ABC News: Beware Do-It-Yourself Alzheimer's Cures
Alzheimer 'Breakthrough' Tempts Families to Improvise
Latest Hope for the Disease Is a Drug With a Commonly Available Ingredient
By LAUREN COX
ABC News Medical Unit
July 31, 2008
What would you do if had an incurable disease and heard that something simple and common may help -- a chemical found at a pet store, or in an allergy drug, or a breakthrough injection a man in California developed?
methylene blue Alzheimer's
The similarities between an active ingredient in a potential Alzheimer treatment and the chemical methylene blue, commonly used as a blue dye, may lead some people to improvise, researchers fear.
It's the sort of dilemma Alan Romantowski, a former airline pilot, faces with each news story about Alzheimer's disease treatments.
"It is tempting; I'm taking ginseng, fish oil, ginkgo and all the over-the-counter things that the doctors say don't have any proof that it helps, but it doesn't hurt," said Romantowski, 55, who is suffering from the early stages of the disease.
And not all of the solutions Romantowski has sought have been from a pharmacy. Earlier this week, he says, he "was just about packing my bags to California" to try an unproven treatment that involved injections into his head -- that is, until his doctor let him know that the so-called breakthrough treatment he heard about in California was "wacky" and unproven.
But whether scientifically sound or wacky, any news about potential Alzheimer's treatments can fill a doctor's voicemail with calls from desperate families.
And a new potential treatment announced Tuesday may be no exception. Discussed at the annual Alzheimer's Association Meeting in Chicago, a drug called Rember sparked hope among researchers and within the Alzheimer community.
Rember has completed a phase II trial, which means it's a long way off from meeting FDA approval as a legal therapy. But, thus far the data has shown promise -- double the improvement in cognition than a placebo gives for patients with moderate Alzheimer's disease.
And the drug happens to have an active compound called methylene blue, which is found in medical and industrial dyes and in some pet shop fish medicine.
"I think there was an article about that in our paper this morning," said Josie Romantowski. "I actually even called my husband about it... as far as trying [a drug], what is there to lose really, at this point?"
Not, however, if it's in the form of blue jean dye or fish medicine, her husband said.
"You try to want to balance between being optimistic and aggressive, and not going into things that are just quackery," he said. "I would certainly discuss it with the neurologists, and if they thought it would be safe and wouldn't be a problem, I'd try anything."
Trials at Home, and the Lab
Researchers found the effect of Rember by accident in 1986, when the active chemical in a test tube dissolved substances found in the brain which are thought to be involved in the development of Alzheimer's called "tangle filaments," said Claude M. Wischik, professor in mental health at the University of Aberdeen, U.K. and lead investigator of the Rember trial.
Over the years, there have been many uses found for this compound in medicine, from biological dyes to a treatment for cyanide poisoning.
"From a surgeon's standpoint, the main thing we use methylene blue for is we inject it into the patient's veins and it turns their urine blue -- that's so we can find leaks," said Dr. Chris Gonzalez, an associate professor of urology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
Gonzalez says an injection of methylene blue might also be used to treat the potentially lethal condition of methemoglobin, where a person cannot get enough oxygen from their blood and turns a slate-blue color. Or, it can also be injected to treat priapism -- "when you get an erection that won't go away," said Gonzalez.
But at the first news of methylene blue's ability to dissolve tangle filaments, "the world responded, 'yeah, so what?'" Wischik told ABCnews.com. The tangle filaments methylene blue dissolved in the test tube were known to be a hallmark of Alzheimer's in the brain. But at the time, Wischik says, the latest theories about Alzheimer's thought of tangles as a consequence of the Alzheimer's, not as a cause of dementia.
"In the end I decided the only way to win was to win -- to have a clinical trial that proves the point," said Wischik. "I had to form a company to do that."
So now that Rember is in clinical trials, all that Wischik and families like the Romantowski family can do is wait and hope for the scientific research to prove it's a useful drug. This wait is nothing new to the Alzheimer community.
Watching and Waiting
Dr. Ronald Petersen, chair of the medical scientific advisory council of the Alzheimer's Association said Tuesday's glowing coverage of Rember already reached his patients and their families.
"As a result I've already had several calls from my office saying 'Is this available, can I get this for my mom and dad?'" said Petersen. "Some people are desperate out there.
"It's a fine line -- trying to give people the idea that there's hope out there in the field, because there really is, but also tempering the news based on the information."
"We've read so many reports of things that were so promising, and then we go and talk to the neurologist," said Romantowski. "In the final analysis, so far always they don't hold up to the original hype that comes out."
"But there are so many of these studies, that somebody has got to hit on one of these," he said.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Sunday, July 20, 2008
ABC News: Can U.S. Catch Up on Plug-In Hybrids?
ABC News: Can U.S. Catch Up on Plug-In Hybrids?
Can Plug-In Hybrids Ride to America's Rescue?
Engineer Behind Many Electric-Car Advances Says Oil's Days May Be Numbered
If the United States breaks its oil addiction, a measure of thanks will no doubt be due to Andy Frank, who some have dubbed the "father of the plug-in hybrid" car.
Andrew Frank, a professor at the University of California, Davis, is considered the godfather of the plug-in hybrid car, which runs 60 miles on electricity from a standard 110-volt wall socket and then switches to liquid fuel.
(Paul Kitagaki Jr./Sacramento Bee/ZUMA Press)
Laboring in near anonymity in his garage-style laboratory on a leafy byway of the University of California at Davis campus, Frank has for three decades focused on developing plug-in-hybrid technology. With his students, he has built nine plug-in vehicles since the 1990s, winning several vehicle contests sponsored by the Department of Energy and automotive companies.
Even so, Detroit showed little interest in the idea of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) -- until recently. With $4-a-gallon gasoline killing SUV sales, big automakers like General Motors, Ford and Toyota have begun to talk about a future with plug-in hybrids -- or even futuristic fuel-cell cars -- instead of SUVs.
Related
Plug-in hybrids go much farther on a single charge than an ordinary hybrid. Some converted Toyota Prius plug-ins get the energy equivalent of 100 miles (or more) per gallon and travel nearly 40 miles on electricity alone before a gasoline engine kicks in for longer trips. With their hefty battery packs, such hybrids can be plugged into a socket in the evening for a charge.
Since 78 percent of American commuters drive 40 miles or less each day, a plug-in driver might need only to fill up his tank with gasoline a half-dozen times a year. It's a game-changing concept that's won over many energy-security hawks and even environmentalists who had been married to futuristic fuel-cell vehicles, but now see plug-ins as a here-and-now way to fight global warming as well as freeing the U.S. from imported oil.
One of the main complaints about plug-in technology is that you're just trading one form of pollution for another -- tailpipe emissions for power-plant smokestack emissions. But a recent "well to wheels" life-cycle analysis by the Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council shows that a shift by the U.S. to plug-in vehicles would cut carbon emissions by as much as 500 million tons annually and 10 billion tons cumulatively by 2050. At the same time, other exhaust pollutants would decline.
Lawsuits Against Bloggers Seen Rising
ABC News: Blog at Your Own Risk: Lawsuits Fly
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=5406538&page=3
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=5406538&page=3
Lawsuits Against Bloggers Seen Rising
Since 2004, 159 Court Actions Have Targeted Citizen Journalists for Libel and Other Charges
When Christopher Grotke answered a late-night knock on the door, he did not expect to find the deputy sheriff on his doorstep serving notice that he was being sued. Nor was he prepared for the charge: libel.
Someone had posted a comment on his citizen-journalism Web site, iBrattleboro.com, stating that a woman in Brattleboro, Vt., was having an extramarital affair. The accused woman then sued Grotke and his Web site co-founder for failing to edit or delete the comment.
The blogging community increasingly is subject to lawsuits and threats of legal action running the gamut from subpoenas to cease-and-desist notices.
Since blogging became popular in about 2004, there have been 159 civil and criminal court actions involving bloggers, according to the nonprofit Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) in New York. Seven cases have resulted in verdicts against bloggers, with cumulative penalties totaling $18.5 million. Many more legal actions never result in trial.
The result? A stifling of free speech in a medium providing more comprehensive and diverse opportunities for commentary than ever before, digital-rights activists, media lawyers, and bloggers say.
"There is a chilling effect of a cease-and-desist letter or a legal threat that claims an aspect of a blogger's work could lead to liability, even when those claims are not well grounded," says Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit in San Francisco that defends digital rights.
Bloggers faced with legal threats often deem it easier to remove potentially offensive content rather than undertake the difficulty and expense of defending themselves, he adds.
Abroad, More Than 60 Bloggers Arrested
Bloggers face much bigger threats overseas, particularly if they criticize governments or point to human rights abuses.
Since 2003, 64 bloggers have been arrested around the world -- with Egypt, China, and Iran initiating more than half of those arrests, according to the World Information Access Report, published last month by the University of Washington. By contrast, the United States has arrested two in that period.
Still, online commentators face risks in the United States.
"In the developed world, bloggers can be punished through lawsuits," writes Philip Howard, a communications professor at the University of Washington, in an e-mail.
The number of lawsuits is growing, says Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association (MBA), a U.S.-based group devoted to protecting citizen journalists.
"As blogging expands and more people are aware of it," he says, "the lawyers are not far behind."
No one is suggesting that bloggers should have free rein to publish whatever they want.
"If you're slandering, you can be sued whether you have a blog or not," says Cox, a blogger himself. "You're not immune to defamation charges ... just because you're a citizen speaking your mind."
Who Should Educate the Bloggers?
There is no consensus, however, on how best to make bloggers aware of their legal responsibilities.
Many lawyers expect bloggers to figure it out themselves.
"If you're going to be responsible enough to manage a site where people post such things, you should be able to detect when things are defamatory and take them down," says Margot Stone, the lawyer for the woman who sued Grotke. "The problem is that technology is outpacing the ethical responsibilities. People haven't thought through the ethics of all this."
Online communities as well as media activists and lawyers are pushing to ensure that bloggers are aware of their legal rights and responsibilities.
The EFF and the Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) -- an affiliate of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School -- offer detailed legal guides for bloggers. Both organizations also help bloggers find legal counsel.
In addition, the CMLP maintains a database of all legal action directed against bloggers.
"That way bloggers know they're not alone," explains David Ardia, director of the CMLP.
Other citizen-media groups say more proactive support is needed.
Since 2006, the MBA has been working with Media Pro Insurance to create the MBA Media Liability Insurance program.
ing up with a product that covers defamation, copyright, privacy violations -- the same protections as newspapers -- for bloggers," says the group's Cox.
MBA members will receive a hefty discount on the insurance package, due to be launched at the end of this month. The cheapest coverage for a solo blogger will be $540 a year.
But some bloggers resist the idea.
"I don't have the money for that kind of thing," says Kathleen Seidel, a New Hampshire-based blogger who was subpoenaed this spring in connection with another lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers that she had written about on her blog.
Having written several posts about litigation and completed two legal courses at the local community college, Seidel was able to deflect legal threats against her blog and successfully composed a motion to quash the subpoena.
Grotke, too, was able to convince a Vermont court to dismiss libel charges.
Many bloggers, however, aren't so fortunate, which is why the online community is searching for ways to protect them.
"The effect of intimidation is a real one," Seidel says.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Challenge of Nonfoundationalism to Indian Christian Theology
Challenge of Nonfoundationalism to Indian Christian Theology
T. Jacob Thomas
Introduction
The basic nonfoundationalist position is that there are no fixed or absolute universal foundations for knowledge. Knowledge exists in particular cultural and linguistic communities and such knowledge does not need any validation from out side its community. The nonfoundationalist approach would help us to think about reality in a different way, not in fixed categories but in an interconnected, independent web of existence. With regard to theology of religions nonfoundationalism can justify the truth claims of different religions and make religions coexist in a galactic world, rejecting a monistic and centred world. It can also provide sufficient strategical validity to contextual theologies in India like Dalit or tribal theology in their struggle to find a place in the vast spectrum of knowledge formations. Major Western epistemological schools like rationalism, empiricism and idealism as well as the Indian advaitic school have been basically concerned with universal validation of knowledge. The nonfoundational or antifoundational rejection of any absolute or universal claims of truth, would help the emergence and justification of contextual contested knowledge theories. Postfoundationalism attempts to combine both foundationalist and nonfoundationalist approaches to knowledge. It affirms the foundationalist vision of truth as necessary but holds that our current knowledge is not final; hence ambition for any metanarrative is out of place. However, several people see nonfoundationalism nihilistic. In order to understand the role of nonfoundationalism constructively we will first examine the major traditions in philosophy and theology which were foundationalistic and then the tenets of nonfoundationalism will be looked into. Finally some modern nonfoundationalist heologies will be evaluated for their usefulness in the Indian context.
The Epistemological Dilemma in Philosophy and Theology
Epistemological debates since the time of the Greek Sophists in the 5th century BCE dealt with questions such as what is truth and how can we know anything, that is, the possibility of reliable and objective knowledge. The Sophist Gorgias argued that nothing really exists and that if anything did exist it could not be known; if knowledge were possible, it could not be communicated. Protagoras, another major sophist, held that no person’s opinions can be said to be more correct than another’s. However, the Sophists were put to oblivion by the opposing school of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who held that it is possible to have exact and certain knowledge of world and its “unchanging and invisible forms,” or ideas. They held that what we see and touch are imperfect copies of pure forms; abstract reasoning can provide genuine knowledge of these forms. The real problem Plato confronted was how to distinguish episteme (knowledge) from doxa (opinion) and authenticate one’s knowledge. For this he appealed to intuition. This was met with the problem that when we rely on intuition with out giving any reasons for it we do not have any basis to judge between alternative intuitions. If we give reasons for our choice of correct intuition, then we are no longer relying on intuition , but on reasons; again we are left with out any reason to justify our reasons. That means, there was no sound basis or foundation for thought.
Aristotle called the basic forms of knowledge which are grasped by the mind, scientia, first principles. The knowledge we get from experience is actually processed by the mind abstracting or deducing new facts from those already known, in accordance with the rules of logic, which was set down for the first time in systematic form by Aristotle. St. Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle in regarding perception as the starting point and logic as the intellectual procedure for arriving at reliable knowledge of nature. The challenge taken up by Aquinas was to make theology a science in accordance with Aristotelian logic. For this he posited the articles of faith as the first principles, on the basis of the authority of the church. However, the Enlightenment philosophers, armed with the spirit of reformation, attacked such authority and challenged the Thomistic way of understanding. Schleiermacher, the enlightenment theologian built his theology not on the authority of the Church but on the self-consciousness of every human being, the “feeling of absolute dependence,” as the foundation for sure knowledge of God.
Classical Foundationalism
The traditional foundationalist philosophy has as its core tenets: idea of a basic dichotomy between the subjective and the objective; the conception of knowledge as being a correct representation of what is objective; the conviction that human reason can completely free itself of bias, prejudice, and tradition; the ideal of a universal method by which we can first secure firm foundations of knowledge and then build the edifice of a universal science; the belief that by the power of self-reflection we can transcend our historical context and horizon and know things as they are in themselves.
Cartesian paradigm of the solitary thinker served as the background for the modern search for secure foundations. In his Meditations (1641) Descartes identified “clear and distinct ideas” as the foundation for knowledge. He made the foundation of all knowledge the certainty of the self and as a corollary the existence of God. He was following the mathematical ideal of certainty to know that “something is so and can’t be otherwise” and asserted, cogito ergo sum, I cannot doubt that I who doubts exist. The result was dualism between mind and matter, thinking thing (res cogitans) and extended thing (res extensa), which made mind as the source of knowledge and not empirical evidence as empiricists argued.
For John Locke, the father of empiricism, all human knowledge comes to us through our senses. Faith helps us, when reason fails, to make the leap towards revelation, not a certainty but a probability. According to the skeptical epistemology of David Hume ( 1711-1776) we can trust only the knowledge that we acquire from our perceptions. Our perceptions,can be divided into two categories: ideas and impressions. Ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions, or, in other words, that it is impossible for us to think of anything, which we have not antecedently felt, either by our external or internal senses. We cannot believe that a certain thing, such as God, soul, or self exists unless we can point to the impression from which the idea of the thing is derived.In his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding he defines the term impression as our lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will. Ever since the time of Hume knowledge found it difficult to establish itself on any sure foundations. George Berkeley, another, empiricist held that human knowledge of external physical objects is always subject to the errors of the senses, and concluded that one cannot have absolutely certain knowledge of the physical world a position which was contrary to that of the rationalists. The classical philosophical schools such as the Cartesian rationalism, Lockean empiricism and German idealism accepted the criteria that a knowledge is valid if it is universally true and accepted beliefs that are self evident, incorrigible and “evident to the senses” as foundations of sure knowledge. Immanuel Kant agreed with the rationalists on the possibility of getting exact and certain knowledge, but along with the empiricists he held that such knowledge is more informative about the structure of thought than about the world outside of thought. He has made room for faith by setting limits to reason, the boundary of knowing. Pure practical reason helps us to postulate freedom, God and immortality.
The Linguistic Turn and the Death of Foundationalism
The linguistic turn refers to the demise of the long reign of the philosophy of Cartesian monological subject and the recognition of the centrality of language in the constitution of knowledge To understand something is no more to form mental “representations” of it as modernism insisted, rather, understanding has become a matter of actively interpreting our world experience—by means of language. The enlightenment belief that reason is neutral and would lead to truth irrespective of context, tradition, or language was found shaky. Several people have contributed to this turn beginning from John Locke to Gadamer. It was Schleiermacher who liberated the hermeneutical theory from the Enlightenment “objectivity” to the consciousness of the feeling subject, paving the way for liberal humanism with its universal concept of human nature. Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger rejected the concept of knowing subject by the “lived experience” of the involved subject which would discover itself. Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein’s (1889-1951) Philosophical Investigations marked the shift in linguistic analysis. His linguistic analysis perceived reality in terms of language games. No truth is possible outside the language. Languages are shaped by cultural systems and traditions into which we are born. Language is inextricably woven into the fabric of life. Language determines our knowledge. Hans-Georg Gadamer ( 1900-2002) was critical of modern approaches to humanities that modeled themselves on the natural sciences and scientific methods and argued that a “historically effected consciousness” is embedded in the text which itself was the product of particular history and culture. Interpreting a text involves a “fusion of horizons” where the meaning emerges in dialogue with the text's history with the interpreter’s own background. The final outcome of all these developments was coming to the realization that no absolute knowledge is possible as the enlightenment conceived.
Poststructuralism
Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics contended that language is a system of relations and the meaning is processed within that structure. The text has no given meaning and the author disappears behind the structure. The problem with Saussure’s structuralism has been that it rejects not only the Cartesian knowing self but also the subjectivity and subverted the emerging identity consciousness among the socially oppressed women, Blacks, Dalits and tribals. The resurgence of identity politics among the submerged or subaltern groups challenged the unitary notions of human kind as false universalism that blocks substantive differences such as race, gender, or ethnicity , and contested all traditional knowledges. Poststructuralism and the strategy of deconstruction addressed this growing concern. Jacques Derrida’s notion of decentred universe challenged all fixed or absolute notions of centre and periphery and has conceived universe as a free play. There is no authoritative centre, which makes validation of knowledge necessary. Derrida has gone beyond Saussure’s notion that words derive their meaning in their difference with other words and pointed out that since the text has no foundational meaning any number of meaning can be formed by deferring the meaning of a word. This endless passive and active interplay of meaning is termed by Derrida as “differance.” Differance happens not in the difference of words as in structuralism but when something is known only from its absence. The poststructuralist strategy of deconstruction devised by Derrida categorically asserts the absolute impossibility of attributing to any text one single ultimate meaning. In deconstruction "objective truth is to be replaced by hermeneutic truth
It brings out the politics behind the construction of meaning. That means sacred texts, such as the Bible, do not have a single ultimate meaning nor are such texts necessarily authoritative. Deconstruction is a rebellion against absolute truth claims. It contest the given knowledge absolutised through hierarchical dualities which Derrida calls binary oppositions, creating superiority and inferiority structures of thought and social practices. Deconstruction disrupts and displaces the hierarchy and dismantles its authority and creates space for the “marginals” to present themselves as social agents.The web of relations outside the text may determine both the meaning of the text and the nature of its authority.
