Jon Jordan

Of all the fascinating things to study about the life and practices of the earliest Christians, it is their corporate worship that most interests me. The fact that they met for eucharist on Sunday morning is unique in many ways. Though a vast majority of the earliest Christians were converts from Judaism—which viewed the Sabbath (Saturday) as the special day of the week—Christians placed primary emphasis on Sunday, the day of the Resurrection. The Christian practice of Sunday worship was a distinct break from their previous tradition.

What is more—and what I see as uncomfortably thought-provoking for our worship today as Christians—is that Sundays in the ancient Roman empire were nothing like Sundays in modern Western culture. Sunday marked the beginning of the Roman work week. This is why the church met early in the morning. They woke up before the rest of civilization, gathered together for prayer, public readings from the Scriptures, and a celebration of the eucharist.

And then they went to work.

Paul’s short letter to the Galatians has been a running focus of mine for the past year and a half. This summer, Coram Deo has asked that Galatians and Exodus be read alongside one another by our students, families, and faculty. The combination of these two factors—along with the encouragement of some friends—has led me to put together what I consider to be five very helpful ideas to understand before studying Galatians. This is clearly not an exhaustive list, but I do hope that it provides a framework for beginning to read and understand Galatians as it was meant to be read and understood.

Five Things to Know about Galatians

1. Galatians is an epistle.
2. Galatians was probably Paul’s first epistle.
3. Paul is making one sustained argument throughout the epistle.
4. Continuity with the Old Testament is crucial for Paul’s argument
5. Discontinuity with the Old Testament is crucial for Paul’s argument.

Galatians was probably Paul’s first Epistle

Remember the Southern or Northern Galatia debate? The question of audience, in the case of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, influences more than just your interpretation of who the author intended to read the letter. Your answer to the question of audience influences your decision about what date to assign to Galatians. In keeping with the hypothesis that Paul’s audience was found in the Southern region of Galatia that he visited with Barnabas in Acts 13-14, Galatians is Paul’s earliest letter with a date some time in or around the early AD 50s (with a possibility of even dipping into the late 40s). This is incredibly early in terms of New Testament texts. The letter to the Galatians likely represents the earliest complete New Testament text (though the Gospel of Mark is a close contender as well). The Gospel of John, for example, wasn’t written until roughly 40 years later. But why does it matter that Galatians was written so early? How does that influence the way we read and understand the text? A few things are worth noting here.

I. Established Tradition

By the middle of the first century AD, there is enough of an established gospel tradition already in place that Paul feels the freedom to reference it. In 2:8-9 he warns against the Galatians accepting a different gospel— one that is different than the one he and those writing the letter with him had already proclaimed. There is no New Testament to reference, there are no Gospel accounts to read. That does not prevent Paul from referencing a standard of teaching from which the Galatians must not depart. This gospel tradition that predates the writing of the New Testament will later be called a variety of things, including the Apostolic Teaching and the Rule of Faith. It would also later serve as the basis for the Nicene Creed. To be a Christian, Paul urges the Galatians, is to trust the one true gospel message brought to them by the Apostles as opposed to any other gospel brought by anybody else.

This does not mean that there was complete unity in the early Church. Sometimes we mistakingly think of the Great Schism of AD1054 or the Protestant Reformation as the only major disagreements throughout Church history. You only have to keep reading Galatians to discover that even among the Apostles there was severe disagreement on some fairly significant issues (see 2:11-14). But what Paul and the brothers with him could agree on is this: within Christianity, there can be no such thing as turning to a different gospel. The gospel Paul received is the gospel he passed on; this is our only option as Christians.

II. Brevity

Throughout Galatians, Paul says some pretty significant things without elaborating much. Either an elaboration would have distracted his audience from his main point, or he had not yet seen a need to elaborate on a given topic based on his ministry up to that point. Or both. The point is that—in keeping with the genre of an epistle—Paul did not set out to write a detailed systematic theology covering a wide spectrum of doctrines, but a letter. Paul is not opposed to writing clear, organized theology: his later letters show this to be true. But in Galatians, an early letter, there is little room for elaboration on major themes.

