Otium Sanctum

Paul's Letters In General

The author of the 2 Peter wasn't mistaken when he wrote that there are some things in the letter of Paul that are so hard to understand "which things uneducated and unbalanced people distort, in the same way as they distort the rest of scripture... (2 Peter 3:16)." I would suggest that the difficulty of beginners in understanding St. Paul derives from the failure to understand the nature of his writings. If one begins to read them without taking into account their original audience, the kind of relationship Paul had with that audience, and the concerns of Paul when he wrote to them, then a lot of those letters will seem to contain gibberish. Further, if one treats those letters AS IF they were written AFTER the four gospels have been written, then one will simply miss the point when Paul speaks of "my Gospel." Finally, if one tries to see in the letters of Paul a doctrine that is already complete, as if they were an integrated treatise distributed in different pamphlets, then one will really end up distorting Paul's message and his gospel.

The letters of Paul were the letters of a missionary to the fledgling Churches he has established or was intending to visit. They were therefore pastoral in intent, i.e. they answer specific questions or concerns. Only two of these can be considered doctrinal: the Letter to the Romans, and the Letter to the Hebrews (which is not really a letter, nor for Hebrews, and is NOT by Paul, although it is included in the Pauline corpus by way of tradition). Paul wrote the letters between the years 50 and 65 AD, years before the first Gospel was completed (Mark, c.70 AD). This is important to know since the word "Gospel" in Paul does not refer to any written material but to the memory of the Lord as it is proclaimed and preached by the apostles. Lastly, the letters were written to assemblies of the faithful that regularly met in households. The letters were read within the context of a formal gathering of the baptized composed mostly of converts from paganism. These were household "churches" (cf. Gal. 6:10, "households of faith") whose members knew one another and who lived together in the same neighborhood or in the same district.

The fact that Paul established these "churches" (see his missionary journeys in Acts) amidst controversies arising, not really from Christianity itself, but from the Jewish roots of Christianity, one can understand why Paul is so "jealous" of their welfare. He is after all, the mother (cf. Gal. 4:19), the nurse (1 Thess 2:7, the NIV translates this "as a mother", but the Gk uses the word trophos, a nurse), even the bridegroom of these assemblies whom he wishes to present as a bride to Christ (2 Cor. 11:2). At a time when Paul's missionary efforts among the Gentiles faced competition from the representatives of the apostles from Jerusalem (these were the missionaries with documentary credentials probably coming from the Mother Church¹), Paul had to -- among others -- warn his assemblies of the notion that to be a Christian, one must first become a Jew. The Christian after all was not saved by the Law, but by the gratuitous love of God in Christ. But Paul's competition seemed to have better credentials than he had. Technically, he doesn't belong to the Twelve. Paul did not have the three qualities of an apostle, qualities that Luke enumerates in the Acts of the Apostles². Hence Paul had to prove that he too was an apostle since he "saw" the Lord and that he has received the ministry from the apostles themselves, was exercising it based on an agreement previously had with the mother Church in Jerusalem and that he was doing his job as a witness of the resurrection should.

Thus we come to Paul's letter to the churches in Galatia

The Letter To The Galatians

The letter to the Galatians is the fourth letter in the Pauline corpus. Its place there is not due to chronology. The Pauline corpus is arranged in such a way that the longest letter (to the Romans) is placed first and the shortest (to Philemon) is placed at the end (the Letter to the Hebrews comes after Philemon because its Pauline authorship has been, since early times, questionable). It is dated between 57 and 58 AD, right after 1 and 2 Thessalonians and 1 and 2 Corinthians, and before Romans and Philippians.

In form, the letter is irregular. It lacks the Thanksgiving of Paul which normally follows the Opening Greetings. But if one considers that the "turning away" of the Galatians from the one true Gospel is hardly something to be thankful for, then we begin to understand also the vehemence with which Paul addresses himself through this letter.

The Parts of the Letter to the Galatians:

Since we are here speaking of a letter, the normal parts would be: Opening Greetings, Thanksgiving, Body, Summary and Conclusion, Final Salutation. We already noted that there is no Thanksgiving in this letter, so we have the following outline:

To be noted in Paul's "Summary and Conclusion" is v. 11: "Take good note of what I am adding in my own handwriting and in such big letters." It would appear that Paul had been dictating the letter until 6:10 and only writes towards the end. This should not be a cause for surprise since this is quite ordinary practice during his time. (Note: There is another way of writing letters that is employed by Paul in Colossians and Ephesians: by amanuensis³.)

Again what I have called the "Final Salutation" is not like the ones where Paul includes his co-workers in greeting the addressees of the letter (compare this passage with 1 Corinthians 16:19-24 or Philippians 4:21-23).

The Body of the letter to the Galatians is a bit more regular in that one can easily find the Hortatory part of the letter beginning Chapter 5. This is a feature that one can easily discern in the letters of Paul: the "Moral Section" is marked by verbal imperative forms. This particular section of Galatians runs from 5:1 - 6:10.

The section from 1:6 - 4:31 can still be further sub-divided. Gal. 1:6 - 2:21, is filled with first person narratives. Here, the pronoun "I" predominates. Then from 3:1, Paul changes his tune. He begins to rebuke the Galatians and to cite passages from Scriptures, interpreting them and even bolstering his arguments by them. We can perhaps call 1:6 - 2:21 "Paul's Defense" since herein is contained Paul's defense of his ministry. We can call 3:1-4:31 "The Gospel of God's Liberating Love." This latter is the doctrinal part of the letter to the Galatians. In brief, let us summarize the parts of the Body of the Letter to the Galatians (1:6-6:10) thus:

Notes

1. Paul alludes to letters of recommendation presented by "others" in 2 Cor. 3:1. From the same letter, one can understand that the competition has been presenting Paul as inferior to the other apostles (cf. 2 Cor. 11:5). But what makes matters worse is that some people from his own churches seem to be siding with the competition (cf. 2 Cor. 11:4).
2. The qualities are the following: that one should have been among the disciples (a) during the Lord's ministry, (b) from the time of John the Baptist's ministry, until the time the Lord "was taken away from us;" and (c) he must be a witness of the resurrection (Acts 1:21-22). Paul would repeatedly insist that he "saw" the Lord.
3. This involved asking a companion scribe to write a letter supplying him only with the most essential ideas to be contained in the letter . The scribe would then compose the letter using the style and vocabulary of his patron. After composing the letter, the scribe then presents it to the patron for corrections and polishing.