Prof: Paul founded
several, probably small,
house churches in the area of
Galatia.
There's some debate about
exactly what part of Asia Minor
he's referring to because there
are different parts that were
called Galatia.
 
Of course the word
"Galatia"
you recognize probably just
comes from the word for
"Gaul",
that is the people who occupied
France,
later the Gauls were tribes
that tended to be in different
parts of Europe at different
times,
so there's part of Asia Minor,
that is,
modern day Turkey,
the central part of it that was
called Galatia after the Gauls.
Paul was there at some point,
we don't know exactly when,
he founded some churches there.
 
These were all Gentile
churches, there's no record at
all that he had any contact in
the area with Jews themselves,
and there is no record in the
letter to the Galatians that
he's addressing Jews at all in
the letter.
If you notice from the letter,
also, it's not directed simply
to one house church or even one
town.
Galatia refers to an area that
included different towns,
and so this is something like a
circular letter that would have
gone around to different parts.
 
Other traveling teachers
obviously have come along at
some point,
and quite reasonable enough,
they may themselves be Jewish
followers of Jesus or they may
be Gentiles themselves but who
became law observant when they
started following Jesus.
 
This would be natural.
 
I mean if you come along and
say, well you're now worshipping
the God of Israel,
now you're sort of claiming to
be followers of Abraham,
you're claiming to be children
of Abraham,
you're claiming to be followers
of a Jewish Messiah.
 
Well, it's okay that you're
followers and its okay that you
were baptized,
but if you really want to be a
full citizen in this group you
need to get circumcised like
other Jews do,
you need to keep kosher;
you need to follow the Jewish
law.
The Jewish ethnic laws are
written for Jews;
they're still enforced,
and if you want to be a part of
the people of Israel and follow
the God of Israel,
then keep the Jewish law.
 
A perfectly natural idea,
but it sends Paul way over the
edge.
 
He writes Galatians to this
group trying to convince them
not to accept this,
what he calls a new teaching or
a different Gospel,
and this is where Paul is in
his most angry and most
vituperative of just about all
of his letters.
 
We're going to go through
several parts of it because what
I'm going to point out right now
is, how did Paul try to convince
them?
 
Look at Galatians with me,
we're going to skip around in
several parts.
 
Galatians 2:15,
the first two chapters you've
already read because we read it
at the very beginning of the
semester,
this is when Paul tells the
story of where he was in
Jerusalem,
where he was in Damascus,
how he got his own Gospel.
He emphasizes his independence
from the leadership of the
churches in Judea,
Peter, James,
John, precisely because it may
well have been that the people
who came to Galatia after he did
and were teaching these people
otherwise,
they might have said,
well Paul, sure,
he told you some of the Gospel,
but Paul's not really one of
the original Apostles.
The original Apostles are
Peter, and James,
and John, and we represent
their point of view.
Paul initially separates
himself from that at all and
says,
I didn't get my Gospel from
Peter, James,
and John, they are not the core
Apostles,
I am just as much an Apostle as
they are,
I got my Gospel straight from
Jesus.
 
Then he goes on to talk about
the law 2:15,
"We ourselves are Jews by
birth and not Gentile
sinners."
 
"Gentile sinners"
was just like two words that
almost automatically went
together in some Jewish rhetoric
and propaganda in this period.
 
Being outside of Israel,
being outside of the people of
God made you a sinner
practically in itself,
at least according to some
points of view,
and Paul tends to share that
point of view because he uses
"Gentile sinners"
himself more than once.
Yet we know that a person is
justified not by works of law
but through faith in Jesus
Christ.
We have come to believe in
Jesus Christ so that we might be
justified by faith in Christ and
not by doing the works of the
law because no one will be
justified by the works of the
law.
 
But if in our effort to be
justified in Christ we ourselves
have been found to be sinners,
is Christ then a servant of
sin?
 
Certainly not!
 
But if I build up again the
very things that I once tore
down, then I demonstrate that
I'm a transgressor.
For through the law I died to
the law so that I might live to
God.
 
I have been crucified with
Christ.
It is no longer I who live but
it is Christ who lives in me.
The life I now live in the
flesh I live by faith in the Son
of God.
 
For if justification comes
through the law then Christ died
for nothing
That's a pretty big statement.
If the law gets you anywhere,
then Christ didn't need to die
at all.
 
Notice what he says in 3:12,
he gets even worse with what he
says--3:12:
The law does not rest on faith,
on the contrary,
whoever does the works of the
law will live by them.
 
Notice he's separating out
faith and law,
that's not something that
almost any Jew would do.
The idea that somehow you don't
have faith in God because you
keep kosher is ridiculous to a
lot of Jews.
In fact you're keeping kosher,
you're keeping the law is an
expression of your faith in God.
 
And so Paul's saying this,
it might sound almost
commonsensical if you've been
raised in a Christian church.
But if you put yourself in the
mind of a Jew of the first
century,
hearing this,
that somehow the law and faith
are opposed to one another,
is just very shocking.
 
Look at 3:15:
Brothers I give an example from
daily life, once a person's will
has been ratified no one adds to
it or annuls it.
 
