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Galatians: Chapter 1:10-2:10
00:30:02
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
Hi, I'm Michael Barber, and this is my dear friend Jim Prothro, and we're both professors here at the Augustine Institute Graduate School. We're fascinated by St. Paul. I've written a book with my dear friend Brant Petrie and my other dear friend John Kincaid on Paul. And Jim Prothero has a new book coming out on Paul through Catholic University of America Press. So we thought we'd partner up and do a series on Galatians. This is session two, part two of that series on Paul's letter to the Galatians. Such a powerful letter. You know, every letter of Paul has its own sort of flavor. And this is the letter that I think Paul is the most passionate in, or at least he's the angriest in. Most of his letters have these long introductions, these sort of poetic introductions. Don't really see that as much in Galatians. Right. He just jumps right into the issues at hand, it seems.
- [00:57]
B
Yeah, that's right. Can see in a few places we looked at last time, Chapter one, verse six, where instead of what he usually does and saying, I thank God for all of you and your faith, and now I'm going to talk about some specific things that you need to know or need to fix, he just says, I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting God. In chapter five. We'll see this more today. But we mentioned last time, chapter five. He's talking about some of the false teachers who've come into Galatia who are trying to get people to be circumcised and telling them, the men, that if they're not circumcised, they won't be able to share the life of Jesus and be saved. And Paul says in chapter five, verse 12, I wish those who are bothering you would emasculate themselves. He's getting after it. Right. I wish they'd cut themselves off. And the end of the letter, you can still feel a little bit of his sort of solemnity, gravity, severity at the end of the letter. Chapter six, verse 17, right before he says, grace, be with you.
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A
Right.
- [02:02]
B
Goodbye. He says, from now on, let no one cause me any more trouble about this. Whoa. But we have to remember, too, right, that Paul, knowing these people and also being far away from them and having a lot of other business, so he can't always come and see them. This is one of the only letters where he doesn't promise to come visit because he apparently can't. Right. He's doing other things. He's far off. He's Writing this impassioned plea to win the Galatians back to his side. And if the other people are going to say mean things about Paul and the other people are going to try to sway them with soothing, sweet words, Paul is going to bring the hammer to tell them, I'm serious, please listen to me. And he gets pretty cranked.
- [02:49]
A
Well, he is very clear that the issues that he's addressing get right to the heart of the Gospel, right to the heart of the Gospel message. And so after his introduction and after talking about how he's so surprised that they're falling away, he goes on to explain that he's not trying to assert his own brilliance or his own insight or his own authority. He's. He's only trying to serve Christ. And this is his point in the verses we'll look at today. He goes on to say, for. For am I now seeking the approval of men or of God, or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Paul's not trying to be a people pleaser here, and he recognizes that the opponents that he's referring to have a message that is quite appealing. All right, he goes on, for I would have, you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. So Paul is going to be explaining this letter that Gentiles don't have to be circumcised. They don't have to undergo that, that surgery. And you can understand that that would, you know, be good news to a lot of Gentile men. Yes, I believe in the Gospel. Yes, I believe in Jesus Christ. But then you have some people that are saying, yeah, but there's one more detail, right? So Paul's message is going to sound like it's very appealing to many people. And Paul's making the case, I'm not trying to just be a people pleaser here.
- [04:40]
B
It's one of those things that you, you encounter in life, really, but you encounter in theology as well, when everybody wants to kind of label things, right, good or bad, nice or not. And I've had lots of conversations with people where I talk about, say, purgatory. And I say purgatory is good news because I get to actually be made clean, right, and put the best black tie suit and tuxedo on my soul. To go to the heavenly. Yeah. To be purified. To go to the Heavenly banquet. Right. And be there at the big feast with the Lord. And other people are like, oh, no, that's bad news. Right. Because that, because there's suffering involved. I don't know what any more of that. You're adding more to that. Why would you do that? Right. So which one of our messages is pleasing people? The one that says you don't have to be purified or the one that says that you do? The one that says you'll always be unclean in heaven or the one that says you'll be clean and perfected?
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A
Right.
