Introduction
The
culmination of Paul’s argument in Galatians, and particularly from 3.1-4.31,
is: ‘For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm
therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ (Galatians 5.1). This
essay seeks to understand Paul’s opposition to a continuing custodial role for the
Law and a use of human philosophies to deal with sinful passions and desires. His arguments against these are found in Galatians
and Colossians. By focussing on the
problem of the Law and of philosophy, we can better understand Paul’s theology. He believed that the Gospel was the only way
to deal with sin not simply in terms of our actions but more basically in terms
of our sinful desires and passions of the flesh.
The
task ahead is to understand several large-scale matters in Paul’s theology,
those having to do with a right understanding of the human plight and a right
understanding of God’s solution. So much
Protestant theology has articulated this in terms of sin and justification, and
this, once justification is understood properly as both ‘justifying the sinner’
and ‘making the sinner righteous’,
can get to the heart of the matter.
However, I would argue that Paul’s understanding might better be
articulated as follows:
· the human plight is a bondage to both sinful acts and the sinful desires that produce them;
· God’s solution is both a forgiveness of sins or justification of the sinner and an inward transformation in Christ and through the Holy Spirit.
The
problem and solution are moral, not just juridical. The moral solution is not in custodial
oversight and regulations but in the person and work of Jesus Christ and the
Holy Spirit. If we misunderstand Paul on
these matters, we end up with a view of the Christian life as one of a sinner
continuing in sin but forgiven by God’s grace.
This is only partly true, but it misses the deeper truths that Paul is
at pains to explain and that I hope to articulate with a look at Galatians and
Colossians together.
Galatians
In
Galatians 4.1-2, Paul compares life under the Law to the life of a son who,
though he is the ‘owner of everything’ remains ‘under guardians and managers
until the date set by his father’. The
underage son had no rights but, like a slave, was under the hand of the
father. In fact, the paidagōgos that Paul mentions in
Galatians 3.24-25 as equivalent to the Law was a slave. The slave was, in some regard, was for a time
above the future heir.
The
nature of sonship was first introduced into the theological argument in
Galatians 3.7. The status of an underage
son, not just the role of the slave who has been entrusted with his care, is in
view a few verses later in Galatians 4.1-7:
I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child,
is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, 2 but he is under guardians and managers until the
date set by his father. 3 In the same way we also, when we were children,
were enslaved to the elementary principles [stoicheia] of the world. 4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent
forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we
might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit
of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a
son, then an heir through God.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who lived in the latter
part of the first century BC, argued that Roman law was far stronger than Greek
law in the power that a father could exercise over a son. Going back in time to the origins of Rome, he
described the laws enacted by Romulus for the Romans:
But the lawgiver of the Romans gave
virtually full power to the father over his son, even during his whole life,
whether he thought proper to imprison him, to scourge him, to put him in chains
and keep him at work in the fields, or to put him to death, and this even though
the son were already engaged in public affairs, though he were numbered among
the highest magistrates, and though he were celebrated for his zeal for the
commonwealth (Roman Antiquities 2.26.4).[1]
Dionysius even says that the law gave ‘greater power to
the father over his son than to the master over his slaves’ (2.27.1). The father could even sell his son three
times. Once sold, the son might regain
his freedom only to be sold again by his father. (After three times, the son would be
considered free.)
While a very ancient custom or law among the Romans, Dionysius
says, this law of paternity was reaffirmed when it was recorded in the Twelve Tables (in the fourth table) (2.27.4)
in the mid-5th c. BC.
Dionysius’ point is that this and other such laws are ancient and
foundational for the Roman people. He
refers to them as ‘ancestral customs and laws’ (tous patrious ethismous te kai nomous). I suggest that this gets at the meaning of ‘stoicheia’ in Galatians.
The Galatian church was at fault for returning to live
under the authority of the Law, such as the law of circumcision or the
observance of days, months, seasons, and years (4.10; 5.2, 6, 11-12; 6.12-15). These are Jewish laws and customs, but Paul
includes Gentile converts in regard to such when he says, ‘Formerly, when you
did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods’
(4.8). Such fundamental customs and laws
Paul calls stoicheia, which the ESV
translates as ‘elementary principles’ (4.3, 9; cf. Colossians 2.8, 20) having been set free from the elemental
customs and laws that guided and controlled a person.
Why would a person—or someone teaching others—want to
reintroduce the Law? The issue was not a
desire on the part of some to be Jewish and to make Gentile converts live under
Jewish laws. Paul’s argument does, of
course, have to do with the Law, but his more general reference to the stoicheia under which both Jews and
Gentiles lived means that the issue is more than Jewishness, or separating
Christians from Jewish particularity (food laws, circumcision, Jewish
calendrical observances). The issue was
that children need guidance and control; they need law. The issue was ethical, not cultural or ethnic. The reason for turning back to the Law was
that those promoting the Law for Christians hoped to introduce the sort of ancient
oversight that some were arguing control human passions and desires. He writes, ‘Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions...’
(Galatians 3.19a). One of the errors of
the so-called New Perspective on Paul was to focus on the ethnic element in the
view of Paul’s opponents rather than the moral point at issue. Both sides were attempting to answer the
question, ‘How do we deal with sin?’ The
opponents reintroduced the Law as a custodian. Paul had no issue with the moral
teaching of the Law; his concern was that seeing the Law as a moral custodian
of sinners totally undermined the Gospel.
It denied the effectiveness of Christ’s death and the power of the
Spirit in believers’ lives.
Thus, the reason that Paul so opposed a return to the
childlike existence of being under the Law was that the Law failed to help
people control their sinful desires. His
understanding of Christian freedom was that it did not simply free Christians
from the Law but that Christ and the Spirit solved the problem of sinful
desire. Much of the argument that Paul
makes in Galatians is toward this point.
