Commentary on the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Galatians

Reason and purpose of writing the message Dividing the message by content It has not yet been established where to look for the readers of this letter - the Galatian churches. According to the long-established view, Galatia, where the Apostle Paul sent his letter, is a country in the center of Asia Minor, which received its name from the Gallic (Celtic) tribes that settled in it (about 277 BC), whose main cities were Ancyra and Pessinus. Proponents of this view say that Paul visited this country for the first time during the trip mentioned in Acts 16:6, and during this time he preached the gospel there. Then he visited Galatia again (Acts 18:23; cf. Gal.4:13). Other scholars believe that by Galatia one must understand not only the country where the Galatians lived, but the entire Roman province of Galatia, which included Galatia itself and, in addition, the countries of Phrygia, Pisidia and Lycaonia, i.e. those countries that the Apostle Paul and Barnabas visited during the first apostolic journey (Acts 13:14), with the cities: Antioch (in Pisidia), Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. With this assumption, the first sojourn of the Apostle in Galatia coincides with the journey spoken of in Acts 13 and Acts 14, and the second with the one spoken of in Acts 16:6. Of these two assumptions, we recognize the first as more correct, i.e. we believe that the Apostle Paul defines Galatia as the country of only the Galatians or the actual northern part of the Roman province of Galatia, and for these reasons. According to Gal. 4:13 et seq. Paul founded churches in Galatia because he was detained in those places by his illness. And in Acts 13 and Acts 14 there is no hint of any illness of the Apostle. On the contrary, according to the depiction of these chapters, the Apostle Paul at that time developed extremely intense activity and quickly moved from one place to another. Meanwhile, it is extremely likely that it is precisely the illness that befell Paul in Galatia that the writer of the book means. Acts 16:6 et seq., which says that the “Spirit” prevented Paul from going to Asia, that is, to the shore of what is now Asia Minor, which is why the Apostle remained to preach the Gospel in the middle of Asia Minor (in Phrygia and Galatia). But if the Apostle then came to the “Galatians” for the first time, then, obviously, by “Galatians” we must mean not those Christian communities mentioned in Acts 13 and Acts 14, but those that existed in Galatia in the narrow sense of this name. Around the time of the Apostle Paul, Galatia was already, at least in the cities, under the influence of Greek culture and changed its Celtic language to Greek. But nevertheless, their character - lively, receptive and fickle - was preserved. In addition, they were superstitious, arrogant and prone to mutual strife, but at the same time hospitable and welcoming. There were also Jews among them, who attracted many Galatians to the side of the Mosaic Law. So, the Apostle Paul founded the church in Galatia on his second apostolic journey, after he founded (on his first journey) churches in Pisidia and Lycaonia. The Apostle began preaching in Galatia under unfavorable circumstances - sick, but his work here was successful, and the Galatians accepted him as an Angel of God, as Christ himself (Gal. 4:14-15). The new life showed itself in various spiritual gifts among the Galatians. On his third apostolic journey, the Apostle again visited Galatia, but now he noticed in Galatians a tendency towards Judaism that had appeared there and denounced the Galatians for this (Acts 18:22-23; Gal. 1:9). The Galatian church undoubtedly included as its main element the Gentiles converted by Paul (Gal. 4:9), but there were also Jews and proselytes. After the departure of the Apostle Paul from Galatia, the Galatian churches were invaded by the Judaizers, opponents of the Apostle Paul. Paul speaks of them with the utmost contempt. He calls them church troublemakers of the Gospel of Christ (Gal.1:7, 5:10). He reproaches them for opportunism, hypocrisy and vanity (Gal. 6:12 et seq.). These Judaizing teachers of the faith told the Galatians that they were obligated to keep the law of Moses. They said that only thanks to them could the Galatians become acquainted with the real, true Gospel (Gal.1:6), that the teaching that Paul brought to them was not complete (Gal.3:3). Paul did not tell the Galatians - and it was supposed to be said - that only through the fulfillment of the law of Moses and through the acceptance of circumcision can the Gentiles become descendants of Abraham and heirs of the divine promises and eternal blessedness given to this patriarch (Gal. 3: 6 et seq.). At the same time, however, they did not force the Galatians to fulfill all the individual regulations of the Mosaic Law, but only the main ones - namely, the regulations on circumcision and the observance of Jewish holidays (Gal. 5:2, 4:10). Hand in hand with the praise of this new “Gospel” in a special Judaistic form went the desire of these false teachers to discredit the Apostle Paul in the eyes of the Galatians. They pointed out to the Galatians that Paul was not a direct disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, while behind them, the Judaizers, stood the Apostles, called by Christ Himself, the most prominent individuals in the Church (Gal. 2:2, 6:9), the pillars of Christianity. Everything that is good in Paul’s teaching comes from these pillars, and everything that belongs to him is nothing more than a product of human imagination (Gal. 1:12). Paul owes his apostolic position to the mediation of the chief apostles (Gal. 1:1) and his apostleship is of the lowest rank. He himself admitted this when he presented his teaching to the chief apostles during his stay in Jerusalem (Gal. 2:2). They said that Paul is the kind of person who can deceive his listeners with his oratory (Gal.1:10), that he seeks popularity in every way (Gal.1:10) and sometimes does not even hesitate to preach himself, where it is beneficial for him, the need for circumcision (Gal.5:11)... With such messages, Paul's opponents managed to