation prevailed into the nineteenth century, when it was taken up by the Tübingen school of F. C. Baur and his associates, who integrated it into their account of primitive Church History. ‘What led the Apostle to write this Epistle to the Galatian Churches’, wrote Baur, ‘we learn very clearly from the Epistle itself’. The Galatians’ falling away from the gospel as Paul preached it was due to the influence of strange teachers who… represented to them that, as a first step to the Christian salvation, they must submit to circumcision (v. 2, 11). Here we first meet with those Judaising opponents with whom the Apostle had to maintain so severe a struggle in the churches which he founded, and they appear here quite in the harsh and uncompromising Judaistic character which marks them as opponents of Pauline Christianity…. In one word, they were Jews or Jewish Christians of the genuine old stamp, who could so little understand the more liberal atmosphere of Pauline Christianity that they would have thought the very ground of their existence was cut from under them if Judaism were no longer to have absolute power and importance. 11
In principle, according to Baur, the declared opponents of Pauline Christianity were in agreement with the leaders of the Jerusalem church; indeed, those leaders ‘are themselves the opponents against whom the Apostle contends in refuting these principles’. 12 But their reluctant recognition, at the Jerusalem conference, that Paul and Barnabas had been entrusted with the gospel for the Gentiles, tied their hands and compelled them to take the position of non–belligerents. Other members of the Jerusalem church, however, were not so bound, and they were infiltrators or trouble–makers who endeavoured to subvert Paul’s teaching and apostolic authority among his Gentile converts, including the churches of Galatia. (Libronix, bible commentary, Galatians)

And from Robin Griffith Jones:

Glance through the letter to the Galatians and the impression is clear that Paul is resisting opponents who are – and know they are – undermining the very foundation of his good news. He stands for God’s grace and rescue by faith; they stand by contrast for the rigid observance of the Law. The battle lines are clear, and the fighting is fierce. That is clearly what Paul wanted the Galatians to think. Thanks to his letter, they may well have done so; so have almost all subsequent readers.
The new teachers had come from Jerusalem itself or from Antioch. They asserted the rights and leadership of the Galatians’ mother assembly in Antioch. They came almost certainly with the authority of Barnabas himself. Paul then, has been proved right: more and more of the Law is being demanded from more and more assemblies…. (Jones 225)

Even Barnabas? He helped Paul establish these churches; was there when Paul delivered his gospel! (Jones is a “northern Galatianer” – if one takes a “southern” position, it resolves this terrible prospect!)

In any case, the inroads made by this disavowal of Paul’s teaching was eroding Paul’s credibility and seriously undermining the veracity of his teaching - it presented a deadly peril to the Gospel of Grace; was Jesus unable to complete his work? Must we complete it ourselves?

The normal state in any group of people is a left (liberal), a center (moderate), and a right wing (conservative), faction, just as we find in churches today: the Jerusalem Church was typical in this sense with an overall leaning towards the right. The underlying world view of all the Jewish Christians tended to be adherence to the law; the “right” demanding strict compliance, one must first be a Jew, then a Christian; the “left” taking a more moderate stand, with a much more relaxed view of the necessity of keeping the Law. Those in the middle were caught between the two; being pressured by each of these groups. These attitudes, colliding with Peter’s experience with the Roman centurion, was inexorably leading towards creation of two gospels – one for the Jews and one for the gentiles.

Paul identified those conservative Christians who actively pursued and promulgated strict adherence to the Law as “trouble makers” and/or “the circumcision”. Some of these folks forced the issue, going behind Paul and attempting to discredit him and his gospel, precipitating the writing of the letter to the Galatians. Though these circumstances were tragic, their recording here is the “breath of God”, ( 2 Timothy 3:16-17 ( KJV ) All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.) ;and as such, provide considerable insight to the workings of the early church, as well as declaring that there is only the gospel; no “another gospel” exists.

Even though all scripture are “inspired”, Galatians stands out as a very important letter:
By common consent, Galatians is one of the four ‘capital’ epistles of Paul (the others being 1 and 2 Corinthians and Romans) and one of the best authenticated. 1 When the claims of the other letters to Pauline authorship is under consideration, the standard assessment is this fourfold group, and pre–eminently Galatians. Denial of the genuineness of Galatians, such as was made in the Dutch school of W. C. van Manen, 2 is recognised as a critical aberration in the history of NT study. From the first gathering together of the Pauline writings into a corpus, early in the second century AD, Galatians had a secure place among them. (Bruce, the epistle to the Galatians, a commentary on the greek text 4)

It is the first written declaration that we are justified by faith:

Paul’s letter to the Galatians is one of the most significant books of the New Testament and of the whole Bible. Sometimes described as “the Magna Carta of Christian Liberty,” it discusses in clear, emotional, and intensely personal language the basic issue of how a man is put right with God. In Paul’s own words, the basic question is: “Does God give you the Spirit and work miracles among you because you do what the Law requires or because you hear the gospel and believe it?” (3.5). And the answer comes in similar language: “A person is put right with God only through faith in Jesus Christ, never by doing what the Law requires” (2.16, emphasis added) (Arichea)

Paul wrote the letter because of the information he received that men, presenting themselves as representatives of the Jerusalem church, were persuading his flock of new believers that Paul’s teaching was wrong and he was not personally authorized or qualified to preach or teach to any one – he had no choice but to respond forcefully!

DISCUSSION

1. What was the proximate “cause” of the writing of the letter to the Galatians?
2. When did the controversy first arise?
3. What was the outcome of the Jerusalem council?
4. Was it unanimously embraced?
5. What was F. C. Baur’s conclusion on 4?
6. Calvin’s?
7. Luther?*
8. Yours? Why?
9. What is the pertinence of “northern” or “southern” Galatia?
10. What did Luther mean by his comment that Galatians is one of the four “capital” letters?
11. Why did Paul start his letter with such vehemence?
12. How is this all relevant to the “body of Christ” today
13. *Extra work: How does all this enter into Luther’s views compared to Eusebius’(“predestination”/ “works”)?
14. Augustine/Pelagius?