So keep this in mind as you read. When reading what Paul says early in his ministry about the Law (Galatians), it is important to also hear what he has to say about the Law later in his ministry (Romans). Both letters are Paul, and both letters are Scripture. At the end of the day, we need to allow them each to speak to their own context, while also hearing both of them properly in order to more fully understand and know God. For a specific example of this, take some time to read Paul on the Spirit in Galatians 4:4-6 and then in Romans 8.

III. Scripture

This is a short, but significant point to keep in mind as you read. When Paul uses the word scripture in Galatians he is referring to what we call the Old Testament. When Paul wrote Galatians, there simply was no such thing as a “New” Testament for Paul to call scripture. Keeping this in mind is crucial to understanding how the Old Testament was fulfilled in the life of Jesus the Messiah.

Paul’s short letter to the Galatians has been a running focus of mine for the past year and a half. This summer, Coram Deo has asked that Galatians and Exodus be read alongside one another by our students, families, and faculty. The combination of these two factors—along with the encouragement of some friends—has led me to put together what I consider to be five very helpful ideas to understand before studying Galatians. This is clearly not an exhaustive list, but I do hope that it provides a framework for beginning to read and understand Galatians as it was meant to be read and understood. Over the coming weeks, I plan to explore these five concepts here. This post will introduce the Five Things, and will explain the first.

Five Things to Know about Galatians

1. Galatians is an epistle.
2. Galatians was probably Paul’s first epistle.
3. Paul is making one sustained argument throughout the epistle.
4. Continuity with the Old Testament is crucial for Paul’s argument
5. Discontinuity with the Old Testament is crucial for Paul’s argument.

Galatians is an Epistle

I. Genre

I cannot stress this enough, and will therefore state it bluntly: it is lazy and irresponsible to ignore genre when reading any piece of literature, especially literature that is labeled Scripture. To read a parable as historical narrative or poetry as scientific explanation is doing a disservice to Scripture, your own heart and mind, and anyone you happen to influence.

Now do not be too afraid—though a little bit of trepidation is appropriate when approaching a sacred text—you do not need to understand the deep intricacies of Ancient Near Eastern literary genre to learn from our Scriptures. But a basic understanding of the prominent genres of the New Testament and the specific text you are reading will, I think, prove quite valuable as you seek to encounter God in the Scriptures.

II. Epistle

The book of Galatians is an epistle—a letter sent to a specific person or group of people—written by Paul to various churches in the region of Galatia (more on that later). Of the 27 books of the New Testament, 21 are epistles. The book of Revelation, one of the 6 non-epistle texts of the New Testament, actually contains 7 mini-epistles in its first three chapters. Understanding the genre of epistle is clearly important for understanding the New Testament.

Of all there is to know about the New Testament genre of epistle, a few key points are important to keep in mind. Like in any modern letter, knowing the author and audience is crucial to understanding. If I find a letter in the hallway after a passing period and assume it is written to me when it is not, I am most likely going to come to some absurd interpretive conclusions. (What do you mean Johnny doesn’t like my new haircut? I’ve had this same style for three years now. Guess I better shave my head.) In addition to understanding the author and audience, it is also crucial to know something about the occasion of the epistle. Why was the letter written? What circumstances led to this particular author addressing this particular audience? Let’s take a quick look at the author, audience, and occasion for the book of Galatians.

Author

Paul was an adult convert to Christianity from Pharisaic Judaism. If you are not familiar with his conversion, it would be very helpful to read the three accounts found in the book of Acts (ch. 9, 22, 26) before reading Galatians. For the purposes of the epistle to the Galatians, it is significant to note that prior to his conversion, Paul was as devoted to Judaism as anyone else in his day.

