Charter of Christian Freedom

A Layperson's Study Guide to Paul's Letter to the Galatians

Lindsey

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781532603204
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The apostle Paul's Letter to the Galatians has had a deep impact on Christian theology and practice, far beyond its short length. It has inspired great theologians; it also sparked reform movements. Its message, however, can be hard to follow for the average reader. This study guide opens up the message of Galatians to people without a theological education and for Bible study teachers and working pastors. Explaining the background from which Paul is writing, the author clarifies the flow of Paul's argument so the average reader can grasp its revolutionary import. Paul's letter sparked a revolution in the author's own spiritual life. This study guide can help do that for others as well.

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Churches in Theological Dissension

An Introduction to the Letter to the Galatians

If we are to grasp what is so revolutionary about the Letter to the Galatians, then we must first understand the church crisis that motivated Paul to write the letter. That is also essential to understanding the letter’s relevance to church life today. So in this first chapter, I want to sketch out the crisis that so alarmed Paul.

That a crisis alarmed Paul is very clear in the intensely emotional language of the letter. In Galatians we do not find Paul engaged in any low-key academic debate. We encounter Paul at his most passionate. In his eyes, the stakes in the crisis are nothing less than the truth and integrity of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Paul marshals all of his rhetorical tools in defense of the gospel as he understands it. For example, we will find him a master of rabbinic interpretation of Scripture. He was trained in it before he became a Christian. He also shows himself a master of the allegorical interpretation of Scripture favored by Greek-speaking Jews.

Whatever tools he uses, Paul exhibits a style of vehemence in theological debate that may, at times, shock us. I sometimes question whether it did not set a damaging model for later church history. Yet such vehemence is common when people feel that life-and-death issues are at stake, especially when identity issues are under threat.

So what was it that so alarmed Paul?

What Are We to Do with These Gentiles?

The crisis in the Galatian churches was an outgrowth of what I consider the greatest turning point in the history of Christianity. It was that moment (probably just a few years after Jesus’s death and resurrection) when the Christian community of believers began to accept Gentiles into its membership.

Jesus was a Jew; so were all of his twelve original disciples. The Christian church arose within Judaism. The book of Acts tells us that the early Christian community in Jerusalem worshipped regularly at the Jewish temple. For this community, the Scriptures were the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament), and these early Christians continued largely to follow Mosaic law (the Torah).

The book of Acts tells us that to the surprise of this early Christian community, Gentiles began to be attracted to the gospel of Jesus Christ (Acts 10). Acts even tells us that it was the Holy Spirit that launched this movement. An angel instructs a God-fearing Roman centurion to invite the apostle Peter to his house to preach the gospel. As a result, Cornelius and his whole household become Christians.

Soon, other Gentiles joined the Christian movement. Acts tells us that a very lively church community came into being in the Greek metropolis of Antioch. It contained believers from both Jewish and Gentile backgrounds. It was there that followers of Jesus first came to be called Christians.

But on what basis was the Christian church to accept these Gentiles into its fellowship? Were they to be accepted as equal members of the church, retaining their Gentile ethnic and cultural identity? Or did these new Gentile believers need to first become Jewish, adopting the identity markers of Jews? By the first century AD, those markers primarily consisted of circumcision of males, observance of Jewish dietary laws, and the keeping of the Sabbath.

If we read carefully the book of Acts as well as other documents in the New Testament and other Christian writings of that first century, we begin to see that this question provoked a fierce debate in Christian circles. Various theological parties arose in the church and passionately argued their case.

The church sought to settle the debate during a church consultation held in the city of Jerusalem. We don’t know exactly the date. It may have been held sometime between AD 45 and 50. Acts 15 describes the consultation and its decision. That decision was that Gentiles would be accepted into the church as Gentiles; they did not need to become Jews first. Jews and Gentiles would be equals in the church, although the consultation’s decision-makers asked Gentiles to respect certain Jewish sensibilities.

As in many church debates today, the consultation’s decision does not seem to have quelled the dissension at first. Factionalism over the issue continued to trouble the church for some time into the future. Ultimately, the decision that Jews and Gentiles would be equal believers won the ascendancy. It may not have happened, however, until after the Christian community in Jerusalem was erased in the destruction of that city by the Roman armies in AD 70.

That the decision of the Jerusalem consultation did gain the ascendancy was to prove decisive for Christianity. It led, in the long run, to a break between Judaism and Christianity. Christianity had its roots in Judaism (and continued to cherish those roots), but it ceased to be a sect of Judaism. It became an independent religion of its own.

The BattleGround in Galatia

What we witness in the Letter to the Galatians is a concrete example of how this theological dissension over the status of Gentiles affected a group of churches far from the mother church in Jerusalem.

This theological dissension was roiling life in the newly established Galatian churches. There it was causing great confusion and turmoil among the churches’ members. Those members included both Gentiles and probably a good representation of Jewish believers.

Biblical scholars fiercely debate whether the theological dissension in the Galatian churches took place before the Jerusalem consultation or after it. If it took place before, we see how the debate agitated Christian communities far from Jerusalem. If afterwards, then we see how the decisions of the Jerusalem consultation continued to be contested.

