C
Proper 4-7 2016 BFC
Introduction
for Scripture read in Galatians
May
29 through June 19, 2016
Too often we
have lost the meaning of Paul’s original teaching because we are unwilling to
engage the political matrix in which it was written. We do that for most all of the Bible. To do that leaves Paul wrangling over subject
matter that is largely other-worldly while Paul was doing his level best to
counter the political climate of his time.
For example, Paul uses the word “gospel” (euangelion, Gr., εὐαγγέλιον) quite often—what
we translate as “good news.” We so
associate that word with religious language that we fail to recognize it was
used to announce the Roman Emperor and hail Roman military victories. To claim the story of a savior that died at
the hand of Roman violence as “gospel” is therefore a profound, politically
countercultural statement.
In chapter 3,
Paul will write about the Jewish Law as a tool of bondage and putting people
under surveillance. Using such strongly
worded negative political language about the Jewish Law runs counter to the spirit
and intent of the Law, a gift given to keep the people free, connected to God,
and connected to one another. So is Paul
saying that the Jewish Law does this or how it is being implemented and
interpreted in this day and age does this?
I think Paul, as a Jew, would certainly talk about implementation and
interpretation. He believes, according
to New Testament scholar Brigitte Kahl, that the Jewish Law has been co-opted
by Roman law and order.
There are also
two very important words for all of Paul’s teaching and letters. These words are important because I think
their mistranslation has led to misunderstandings of how an early Christian
teacher, perhaps the most preeminent one in the apostle Paul, understood life
with God’s Anointed, Jesus.
Again, hear
this first word within the matrix of the meta-narrative of the Roman
Empire. The first word is pistis (Gr., πίστις.) Throughout the time that the Bible has been
translated into English, the word pistis has
most often been translated as “faith” or “belief.” The word was a key part of Roman imperialism
and described how Rome and Caesar would provide peoples and nations with
protection and security from all harm (e.g., from crime, rival armies,
etc.). And in return for the umbrella of
safety and national security provided, how peoples and nations, the “friends”
of Rome would show their loyalty, and
devotion, their pistis, to Rome and
Caesar. That is what pistis literally means, “loyalty to.”[1]
The second
word is smaller, a preposition, and goes with the Greek word pistis in many of the phrases Paul uses
to talk about Jesus. It is two letters, epsilon and nu. Pronounced, “en”, it
sounds enough like an English cognate (a word sounding enough like the English
word) that we assume we know its meaning.
We have heard pistis coupled with
en enough times that it just rolls
off our tongue. According to the
traditional translation, Paul is forever talking about “faith in Jesus Christ.” It
sounds like we are to have faith and belief in a person, namely Jesus. More and more scholars, however, are arguing
for that small proposition, en, to be
translated in its alternate meaning, “of.”
So hear how different those translations are. Are we to have faith or belief in Jesus
Christ? Or are we to have the “loyalty
of Jesus Christ.” Think about that for a
moment. One asks us to have faith in a
living being that could be translated into anything you want it to be. The other says that our loyalty is to be
modeled after Jesus Christ. Or to mix translations,
we are to have the faith of Jesus Christ.
That latter translation means we have to
know who Jesus the Anointed was to model our faith after his. We do not get to pretend like Jesus told
us that we would have great monetary success if we followed him, or that God
would make us healthy, wealthy, and wise if we practiced getting up early in
the morning, or that there are five spiritual laws that will make us part of
the “in crowd.” Having the faith of
Jesus or loyalty to the life of Jesus means dining with prostitutes and tax
collectors, critiquing and excoriating the establishment for the way it takes
the legs out from underneath the people, and finding common purpose and lot
with the hurting, defeated, and the vanquished of the world. And we do all of that with an engaged and
confrontational nonviolence. Traditionally,
faith in Jesus Christ has meant anything.
But the faith of Jesus meant something in particular.
So . . . that
is an important faith question. Are we
to have faith in Jesus or to have the faith of Jesus? Is it putting our trust in a historical being
who looks just like us? Or it having
full confidence in and loyalty to the faith of Jesus that calls us to radical
practices in a world that looks just as violent as ours? We have to decide these things as we look at
the Scriptures in Galatians. We have to
know that the Roman Empire was the stew in which Paul found himself, spreading
an alternative gospel, what the Jesus Seminar refers to as “the
world-transforming news.”
[1]Richard
A. Horsley, Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Harrisburg,
PA: Trinity Press International, 1997),
p. 93, and in the same anthology, Dieter Georgi, “God Turned Upside Down,” pp.
148-149.
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