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B
It's always a matter of perception. Is it nice and easy, pleasing news for a gentile man to say, oh, good, I don't have to get circumcised. That sounds like it hurts. Or is it easy pleasing to people news to say, hey, all you have to do is get circumcised. It's a physical thing. Happens one time, you recover, then you're done, you're set for life. Instead of saying the life of faith of following God throughout your entire life on earth and then of course, forever in love and charity. Right. Is that easier or harder?
- [06:15]
A
Right. And Paul's point is, I'm not trying to find the easiest solution. I did not. Yes. Or the hardest. Right. He says, for I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. So here we read about how Paul has received a revelation from the Lord. And this is really why Paul can be identified as an apostle. Apostle in the same way Peter or the others are. The other 12 are apostles. He himself has been commissioned by Christ in a special way. And Paul is going to assert that Paul is not going to let anyone take that away from him. He goes on to say, for you have heard of my. Now here, I would maybe want to change the translation in the ESV just a little bit here. You have heard of my former life in Judaism. Some people read that line and they imagine that when Paul became a Christian, he stopped being a Jew. That's not the way Paul talks in other places. Paul still sees himself as a Jew, but the key thing is his life has changed. Right. Any other thoughts on how we might interpret that line there?
- [07:26]
B
Yeah, it's an important thing to remember that when we talk about Judaism, we're not just talking about a set of religious beliefs that don't include Jesus. Right. For Paul, his Judaism, his religion includes Jesus because he thinks Jesus is the Messiah. But also to remember that Judaism or Jewishness, like Germanness or Indianness or anything else is an ethnicity, is a nationality. And in the book of Revelation, one of the beautiful things that John sees in his vision is people from every tribe and nation of tongue. And so if we read through the Gospels and we say, see, Paul and all of these other Jews stopped being Jewish when they became Christians, we're actually like taking one of the nations out of the beautiful vision, except this one.
- [08:18]
A
Yes, exactly, exactly.
- [08:19]
B
Right, right, right. So in both senses, Paul is still a Jew in a way, even though everything that he believes and everything he sees, he thinks about himself. Right. Is transformed in Jesus Christ.
- [08:31]
A
That's right.
- [08:32]
B
And so we could maybe change this. Like you were saying, if you wanted to retranslate it, you could cross out former and put earlier life, because he's going to describe the way that he his life formerly earlier. Or you could even just put a little line between former life and in Judaism so that you remember that the point is his former life as opposed to now, not that he formerly was a Jew and isn't anymore.
- [08:58]
A
Right, right, right. How I persecuted the church, Paul says, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age. Among so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. So Paul's going to be the one saying, you don't have to be circumcised in order to be in Christ. And some people might say, well, then Paul's not preaching a really Jewish gospel. And Paul said, no, I'm not in any way denying my Jewishness. I advanced in Judaism even beyond those of my peers. I was zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when he who had set me apart before was born and who called me by his grace. So notice Paul believes even before he was born, this was part of God's plan. Call me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. I did not immediately consult with anyone, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me. But I went away into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. Thoughts on Paul's statement here.
- [10:18]
B
On the one hand, right again, as Dr. Barber said, you've got this real great emphasis. Paul sees himself kind of like Jeremiah or Ezekiel or anybody else that God has purposed for him to be ready to call him to be an apostle of his even from before he was born, when he was in his mother's womb. But suddenly, then he starts off with that when God called me to this, this moment, that he has this vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus, persecuting the church, which you can read about in Acts, chapter nine. He says, when that happened, I didn't immediately consult with anyone, and I didn't go straight up to Jerusalem. I went out to Damascus, right? And then you say, like, well, what's the point here? So one of the points that Paul wants to make, if you look back, usually at the beginning of the paragraph, you're going to get a sentence that's really key to understand what he's up to. When he says, my gospel is not man's gospel, I didn't get it from anybody else. I got it from the Lord by a revelation of Jesus Christ when he appeared to me. Paul is going to emphasize that he received this and he received this on his own. And this is going to be really important in the next several verses because he's going to tell the story of how after he received this call from Jesus to be an apostle and a proclaimer of the faith, he used to persecute, Paul went off to Damascus, prayed, preached, evangelized. Later he came to Jerusalem and met with some of the apostles. And then later again he met with them. But he's gonna emphasize to everybody that he and the apostles in Jerusalem had the same gospel, even though Paul didn't hear that news from them, even though Paul got it straight from Jesus. And this is gonna be part of his argument, the way that he proves to his people what he's saying, that this gospel that he preached, the one that they received, is the one from the Lord. It's not one that humans have mucked about with or messed around with because they got it from Jesus. They walked around with Jesus his whole life, right? And he got it from Jesus, even though he saw Jesus after Easter. And both of them have the same message. Both of them say that Gentiles don't have to be circumcised to be saved. And so he's going to make that argument in the story that he tells here.
