Galatians Paper

St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians is one of his best works and reminds modern day Christians of the freedom that is found in Christ Jesus. Over time many theologians have written commentaries to expound upon the good news of the gospel in this work but no two men have ever grasped the concepts in St. Paul’s Epistle better than St. Augustine and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther. The timeless works of these men are still teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, believers in the twenty-first century. There are differences and similarities in how each man approaches their interpretation. For instance St. Augustine interprets the work, as he did with his book “Confessions,” through Plotinus’ Neo-Platonic view and Luther interprets the work through his doctrine of Law and Gospel. Differences aside, both men agree that the core of the message St. Paul conveys is the echo of Christ’s teaching in John 8:36, Jesus sets you free.
St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians serves both as a rebuke and a reminder to the churches he started in Asia Minor. The people of Galatia were young in their Christian walk and had not yet gained the gift of discernment that comes through experience. Paul had delivered the good news of the gospel of Christ to them, but his message was now being perverted by the Jewish Christian converts from Jerusalem. The free gift of salvation that Christ Jesus gives to God’s elect was intended for both Gentile and Jew. The Jewish converts didn’t yet grasp the freedom of a Christian. They felt that they were still bound to the law and were convinced that the Gentiles must therefore be bound to it as well. They took this belief to the churches of Galatia and were teaching circumcision to the Gentiles.
Paul was astonished that the people of Galatia had so quickly abandoned his teaching of freedom in Christ Jesus and proceeded to rebuke them. To prevent any future perversions Paul states, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed.” (Gal 1:8) He continued to explain to them that if they partake in circumcision, they are then bound to obey the whole law and that Christ is of no use to them. For if they could gain their righteousness through the law then Christ died for nothing. Furthermore, the law came to Moses 430 years after God had reckoned onto Abraham righteousness for his faith. Therefore the righteous live by faith not by the law.
After the rebuke section of his Epistle, Paul begins to remind them that they had received faith through the power of the Holy Spirit when he preached and reiterated the importance of Christ’s sacrifice. He continued to assure them that anyone who belongs to Christ must have their flesh crucified and now live life by the Spirit because life by the flesh is subject to the law and can only bring death and despair. But life by the Spirit sets you free from the law. Paul then encourages them to live like good Christians. According to the Apostle, a good Christian lives in joy, love, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
In the preface of his work “Commentary on the Letter to the Galatians,” St. Augustine observers:
“The reason the Apostle writes to the Galatians is so they may understand what it is that God’s grace accomplishes for them: they are no longer under the law.” (Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians p.125)
He further explains that the grace of the gospel that was preached to them by the Apostle had been abandoned. They had returned to the burdens of the law. Augustine recognizes that this line of thinking came from an influence outside their church.
The people of Jewish influence were claiming that, to be a Christian, you must both receive grace and be subject to the law. They were creating doubt in the minds of the church of Galicia in regard to the authority of St. Paul. Because of this, St. Paul reaffirms his authority.
“For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” (Gal 1:11-12)
By stating that his gospel had a divine, not a human, origin St. Paul claims that the authority of his gospel is infallible, in contrast to a human origin which is corrupt and self seeking.
In addition Augustine recognizes a theme of Christian correction in St. Paul’s Epistle: the correction of the Galatians, the correction of St. Peter, and the “how to” example explained in Gal. 6:1. The entire letter serves as a correction of the Galatians.
St. Paul observes St. Peter eating apart from the gentiles when a group of Jewish converts come to visit:
“When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.” (Gal. 2:11-13)