The linguistic turn led to the demise of the foundationalist tenet that for truth to exist there must be some sort of “extralinguistic” reality. Instead the legitimacy of a plurality of stand points and interpretations over an absolute or a contextual conception of knowledge or truth was affirmed. The linguistic turn has led to the postmodern argument that there are no truths, but only rival interpretations. This does not mean that language is everything, but that we know everything by means of language. There is no need of any foundation, either by way of intuition or by experience.
Postmodernism – Deconstruction of Knowledge
The perspective character of knowledge has been given ever-increasing importance since the age of Nietzsche. Human experience, insights and the perspective shape new ways of achieving and producing knowledge. The new view on knowledge does not assume reason to remain the same at all times and in all places. Rather it is now assumed that the subject of knowledge constitutes itself through a large number of social factors in its cultural context, like gender, wealth, class, and tradition.
Knowledge has now become a communicative function, an interplay between competence and performance, a “social construction of reality.” It is no longer result of any inherent human characteristic. Circumstances in society affect the subject’s knowing and knowledge. The question of the nature of knowledge is now replaced with the question of knowledge’s social connection and of rationality in communicative social course of events.
The philosophical core of postmodernism is a rejection of foundationalism, defended as the belief in given or fully attainable truths. LeRon Shults notes that postmodernism was born “out of the death throes of foundationalism.” The distinguishing features of the postmodernism can be identified as (1) rejection of an essentialist metaphysics; (2) a nonfoundationalist epistemology; (3) the historical contingency of all ides and a constructivist view of knowledge; (4) an aversion to metanarratives; and (5) the decentering of the self. Postmodernists differ from one another in important respects.
The nonfoundationalists defend an aesthetic relation to self; one should affirm “one’s liberty” by devising a personal style in opposition to all ruling norms. They attempt to immunize particular interpretations from critique by appealing only to the intra communal factors; they disengage themselves from any inter communal or extra communal factors. From a static and monist outlook on human kind, these newer attempts emphasized that the knowledge is produced in the interaction between subject and context. This means the earlier anthropological essentialism was discarded in favour of a relational view of the human person.
Postmodern theologies
The Liberation theology as well as the consequent third World theologies, though aimed at “a radical break” from the Euro-centric epistemologies could not escape the project of modernity, the dialectical progress of history and the Marxist “metanarrative” of class struggle. These contextual theologies could not accommodate epistemological and anthropological pluralism because of their basic foundationalistic world-view. Several contemporary scholars responded to the challenge raised by the nonfoundationalist theory of knowledge in a variety of ways. These nonfoundationalist theologies are postmodern as they reject the modern project of metanarratives but in that attempt find themselves in the awkward position of emitting ultraliberal as well as ultra conservative responses.
Among the liberal postmodern theologians Mark C. Taylor, Thomas J.J. Altizer, Robert P. Scharlemann, Charles Winquist, David Ray Griffin and Don Cupitt are important, though their works are not identical. Don Cupitt and Mark. C. Taylor endorse the line of thought of postmodern philosophers like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze. Both of them are influenced by Nietzsche’s ideas on the death of God. To them the death of God meant “the death of a transcendental signifier stabilizing identity and truth” and their concern is not a theology in the traditional sense but an “a/theology.” As Taylor calls it.
Among the conservative Postmodern theologians Graham Ward includes the names of George Lindbeck who initiated the Postliberal school of theology and his Yale colleague, Hans Frei , whose Biblical interpretation became basic source for this school, and other Yale students like William Placher, Ronald Thiemann and Kathrynn Tanner. Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbry also is included among the postliberal theologians. John Milbank, a sociologist, whose theology of Radical Orthodoxy, though nonfoundationalist, is premodern as it rejects any traffic between theology and contemporary human or natural sciences.
Postliberalism
Postliberal theologians reject the nonfoundationalists claim “that knowledge is grounded in a set of non-inferential, self-evident beliefs.” For them experience comes to us always as interpreted . There is no way for us to check them against some primordial, uninterpreted experience.” The nonfoundational or antifoundational character of Postliberalism goes back to Karl Barth or even to Aquinas. Barth held that there could be no “foundation, support, or justification” for theology in any philosophy, theory or epistemology” Karl Barth affirmed the self-authenticating Word of God as the foundation of theology. The truth of this Word is self evident to the believer. It may not make any sense to those who do not share the faith. This Barthian approach to Bible has influenced the postliberalist thinking that other religions or schools of thought can have their own valid set of foundations with no need of authentication from any outside authority. Lindbeck also is open about his indebtedness to Aquinas who wrote that the Christian language about God is true, but we do not know how it is true. We know God loves us, but we do not know what love would be like for God. We cannot go beyond our experience; we can only work within the rules the community provided to talk about God. As the title of the postliberal theologian William Placher’s book suggests, Christians need not "apologize" for their theology not conforming to non-Christian standards of rationality.
The postliberal approach finds important the differences among religions, rather than their commonalities. They don’t agree with the pluralists that all religions are saying the same thing. Postliberal theology “emphasizes the scriptural stories or narratives by which Christians identify God and the Christian community and come to understand their own lives.” Interpreting Hans Frei, the postliberalists argue that the Christian story for them can shape the Christian communal identity. It has the assimilative power to absorb the world. Postliberal theology emphasizes the importance of an intratextual use of scripture, relying on “the distinctive internal logic of Christian beliefs and practices. Kathryn Tanner “refuses to locate divine acts in some larger narrative of what is happening in creation, but insists on the primacy of God’s activity, but she sees such an account as ‘empowerment’ of quests for social justice rather than ‘tyranny.’ Postliberalists attempt for the “creative fusion of hermeneutics and epistemology.”
Postfoundationalism
If the problem with foundationalism was that it missed the communal factors by absolutizing the thinking subject, nonfoundationalism attempted to “immunize particular interpretations from critique by appealing only to those communal factors”. J. Wenzel van Huysteen, a Princeton theologian and proponent of a postfoundationalist theology fears that postliberal approach to community would develop ghetto mentality or “closet foundationalism.” For van Huysteen, the task of theology is “both to understand and explain.” He criticizes the postliberalists for rejecting the latter aspect of theology and making it simply “narrative” Our knowledge of reality is always mediated by our interpretation of experience. Our claims of truth are not absolute because our interpretation of reality is fallible. Our language is metaphorical and therefore cannot be absolutized, even if it is fully operational with in a given community. He says that interpreted experience is key to the relation between truth and knowledge. According to Mark Bevir, postfoundationalism implies that the individuals can have experiences and exercise their reason only against the background of a social practice or tradition. Individuals can exist only against the background of the community: “an individual is embedded within the community.” Postfoundationalism safeguards identity not by immunizing it against any critique but by emphasizing difference – otherness. It does not make a closed community, as is the tendency in postliberalism or radical orthodoxy, but rather stands for “an open community.
Van Huyssteen, suggests “critical realism” as a way of overcoming the dichotomy between the thinking individual and closed community. According to Tom Wright, a New Testament scholar and the Bishop of Durham,
...[critical realism] is a way of describing the process of "knowing" that acknowledges the reality of the thing known, as something other than the knower (hence "realism"), while fully acknowledging that the only access we have to this reality lies along the spiralling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known (hence "critical").
Van Hyussteen has his own version of critical realism that “affirms the embedded nature of human knowledge and existence” Critical realism, believes that the conceptual categories that we use to identify and understand social events are not exogenously determined; rather these categories are socially and historically determined. Critical realism is mainly employed by scientist turned theologians like John Polkinghorne, Ian Barbour, and Arthur Peacocke who were influenced by the scientist turned philosopher, Michael Polanyi. Polanyi's ideas were taken up enthusiastically by T. F. Torrance a theologian who finds dialogue with science important. Following van Hyussteen LeRon Shults attempts to develop a postfoundationalist theology based on the theological method of Wolfhart Pannenberg, who promotes dialogue with science and the philosophy of Calvin Schrag. Schrag holds that though our knowledge is contextual and fallible that do not automatically entail relativism. Reason has a binding effect across the contexts. Based on this philosophical approach postfoundationslim “insists on developing transcommunal and intersubjective explanations,” a necessary correction to postliberalism. Now we will briefly look at how Indian Dalit theologians deal with the challenge of postmodern theories.
Dalit theology
Dalit theology emerged as an academic discipline in the 1980s. It emerged as a quest for a “contested epistemology; it offered a “methodological challenge to the grand narratives of ‘prefix-less’ theology and Indian Christian theology.” Arvind P. Nirmal(1936-1995) rejected the Brahminic tradition in Indian Christian theology He observed that even though a third world theology was emerged in the 1970s under the influence of the Latin American Liberation theology it “failed to see in the struggle of Indian dalits for liberation a subject matter appropriate for doing theology in India.” Liberation theology or the third world contextual theologies could not offer a proper method for analyzing and interpreting the story of the Dalits. Dalit theology needed “a methodological shift in this postmodern context.” In his search for a suitable critical and constructive method Nirmal digged out the neglected Indian protest tradition of Lokayata or Carvaka school of Indian philosophy which rejects the Brahminic notion of esoteric knowledge. Vinaya Raj introduces a nonfoundationalist poststructuralist method of deconstruction, suitable for Dalit theology. He writes: “Deconstruction-- the poststructural method, as it believes in the fluidity and nonfixity of the meaning/subjectivity helps us to produce new meanings through discursive readings.” The nonfoundationalist poststructuralist strategies offer alternate ways of looking at theories of self and social formations, and transform existing caste practices and institutions in order to construct a sense for Dalits as active social agents.
Conclusion
Colin Gunton is of the opinion that we should not give up our search for foundations. For him non-foundationalism is a reflex to foundationalism. He argues, “that the basis and criteria of rationality are intrinsic to particular human intellectual enterprises, which should not have imposed upon them in a procrustean way the methodologies which are appropriate for other forms of intellectual life.” Yet Gunton rejects non-foundationalism as it constructs a barrier to outside critique. The nonfoundationalists “run the risk of the rank subjectivism… they evade the intellectual challenge involved in the use of the word ‘God’.” Basing on the theology of Cappadocians Gunton writes that since God is a communion of persons and each person is distinct but inseparable from the others, God’s being consists in relationship with one another. He writes,
…[the] three persons are for and from each other in their otherness. They thus confer particularity upon and receive it from one another. That giving of particularity is very important: it is a matter of space to be. Father, Son and Spirit through the shape – the taxis – of their inseparable relatedness confer particularity and freedom on each other. That is their personal being.
For Barth the doctrine of the imago Dei means that God created human beings for fellowship. Humans are naturally fellowshiping beings, with other beings and with God. It also means only in relationship with God that we can be fully human. There is no objectively existing datum that can be called religion, no “true religion” as such. Neither are we able to discover truth. We only become real only in relation between objectivity and subjectivity. Hendrick Kraemer called this Barthian approach “Biblical realism.” Since we cannot understand ourselves or others wholly we must focus on what we are made for—relationship. So the encounter with other religions must focus on the relational aspects of the encounter. The relational character of being human existence, the network of existence need to be the common ground between people, defined by way of religions, ethnicity, race, language or gender. Postliberlaism failed to note this relational aspect of Barthian theology, instead they used him mainly to insulate themselves from any outside scrutiny. Postliberal suggestion that Christian community exists alongside other communities with each having its own rules of discourse and linguistic conventions, each becoming a system unto itself, without any cross-cultural, universal values, is not satisfactory. The problem the postliberalists want to solve is not solved as there still looms the danger of the most dominant group exerting its values upon others. Colin Gunton criticizes postmodernity as “an imperious for truth which abolishes all other truth by a form of homogenization. It is, despite appearances, a form of universalism” Postliberlaism deprives itself any theological warrant to establish mutual relationship as the rules of each community remain separate.
The challenge to Christian theology in India is to demonstrate that Christian faith, at its very heart, and not only in its moral preaching, promotes the dignity and honor of human personhood. Christians have to acknowledge the criticisms raised by contemporary discourses on casteism, racism and, sexism. In order to accept the other, to accept difference, theology should change its universal, fixed, absolute categories of knowledge and values and reorient its theoretical basis to accept the validity of multi-foundational faith, values and practices. If we redefine our worldviews it is possible to see that as stars in relation to galaxies, or galaxies in relation to the universe or universe in relation to multiverse are not necessarily centred on any particular point; the world organism, even the atoms and the subparticles exist only in relationship, one keep the other in its place with their simple presence, mutually influencing and shaping other’s identity. If that relationship is broken the entire universe will collapse. Hence our theologies need to be relational with respect to individuals, communities, genders, races, and all creation, resisting all efforts to subsume the difference or drift away from one another.
Select Bibliography
Ford, David F., ed. The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian theology in the twentieth century. Second edition. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1997. Gellner Ernest. Postmodernism, Reason and Religion. London: Routledge, 1992.Danish Yearbook of Philosophy vol 35, 2000. University of Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum press, 2001. Healy, Paul. Rationality, Hermeneutics, and Dialogue: Toward a Viable Postfoundationalist Account of Rationality. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. Healy, Paul. Rationality Judgment, and Critical Inquiry,” The Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 1:3, 1993. Kamitsuka, David G. Theology and Contemporary Culture: Liberation, Postliberal and Revisionary Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Lindbeck, Goeorge A. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and theology in a postliberal age. Philadelphia: John Knox Press, 1984. Nirmal, Arvind P. Heuristic Explorations. Madras: CLS, 1990. Nirmal, Arvind P.ed. A Reader in Dalit Theology, Madras: Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute, 1991. Raj, Vinaya, Y. T. “Poststructructuralist theory of language, discourse, power and resistance and its implications for the re-working of Dalit theological methodology,” M.Th. Thesis submitted to the Senate of Serampore College, 2006. Rorty, Richard. The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method .Chicago: University of Chicago press[1967], 1992. Schrag, Calvin. The Resources of Rationality: A Response to the Postmodern Challenge. Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1992. Schwarz, Hans,.Theology in A Global Context: The Last Two Hundred Years Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005. Shults, LeRon, F. The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology: Wolfhart Pannenberg and the New Theological Rationality. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmaans, 1999. Toulmin, Stephen. The Return to Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
T. Jacob Thomas
Introduction
The basic nonfoundationalist position is that there are no fixed or absolute universal foundations for knowledge. Knowledge exists in particular cultural and linguistic communities and such knowledge does not need any validation from out side its community. The nonfoundationalist approach would help us to think about reality in a different way, not in fixed categories but in an interconnected, independent web of existence. With regard to theology of religions nonfoundationalism can justify the truth claims of different religions and make religions coexist in a galactic world, rejecting a monistic and centred world. It can also provide sufficient strategical validity to contextual theologies in India like Dalit or tribal theology in their struggle to find a place in the vast spectrum of knowledge formations. Major Western epistemological schools like rationalism, empiricism and idealism as well as the Indian advaitic school have been basically concerned with universal validation of knowledge. The nonfoundational or antifoundational rejection of any absolute or universal claims of truth, would help the emergence and justification of contextual contested knowledge theories. Postfoundationalism attempts to combine both foundationalist and nonfoundationalist approaches to knowledge. It affirms the foundationalist vision of truth as necessary but holds that our current knowledge is not final; hence ambition for any metanarrative is out of place. However, several people see nonfoundationalism nihilistic. In order to understand the role of nonfoundationalism constructively we will first examine the major traditions in philosophy and theology which were foundationalistic and then the tenets of nonfoundationalism will be looked into. Finally some modern nonfoundationalist heologies will be evaluated for their usefulness in the Indian context.
The Epistemological Dilemma in Philosophy and Theology
Epistemological debates since the time of the Greek Sophists in the 5th century BCE dealt with questions such as what is truth and how can we know anything, that is, the possibility of reliable and objective knowledge. The Sophist Gorgias argued that nothing really exists and that if anything did exist it could not be known; if knowledge were possible, it could not be communicated. Protagoras, another major sophist, held that no person’s opinions can be said to be more correct than another’s. However, the Sophists were put to oblivion by the opposing school of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who held that it is possible to have exact and certain knowledge of world and its “unchanging and invisible forms,” or ideas. They held that what we see and touch are imperfect copies of pure forms; abstract reasoning can provide genuine knowledge of these forms. The real problem Plato confronted was how to distinguish episteme (knowledge) from doxa (opinion) and authenticate one’s knowledge. For this he appealed to intuition. This was met with the problem that when we rely on intuition with out giving any reasons for it we do not have any basis to judge between alternative intuitions. If we give reasons for our choice of correct intuition, then we are no longer relying on intuition , but on reasons; again we are left with out any reason to justify our reasons. That means, there was no sound basis or foundation for thought.
Aristotle called the basic forms of knowledge which are grasped by the mind, scientia, first principles. The knowledge we get from experience is actually processed by the mind abstracting or deducing new facts from those already known, in accordance with the rules of logic, which was set down for the first time in systematic form by Aristotle. St. Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle in regarding perception as the starting point and logic as the intellectual procedure for arriving at reliable knowledge of nature. The challenge taken up by Aquinas was to make theology a science in accordance with Aristotelian logic. For this he posited the articles of faith as the first principles, on the basis of the authority of the church. However, the Enlightenment philosophers, armed with the spirit of reformation, attacked such authority and challenged the Thomistic way of understanding. Schleiermacher, the enlightenment theologian built his theology not on the authority of the Church but on the self-consciousness of every human being, the “feeling of absolute dependence,” as the foundation for sure knowledge of God.
Classical Foundationalism
The traditional foundationalist philosophy has as its core tenets: idea of a basic dichotomy between the subjective and the objective; the conception of knowledge as being a correct representation of what is objective; the conviction that human reason can completely free itself of bias, prejudice, and tradition; the ideal of a universal method by which we can first secure firm foundations of knowledge and then build the edifice of a universal science; the belief that by the power of self-reflection we can transcend our historical context and horizon and know things as they are in themselves.
Cartesian paradigm of the solitary thinker served as the background for the modern search for secure foundations. In his Meditations (1641) Descartes identified “clear and distinct ideas” as the foundation for knowledge. He made the foundation of all knowledge the certainty of the self and as a corollary the existence of God. He was following the mathematical ideal of certainty to know that “something is so and can’t be otherwise” and asserted, cogito ergo sum, I cannot doubt that I who doubts exist. The result was dualism between mind and matter, thinking thing (res cogitans) and extended thing (res extensa), which made mind as the source of knowledge and not empirical evidence as empiricists argued.