- [12:41]
A
And this is going to be important for us also to reflect on, right? Why is it that we believe the gospel? Why is it that we embrace the message of why is it that we believe in the Church's message? Why do we listen to what the Church teaches? It's not because we have a particular affinity for a particular personality. The Church is not a personality cult. In fact, there are lots of saints who were a bit off putting. I mean, you read the writings of Jerome and think, would I have liked this person? He could be a bit gruff at times, you know, and the reason we are Catholic today isn't because, well, you know, that Pope Francis, he just seems to have a winning smile. And I want to be a Catholic because of Pope Francis, or I want to go to the Catholic Church on Sunday because I particularly like this. This one priest. You know, a lot of people end up falling into the trap of viewing. They're viewing the church in terms of a cult of personality. At the end of the day, the reason that we embrace the message of Christ is because it's the message that comes from God and we believe in Jesus Christ. And the reason we follow the Church's teaching isn't because we like Pope Francis's smile, although he has a great smile. Right. It's not because we have a particular affinity for some special priest. No. At the end of the day, we believe that God has established his church through certain apostles. That's why we refer to the church as apostolic. I believe in one holy, catholic, apostolic church. And we recognize that it's through these particular individuals, Peter, Paul, the other apostles, that the gospel is proclaimed. And we also recognize that the bishops are the successors to those apostles. And so for time immemorial, people like St. Jerome would say, I'm with Peter. Right? Whoever is with Peter, he's my man. That's what Jerome says in one of his letters. Whoever is with Peter, he's my man. Why? Because Peter is just really funny and he's fun to be around. Well, he might have been. But that's not why we believe in Peter's message. It's because we believe Christ is speaking through his apostles and through Paul.
- [14:59]
B
That's right. And that is a great help to us, too, because it gives us something to hold onto when those personalities disappoint us or when things seem to be really shaky. To say, I'm not believing simply in an institution or simply in a person or personality, but I believe in this that's come from God and been handed down through people, through good people, through questionable people. Right. But it's been handed down, and it's God's word and God's gospel. And so that's what we hold onto.
- [15:30]
A
And we're gonna see Peter lets down Paul here in Galatians. And down through the ages. We've had popes and bishops and priests who have not lived up to the gospel, but the truth of the gospel is not validated in the individual lives. In other words, just because a Pastor lets us down. A priest lets us down. Sometimes more than just let us down, they commit grave scandal. Doesn't invalidate the truth of the message of Jesus Christ. That's right. That's right. That's Paul's point.
- [16:03]
B
Right.
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A
So he's going to go on to say, and let's see, where did we leave off? Okay. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and I remained with him for 15 days. Now, that Cephas is a reference, of course, to Peter. Cephas is the. Is from the Aramaic term that means rock. It's likely the original title may very well been that Peter is the Greek translation of the Aramaic name of the Prince of the apostles.
- [16:36]
B
That's right. And in John's Gospel, actually, you can see this John 1:42, where Jesus and Peter meet each other. It says he brought him to Jesus, and Jesus looked at him and said, you're Simon, the son of John. You'll be called Cephas. And then John explains that means Peter, right?
- [16:56]
A
Yeah. Right. It's important to point this out, though, because there are some people who want to say that Cephas and Peter aren't the same person because they sort of forget that passage in John. Anyway, that's out there. Anyway. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and I remained with them for 15 days. So even though Paul is emphasizing he received the Gospel himself from Jesus, Paul is not a spiritual lone ranger. Paul recognizes that there's an ecclesial dimension to his ministry, and so he wants to go up and meet with Peter. He also says, I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother. And he writes, in what I am writing to you before God, I do not lie. So he's adamant. I did meet with James, I did meet with Peter. Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown in person to the churches in Judea that are in Christ. They only were hearing it said, he who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy. And they glorified God because of me. Any thoughts on this particular section here, Jim?