The promises were made to
Abraham and to his offspring.
It does not say "and to
offsprings."
And what he's doing is he's
playing on the Greek word
"seed"
is what is translated here as
"offspring."
 
He's saying this was given to
Abraham's seed and the Greek
word is singular,
"seed,"
it doesn't say
"seeds,"
so that means that it has to
refer to Christ.
Christ is the seed of Abraham
not all the people of Israel.
My point is this,
the law which came four hundred
thirty years later,
does not annul a covenant
previously ratified by God so as
to nullify the promise.
For if the inheritance comes
from the law it no longer is
from promise,
but God granted to Abraham
through promise.
 
Notice what he's doing here,
he differentiates the law from
promise, which would be very odd
coming for a Jew at the time.
Separating off the law from
faith, separating off the law
from promise is counter
intuitive in Jewish theology at
the time.
 
Then what he also says is the
law came 430 years after God
made his first covenant with
Abraham.
Abraham just--God justified
Abraham by faith,
although he was circumcised
later, but the circumcision was
not what justified him;
it was his faith that justified
him, even Abraham.
 
He takes all the way back to
the father of the Jews and says,
God made a commitment with
Abraham,
the law came 430 years later,
so the law is a late comer in
the whole system of how God was
dealing with people.
Then look at what he says in
3:19 right after that,
"Why then the law?"
 
In other words if you had the
covenant with Abraham why did
the law come about anyway?
 
You didn't need the law to have
the covenant according to his
theology.
 
He says,
Why then the law?
It was added because of
transgressions until the
offspring would come to whom the
promise had been made,
and it was ordained through
angels by a mediator.
Now this is really weird.
 
"The law came about for
transgressions."
Now there's a way to--there's a
couple ways you could understand
this,
and the way most modern
Christians read it is the law
came about to keep people from
sinning.
 
You know what you're not
supposed to do by reading the
law,
so the law comes back to keep
you from transgressing,
but I don't think that's what
Paul's doing because precisely
in Romans 5:20 when he makes a
similar statement,
it's very clear there that the
law came in to increase
transgressions.
What he's saying here is
somehow the law came in after
the covenant was already
established and it was precisely
brought in through--
much later and it was added to
increase sin in the
world.
It's a very odd thing to say.
 
Notice what he also says,
"It was ordained by
angels."
 
I've talked about this before
when we talked about the speech
of Stephen.
 
Paul's saying that God wasn't
even the one who gave the law to
Moses, it was given by angels.
 
He says, "It was ordained
through angels by a
mediator."
 
Well who was the mediator?
 
Moses right?
 
"Now a mediator involves
more than one party;
but God is one."
 
That's odd, but it seems to
express what would have been
sort of a legal theory in the
ancient world.
For example,
if I want to sign a contract
with all of you we don't have to
have a mediator,
you just basically choose one
of you or a committee of you to
represent you,
and I represent myself.
If I want to sign a contract
just with Jude,
then we don't need a mediator,
we just sign the contract
together.
 
But if you have two groups of
people wanting to come to some
kind of agreement to have a
contract,
a covenant, you need a mediator
who can be in the middle and not
represent either of their
interests but be neutral.
What he's saying is that
there's a mediator here,
all the Jews know that Moses
was the mediator,
but if the contract was between
God--
if the law was between God and
the Israelites you didn't have
to have a mediator,
and he says that's precisely
why they had to have mediator,
it wasn't between God and the
Israelites,
it was between the angels and
the Israelites.
 
Notice how demoting this is,
how a certain piety of the law,
you believe the law came 430
years after the covenant,
it was given by angels to
Moses, not even directly from
God,
and it was given in order to
make sin worse not to get rid of
sin.
Look what he says in 3:23,
he's digging himself deeper
though.
 
He's saying more and more
negative things about the Jewish
law.
 
3:23: "Before faith came
we were imprisoned and guarded
under the law until faith would
be revealed."
Now the law becomes a prison
guard that keeps humanity,
and he seems to talking about
all of humanity not just Jews,
somehow the law,
the Jewish law put all of
humanity in prison and kept it
there all those years.
Look what he says in 3:24,
"Therefore the law was our
disciplinarian until Christ came
so that we might be justified by
faith."
 
Well the word
"disciplinarian"
there is the Greek word
"pedagogue."
Does anybody have pedagogue in
your Greek translation there at
3:24?
 
Does anybody have a different
translation at 3:24 then
disciplinarian?
 
Yes sir in the back.
 
Student: 
>
Prof: What is 3:24,
"Therefore the law was
our--
Student:  The law was
>
 
Prof: Okay,
it was put in charge,
so it's someone charge.
 
It refers to the slave,
because these were almost
always slaves,
who took care of young boys
when they were going to school.
 
A child would,
up to a certain age,
would under the care--obviously
they were talking about upper
class people who had slaves and
could--
and would put their children
into the care of nurses and
slaves.
 
The child at a very young age
would be under the care of a
nurse,
but at a certain age,
maybe five or six,
the child, the boy especially,
would be put in the charge of a
slave who basically was assigned
to watch over the kid.
 
The "pedagogue,"
contrary to the way this has
come into English as pedagogue,
didn't refer primarily to the
teacher of the child.
 
That was a different term.
 
