(Tina)Theresa Hannah-Munns
RLST 248-001 - Dr. William Arnal
Exegesis #3
This passage is the first clear linear biographical account of Paul’s conversion and missionary practice. He establishes himself as beginning with ‘zeal’ in Judaism and that he avidly was against the Christian sects around him, stating that he was “violently persecuting the church of God” (1:13). He still is with his position on the legal faction of circumcision found within the Law of Moses and followed by the Jewish. Incidentally, he seems to have managed to accomplish his earlier mission to destroy the church within Jerusalem since it is his Doctrine to the Gentiles that lives to this day through the construction of the Bible. It is this letter to the Galatians that shows the dividing line between the church of Jerusalem who follow Mose’s Law, as advocated by Peter, and the Gentile church of Paul’s design. He seems to strictly adhere to the Jew/Gentile line again and again, separating Christians into two camps. He does this while also recognizing Peter’s authority within his own faction (1:7-8).
Paul emphasizes that his revelation from God about his Son was so sacred that he never consulted human agency, but only divine agency. He does this to establish his own direct experience with the Christ myth and set himself as equal to Peter as an apostle. Peter’s divine authority came from knowing Jesus in the flesh, whereas Paul states that his calling is of the spirit of complete divine agency for a mission of divine importance, for God “had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace” (1:15). Paul accounts how he travelled a bit and it was three years after his revelation that he then visits with Peter for fifteen days before retreating for another fourteen years before starting his mission.
Altogether, seventeen years of contemplation on his experience and the start of his formulations for the Gentile doctrine established him enough so that he could again present himself to Peter and the church of Jerusalem, again in response to a revelation where God must have told him he was now ready to begin his mission. He elaborates that his Greek companion who accompanied him at this start was “not compelled to be circumcised” (2:3). This is the first specific statement of reason for his writing the Galatia church and I assume that his mention of Titus was to establish the division that was honored in the beginning between Peter and Paul on who the Gentile mission was ‘entrusted’ (2:7). He further establishes even his earthly acknowledgement of being the fourth pillar by listing James and Cephas (Peter) and John as the three pillars from the Jerusalem church. This allows the readership to grasp the parallel ability of his gospel to coexist but be differentiated with that of the gospel of the law handed to Peter and the Jerusalem church (2:9).
He then leads into his confrontation of Peter at Antioch for Peter’s own hypocrisy of doing one thing and then teaching another. The circumcision faction seems not to have been an issue until it was conceived as an issue later after Jesus’ death. As Paul puts it, “for until certain people came from James, he (Peter) used to eat with Gentiles” (2:12). In the very next verse Paul seems to state that this is the beginning of the “circumcision faction” that has changed the behaviour and produced hypocrisy within the Jerusalem church. Paul would have no part in this and frankly stated what he seen was obvious “that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel” (2:14).
Paul ends his biographical summary with the main point of his argument that even a Jew who has the law have a hard time upholding the law, how much harder and more binding the law would be on the gentiles.
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