For John Locke, the father of empiricism, all human knowledge comes to us through our senses. Faith helps us, when reason fails, to make the leap towards revelation, not a certainty but a probability. According to the skeptical epistemology of David Hume ( 1711-1776) we can trust only the knowledge that we acquire from our perceptions. Our perceptions,can be divided into two categories: ideas and impressions. Ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions, or, in other words, that it is impossible for us to think of anything, which we have not antecedently felt, either by our external or internal senses. We cannot believe that a certain thing, such as God, soul, or self exists unless we can point to the impression from which the idea of the thing is derived.In his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding he defines the term impression as our lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will. Ever since the time of Hume knowledge found it difficult to establish itself on any sure foundations. George Berkeley, another, empiricist held that human knowledge of external physical objects is always subject to the errors of the senses, and concluded that one cannot have absolutely certain knowledge of the physical world a position which was contrary to that of the rationalists. The classical philosophical schools such as the Cartesian rationalism, Lockean empiricism and German idealism accepted the criteria that a knowledge is valid if it is universally true and accepted beliefs that are self evident, incorrigible and “evident to the senses” as foundations of sure knowledge. Immanuel Kant agreed with the rationalists on the possibility of getting exact and certain knowledge, but along with the empiricists he held that such knowledge is more informative about the structure of thought than about the world outside of thought. He has made room for faith by setting limits to reason, the boundary of knowing. Pure practical reason helps us to postulate freedom, God and immortality.
The Linguistic Turn and the Death of Foundationalism
The linguistic turn refers to the demise of the long reign of the philosophy of Cartesian monological subject and the recognition of the centrality of language in the constitution of knowledge To understand something is no more to form mental “representations” of it as modernism insisted, rather, understanding has become a matter of actively interpreting our world experience—by means of language. The enlightenment belief that reason is neutral and would lead to truth irrespective of context, tradition, or language was found shaky. Several people have contributed to this turn beginning from John Locke to Gadamer. It was Schleiermacher who liberated the hermeneutical theory from the Enlightenment “objectivity” to the consciousness of the feeling subject, paving the way for liberal humanism with its universal concept of human nature. Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger rejected the concept of knowing subject by the “lived experience” of the involved subject which would discover itself. Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein’s (1889-1951) Philosophical Investigations marked the shift in linguistic analysis. His linguistic analysis perceived reality in terms of language games. No truth is possible outside the language. Languages are shaped by cultural systems and traditions into which we are born. Language is inextricably woven into the fabric of life. Language determines our knowledge. Hans-Georg Gadamer ( 1900-2002) was critical of modern approaches to humanities that modeled themselves on the natural sciences and scientific methods and argued that a “historically effected consciousness” is embedded in the text which itself was the product of particular history and culture. Interpreting a text involves a “fusion of horizons” where the meaning emerges in dialogue with the text's history with the interpreter’s own background. The final outcome of all these developments was coming to the realization that no absolute knowledge is possible as the enlightenment conceived.
Poststructuralism
Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics contended that language is a system of relations and the meaning is processed within that structure. The text has no given meaning and the author disappears behind the structure. The problem with Saussure’s structuralism has been that it rejects not only the Cartesian knowing self but also the subjectivity and subverted the emerging identity consciousness among the socially oppressed women, Blacks, Dalits and tribals. The resurgence of identity politics among the submerged or subaltern groups challenged the unitary notions of human kind as false universalism that blocks substantive differences such as race, gender, or ethnicity , and contested all traditional knowledges. Poststructuralism and the strategy of deconstruction addressed this growing concern. Jacques Derrida’s notion of decentred universe challenged all fixed or absolute notions of centre and periphery and has conceived universe as a free play. There is no authoritative centre, which makes validation of knowledge necessary. Derrida has gone beyond Saussure’s notion that words derive their meaning in their difference with other words and pointed out that since the text has no foundational meaning any number of meaning can be formed by deferring the meaning of a word. This endless passive and active interplay of meaning is termed by Derrida as “differance.” Differance happens not in the difference of words as in structuralism but when something is known only from its absence. The poststructuralist strategy of deconstruction devised by Derrida categorically asserts the absolute impossibility of attributing to any text one single ultimate meaning. In deconstruction "objective truth is to be replaced by hermeneutic truth
It brings out the politics behind the construction of meaning. That means sacred texts, such as the Bible, do not have a single ultimate meaning nor are such texts necessarily authoritative. Deconstruction is a rebellion against absolute truth claims. It contest the given knowledge absolutised through hierarchical dualities which Derrida calls binary oppositions, creating superiority and inferiority structures of thought and social practices. Deconstruction disrupts and displaces the hierarchy and dismantles its authority and creates space for the “marginals” to present themselves as social agents.The web of relations outside the text may determine both the meaning of the text and the nature of its authority.
The linguistic turn led to the demise of the foundationalist tenet that for truth to exist there must be some sort of “extralinguistic” reality. Instead the legitimacy of a plurality of stand points and interpretations over an absolute or a contextual conception of knowledge or truth was affirmed. The linguistic turn has led to the postmodern argument that there are no truths, but only rival interpretations. This does not mean that language is everything, but that we know everything by means of language. There is no need of any foundation, either by way of intuition or by experience.
Postmodernism – Deconstruction of Knowledge
The perspective character of knowledge has been given ever-increasing importance since the age of Nietzsche. Human experience, insights and the perspective shape new ways of achieving and producing knowledge. The new view on knowledge does not assume reason to remain the same at all times and in all places. Rather it is now assumed that the subject of knowledge constitutes itself through a large number of social factors in its cultural context, like gender, wealth, class, and tradition.
Knowledge has now become a communicative function, an interplay between competence and performance, a “social construction of reality.” It is no longer result of any inherent human characteristic. Circumstances in society affect the subject’s knowing and knowledge. The question of the nature of knowledge is now replaced with the question of knowledge’s social connection and of rationality in communicative social course of events.
The philosophical core of postmodernism is a rejection of foundationalism, defended as the belief in given or fully attainable truths. LeRon Shults notes that postmodernism was born “out of the death throes of foundationalism.” The distinguishing features of the postmodernism can be identified as (1) rejection of an essentialist metaphysics; (2) a nonfoundationalist epistemology; (3) the historical contingency of all ides and a constructivist view of knowledge; (4) an aversion to metanarratives; and (5) the decentering of the self. Postmodernists differ from one another in important respects.
The nonfoundationalists defend an aesthetic relation to self; one should affirm “one’s liberty” by devising a personal style in opposition to all ruling norms. They attempt to immunize particular interpretations from critique by appealing only to the intra communal factors; they disengage themselves from any inter communal or extra communal factors. From a static and monist outlook on human kind, these newer attempts emphasized that the knowledge is produced in the interaction between subject and context. This means the earlier anthropological essentialism was discarded in favour of a relational view of the human person.
Postmodern theologies
The Liberation theology as well as the consequent third World theologies, though aimed at “a radical break” from the Euro-centric epistemologies could not escape the project of modernity, the dialectical progress of history and the Marxist “metanarrative” of class struggle. These contextual theologies could not accommodate epistemological and anthropological pluralism because of their basic foundationalistic world-view. Several contemporary scholars responded to the challenge raised by the nonfoundationalist theory of knowledge in a variety of ways. These nonfoundationalist theologies are postmodern as they reject the modern project of metanarratives but in that attempt find themselves in the awkward position of emitting ultraliberal as well as ultra conservative responses.
Among the liberal postmodern theologians Mark C. Taylor, Thomas J.J. Altizer, Robert P. Scharlemann, Charles Winquist, David Ray Griffin and Don Cupitt are important, though their works are not identical. Don Cupitt and Mark. C. Taylor endorse the line of thought of postmodern philosophers like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze. Both of them are influenced by Nietzsche’s ideas on the death of God. To them the death of God meant “the death of a transcendental signifier stabilizing identity and truth” and their concern is not a theology in the traditional sense but an “a/theology.” As Taylor calls it.
Among the conservative Postmodern theologians Graham Ward includes the names of George Lindbeck who initiated the Postliberal school of theology and his Yale colleague, Hans Frei , whose Biblical interpretation became basic source for this school, and other Yale students like William Placher, Ronald Thiemann and Kathrynn Tanner. Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbry also is included among the postliberal theologians. John Milbank, a sociologist, whose theology of Radical Orthodoxy, though nonfoundationalist, is premodern as it rejects any traffic between theology and contemporary human or natural sciences.
Postliberalism
Postliberal theologians reject the nonfoundationalists claim “that knowledge is grounded in a set of non-inferential, self-evident beliefs.” For them experience comes to us always as interpreted . There is no way for us to check them against some primordial, uninterpreted experience.” The nonfoundational or antifoundational character of Postliberalism goes back to Karl Barth or even to Aquinas. Barth held that there could be no “foundation, support, or justification” for theology in any philosophy, theory or epistemology” Karl Barth affirmed the self-authenticating Word of God as the foundation of theology. The truth of this Word is self evident to the believer. It may not make any sense to those who do not share the faith. This Barthian approach to Bible has influenced the postliberalist thinking that other religions or schools of thought can have their own valid set of foundations with no need of authentication from any outside authority. Lindbeck also is open about his indebtedness to Aquinas who wrote that the Christian language about God is true, but we do not know how it is true. We know God loves us, but we do not know what love would be like for God. We cannot go beyond our experience; we can only work within the rules the community provided to talk about God. As the title of the postliberal theologian William Placher’s book suggests, Christians need not "apologize" for their theology not conforming to non-Christian standards of rationality.
The postliberal approach finds important the differences among religions, rather than their commonalities. They don’t agree with the pluralists that all religions are saying the same thing. Postliberal theology “emphasizes the scriptural stories or narratives by which Christians identify God and the Christian community and come to understand their own lives.” Interpreting Hans Frei, the postliberalists argue that the Christian story for them can shape the Christian communal identity. It has the assimilative power to absorb the world. Postliberal theology emphasizes the importance of an intratextual use of scripture, relying on “the distinctive internal logic of Christian beliefs and practices. Kathryn Tanner “refuses to locate divine acts in some larger narrative of what is happening in creation, but insists on the primacy of God’s activity, but she sees such an account as ‘empowerment’ of quests for social justice rather than ‘tyranny.’ Postliberalists attempt for the “creative fusion of hermeneutics and epistemology.”
Postfoundationalism
If the problem with foundationalism was that it missed the communal factors by absolutizing the thinking subject, nonfoundationalism attempted to “immunize particular interpretations from critique by appealing only to those communal factors”. J. Wenzel van Huysteen, a Princeton theologian and proponent of a postfoundationalist theology fears that postliberal approach to community would develop ghetto mentality or “closet foundationalism.” For van Huysteen, the task of theology is “both to understand and explain.” He criticizes the postliberalists for rejecting the latter aspect of theology and making it simply “narrative” Our knowledge of reality is always mediated by our interpretation of experience. Our claims of truth are not absolute because our interpretation of reality is fallible. Our language is metaphorical and therefore cannot be absolutized, even if it is fully operational with in a given community. He says that interpreted experience is key to the relation between truth and knowledge. According to Mark Bevir, postfoundationalism implies that the individuals can have experiences and exercise their reason only against the background of a social practice or tradition. Individuals can exist only against the background of the community: “an individual is embedded within the community.” Postfoundationalism safeguards identity not by immunizing it against any critique but by emphasizing difference – otherness. It does not make a closed community, as is the tendency in postliberalism or radical orthodoxy, but rather stands for “an open community.
Van Huyssteen, suggests “critical realism” as a way of overcoming the dichotomy between the thinking individual and closed community. According to Tom Wright, a New Testament scholar and the Bishop of Durham,
...[critical realism] is a way of describing the process of "knowing" that acknowledges the reality of the thing known, as something other than the knower (hence "realism"), while fully acknowledging that the only access we have to this reality lies along the spiralling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known (hence "critical").
Van Hyussteen has his own version of critical realism that “affirms the embedded nature of human knowledge and existence” Critical realism, believes that the conceptual categories that we use to identify and understand social events are not exogenously determined; rather these categories are socially and historically determined. Critical realism is mainly employed by scientist turned theologians like John Polkinghorne, Ian Barbour, and Arthur Peacocke who were influenced by the scientist turned philosopher, Michael Polanyi. Polanyi's ideas were taken up enthusiastically by T. F. Torrance a theologian who finds dialogue with science important. Following van Hyussteen LeRon Shults attempts to develop a postfoundationalist theology based on the theological method of Wolfhart Pannenberg, who promotes dialogue with science and the philosophy of Calvin Schrag. Schrag holds that though our knowledge is contextual and fallible that do not automatically entail relativism. Reason has a binding effect across the contexts. Based on this philosophical approach postfoundationslim “insists on developing transcommunal and intersubjective explanations,” a necessary correction to postliberalism. Now we will briefly look at how Indian Dalit theologians deal with the challenge of postmodern theories.
Dalit theology
Dalit theology emerged as an academic discipline in the 1980s. It emerged as a quest for a “contested epistemology; it offered a “methodological challenge to the grand narratives of ‘prefix-less’ theology and Indian Christian theology.” Arvind P. Nirmal(1936-1995) rejected the Brahminic tradition in Indian Christian theology He observed that even though a third world theology was emerged in the 1970s under the influence of the Latin American Liberation theology it “failed to see in the struggle of Indian dalits for liberation a subject matter appropriate for doing theology in India.” Liberation theology or the third world contextual theologies could not offer a proper method for analyzing and interpreting the story of the Dalits. Dalit theology needed “a methodological shift in this postmodern context.” In his search for a suitable critical and constructive method Nirmal digged out the neglected Indian protest tradition of Lokayata or Carvaka school of Indian philosophy which rejects the Brahminic notion of esoteric knowledge. Vinaya Raj introduces a nonfoundationalist poststructuralist method of deconstruction, suitable for Dalit theology. He writes: “Deconstruction-- the poststructural method, as it believes in the fluidity and nonfixity of the meaning/subjectivity helps us to produce new meanings through discursive readings.” The nonfoundationalist poststructuralist strategies offer alternate ways of looking at theories of self and social formations, and transform existing caste practices and institutions in order to construct a sense for Dalits as active social agents.
Conclusion
Colin Gunton is of the opinion that we should not give up our search for foundations. For him non-foundationalism is a reflex to foundationalism. He argues, “that the basis and criteria of rationality are intrinsic to particular human intellectual enterprises, which should not have imposed upon them in a procrustean way the methodologies which are appropriate for other forms of intellectual life.” Yet Gunton rejects non-foundationalism as it constructs a barrier to outside critique. The nonfoundationalists “run the risk of the rank subjectivism… they evade the intellectual challenge involved in the use of the word ‘God’.” Basing on the theology of Cappadocians Gunton writes that since God is a communion of persons and each person is distinct but inseparable from the others, God’s being consists in relationship with one another. He writes,
…[the] three persons are for and from each other in their otherness. They thus confer particularity upon and receive it from one another. That giving of particularity is very important: it is a matter of space to be. Father, Son and Spirit through the shape – the taxis – of their inseparable relatedness confer particularity and freedom on each other. That is their personal being.
For Barth the doctrine of the imago Dei means that God created human beings for fellowship. Humans are naturally fellowshiping beings, with other beings and with God. It also means only in relationship with God that we can be fully human. There is no objectively existing datum that can be called religion, no “true religion” as such. Neither are we able to discover truth. We only become real only in relation between objectivity and subjectivity. Hendrick Kraemer called this Barthian approach “Biblical realism.” Since we cannot understand ourselves or others wholly we must focus on what we are made for—relationship. So the encounter with other religions must focus on the relational aspects of the encounter. The relational character of being human existence, the network of existence need to be the common ground between people, defined by way of religions, ethnicity, race, language or gender. Postliberlaism failed to note this relational aspect of Barthian theology, instead they used him mainly to insulate themselves from any outside scrutiny. Postliberal suggestion that Christian community exists alongside other communities with each having its own rules of discourse and linguistic conventions, each becoming a system unto itself, without any cross-cultural, universal values, is not satisfactory. The problem the postliberalists want to solve is not solved as there still looms the danger of the most dominant group exerting its values upon others. Colin Gunton criticizes postmodernity as “an imperious for truth which abolishes all other truth by a form of homogenization. It is, despite appearances, a form of universalism” Postliberlaism deprives itself any theological warrant to establish mutual relationship as the rules of each community remain separate.
The challenge to Christian theology in India is to demonstrate that Christian faith, at its very heart, and not only in its moral preaching, promotes the dignity and honor of human personhood. Christians have to acknowledge the criticisms raised by contemporary discourses on casteism, racism and, sexism. In order to accept the other, to accept difference, theology should change its universal, fixed, absolute categories of knowledge and values and reorient its theoretical basis to accept the validity of multi-foundational faith, values and practices. If we redefine our worldviews it is possible to see that as stars in relation to galaxies, or galaxies in relation to the universe or universe in relation to multiverse are not necessarily centred on any particular point; the world organism, even the atoms and the subparticles exist only in relationship, one keep the other in its place with their simple presence, mutually influencing and shaping other’s identity. If that relationship is broken the entire universe will collapse. Hence our theologies need to be relational with respect to individuals, communities, genders, races, and all creation, resisting all efforts to subsume the difference or drift away from one another.
Select Bibliography
Ford, David F., ed. The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian theology in the twentieth century. Second edition. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1997. Gellner Ernest. Postmodernism, Reason and Religion. London: Routledge, 1992.Danish Yearbook of Philosophy vol 35, 2000. University of Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum press, 2001. Healy, Paul. Rationality, Hermeneutics, and Dialogue: Toward a Viable Postfoundationalist Account of Rationality. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005. Healy, Paul. Rationality Judgment, and Critical Inquiry,” The Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 1:3, 1993. Kamitsuka, David G. Theology and Contemporary Culture: Liberation, Postliberal and Revisionary Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Lindbeck, Goeorge A. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and theology in a postliberal age. Philadelphia: John Knox Press, 1984. Nirmal, Arvind P. Heuristic Explorations. Madras: CLS, 1990. Nirmal, Arvind P.ed. A Reader in Dalit Theology, Madras: Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute, 1991. Raj, Vinaya, Y. T. “Poststructructuralist theory of language, discourse, power and resistance and its implications for the re-working of Dalit theological methodology,” M.Th. Thesis submitted to the Senate of Serampore College, 2006. Rorty, Richard. The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method .Chicago: University of Chicago press[1967], 1992. Schrag, Calvin. The Resources of Rationality: A Response to the Postmodern Challenge. Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1992. Schwarz, Hans,.Theology in A Global Context: The Last Two Hundred Years Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005. Shults, LeRon, F. The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology: Wolfhart Pannenberg and the New Theological Rationality. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmaans, 1999. Toulmin, Stephen. The Return to Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Indian Bible Commentary Paul’s Letter to Galatians
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Indian Bible Commentary
Paul’s Letter to Galatians
Introduction
Book of Galatians has profoundly influenced Christian history. It is considered the "the Magna Carta" of Christian freedom. The epistle to Galatians pictures the early church's struggles to free itself from the so called "Judaizers" who would have made the Christian Church a Jewish sect had they been successful. The Judaizing faction, based in Jerusalem, had their missionaries sent to Pauline congregations to teach them the necessity of observing the Mosaic law for their salvation. They had the support from the Jerusalem Church headed by James, brother of Jesus Christ. Even Peter and Barnabas were misguided by their arguments and stopped eating with Paul's gentile converts. Paul defended the freedom and equality of the gentiles and argued that no law is applicable to them for their salvation as they are justified by faith in the Christ of God. The Judaizers on their turn attacked the authenticity of Paul’s apostleship. In the letter to the Galatians Paul defends his credentials as a true apostle of Jesus Christ and upholds that the freedom the gentiles enjoy is on account of their faith in Christ and not based on any observance of rituals or the Law. In discussing his theological position with regard to the Gospel of God in Christ Paul touches upon the equality of races and genders well as the significance of religious traditions like Judaism. The major themes selected for study in this article are the meaning of Gospel, importance of faith for salvation, meaning of God's promise or covenant, place of non Christian traditions in relation to Christian faith, the question of circumcision and baptism, and human freedom.
