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  • From: "Dieter Mitternacht" <dieter.mitternacht AT teol.lu.se>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: Galatian situation
  • Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 23:33:44 +0200


Dear Mark.
Thanks for your reply.
to # 1: I do not quite follow you in your support of my view. Could you
expand a little how you see ironic rebuke at work?
to # 2: You argue, that the advisors or 'influencers', as you call them in
your dissertation, are from Galatia.
If so, how do you think of the 'some-you', 'they-you' distinction that occurs
in the letter (1.7,9, 4.17 etc). And, if the influencers are from Galatia,
would that for instance means, that 4.21ff is also addressed to them? But
then, that would not fit with 4.28ff. I guess I am wondering, what is your
hard evidence?

to 3#: I think, what we can deduce from Paul's account in Gal 2.1-10 (which,
in my view, is a rather sophisticated report of Paul's implications of the
Jerusalem Council) is that, for Paul, the major issue at the Council was
circumcision. I know that some commentators find no use of the Council
decision on circumcision in Paul's argumentation and are baffled. Cf.
Witherington 13: "Had Paul known of and had the Jerusalem Church agreed to
such a compromise before Galatians was written it is very difficult to
explain why Paul did not refer to it..." I just cannot agree. Two reasons: a)
the rhetorical composition of the success story of 2.6-10 with which Paul has
been building up ethos is extraordinary. He says much more than just:
circumcision is not required for Gentiles. He comes out of his own report as
the Apostle of the uncircumcised. b) the issue at stake in Gal is not
disagreement on Council decision (with regard to circumcision at least, food
restrictions may be another matter), but with regard to the INTERPRETATION of
that decision. That's why I emphasized in my first input: Everybody agreed on
the insignificance of circumcision for salvation! Paul, however, uses the
Council report in 2.6-10 to claim his own authority as the Apostle of
uncircumcision, which, of course, if accepted, gives him the interpretation
privileges he needs for the following argumentation. In this sense, I think,
the Council report of 2.6-10 is vital for the whole letter.

to #4: YES!

to #5&6: In order to understand the causes of the collision of perceptions in
Gal I have in my own work been helped by research on social cognition by H.H.
Kelley. Acc. to Kelley, there are two kinds of causal schemata that determine
how people perceive causal relationships between persons and situations. The
two kinds are called: 'multiple necessary causes schema' and 'multiple
sufficient causes schema'. In short, people of the first kind perceive
success in life like olympic athlets. In order to succeed, they have to
fulfill every single requirement. People of the second kind, think of success
more in terms of driving their car to work: as long as sufficient care is
taken, they will get there. If the tires are bad, I have to drive a little
slower, use good roads etc. As long as the balance is right, there will be no
problem.
Now imagine different people conceiving of the same challenge from these two
different perspectives and you have a major collision of cognition.
to sum it up: in my construction Paul belongs to the first category (1 Cor
9.24, Gal 5.9), whereas the Galatians and the advisors belong to the second.
This turns the whole question of who is tolerant and intolerant on its head,
I know, but I think it is worth an effort to at least consider the
possibility.

-so much for now-

Dieter










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