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Galatians: Chapter 1:1-9
00:30:04
Dr. Michael Barber and Dr. James Prothro, professors of Sacred Scripture at the Augustine Institute Graduate School, study St. Paul's pivotal Letter to the Galatians.
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, I'm Michael Barber, and this is my dear friend Jim Prothero, and we're both professors here at the Augustine Institute Graduate School. Today we begin a new series on the letter of Paul to the Galatians. This is a really important letter of Paul, wouldn't you say? Why would you say this is such an important letter for St. Paul?
- [00:19]
B
Oh, it's important in a lot of different ways. I think one of the ways for us as readers, I think, is it shows us how Paul responds to a crisis. And we'll see that there's a big crisis going on with the Galatia and the way in which he responds, to try to teach them out of their error, not just so that they believe the right thing, but also, especially in chapters five and six, so that they act and live in the truth, or living, walking in the truth of the Gospel, as he calls it. So their entire lives, instead of going off after this falsehood that they've been deceived by, that their entire lives are walking in line with the truth of the Gospel and its power through the Holy Spirit to transform us and make us like Jesus.
- [01:05]
A
And so what we're going to see throughout this Epistle is Paul proclaiming that he has been deputized by the Lord. He has been commissioned by the Lord to preach the truth of the good news of Jesus Christ. And this is apparent in the very first verses of the letter. So I always like to tell students in my courses on Paul that you often will be able to recognize what ideas are going to be central to a letter of Paul by the first few verses. Say the first ten verses or so. And that's definitely true, I think, of this epistle. Right. So you see that right at the beginning. You see some really important themes in the first couple of verses. So why don't we just jump right in? I want to encourage you to join us. We're using the English Standard Version, Catholic edition here. And you've got your Bible open up. Otherwise, put the Bible verses on the screen. You guys ready back there to put some Bible verses up there for people? Great. And we'll just jump right in. Paul, an epistle. I'm sorry, not an epistle. Paul is not. This is an epistle. Paul, an apostle, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who. Who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with me to the churches at Galatia. So here we see some really important ideas that Paul's going to flesh out here. Let's begin with the idea of Paul as an apostle, what's so significant about that? What does apostle mean?
- [02:41]
B
Yeah, that's right. So you used the word earlier, deputized, that Paul has been sort of deputized by the Lord to go and be a preacher and an evangelist and a planter of churches out the wider Roman Empire. So the word apostle literally means someone who's sent. And if you've got like a king or an emperor or something like that up here, and then he has lots of people and lots of places in his kingdom, the apostle is the one who's like an ambassador. So the king can't go and visit every place on their own, but they send an apostle to go and speak, to go and have authority over these other places and talk to them, to guide them and kind of bring them into line with the king's vision and keep them loyal to the king, and also to bring them the goods that the king or the other ruler or emperor has for all of his subjects. And so Paul, for the Lord Jesus Christ is just that. Paul, along with the other apostles, certainly the 12 who were with Jesus in his life and after Judas left, his replacement, who. Who was also with Jesus in his earthly life. But Paul as well, who has seen the Lord after his resurrection in the vision when he came to follow Jesus and went from being a persecutor to a proclaimer of Jesus. And we'll hear more about that in chapter one later of Galatians. But Paul has been deputized to go and be his apostle to the nations.
- [04:14]
A
So Paul is the one that Jesus has, in a sense, invested his authority in, right.
- [04:20]
B
He has Jesus authority to keep the people loyal to Jesus by their faithfulness, to instruct them, and then also to. As an apostle, right, to share the graces and the goods that come to us through Jesus death and resurrection.
- [04:36]
A
So he's the apostle. And then he makes the point not from men, nor through man. So he's really highlighting and emphasizing his own divine commissioning here. Paul is not some Joe Schmo who just shows up with his own ideas and his own teaching and his own message. No, he's a. An apostle through Jesus Christ and God the Father. And that language of Jesus Christ would evoke the idea of the Messiah, right? The king. So as you were saying, the king would have ambassadors, would have messengers. Paul is that deputized authority figure, that voice that speaks for the king, for God the Father, who raised Jesus from the dead. And so there we have this very important idea of resurrection, which is going to be an important idea in Galatians itself. Right?
