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  • From: "Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT gvi.net>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Social context of Galatian's suffering
  • Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 11:55:55 -0500 (CDT)


Ray Pickett wrote:
>However, there is a sense in which crucifying the flesh with its
>passions and desires (5:24) is set over against inscribing the flesh of
>the penis. This is another reason I take Paul's struggle to be over
>pagans and not proselytes. I think Paul is operating with a typical
>caricature of gentiles as "sinners" (2:15). I don't think the language
>of the letter language gentiles who are at the final stage of the
>process of becoming Jews. Indeed, I would go so far as to transfer
>Stowers' argument regarding Romans to Galatians, namely that Paul's
>gospel is directed to gentiles and addresses one of the main topics of
>debate in hellenistic culture, the passions. Instead of indulging one's
>desires, those who belong to Christ bear oe another's burdens and so
>fulfill the law of Christ. When you get down to essentials, I don't
>think the "law of Christ" is materially different that the heart of
>Torah. The difference is the Spirit.
>
>I don't think you and I differ that much in how we are conceiving of
>Paul as a Jew and his relationship to Judaism. In fact, there isn't much
>you have said that I would take issue with. I guess I imagine that more
>conservative Jews would be more troubled by Paul than you do. The main
>difference in our views, I think, is that I imagine Paul to be mucking
>about with pagans and you think, in Anatolia anyhow, that Paul is
>dealing with gentiles who are about to complete the proselyte process
>and become circumcised. Is that how you see it?

Dear Ray,
This has been a fun and productive discussion, allowing us to consider
several important ways in which we imagine the social setting that might
make sense of Paul's rhetorical concerns as we understand them to be
expressed in this letter to Galatia. I do recognize that this has
dominanted the list, and take the relative silence to suggest it is time to
back off... but not just yet!

The topic of 5:24 again permits two very different inferences to be drawn.
When I read this and the surrounding verses, I imagine the language of an
honor contest in which completing proselyte conversion is accorded higher
honor in the context of the gentile addressees; and this implies a Jewish
communal setting.

I take vv. 24-26 to deal with the same topic as vv. 1-6, namely, that
gentiles in-Christ must not play this honor game according to the fleshly
markers by seeking to gain the more desirable status of proselytes, for to
do so is to delegitimate the meaning of Christ for themselves, who has
already granted them the status of righteous ones according to the
confession of faith. Flesh versus spirit language in this chapter falls
within this semantic domain: how your identity as righteous ones is
grounded.

Back to vv. 24-26. Here I take the passion in view to be the comparative
impulse of an honor contest, the impulse to gain honor, not to behave
lawlessly. V. 26 deals with social interaction--challenging and
envying=seeking to increase honor and resentment of the others honor
increase--so too do the vice lists and rest of the chapter. So I take Paul
to be saying, let us not put more value on the honor we might have or
acquire for ourselves according to this honor contest: not challenging one
another to get it, and not resenting what the other may have gained on
these terms. Thus the message of v. 25 is, if we are made righteous ones by
the Spirit (i.e., as gentiles confessing faith in Christ), then we should
now live accordingly, regardless of how others may regard us in terms of
the honor game of the present age (i.e., as merely gentiles, even welcome
guests, but not righteous ones if not completing proselyte conversion).

This reading is strengthened, I believe, by v. 15, which explicitly
describes an honor contest as though a fight among animals: "But if you
bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one
another." The call to freedom of vv. 13-14, and to serving one another
instead, lead to the intention of the Law for all humankind, whether Jewish
and thus obliged to observe it, or not. This strikes at the heart of the
matter for these gentiles, why do you seek identity as righteous ones when
you already have this status in Christ (God already knows you; 4:9), for
this negates the meaning of what you have; so just do it (5:25). Do not
such social contests for the acknowledgment of honored identity from ones
peers occupy the concerns of people within any social group? Is this not
the heart of the sermon to quit struggling with and judging your neighbor
(discriminating based on differences like who they are or not, what status
or goods they have or not, etc.) and just do what you know is right? And do
not hierarchical distinctions lead seemingly ineluctably to discrimination?
These are not Jewish problems, but human ones, nevertheless, in this case
the context is a Jewish communal one, it seems to me. Otherwise I cannot
understand the gentile preoccupation with advancing in honored identity by
way of circumcised flesh.