Date and Purpose
Of the seven undisputed Pauline letters, Galatians is the most difficult to date. Scholars, are not in agreement whether the Galatians were written before or after the Council of Jerusalem which is referred to in Acts 15 which might have happened in CE 50. Some scholars hold that the Galatians may be the earliest epistle, written in CE 48 by Paul before the Council. They also differ in the purpose of both accounts. While Acts try to justify Peter, Galatians is written for Paul’s self defense. This epistle has considerably helped the church to establish itself as a separate entity different from the Jewish church. We take the view that it was written after the Jerusalem Council by Paul to win back people of Galatia from the “Judaizers” or the “agitators” (as some commentators would like to call them) and make them accept his apostolicity.
Context of the letter
This letter has in its background the ethnic conflict between Jews and proselytes to Judaism as well as gentile Christians. Also it deals with the questions related to the practice of Jewish Christians refusing to eat with the Gentile Christians, an issue similar to the question of untouchability and caste system existing in the Indian Church; this has made the letter particularly significant to India. The religious background of Galatia was also multi-religious as that of India. The local population worshipped Greek and Roman deities as Galatia was converted by Caesar Augustus to a Roman colony. Galatia also had a large number of Jews, who followed the Second Temple Judaism and there were also few proselytes to Judaism. The Christian church in Galatia was comprised of Jewish as well as gentile converts. The “Judaizers” who came from Jerusalem held that although ultimately there would be no difference between the Jews and gentiles before God, in the penultimate conditions, the gentiles had to undergo Jewish ceremonial laws of circumcision and commensuration (laws regarding eating with gentiles, i.e., abstaining from Table fellowship with the non-Jews) before becoming Christians. The question of circumcision was more a gender issue rather than a question of observance of the Jewish Law.
The way the apostles handled the issue of salvation of gentiles as well as the issue of circumcision at the Jerusalem Council, specifically the question of the equality of all human races before God, has some thing important to say to the pluralistic religious and social context of India especially with regard to the prevailing caste and gender inequalities. Paul upheld that gentiles are acceptable to God in the same way the Jews are and faith is the only condition for salvation; in Christ all human made barriers -- religious, cultural or gender -- are broken down and all are one in Christ.
Acts and Galatians
Galatians chapter 2 and Acts chapter 15 refer to some apostolic meeting in Jerusalem which Paul attended. But Paul’s version of the meeting is different from Luke’s account. Acts 15 tells us that James decided, on behalf of the church, that gentiles should have to undergo circumcision, and should abstain from “things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood" (15.19-20). Paul’s version of the decision of the council was that "we [Paul and Barnabas] should go to the Gentiles and they [James, Cephas, and John] to the circumcised. The only one thing they asked was to “remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do" (2.9-10). As Paul has understood the Council did not demand gentile circumcision. It was only some agitators who had the blessings of certain apostles of Jerusalem under the leadership of James, who wanted to create seeds of dissention among the Galatians, which Paul vehemently opposed. He had to oppose even Peter who changed his position after the intervention of the missionaries from Jerusalem. Even Barnabas sided with them.
Both Acts and the Galatians agree that in Christ salvation is possible for all people. However, the methodology of arriving at the conclusion has become crucial for Paul, than the conclusion itself. Here Paul contrasts “faith in Christ’ with “works of the law." These phrases subsequently "became ciphers for the superiority of Christian faith and the inferiority of Jewish Torah-observance” (Tatha Wiley, p. 9). The other Apostles upheld the role of Torah in the history of salvation. In Galatians Paul admits James, Peter and John are reputed to be pillars in the church, but their reputations mean nothing to Paul and he is every bit equal to other apostles. However, the Acts clearly subordinates Paul to the Jerusalem authorities and all that they represented theologically went against the independent Pauline line. Proper attention to the ethnic conflict between the Jewish and the gentile Christians will shed much light into Paul's arguments in this letter in defense of the gentile Christians.
While the Galatians has no reference to Damascus in Acts the geographical centre of Paul’s conversion experience is Damascus. In Galatians Paul notes the significance of Arabia where he spent several years after his conversion which finds no reference in the Acts. Often we see the authority of Paul as expressed in Galatians countered by the Acts narrative. The author of Acts attempts to cut Paul down to a subordinate position to the Jerusalem apostles. Acts rejects Paul’s sniffing at Cephas, James and John. Galatians, on the other hand holds that James, Peter and John all have agreed with Paul in Jerusalem. The letter to Galatia has in its background not only the gentile Jewish conflict but also the hierarchical struggles among the apostles.
What happened in Antioch?
The Antioch incident' described in Galatians 2.11–21 “remains a crux interpretum in New Testament studies” (Stephen Anthony Cummins, 2001). This incident sheds considerable light on both Pauline theology and the development of the early church. As Tatha Wiley says, the letter draws us to the “controverted heart of Christian origins.” The Antioch confrontation has served as a source of consternation and controversy in the early church. For example, Marcion (d. c. AD 160) used it to promote anti-Judaism in the Church; the early third century Pseudo-Clementines used it to attack Paul; and Porphyry (c. 232–303) used it against Christianity itself. Irenaeus (c. 130–200), made use of it in his combat against certain gnostic advocates of Paul. He viewed Peter in a more positive light by subduing Paul to Jerusalem apostles' authority. Tertullian (c. 160–220), reacting against Marcion, maintained that the two apostles shared the same basic gospel.
According to Eusebius, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215) simply maintained that the Peter of Galatians was not the apostle Peter, but rather another of the seventy disciples bearing the same name (see Luke 10.1). Origen (c. 185–254) held that both Peter and Paul were only pretending to dispute with one another in order to condemn more effectively the Judaizers. Aquinas (1225-74) followed Augustine(354–430) in viewing Paul's public rebuke of Peter as a necessary response to an action which was an unacceptable renunciation of the truth. However, Aquinas held that it constituted only a venial rather than a mortal sin. It was exactly at this point Luther (1483–1546) differed with Aquinas. For Luther the conflict was no mere pretence ; it was a clear desertion of the truth of the gospel. On the basis this view Luther rejected all the veneration of the saints, the significance of papal decisions and the value of works of satisfaction. Luther held that the central tenet of the Gospel has to be justification by grace through faith, and not through any “works of the law' (Gal. 2.16). However, for F. C. Baur, the founder of the so-called Tübingen school, the churches in Jerusalem (led by James) and Antioch (led by Paul) represented the outworking of a division between two Christian “parties”: the conservative “Hebrews” and the more liberal “Hellenists” (see Acts 6.1- 8.4). Baur's view has been a dominant force in nineteenth and twentieth century interpretations of the Antioch incident. Still today debates on justification by faith and the role of exegetical method in relation to matters of theology, dogma and praxis are prevalent among the ecumenicals and evangelicals. In the context of India this background information will help us to gain some theological insights regarding how to address the socio-cultural problems existing in the Indian Church.
History of interpretation
Paul is weaving together several stories throughout Galatians. This is perhaps his most narrative epistle considering how much storytelling plays a part in his argument. Historically, the book of Galatians has misled Christian commentators largely due to the technical discussions of biblical topics ranging from circumcision, to the Torah, and to freedom in Christ. Jerome thinks that Paul is playing upon the name Galatians, claiming its derivation from the Hebrew word Galath, which means fallen or carried away, as though Paul wanted to say, "You are true Galatians, i.e., fallen away in name and in fact." For Luther it was Jewish legalism that Paul opposed. Since Luther it has been regarded justification by faith is central to Paul’s theology. Calvin also held justification by faith as a central doctrine in Paul. Bultmann understood justification by faith against the background of his existential understanding of anthropology. He considered the first century Judaism as legalistic in his work, Primitive Christianity. That means Judaism believed that salvation was depended on the observance of the law, or good works in accordance with the law. Bultmann held that Paul took his central ideas, motifs and theology from Hellenism and not from Judaism. He found an antithesis between Paul and Judaism . Bultmann’s ideas dominated the thinking of early twentieth century scholarship.
Albert Schweitzer on the other hand considered Paul as a Jewish thinker and not a Hellenistic. It has to be noted that for Schweitzer, the centre of Paul’s theology was not justification by faith but Christ-mysticism. Schweitzer regarded Christ-mysticism as the centre of Pauline theology within the context of apocalyptic Judaism; he rejected the influence of Hellenistic Judaism upon Paul (Schweitzer, Mysticism, pp. 225, 295) This understanding of Paul as a mystic would be helpful to interpret Galatians in the Indian context. Kristel Stendahl, in his famous article, “The apostle Paul and the introspective conscience of the West ”(1963) held that Paul did not see any fundamental problem in Judaism. For him the pre-Christian Paul did not find any problem in finding his salvation in Judaism. Stendahl blamed Augustine for making Paul a person who had an introspective conscience. He held that it was Luther who degraded Paul’s justification by faith as an answer to individual salvation. Stendahl identified Paul’ s Damascus encounter as a calling rather than a conversion. Like Schweitzer, Stendahl interpreted the justification by faith in relation to Paul’s Gentile mission. This way of looking at Paul’s relation to Judaism would enlighten us in India in our approach to different religious traditions existing in the Indian missionary context, which constitute the spiritual background of Indian Christians. We can more tolerantly and with genuine openness approach and understand our mother traditions. As Chakkariah has pointed out, Hinduism to him is the spiritual mother while Christianity is his wedded love.
A New Perspective
Contemporary Pauline scholars challenge the theological historical assumptions embedded in the dominant interpretation of Galatians. A major challenge came from the “new Perspective” advocated by scholars like Krister Stendahl, E. P. Sanders, James Dunn, and N. T. Wright in the 1960s. Galatians had too often been interpreted in the adversus Judaeos tradition which suggested a superior Christianity (faith) over against an inferior Judaism. The New Perspective rejected the idea that a theology of works-righteousness can be found at all in the Second Temple Judaism, popular during Paul’s time. They considered the view of works-righteousness as a polemical caricature of Judaism, not a historical reality. The theme of salvation by grace through faith occurs almost exclusively in Paul’s letters to Galatians and Romans. In these two letters Paul deals directly with the relationship of Gentile and Jewish followers of Jesus. Paul believed passionately in grace and faith, so did other Jews of his day.
Influenced by Augustine and Luther, scholars once assumed that the pre-Jesus Paul carried a heavy burden of sin. This argument was based on Romans 7 and 1 Timothy 1:15 where Paul calls himself the foremost of sinners. the “New Perspective” school began reading ancient Jewish texts on their own terms, rather than through the Christian lenses. They found that texts like Galatians 1 and Philippians 3 reveal that Paul did not struggle under a burden of sin; rather, he remained proud of his faithfulness to the law throughout his life. Does it not suggest that in India those who come from traditional local faith traditions can uphold what ever is not inimical to Christianity, once they embrace it? Perhaps it suggests more than that. Just as Paul argued that his revelation is equally valid and he himself is equal to any of the other apostles, Christians in India can validly claim a direct revelation from Christ. Perhaps, this is what Chenchiah meant when he spoke of the “raw fact of Christ” which is not supported by any traditions.
Paul indeed emphasized the equality of Jews and Gentiles in their faith to Christ (3:26). E. P. Sanders, in his Judaism held that the notion of justification by faith resulted from Paul’s Gentile mission was a polemic response against his opponents. What was distinctive of his mission was the inclusion of Gentiles without requiring them to observe Israel's Torah. In this new perspective, Paul’s conversion was not from Judaism to Christianity, as in leaving one religion for another. Instead, he received an "apocalypse" from God, that revealed the risen Jesus to him. Paul's gospel was not simply the announcement of salvation by grace through faith as held in the older perspective. Paul's gospel proclaimed God's decisive saving action in the death, resurrection, and return of Jesus. "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again." Paul proclaims the righteousness and power of God, demonstrated through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ (not simply "faith in" Jesus) to save humankind and the cosmos.
The new perspective in Pauline studies considerably benefit Jewish-Christian relations as Christians seriously try to understand Judaism on its own terms. It prompts us to interpret Hinduism or any other religion on its own terms and find the link to Christian faith not as its fulfillment rather from an altogether different angle, in a “good neighbor” paradigm. In the older perspective, following Augustine and Luther, Christians sought to get people lost before they can be saved. The new perspective, while it takes sin seriously, instead announces God's lacerative acts on behalf of individuals, communities and all of creation. While the old perspective calls people to repent and find forgiveness, the new perspective invites people to participate in the ongoing work of God. Paul applies the same equality to Jews and Gentiles as well as to slave and free (which undermined the very basis of Rome’s economic system) and to male and female (which undermined the patriarchal basis of Roman society, grounded in the idea of Caesar as paterfamilias for the whole empire). This means that there must be no second-class citizens in the Church; that there should be provision in the Church structure for women to have equal authority as well as equal opportunity to leadership, teaching, and prophetic ministry; that gentiles and Jews as well as slaves and free people are to be treated on equal level in the Church of Christ.
What should be asserted in India is that one individual or religious community, is not more disadvantaged than the other, one is not more welcomed than the other, one is not more privileged than the other in relation to Christ. All have equal standing before God; no one is great or small before God.
Table fellowship: A Caste issue?
Exegetes and theologians once presumed that Paul’s theological concepts like justification could be discussed independently of their social setting. Today it is axiomatic that meanings are intimately bound up with social settings. The major question in Galatia was with regard to the nature of table fellowship of Jewish and Gentile Christians. Though the Roman masters would eat at the same table with slaves and other lower-class people, but they would maintain the status differentiation by offering differing kinds of food and thus reinforce the divisions in Roman society through the public table practices. Paul responds to this practice in 1 Corinthians 11. The question of table fellowship among Christians in Antioch was different. Here Judaistic Christians missionaries who came from Jerusalem taught that unless the gentiles become Jews first sharing a common table with them was not in order. Paul accuses that Peter and Barnabas sided with them. Such an act from the side of apostle like Peter would pave way for the practice of social inequality between Jews and Gentiles in Christ’s church. Paul found it contrary to the faith in Christ and also to the Abrahamic faith which Jewish Christians acknowledged. Paul’s argument for common table fellowship was based on the promise of God to Abraham that all nations will be blessed in Abraham. According to him fulfillment of the promise of God was ultimately fulfilled in Jesus who is the seed of Abraham. The Judaisers also accepted and strongly promoted the view that Jesus is the seed of Abraham. We may remember that both Matthew and Luke in their Gospels found it necessary to include the genealogies that would support the lineage of Jesus from Abraham, in the case of Luke, he would even trace it back to Adam.
Many western missionaries who came to India were critical of caste system though they were not as critical of racism in their own homelands. M.M. Thomas in his book, Salvation and Humanization, narrates an incident happened in South India. The high caste converts of an Anglican Church in Madurai sent a complaint to their bishop asking him to restrict the missionaries from giving Holy Communion to them along with the untouchable. Even such strong steps from missionaries did not completely eradicate castes system from the Indian Churches. Caste discrimination continued to be even strengthened under the native leadership after the independence of India. Now this is the major issue that threatens the good news of Christ in India. If churches do not take strong stand against casteism, the Indian churches would be missing the truth of the Gospel which Paul defended so strongly in his letter to Galatians.
The circumcision: A gender issue?
Through out the Christian tradition, the circumcision preaching had been interpreted as a threat not to the equality of members in the assemblies but to the legitimacy of the Christian gospel. But Tatha Wiley has introduced a different interpretive principle to understand the Galatian conflict. She raises the question about the feelings of women in the Galatian Assemblies with regard to circumcision. She argues that the dispute between evangelists over the necessity of circumcision was, in its immediate communal context as well as direct consequence, a dispute over whether the membership of Gentile believers in the Galatian assemblies would be differentiated by gender (Wiley,11). For her the question of circumcision was directly related to gender and it remained at the heart of the Galatian conflict. Paul as well as his Jewish friends were competing to win the hearts and minds of the Gentile men and women in the Galatian assemblies. The circumcision conflict not only raised the question of membership in the church, but also about women’s role in the churches. Equality of the all congregational members was part of the constructed social reality of the first Christian generation. For Tatha Wiley circumcision would not only enforce the Jew/Gentile dichotomy but also the male/female division of Judaism. Circumcision implies that women are lesser people who are unable to have real authority and leadership in religious life. Paul not only argues that Jesus abolishes the concept of the “Holy of Holies” accessible only to the high priest but Paul rejects the whole Jewish religious system with its divisions between Jews, Gentiles, men, women, priests, and people. For her, to some degree, Paul’s rejection of physical circumcision might mean a rejection also of male privilege (Wiley, 120). She asserts that the question of purity was not the deciding factor that excluded women, also fear of circumcision was not the only factor that entitled adult Gentile men with the status salvation.
Paul’s interference was precisely for the equality of Gentile women in the Galatian Assemblies. Paul’s rejection of physical circumcision might mean a rejection also of male privilege. She holds that Paul is of the opinion that without theTorah, differences between women and men are removed and that women, like men, are to be admitted to the assemblies as persons, turning to the God of Israel by way of their own decision.
Chapter Analysis: Argumentation
This letter is written after the model of a Greco-Roman apologetic letter: prescript (1:1-5), introduction (1:6-11), narrative (1:12-2:14), proposition (2:15-21), proof (3:1-4:31), exhortation (5:1-6:10), and conclusion (6:11-18).Paul begins by mentioning the Christ-narrative: “who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil age” (1:4). After asserting his apostleship Paul pronounces curses upon any one, who should dare to preach any other gospel than Christ's own, first preached by Paul. Next he moves to a lengthy account of his personal conversion history (1:11-2:10), filling in the story with enough historical details to sketch a rough timeline of his conversion when compared with Acts. Chapter 2 is also narrative. The seemingly instructive section of chapter 2 (2:15-21) almost certainly belongs to Paul’s address to Peter at Antioch. In the second chapter Paul deals with the Antiochean controversy. In both Jewish and Greco-Roman circles, eating with someone was a sign of communion with them, and such communions enforced unity among the same group members and created division between different groups. “Good Jews” didn’t eat with “sinners.” Jesus got into trouble for “eating with sinners.” Paul’s chastisement of Peter was for his subservience to this Jewish practice by breaking the table fellowship with the Gentiles that Paul practiced in his churches. Table fellowship was a concept that had serious social implications at that time. Paul’s practice was to include all at the table, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female, which is a practice that stands in stark contrast to the Jewish practice. It was contrary to the Roman practice of serving different foods for different categories of people. Elsewhere he emphasizes One body, One bread, One Spirit.
Discussion in the second chapter is particularly significant to the Indian church situation where caste conflicts destroys intercommunion of different castes. Most churches in India are infested with this kind of destructive practices. People find it difficult to cross the caste barriers and enjoy table fellowship or marital relationships across caste divisions. Many high caste Christians adhere to the Judaistic or Petrine position and refuse to eat with the lower castes. Paul’s courageous stand must encourage Indian Christian to overcome the caste mentality and accept all humans equally worth in Jesus Christ. As noted above this is the biggest task of the Indian churches.