- [05:27]
B
That's right. That's right. As we'll see, we go through one of the big questions in Galatians is how to receive life, life through Jesus. Life we have because he rose from the dead and he shares his resurrection life with us. But how? And as we'll see, some of the people who are here think that even though they've come to receive the Holy Spirit, the life of Jesus himself. In Romans 8:11, Paul even says that it's the Holy Spirit, specifically through whom Jesus was raised. As the whole Trinity works together and Christ ascends or rises from the dead, the Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is in us. But some people were thinking, even though we've received that Spirit, you know, what we really ought to do to be saved and have life actually is if we're mentioning go get circumcised and if we're women or men, right, to keep the old laws from the law of God about foods and about certain holy days. And they're going to go off for that. Paul's going to emphasize that it's through the Holy Spirit received in baptism and lived out by faith in our lives that we actually receive life in Jesus and not through these other things.
- [06:46]
A
So we're going to see Paul in this letter to, on the grounds of his own apostleship, explain what it means to be in the one in Christ Jesus who has been raised from the dead. So already at the beginning, we're getting these key ideas that are going to resonate throughout the Epistle and all the brothers who are with me to the churches of Galatia. Now, it's interesting here, Paul uses the language of churches. Later in the Epistle, he'll also use the language of church. And I keep saying Epistle, Epistle, letter, it means the same thing. So people used to say these were different ideas. Epistle. And Epistle is more formal or something like that. But now most people today recognize Epistle is just a letter. In Galatians Chapter one, Paul will later go on to say, I persecuted the church of God. So there's a sense in which there's one church and that one church is in various places. So the key question we want to ask here is, well, where are the churches that Paul is talking about? And here we get in a little bit of disputed territory, Right? There's a bit of debate about who the Galatians are.
- [07:57]
B
That's right. That's right. So if you're looking at your map about in the Middle of this big land mass. This is ancient Asia Minor, modern day Turkey. And there's a big sort of set of letters there that says Galatia. It's kind of in the middle, right in the center, both up, down, and left to right, and that's where Galatia is. But Galatia really runs kind of from the bottom of this landmass to almost the top. It's a region of modern Turkey, ancient Asia Minor. And so there's a question among scholars as to exactly where these churches are, whether they're in the southern part of Galatia or whether they're farther up. What are some of the. I mean, what are the stakes here? Like, why is it important to even care where these are?
- [08:49]
A
Right. Well, one of the big issues is whether Paul's audience is primarily Gentile or whether there are Jews in Paul's audience. So some people will point out that we don't have evidence for Jews in some places, but there's evidence for Jews. So we don't have evidence for Jews in the northern area, but there is evidence for Jewish for Jews in the southern area. But at the end of the day, the stakes aren't really that big, in my opinion, and aren't hugely decisive in changing the meaning of the letter. So I tend to say doesn't really matter where you're. Where you're. There are some questions that. That scholars will be really interested in, but by and large, at the level, you know, most people who are reading this epistle, I don't think it's going to make a huge difference. But.
- [09:39]
B
Well, and you said earlier yourself, you talked about the specific churches of Galatia that he's writing to this particular churches, but then also the whole church of God. And this is a letter that tells the whole church of God everywhere and for all time, something about the truth. Right. And how we receive life in Jesus, even if it comes out of a very specific circumstance that was happening in these churches in Galatia in a particular year, in a particular bit of Asia Minor back in Paul's day. Right, yeah, no, so I'd agree with that.
- [10:14]
A
And you and I are interested in these more technical, dense questions, and we could make a lot of hay out of this because there are some really interesting implications when it comes to particular passages. But for our purposes here, I don't think it's really necessary to stake out of position on this debate. All right. So Paul goes on to say, grace, Charis is the Greek word to you, and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age. Now, there's a lot to unpack here. The first thing I'd like to talk about is this language of grace. It's a really important idea for Paul, and it's important for all of us Catholics. I mean, when we go to church, we often sing about how amazing grace is. But I think the reality is, for most Catholics, grace isn't a term that we think much about. I mean, I get hungry when I hear the word grace, because that's usually associated with the prayer before meals, right? So I hear grace, all right, but the reality is Paul isn't speaking of the prayer before meals when he's talking about grace throughout his letters. Right? The word that's translated grace is a really common word in ancient Greek. And actually, I think a lot of people will be surprised by this. It's not a theological term. It's not a spiritual term for ancient readers. Grace is just a word that means gift in a lot of contexts. And you see this in another letter in the New Testament, the Epistle to the Ephesians. We read, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. So you get this key idea of grace as gift. Why is that so important?