Audience

There is actually quite some disagreement about the specific audience of this epistle. Galatia was a Roman province covering approximately the same land as modern day Turkey. When Paul wrote this epistle, Galatia referred to the entire region. By the end of the third century AD, only the northern region was referred to as Galatia. All that to say that we are not entirely sure to which specific region of the Galatian province Paul was writing. If you are curious, I tend to accept the southern Galatia hypothesis, which would link the epistle to the Galatians with Paul’s missionary journey of Acts 13-14. Regardless, the Galatian Christians were an ethnically and spiritually diverse people that had little knowledge of Judaism or the Old Testament before their conversion.

Occasion

After Paul and Barnabas planted churches throughout Galatia (see Acts 13-14), a majority of the Christians in the region were Gentiles. Some time after leaving Galatia, Paul learned that a group of Jewish Christians had entered Galatia and began teaching that full Christian salvation must include observance of the Torah (the Jewish Law or Pentateuch), including circumcision, feasts, and the observance of Sabbath. In some of his most forceful language found in the New Testament, Paul pens Galatians as an argument against these Jewish Christian teachers.

III. Unique to Galatians

All of the writings in our New Testament that are believed to have been written by St. Paul are epistles. When comparing them to each other and to other known religious and non-religious epistles of his day, a quite interesting pattern arrises. Paul seems to be following a relatively standard pattern in his greetings at the beginning of each of his epistles. When this pattern changes, as we see in the opening verses of Galatians, something important is probably happening.

Paul introduces himself as an Apostle—which is very common in his epistles—and then spends portions of the first chapter defending his Apostolic authority—which is not very common in his epistles. His apostleship was not given to him by a human and was not made possible by a human. Instead, he was made an Apostle through a direct revelation and an appointment by Jesus himself (Gal 1:1). In addition to defending the authenticity of his authority as an apostle, Paul also notes that the epistle is from him and all the brothers who are with him. These two unique parts of his greeting—a defense of his apostolic authority and the joint-authorship of the epistle—set the stage for the forceful correction Paul gives to the Jewish Christian teachers throughout Galatia.

Freedom almost always gets you what you want; it rarely gets you what you need. When we approach Scripture, it is the freedom to interpret as we want that can get us into a world of trouble. In his masterpiece De doctrina christiana (On Christian Doctrine), Saint Augustine lays out in four books the rules for interpreting Scripture that he teaches his students as Bishop of Hippo. In his preface, he lays out an argument for teaching Christians how to interpret Scripture as opposed to allowing them ultimate interpretive freedom.

There are certain rules for the interpretation of Scripture which I think might with great advantage be taught to earnest students of the word, that they may profit not only from reading the works of others who have laid open the secrets of the sacred writings, but also from themselves opening such secrets to others. These rules I propose to teach to those who are able and willing to learn.

St. Augustine was brilliant for many reasons, not least of which was his ability to anticipate possible objections to his ideas. He anticipates three types of objectors: those who do not understand the rules he teaches, those who understand the rules but are discouraged when failing in trying to apply them, and finally, those who:

either really do understand Scripture well, or think they do, and who, because they know (or imagine) that they have attained a certain power of interpreting the sacred books without reading any directions of the kind that I propose to lay down here…

[they] will cry out that such rules are not necessary for any one, but that everything rightly done towards clearing up the obscurities of Scripture could be better done by the unassisted grace of God.

The idea that no work, knowledge, or interpretive elbow grease is needed to properly understand the Scriptures was as common an idea in Augustine’s day as it is in ours. Augustine briefly addresses the first two objectors before moving on to a more sustained argument against the third.

But now as to those who talk vauntingly of Divine Grace, and boast that they understand and can explain Scripture without the aid of such directions as those I now propose to lay down, and who think, therefore, that what I have undertaken to write is entirely superfluous. I would such persons could calm themselves so far as to remember that, however justly they may rejoice in God’s great gift, yet it was from human teachers they themselves learnt to read…

… they must surely grant that every one of us learnt his own language by hearing it constantly from childhood, and that any other language we have learnt,—Greek, or Hebrew, or any of the rest,—we have learnt either in the same way, by hearing it spoken, or from a human teacher. Now, then, suppose we advise all our brethren not to teach their children any of these things, because on the outpouring of the Holy Spirit the apostles immediately began to speak the language of every race; and warn every one who has not had a like experience that he need not consider himself a Christian, or may at least doubt whether he has yet received the Holy Spirit? No, no; rather let us put away false pride and learn whatever can be learnt from man; and let him who teaches another communicate what he has himself received without arrogance and without jealousy.

