You Stupid Celts! – From the Daily Office – June 7, 2012

Paul wrote:

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified! The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?

(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Galatians 3:1-3 – June 7, 2012)

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!”