BIBLE DISCUSSION: Galatians Chap. 3 - Oct 28-Nov 3
 

This thread is for posting any thoughts about the third chapter of Galatians.

Galatians 3
 

Galatians 3 NRSV:

Law or Faith

3You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! 2The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? 3Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? 4Did you experience so much for nothing?—if it really was for nothing. 5Well then, does God* supply you with the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?

6 Just as Abraham ‘believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, 7so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. 8And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.’ 9For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.

10 For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law.’ 11Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law; for ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.’* 12But the law does not rest on faith; on the contrary, ‘Whoever does the works of the law* will live by them.’ 13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’— 14in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
The Promise to Abraham

15 Brothers and sisters,* I give an example from daily life: once a person’s will* has been ratified, no one adds to it or annuls it. 16Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring;* it does not say, ‘And to offsprings’,* as of many; but it says, ‘And to your offspring’,* that is, to one person, who is Christ. 17My point is this: the law, which came four hundred and thirty years later, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise. 18For if the inheritance comes from the law, it no longer comes from the promise; but God granted it to Abraham through the promise.
The Purpose of the Law

19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring* would come to whom the promise had been made; and it was ordained through angels by a mediator. 20Now a mediator involves more than one party; but God is one.

21 Is the law then opposed to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could make alive, then righteousness would indeed come through the law. 22But the scripture has imprisoned all things under the power of sin, so that what was promised through faith in Jesus Christ* might be given to those who believe.

23 Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. 24Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring,* heirs according to the promise.

Nor gay nor straight
 

Because I am not versed in the ancient view of the Law, neither as a Greek nor as a Jew, I find Paul's reasoning through most of this chapter to be tortuous. Poor Abraham. All of creation seems to ride on him and his legacy. Yet all that convoluted rhetoric leads to the culmination of the chapter

It is SOOOO tempting to add the gay/straight polarity to the list in v. 28. That certainly is how I think of it. I think that Paul is saying that all those facile distincitions that we make so much about are washed away in baptism. I can't think of any opposites that were more entrenched in Paul's world than slave/free, Jew/Greek, male/female. That's why I think that ALL divisive distinctions, including gay/straight, are likewise washed away. We are no longer subject to human disciplinarians who wag their fingers and say, "No, you can't love that person. We've never done it that way before." We are all one in Christ Jesus. It says so right in the Bible!

Nice thoughts about this. This is how the church should be. All one in Christ.

Where is everyone?
 

Where are all the Greek scholars and New Testament scholars?

Galatians 1 got something like 62 responses. Galatians 2 was in the high 30s. Now we're on the third chapter and everyone has disappeared just when it's getting good.

Pablo, Antony, u-dog, sailaway, others, where are you when we need you?

I antonyh have transfigured into the mighty Dumbledore! I can't speak for the others :D Maybe all the Calvinist rantings scared away the dwarfs.

Dwarves, my butt, dimpledorf. It's just that serious scholars can't keep up with a chapter a week. I'm still on Gal 1:10. Give me some time - this jot and tiddle stuff takes time.

Ahhh
 

Serious Calvinist scholars none the less! :lol::pray: You're going to have to work harder to catch up! Deadlines!

Oh, very well. But reckless speed is how we ended up with the KJV and the 1962 version of the Heidelberg confession.

All throughout history the church has had to fight the slide into legalism.
Today legalistic Christianity (those who insist on following laws, rules, regulations) has become the dominant face of Christianity in the United States. But where legalism abounds, love does not.

The Puritains took God's Word and turned it into a very strict set of regulations. All who strayed from the prescribed path were to be punished. No love there.

The Medieval church made Christianity a set of regulations that gave all power to the church government. The church became a way that the people were governed, not a way by which people heard the Gospel message. God's message of love was pushed away into the shadows.

Faith, however, is so simple. It is a gift from God. It might be just too simple and too abstract for many people. You have no power over people who come to God through faith. You can't exclude people if each person is saved through faith. You can't be superior to others if God's gift of grace is given to all freely through faith.