Previously St. Peter had lived like a gentile but now out of the fear of these men he returns to observing the law. St. Paul didn’t let this hypocrisy go uncorrected. In his letter to the Galatians Paul details his rebuke and correction of Peter which in Augustine’s view is being used as an example of how Christians should correct each other.
In the final chapter of Galatians St. Paul explains that the rebuking of a fellow Christian should be done out of love.
“Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” (Gal. 6:1-2)
He didn’t want them to neglect “fraternal correction,” however he didn’t want them fighting each other so he stresses that we should correct each other gently and in a spirit of love.
Augustine was influenced by Plotinus’ doctrine of neo-Platonism. Plotinus’ main concern was to detail the path of the human soul as it pursued union with God. In doing so he gave rise to his theories on the One, the mind, the World-Soul, and the place of humans in the scheme of things.
The One is the Light-Source out of which the world comes into existence. Although the One is the source of being, it does not posses being, as it is beyond being. The nature of the One is to create, thus becoming the Godhead. Its emanation is overflowing and leads to his next concept the Mind.
The Mind is the same as Plato’s concept of real ideas as it is a collection of infinite ideas and it gives the forms or templates for everything that actually exists in the world. The Divine Mind is the source of all other minds. To think rationally is to think the thoughts of God’s. The Mind feels both the urge to return to the Godhead and to create and its creation gives rise to Plotinus’ next concept the World-Soul.
The World-Soul is the agent of creation because the Mind is passive. Human souls are the highest level of creation. The World-Mind is composed of the same substance of the human soul and is eternal and immortal. The World-Soul feels a relentless urge to return home to the One. It also functions to create the material world as it is the energy and force that generates matter. Therefore Nature and all things in nature are the result of the overflowing World-Mind. Nature then becomes the furthest thing from the Godhead and therefore is evil. An enlightened soul views all made things as unworthy and shuns them.
A human’s place in this world is to nurse the soul as it journeys back to the Godhead. James L. Christian states in “The Wisdom Seekers”
We must disconnect from the world of trivial preoccupation; we must withdraw from the seductive environment of the senses that would detour our mind and body from the constant cultivation of our spiritual life. Our every effort is to become uncontaminated by flesh and body.” p.275
The soul’s job then is to, through its own free will, deny the material world thus purifying itself in the process of seeking the return to the Godhead.
Plotinus’ influence on St. Augustine is significant to the way he views freedom as presented in St. Paul’s Epistle, specifically the denial of the flesh and the journey of the soul back to God. According to St. Augustine the law is of the flesh as it came to humans through a human, Moses. Although God wrote the law he did so to serve as a disciplinarian for human life. Augustine believes that over time humans have added to it their own traditions making it worldlier. The law was never meant to impart righteousness onto the human soul but to humble it.
The law was ordained, therefore for a proud people so that they might be humbled by their transgression (since they could not receive the grace of love unless they were humbled, and without this grace they could not fulfill the precepts of the law at all), so that they might seek grace and not assume they could be saved by their own merits (which is pride), and so that they might be righteous not by their own power and strength, but by the hand of a mediator who justifies the impious. (Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians p.167)
For Augustine, St. Paul’s concept of freedom from the law and its oppression is denial of the flesh and the material world. For Augustine the freedom that Christ brings the human soul is grace giving a person the ability to deny the material world and return to God.
“Now a kind of death is brought about through the disciplinarian, with the intended result that the disciplinarian is not necessary, just as an infant is breast-fed with the result that it’s mother’s milk is no longer necessary, and one arrives at one’s homeland by ship with the result that the ship is no longer necessary. Another explanation is that through the law understood spiritually he died to the law, in order that he might not live under it carnally.” (Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians p.149)
St. Augustine also demonstrates his Neo-Platonic influence in book VIII of his “Confessions,” in which he is struggling with his conversion to Christianity.
“So let us hear no more of their assertion, when they observe two wills in conflict in one man, that there are two opposing minds in him, one good and the other bad, and that-they are in conflict because they spring from two opposing substances and two opposing principles.” (Confessions p.174)
Clearly in this passage Augustine is referring to the desire of the World-Soul to return to the One and the desire to create things in the material world. In a very Neo-Platonic way he calls the desire to return to the divine good and the desire for the world bad. In addition, the completion of his conversion demonstrates the purification of the soul on its journey to return to the One.
Through a Neo-Platonic lens Augustine interprets Paul’s message as one of freedom though denial of worldly things and desires so that a soul may be purified and focus solely on God. Augustine sets an example for his future parishioners in his “Confessions.”