This amplifies the language of 5:2 and context: Christ is no advantage to
gentiles (has not rendered them righteous ones) if they yet seek to become
righteous ones by proselyte conversion, for this empties of meaning what
they have already gained (I take this to be the message of the letter: cf.
e.g., 1:7; 2:21; 3:4; 4:17-20; 5:7-12; 6:12-14). Thus the call is to resist
this method of identity acquisition of righteous standing, and wait for the
hope of righteous standing that will be revealed. And the paraenetic
concerns of 6:1-10 are specifically addressing the need for the members of
this subgroup, because of the marginality that will result from this
failure to gain honored identity on the prevailing dominant community's
terms, to thus help each other resist and persist until they reap what they
sow, ever careful not to be seduced again into this (most attractive)
contest on the prevailing terms.

Overall, I do not see the exigence of the letter involves Christ-believing
gentiles wishing to behave like pagans, or any concern with antinomianism,
you might say. Paul's call to freedom yet the turn to paraenetic concerns
in chapters 5 and 6, as you know, gave rise to the so-called two-front
theories, and in certain respects still guides the interpretive
assumptions, e.g., the way in which the passions of 5:24 are taken. This I
think in part is the result of mixing two different issues, acquisition of
identity, and observance for ones who have this identity. That is to say,
the question in Galatia is not Law-observance, because these gentiles are
not yet people of the Law, so the call to freedom is not from
Law-observance, and a logical concomitant concern to prohibit antinomianism
does not thus drive Paul's paraenetic material in chapters 5 and 6. Rather,
I take the call to freedom to be from the acquisition of identity as
Law-people, the righteous ones, the people of God, Israelites, etc., all
ways of describing the desirable identity that these gentiles wish to
acquire in order to be socially acknowledged as righteous ones in this
community, and thus entitled to full membership and access to goods, e.g.,
that would result. Paul calls them to perpetual marginality on the
traditional terms of this community. The paraenetic material in chapter 5
continues to explain why they must not acquire proselyte status, and that
of 6:1-10 how they need to help one another in the marginal/vulnerable
state that they will thereby remain. Paul is not and does not seek to be
free of this idenity, he is Jewish and obliged to observe the Law, even on
the logic of his rhetorical comment to the gentiles of 5:3! He must thus
explain that he too is marginalized for his position on their identity as
equal without being cirucumcised (5:11). They are both in this fix, though
they have arrived there differently, and remain different, i.e., Jewish or
not. But they are not to discriminate along this line.

Thus I take the socially bad news of the good news that Paul proclaims to
explain the letter's emphasis upon the crucified (rather than resurrected)
Christ and stigmatized Paul. This is what these gentiles have signed up for
by their faith in Christ by way of the messenger Paul. "But hang in there
and help one another, God will see to it that you reap what you sow, and
your righteousness will one day be acknowledged by all." Much like the
pleading of the psalmist or the message of Israel's prophets, it seems to
me.


Take care,
Mark Nanos

According to the flesh:
Jewish, businessman, author, and postgraduate student
University of St. Andrews and
Kansas City, Missouri

[No offense intended by my identification, and I hope none will be taken.
Just a little playful way I thought might provide a useful analogy in a
discussion of the semantics of identity in Galatians, or how we know one
another "according to the flesh," in view of the reminder to locate
ourselves, which can be taken to mean, i.e., tell each other who we are in
social (i.e. hierarchical) terms, so we can decide how much value to place
upon what we say according to the status ascribed or acquired. I am not
suggesting it should be otherwise; this is the nature of group identity,
i.e. ethnocentrism.]






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