- [12:02]
B
Well, it's a really big deal because what we're thinking of when we think about grace isn't kind of like an attitude. It's certainly not a prayer before meals or something like that. It's not an attitude either. Right. Like, well, I have a lot of grace for the gracious.
- [12:22]
A
Graciousness.
- [12:23]
B
Graciousness, right. Kind of like just sort of mean, like kind of niceness, right? We know that God is kind and good and loving and all of those things, but the grace of God, when we hear the New Testament speak about the grace of God, we're talking about a concrete thing, a concrete gift that's given. And in fact, we see it right here in these verses, right? The grace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us and save us. And so it's Jesus giving himself and the Father giving the world his own Son. That is the capital G, grace or gift from which all of the graces that we receive for our sanctification, for our forgiveness, for our growth in life, and God that all of those graces we receive flow from that gift.
- [13:18]
A
Right? And the more you look at gift giving in the ancient world, the more you see how significant it is that Paul uses This language of grace. There's a scholar that I've learned a lot from. His name is John Barclay. And John Barclay is famous for doing work on grace or gift imagery in the ancient world. And he explains that in the ancient world, people would give gifts not just as a way of expressing kindness, but also as a way of enabling people to give back. Right? So people who were wealthy would give gifts to the poor, and that enabled the poor in some way to give back to those who are wealthy and they have social status and have interaction with their. With people in society who were of a higher class. Right? And Barclay talks about this in his works. He says that the goal of giving in the ancient world was like a game of catch. And he says the goal was to keep the ball, the gift, continually circulating back and forth. And so people, when they gave gifts, when they gave gifts to the poor, often went through a very deliberate process of selecting people who would be worthy of their gift. Because the idea was the giver was giving something to enable someone to give back. And he wanted to create this feedback loop of giving. And so one of the worst things you could do would be to give your gift to someone who was unworthy. In fact, Pseudo Facilities says that giving to the unworthy is like sowing seeds in the sea. Right? You're a very imprudent and foolish giver. If you don't give the people who are going to be able to give back. And this is gonna be really important for interpreting what Paul is doing in Galatians, because the idea of the gift and who is worthy to receive that gift emerges as a central. As a crucial theme in this epistle.
- [15:22]
B
I think that's right. And there's two things, if I could add onto that, too. When we kind of frame this in our mind and we think about gift giving, on the one hand, this is why Jesus is so radical when he says, le to the people who can't pay you back in Luke, chapter six, right. St. Paul says, you've received freely, so give freely. Jesus, on the one hand, is saying, don't just go and find somebody and say, well, why would I give you a gift?
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A
What's in it for me?
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B
What's in it for me? Right? On the other hand, God's gift does work to transform us so that we can give something back. A lot of people would say, oh, it's not a gift. If you get anything out of it, it's not really a gift. So, you know, you think about like, oh, but you gave today to that person, or to that, whatever. But when you give to the church, doesn't it keep the lights on? Isn't that good for you? Is it really a gift then?
- [16:19]
A
Right.
- [16:20]
B
Can it really be one? But you have to think about, I think about this myself with gift giving as a parent. Right. All of the things that I do for my kids, when I give my kid a little toy piano or markers and crayons, I want them to use them. I don't think that I'm wasting my love on them if I get something for them that they won't use. But I get them these things because I hope that they'll use them. And I do love that they say thank you. I'm not just sitting around going, I gave you something. Now where is my thank you? How dare you throw a tantrum this afternoon when I gave you a treat this morning? Right. Usually that's actually a causal relationship.
- [17:10]
A
Right. But sugar poses problems for children. I have no idea.
- [17:19]
B
But we give gifts because they're expressions of the relationships that we have and of relationships that we want to build out of love for people. So. And just to say that giving a gift means that there's something that you're going to get back from this doesn't necessarily mean you're being selfish about it or that's the reason to give the gift, but it is something that is good that the gift actually allows to begin to happen in the relationship. And that's what happens with God's grace, too.