Paul takes up Habakkuk’s text (Hab. 2:4) which says that the righteous will live, not by their own righteousness, but by faithfulness to their vision. Paul somewhat alters its perspective. He focuses not on the faithfulness of the vision but on the faith of the one who waits for the vision; so it is the “righteous by faith who will live.” If this is so then one cannot possibly be righteous by the law. Faith decides righteousness. Commitment to one’s vision also impute righteousness. Just as people with religious orientation are guided by their faith, people committed to their ideological persuasion could also be made righteous on account of their vision, by Pauline argument. Faith and vision both go beyond oneself, transcends the narrow selfish interests and rises to level of spirituality. Thus Paul offers consolation of acceptance by God, not only for the religious but also for secular person. In the next section, Paul reaches all the way back to Abraham and traces Abraham’s story as the paradigm for conversion, and in the rest of chapter 3 as well as chapter 4 Paul continues to give instruction through means of intertextual allusions. Paul begins his third chapter with the curse of the law in Deuteronomy (3:10), then moves next to the question of being justified by faith with reference again to Habakkuk (3:11). Then he centers on Christ’s crucifixion (3:13-14) which inaugurated the next stage of the gospel going to the Gentiles and finally the coming of the Spirit (3:14).
It has been usually held that chapter three, especially 3:10-12, stood at the heart of Paul’s message to the Galatian believers The key argument in this chapter is that it is impossible for a person to be justified by observing the law. The law nullifies any religious observance that negates the earlier promise given to Abraham, who was himself a gentile without circumcision. In a religiously fundamentalist country like India this argument brings liberation to people who want to maintain a free fellowship with God without any interference from the religious hierarchies of different sorts. Salvation is unattainable by obedience to the law’s commands, because no one is able to continually remain in steadfast obedience to them. The issue in Galatia was that the law-observant Judaizers seek to turn Christian Gentiles to law-observers as well. Paul opposes this trend with all his might.
Paul says that Christ has been portrayed as crucified before their eyes (3:1). He makes mention of their having received the Spirit (3:2-3), and point out that they have suffered many things (3:4). Now someone has bewitched them (3:1). Later in 6:12-13 Paul writes that the Judaizers are greedy for the flesh of the Galatians, for their own gain not for the gain of the circumcised.The law does not operate on the principle of believing, but on the principle of doing (Gal. 3:12).The law does not confer righteousness since nobody is able to keep it, but it participates in the prophetic witness to righteousness. The law upholds the principle that obedience confers blessing. Paul argues that the law did not annul or add to the principle of justification by faith. This is clearly seen in the way God ratified his covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15. Following the customs of the day, animals were cut apart and the halves arranged opposite to each other. The parties were to pass through the pieces, and so the covenant would be ratified in blood. However, in making his covenant with Abraham, God passed between the pieces alone. Again, this suggests that this covenant is not so much an agreement as it is a declaration of what God promises to perform. The fulfillment of the promises does not depend on both parties playing their parts, since Abraham had no part - the covenant does not depend on him, but only on God's ability and faithfulness to perform what he has promised. But what Paul is really saying (v. 17: "what I mean is this"), is that since no one can set aside or add to even a human covenant that has been duly established (v. 15), then, "The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise" (v. 17). The inheritance was given to Abraham by promise - by God's sovereign declaration of what he would perform - and ratified in blood. And as we have seen, the promised blessing is applied through faith to those whom God has chosen to believe. The law, which came after, does not affect this, whether we are referring to the promised inheritance or the means by which it is applied (v. 18). Therefore, the principle of justification by faith is preserved despite the formal institution of the law.
Chapter three has been used by Prosperity Gospel preachers to reinforce their own gospel. The prosperity Gospel preached by many fast track gospel preachers severely damage the message of the Gospel. Blessings from God has been equated with materialistic growth. The bedrock of the prosperity gospel is Galatians 3:29: “ And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” Some others appeal to Gal. 3:14, which says “that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles . . . .” Certainly Gospel is related to human well being. But the contention of the prosperity Gospel that God bestows material blessings proportionate to the amount of prayers of believers is mocking the image of God portrayed by Jesus, God as the parent of all who bestows blessing according to the needs of every one, not by the acts or merits of any one. Acquiring more than what one needs is against the gospel as it is evident in the sermon on the mount as well as from the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. Paul also speaks of materialistic equality as the will of God in II Corinthians 7. In the New Perspective approach the debate in Galatians 3 is not over how an individual becomes saved, but what the children of Abraham look like. Paul asserts that they look like people with faith, without respect to the works of the law, all to be one in Christ, irrespective of the one’s birth, gender, caste, colour, nationality, culture or religion.
Paul continues his discussion in Chapter Four on how we inherit the promises of Abraham in faith by the grace of God. The Hebrew word, hen, speaks of undeserved favor. It is usually translated to Greek as charis, grace, graciousness, grace in a person, favor, gracious care, undeserved gift that which one grants to another, or the action of one who volunteers to do something on behalf of another. Grace can be never earned or deserved, but can only be received as a gift. Grace is all that God is free to do and it functions apart from all human works, cooperation or merit. Grace is universally free and is designed to impart happiness and joy on all. In the Greek and Roman cultures, sons were not automatically heirs to their father's estate. When they reached a point of maturity where they could understand what it meant, usually between 14 and 18, they went through a formal adoption process where they received “the full rights of sons”, qualifying them to inherit their father's estate. Until then even though they were biologically related to their fathers, they had no more legal standing than the household slaves. Through the Lord's atoning sacrifice, we've been given “the full rights of sons” in our Father's family. No longer slaves to sin, and not just forgiven, we've been made heirs with Christ of all eternity.
Galatians 5 is considered as a pivotal text for understanding Christian freedom and calling. It has been a dear text for the monastic movement. Monastic life has been an attempt to walk and live with Jesus. For this the Monastic Fathers and Mothers sought to create an environment which was acoustically perfect to hear God's voice. However, such an environment turned out to be artificial. To walk freely one must first recognize all those various artificial environments. When people forget the artificiality of their environment and take it as an immutable law of nature they get trapped within the 'game', within the confines of the environment. Freedom in Christ means that one need not limit oneself to a few of these 'games,' ritualistic, or monastic, pietistic or of such sort. Paul affirms this by saying that he is free to be all things to all people; that he has authority over all things, though he in his freedom has refrained himself from many things for the sake of the weak members of the community. Jesus in his ministry illustrated this freedom by throwing out social conventions that restricted the exercise of one's freedom as human being - he touched the outcasts, ate with them, broke Mosaic law of purity and pollution, allowed women disciple to accompany him even in long journeys such as to Jerusalem , enlarged the concept of family, called God “Daddy,” discarded all the usual pietistic life style of the Pharisees, acknowledged the faith of the non Israelites, crossed the boundaries of Israel to live with the gentiles, ate and drank with them, never insisted on any religious strictures upon his followers.
What Paul is suggests is to drop all hypocrisy! To be free in Christ is to shun away all hypocrisy since Christ considered hypocrisy as the greatest of sins that distorts one's relation to God and others in community. One does not have to pretend to be something else in Jesus community. All are accepted as they are by Jesus. One does not have to worry about one's religion, sexual orientation, intellectual abilities while coming to Jesus. All his friends in Galilee were marginalized people, thrown out of the elite society. For him all social rules were artificial.
Paul has been dealing with two ethnic groups of people in the entire context of the letter to Galatians – Jews and Gentiles. What Paul spoke of the “uncircumcised,” -- the “Gentiles,” --and the “circumcised” in Gal. 2:7-9 is repeated in Gal. 6:15. The term “Israel” has always been used as an ethnic reference to the people who have descended from the patriarch Jacob. Some scholars, called the covenant theologians, argue that Paul equated Church with Israel. However, it should be noted that any Church literature that equates the Church to Israel was not found until 160 A.D. Paul has been emphatic in rejecting any attempt to bind Christians to the Jewish community or the observance of the Law. Any attempt to achieve salvation throught he observance of the Jewish Law has been considered by Paul as a denial of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore it is unfair to Paul to say that he equated Gentile Christians to the new spiritual Israel, or made the Church the new spiritual Israel, as claimed by some theologians.
Theological Themes:
Gospel of God
It is important to examine what Paul understands by the term “gospel” in the letter to the Galatians. Paul’s usage of the term must be searched in two possible background sources: the Hebrew scriptures on the one hand and pagan usage
on the other. In other words, the Pauline meaning of the Gospel has to be searched in the message of Isaiah or in the Greco-Roman imperial proclamations. In Isaiah 40.9 we read of the herald of good tidings who proclaims “Here is your God!” and in 52.7 we read of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, and says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” These passages, deal with the great double theme of Servant Songs (Isaiah 40-55): Yahweh's return to Zion and enthronement, and the return of Israel herself from her exile in Babylon. For some, this is the background against which the New Testament term, “gospel” need to be understood. The Isaianic tradition of “good news” was prevalent in the Second Temple period, which sets the background of the New Testament.
Others insist upon the pagan background of the gospel. In the Greek world good news is a technical term for "news of victory." It would refer to the announcement of the birth or accession of an emperor. The coming of a new ruler meant the promise of peace, a new start for the world. Then the question that has been raised is whether “the gospel,” for Paul, an Isaianic message or a pagan Imperial proclamation? The New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright suggests that such an anti-thesis between Jewish and pagan is a false and misleading one. Wright argues that for Paul, gospel, primarily, is a message about the true God as opposed to the false gods; secondly, it is a message about the Messiah, the true king of Israel, and hence of the world; the “gospel” confronts directly the claims of other gods and lords. The message of good news decisively confronts the power of the spurious gods. Here the question is, whether the regular Pauline phrase “the gospel of God”, should be read as “the gospel concerning God” or as “the gospel from God”. Though it is difficult to divide them up completely, the Galatians suggests that the content of the gospel is primarily, God. Hence, Gospel is Gospel of God in Christ.
The gospel certainly concerns the Christ, the Jewish notion of Messiah; it is through the Messiah that the true God has revealed the gospel which involved the portrayal of Jesus Christ as the crucified one (3.1). “The gospel” is not a message about “how one gets saved,” in an individualistic and ahistorical sense but the announcement of God’s rule, a summons to share in the blessings of the “age to come,” proclaimed by Isaiah.
For Paul there is no other gospel besides the one he had preached to the Galatians. He preached, not a gospel of his own invention, but the very same Gospel God had long ago prescribed in the Sacred Scriptures.
Abraham’s Children: Children of Promise or People of Faith
Another significant usage of Paul in Galatians is his interpretation of Abraham’s role in human salvation -- the meaning of the “children of Abraham” and “Abraham’s faith.” For the Jews the children of God meant the descendants of Abraham (John 8:31-47). It is likely that the Judaizers has asserted that it was necessary for the Gentiles to become children of Abraham first in order to be saved, that is in order to become the children of God. They insisted that in order to become the children of Abraham, it was necessary for them to receive circumcision, the physical seal of the covenant that God made with Abraham (Genesis 17:9-14). Paul refers to the case of Abraham not only to counter the Judaizer's misuse of covenant history and their misinterpretation of the ters “children of Abraham.”
Paul affirms that according to the Scripture Abraham was righteous because of faith and not works. When he appeals to the verse again in his letter to the Romans, (See Romans 4) Paul does expand on this point and reveals some of the reasoning behind his use of it. Christian faith does not enforce worship and declares that God accepts us just as we are, and our worship and service in God's name is a grateful response for that unmerited love and acceptance. God accepted the faith of Abraham while he was still an uncircumcised person; therefore religious rituals have nothing to do with the salvation of God in Jesus Christ. Paul is saying that when it comes to justification, and when it comes to being the children of Abraham and the children of God, it does not matter whether one is Jew or non-Jew, slave or free, male or female. Before God one is not more disadvantaged than the other for all are under condemnation by the righteous judgment of God; one is not more welcomed than the other, for all must come through the faith that God gives; one is not more privileged than the other, for all are children of Abraham by their faith in God. John the Baptist in (Luke.3:8) declares that God can make children of Abraham out of stones. Jesus is said to have declared that salvation of Zachaeus, the socially outcaste tax collector, and that of Lazarus in the parable, are on account of their filial relation to Father Abraham.
Believers are "all one in Christ Jesus" (v. 28) and are the children of God (v. 26). In our context, this supersedes all natural distinctions between individuals, so that in Christ "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female." In the caste context of India the concept of being the children of God is important. Seeing the power of the concept Gandhiji called the outcastes, “Harijan,” people of God. However, he could not substantiate this in terms of Hindu theology and ideology which legitimizes varnasramas, the fourfold divisions of society and dharma which requires caste practices as one’s duty, that maintains people outside the caste as “mlechhas” or untouchables.
Paul by employing the term “Abraham’s children” does not mean that Christ has abolished all racial differences, all class disparities, and all gender distinctions. That is, Paul’s logic of promise to Abraham cannot be used to refute plurality of races, classes, and genders. The meaning of the name Abraham itself is “father of many nations.” In Paul’s argument there is a spiritual basis that nullify all racism and sexism, while affirming the plurality of the identity of races and gender. That is, if in Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew or Gentile, that means no racial or gender discrimination should remain, while distinctiveness are legitimately maintained. However, no legitimate distinctions can be maintained in terms of “slave-free” categories, as they are based on economical and not anthropological factors. Paul’s point for the Galatians is that the blessings of Abraham for Gentiles (i.e., Galatians) comes only through Christ and not by observing Mosaic law, as the Judaizers insisted. Furthermore, with Christ’s redemption comes the promise of the Spirit, which, once again, is only available through faith.
Before and Beyond Circumcision
In Galatians Paul argues that the Abrahamic tradition gathers all the gentile faith traditions in Christ. Abraham was justified through faith even before he was circumcised, or before he adopted any particular religious ritualistic tradition. In Galatians 4:8-11, the ex-pagan Galatian Christians are warned that if they become circumcised, that is, aspire to become Jewish, they will in effect be reverting to paganism, forsaking the freedom of faith made available through Jesus Christ. The gospel stands over against any such attempt to circumscribe people to any legal or ritualistic systems of religion. The gospel is a message about the true God. If the “false brethren”, or the Galatian “agitators”, -- the so called Judaizers-- had had their way, the gospel would have become simply an inner-Jewish message, inviting people to get circumcised and to join Judaism. Paul’s reconstruction of the Jewish worldview necessarily broke the bounds of previous Jewish ways. Similarly, the pagans also reconstructs their world view and religious boundaries to go beyond to accept those who hailed the crucified king, Messiah Jesus, as their Lord and formed together a single family of Jews and gentiles. The common table functioned as a vital symbol of this new family of God in Jesus Christ. Paul would speak of scripture “preaching the gospel in advance” to Abraham (3.8). “The gospel” which is thus preached is not the summons to a new dimension of religious experience nor an invitation to a private experience of salvation but the message that all the nations would be blessed in Abraham (3.8b) The story of Jesus the Messiah, narrates how that promise has come true, how the single “seed,” the one family promised to Abraham, has been created, which would have been impossible if Torah was absolutized (3.15-22, 28 29). “Justification by faith” was not,
for Paul, a doctrine about how people could find a gracious God without moralism but the announcement that people are accepted by faith into the united family of Abraham. “Apocalyptic” is not about the destruction of everything that
happened before Jesus and the ushering in of a totally new world but it is about the new creation breaking into the old, true God “rescuing us from the present evil age”(Gal. 1:4). The real “apocalypse” has taken place in the resurrection of the Messiah Jesus (Gal. 1:13), the significance of which is explained through the Abrahamic covenant (Gal. 3-4). Paul's gospel, like Isaiah's, confronts the tyrants and summons their victims to freedom.
Covenant and the Logic of Promise
Covenant is a major theological theme in the Old Testament. Covenant is a formal agreement, contract, testament, or treaty between two parties, with specific obligations on each side. Covenants (Hebrew berith, Greek diatheke, Latin testamentum) often promise specific benefits, rewards, or blessings for people who keep the terms of the covenant but they also threaten with sanctions, punishments, or curses for people who break the terms of the covenant. Covenants also need to be ratified formally, usually sealed with blood. God’s covenant with people in the Bible is in the form of God's promises to people. People are really not a party to the covenant. God makes promises and demands. God makes up for that which is not obeyed by the people in his own person and makes new covenants.
God’s covenant with Noah promises not to destroy the whole human race again through a flood (9:8-11); covenant with Abraham promises that in him all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (12:3; 18:18). The covenant with Moses was interpreted as obeying the laws in return to God’s protection in the promised land. Mosaic Law remained the supreme covenant in Judaism. The law says that the ones who do the law will live by their doing (Lev 18:5). Paul in Galatians attempts to solve the questions surrounding the Torah. Paul argues that the law cannot save for two reasons: 1) no one can keep it; and 2) the law is not of faith. Paul turns to blame the reason for the curse not only on the doer’s inability, but also on the law because it is not of faith. The law has never been meant to save in the first place (3:21-22).
The theology of covenant has very much shaped the interpretation of God’s relation with people in the history of the church. The reformers assumed that Judaism was a religion based on “works” (laws) and Christianity was based on “grace” (faith and trust in God’s promises). Today it is generally acknowledged that the ancient Jews were as much dependent on grace as any Christian. They also viewed the law as a response to what God has done and not as a way of earning God’s favor as previously held. Therefore, it is unlikely that Paul put the law aside in favor of grace. However it must be said that Paul has shifted the locus of our response to grace from Torah observance and to following Jesus and replaced circumcision with baptism as the sign of the covenant.
Christ has come to free humankind, and it is a new age. People are no more imprisoned to the law. They do not need to seek the law for the status of any kind. To reach back to obey the law is to stand still in salvation history. In seeking to observe the law one is seeking to remain under the curse from which Christ has redeemed the world. Those who observe the law are under a curse. They are cursed because by turning back to obey the law, they are rejecting the redemption from the law.
Paul’s statements especially Galatians 3:28, subvert both the hierarchies of ancient Jewish practices and the foundations of Roman society. It also demands equality for women with men which must include all areas of Christian social practice in this age. Women, like men, must enter into the solemn assemblies as persons, turning to the God of Israel by way of their own decision.
The in breaking of God’s reign of peace and justice into this world requires that we radically alter our perception of social relations. According to Paul, Christ’s work on the cross not only brought redemption but was the catalyst for several other steps in the story-line of salvation history.
Freedom in Christ
What is freedom in Christ ? Jesus in his ministry illustrated his freedom by throwing out social conventions that restricted the exercise of his responsibility to the other as a human being -- he touched the outcasts, broke Levitical law, had close women followers, called God 'Daddy', enlarged the concept of family, discarded all the usual pietistic life style of the Pharisees, accepted the faith of the non Israelites, crossed the boundaries of Israel to live with the gentiles, never insisted of any religious rules on his followers. Paul in his letter to Galatians affirms that the freedom Christ brought to them demands continuous exercise of it and they are not to be threatened by any one to the earlier ritualistic bondages of the law. Paul himself understood this freedom to be an exercise that he can be free to be all things to all people; that he has authority over all things, though he in his freedom has refrained himself from many things for the sake of the weak members of the community.
Freedom is something which is difficult to keep up. Unless the individual and the community are not cautious enough freedom will fall back to bondage. The story of sin in the Bible is the story of human inability to maintain freedom and integrity. Humans lost their freedom to their own passions as well as to that of the forces surrounding them. The story of sin that started from Adam and Eve corrupted human culture and civilization. Cain the originator of human culture and civilization became the symbol of violence and cruelty. Social, economic and religious innovations and institutions became part of the vicious circle of sin and violence developing into slavery, casteism, untouchability, gender discrimination, ethnic rivalry, war, imperialism, feudalism, capitalism, consumerism, globalization, the marginalization of the weak and the poor. The Church responded to this crisis of freedom and faith by insulating the lives of the communities and individuals from evil influences through the creation of artificial environment of the monastic system.