My NIV translation mistranslates "Male NOR female". I'm not one usually to quibble over small points, for if I do that, I often miss the main message, but this is interesting. I think God is making a point that there are only Jews or Greeks (gentiles), slaves or free, but there not exclusivly males OR females. There are those who belong to the body of Christ that blur the boundaries between the two genders. We are male AND female AND those who don't clearly fit into the two categories. And it makes no difference what we are, for we are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

Pablo

It was interesting to me this week in school. We discussed the "Neither Jew nor Greek, male and female" verse in class. The discussion evolved into a discusion about the Jewish holocaust. The kids brought up how one group of people think that they are somehow superior and worth more than another.

It is distressing when looking at history how often one group opresses another beacuse they feel that the other group is for some reason of less value.

Pablo

The Greek
 

Just remember that the English Puritans were quite different to what happened to puritanism in the colonies. I suppose us Calvanists earned this little jab :lol:

You got me looking at the Greek on this. Here is is:

οὐκ ἔνι Ἰουδαῖος οὐδὲ=nor Ἕλλην οὐκ ἔνι δοῦλος οὐδὲ=nor ἐλεύθερος οὐκ ἔνι (male)ἄρσεν καὶ=and θῆλυ(female) πάντες γὰρ ὑμεῖς εἷς ἐστε ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ

So you are right that "and" is there instead of "nor". A point could be made that the NIV translation was not literal. However I must challenge your interpretation of the significance of this. Is it likely that Paul given his rigid gender boundaries would intend to express a form of gender-blending in his letter? Very unlikely I would say. If it cannot mean that in the original context, I'm not sure it can be applied that way in modernity.

Some scholars (I think of Dominic Crossan, for instance) don't think the real Paul was as sexist or "rigid" as you allege. There is a very strong case that such things as "women should be silent in church" etc. were not by the real Paul, but by person(s) writing in Paul's name.

Crossan argues that there was a strain in early Christianity (which Paul may be reflecting here) that believed that gender differentiation into male and female was not the original condition of humanity (this is an interpretation of the "second" creation story in Genesis). The original "Adam" was not differentiated into male and female until after the "operation" that created Eve.

Steven Webster

Not sure I buy the argument
 

This is an interesting theory but this is the apostle Paul:lol:, the man who wrote 1 Corinthians 11:14-15, "Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering." His rigid gender boundaries came out of his roots in Judaism. Take these texts out of Judaism Pseudo-Phocylides 212, "Long hair is not fit for boys, but for voluptuous women." See also Philo, Laws 3:37 and Gleason 1995, 69 on the Stoic perception of hair as a gender signifier.

I'm not buying Crossan's argument at all.

Isn't Paul human? Isn't he capable of inconsistency and self-contradiction?

We always need to bear in mind that Paul's writings are letters addressed to particular churches with particular problems that we don't have complete information about. What exactly was this head-covering business about? I don't think we really know. Probably the violation of accepted custom was creating discord in the Corinthian Church and Paul is coming down on the side of "good order" rather than avant garde fashion.

I went to my favorite study bible, the New Interpreter's Study Bible (hereafter "NISB") which generally incorporates up-to-date feminist scholarship. It notes that in I Corinthians 11:11-12 ("Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man or man independent of woman. For just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman; but all things come from God.") Paul again affirms the unity and equality of men and women "in the Lord" while at the same time he supporting custom when it comes to head coverings in worship.

Paul was a man of his times. He was not a 20th century feminist. Nevertheless I believe Crossan and other scholars are not mistaken in seeing a radical equalization of women and men in the teachings of Jesus and Paul. After all, this whole head covering rant is premised on the fact that women DO SPEAK, PRAY AND PROPHESY IN PAUL'S CHURCHES. The verse which elsewhere is attributed to Paul that says "women should be silent in church" is generally understood to be written by someone other than Paul.

Of course, Jesus and Paul were immersed in a culture with rigid gender roles. And aren't we in almost the same situation? Aren't we still struggling with a cultural inheritance of rigid gender roles? Isn't Paul's prophetic declaration "there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" still a challenging (and encouraging) teaching for us?

Steven Webster

The passages in the letter to the Corinthians that deal with women's leadership in the churches are considered by MANY (most?) reputable scholars to be interpolations inserted by later redactors OR at the very least compromises by Paul with his culture for the sake of the broader acceptability of Gospel in Roman/Greek society. I personally believe that they are interpolations. here are my reasons:

1. They contradict Paul's clearly understood theology (as expressed in Galations and elsewhere) that in christ there is no longer male and female.