The pedagogue was a slave who
just basically took care of the
boy,
made sure the boy--carried the
kid's books to school,
had the tablets,
the wax tablets they wrote on
and the blocks they wrote on,
kept the kid's stuff in a
little satchel,
and watched the kid,
took the kid to school to make
sure the kid got there safely,
make sure no older boys were
bullies or make sure the kid
didn't get into any trouble,
and then stayed in school and
sat--maybe sat in the classroom
or sat outside the classroom
until school was over,
then took the kid back home,
made sure the kid did his
homework.
 
And according to a lot of Greek
literature,
pedagogues are--not only are
they slaves,
they're ugly,
we have lots and lots of
artistic representations of
pedagogues in ancient terra
cotta and that sort of thing,
and they're usually depicted as
this ugly,
stumped slaves,
and they're often depicted as
mean and cruel,
and they beat the kids all the
time.
By calling the law a pedagogue
here,
I don't think Paul's saying
that the law was our teacher,
I think what he's saying is the
law is that slave,
a serviling who kept us
basically enslaved;
remember he just said we're
prisoners.
Look what he says in 4:3,
"So with us when we were
minors we were enslaved to the
elemental spirits of the
cosmos."
 
The term "elemental
spirits"
goes back to something I talked
about previously;
I think it was in my lecture
when I talked about Stephen's
speech in Acts.
 
This is that Greek word
stoichea,
stoichea is a very,
very big major Greek word,
it can used in all kinds of
ways.
For one thing it just referred
to ranks of soldiers.
If soldiers were lined up in
different ranks those ranks were
stoichea, rows.
 
It could refer to all kinds of
other rows,
it could refer to letters of an
alphabet that could be talked
about as stoichea because
what do you do,
you put them--you put all the
letters of the alphabet in a row
and you--
and there are different
elements.
 
Stoichea also could
refer to what we would call
chemical elements,
the table of elements;
those would be called
stoichea in Greek.
For example,
they took wind,
fire,
water, and air,
and sometimes there were other
four--
earth sometimes,
you've heard this theory right,
that the Greeks believed and
the ancient people believed
there were four fundamental
elements of all matter,
and those--or sometimes they
said six,
sometimes eight,
sometimes others,
but quite often they'd settle
on four classical elements--
and they believed that
everything was made up of some
combination of earth,
fire, water,
and air, and everything is some
matter though.
The thicker stuff has more
earth in it and less air,
the lighter stuff has more air
in it and less earth,
but all matter is made up of
these four elements.
These elements constitute the
whole cosmos but what's really
interesting is,
at least a lot of people in the
ancient world believed that
these--
this term also referred to the
sort of angelic or demonic,
or godlike beings who
constitute the universe also.
In other words,
they didn't believe necessarily
that air was simply an inert
material.
It also was a god or some kind
of demonic being.
Or some people would say that
each of these different layers
of the universe,
say the layer that is earth or
the layer that is water,
or the layer that is air,
or the top layer that is fire
or ether,
that those are all divine
beings themselves,
or they could talk about them
as being not divine beings
themselves but being ruled by
divine beings.
Even Jews, for example,
would think that there were
certain angels who were in
charge of different rows of the
universe.
 
For example,
if you--this is what we talked
about in Gnosticism,
if you wanted to go to God,
according to some magical texts
for example,
you had to figure out the
tricks to go through the
different ranks of demons or
angels that lived in the sky
between you and God.
 
One way to do that is to learn
the secret passwords,
so magical texts often will
give you what look like
passwords,
because we've had this
password, and when your soul is
flying up to God,
you can give the password to
whatever demon or angel is
guarding different gates between
you and God.
These stoichea refers to
elements of the universe in a
physical sense but it also
refers to these spiritual beings
that rule the cosmos,
or even make up the stuff of
the cosmos and a lot of ancient
thought.
Now notice what Paul is saying
here,
"When we were under the
law we were enslaved to the
elemental spirits of the
universe."
Being under the law is being
enslaved to these,
and he says you want to go back
to that slavery?
Wait a minute,
what are the Galatians doing?
They're not saying,
we want to go back and serve
idols.
 
What Paul is saying is,
when you served idols you were
actually serving the
stoichea of the universe.
They weren't real gods they
were fake gods.
These are some kind of angelic
beings or demonic beings.
Paul, I think,
believed they were real beings
behind idols but they were
demons or something like that,
and the stoichea were
those.
The Galatians are not wanting
to go back to idol worship
apparently, what are they
wanting to do?
They're just thinking,
well we're going to keep the
Jewish law.
 
But Paul, not they,
equates keeping the Jewish law,
if you're a Gentile,
with going back to idolatry.
That is radical,
for any Jew in the first
century to equate law
observance, keeping kosher,
being circumcised with actually
worshipping idols.
That's radical,
and yet that's what Paul's
doing here in Galatians.
 
I say that because in 4:8 he
says,
"Formerly,
when you did not know God you
were enslaved to beings that are
by nature not gods."
That is you're enslaved to
demons or some kind of other
being like that.
 
