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Word Gems
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Galatians
Conclusion: The Battle to Define Christianity
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F.F. Bruce, in his opening remarks to Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, strikingly asserts that, though the apostle to the gentiles was condemned by Rome, “the day was to come when men would call their dogs Nero and their sons Paul.”
It is difficult to overstate Paul’s influence upon the flow of history. If, as his critics contended, the message of Jesus turned the world upside down, the once-Pharisee’s evangelistic labors must be credited with much of that overturning; indeed, it may not be an exaggeration to suggest that the modern world would never have heard of Jesus Christ but for the dogged efforts of Saul of Tarsus. Paul did not simply preach the gospel but, much to the consternation of the Jerusalem mother church, radically altered, even invented it, as he went.
Such a view, by no means unknown to New Testament scholars, is one largely ignored or denied from the pulpits of the majority of today’s Christian denominations. There is a natural desire among believers (the author speaks from past personal experience) to view the college of apostles as a harmonious monolith, a united front against the world, with all members working in a spirit of congeniality and mutual self-respect.
It may be, therefore, more than a little disconcerting for the faithful to read passages such as Galatians 2.12 which speak of the bigoted little group that “came from James.” For some, in a fit of cognitive dissonance, it will be tempting to engage in what might be termed pathological harmonizing, an unwarranted construction of scripture and combining of verses, in this instance, designed to maintain the illusion that the New Testament apostles called each other by affectionate nicknames and went golfing together on the weekends.
For example, the phrase under review is construed by some to mean, “purportedly came from James,” that is, without James’ authorization; further, that these self-appointed emissaries of James were, in fact, hard-core Pharisees, simply conducting their own missionary efforts to expand the interests of Judaism.
Such interpretation will be convincing only to those unfamiliar with the internal evidence of the Galatians document. There, the flow of Paul’s argument makes clear that he is dealing with fellow church-members – and ones of such august repute that even Peter and Barnabas are swept away by these sent “from James,” the very blood brother of Jesus. And if this is not enough to stop the pathological harmonizing, Hagan delivers a crushing salvo in his work which explains the letter of James as a kind of blasting pulpit-rebuttal of Paul’s Galatians.
All of the foregoing is offered to underscore, for the many who would deny it, the reality of the first-century battle to define Christianity, a conflict not precipitated by forces outside of – but within -- the Church. Paul's chances for success here were rather low. Unlike the Twelve, he had not been taught by the flesh-and-blood Jesus, but, instead, had been a violent, fanatical persecutor of the Church. His claim of association with Jesus came by way of a heavenly revelation, not the kind of evidence that is easy to corroborate. Match all this against the solid resume of Peter, friend of the Master – or even James, who had grown up in Jesus’ family. Yet Paul had the unmitigated chutzpah to suggest that he alone stood as final arbiter of the teachings of Jesus.
Paul and Jerusalem defined Christianity in radically different ways. The latter group saw itself as an extension of Judaism; they continued to observe the seventh-day Sabbath, dietary rules, circumcision, and many other regulations of the Mosaic Law. Their respect for the ancient law created a theology which, in essence, demanded that one become a Jew first in order to become a Christian. While Paul would easily agree that all of these items might be allowable as cultural preferences, none of them are strictly mandated, nor even advised, in order to follow Christ.
This position, Paul often asserts, is not one based on disregard for the law but an understanding of its ultimate aim. It is not easy for us today to appreciate Paul’s difficulty in making his argument. Consider his suspect and checkered proposition: He was offering the modest proposal that he, the once-destroyer of Christians, without visible credentials - moreover, in opposition to those hand-picked by Jesus himself and at variance with God-given laws laid down millennia ago - was now special agent for Christ and God. Well, Paul's thesis was a hard door-to-door sell back home at the mother-church, and if Jerusalem was less than amused by such hubris we should not be overly surprised. Would you, as a follower of the impressive James, the blood-brother of Jesus, believe Paul's story?
Galatians offers insight into the wide-reaching ramifications of these two viewpoints: Jerusalem, as evidenced by their brand of table-fellowship etiquette, leads us to a kind of apartheid within the Church, a caste-system of first and second-class Christians, all of which to be contrasted with Paul’s ahead-of-his-time egalitarian sentiment: “There is neither Jew nor Greek [. . .] bond nor free [. . .] male nor female.”
Big doors, as the saying goes, swing on small hinges, and in Paul’s dispute with James we witness not mere ecclesiastical politics but, in effect, an almost-cosmic debate concerning whether Christianity would remain a tiny subset of Judaism or – as Paul would have it – a truly worldwide movement affecting future billions.
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