I do not want to wade into this scholarly debate. There are strong arguments made on both sides. But, in my opinion, neither side has proved its case conclusively. I don’t think this particular scholarly debate over the dating of the letter fundamentally effects how we read the letter.

Possible Theological Positions in the Debate in Galatia

What is important for our reading of the letter is understanding the crisis that was particularly roiling the Galatian churches. Here we must resort to some speculation, for we glean our understanding of the crisis almost exclusively from Paul’s letter.

Paul is not an unbiased, dispassionate reporter. When he reports on what his opponents are saying, he does so with the intention of refuting them. We will never know if he reports their positions accurately, because no writings of his opponents survive. We cannot recreate their position from their own writings. So we must rely on Paul’s biased viewpoints.

The following, however, seems to be the situation.

A group of traveling Christian evangelists or teachers was apparently visiting the Galatian churches—churches that the Apostle Paul had evangelized and founded. They were churches in predominantly Greek-speaking, Gentile cities.

Galatia was a Roman province in Asia Minor, or what today we would call central Turkey. The leading city of the province was Ancyra. Today we know it as Ankara, the capital of Turkey.

The Romans gave the province the name of Galatia because around 275 BC Celtic war bands migrating out of central Europe conquered the area. The Greeks called these Celtic peoples Keltoi or Galatae; the Roman called them Gauls.

For a while, the war bands wreaked havoc among the Greek cities of Asia Minor. However, both Greek kings and the Romans had largely pacified them. By Paul’s day, most of the residents of Galatia were Greek-speaking, living under Roman rule. That’s why Paul wrote his letter in Greek. Yet there must have been people in these churches who had Celtic ancestry. They were probably the very first Celtic Christians.

After evangelizing Galatia, Paul moved on to other regions, but he maintained close contact with the churches he founded. He heard, therefore, about new Christian teachers who were visiting and preaching in the Galatian churches.

In their preaching, these evangelists argued that Gentile Christians needed to practice the commandments of the Jewish Torah,1 especially the practice of circumcision. Hence, for convenience, scholars call this group the Judaizers.

In supporting their preaching, the Judaizers appealed to the Hebrew Scriptures. Many of the Gentile believers were probably not familiar with the Old Testament, so they must have been quite persuaded by the arguments they heard. As a result, many of the male Galatian Gentile Christians had either been circumcised or were seriously contemplating it. Some of these Gentile Christians may also have begun to adopt Jewish dietary laws.

We don’t know whether these traveling evangelists were Jewish Christians (possibly even coming from the mother church in Jerusalem) or whether they were Gentile Christians who had adopted Jewish customs and were now arguing that other Gentile Christians should do so, too.

If they were Jewish Christians, they may have been eager to keep Jewish identity markers alive for a very practical reason. Non-Christian Jews were alarmed that the new Christian movement was threatening the supremacy of the Torah in the life of faith. This fed into some of the Jewish persecution of Christians.

The Judaizing party in the church may have been trying to dampen these outbreaks of persecution by emphasizing that all Christians, including Gentile converts, lived by the Torah. They could then argue that Christianity was no threat to Judaism, because all new Gentile Christians were compelled to recognize the supremacy of the Torah. Thus, they could deflect Jewish persecution away from the church.

If the Judaizers were Gentile Christians, they may have wanted to align themselves with what they thought was the more ancient and august religion of Judaism. We have clear evidence that many Gentiles in this era had a great respect for Judaism as an ancient and morally demanding religion. Many of them attended Jewish synagogues regularly. They were known as God-fearers. These God-fearers provided many converts to the new Christian churches. As they entered into the church, they brought with them the high regard they had for Judaism and its hallowed customs.

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Table of contents

• Title Page
• A Preface to Study
• Chapter 1: Churches in Theological Dissension
• Chapter 2: Paul the Letter Writer
• Chapter 3: A Weighty Greeting
• Chapter 4: Give Me Your Attention
• Chapter 5: A Genuine or Phony Apostle
• Chapter 6: Theological Reflection
• Chapter 7: A Fateful Agreement
• Chapter 8: The Agreement Falls Apart
• Chapter 9: Paul’s Gospel in a Nutshell
• Chapter 10: Theological Reflection
• Chapter 11: An Appeal to Religious Experience
• Chapter 12: An Appeal to Scripture
• Chapter 13: Security in the Promise
• Chapter 14: A New Era Begins
• Chapter 15: The New Era (Continued)
• Chapter 16: A Deeply Personal Appeal
• Chapter 17: Another Appeal to Scripture
• Chapter 18: Theological Reflection
• Chapter 19: Stand Firm in Your Freedom
• Chapter 20: What Really Counts
• Chapter 21: Responsible Freedom
• Chapter 22: Paul’s Alternative Vision
• Chapter 23: The Bottom Line
• Chapter 24: Theological Reflection
• Chapter 25: A Concluding Subscript
• Chapter 26: Theological Reflection
• Chapter 27: A Final Comment
• For Further Study
• Works Cited