"Now however that you've
come to know God,
or rather to be known by God,
how can you turn back again to
the weak and beggarly
stoichea?"
He's equating their attempt to
keep kosher or be circumcised
with their returning to
idolatry.
Then look what he says in his
little exegesis in 4:21,
here he has a good ten verses
that are important so I'm going
to read the whole ten verses.
 
Tell me, you who desire to be
subject to the law will you not
listen to the law?
 
[He's going to give you a
little exegesis here.]
For it is written that Abraham
had two sons,
one by a slave woman and the
other by a free woman.
One, the child of a slave,
was born according to the
flesh, the other,
the child of the free woman,
was born through the promise.
 
Now this is an allegory,
these women are two covenants.
One woman in fact is Hagar from
Mt.
Sinai bearing children for
slavery.
Wait minute,
Hagar is the slave of
Abraham not his wife.
 
Sarah is the wife of
Abraham not his slave.
Isaac, who then had Jacob,
who then had Joseph and all the
brothers, from whom the people
of Israel came,
came through Sarah not Hagar.
 
According to Jewish mythology
who were the descendants of
Hagar and Ishmael?
 
Student: 
>
Prof: Pardon?
 
Who are the--
Student: 
>
 
Prof: Not Muslims but
Arabs.
Yes--because not all
Muslims--but according to Jewish
mythology Arabs are the ones who
descend from Hagar and Ishmael,
not the Jews.
 
Paul equates Hagar with Mt.
 
Sinai, which is the mountain
from which Moses got the law.
Why does he connect Hagar who
represents the non-Jews with
Sinai which represents the law?
 
You would think he would
represent Sarah with Sinai.
"Now Hagar is Mt.
 
Sinai in Arabia and corresponds
to the present Jerusalem
..."
 
Jerusalem?
 
Sarah should correspond to
Jerusalem, "...
for she is in slavery with her
children, but the other woman
corresponds to the Jerusalem
above."
Now he gets another Jerusalem,
now there's some kind of
heavenly Jerusalem
that's--what's represented by
Sarah."
 
She is free and she is our
mother.
For it is written,
"Rejoice,
you childless one who bear no
children,
burst into song and shout,
you who endure no birth pains,
for the children of the
desolate woman are more numerous
then the children of the one who
is married."
Now you my friends are children
of promise like Isaac.
Now he's talking to Gentiles
here, he's not talking to Jews.
He's saying,
you Gentiles are children of
promise, you're connected to
Isaac.
"But just as that time the
child who was born according to
the flesh persecuted the child
who was born according to the
spirit,
so it is now also."
Wait a minute,
it seems like he's accusing the
Jews of persecuting non-Jews,
followers of Jesus.
What does the scripture say?
 
"Drive out the slave and
her child for the child of the
slave will not share the
inheritance with the child of
the free woman."
 
So friends we are children not
of the slave but of the free
woman.
 
Drive out the slave woman.
 
If he's equated the slave woman
Hagar with Mt.
Sinai, with Jerusalem in Judea,
it seems like he's equating
Hagar with the Jews,
at least the law observant
Jews, and he says,
drive them out?
That is very radical.
 
And then finally he ends up
later in Chapter 5:4 and then
I'll move on,
"You who want to be
justified by the law have cut
yourselves off from Christ,
you have fallen away from
grace."
Notice he's not saying that
you're going to fall away from
grace if you sin.
 
That doesn't seem to be the
problem.
He's saying,
if you Gentile followers of
Jesus even attempt to keep the
Jewish law, you'll be cut off
from the grace of God.
 
That's radical.
 
It's no wonder that all this
stuff got Paul into trouble.
Now we don't know what happened
with Paul's letters to the
Galatians.
 
We don't know whether he
convinced them that he was right
and the other people who were
coming--
telling them--teaching them to
obey the law were wrong.
We don't have second Galatians
unfortunately,
or any other letters.
 
It has been pointed by some
scholars that Paul never talks
about the collection that he
later takes up which--
among his different churches
which I'll talk about in a
minute.
 
He never talks about that in
Galatians,
nor does he ever mention the
area of Galatians again to any
of his other churches in other
areas,
and that's led some people to
suggest,
well maybe Paul lost the battle
in the churches of Galatia,
and, therefore,
he just didn't deal with them
anymore after that.
 
We have references in his his
letters to churches in Achaea,
like Corinth.
 
We have reference to his
churches in Macedonia,
we have reference to churches
in Ephesus,
we have reference to different
churches where we know Paul
founded churches,
but we don't ever have any
reference elsewhere to Galatia.
 
Some people have said,
maybe he lost the battle,
maybe he lost the argument,
and that's why we don't hear
anymore about it.
 
But we don't know that for sure.
 
The letter though,
if Paul went around teaching
this kind of stuff,
it clearly, though,
got him in trouble with other
people who just thought,
not only was this wrong but it
sounded antinomian,
it sounded anti-law in general,
and that leads us to Romans.
Now turn over to Romans.
 
Romans is written in a very
different situation,
but let's first just see,
what does Romans tell us about
Paul's reputation with regard to
the law?
Look in Romans 3:8.
 
Now in chapter 3 he's talking
about a lot of different things
about justification by faith,
apart from law,
but just in verse 8 I'm just
going to take a clue out here,
"But why not say,
as some people slander us by
saying that we say,
let us do evil that good may
come?
 
