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  • From: Matthew Baldwin <baldwin AT apocryphum.com>
  • To: <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Corpus-Paul] Paul a human apostle not from humans
  • Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2003 20:50:05 -0500

Re: M. Nanos' query on Gal 1:1 (et cetera).

I have always assumed not that the "not from humans" and "not from a human"
stand within the structured oppositions of Paul's discourse which place the
first man apposite to the second, the old man against the new creation, the
flesh against the spirit, the law of sin and death against the law of
Christ, etc., including fundamentally created beings against the divine. In
the immediate context of Galatians, when he deploys the phrases he of course
signals his independence from the leaders of the assembly in Jerusalem--this
would be politically expedient given the probability that representatives
from that group (e.g. Cephas, men from James, false believers) had recently
claimed in Galatia that Paul's official status was subject to the
supervision of Jerusalem and that he had learned his message from them--but
he means much more as well: the gospel he preaches comes directly from God,
via the Lord, which is the ground of all apostolic authority; Christ, not a
human being or the message of a human, is revealed "in" Paul, through his
preaching, so that those who receive him receive a message grounded not on
(his own or any other) human authority but grounded in a spiritual,
effectively prophetic, authority. He did not "confer with flesh and blood"
but instead brings God's "spirit." His message does not please human (or
any other) beings (to bring in 1 Cor., the God-given message of the
crucifixion is a scandal, foolishness, and a hidden mystery), but it is all
the more trustworthy for this fact. The foolishness of preaching is that
the divine is directly disclosed in a human messenger. As he asserts the
nature of his own authority, he points out a first-level error of his
opponents; they rely on a "mediator:" human (or even angelic) tradition,
which is more than one, but God is one.


Matthew C. Baldwin
Assistant Prof. of Religion and Philosophy
Mars Hill College, Mars Hill, NC
Ph.D. New Testament University of Chicago




  • [Corpus-Paul] Paul a human apostle not from humans, Matthew Baldwin, 01/08/2003

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