From the Letter to the Galatians:
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Galatians 1:6-7 (NRSV) – January 28, 2013.)
I confess to a certain fondness for the Galatians. I’ve never been a really big fan of Paul the Apostle and I sometimes wistfully wonder how our Christian faith might have developed if he had not been its principal post-Ascension spokesperson. What if the Johanine community that produced the Gospel of John and the three letters that also bear his name had been more prominent? What if James and his insistence on works of mercy because “faith, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:17) had been more influential than Paul’s assertion to the Romans that salvation is “by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works” (Romans 11:6)? Well, we’ll never know . . . but apparently the Galatians were listening to someone suggest an alternative to Paul’s understanding of the Christian gospel and, as a result, he wrote them this letter. Anybody that could so upset Paul that he would call them “you foolish Galatians” (Gal. 3:1) gets high marks in my book! That the Galatians were also Celts with whom I, as an Irish-American, share an ethnic heritage gives them additional credit.
But I have to admit that Paul does have a point about “a different gospel” and that “there is [not] another gospel.” What there are are differing interpretations of the gospel, different understandings of its import, different emphases on points of its message. What I really don’t like about what Paul is saying is the implication that his and his interpretation only is correct and that, therefore, anyone who disagrees with him “wants to pervert the gospel of Christ.” I believe it is entirely possible to have disagreement on this things, to have unity without uniformity. In fact, I would say it’s desirable, but here in his letter to the Celts of Asia Minor Paul doesn’t seem to think so.
Elsewhere Paul used the metaphor of the body when he tried to share with the church in Corinth the fundamental importance of unity. In the body metaphor in the 12th chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul demonstrates how a body is made up of diverse members: “If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.'” (1 Cor. 12:19-21) Unity among diverse elements comes through inclusion of the various members of the body of Christ in deep sharing and mutual responsibility.
Of course, Paul was thinking of varying and diverse roles within the body of a congregation – apostle, evangelist, pastor, catechist, preacher, and so forth. He does not extend the body metaphor to those with differing opinions about the nature of faith, the person of Christ, the doctrine of atonement, the nature of salvation, and so forth. How much more lively might the church be if he had? How much more lively might the church be if we would?
If instead of thinking of the church as a community in which to find “the right answers,” we thought of it as a community in which to explore questions, how much more relevant and helpful to people’s lives might it be? So long as unity is seen as uniformity, we will be stuck trying to find (or convince others of) right answers. But if we can see unity in diversity, we will be able to hear a variety of responses; some responses will be useful for some seekers, and others will be useful for others. None will be “right” and none will be “wrong,” but all will be relevant.
This must be the church’s quest in the 21st Century, unity in diversity which makes the gospel relevant in the lives of all. No longer should we hear anyone address another as “you stupid Galatian!” No longer should we hear anyone condemned as “perverting the gospel.” We are not to preach “a different gospel,” but we are to offer a gospel that, with all its varied emphases and diverse applications, makes a difference.
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Father Funston is the rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
On the second day of Christmas the church remembers a murder, the martyrdom of Stephen, and our Daily Office lectionary won’t let us forget it. Often the readings of the Daily Office seem to have nothing to do with the season and they seldom are tied to a saint’s commemoration, but today the morning and evening readings tell the whole story in gruesome detail.
Perhaps among the most familiar words from St. John’s apocalypse, “Blessed are they who are invited to the marriage feast of the Lamb.” They are used as a fraction anthem or invitation to communion in many churches. But in this brief passage from Revelation, the most powerful image for me today is the angel saying, “I am a fellow-servant with you and your brothers and sisters.”
The collect for today from The Book of Common Prayer:
A year ago I was in Ireland, camped out in a cottage outside of the village of Banagher, County Offaly, on sabbatical. As my study project, I was translating old Irish hymns into metrical, rhyming English such that they could be sung to the music of the original. The hymns were published in the early 20th Century in a collection titled Dánta Dé Idir Sean agus Nuadh compiled by Uná ní Ógáin. Dánta Dé includes a communion hymn which elaborates on John’s story of the wedding feast; it is entitled The Blessed Wedding at Cana and is attributed to Maighréad ní Annagáin. I found I could not directly translate the hymn, so instead I wrote a poem of my own. Reading this story today, I recall working on that piece and offer it again.
I’m not sure, but those may be my three favorite words in all of Paul’s writings: “You stupid Celts!” That’s what he’s saying here. The Galatians were Celts, distant cousins of the Irish, Welsh, Scots, and Bretons. They all had their origins in the Celtic homelands of the northwestern Alps and migrated to Asia Minor, the islands of Britain and Ireland, and other places. And here Paul calls the Celts of Asia Minor anoetos, a Greek word which means “lacking understanding” and is variously translated as foolish, thoughtless, senseless, or stupid. “You stupid Celts!” ~ It is generally believed that Paul is reacting against the Galatians acceptance of the suggestion of the “Judaizers” that they needed to be circumcised before they could really become Christians. But I wonder . . . . I’ve done a fair amount of study of Celtic spirituality, at least of the western (British Isles) sort; I spent a three-month sabbatical translating ancient Gaelic religious poetry. The western Celtic understanding of Christ’s work was rather different from the Pauline notion. Paul (especially as developed by Augustine but, I think pretty clearly, originally) saw Christ’s salvific work in terms of propitiation and justification: just a few more verses and he will insist to the Galatians “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law.” (v. 13) The Celts, on the other hand, thought in terms of Jesus completing the goodness of creation; they believed much like Origen did that human beings were not so much fallen or cursed by sin as immature and incomplete, striving not for redemption but for perfection. ~ Some of Origen’s views were eventually anathematized as heretical and, though he is viewed as a “Church Father”, he has not been sainted. Later Celtic theologians have suffered the same indignity. The Irishman Johannes Scotus Eriugena believed that all human beings reflect attributes of divinity and that all are capable of progressing toward perfection, a view that Paul would clearly have disputed; Eriugena’s theology was discredited as “Irish porridge” and “an invention of the devil.” The Culdee monk Pelagius (who was probably a Breton rather than Irish) taught that humans do not have inherent sinfulness, but rather have a natural sanctity and the moral capacity to choose to live a holy life; Pelagius, too, was condemned as a heretic. ~ I sometimes wonder if this pervasive western Celtic belief in the essential goodness of humankind and in the progressive divinization or completion of creation might have been shared by their eastern cousins in Galatia. If so, it might have been this which led them to be more accepting of the Judaizer’s suggestions; after all, if the Christian goal is divinization and if circumcision put the Chosen People closer to God, perhaps it ought to be considered. No wonder Paul, who didn’t believe human beings could do anything to contribute to their own sanctification, thought them stupid and foolish! How different might the Christian church today be if the views of the Galatians, Pelagius, Eriugena, and other Celts had prevailed? One will never know. ~ I do know this, however. Those Celtic views ought to be heard and considered. None of us fully knows the mind of God and the views and thoughts of all should be valued as we struggle together to understand. They may be my favorite words of Paul, but not because they are particularly beneficial; indeed, they are not. The church today would be much better off and a much more congenial society if no one ever said or wrote anything like, “You stupid Celts!”
