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IAN'S
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Lessons from Scripture...  Ian Elmer returns this week with his thought-provoking explorations into Sacred Scripture. His first commentary for the year takes us though a lesson from St Paul's letter to the Galatians that continues to cause difficulties in our own time. Rules is Rules!
This is a scenario that is rehearsed in lounge rooms and school playgrounds every day the world over. Most of us can probably remember having ended a game of monopoly by similar means, especially when we seemed to be losing. Similarly, many of us would remember having stopped a neighbourhood footy match and taken our ball home after our playmates treated our version or our interpretation of the rules in a far too cavalier fashion (according to our view). Rules are rules! And human society could not function without them. The result would be anarchy. Rules can, however, be the source of conflict, confusion, and injustice. All-too-often it is not the rules per se that are the cause of such problems but one person's or one group's attempt to impose their interpretation of the rules on others. It is just this situation that confronted Paul at Galatia. The Galatian Crisis Recapping on our earlier commentary on Galatians, we note that Paul's letter to the Galatians is a short and passionate document, which is perhaps the most polemical of all the Pauline correspondence. Although commentators differ about the exact details of the situation that occasioned Paul's letter to the churches in Galatia, all agree that Paul wrote to counter what he considered to be a significant crisis for his Galatian converts. In this letter we find Paul vehemently defending his gospel and his right as an apostle to preach this gospel among the Gentiles (1:16; 2:8) against accusations to the contrary advanced by opponents who were advocating "a different gospel" (1:6-10). The content of the letter seems to imply that this other gospel entailed faithful adherence to the Mosaic Law (3:10), including circumcision (5:2-4; 6:12-13), as well as the observance of the Sabbath and the Jewish feast days (4:8-11). As to the basis of the missionaries' warrant they appear to have resorted to two avenues of authority. First, they apparently appealed to Scripture, particularly the story of the Abrahamic covenant (3:6-29; 4:21-31), at which the institution of circumcision was imposed on God's chosen people (Gen 17:1-27). Accordingly, these missionaries have traditionally been considered "Judaisers"; that is, proponents of a traditional Jewish proselyte model of Christian mission, which required Gentile Christians to attach themselves to ethnic Israel. Second, the fact that Paul finds it necessary to detail his relationship with the apostolic authorities at Jerusalem (1:11-2:14) may imply that these missionaries also claimed a direct commission from the Jerusalem church, while casting doubts on Paul's own claims to apostolic authority. Thus, a significant aspect of their message must have been the record of the events surrounding Paul's early association with the Jerusalem Apostles, Peter, James and John, including the Council at Jerusalem (2:1-10) and possibly also the so-called "Incident at Antioch" (2:11-14). Paul and Jerusalem
We might ask, then, why did Paul react so violently to the message of the Judaisers at Galatia? Elsewhere, we find Paul ready to counsel tolerance in the face of conflicting interpretations of the Christian message (cf. 1 Cor 8:1-13; 10:14-33; Rom 14:1-15:13). The crisis that confronts Paul at Galatia is severe. According to Paul, the Galatians are in danger of "falling from grace" (Gal 5:4) as a result of the Judaisers who have "bewitched" (3:1) and "unsettled" (1:7; 5:12; cf. 6:12-13) the communities. Such is the severity of the crisis that it is not enough for Paul to simply reassure the Galatians, he must also confront the situation head on, demonstrating the "truth of the gospel" and relating how he has consistently fought for that truth, formerly in Jerusalem and Antioch, and presently in Galatia. The Jerusalem Council and the Antiochene incident set the stage for Paul's response to the Galatian Judaisers because they demonstrate, on the one hand, how the contingencies of the present situation impinge on his language and, on the other, how the central issue, the gospel's relation to the Law, has been a constant issue of contention between himself and Jerusalem. The entire crisis is for Paul a question of the supreme power of the gospel, which cannot be compromised in the name of even the most revered authorities, be they the Jerusalem Apostles, or even Moses, whose Law they follow. The Truth of the Gospel In both his earlier conflicts with James and the pro-circumcision putsch at Jerusalem (2:1-10) and Antioch (2:11-14) the issues of circumcision and Law-observance were closely tied to the difficulties of Christian Jews sharing table fellowship with uncircumcised Gentile Christians. Jewish purity and dietary sensibilities would have made it difficult for Jewish converts to the movement to share fully in the eucharistic fellowship of an ethnically-mixed congregation. Nevertheless, neither in 2:11-14 nor in the rest of the letter does Paul make any allusion to the