This is an article I wrote recently for the Cathedral of St. Stephen Art Group. They asked for a short article so here it is.
The context for St. Paul’s Proclamation of
Freedom
As many of you
as were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no
longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are
one in Christ Jesus. (Gal. 3:27-28)
The context for this well know
text from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians is one of conflict between
differing beliefs of how converts should live out their faith.
The context of this letter is
important as historically it has given rise to hatred of and discrimination against
the Jewish people forgetting that Jesus and Paul were Jews. Paul never tries to convince Jewish believers
to abandon the Torah.
The community of believers in
Galatia were Gentiles who had been evangelised by Paul. However, now some rival apostles had come
demanding that the Gentile converts observe the Jewish law, the Torah. Paul vehemently refutes this – it is faith in
Jesus Christ that justifies the believer, not observance of the Jewish law.
The argument gets personal
because his opponents believe Paul has been diluting the faith, so Paul lays
his credentials as an apostle for all to read.
In this letter to his converts he
gives a very negative assessment of the Torah (3:19-20). He is anxious that the Gentile believers not
adopt the Jewish observances. This
letter is a passionate argument against those who would not only demand
unnecessary observance from Gentile converts, but deny the freedom brought by
Christ – and Paul is not having it. In later
letters he wrote he explores some of these issues in a more mature and
reflected way.
The key thesis of this letter is
that person is justified not by works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ
(2:16). In Christ there is freedom – ‘for
freedom Christ has set us free’ (5:1).
In baptism, the convert has ‘put
on Christ’ (3:27), has become a new reality therefore she or he enters into the
freedom of Christ in which differences of status, race, sex or privilege have
no significance. For Paul, Gentiles
observing the Torah would perpetuate this state of society.
These divisions were commonplace
in society of the time. It is reported
that Socrates said he had three blessings, ‘that I was born a human being and
not a beast, a man and not a woman, a Greek and not a barbarian’. According to Rabbi Judah, a man is obliged to
say daily ‘Blessed is God who has not made me a Gentile, who has not made me a
boor (slave), who has not made me a woman’.
To ‘put on Christ’ means to have
Christ’s outlook and mission. This is a total re-orientation to God of Jesus and
is now the believer’s primary meaning and context. This is the freedom Christ has given them:
the freedom of active love (5:2). So, to
perpetuate these divisions of privilege and power is to abandon the great gift
of Christ – the Spirit that gives freedom to act as Christ acts. To perpetuate these divisions is to collude
with death.
However, it is interesting that
while Paul can proclaim freedom from these social divisions and all it implied,
he did not see that this would change people’s roles. Slaves remained slaves (letter to Philemon),
women were to be subject to their husbands (1 Cor 11:3). The urgent issue for the early church to deal
with was the relationship between the Jewish and Gentile believers – should the
Gentile converts observe the Torah. In
his letters Paul returns to this both theologically and practically.
The change that the freedom of
the believer brings about is the freedom of love. He spells this out in chapters 5 and 6 of the
letter. It is to ‘bear one another’s
burdens’ (6:2), it is to ‘not grow weary of doing what is right’ (6:9), to work
for the good of all (6:10).
There is always a relationship
between theology, history and practice.
It took the early church many decades to sort out the Jew/Gentile
relationship (and is still being understood).
It took Christianity and western society about 1800 years to understand
that this text meant that slavery as a way of life was incompatible with human
dignity. It took until the 20th century for women to have equality
in law in some societies.
Incarnating this call of
equality, human dignity and freedom which is Jesus’ gift of mission to us will
always have an urgency and will always be contentious. I am reminded of Dom Helder Camara, Bishop of
Recife, Brazil and extraordinary advocate for the poor: "When I give food
to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a
communist”.
Wherever there are divisions that
disempower people there the freedom of Christ which is love must
transform. While humans live and
breathe, this will always be a work in progress.
