Corpus-Paul

["Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT mail.gvi.net>]

Dear Moon,
Sorry to be so long getting to your welcome inquiry. You have well 
summarized my view, and I will try to enter a discussion of the 
questions you now raise below your comments.

You wrote:
> ever since I joined this list, I have been experimenting a new
> reading of Galatians, from the perspective of Mark Nanos, which
> has been expressed clearly and several times on the list. To summarize
> the perspective in two sentences:
>
> 1) Paul has in mind the status of Gentile believers in relation to the
> Jewish people, the people of the Law, when he talks about the Law. More
> specifically, Paul tries to say tha the Gentile believers are God's
> people, Abraham's children on the same level as the Jewish people,
> WITHOUT becoming the people of the Law (by getting circumcision, e.g.)
> 2) Paul does not view the Jewish life characterized by ERGWN NOMOU,
> hUPO NMON,etc. as inferior or immature in itself. There is no ethical
> evaluation of the life under the Law. Its evaluation is only from
> the viewpoint of salvation history: Once only the people of the Law
> were God's people, and Gentiles who wanted to be God's people must
> be circumcised and thereby becoming Israel, but now the time has come
> when Gentiles can be God's people through faith in Christ, without
> becoming the people of the Law.
>
> In this reading, Gal 4:5 TOUS hUPO NOMON EXAGORASHi (To redeem
> those under the Law) can be taken to mean
> "break the constraints or barrier set by the Law, which allows only
> the people of the Law the status of God's people". Here there is no
> ethical evaluation of those under the Law. But recently I encountered
> Gal 5:18 EI DE PNEUMATI AGESQE, OUK ESTE hUPO NOMON
> (If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law). This statement
> belongs to the section that talks about the conflict between the
> flesh and the Spirit, and the works of the flesh and the fruits of the
> Spirit (Gal 5:16-26). So, the implication of Gal 5:18 seems that
> the life by the Spirit is somehow against the life under the Law,
> as the life by the Spirit is against the life in the flesh.
> But then we have here an ethical evaluation of the life hUPO NOMON!
>
> To avoid it, I attempted to interpret 5:18 as follows:
>
> By the way (DE), if you are led by the Spirit, the [you are already God's
> people, and ] you are not under the Law [ and have no need to become
> the people of the Law by getting circumcision].
>
> This comment would seem out of the logical flow of Gal 5:16-28, but
> Paul might have wanted to make this comment when he had an opportunity to
> talk about "being led by the Spirit", which Paul said in Gal 3:5 was
> the evidence of Galatians' being Abraham's children. The proposition
> that "you are not under the Law, and have no need to become the people
> of the Law" is the main thrust of the letter.
>
> However, Roman 6:14 seems to be an obstacle to this reading:
>
> For sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not udner the Law
> but under grace.
>
> This verse seems to express a similar thought to Gal 5:18.
> Here not being under the Law is the cause for sin's not having
> dominion over the Romans. Gal 5:18 can be similary taken to imply
> that the life in the flesh is somehow caused by the life under the Law.
> If not being under the Law but under grace (through Christ) is the
> cause for sin's not being dominant, it implies that being under
> grace EMPOWERS people in a way that was not possible when they were
> under the Law.
>
> Then, for Paul, "Those under the Law" are not simply the Jewish people,
> the people of the Law, but those who were under the dominion of sin as
> well.
>
> I think this line of interpretation of Gal 5:18 and Rom 6:14 would
> be unacceptable to Mark Nanos. He might be able
> to think of "situational rhetoric" that may help us avoid the negative
> ethical evaluation of the life under the Law.

Yes, you have rightly anticipated my reaction. Let us leave aside, in 
trying to get at the situational discourse in which Gal. 5:18 is 
embedded, the issue of Romans and a seemingly similar comment, but to 
a very different rhetorical situation.

Translating 5:18 is a task in itself, with AGESTHE, "to bring" or "to 
lead" in the passive, and, as Burton notes, this conditional clause 
expresses a present particular supposition conveying a suggestion of 
continuance of action in progress (Galatians, p. 303). He thus 
translates as, "But if ye are continuing to be led by the Spirit, ye 
are not under the Law." Note the plural "you," although Burton 
interprets as though individual you's, instead of the group of 
gentiles in their group plight. Paul  is appealing to their own 
experience to corroborate his argument, as he had in 3:5, as your 
note.

In this case the conclusions that you though might be drawn in terms 
of "life in the flesh is somehow caused by the life under the Law" 
are removed. It is not a question of whether one is under Law--a 
Jewish person, that is--or under Spirit, for Paul as a Jewish person 
considered himself to be both. It is the question you rightly note 
underscores the entire letter, whether gentiles already in the Spirit 
("if we live [stand as righteous ones/justified] by the Spirit, if 
they would "walk by the Spirit" (5:25), should also need to become 
people of the Law, Jewish proselytes, thus under the Law.

No, Paul argues, and trying to be known "in the flesh"/"in human 
terms," that is, by reputation as Jewish proselytes rather than 
gentiles, will only engage these gentiles in the agonistic task of 
seeking honor from one another in terms of human institutions of 
differentiation according to the constraints of the present age 
("kosmos"), instead of being free to give honor to one another, their 
own status apart from proselyte status already acquired and ensured 
by Christ-association in this new creation community (of Israel and 
the Nations as one worshipping the One God together), an expression 
of the Spirit-life accompanying the manifestation of the dawning of 
the age to come (cf. 3:28; 6:14-15). (How's that for a sentence!). 
The desires of the flesh here are the desires that are driving the 
gentile addressees to seek acceptance, the desire for human 
acceptance, honor, goods, etc.; human competition for standing as the 
undisputed righteous ones of God, the stuff of many a socio-religious 
quarrel, in fact. These desires may not be wrong in and of 
themselves, but they lead in the wrong direction, as this vice 
catalogue stereotypically portrays them, when they motivate the 
addressees against the direction that the Spirit has already made 
manifest, their full membership already gained by way of Christ. To 
seek full membership (in this case for undisputed acceptance, honor, 
goods, etc.) by becoming proselytes is thus now, for themselves, to 
deny that this has already been gained, or as Paul puts it to Peter, 
to render gratuitous the meaning of the death of Christ (2:21; cf. 
3:1-5). If you read through the balance of ch. 5 and first 10 verses 
of ch. 6 in this light, you will see that appeal runs along this 
line, away from competitive evaluation of the other because of 
assurance of status and ultimate victory assured by God.

The context of the conflict of flesh and spirit is best put in 5:15, 
like an agonistic fight among animals for territory or goods, the 
flesh seeks human victory. This is not a Jewish but a human problem. 
In this case the issue is Jewish status for non-Jewish people. But it 
is not a problem for Jewish people more than gentiles, of course, as 
the study of any human social relations should make obvious. The Law 
actually helps reduce this conflict for Jewish people; that is why we 
teach children rightness and seek to have them run with the right 
crowd, for example, Jewish and Christian and Muslim and Hindu 
parents, et al. If we thought that doing so would make them worse we 
surely would not do so! Paul's language has been read as though a 
psychological profile of an individual's plight, when the issue in 
Galatians is very particular and about the status/non-status of a 
group of gentiles in Christ vis-a-vis the normative status of the 
interpretation of the present age within Jewish communities on this 
issue, versus the expectation of the age to come, which Paul believes 
has arrived, and calls his gentile addressees to comply with the 
implications of now for themselves.

I hope this is clear. Does it handle the problem that seemed to arise 
in your reading?

Regards,
Mark Nanos