2. They are at odds with the greetings to colleagues that Paul includes in most of his authentic letters. from these greetings it is clear that Paul relies on and values the leadership, courage, and spiritual insights of women to accomplish his ends.

3. If you read Corinthians with those passages excised there is no interuption in the flow of the language. In fact, the text reads more smoothely without them. Its really pretty clear that they were not part of the original composition.


Paul was a radical egalitarian, even by todays standards. By first century standards he was a TOTAL WHACKO!! (God bless him!) It is no surprise that his followers, translators, copyists, etc felt the need to tone him down a little. Even in Ephesians 5 where he seems to be blessing Roman Patriarchal culture, if you read carefully what he says about the ideal relationships between master/slave husband/wife and father/child you have to realize that even while he is affirming those relationships he is tearing the guts out of them and completely redefining them.

When Paul is done with Patriarchy in Ephesians its like a Marcino Cherry. The basic cellular structure and shape is still intact but NOTHING of the substance of the original cherry remains.

It really seems of no importance to me WHO the authors of various portions of the Bible were. What I feel is important is that God speaks through the words that he has preserved and passed down to us. It is pretty certain that Moses did not write the first five books of the Bible (at least not all of them, especially the events that took place after his death.) There was probably more than one author of Isaiah.

Paul may or may not have written all that is attributed to him. It doesn't really matter to the message. The epistles of the New Testament and the book of Acts are remarkable in the fact that they seek to bring women into the active life of the church. The Greek culture was very oppressive to women, more so than the Hebrew culture even. In the historical context the New Testament writings are indeed cutting edge liberalism. (I am starting to sound like I agree with u-dog again. I hate when that happens!) From our viewpoint the writings might seem to encourage oppression of women, but I think the opposite is the case.

An analogy from American history. It was President Grant that set up the Indian Reservations and worked toward moving the Native Americans onto those reservations. We might look at his actions and see them as inhumane, degrading and racist. But in the context of the day, he was the first president that had a policy of moving the Native Americans rather than killing them off. His policies were a giant step forward compared to those of his predecessors. However, we can't say that forcibly moving people onto reservations at the present time is fair and compasionate. The cultural situation is different. The spirit of Grant's policies, not the letter is what is important to realize and put into practice. I think the same might be said for Paul's writings. God message given through Paul is not oppressive to women but a giant step toward including women fully in the life of the church. However, we should be following the spirit of that message, not adhering to regulations that today go counter to the original spirit of the writings. (This paragraph has not come out as clearly as the idea was in my head. Hopefully my reasoning makes some sense.)

Pablo

I see it
 

I think you're right, Paul is capable of self-contradiction and inconsistency like all of us. I feel that Paul did hold to his culturally conditioned view of gender roles while still recognizing that before God all humans are equal regardless of gender and that woman have a place in his ministry.

If we revisit the original passage "male and female" ... this is Paul recognizing that before God all people are equal regardless of gender. I don't see him blending gender in any way.

I'll go with "at the very least compromises by Paul with his culture". All this redaction hocus pocus is often a way modern scholars inappropriately read their contemporary ideologies (like feminism) into the text.

I'm not buying the reasoning here. Paul puts gender into very strong role buckets but still affirms that women and men are equal before God. Just because the text reads smoothly when you pull out the long hair passage does not mean that it was not meant to be there.

I think he was a Jewish man with all the accompanying cultural baggage.

Intention of the author is key...If you can find it
 

I think it is very important to situate books of the Bible in the proper linguistic, cultural and national settings. This includes who wrote the book and who it was written too. The setting helps you understand what the author intended to say when he wrote the passage. This is a fundamental rule of Biblical interpretation: "A passage cannot mean something other than what the author intended it to mean."

Our discussion of "male and female" is a classic example of the need to understand the cultural roots of the author. Is it likely that Paul really used "and" to express the blending of genders before God? Was such a concept even around during his time? Would Paul as a first century Jew be able to write such a thing?

I believe that Paul is simply saying that Male and Female (in their defined gender roles) are equal before God in Christ. I can't read any more into it than that without imposing my modern understanding of gender onto the text (something post-modernist Biblical scholars love to do).