The beginning of the monastic movement was from the “desert fathers” who fled the sinfulness of the city life to the loneliness of deserts so that they may not be contaminated. Through the introduction of the monastic system the Church wanted to create an environment which was acoustically perfect to hear God's voice. Monks were trained to live and walk with Jesus within the four walls of monasteries. However, such an environment turned out to be artificial. Outside monastery, the monks found themselves more vulnerable to worldly passions than their counterparts who lived and struggled in the real life world. Church reformers like Martin Luther attacked such artificial spirituality. To walk freely one must get rid of all these various artificial environments. Monastic movement has become the model of the contemporary corporate companies who design their environment, in order to produce more profit. New game rules have been introduced to maximize their profit and to channelize every bit of human energy for the sole purpose of making money, disregarding the values of family, community, leisure, and natural environment that sustain human creativity and freedom. However, when people forget the artificiality of their environment and take it as an immutable law of nature they get trapped within the “game,” within the confines of the environment.
What Paul suggests is to drop all hypocrisy! To be free in Christ is to shun away all hypocrisy since Christ considered hypocrisy as the greatest of sins that distorted one's relation to God and others in community. One does not have to pretend to be something els in Jesus community. The law entices people to pretend that they observe it even though no one is able to be righteous as the law demands. For Paul law is not salvatory, it only highlights human inability to satisfy the righteous demands of the law. As Tatha Wiley argues, it is the Torah that discriminates between women and men. Transcending it means freedom. This is what Paul asks us in the letter to Galatians – go beyond the limitations of the law to the open world of humanity, to cross the boundaries of Jerusalem to Samaria and to the end of the world.
In their attempts to be righteous humans are tempted to pretend before others that they are righteous, which is the most despicable human behavior in the eyes of Jesus. All are accepted as they are by Jesus. One does not have to worry about one's religious or sexual orientation, intellectual abilities or ethnic qualities while coming to Jesus. All of Jesus’ friends in Galilee were marginalized people, thrown out of the elite society. For him all social rules were artificial and hypocritical. Church needs to be an alternative community, where all hypocrisy, hierarchical impositions, spiritual gradations, ritualistic pretension have no place.
Role of religions
The Hebraic way of thinking was different from the Hellenistic way of thinking. Paul spoke to the Jews according to the Hebrew way of thinking, and preached to the Greeks as we see in the Athens incident, in Greek categories (Acts 17:22-31). In his letter to the Corinthians Paul has written that the Jews seek signs while the Greeks seek wisdom. Paul found it necessary to use both ways in order to communicate the truth of the Gospel. Pauline methodology requires one in India to be open to the pluralistic sensibilities, in its various ramifications of Advaitic as well as non advaitic, theistic as well as the non theistic, brahminic as well as the carvaka traditions. It must be noted that even the atheistic traditions like Jainism and Buddhism have contributed to the spirituality of India. Christian theological schools like death of God theology similar to the non theistic Indian religious traditions are more concerned with human suffering and death than some theistic religiosity . It is worth to note that Indian Dalit theologians owe much of their “pain-pathos” methodology to Buddhism rather than to traditional Christian theologies that reject patripassianism, death of God, as heresy. Not only the acclaimed death of God theologians, but theologians like Jurgen Moltmann, and Dorothy Solle, Edward Schillebeekx, and James Cone reject the view that patripassianism, the suffering nature of God, is heretical; they affirm the inevitable suffering and death in God as necessary to explain the love of God.
The missionaries who came to India employed the advaitic brahminic traditions to communicate the Gospel truth to the Indians, but ignored the Jain and Buddhist traditions. Ahimsa, which has been much popularized by Gandhi, owes its origin not to classical Hinduism but to the Jain and Buddhist traditions. In India, advaitic strand of thought has been popular only among a minority brahminic tradition, though that minority is very influential. India has a large number of Dalits and tribals whose thought world has been different from the Brahmin dominated classical Hinduism and its advaitic thought world, but suppressed all through out history. It is now almost acknowledged by scholars that in India Christianity can communicate the Gospel only when it is willing to acknowledge and appropriate these living forms of Indian life world and thought existing among the dalits and adivasi tribals. Here the same spirit of Paul who made himself a Jew to the Jews and Greek to the Greeks need to be remembered and adopted. In Pauline methodology religions are not hindrance to Gospel, but necessary signifiers to the Gospel; religions play a role similar to the Jewish Law. They are valid in themselves and salvifically significant like the Jewish Law, but finds their relevance in relation to Christ. Christianity itself is salvifically significant but has to find its relevance only in relation to the Jewish Law and different religions in context. No religion in isolation , just as no individual in herself /himself, is complete or self-sufficient, but needs one another to find meaning and relevance of its own existence and role in the world.
Conclusion: God's purpose in calling peoples
Paul acknowledges that even before his birth, God had a plan for his life. In India many people believe in destiny. It may have its negative impact on life as it can promote fatalism. But theologians like Calvin believed in predestination which also have some determined course of action in life countermanding freedom of the will. But if we look at Paul's view of it, destiny need not be fatalistic or predetermined. It refers to the plan of God for creation. It is quite understandable that an “intelligent designer “has planned the world in such a way that every part of creation has a specific role to play in the world. Discovering that role relieves us from unnecessary tension regarding the ebbs and flows during the course of life. According to Calvin we need not worry about even our salvation. It is taken care for us by the creator and redeemer. We are free to choose a life that is pleasing to God which is free of any unnecessary worry with regard to salvation. Salvation is already available in Jesus . We are here to praise God for that. Paul is convinced of his life in terms of God's plan to save gentiles. This is asserted not only in Galatians but also in letters to Romans, Ephesians and Colossians. What ever happens in his life, Paul conceives it to be for the promotion of the gospel, God's plan for the creation. This gnana, sapientia, saving knowledge makes one a free person. This relieves us also from worry and care of the vicissitudes of our life. God calls us for fulfilling God’s purpose in creation regardless of ethnicity, culture, religion, language or gender.
The introductory remarks to the letter to the Galatians show Paul’s theological openness and imaginative mind. He claims a direct revelation from God. This he repeats several times. Perhaps he might be attempting to secure his position against the Judaizers who questioned his apostleship. For us in India it opens up some important theological vista. Paul is claiming the rightfulness of direct revelation from God, over and above the mediatory channels, in the form of apostles or theological or religious traditions, though not in defiance of them. It is important to maintain one's theological freedom in order to relate with God. Most often Church traditions limit the freedom of people to approach God directly to God and snub the individual initiatives as heresy. Paul asserts his freedom to preach the gospel as it was revealed to him, while at the same time ready to acknowledge a different way of understanding revelation. What he declares as “eternally condemned” is not the freedom of interpreting the meaning of the Gospel, but forcing people to a particular interpretation of it on the basis of some kind of self-declared authority. Schweitzer’s observation that Paul has been a mystic adds strength to us in India to work out a mystic path of salvation, not in monastic isolation, but in creative confrontations with a hypocritical spirituality. Paul is creating a new path towards God, a kind of active mysticism and experience-in-relation to Christ.
Paul addresses God as father, Father of Jesus Christ. It has been unusual in the Jewish circles. Today the fatherhood represents the patriarchy, hierarchical dominance of the male over the female, rather than the intimacy of filial relationship with God. Jesus and Paul use this term to show that a believer has the status of an offspring, sonship or daughtership, in relation to God. However, the “fatherhood of God,” consciously or unconsciously, is used in the Church today in order to deny women their rightful claim before God. They become secondary in their relation to God on account of their gender which has become explicit in denying them ministerial ordination in many major churches. Moreover, it symbolizes a wrong Trinitarian theology in which the “motherhood of God” is pushed to the background to uphold “manliness” of the Father. Today many Christians fail to acknowledge the motherhood of God, while many women refuse to acknowledge the domineering Patriarchal symbol of Fatherhood as irrelevant today. Patriarchy denies the equality of women before God. The retrieval of Motherhood of God is important in the post modern world and Paul has given us the right to address God in intimate categories because God is a person of relationship and not of some supernatural authority, or a symbol to validate the male supremacy in the world.
What is the relation of Christians to the world? There are passages used to show that world is inhospitable and must be rejected. Paul in all his letters has given adequate importance to ethics, human behavior in this world. Paul is aware of the good and bad aspects of life. One is not separated from the other though they are quite distinctive. Though not the dualism of classical Greek thinking where good and bad are two distinct realities Bible and Christians have acknowledged that the world made good by God has been corrupted and the free will of human beings has been distorted and perverted. Evil is the misuse of freedom of the will. God is always at the helm of affairs by controlling the evil and helping the humans to overcome the evil, by giving them the power of God’s spirit and vision about the world. God is creating strong human persons to lead the world in the newness of the spirit. Paul is invoking that spirit so that the disciples may not become susceptible to evil.
For further reading:
Betz, Hans Dieter. Galatians. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979.
Cummins, Stephen Anthony. Paul and the Crucified Christ in Antioch: Maccabean Martyrdom and Galatians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Dunn, James D. G. The Theology of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Matera, Frank,J. Galatians. Sacra Pagina Series vol.9. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1992.
Schweitzer, Albert. The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. London:A. & C. Black. 1931
Wiley, Tatha. Paul and the Gentile Women: Reframing Galatians. London: T&T Clark, 2005.
Indian Bible Commentary
Paul’s Letter to Galatians
Introduction
Book of Galatians has profoundly influenced Christian history. It is considered the "the Magna Carta" of Christian freedom. The epistle to Galatians pictures the early church's struggles to free itself from the so called "Judaizers" who would have made the Christian Church a Jewish sect had they been successful. The Judaizing faction, based in Jerusalem, had their missionaries sent to Pauline congregations to teach them the necessity of observing the Mosaic law for their salvation. They had the support from the Jerusalem Church headed by James, brother of Jesus Christ. Even Peter and Barnabas were misguided by their arguments and stopped eating with Paul's gentile converts. Paul defended the freedom and equality of the gentiles and argued that no law is applicable to them for their salvation as they are justified by faith in the Christ of God. The Judaizers on their turn attacked the authenticity of Paul’s apostleship. In the letter to the Galatians Paul defends his credentials as a true apostle of Jesus Christ and upholds that the freedom the gentiles enjoy is on account of their faith in Christ and not based on any observance of rituals or the Law. In discussing his theological position with regard to the Gospel of God in Christ Paul touches upon the equality of races and genders well as the significance of religious traditions like Judaism. The major themes selected for study in this article are the meaning of Gospel, importance of faith for salvation, meaning of God's promise or covenant, place of non Christian traditions in relation to Christian faith, the question of circumcision and baptism, and human freedom.
Date and Purpose
Of the seven undisputed Pauline letters, Galatians is the most difficult to date. Scholars, are not in agreement whether the Galatians were written before or after the Council of Jerusalem which is referred to in Acts 15 which might have happened in CE 50. Some scholars hold that the Galatians may be the earliest epistle, written in CE 48 by Paul before the Council. They also differ in the purpose of both accounts. While Acts try to justify Peter, Galatians is written for Paul’s self defense. This epistle has considerably helped the church to establish itself as a separate entity different from the Jewish church. We take the view that it was written after the Jerusalem Council by Paul to win back people of Galatia from the “Judaizers” or the “agitators” (as some commentators would like to call them) and make them accept his apostolicity.
Context of the letter
This letter has in its background the ethnic conflict between Jews and proselytes to Judaism as well as gentile Christians. Also it deals with the questions related to the practice of Jewish Christians refusing to eat with the Gentile Christians, an issue similar to the question of untouchability and caste system existing in the Indian Church; this has made the letter particularly significant to India. The religious background of Galatia was also multi-religious as that of India. The local population worshipped Greek and Roman deities as Galatia was converted by Caesar Augustus to a Roman colony. Galatia also had a large number of Jews, who followed the Second Temple Judaism and there were also few proselytes to Judaism. The Christian church in Galatia was comprised of Jewish as well as gentile converts. The “Judaizers” who came from Jerusalem held that although ultimately there would be no difference between the Jews and gentiles before God, in the penultimate conditions, the gentiles had to undergo Jewish ceremonial laws of circumcision and commensuration (laws regarding eating with gentiles, i.e., abstaining from Table fellowship with the non-Jews) before becoming Christians. The question of circumcision was more a gender issue rather than a question of observance of the Jewish Law.
The way the apostles handled the issue of salvation of gentiles as well as the issue of circumcision at the Jerusalem Council, specifically the question of the equality of all human races before God, has some thing important to say to the pluralistic religious and social context of India especially with regard to the prevailing caste and gender inequalities. Paul upheld that gentiles are acceptable to God in the same way the Jews are and faith is the only condition for salvation; in Christ all human made barriers -- religious, cultural or gender -- are broken down and all are one in Christ.
Acts and Galatians
Galatians chapter 2 and Acts chapter 15 refer to some apostolic meeting in Jerusalem which Paul attended. But Paul’s version of the meeting is different from Luke’s account. Acts 15 tells us that James decided, on behalf of the church, that gentiles should have to undergo circumcision, and should abstain from “things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood" (15.19-20). Paul’s version of the decision of the council was that "we [Paul and Barnabas] should go to the Gentiles and they [James, Cephas, and John] to the circumcised. The only one thing they asked was to “remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do" (2.9-10). As Paul has understood the Council did not demand gentile circumcision. It was only some agitators who had the blessings of certain apostles of Jerusalem under the leadership of James, who wanted to create seeds of dissention among the Galatians, which Paul vehemently opposed. He had to oppose even Peter who changed his position after the intervention of the missionaries from Jerusalem. Even Barnabas sided with them.
Both Acts and the Galatians agree that in Christ salvation is possible for all people. However, the methodology of arriving at the conclusion has become crucial for Paul, than the conclusion itself. Here Paul contrasts “faith in Christ’ with “works of the law." These phrases subsequently "became ciphers for the superiority of Christian faith and the inferiority of Jewish Torah-observance” (Tatha Wiley, p. 9). The other Apostles upheld the role of Torah in the history of salvation. In Galatians Paul admits James, Peter and John are reputed to be pillars in the church, but their reputations mean nothing to Paul and he is every bit equal to other apostles. However, the Acts clearly subordinates Paul to the Jerusalem authorities and all that they represented theologically went against the independent Pauline line. Proper attention to the ethnic conflict between the Jewish and the gentile Christians will shed much light into Paul's arguments in this letter in defense of the gentile Christians.
While the Galatians has no reference to Damascus in Acts the geographical centre of Paul’s conversion experience is Damascus. In Galatians Paul notes the significance of Arabia where he spent several years after his conversion which finds no reference in the Acts. Often we see the authority of Paul as expressed in Galatians countered by the Acts narrative. The author of Acts attempts to cut Paul down to a subordinate position to the Jerusalem apostles. Acts rejects Paul’s sniffing at Cephas, James and John. Galatians, on the other hand holds that James, Peter and John all have agreed with Paul in Jerusalem. The letter to Galatia has in its background not only the gentile Jewish conflict but also the hierarchical struggles among the apostles.
What happened in Antioch?
The Antioch incident' described in Galatians 2.11–21 “remains a crux interpretum in New Testament studies” (Stephen Anthony Cummins, 2001). This incident sheds considerable light on both Pauline theology and the development of the early church. As Tatha Wiley says, the letter draws us to the “controverted heart of Christian origins.” The Antioch confrontation has served as a source of consternation and controversy in the early church. For example, Marcion (d. c. AD 160) used it to promote anti-Judaism in the Church; the early third century Pseudo-Clementines used it to attack Paul; and Porphyry (c. 232–303) used it against Christianity itself. Irenaeus (c. 130–200), made use of it in his combat against certain gnostic advocates of Paul. He viewed Peter in a more positive light by subduing Paul to Jerusalem apostles' authority. Tertullian (c. 160–220), reacting against Marcion, maintained that the two apostles shared the same basic gospel.
According to Eusebius, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215) simply maintained that the Peter of Galatians was not the apostle Peter, but rather another of the seventy disciples bearing the same name (see Luke 10.1). Origen (c. 185–254) held that both Peter and Paul were only pretending to dispute with one another in order to condemn more effectively the Judaizers. Aquinas (1225-74) followed Augustine(354–430) in viewing Paul's public rebuke of Peter as a necessary response to an action which was an unacceptable renunciation of the truth. However, Aquinas held that it constituted only a venial rather than a mortal sin. It was exactly at this point Luther (1483–1546) differed with Aquinas. For Luther the conflict was no mere pretence ; it was a clear desertion of the truth of the gospel. On the basis this view Luther rejected all the veneration of the saints, the significance of papal decisions and the value of works of satisfaction. Luther held that the central tenet of the Gospel has to be justification by grace through faith, and not through any “works of the law' (Gal. 2.16). However, for F. C. Baur, the founder of the so-called Tübingen school, the churches in Jerusalem (led by James) and Antioch (led by Paul) represented the outworking of a division between two Christian “parties”: the conservative “Hebrews” and the more liberal “Hellenists” (see Acts 6.1- 8.4). Baur's view has been a dominant force in nineteenth and twentieth century interpretations of the Antioch incident. Still today debates on justification by faith and the role of exegetical method in relation to matters of theology, dogma and praxis are prevalent among the ecumenicals and evangelicals. In the context of India this background information will help us to gain some theological insights regarding how to address the socio-cultural problems existing in the Indian Church.
History of interpretation
Paul is weaving together several stories throughout Galatians. This is perhaps his most narrative epistle considering how much storytelling plays a part in his argument. Historically, the book of Galatians has misled Christian commentators largely due to the technical discussions of biblical topics ranging from circumcision, to the Torah, and to freedom in Christ. Jerome thinks that Paul is playing upon the name Galatians, claiming its derivation from the Hebrew word Galath, which means fallen or carried away, as though Paul wanted to say, "You are true Galatians, i.e., fallen away in name and in fact." For Luther it was Jewish legalism that Paul opposed. Since Luther it has been regarded justification by faith is central to Paul’s theology. Calvin also held justification by faith as a central doctrine in Paul. Bultmann understood justification by faith against the background of his existential understanding of anthropology. He considered the first century Judaism as legalistic in his work, Primitive Christianity. That means Judaism believed that salvation was depended on the observance of the law, or good works in accordance with the law. Bultmann held that Paul took his central ideas, motifs and theology from Hellenism and not from Judaism. He found an antithesis between Paul and Judaism . Bultmann’s ideas dominated the thinking of early twentieth century scholarship.
Albert Schweitzer on the other hand considered Paul as a Jewish thinker and not a Hellenistic. It has to be noted that for Schweitzer, the centre of Paul’s theology was not justification by faith but Christ-mysticism. Schweitzer regarded Christ-mysticism as the centre of Pauline theology within the context of apocalyptic Judaism; he rejected the influence of Hellenistic Judaism upon Paul (Schweitzer, Mysticism, pp. 225, 295) This understanding of Paul as a mystic would be helpful to interpret Galatians in the Indian context. Kristel Stendahl, in his famous article, “The apostle Paul and the introspective conscience of the West ”(1963) held that Paul did not see any fundamental problem in Judaism. For him the pre-Christian Paul did not find any problem in finding his salvation in Judaism. Stendahl blamed Augustine for making Paul a person who had an introspective conscience. He held that it was Luther who degraded Paul’s justification by faith as an answer to individual salvation. Stendahl identified Paul’ s Damascus encounter as a calling rather than a conversion. Like Schweitzer, Stendahl interpreted the justification by faith in relation to Paul’s Gentile mission. This way of looking at Paul’s relation to Judaism would enlighten us in India in our approach to different religious traditions existing in the Indian missionary context, which constitute the spiritual background of Indian Christians. We can more tolerantly and with genuine openness approach and understand our mother traditions. As Chakkariah has pointed out, Hinduism to him is the spiritual mother while Christianity is his wedded love.