Why would we teach our children the important rules of reading and writing, and not also teach them the even more important rules of interpretation? We don’t depend merely on Divine Grace to teach students skills or workers a trade. Why—when the task is all the more significant—would we neglect to spend time teaching other Christians to properly interpret Scripture? Augustine continues:

 And we know that the eunuch who was reading Isaiah the prophet, and did not understand what he read, was not sent by the apostle to an angel, nor was it an angel who explained to him what he did not understand, nor was he inwardly illuminated by the grace of God without the interposition of man; on the contrary, at the suggestion of God, Philip, who did understand the prophet, came to him, and sat with him, and in human words, and with a human tongue, opened to him the Scriptures.

In the last place, every one who boasts that he, through divine illumination, understands the obscurities of Scripture … [so] reading and understanding, as he does, without the aid of any human interpreter, why does he himself undertake to interpret for others? Why does he not rather send them direct to God, that they too may learn by the inward teaching of the Spirit without the help of man?

Finally, Augustine closes his preface with a classic “teach a man to fish” moment:

The man who lays down rules for interpretation is like one who teaches reading, that is, shows others how to read for themselves.

So the man who is in possession of the rules which I here attempt to lay down, if he meet with an obscure passage in the books which he reads, will not need an interpreter to lay open the secret to him, but, holding fast by certain rules, and following up certain indications, will arrive at the hidden sense without any error, or at least without falling into any gross absurdity.

There is value in learning basic interpretive rules. It will not guarantee proper interpretation, and does not negate the need to study in community—both with others and with the community of history—but sometimes simply avoiding “gross absurdity” is reward enough.

The second Issue of A Life of Theology: The Coram Deo Journal of Theology is now available as a PDF and the update to the free iBook (on the iBookstore for iPad) is currently under review and should be available later this week. This Issue’s theme is The Resurrection, and the introduction to the issue is provided below.

“Our task in the present is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first resurrection and a foretaste of the second.”

N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

Following the crucifixion of Jesus—a Roman form of execution taken as a sign by most people that his messianic movement had failed—his followers were faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, they believed that God was indeed going to act in and through Jesus to bring about His kingdom on earth. They had seen the miracles, they did not turn away from the difficult teaching, and they were told that this new movement would not fail (Matt 16:18). On the other hand, they had been promised abundant and eternal life by the very man whose death they had just witnessed. As they huddled together for a long Saturday there was room for many emotions: doubt, fear, anger; but there was no room for hope. A crucified messiah, after all, is a failed messiah.

But then early the next morning, some of the women among them began their journey down to Jesus’ tomb in order to adorn the grave-site with a collection of spices. To their surprise, the tomb was empty.

Once the disciples recovered from the shock, spent forty days with the risen Jesus, and were given the Holy Spirit, things began to change. The cowardly disciples who on Friday were ready to deny their association with Jesus were now boldly facing imprisonment and death for proclaiming his Resurrection. The great ethnic divide between Jew and Gentile was dissolved. The news of Jesus’ resurrection was spreading—and communities based on this news were growing—across the Roman empire and beyond. Within the first few centuries of the Christian church, there were enough Christians in the Roman empire to warrant Constantine’s issuing of the famous Edict of Milan.

Throughout its history, the Christian church has celebrated the season of Easter to remind the community of the significance of the Resurrection of Jesus. Not just one day; not just one service—but an entire season. The resurrection certainly deserves this special treatment. This issue is our attempt to scratch the surface of reflecting on the reality, beauty, and significance of the resurrection in our lives during this Easter season.

Jon Jordan
History, Apologetics, Greek Faculty
Eastertide 2013