- [17:46]
A
Yeah. John Barclay, we mentioned him earlier, he points out that a lot of people today think a gift isn't really a gift if there are strings attached. So a gift can only be a gift if there's no expectation of return. And he points out, the reality is that's a very modern idea. Wasn't really until about time, Martin Luther, that people thought in those categories. People always recognize that gifts come with expectations. Right. If my, if my mother sends gifts in the mail to my children, right. And my children don't call her and say thank you. Right. There's obviously something off here. And so everybody would recognize that. So this, that my mom doesn't give gifts because she wants to get a thank you call. That's not the primary reason she gives the gift. But gifts come with expectations. In the ancient world, that was the idea as well. If you're wealthy, you gave a gift to the poor and you expected that the give, that the poor person would reciprocate. And sometimes that was difficult because they were poor. So they would often have these delicate negotiations what are you going to respond with before you even gave the gift in the first place? So that nobody was embarrassed? But the key idea in Galatians is going to be God gives us a gift. Gift. And that gift is His Son, Jesus Christ. And he gives us that gift on the cross. He gave himself for me on the cross, but he doesn't stop giving himself to us on the cross.
- [19:13]
B
That's right.
- [19:13]
A
He still is with us. And so in Galatians 2, just to kind of jump the gun a little bit, in Galatians 2, Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. So the idea is God gives us His Son, yes, on the cross he makes himself a gift for us, but he also gives us His Son in an ongoing way where he lives in us by his grace. For what purpose? So that I can live a new life. I can be transformed.
- [19:50]
B
And so when we're looking at that, you talked earlier about sort of giving gifts to people who deserve it and can pay you back.
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A
Right.
- [19:56]
B
And then we mentioned Jesus's kind of radical giving to people who don't deserve it. So on the one hand, here you've got. You've got our living life to God and in God. And yet on the other hand, Paul emphasizes that it is a gift and that in fact, we're. Would you say we're worthy or not worthy? Can you explain the gift part of this a little bit?
- [20:17]
A
Right. So we're going to see Paul. One of the key issues in Galatians is going to be that Paul believes the gift par excellence, the greatest gift of all, the gift of Christ. The gift of Christ's life within us is given to us freely. We don't do anything to merit to earn that initial gift of Christ's life in us. And that's part of the reason the Gospel is so radical, because God gives his gifts to those who are unworthy. And Paul explains this in Romans 5. Right. And even when we were enemies of God, he sent his Son to die for us. But there are going to be those in the churches in Galatia who are saying, no, there are certain things you have to do in order to be worthy of this gift. You need to be circumcised, for example. All right, so anyway, we go on. In Galatians 1, Paul talks about how Christ gave himself for us for our sins. Of course, Christ is the gift he gives Himself for us. The whole idea of grace. Christ is giving Himself to us. For what purpose? To deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Here we have a really Jewish expression, right? The idea of the present age. Do you want to talk a little bit about that language here?
- [21:38]
B
Sure, yeah. So if you're thinking very basically, right, in the ancient Jewish conception, you would talk about the present world or the present age, right? This creation and then the world to come or the age to come, you can also call that the new creation. The basics of this age, the one that we're in now, is that we live in an age in which sin and death have entered into the world. Things break down and decay, human beings are inclined towards sin, and we're born with original sin. Paul describes this in Romans 5 especially. The age to come is the one that you expect and you look for, right? When God has undone all of the sin from creation, has swallowed up death forever, as he Sundays in Isaiah 25. And where creation is renewed, we call it the new creation, where everything is restored to perfect righteousness. If you think about it in terms of Genesis 3, Adam and Eve are in Eden. They sin, the penalty of death comes, and they're kicked out of paradise, that beautiful garden there, with God, in communion with God. And. And the new creation is God restoring humanity to that paradise. In a sense, that's right. But in Jesus, there's kind of a bit of an overlap.