Their condemnation is
deserved."
Paul denies the charge,
but is it very hard to imagine
why some people who may have
heard about the kinds of stuff
he says about the law,
the law was brought in to
increase transgression,
and then transgression
increased so that God could have
more grace and mercy?
Doesn't that sound like Paul is
saying, let us do evil so that
good may come?
 
Apparently some people thought
it did,
so Paul brings up the charge
and denies it,
but it shows that Paul had
already developed by this time
some kind of antinomian
reputation.
Notice what he says in Romans
6, in the sixth chapter:
"What then are we to say,
should we continue in sin in
order that grace may
abound?"
It sounds like that would be
the logical outcome,
Paul.
 
You've just said several times
that as sin increased in the
world grace increases more,
so let's sin.
We're not saved by doing good
anyway, we're not saved by
following the law,
so let's just ignore the law
and sin, and grace will abound.
 
Paul again seems to be echoing
something that could be a very
logical charge against him.
 
How does he answer it?
 
"By no means!
 
How can we who died to sin go
on living in it?"
Here he goes on to answer the
charge in the rest of Chapter 6
by saying,
by coming--by being baptized in
the Christ you have so vacated
the whole realm of sin that it's
inconceivable that you could go
back to it.
As long as you're in Christ you
can have nothing to do with the
whole world of sin.
 
He gets rid of that charge,
but we can see that some people
saw that there was a logical
connection between some of the
things he had said in places
like Galatians.
He has to deny it.
 
He does the same thing in 6:15,
"What then?
Should we sin because we are
not under law but under
grace?"
 
He says no, no,
no, no by no means;
that's not what I mean.
 
You can see how he got the
accusation.
Then in 3:20,
some of the other places he
talks about the law in Romans.
 
"For no human being will
be justified in his sight by
deeds prescribed by the law,
for through the law comes
knowledge of sin."
 
You can hear Paul's gears
working, he's trying to nuance
some of the things he's saying
about the law so that it doesn't
sound quite as radical as he had
sounded in Galatians,
and that he may likely have
sounded elsewhere.
Right here he admits,
therefore, well the law is good
for some things,
through the law came knowledge
of sin, so that's a good thing.
 
Look what he says in 3:21,
right below that:
"But now apart from law
the righteousness of God has
been disclosed,
and it is attested by the law
and the prophets."
 
So both the Torah,
the law, and the prophets at
least bears witness to the
righteousness of God,
because, as you'll notice,
throughout both Galatians and
Romans,
Paul quotes Jewish scripture
more than he does in any of his
other letters.
It's precisely when Paul is
dealing with the problem of what
is the relationship between
non-Jews to Jewish law that Paul
actually quotes Jewish scripture
the most,
and that's in Galatians and
Romans.
Here he's saying we can look at
the law and the prophets to
learn about this doctrine of
righteousness that I'm now
saying to you because the law
will attest to it.
It's a much more positive view
of the law.
And then he also says,
we uphold the law by doing
this.
 
Look at 3:27:
Then what becomes of boasting?
It is excluded.
 
By what law?
 
By that of works?
 
No, but by the law of faith.
 
For we hold that a person is
justified by faith apart from
what is prescribed by the law.
 
Or is God the God of the Jews
only?
Is he not God of the Gentiles
also?
Yes, of Gentiles also,
since God is one.
Look at the last verse of that
chapter: "Do we then
overthrow the law by this
faith?"
You would have thought from
things that he said in Galatians
that the answer to that would be
"yes."
"By no means,
on the contrary,
we uphold the law."
 
And then look one more place
here 7:12,
Romans 7:12 --back up one verse
to verse 11,
"For sin seizing an
opportunity in the commandment
deceived me and through it
killed me."
Notice what happens here.
 
Sin is talked about as this
agent of the cosmos;
sin is almost like one of the
stoichea,
kind of an intelligent being.
 
This is actually a debate among
scholars of Paul.
Some people really believe that
sin is a hypostatized
intelligent being of some sort
in the cosmos.
Other people say no,
no, Paul's talking
metaphorically when he talks
about sin in these words,
and we need to see sin not at
this actual hypostatized being
but simply a metaphor,
a metaphorical being.
So scholars themselves debate
about what Paul means when he
talks about sin as this agent.
 
At least he talks about sin as
the agent who uses the
commandment, uses the law--where
was I just reading?
Student:  7:11.
 
Prof: 7:11 yes,
"Sin seizing an
opportunity of the
commandment,"
so sin uses the commandment to
deceive the human beings and
kill them.
 
Paul is not talking about
himself personally here;
he's talking about himself as a
representative of all human
beings.
 
Then he says,
"So the law is holy and
the commandment is holy,
and just, and good."
Doesn't it strike you that that
little addition of verse 12
doesn't seem to follow so
logically from verse 11?
How can the law be holy,
and just, and good if it's
deceiving people?
 
What's clearly going on is Paul
is backing off the more radical
things he's said about the law
and trying to nuance this,
and that's the question I'll
ask.
Let's read the rest of that,
For we know that the law is
spiritual but I am of the flesh,
sold into slavery under sin.
I do not understand my own
actions, for I do not do what I
want;
I do the very thing I hate.
Now if I do what I do not want
I agree that the law is good,
but in fact it is no longer I
that do it, but the sin that
dwells in me.
 