Eucharist, even though it could undoubtedly have served as a powerful lesson on the issue of unity among believers (cf. 1 Cor 10:17; 11:17-34). The reason for this was that in the Galatian situation the issue was far more fundamental than eucharistic fellowship as such. The latter, after all, presupposes that which Paul considered the gospel creates and is impossible without; namely, the unity of all in Christ regardless of their status with respect to the Law (Gal 3:28). Paul argues that the legalistic "separatism" espoused by the Judaisers at Antioch, and by implication those at Galatia, made the Law and its definition of righteousness constitutive of the Christian community, so that Gentiles were at a disadvantage over against those who belonged "by nature" to the covenant of Abraham (Gal 2:15-21; 3:6-7). We can see that it was the gospel at its most fundamental that was being undermined by the interference the Judaisers at Galatia. Demanding that the Gentiles be circumcised and adhere to the Law amounted to an active denial of full membership of the community for the Gentile converts, which for Paul would have been more basic than a fracturing of eucharistic fellowship. In Paul's view, denying Gentiles full incorporation into the Christian community amounted to a denial that Christ's death is sufficient to "justify" all humans equally before God so that believers can indeed be "one in Christ" (Gal 3:8, 28; cf. Rom 3:30). The pro-circumcision putsch at Galatia did not merely destroy eucharistic fellowship, its proponents resurrected that which Paul claimed the gospel had destroyed — all the boundaries that separated Jewish converts from their Gentile co-religionists, not only within the Christian movement, but in the eyes of God (Gal 3:28; cf. Rom 1:16; 10:12). Paul equates the legalism and rule following that the Judaisers espoused as boundary markers separating Jew from Gentile with "a yoke of slavery" (5:1b; cf. Rom 7:25). Paul is emphatic that this sort of nit-picking, legalistic Law-observance can only mean a diminution of the "liberty" wrought by Christ (5:1, 13). Paul proclaims that the death of Christ has broken down all ethnic, social and gender boundaries between "Jew and Gentile, Slave and Free, Woman and Man" (3:11; cf. Col 3:28). For Paul, Christians should be sans frontiers — people without boundaries. Final Reflections It may surprise us that the battle between legalists and liberals is one that was first joined during the opening decades of the Christian era. Paul fought tenaciously for his vision of a universalist faith that eschews all rules governing social and ethnic boundaries. Paul did not ultimately win that battle. Indeed, the war continues to be waged today. Factionalism is a common feature of most Christian denominations. However, we need to read afresh Paul's lessons in Galatians and not allow ourselves to become "enslaved" to laws and regulations. Paul clearly saw how strict adherence to the Mosaic Law could lead to the marginalisation and alienation of his Gentile converts. The situation Paul encountered may no longer be a live issue today. Christianity is no longer divided along ethnic grounds, but rather ideological ones. Still, Paul's lesson on legalism remains relevant. As Christians we can never be the ones who take our ball and go home because others won't play by our rules. We are called to eschew the kind of legalism that sets up divisions and boundaries. We must avoid the tendency to legalistic thinking that is prone to making distinctions between "them" and "us". We are called to enter into dialogue, seek communion and, thereby, embrace the "liberty" brought by Christ's salvific death on the cross. We are not innately righteous in God's eyes; nor can we earn such by rigidly obeying the Law (be it canon or civil). We do well to remember the words of Paul to Judaisers: We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners;
yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but
through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus,
so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the
works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the
law. (2:15-16)  Photo Credits:
What are your thoughts on this essay? Ian Elmer can be contacted at: Ian Elmer <ianelmer@catholica.com.au> Please Note: You need to remove the "NOSPAM" words at the beginning of the email address before sending the email" ©2007 Ian Elmer |
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"Rules
is rules!" the little boy spluttered as he overturned the game
board, sending plastic tokens, paper play-money, and cards awry. "If
ya not gunna play by the rules, I'm not gunna play a'tall!"
Ian
Elmer is a lecturer in New Testament at ACU National (formally Australian
Catholic University). He is also a member of the Centre for Early Christian
Studies, and was recently admitted into ACBA (Australian Catholic Biblical
Association). His research specialities are Paul and First-Century Christianity.
He is the author of published articles in the Australian Ejournal of Theology
and in Prayer and Spirituality in the Early Church (a publication of the
Centre for Early Christian Studies). He has recently submitted his doctoral
thesis, entitled Paul, Jerusalem and the Judaisers: The Galatian Crisis
in its Broader Historical Context.