A New Perspective
Contemporary Pauline scholars challenge the theological historical assumptions embedded in the dominant interpretation of Galatians. A major challenge came from the “new Perspective” advocated by scholars like Krister Stendahl, E. P. Sanders, James Dunn, and N. T. Wright in the 1960s. Galatians had too often been interpreted in the adversus Judaeos tradition which suggested a superior Christianity (faith) over against an inferior Judaism. The New Perspective rejected the idea that a theology of works-righteousness can be found at all in the Second Temple Judaism, popular during Paul’s time. They considered the view of works-righteousness as a polemical caricature of Judaism, not a historical reality. The theme of salvation by grace through faith occurs almost exclusively in Paul’s letters to Galatians and Romans. In these two letters Paul deals directly with the relationship of Gentile and Jewish followers of Jesus. Paul believed passionately in grace and faith, so did other Jews of his day.
Influenced by Augustine and Luther, scholars once assumed that the pre-Jesus Paul carried a heavy burden of sin. This argument was based on Romans 7 and 1 Timothy 1:15 where Paul calls himself the foremost of sinners. the “New Perspective” school began reading ancient Jewish texts on their own terms, rather than through the Christian lenses. They found that texts like Galatians 1 and Philippians 3 reveal that Paul did not struggle under a burden of sin; rather, he remained proud of his faithfulness to the law throughout his life. Does it not suggest that in India those who come from traditional local faith traditions can uphold what ever is not inimical to Christianity, once they embrace it? Perhaps it suggests more than that. Just as Paul argued that his revelation is equally valid and he himself is equal to any of the other apostles, Christians in India can validly claim a direct revelation from Christ. Perhaps, this is what Chenchiah meant when he spoke of the “raw fact of Christ” which is not supported by any traditions.
Paul indeed emphasized the equality of Jews and Gentiles in their faith to Christ (3:26). E. P. Sanders, in his Judaism held that the notion of justification by faith resulted from Paul’s Gentile mission was a polemic response against his opponents. What was distinctive of his mission was the inclusion of Gentiles without requiring them to observe Israel's Torah. In this new perspective, Paul’s conversion was not from Judaism to Christianity, as in leaving one religion for another. Instead, he received an "apocalypse" from God, that revealed the risen Jesus to him. Paul's gospel was not simply the announcement of salvation by grace through faith as held in the older perspective. Paul's gospel proclaimed God's decisive saving action in the death, resurrection, and return of Jesus. "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again." Paul proclaims the righteousness and power of God, demonstrated through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ (not simply "faith in" Jesus) to save humankind and the cosmos.
The new perspective in Pauline studies considerably benefit Jewish-Christian relations as Christians seriously try to understand Judaism on its own terms. It prompts us to interpret Hinduism or any other religion on its own terms and find the link to Christian faith not as its fulfillment rather from an altogether different angle, in a “good neighbor” paradigm. In the older perspective, following Augustine and Luther, Christians sought to get people lost before they can be saved. The new perspective, while it takes sin seriously, instead announces God's lacerative acts on behalf of individuals, communities and all of creation. While the old perspective calls people to repent and find forgiveness, the new perspective invites people to participate in the ongoing work of God. Paul applies the same equality to Jews and Gentiles as well as to slave and free (which undermined the very basis of Rome’s economic system) and to male and female (which undermined the patriarchal basis of Roman society, grounded in the idea of Caesar as paterfamilias for the whole empire). This means that there must be no second-class citizens in the Church; that there should be provision in the Church structure for women to have equal authority as well as equal opportunity to leadership, teaching, and prophetic ministry; that gentiles and Jews as well as slaves and free people are to be treated on equal level in the Church of Christ.
What should be asserted in India is that one individual or religious community, is not more disadvantaged than the other, one is not more welcomed than the other, one is not more privileged than the other in relation to Christ. All have equal standing before God; no one is great or small before God.
Table fellowship: A Caste issue?
Exegetes and theologians once presumed that Paul’s theological concepts like justification could be discussed independently of their social setting. Today it is axiomatic that meanings are intimately bound up with social settings. The major question in Galatia was with regard to the nature of table fellowship of Jewish and Gentile Christians. Though the Roman masters would eat at the same table with slaves and other lower-class people, but they would maintain the status differentiation by offering differing kinds of food and thus reinforce the divisions in Roman society through the public table practices. Paul responds to this practice in 1 Corinthians 11. The question of table fellowship among Christians in Antioch was different. Here Judaistic Christians missionaries who came from Jerusalem taught that unless the gentiles become Jews first sharing a common table with them was not in order. Paul accuses that Peter and Barnabas sided with them. Such an act from the side of apostle like Peter would pave way for the practice of social inequality between Jews and Gentiles in Christ’s church. Paul found it contrary to the faith in Christ and also to the Abrahamic faith which Jewish Christians acknowledged. Paul’s argument for common table fellowship was based on the promise of God to Abraham that all nations will be blessed in Abraham. According to him fulfillment of the promise of God was ultimately fulfilled in Jesus who is the seed of Abraham. The Judaisers also accepted and strongly promoted the view that Jesus is the seed of Abraham. We may remember that both Matthew and Luke in their Gospels found it necessary to include the genealogies that would support the lineage of Jesus from Abraham, in the case of Luke, he would even trace it back to Adam.
Many western missionaries who came to India were critical of caste system though they were not as critical of racism in their own homelands. M.M. Thomas in his book, Salvation and Humanization, narrates an incident happened in South India. The high caste converts of an Anglican Church in Madurai sent a complaint to their bishop asking him to restrict the missionaries from giving Holy Communion to them along with the untouchable. Even such strong steps from missionaries did not completely eradicate castes system from the Indian Churches. Caste discrimination continued to be even strengthened under the native leadership after the independence of India. Now this is the major issue that threatens the good news of Christ in India. If churches do not take strong stand against casteism, the Indian churches would be missing the truth of the Gospel which Paul defended so strongly in his letter to Galatians.
The circumcision: A gender issue?
Through out the Christian tradition, the circumcision preaching had been interpreted as a threat not to the equality of members in the assemblies but to the legitimacy of the Christian gospel. But Tatha Wiley has introduced a different interpretive principle to understand the Galatian conflict. She raises the question about the feelings of women in the Galatian Assemblies with regard to circumcision. She argues that the dispute between evangelists over the necessity of circumcision was, in its immediate communal context as well as direct consequence, a dispute over whether the membership of Gentile believers in the Galatian assemblies would be differentiated by gender (Wiley,11). For her the question of circumcision was directly related to gender and it remained at the heart of the Galatian conflict. Paul as well as his Jewish friends were competing to win the hearts and minds of the Gentile men and women in the Galatian assemblies. The circumcision conflict not only raised the question of membership in the church, but also about women’s role in the churches. Equality of the all congregational members was part of the constructed social reality of the first Christian generation. For Tatha Wiley circumcision would not only enforce the Jew/Gentile dichotomy but also the male/female division of Judaism. Circumcision implies that women are lesser people who are unable to have real authority and leadership in religious life. Paul not only argues that Jesus abolishes the concept of the “Holy of Holies” accessible only to the high priest but Paul rejects the whole Jewish religious system with its divisions between Jews, Gentiles, men, women, priests, and people. For her, to some degree, Paul’s rejection of physical circumcision might mean a rejection also of male privilege (Wiley, 120). She asserts that the question of purity was not the deciding factor that excluded women, also fear of circumcision was not the only factor that entitled adult Gentile men with the status salvation.
Paul’s interference was precisely for the equality of Gentile women in the Galatian Assemblies. Paul’s rejection of physical circumcision might mean a rejection also of male privilege. She holds that Paul is of the opinion that without theTorah, differences between women and men are removed and that women, like men, are to be admitted to the assemblies as persons, turning to the God of Israel by way of their own decision.
Chapter Analysis: Argumentation
This letter is written after the model of a Greco-Roman apologetic letter: prescript (1:1-5), introduction (1:6-11), narrative (1:12-2:14), proposition (2:15-21), proof (3:1-4:31), exhortation (5:1-6:10), and conclusion (6:11-18).Paul begins by mentioning the Christ-narrative: “who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil age” (1:4). After asserting his apostleship Paul pronounces curses upon any one, who should dare to preach any other gospel than Christ's own, first preached by Paul. Next he moves to a lengthy account of his personal conversion history (1:11-2:10), filling in the story with enough historical details to sketch a rough timeline of his conversion when compared with Acts. Chapter 2 is also narrative. The seemingly instructive section of chapter 2 (2:15-21) almost certainly belongs to Paul’s address to Peter at Antioch. In the second chapter Paul deals with the Antiochean controversy. In both Jewish and Greco-Roman circles, eating with someone was a sign of communion with them, and such communions enforced unity among the same group members and created division between different groups. “Good Jews” didn’t eat with “sinners.” Jesus got into trouble for “eating with sinners.” Paul’s chastisement of Peter was for his subservience to this Jewish practice by breaking the table fellowship with the Gentiles that Paul practiced in his churches. Table fellowship was a concept that had serious social implications at that time. Paul’s practice was to include all at the table, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female, which is a practice that stands in stark contrast to the Jewish practice. It was contrary to the Roman practice of serving different foods for different categories of people. Elsewhere he emphasizes One body, One bread, One Spirit.
Discussion in the second chapter is particularly significant to the Indian church situation where caste conflicts destroys intercommunion of different castes. Most churches in India are infested with this kind of destructive practices. People find it difficult to cross the caste barriers and enjoy table fellowship or marital relationships across caste divisions. Many high caste Christians adhere to the Judaistic or Petrine position and refuse to eat with the lower castes. Paul’s courageous stand must encourage Indian Christian to overcome the caste mentality and accept all humans equally worth in Jesus Christ. As noted above this is the biggest task of the Indian churches.
Paul takes up Habakkuk’s text (Hab. 2:4) which says that the righteous will live, not by their own righteousness, but by faithfulness to their vision. Paul somewhat alters its perspective. He focuses not on the faithfulness of the vision but on the faith of the one who waits for the vision; so it is the “righteous by faith who will live.” If this is so then one cannot possibly be righteous by the law. Faith decides righteousness. Commitment to one’s vision also impute righteousness. Just as people with religious orientation are guided by their faith, people committed to their ideological persuasion could also be made righteous on account of their vision, by Pauline argument. Faith and vision both go beyond oneself, transcends the narrow selfish interests and rises to level of spirituality. Thus Paul offers consolation of acceptance by God, not only for the religious but also for secular person. In the next section, Paul reaches all the way back to Abraham and traces Abraham’s story as the paradigm for conversion, and in the rest of chapter 3 as well as chapter 4 Paul continues to give instruction through means of intertextual allusions. Paul begins his third chapter with the curse of the law in Deuteronomy (3:10), then moves next to the question of being justified by faith with reference again to Habakkuk (3:11). Then he centers on Christ’s crucifixion (3:13-14) which inaugurated the next stage of the gospel going to the Gentiles and finally the coming of the Spirit (3:14).
It has been usually held that chapter three, especially 3:10-12, stood at the heart of Paul’s message to the Galatian believers The key argument in this chapter is that it is impossible for a person to be justified by observing the law. The law nullifies any religious observance that negates the earlier promise given to Abraham, who was himself a gentile without circumcision. In a religiously fundamentalist country like India this argument brings liberation to people who want to maintain a free fellowship with God without any interference from the religious hierarchies of different sorts. Salvation is unattainable by obedience to the law’s commands, because no one is able to continually remain in steadfast obedience to them. The issue in Galatia was that the law-observant Judaizers seek to turn Christian Gentiles to law-observers as well. Paul opposes this trend with all his might.
Paul says that Christ has been portrayed as crucified before their eyes (3:1). He makes mention of their having received the Spirit (3:2-3), and point out that they have suffered many things (3:4). Now someone has bewitched them (3:1). Later in 6:12-13 Paul writes that the Judaizers are greedy for the flesh of the Galatians, for their own gain not for the gain of the circumcised.The law does not operate on the principle of believing, but on the principle of doing (Gal. 3:12).The law does not confer righteousness since nobody is able to keep it, but it participates in the prophetic witness to righteousness. The law upholds the principle that obedience confers blessing. Paul argues that the law did not annul or add to the principle of justification by faith. This is clearly seen in the way God ratified his covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15. Following the customs of the day, animals were cut apart and the halves arranged opposite to each other. The parties were to pass through the pieces, and so the covenant would be ratified in blood. However, in making his covenant with Abraham, God passed between the pieces alone. Again, this suggests that this covenant is not so much an agreement as it is a declaration of what God promises to perform. The fulfillment of the promises does not depend on both parties playing their parts, since Abraham had no part - the covenant does not depend on him, but only on God's ability and faithfulness to perform what he has promised. But what Paul is really saying (v. 17: "what I mean is this"), is that since no one can set aside or add to even a human covenant that has been duly established (v. 15), then, "The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise" (v. 17). The inheritance was given to Abraham by promise - by God's sovereign declaration of what he would perform - and ratified in blood. And as we have seen, the promised blessing is applied through faith to those whom God has chosen to believe. The law, which came after, does not affect this, whether we are referring to the promised inheritance or the means by which it is applied (v. 18). Therefore, the principle of justification by faith is preserved despite the formal institution of the law.
Chapter three has been used by Prosperity Gospel preachers to reinforce their own gospel. The prosperity Gospel preached by many fast track gospel preachers severely damage the message of the Gospel. Blessings from God has been equated with materialistic growth. The bedrock of the prosperity gospel is Galatians 3:29: “ And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” Some others appeal to Gal. 3:14, which says “that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles . . . .” Certainly Gospel is related to human well being. But the contention of the prosperity Gospel that God bestows material blessings proportionate to the amount of prayers of believers is mocking the image of God portrayed by Jesus, God as the parent of all who bestows blessing according to the needs of every one, not by the acts or merits of any one. Acquiring more than what one needs is against the gospel as it is evident in the sermon on the mount as well as from the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. Paul also speaks of materialistic equality as the will of God in II Corinthians 7. In the New Perspective approach the debate in Galatians 3 is not over how an individual becomes saved, but what the children of Abraham look like. Paul asserts that they look like people with faith, without respect to the works of the law, all to be one in Christ, irrespective of the one’s birth, gender, caste, colour, nationality, culture or religion.
Paul continues his discussion in Chapter Four on how we inherit the promises of Abraham in faith by the grace of God. The Hebrew word, hen, speaks of undeserved favor. It is usually translated to Greek as charis, grace, graciousness, grace in a person, favor, gracious care, undeserved gift that which one grants to another, or the action of one who volunteers to do something on behalf of another. Grace can be never earned or deserved, but can only be received as a gift. Grace is all that God is free to do and it functions apart from all human works, cooperation or merit. Grace is universally free and is designed to impart happiness and joy on all. In the Greek and Roman cultures, sons were not automatically heirs to their father's estate. When they reached a point of maturity where they could understand what it meant, usually between 14 and 18, they went through a formal adoption process where they received “the full rights of sons”, qualifying them to inherit their father's estate. Until then even though they were biologically related to their fathers, they had no more legal standing than the household slaves. Through the Lord's atoning sacrifice, we've been given “the full rights of sons” in our Father's family. No longer slaves to sin, and not just forgiven, we've been made heirs with Christ of all eternity.
Galatians 5 is considered as a pivotal text for understanding Christian freedom and calling. It has been a dear text for the monastic movement. Monastic life has been an attempt to walk and live with Jesus. For this the Monastic Fathers and Mothers sought to create an environment which was acoustically perfect to hear God's voice. However, such an environment turned out to be artificial. To walk freely one must first recognize all those various artificial environments. When people forget the artificiality of their environment and take it as an immutable law of nature they get trapped within the 'game', within the confines of the environment. Freedom in Christ means that one need not limit oneself to a few of these 'games,' ritualistic, or monastic, pietistic or of such sort. Paul affirms this by saying that he is free to be all things to all people; that he has authority over all things, though he in his freedom has refrained himself from many things for the sake of the weak members of the community. Jesus in his ministry illustrated this freedom by throwing out social conventions that restricted the exercise of one's freedom as human being - he touched the outcasts, ate with them, broke Mosaic law of purity and pollution, allowed women disciple to accompany him even in long journeys such as to Jerusalem , enlarged the concept of family, called God “Daddy,” discarded all the usual pietistic life style of the Pharisees, acknowledged the faith of the non Israelites, crossed the boundaries of Israel to live with the gentiles, ate and drank with them, never insisted on any religious strictures upon his followers.
What Paul is suggests is to drop all hypocrisy! To be free in Christ is to shun away all hypocrisy since Christ considered hypocrisy as the greatest of sins that distorts one's relation to God and others in community. One does not have to pretend to be something else in Jesus community. All are accepted as they are by Jesus. One does not have to worry about one's religion, sexual orientation, intellectual abilities while coming to Jesus. All his friends in Galilee were marginalized people, thrown out of the elite society. For him all social rules were artificial.
Paul has been dealing with two ethnic groups of people in the entire context of the letter to Galatians – Jews and Gentiles. What Paul spoke of the “uncircumcised,” -- the “Gentiles,” --and the “circumcised” in Gal. 2:7-9 is repeated in Gal. 6:15. The term “Israel” has always been used as an ethnic reference to the people who have descended from the patriarch Jacob. Some scholars, called the covenant theologians, argue that Paul equated Church with Israel. However, it should be noted that any Church literature that equates the Church to Israel was not found until 160 A.D. Paul has been emphatic in rejecting any attempt to bind Christians to the Jewish community or the observance of the Law. Any attempt to achieve salvation throught he observance of the Jewish Law has been considered by Paul as a denial of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore it is unfair to Paul to say that he equated Gentile Christians to the new spiritual Israel, or made the Church the new spiritual Israel, as claimed by some theologians.
Theological Themes:
Gospel of God
It is important to examine what Paul understands by the term “gospel” in the letter to the Galatians. Paul’s usage of the term must be searched in two possible background sources: the Hebrew scriptures on the one hand and pagan usage
on the other. In other words, the Pauline meaning of the Gospel has to be searched in the message of Isaiah or in the Greco-Roman imperial proclamations. In Isaiah 40.9 we read of the herald of good tidings who proclaims “Here is your God!” and in 52.7 we read of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, and says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” These passages, deal with the great double theme of Servant Songs (Isaiah 40-55): Yahweh's return to Zion and enthronement, and the return of Israel herself from her exile in Babylon. For some, this is the background against which the New Testament term, “gospel” need to be understood. The Isaianic tradition of “good news” was prevalent in the Second Temple period, which sets the background of the New Testament.
Others insist upon the pagan background of the gospel. In the Greek world good news is a technical term for "news of victory." It would refer to the announcement of the birth or accession of an emperor. The coming of a new ruler meant the promise of peace, a new start for the world. Then the question that has been raised is whether “the gospel,” for Paul, an Isaianic message or a pagan Imperial proclamation? The New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright suggests that such an anti-thesis between Jewish and pagan is a false and misleading one. Wright argues that for Paul, gospel, primarily, is a message about the true God as opposed to the false gods; secondly, it is a message about the Messiah, the true king of Israel, and hence of the world; the “gospel” confronts directly the claims of other gods and lords. The message of good news decisively confronts the power of the spurious gods. Here the question is, whether the regular Pauline phrase “the gospel of God”, should be read as “the gospel concerning God” or as “the gospel from God”. Though it is difficult to divide them up completely, the Galatians suggests that the content of the gospel is primarily, God. Hence, Gospel is Gospel of God in Christ.