For I know that nothing good
dwells within me,
that is in my flesh.
 
I can will what is right,
but I cannot do it.
For I do not do the good I
want, but the evil I do not want
is what I do.
 
Now if I do what I do not want
it is no longer I that do it but
sin that lives within me.
 
So I find it to be a law that
when I want to do what is good,
evil lies close at hand.
 
For I delight in the law of God
in my inmost self but I see in
my members another law at work
with the law of my mind,
making me captive to the law of
sin that dwells in my members.
Well all of that is very
confusing, and if you want to
get a PhD you can do the
exegesis of it for the rest of
your life.
 
The main thing I'm pointing out
here is that Paul is being very
careful to nuance a
straightforwardly negative
depiction of Jewish law and say
that,
well it's still good in a sense.
 
It still is true,
it's still holy,
and he's doing this because I
think he knows that he's got a
reputation as being anti-law and
being antinomian.
So why these differences
between Romans and Galatians?
Well we need to understand a
little bit more about the Roman
situation.
 
First, Paul did not found the
church in Rome;
it grew up on its own by other
people.
According to church tradition,
according to Roman Catholic
tradition,
Peter, the Apostle Peter
founded the church in Rome,
but that's tradition and we
don't have any historical data
to really prove it.
And I personally believe that
probably the church in Rome was
started by anonymous Jews who
happened to hear about Jesus and
went to Rome and then started
little house groups of Jesus
followers on their own,
and then Apostles came later,
just like Paul seems to have
gone there later.
The Roman church,
at the time Paul is writing
this letter, is by this time no
longer a purely Jewish group.
They now seem to be
predominantly Gentile,
with some Jews in the churches
in Rome also.
And remember we're not talking
about one church building or
even one house church;
we're talking about probably
several different house churches
that met in different people's
houses,
or in their apartments,
in tenements and these sorts of
things.
Maybe some of them had more
Judaism than others.
But the overall church in Rome
is by now apparently Gentile and
when Paul writes Romans he
directs his rhetoric to
Gentiles.
 
He does say hello to some Jews
in the last chapter.
He greets the Jews who are
there that he knows.
But if you look through the
rhetoric of Romans,
more and more of us scholars
are convinced that the main
recipients of Paul's rhetoric is
supposed to be Gentile believers
in Jesus.
 
Why does Paul write this letter?
 
Several different reasons,
not just one.
For one thing he can't write
like he's written most of his
other letters as talking to a
group he founded.
He can't talk about himself as
their father in the faith in
that way,
he can't set himself up as
their Apostle in a
straightforward way because he's
never been there at this point.
 
He didn't found the churches
there,
so he's writing a letter,
this is one of the very,
very few things we have of
him--well the only letter
perhaps where he writes a letter
to a church that he himself
didn't found,
so that's important.
What do we find out?
 
Why is he writing it?
 
Look at 15--Romans 15:22:
 
This is the reason I have so
often been hindered from coming
to you.
 
[so he's wanted to go to Rome]
But now with no further place
for me in these regions,
I desire, as I have for many
years,
to come to you when I go to
Spain.
 
For I do hope to see you on my
journey and to be sent on by you
once I have enjoyed your company
for a little while.
Paul sees himself as the
Apostle to the Gentiles,
as Peter was the Apostle to the
Jews.
So why not?--I mean he didn't
found the church there but if he
believes that he's already done
all this missionizing in Asia
Minor and Greece.
 
It's kind of ironic for Paul to
say this because what had he
actually done?
 
Christianity wasn't this big
movement with thousands of
people everywhere.
 
It wasn't even like there was a
Christian church in each city or
town, but Paul seems to act like
he's done everything he can in
the East.
 
Yep, everything in Greece and
Asia Minor, my churches are all
doing great, I got to get out of
here, my work here is done.
And so he's taking off to the
west.
It's kind of exaggerating,
I think,
just exactly what he's
accomplished,
but in his mind by planting a
few house churches in major
cities,
he's sort of done the first job
of evangelization that he saw
himself called by God and sent
out to do.
 
Now he's looking to the west,
and he wants to go to Spain,
and so he's going to stop in
Rome.
Notice how he says,
"I want you to send me
on."
 
That Greek actually means that
he's asking them--
he's asking them for a
financial contribution,
sending him along is not just,
hey Paul don't let the door hit
your butt on the way out!
 
It's sending him along with
money.
What he's doing is saying,
I want a little contribution
from you so I want some support
from you, both symbolic support
and financial support.
 
That's what he's--he's writing
to them to talk about his
further mission to Spain.
 
He's writing to them also
because Rome is the center of
the earth for the Romans and for
many people,
and so he's the Apostle to the
Gentiles of the whole earth.
So what more likely place for
him to go than to Rome,
at least sometime,
on his way to Spain.
That's one thing he's doing.
 
We'll keep reading there at
15:25.
"At present,
however, I am going to
Jerusalem in a ministry to the
saints."
A liturgy, he's taking some
help to what he calls "the
saints" in Jerusalem.
 