- [23:07]
A
For ancient Jews, the idea of a new creation was often associated with messianic hopes, right? The idea of this future age when God would deliver his people. And for Paul, I think this whole Jewish outlook gets reframed because for Paul, the Messiah has come. And in the resurrection of Christ, we have an event that was associated with the new creation. What is resurrection if not part of that idea of God? Recreating the cosmos, renewing the physical world, right? And so in Christ, we have the dawning of that new age, that new creation. And so whereas the Jewish mindset had these kind of two spheres, right? This world, the old creation, and then this world, the world to come in the new creation. Now, those who are in Christ are sort of in this period of overlap, right? In Christ, we're already participating in the beginning of the new world, the beginning of the new creation, the world to come. And Paul makes that very clear in Galatians, right? You want to take a look at that passage there.
- [24:18]
B
So toward the end of the letter where Paul is sort of finishing his response by saying, look, getting life in Christ isn't about being circumcised. It's actually about not being circumcised either. It's about that life of God, the messianic reality, the kingdom of God being present in us already. And he says in Galatians 6, 15, neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but new creation, which is in each of us. In 2 Corinthians 5, 17, he said, if anyone is in Christ, its new creation, right? That's already happening, even though we still are beset by the problems of the present age and the present evil age, death, sin, the temptations of the flesh and the devil. They're still around, and yet they're not running the show because the kingdom of God has already come to be present with us through the grace of the Holy Spirit in the church, and is continuing to grow and become strengthened until the day when finally the new Jerusalem descends to this world and God casts out in the judgment all evil and causes for sin and renews all things.
- [25:33]
A
And so Paul is proclaiming this gospel. Gospel means good news, right? The good news as the Apostle Christ, that Jesus has come to set us free from this present age and bring us into the new creation. And I think we should just briefly cover the last few verses here in this section, verses 7, 6, 9, where Paul says, I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one preached to you, let him be accursed, as we have said before. So now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you have received, let him be accursed. So just in, say, a minute and a half here, right? How does this set us up? And we can come back and, you know, look at this in the next session.
- [26:37]
B
One of the things I think is really striking here is right there in verse six, in a lot of Paul's letters, he starts off with a thanksgiving, I thank God for you and your faith and everything like that. He doesn't do that here. He's cranked. He's really going. And he just jumps right in. He says, I am amazed. I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who Called you by the grace of Christ. Deserting. It means they're switching sides, right? Paul's kind of diagnosing what they're doing. He's putting them on notice, right? The people there aren't thinking to themselves, I'm deserting God.
- [27:11]
A
Right.
- [27:12]
B
They're just. They're thinking that maybe they're being more faithful by being circumcised. Right? They're listening to these other preachers who have come into town and told them this. Paul says, this isn't a question of, like, which hymnal should I use, Right. Which podcast should I follow that's more faithful, Right. Should I have this cross in my room or this over here? Or should I have 19 different medallions or none, right? As a pine. He says, it's not about that. This isn't a little thing. This is about how you receive God's love and life and how you give your life back to God in love for him. That's what this is about. This is about the very heart of the faith. So he's kind of diagnosing the situation early on and jumping right in there. And he makes it about the terms of the gospel. He says, there's one gospel, even if somebody says that there's more than there's just one. And he also refers them back to the tradition that they had received. Apostolic tradition. This is also about the church. He says, if anyone, even an angel, right? Cause there's bad angels, remember? Even we call them demons, but they're still angels. He says, even if an angel shows up to you from out of the blue and says, hi, you love Jesus. I have a different gospel from Jesus. It's not the same one that you've heard, but that's okay. Trust me, I'm an angel. Paul says, let him be accursed.
- [28:43]
A
Because Paul is the one who has encountered Christ. He's encountered the risen Lord, and he is the one that's been entrusted with this message. Now, he's not the only one. There are other apostles. And we're going to see in the next session of Galatians where Paul talks about his relationship with the other apostles. And as we'll see in Galatians, Paul and the other apostles believe it's necessary for them to be on the same page about what that gospel is. We're going to be looking at that in the next session. So thanks so much for joining. Joining us here. I want to thank all of you in the mission circle that continue to support our work here at the Augustine Institute. Also, if you want to go deeper into the study of Paul. I've got a short course that's available through the Augusta Institute on Paul, and you can learn about that, about Paul's broader theology there. Here we're going to be focused specifically on Galatians. We're really looking forward to moving through this amazing letter of St. Paul. And in the next session, we'll be looking at in particular Paul's relationship with Peter and the other apostles. So hope to see you then. Thanks so much for tuning in. Until next time. May God bless you and your family.