He says,
For
through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. 20 I have been crucified with
Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I
now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself for me. 21 I do
not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then
Christ died for no purpose (Galatians 2.19-21).
And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its
passions and desires (Galatians 5.24).
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit,
according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world,
and not according to Christ (Colossians 2.8).
Paul mentions the stoicheia both in 2.8 (above) and again in 2.20:
If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations….
This verse indicates that, as in Galatians, Paul does still have the idea of laws in view. Whatever these stoicheia are, they require submission to their regulations. I will leave aside speculation at this time as to whether there is a personal side to these regulations that lies in Greek and Roman mythology, but Paul’s primary concern is to do with living under certain regulations. He provides an example of what he means, asking why they submit to rules such as
Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” 22 (referring
to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and
teachings? (Colossians 2.21-22).
What, then, is the connection between philosophy (2.8) and regulations (2.20)? The answer is that in antiquity philosophy largely had to do with the regulation of life, and Paul dismisses philosophy in this regard. For example, the Pythagoreans practiced self-control by looking at sumptuous food and not eating it (Diodorus Siculus, History 10.5.2), and they taught that indulging in the pleasures of love meant not being master of oneself (10.9.4). Pythagoras called his principles not ‘wisdom’ but ‘love of wisdom’--philosophia (10.10.1; cf. Col. 2.8). The Stoics opposed the Epicurean teaching that what is morally good is determined by the senses—in other words, that we should follow our desires and seek pleasure. They condemned ‘men who are slaves to their appetites and their lusts’ (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius CXXIV.3, ‘On the True Good as Attained by Reason’).[2] Instead of pleasure, the Stoics taught that reason, the mind not the senses, would guide people to what is truly good. Seneca says,
Reason, however, is surely the governing element in such a matter as this; as reason has made the decision concerning the happy life, and concerning virtue and honour also, so she has made the decision with regard to good and evil (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius CXXIV.4).
Such rules, claimed Paul, were entirely futile. The reason was that the problem of sin lay deeper than in actions but lay in desires. In Ephesians, Paul says,
we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out
the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath,
like the rest of mankind (Ephesians 2.3).
In his letter to Titus, Paul repeats a similar statement regarding the human predicament:
For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray,
slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy,
hated by others and hating one another (Colossians 3.3).
We
can state Paul’s soteriology in terms of the problem of sinful acts and the
solution of God’s justification of the sinner, but this neither touches the
depths of Paul’s theology nor the connection it had to Jesus’ ethic of the heart. The problem of the human condition for Paul
was of sinful desires and passions that led to sinful acts, and the solution from
God was to transform us in Christ and through the Holy Spirit.
This solution was diametrically opposed to submitting to philosophy just as much as to the Jewish Law. In Plato’s work called Phaedo, this function of philosophy is clearly stated:
And self-restraint—that which is commonly called
self-restraint, which consists in not being excited by the passions and in
being superior to them and acting in a seemly way—is not that characteristic of
those alone who despise the body [68d] and pass their lives in philosophy?” (Phaedo 68c, d).[3]
Perhaps the key to Paul’s criticism of philosophy is the idea of Protagoras that virtue can be taught:
Seeing then that so much care is taken in the matter of both private and
public virtue, do you wonder, Socrates, and make it a great difficulty, that virtue
may be taught?’ (Plato, Protagoras 326e).[4]
Or is there not, some one thing whereof all the citizens must needs partake, if there is to be a city?’ [and he answers] ‘justice and temperance and holiness—[325a] in short, what I may put together and call a man's virtue; and if it is this whereof all should partake and wherewith everyone should proceed to any further knowledge or action, but should not if he lacks it; if we should instruct and punish such as do not partake of it, whether child or husband or wife, until the punishment of such persons has made them better,[325b] and should cast forth from our cities or put to death as incurable whoever fails to respond to such punishment and instruction....’ (Protagoras 324e-325b).
Paul, on the other hand, criticises human precepts and teaching (Colossians 21-22). In fact, in Ephesians Paul speaks of being ‘learning Christ and being ‘taught Christ’:
But that
is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in
him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22
to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is
corrupt through deceitful desires, 23
and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of
God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4.20-24).
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave
them up to aa debased mind to do what ought not to be done (Romans 1.28).
The solution, worked out over many chapters, comes to this: a transformed mind. Paul says,
Do not
be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,
that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and
acceptable and perfect (Romans 12.2).[5]
… while the whole field of philosophy is fertile and productive and no portion of it barren and waste, still no part is richer or more fruitful than that which deals with moral duties; for from these are derived the rules for leading a consistent and moral life (De Officiis 3.5).[6]
Paul’s opposition to philosophy was that
it was in fact unfertile and unproductive in leading to a consistent and moral
life. The Gospel was not a philosophy
but was about Jesus Christ. It offered
not principles but a ‘power at work within us’ (Ephesians 3.20). It was the ‘power of God for salvation to
everyone who believes’ (Romans 1.16).
[1] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, trans.
Earnest Cary (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937).
[2] Lucius Annaeus
Seneca, Moral Letters to Seneca / Letters
from a Stoic, trans. Richard Mott Gummere (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1915).
[3] Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 1, trans.
Harold North Fowler; Introduction by W.R.M. Lamb (Cambridge, MA, Harvard
University Press, 1966).
[4] Plato, Plato in
Twelve Volumes, Vol. 3, trans. W.R.M. Lamb (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1967).
[5] Romans 7.7-25, I would argue, is about the person living under the
Law trying to tame desire. Romans 8.1-17
answers this problem with the solution in Christ and through the Holy Spirit.
[6] M. Tullius Cicero. De
Officiis, trans. Walter Miller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1913).