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther often referred to St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians as “my Katie von Bora.” This Epistle captivated Luther’s heart and he preached from it habitually.
“But it is because, as I often warn you, there is a clear and present danger that the devil may take away from us the pure doctrine of faith and may substitute for it the doctrine of works and human of human traditions. It is very necessary, therefore, that this doctrine of faith be continually read and heard in public.” (Luther’s Works vol. 26 p.3)
According to Luther’s commentary, St. Paul’s Epistle is an argument establishing the doctrine of faith, grace, and the forgiveness of sins. It teaches Christians to distinguish between Christian righteousness and all other kinds of righteousness so that in the midst of despair through the temptation of the devil, a Christian may gain freedom by shifting their focus to this passive righteousness and cling to the promise of the gospel.
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore.” (Gal. 5:1)
In his commentary, Luther explains that the freedom that Paul is referring to in the above passage isn’t a political freedom, but the freedom of the spirit from the conscience.
“For Christ has set us free, not for a political freedom or a freedom of the flesh but for a theological or spiritual freedom, that is, to make our conscience free and joyful, unafraid of the wrath of God.” (Luther’s Works vol. 27 p.5)
Luther believes that the spirit must be trained so that it can recognize an accusation from the law and abandon the despair it causes for the freedom of Christ. His doctrine of law and gospel comes from this idea of oppression and freedom.
For Luther, the law is the law that Moses delivered to the Israelites in the Old Testament or anything else that puts a burden upon the human conscience and causes them to seek active righteousness, active in the sense that a person tries to obtain righteousness through their own works. The law serves as the “Hammer of God” hammering away at the flesh with its demands until it brings about a level of despair that crushes a person’s pride. Its purpose is not to bring about righteousness but to create in the human soul the need for the gospel.
What, then, was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. (Gal. 3:19)
The gospel is the promise that God gave through faith in his son Jesus Christ.
Faith in the gospel comes from the hearing of the word of God from a elected preacher causing faith to spring to life in the soul of the elect believer through the power of the Holy Spirit. This faith sets you free from the supervision and demands of the law obtaining righteousness passively not by your own merits.
“You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” ( Gal. 3:26-27)
The gospel is God’s free gift of reconciliation through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Through law and gospel Luther is able to comprehend Paul’s theology and detect God’s work in the lives of his parishioners through the example set forth in the Galatians Epistle. God comes down to us and uses the law to show humans that they are sinful, causing despair.
When a man’s sin has been disclosed by the law that the law shines into his heart, he finds nothing more odious and intolerable than the law.”(Luther’s Works vol. 26 p.320)
After being convicted by the law, a person is comforted by the mediator Jesus Christ.
That mediator is Jesus Christ. He does not change the sound of the law, as Moses did; nor does he cover it with a veil or lead me away from view of the law. But he sets himself against the wrath of the law and abolishes it; in his own body and by himself he satisfies the law. Afterwards he says to me through the gospel: “Of course, the law is horrible and wrathful. Do not be afraid , however, or run away; but stand fast. I take your place and make satisfaction to the law for you.” (Luther’s Works vol. 26 p.325)
For example, the Galatians were being told that they must become circumcised to be Christians. This is the law in action. But St. Paul delivers the promise of the gospel reminding them that righteousness is passive, not active there, by abolishing their obligation to the law.
Of the two commentaries discussed, I would choose Luther’s view to adopt into my own personal theology. Luther puts the obligation of salvation on God not humans; where as St. Augustine puts the burden on the human to nurse and purify the soul as it travels back to God. Being a human I would rather have the omnipotent being God in charge instead of a depraved, fallen being such as myself. Luther’s theology also unyokes a person from the law in a sense that it gives relief from the pressures of society. For instance, according to Luther, the gospel is there to give serenity and comfort to a soul. In contrast, St. Augustine’s commentary views the gospel as a guide on a tiresome journey.
I believe the freedom that is given through Christ is a better understood by Luther and is a better model for pastors to use with their parishioners. It sets them free from the standards of society, the law, and allows them to enjoy the things God has given us, as opposed to Augustine’s view of everything of the world being evil and should be shunned. Augustine’s view stresses a person out, as they are constantly worrying abou t being too worldly. Luther gives God’s grace and freedom to enjoy life and do what makes you happy as long as it doesn’t conflict with Christ’s new commandment of love God and neighbor.





















Bibliography:

Augustine, St. Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians Oxford Early Christian Studies
Translated by Eric Plumer

Luther, Martin Luther’s Works Vol. 26&27 Concordia Publishing House
Translated by Jaroslaw Pelkian

Augustine, St. Confessions Penguin Classics
Translated by R.S. Pine-Coffin

Christian, James L. The Wisdom Seekers Vol. 1 Thompson Learning Inc.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible New Revised Standard Version