- [18:03]
B
No. Again, in the overall argument, you can see the points that Paul is making. Right. He says, I went up to go see them, but notice I didn't do anything publicly. I didn't go meet everybody. And this is three years after. So I've gone to meet them, but it's not because I sort of went to them to kind of ask them for all of their gospel. Now, surely when he's there with Peter for 15 days, he's a really famous New Testament scholar who wrote that presumably they didn't talk about fishing. Surely they're talking about the faith. But Paul's point still is that I went to go talk with him and I met with them, but I didn't go with nothing. And then they gave me all the stuff, right? I got this from Jesus just as they got the gospel from Jesus, from being his disciples. And in the case of James being his relative, it says here, brother. But throughout the early church, the consensus is that Mary has only one biological child. And so there's some people who today will read brother, and they'll go like, oh, well, obviously it's just Mary's next kid or older kid. But if you notice the gospels, like when Jesus is an infant or a child, or even when he gets lost in Jerusalem, because the whole family's gone up, there ain't no brothers mentioned. There are cousins and relatives, though. And the early church, when they describe James, the brother of the Lord, they interpret this word brother to have another meaning, which it does, is cousin. And this is Jerome's way of addressing it. When he walks through all of the data in the New Testament and he says, is James the Lord's biological brother? He says, no, he's his cousin. Just have a look at all of the passages. And the word that is used in Greek, that's translated, brother here in fact means brother or cousin or relative. The same way like, I can talk about my brother here, right? Except they'll use it for other relatives.
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A
And you see this in the Greek version of the Old Testament, for example, Abraham calls Lot his nephew, his brother. We are brothers.
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B
That's right.
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A
If you're reading Genesis, no, you're not brothers. Yeah, but the Greek word that's used for brothers can also mean cousins. So it seems to be what's going on there. So we go on and we read. Paul Sundays, then after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. So it's 14 years later, a lot of water has gone under the bridge. I went up because of a revelation and set before them, though privately, before those who seemed influential, the gospel that I proclaimed among the Gentiles in order to make sure I was not running or had run in vain. Now, this is really important. Paul thinks that if he's preaching the gospel different than the other apostles, he could be running in vain. And so there's a recognition here that the Church has to proclaim the same gospel. Right. And so he goes up, he talks with them, but even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. So even though Titus goes up with him, who's a Gentile, he's not forcibly circumcised by Peter or James or the others up there yet because of false brothers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus so that they might bring us into slavery. Okay, why is it slavery? We'll talk about that going forward. To them, we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the Gospel might be preserved for you. So Paul is insistent. He didn't give an inch on whether or not Titus or others needed to be circumcised. And apparently this was accepted by the other Christians in Jerusalem. Any thoughts on that there?
- [22:02]
B
Yeah. And the way that Paul tells the story really briefly here, it's not even just that Paul's idea was, well, let's not circumcise him. The point is they didn't want him to be circumcised either. If Paul had walked in with Titus to everybody else, and everybody else was really concerned about, like, oh, well, but you're not pure if you're not circumcised, then they would have been like, oh, we got to go eat at a different table. But they didn't. Right. Peter and James and John and the others said, hey, Titus, come on in. Good to meet you. You can be our Greek friend now. And so Paul is saying, look, I didn't feel a need to circumcise him because I know the truth of the gospel. And guess what? The Jerusalem apostles didn't feel a need to circumcise him because they know the truth of the gospel. I got it from Jesus in a vision. They got it from Jesus while they were following him around and through the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. So what's the problem? Well, it's these. He calls them false brothers who came in to spy on them and kind of snuck in, slinked in, and they want to spy out our freedom in Christ Jesus to bring us into slavery. So what's up with the freedom? Slavery?