"The saints"
just means "the holy
ones," he's probably
talking about believing Jews,
Jews in Judean Jerusalem who
believe that Jesus is the
Messiah.
 
So he's taking them some kind
of help too.
For Macedonia and Achaea
[remember his churches in
Philippi and Thessalonica or in
Macedonia,
his church in Corinth is in
Achaea]
have been pleased to share
their resources with the poor
among the saints in Jerusalem.
 
They were pleased to do this,
and indeed they owe it to them.
For the Gentiles have come to
share in their spiritual
blessings, they also ought to be
of service to them in material
things.
 
He's taking money that he's
been collecting in his different
churches that are Gentiles
churches back as a gift to the
poor followers of Jesus in
Jerusalem,
the Jews.
 
So when I have completed this
and have delivered to them
what--has been collected,
I will set out by way of you to
Spain.
 
And I know that when I come I
will come in the fullness of the
blessing of Christ.
 
This collection was much more
important to Paul than a lot of
modern Christians seem to think.
 
It's just kind of--all churches
take up money.
But remember Paul had agreed
when he met in Jerusalem with
Peter,
James, and John,
and other people,
that he would go to the
Gentiles,
and they didn't have to
circumcise the Gentiles.
 
Peter would go to the Jews.
 
The one thing they said was,
remember the poor.
And so this was interpreted
that in the different churches
that Paul founded among
non-Jews,
he would continue to take up
financial contributions to send
back to Jerusalem.
 
This was partly,
just of course,
they were poorer there.
 
But it's also apparently seen
by Paul as very symbolically
important.
 
The giving of money from the
Gentile churches to the
Jerusalem churches would be an
acknowledgement by them,
by the Gentiles,
of the somewhat superiority,
at least in time in the Gospel.
 
They got their Gospel from the
Jews;
it's an acknowledgement of the
importance and the centrality of
Jews in the Jesus movement by
Gentiles.
It's also reciprocal.
 
Remember I talked about--we
talked about the patron client
structures and we've talked
about gifts, and people giving
things to other people.
 
In the ancient world the whole
patron client structure was very
much centered around giving and
receiving,
so if I give you something
you're indebted to me and if you
don't want to be shamed you have
to give something back to me,
so giving and receiving is
always a very important issue
with status and relationships
and friendships in the ancient
world,
whether you're talking about
equals or people on different
statuses.
Paul is setting up the
relationship between the Judean
churches,
predominantly Jewish,
and his Gentile churches that
he's founded as something like a
patron client structure where
the Jews gave the Gentiles
something,
the Gospel;
now the Gentiles owe it to the
Jewish followers to give them
something.
 
So he's taking this collection.
 
Paul has talked about this
collection in several of his
letters, it's been very
important to him,
and so he's on his way to
Jerusalem to do this.
But now notice what happens.
 
We know a little bit about
Paul's last trip to Jerusalem as
is depicted in Acts.
 
How does Acts portray this?
 
Paul goes to Jerusalem,
he's got some Gentiles with
him, he's got some other Jews
with him.
He goes to the temple purely to
pray, to be a good Jew.
Other people,
non-believing Jews,
see him there,
and they think that he's trying
to bring Gentiles into the
temple.
So he's arrested,
he's tried, and then he has to
eventually appeal to Caesar to
get to Rome.
What does Acts tell us about
the collection?
What happened to the collection
in Acts?
We don't know.
 
The writer of Acts may have
known about this collection.
It was certainly one of the
most important things to Paul in
his ministry.
 
The writer of Acts tells us
nothing.
Notice also,
Paul seems to be a little
nervous if you read between the
lines,
because what happens if he's
collected all this money and he
takes it to Jerusalem and the
Jewish leaders say,
Paul do you know what kind of
rumors have been flying about
what you're saying about the
law?
Do you know what we've heard?
 
We're not going to take your
money;
we're not going to justify your
activities.
I think Paul was concerned that
the Jerusalem churches wouldn't
take his money,
and that would be catastrophic
for his vision of having a
united church,
that included both Jews and
Gentiles.
He writes to the Romans partly
because he's going to Spain and
he wants to prepare the ground
for a trip to Rome and to Spain,
but also he goes so carefully
to explain what he really
believes about the law and
justification,
because I think,
he's afraid of what may happen
in Jerusalem.
 
He's, in a sense,
trying to get the Roman
Christians on his side before
his trip to Jerusalem.
That takes us to what's become
a new interpretation of Romans.
I'm going to do this quickly
and we can talk about it maybe
more after the break,
but the traditional
interpretation of Romans was
that this was Paul's theological
treatise.
 
It didn't have much of anything
to do with the circumstances.
Paul just kind of decided he
was going to Rome,
so he sits down and he says,
what's really my Gospel in 16
chapters?
 
He writes it up;
he sends it to the churches in
Rome to present my Gospel to
them.
This is sort of a theological
treatise,
and the main point of the
treatise is: you're not
justified by works of law,
by any works no matter which
law, you're justified by grace
through faith alone.
The big Protestant,
the Lutheran,
the Calvinist reading of Romans
set Romans as the center book of
the Bible,
and it's thought that what it's
mainly about is individual
salvation,
your personal salvation.
 
