The Letter to the Galatians

Christian Freedom

Paul did not impose on Gentile converts either the Law of Moses or circumcision; he did not teach the Law. But was it possible to conceive of humanity being saved apart from the laws God gave to Moses? For some, there was no doubt: apart from the Law and its practices there was no salvation. These Jewish Christians have been dubbed Judaizers. They taught that Gentiles must first submit to at least part of the Mosaic Law, especially circumcision, before they could become Christians (see Gal 1:7; 4:17, 21; 5:2-12; 6:12, 13). In order to better cancel the authority and revolutionary teaching of Paul, they hinted that he was not a true apostle. The Galatians were perturbed.

Learning of this, Paul wrote a passionate Letter (probably in A.D. 56–57) in which irony vied with logic, in order to reestablish the truth. The issue was not simply his apostolate but the very truth of Christianity. Jesus Christ is the only Savior: True or false? If true, then what connection still exists between the Galatians and a Law that has now been left behind?

The Apostle clearly realized that to bond the Church to the former traditions of Judaism was to make her hateful to Gentiles and to condemn the growth of the Church and her mission as well. Above all, it was to deny the Church’s very being. The Letter to the Galatians informs us of this crisis. The Galatians were probably the descendants of three Gallic tribes that had settled in Cappadocia and Pontus in the second half of the third century B.C. In 25 B.C. this little state, which had expanded through the acquisition of territories from Lycaonia, Phrygia, and Pisidia, had become the Roman province of Galatia. It continued, however, to call itself the “region of Galatia,” the land occupied by descendants of the immigrants.

Luke followed this usage when he says that the second (A.D. 49–52) and third (A.D. 53–57) missions of Paul and his companions passed through “the region of Phrygia and Galatia” (Acts 16:6; 18:23). It seems, then, that the Letter sent “to the Churches of Galatia” (Gal 1:2) is addressed precisely to these former Gauls, especially since their character, as it emerges from this document, is strangely like that of the Gauls of whom Julius Caesar speaks: inconstancy and lightness of mind, desire of novelty, love of freedom, very great generosity (The Gallic War IV, 59).

This Letter to “foolish Galatians,” who have allowed themselves to be “bewitched” (Gal 3:1), is a burning stream of lava, a torrent of feeling: Paul, with his tender paternal love, is bewildered by such a rapid turnabout in some. The clever deceits of his detractors disgust him; he is terribly upset because the Gospel is being falsified. Then he becomes a pitiless dialectician and a polemicist who uses steely irony and contempt.

In retrospect, this was a happy crisis that allowed Christianity to assert its autonomy and henceforth to travel its own road amid the peoples and for their salvation! It obliged the Church to become a People of God that acknowledges no borders, a people universal in time and space, with a changeless Gospel but at the same time with a life and activity that are continually renewed! Henceforth, the only thing that counts for the salvation of human beings is faith in Christ.

The Letter to the Galatians may be divided as follows:

I: Paul Defends His Apostolate (1:1—2:14)

II: Paul Defends the Freedom of Christians (2:15—6:10)

III: Conclusion (6:11-18)