The gospel certainly concerns the Christ, the Jewish notion of Messiah; it is through the Messiah that the true God has revealed the gospel which involved the portrayal of Jesus Christ as the crucified one (3.1). “The gospel” is not a message about “how one gets saved,” in an individualistic and ahistorical sense but the announcement of God’s rule, a summons to share in the blessings of the “age to come,” proclaimed by Isaiah.
For Paul there is no other gospel besides the one he had preached to the Galatians. He preached, not a gospel of his own invention, but the very same Gospel God had long ago prescribed in the Sacred Scriptures.
Abraham’s Children: Children of Promise or People of Faith
Another significant usage of Paul in Galatians is his interpretation of Abraham’s role in human salvation -- the meaning of the “children of Abraham” and “Abraham’s faith.” For the Jews the children of God meant the descendants of Abraham (John 8:31-47). It is likely that the Judaizers has asserted that it was necessary for the Gentiles to become children of Abraham first in order to be saved, that is in order to become the children of God. They insisted that in order to become the children of Abraham, it was necessary for them to receive circumcision, the physical seal of the covenant that God made with Abraham (Genesis 17:9-14). Paul refers to the case of Abraham not only to counter the Judaizer's misuse of covenant history and their misinterpretation of the ters “children of Abraham.”
Paul affirms that according to the Scripture Abraham was righteous because of faith and not works. When he appeals to the verse again in his letter to the Romans, (See Romans 4) Paul does expand on this point and reveals some of the reasoning behind his use of it. Christian faith does not enforce worship and declares that God accepts us just as we are, and our worship and service in God's name is a grateful response for that unmerited love and acceptance. God accepted the faith of Abraham while he was still an uncircumcised person; therefore religious rituals have nothing to do with the salvation of God in Jesus Christ. Paul is saying that when it comes to justification, and when it comes to being the children of Abraham and the children of God, it does not matter whether one is Jew or non-Jew, slave or free, male or female. Before God one is not more disadvantaged than the other for all are under condemnation by the righteous judgment of God; one is not more welcomed than the other, for all must come through the faith that God gives; one is not more privileged than the other, for all are children of Abraham by their faith in God. John the Baptist in (Luke.3:8) declares that God can make children of Abraham out of stones. Jesus is said to have declared that salvation of Zachaeus, the socially outcaste tax collector, and that of Lazarus in the parable, are on account of their filial relation to Father Abraham.
Believers are "all one in Christ Jesus" (v. 28) and are the children of God (v. 26). In our context, this supersedes all natural distinctions between individuals, so that in Christ "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female." In the caste context of India the concept of being the children of God is important. Seeing the power of the concept Gandhiji called the outcastes, “Harijan,” people of God. However, he could not substantiate this in terms of Hindu theology and ideology which legitimizes varnasramas, the fourfold divisions of society and dharma which requires caste practices as one’s duty, that maintains people outside the caste as “mlechhas” or untouchables.
Paul by employing the term “Abraham’s children” does not mean that Christ has abolished all racial differences, all class disparities, and all gender distinctions. That is, Paul’s logic of promise to Abraham cannot be used to refute plurality of races, classes, and genders. The meaning of the name Abraham itself is “father of many nations.” In Paul’s argument there is a spiritual basis that nullify all racism and sexism, while affirming the plurality of the identity of races and gender. That is, if in Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew or Gentile, that means no racial or gender discrimination should remain, while distinctiveness are legitimately maintained. However, no legitimate distinctions can be maintained in terms of “slave-free” categories, as they are based on economical and not anthropological factors. Paul’s point for the Galatians is that the blessings of Abraham for Gentiles (i.e., Galatians) comes only through Christ and not by observing Mosaic law, as the Judaizers insisted. Furthermore, with Christ’s redemption comes the promise of the Spirit, which, once again, is only available through faith.
Before and Beyond Circumcision
In Galatians Paul argues that the Abrahamic tradition gathers all the gentile faith traditions in Christ. Abraham was justified through faith even before he was circumcised, or before he adopted any particular religious ritualistic tradition. In Galatians 4:8-11, the ex-pagan Galatian Christians are warned that if they become circumcised, that is, aspire to become Jewish, they will in effect be reverting to paganism, forsaking the freedom of faith made available through Jesus Christ. The gospel stands over against any such attempt to circumscribe people to any legal or ritualistic systems of religion. The gospel is a message about the true God. If the “false brethren”, or the Galatian “agitators”, -- the so called Judaizers-- had had their way, the gospel would have become simply an inner-Jewish message, inviting people to get circumcised and to join Judaism. Paul’s reconstruction of the Jewish worldview necessarily broke the bounds of previous Jewish ways. Similarly, the pagans also reconstructs their world view and religious boundaries to go beyond to accept those who hailed the crucified king, Messiah Jesus, as their Lord and formed together a single family of Jews and gentiles. The common table functioned as a vital symbol of this new family of God in Jesus Christ. Paul would speak of scripture “preaching the gospel in advance” to Abraham (3.8). “The gospel” which is thus preached is not the summons to a new dimension of religious experience nor an invitation to a private experience of salvation but the message that all the nations would be blessed in Abraham (3.8b) The story of Jesus the Messiah, narrates how that promise has come true, how the single “seed,” the one family promised to Abraham, has been created, which would have been impossible if Torah was absolutized (3.15-22, 28 29). “Justification by faith” was not,
for Paul, a doctrine about how people could find a gracious God without moralism but the announcement that people are accepted by faith into the united family of Abraham. “Apocalyptic” is not about the destruction of everything that
happened before Jesus and the ushering in of a totally new world but it is about the new creation breaking into the old, true God “rescuing us from the present evil age”(Gal. 1:4). The real “apocalypse” has taken place in the resurrection of the Messiah Jesus (Gal. 1:13), the significance of which is explained through the Abrahamic covenant (Gal. 3-4). Paul's gospel, like Isaiah's, confronts the tyrants and summons their victims to freedom.
Covenant and the Logic of Promise
Covenant is a major theological theme in the Old Testament. Covenant is a formal agreement, contract, testament, or treaty between two parties, with specific obligations on each side. Covenants (Hebrew berith, Greek diatheke, Latin testamentum) often promise specific benefits, rewards, or blessings for people who keep the terms of the covenant but they also threaten with sanctions, punishments, or curses for people who break the terms of the covenant. Covenants also need to be ratified formally, usually sealed with blood. God’s covenant with people in the Bible is in the form of God's promises to people. People are really not a party to the covenant. God makes promises and demands. God makes up for that which is not obeyed by the people in his own person and makes new covenants.
God’s covenant with Noah promises not to destroy the whole human race again through a flood (9:8-11); covenant with Abraham promises that in him all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (12:3; 18:18). The covenant with Moses was interpreted as obeying the laws in return to God’s protection in the promised land. Mosaic Law remained the supreme covenant in Judaism. The law says that the ones who do the law will live by their doing (Lev 18:5). Paul in Galatians attempts to solve the questions surrounding the Torah. Paul argues that the law cannot save for two reasons: 1) no one can keep it; and 2) the law is not of faith. Paul turns to blame the reason for the curse not only on the doer’s inability, but also on the law because it is not of faith. The law has never been meant to save in the first place (3:21-22).
The theology of covenant has very much shaped the interpretation of God’s relation with people in the history of the church. The reformers assumed that Judaism was a religion based on “works” (laws) and Christianity was based on “grace” (faith and trust in God’s promises). Today it is generally acknowledged that the ancient Jews were as much dependent on grace as any Christian. They also viewed the law as a response to what God has done and not as a way of earning God’s favor as previously held. Therefore, it is unlikely that Paul put the law aside in favor of grace. However it must be said that Paul has shifted the locus of our response to grace from Torah observance and to following Jesus and replaced circumcision with baptism as the sign of the covenant.
Christ has come to free humankind, and it is a new age. People are no more imprisoned to the law. They do not need to seek the law for the status of any kind. To reach back to obey the law is to stand still in salvation history. In seeking to observe the law one is seeking to remain under the curse from which Christ has redeemed the world. Those who observe the law are under a curse. They are cursed because by turning back to obey the law, they are rejecting the redemption from the law.
Paul’s statements especially Galatians 3:28, subvert both the hierarchies of ancient Jewish practices and the foundations of Roman society. It also demands equality for women with men which must include all areas of Christian social practice in this age. Women, like men, must enter into the solemn assemblies as persons, turning to the God of Israel by way of their own decision.
The in breaking of God’s reign of peace and justice into this world requires that we radically alter our perception of social relations. According to Paul, Christ’s work on the cross not only brought redemption but was the catalyst for several other steps in the story-line of salvation history.
Freedom in Christ
What is freedom in Christ ? Jesus in his ministry illustrated his freedom by throwing out social conventions that restricted the exercise of his responsibility to the other as a human being -- he touched the outcasts, broke Levitical law, had close women followers, called God 'Daddy', enlarged the concept of family, discarded all the usual pietistic life style of the Pharisees, accepted the faith of the non Israelites, crossed the boundaries of Israel to live with the gentiles, never insisted of any religious rules on his followers. Paul in his letter to Galatians affirms that the freedom Christ brought to them demands continuous exercise of it and they are not to be threatened by any one to the earlier ritualistic bondages of the law. Paul himself understood this freedom to be an exercise that he can be free to be all things to all people; that he has authority over all things, though he in his freedom has refrained himself from many things for the sake of the weak members of the community.
Freedom is something which is difficult to keep up. Unless the individual and the community are not cautious enough freedom will fall back to bondage. The story of sin in the Bible is the story of human inability to maintain freedom and integrity. Humans lost their freedom to their own passions as well as to that of the forces surrounding them. The story of sin that started from Adam and Eve corrupted human culture and civilization. Cain the originator of human culture and civilization became the symbol of violence and cruelty. Social, economic and religious innovations and institutions became part of the vicious circle of sin and violence developing into slavery, casteism, untouchability, gender discrimination, ethnic rivalry, war, imperialism, feudalism, capitalism, consumerism, globalization, the marginalization of the weak and the poor. The Church responded to this crisis of freedom and faith by insulating the lives of the communities and individuals from evil influences through the creation of artificial environment of the monastic system.
The beginning of the monastic movement was from the “desert fathers” who fled the sinfulness of the city life to the loneliness of deserts so that they may not be contaminated. Through the introduction of the monastic system the Church wanted to create an environment which was acoustically perfect to hear God's voice. Monks were trained to live and walk with Jesus within the four walls of monasteries. However, such an environment turned out to be artificial. Outside monastery, the monks found themselves more vulnerable to worldly passions than their counterparts who lived and struggled in the real life world. Church reformers like Martin Luther attacked such artificial spirituality. To walk freely one must get rid of all these various artificial environments. Monastic movement has become the model of the contemporary corporate companies who design their environment, in order to produce more profit. New game rules have been introduced to maximize their profit and to channelize every bit of human energy for the sole purpose of making money, disregarding the values of family, community, leisure, and natural environment that sustain human creativity and freedom. However, when people forget the artificiality of their environment and take it as an immutable law of nature they get trapped within the “game,” within the confines of the environment.
What Paul suggests is to drop all hypocrisy! To be free in Christ is to shun away all hypocrisy since Christ considered hypocrisy as the greatest of sins that distorted one's relation to God and others in community. One does not have to pretend to be something els in Jesus community. The law entices people to pretend that they observe it even though no one is able to be righteous as the law demands. For Paul law is not salvatory, it only highlights human inability to satisfy the righteous demands of the law. As Tatha Wiley argues, it is the Torah that discriminates between women and men. Transcending it means freedom. This is what Paul asks us in the letter to Galatians – go beyond the limitations of the law to the open world of humanity, to cross the boundaries of Jerusalem to Samaria and to the end of the world.
In their attempts to be righteous humans are tempted to pretend before others that they are righteous, which is the most despicable human behavior in the eyes of Jesus. All are accepted as they are by Jesus. One does not have to worry about one's religious or sexual orientation, intellectual abilities or ethnic qualities while coming to Jesus. All of Jesus’ friends in Galilee were marginalized people, thrown out of the elite society. For him all social rules were artificial and hypocritical. Church needs to be an alternative community, where all hypocrisy, hierarchical impositions, spiritual gradations, ritualistic pretension have no place.
Role of religions
The Hebraic way of thinking was different from the Hellenistic way of thinking. Paul spoke to the Jews according to the Hebrew way of thinking, and preached to the Greeks as we see in the Athens incident, in Greek categories (Acts 17:22-31). In his letter to the Corinthians Paul has written that the Jews seek signs while the Greeks seek wisdom. Paul found it necessary to use both ways in order to communicate the truth of the Gospel. Pauline methodology requires one in India to be open to the pluralistic sensibilities, in its various ramifications of Advaitic as well as non advaitic, theistic as well as the non theistic, brahminic as well as the carvaka traditions. It must be noted that even the atheistic traditions like Jainism and Buddhism have contributed to the spirituality of India. Christian theological schools like death of God theology similar to the non theistic Indian religious traditions are more concerned with human suffering and death than some theistic religiosity . It is worth to note that Indian Dalit theologians owe much of their “pain-pathos” methodology to Buddhism rather than to traditional Christian theologies that reject patripassianism, death of God, as heresy. Not only the acclaimed death of God theologians, but theologians like Jurgen Moltmann, and Dorothy Solle, Edward Schillebeekx, and James Cone reject the view that patripassianism, the suffering nature of God, is heretical; they affirm the inevitable suffering and death in God as necessary to explain the love of God.
The missionaries who came to India employed the advaitic brahminic traditions to communicate the Gospel truth to the Indians, but ignored the Jain and Buddhist traditions. Ahimsa, which has been much popularized by Gandhi, owes its origin not to classical Hinduism but to the Jain and Buddhist traditions. In India, advaitic strand of thought has been popular only among a minority brahminic tradition, though that minority is very influential. India has a large number of Dalits and tribals whose thought world has been different from the Brahmin dominated classical Hinduism and its advaitic thought world, but suppressed all through out history. It is now almost acknowledged by scholars that in India Christianity can communicate the Gospel only when it is willing to acknowledge and appropriate these living forms of Indian life world and thought existing among the dalits and adivasi tribals. Here the same spirit of Paul who made himself a Jew to the Jews and Greek to the Greeks need to be remembered and adopted. In Pauline methodology religions are not hindrance to Gospel, but necessary signifiers to the Gospel; religions play a role similar to the Jewish Law. They are valid in themselves and salvifically significant like the Jewish Law, but finds their relevance in relation to Christ. Christianity itself is salvifically significant but has to find its relevance only in relation to the Jewish Law and different religions in context. No religion in isolation , just as no individual in herself /himself, is complete or self-sufficient, but needs one another to find meaning and relevance of its own existence and role in the world.
Conclusion: God's purpose in calling peoples
Paul acknowledges that even before his birth, God had a plan for his life. In India many people believe in destiny. It may have its negative impact on life as it can promote fatalism. But theologians like Calvin believed in predestination which also have some determined course of action in life countermanding freedom of the will. But if we look at Paul's view of it, destiny need not be fatalistic or predetermined. It refers to the plan of God for creation. It is quite understandable that an “intelligent designer “has planned the world in such a way that every part of creation has a specific role to play in the world. Discovering that role relieves us from unnecessary tension regarding the ebbs and flows during the course of life. According to Calvin we need not worry about even our salvation. It is taken care for us by the creator and redeemer. We are free to choose a life that is pleasing to God which is free of any unnecessary worry with regard to salvation. Salvation is already available in Jesus . We are here to praise God for that. Paul is convinced of his life in terms of God's plan to save gentiles. This is asserted not only in Galatians but also in letters to Romans, Ephesians and Colossians. What ever happens in his life, Paul conceives it to be for the promotion of the gospel, God's plan for the creation. This gnana, sapientia, saving knowledge makes one a free person. This relieves us also from worry and care of the vicissitudes of our life. God calls us for fulfilling God’s purpose in creation regardless of ethnicity, culture, religion, language or gender.
The introductory remarks to the letter to the Galatians show Paul’s theological openness and imaginative mind. He claims a direct revelation from God. This he repeats several times. Perhaps he might be attempting to secure his position against the Judaizers who questioned his apostleship. For us in India it opens up some important theological vista. Paul is claiming the rightfulness of direct revelation from God, over and above the mediatory channels, in the form of apostles or theological or religious traditions, though not in defiance of them. It is important to maintain one's theological freedom in order to relate with God. Most often Church traditions limit the freedom of people to approach God directly to God and snub the individual initiatives as heresy. Paul asserts his freedom to preach the gospel as it was revealed to him, while at the same time ready to acknowledge a different way of understanding revelation. What he declares as “eternally condemned” is not the freedom of interpreting the meaning of the Gospel, but forcing people to a particular interpretation of it on the basis of some kind of self-declared authority. Schweitzer’s observation that Paul has been a mystic adds strength to us in India to work out a mystic path of salvation, not in monastic isolation, but in creative confrontations with a hypocritical spirituality. Paul is creating a new path towards God, a kind of active mysticism and experience-in-relation to Christ.
Paul addresses God as father, Father of Jesus Christ. It has been unusual in the Jewish circles. Today the fatherhood represents the patriarchy, hierarchical dominance of the male over the female, rather than the intimacy of filial relationship with God. Jesus and Paul use this term to show that a believer has the status of an offspring, sonship or daughtership, in relation to God. However, the “fatherhood of God,” consciously or unconsciously, is used in the Church today in order to deny women their rightful claim before God. They become secondary in their relation to God on account of their gender which has become explicit in denying them ministerial ordination in many major churches. Moreover, it symbolizes a wrong Trinitarian theology in which the “motherhood of God” is pushed to the background to uphold “manliness” of the Father. Today many Christians fail to acknowledge the motherhood of God, while many women refuse to acknowledge the domineering Patriarchal symbol of Fatherhood as irrelevant today. Patriarchy denies the equality of women before God. The retrieval of Motherhood of God is important in the post modern world and Paul has given us the right to address God in intimate categories because God is a person of relationship and not of some supernatural authority, or a symbol to validate the male supremacy in the world.
What is the relation of Christians to the world? There are passages used to show that world is inhospitable and must be rejected. Paul in all his letters has given adequate importance to ethics, human behavior in this world. Paul is aware of the good and bad aspects of life. One is not separated from the other though they are quite distinctive. Though not the dualism of classical Greek thinking where good and bad are two distinct realities Bible and Christians have acknowledged that the world made good by God has been corrupted and the free will of human beings has been distorted and perverted. Evil is the misuse of freedom of the will. God is always at the helm of affairs by controlling the evil and helping the humans to overcome the evil, by giving them the power of God’s spirit and vision about the world. God is creating strong human persons to lead the world in the newness of the spirit. Paul is invoking that spirit so that the disciples may not become susceptible to evil.
For further reading:
Betz, Hans Dieter. Galatians. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979.
Cummins, Stephen Anthony. Paul and the Crucified Christ in Antioch: Maccabean Martyrdom and Galatians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Dunn, James D. G. The Theology of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Matera, Frank,J. Galatians. Sacra Pagina Series vol.9. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1992.
Schweitzer, Albert. The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. London:A. & C. Black. 1931
Wiley, Tatha. Paul and the Gentile Women: Reframing Galatians. London: T&T Clark, 2005.
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