You need to recognize that you
won't be saved by your works,
by anything you do.
 
Not only you're not saved by
Jewish law;
you're not saved by Roman
Catholic rules,
you're not saved by any law,
you're saved by putting your
faith in Jesus,
accepting Jesus as your Lord
and personal Savior,
or something like that.
It's individual salvation,
and it's a doctrine of
individual salvation by faith
that's the reason Paul wrote
Romans.
 
And that's what its central
message is: very
individualistic,
very doctrinal,
very theological.
 
That reading of Romans has been
severely challenged in the last
forty years or so.
 
Now people are starting to say
it's not the first few chapters
of Romans that constitute the
most important part of Romans,
which has always been the
Protestant interpretation,
because that's where Paul talks
doctrinally about justification
by faith.
 
Scholars have said now,
look to the end of Romans,
chapter 9-11 the latter part of
Romans,
that's where you'll see what
the real point of Romans is,
and it's not about individual
salvation.
It's about the relationship
between the nations--
when I say "Gentiles"
remember that's just a term
that Jews used for all the
nations except themselves,
so when I say "the
nations"
I mean all non-Jewish peoples
in the ancient world.
That's the way the Gentiles
[correction: Jews]
used the term.
 
In fact, "Gentiles"
is just sort of Latinized
translation of the Greek work
"nations."
When you see
"Gentiles"
in Paul's text,
read "nations,"
they refer to the non-Jewish
nations.
What's the relationship of the
nations to Israel and the God of
Israel?
 
Look at a few places.
 
In chapter 9 Paul basically
gives this apocalyptic
expectation,
he even quotes Hosea saying,
"The people who are not my
people will be my people."
In other words,
again Paul's quoting Jewish
scripture to enforce his belief
that at the end of time Gentiles
would become people of God and
this was common in Jewish
apocalyptic idea.
 
The basic scenario was,
the Messiah's going to come at
the end.
 
The Messiah will bring in--will
overthrow the oppressors of the
Jews,
and the Messiah will bring in
all the other nations,
all the nations,
the Egyptians,
the Greeks,
the Romans will all come to the
temple in Jerusalem.
They'll bring gifts;
they'll all worship the God of
Israel.
 
You find this in Isaiah;
you find it in Hosea.
So Jewish scripture itself gave
Jews of Paul's day the idea that
the apocalyptic end would bring
all the nations in.
The Messiah had already come
for Paul, so that's why he seems
himself as going to get the
Gentiles in.
His whole mission is part of
this end time scenario.
What does that mean?
 
Look at Romans 11:13:
I'm speaking to you Gentiles,
[so he turns directly to the
Romans]
in as much then as I am an
Apostle of the Gentiles,
I glorify my ministry in order
to make my own people jealous
and thus save some of them.
 
For if their rejection is the
reconciliation of the world,
what will their acceptance be
but life from the dead?
If a part of dough offered as
first fruits is holy,
then the whole batch is holy.
 
If the root is holy then the
branches are also holy.
Paul gives a theology here of
the remnant.
Some of the--a lot of the Jews
have not accepted that Jesus is
the Messiah.
 
Therefore, they seem to be cut
off, they're like branches of an
olive tree that are cut off.
 
And the Gentiles,
who are not natural branches of
the olive tree,
have been grafted in their
place.
 
That means that they're part of
Israel now.
Notice what this means.
 
That you may not claim to be
wiser than you are brothers and
sisters, I want you to
understand this mystery.
A hardening has come upon part
of Israel [some of the Jews
don't believe]
until the full number of the
Gentiles has come in.
 
[That's his job is trying to
bring in the full number of the
Gentiles.]
And so all Israel will be
saved.
 
Wow, all Israel?
 
Notice he doesn't explain how
this happens,
but in Romans 9-11 Paul
presents this magnificent
scenario that he believes was
prophesied in Jewish scripture
itself.
 
That at the end of this cosmos,
the end of this world,
the Messiah would come,
overthrow the oppressors of the
Jews,
set up Jerusalem as the center
of the earth.
 
And then all the Gentiles,
all the nations,
would come to the God of
Israel, they would be grafted
into the nation of Israel,
they would worship the God of
Israel.
 
Paul's addition to this myth is
simply that you don't need to
keep the law in order to do
this.
All that Paul is saying about
the law is secondary to his main
point, which is,
you're now part of Israel.
Paul is not about starting a
new religion.
There's no
"Christianity"
in Paul.
 
There are no
"Christians"
in Paul's letters.
 
You can't find the word.
 
You can't find the concept.
 
There's no
"Christianity"
or "Christians"
in Paul's world.
He believed that he was the
Apostle to the Gentiles to bring
them into Israel to make the
Gentiles part of Israel.
Then, as he says right here,
most wildly along he somehow
believes,
although he doesn't tell us how
it's going to happen,
that somehow God and God's
miraculous mercy is going to
figure out a way in the end to
even bring all of Israel back in
also.
All Israel, he says,
will be saved.
Paul's not necessarily the
first Christian theologian.
He's one of the most radical
Jewish theologians in the
ancient world.
 
Okay, we'll stop now and papers
will be handed out.
You all come up here to hand
out the papers.