- [23:15]
A
Well, the main idea here is that the false brethren are those who are saying that non Jews who come to know Christ have to be circumcised. See, this is why it's central. This is why the issue that's going on for Paul is So important, right? Some people are saying that in order to be saved, in order to be in Christ, you really need to be circumcised. In order to receive grace, you need to be circumcised. And as we talked about in the last session, Paul says God saves us by his gift, by his grace. So some people are saying you have to do certain things in order to be worthy of God's grace, namely to be circumcised to become a Jew. Paul is making the case, no. God's mercy is given to us freely. And this is really important for us to internalize. Because I think for a lot of Catholics, well, I'll be saved so long as I check all these boxes, right? And we can have a kind of approach to our faith that is almost mechanical, right? I gotta say these prayers, gotta go to church on Sunday. And don't get me wrong, make no mistake about it. God gives us his grace to enable us to do these things that are important and crucial for our salvation. But God's love isn't contingent on our worthiness. God loves us even when we are unworthy. And that's why we baptize our children, for example, before my children do anything to show that they're good people, they're already baptized. Really important part of Catholic practice. All right, so we go on and we can say more about this, and we will. But. And from those who seemed influential, what they were makes no difference to me. God shows no partiality. Paul says, it doesn't really matter what your earthly reputation is ultimately, for Paul, what matters is who is commissioned by Christ. And he has been commissioned by Christ. And whether or not these other people are perceived as influential makes no difference to the fact that he has received Christ's commission. Those I say who seemed influential added nothing to me. On the contrary, when they saw that I'd been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised. And notice, Paul thinks that Peter's been entrusted with the gospel. Paul doesn't doubt that Peter's been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised. For he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me, for mine, to the Gentiles. And when James and Cephas, Peter and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me. That we should go to The Gentiles, and they did the circumcised, they would go to the Jews only. They asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. We're just running out of time. We've got about two minutes left here. Any thoughts here on that passage?
- [26:20]
B
Yeah. So what Paul sees and what he wants them to see as he retells this, right, is that we can sort of put aside status for a minute, either the status of those false brethren who are coming in or of anybody else. The question is, who has received the truth from Jesus and is preaching it? Well, Paul and the other apostles, the true apostles, received the truth from Jesus. And when they see it in each other, they can recognize it. Peter and James and John look at Paul and they say, yeah, you're on the level. You've got the Gospel of God. You know it just like we know it, keep preaching it. And Paul sees the same thing in them. He already knows it. And so what they come to is a kind of agreement, maybe a temporary one, maybe for long term, right? But that Paul especially will be the apostle to the Gentiles. He calls it uncircumcised here, mostly just because we're thinking of one practice that separated Jews from Gentiles in the Roman world, which was circumcision, even though it's specifically male, right? We're talking about men and women, adults and children, right? Jews and Gentiles, this sort of great division of the world, right, of God's historic people and all the other nations. And so Paul is given, not just a kind of pat on the back, like, okay, you're not doing too bad, but Paul's actually told by the other Jerusalem apostles, go preach this and bring the nations into the kingdom of God. And that's what he is doing. And that's the authority on which his Gospel and the way that he preaches it to Gentiles, that they should be baptized to receive the Holy Spirit, but not circumcised to receive the Holy Spirit, that that's what he's up to, and that's the authority on which everything that he's going to continue to say in this letter really rests.
- [28:15]
A
That's right. And for, of course, Jews, Gentiles were uncouth, they were unclean, they had all kinds of perverse practices. They didn't know the Torah. So for many, the idea that Gentiles could receive grace at all was astonishing. Circumcision was a sign of curtailing your natural passions. It was often seen as rejecting carnal passions and carnal desires. So people who are uncircumcised. Right. The connotation there is they live a loose lifestyle, morally loose lifestyle. So the idea that Gentiles could be saved is really earth shattering for many people.
- [28:59]
B
That's right. And it's important to emphasize too, this isn't just on the Jewish side. There's a flip side to this too. So the Roman historian Tacitus says in a really infamous and troubling passage, he says the Jews are terrible, they're gross. And he says everything that is good they think is evil. We abort our babies and they don't. They get circumcised and we don't. Right. And so there's animosity on both sides among certain groups.
- [29:30]
A
Right. And so the idea that Paul's going to pronounce here is that there is salvation for all Christ. And that's why it's good news for me, because I'm uncouth Gentile. That's why it's good news for you too. We're going to talk about that more as we unpack this. I want to thank all of you who are Mission Circle donors who make this work possible. I want to thank you for tuning in and I also want to encourage you to check out our other programs on Formed and maybe also the short course we have on Paul gives you further details how to understand Paul. Till next time. May God bless you and your family.