influence the Galatian Christians. When Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians, the latter were already ready to take the side of legalistic Judaism (Gal.1:6), accept circumcision (Gal.5:2 et seq.) and had already begun to celebrate Jewish holidays (Gal.4:10). In a word, an extraordinary metamorphosis took place with the Galatians, and Paul was directly amazed by this circumstance (Gal. 3:1, 5:7). The state of affairs of Pavlov's Gospel was extremely critical. The question was being decided whether the young Christian religion should tie itself to the dying forms of Judaism, frozen in appearance, or continue its eagle flight over the world with the power of the new spirit inherent in it. Galatia became the arena of that struggle, on the outcome of which the fate of the whole world depended. What happened later in Corinth and Rome was only the conclusion to this great struggle, only its echoes. In the Epistle to the Romans one no longer feels the same fighting mood that prevails in the Epistle to the Galatians: there one can already hear the calm voice of a man who won a victory over the Judaizers. And in the Epistle to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul speaks with all the passion of a fighter for his idea. Thus, the Apostle’s goal in writing the Epistle to the Galatians was: firstly, to protect and restore his own apostolic authority, and then, secondly, to establish in the minds of the Galatians the idea that for a pagan who converted to Christianity, the Law of Moses and circumcision are not needed at all, and that even without this he becomes the heir of all the promises given to Abraham. The Apostle Paul ended his third apostolic journey, during which he visited Galatia (Acts 18:23), with a long stay in Ephesus (from 54 to 56). As can be seen from the letter to the Galatians, it could not have been written too long after the Apostle's removal from Galatia. He is surprised precisely (Gal. 1:6) that the Galatians “too quickly” go over to the side of Paul’s opponents - it is clear that he parted with them not so long ago. Based on this, we can assume that the Epistle to the Galatians was written by the Apostle shortly after his arrival in Ephesus, precisely at the end of 54 or the beginning of 55. In its content, the entire epistle to the Galatians represents the disclosure of the idea that for the pagans who believed in Christ, the fulfillment of the Law of Moses is completely unnecessary. In this case, it resembles the Epistle to the Romans with the only difference that it speaks of the unsuitability of the law in general as a means of justifying a person, and here of its uselessness for a Christian. The entire content of the epistle can be divided into three sections: 1) apologetic, covering the first two chapters of the epistle, in which the Apostle refutes the lies brought against him by the Judaizers and restores his apostolic authority, 2) dogmatic-polemical, extending from Gal.3 to Gal.5:13. Here the Apostle proves that Christians are not required to take upon themselves the fulfillment of the Law of Moses, which supposedly helps a pagan Christian to become a descendant of Abraham and inherit the promises given to this patriarch, and 3) moral, which contains instructions regarding the correct Christian life. The contents of each section are described in detail when explaining the message. Excerpts from the Epistle to the Galatians are found in the earliest works of Christian writing - in the writings of the apostolic men, but these are not actually quotes, but a slightly modified repetition of the thoughts contained in the epistle. The further we go, the clearer these borrowings become. In the canon of the Muratorium and in the Pescito it is already found as a letter of the Apostle Paul. But since the 50s of the 19th century, learned critics of Baur’s school began to reject the authenticity of this message, and in 1888, Prof. Steck published his treatise on the last. to Galatians, in which he tried to prove that this epistle draws all its content from the epistles to the Corinthians and Romans and arose precisely at a time when the struggle against Judaism intensified in the Christian church, i.e. at the beginning of the second century. However, the very fact that only a few scientists took Steck's side shows that the reasons he gave in defense of his hypothesis seemed rather weak to learned theologians. And in fact, Steck’s main idea that the epistle, by its polemic against Judaism, betrays its later origin, is completely untenable, because the reasons for Judaism’s opposition to Paul’s Gospel could have existed precisely in the first century, when pagan churches were just emerging. Afterwards, in the second century, the collisions between Judaism and the Gospel of Paul would have been completely incomprehensible, since in the second century the missionary activity to convert pagans to the fold of the Church of Christ was already completed. In addition, from the writings of the apostolic men it is clear that among Christians of the second century the question of the relationship of the law was considered already resolved in the spirit of the teaching of the Apostle Paul. As for the closeness of the epistle to the Galatians with the epistles to the Corinthians and Romans, this was quite natural to expect from an epistle that appeared at the same time as those indicated. Other objections to the authenticity of the epistle to the Galatians are nothing more than a manifestation of a purely subjective misunderstanding of some truly difficult to interpret passages from the epistle. to the Galatians. Of the patristic interpretations of the Epistle to the Galatians, the interpretations of Ephraim the Syrian, Augustine, and Blessed One deserve special attention. Jerome, John Chrysostom, Theodoret and Bl. Theophylact, and from the Russians - Archimandrite. Agafangela, Archbishop. Philaret, Bishop Theophan, Priest. I. Galakhova (Kazan 1897) and prof. Ya. Ya. Glubokovsky: The Gospel of Christian Freedom in the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians (Pet. 1902). Among the foreign ones, the best commentary is the interpretation of Prof. Zana (Leipzig 1907). The literature of the message up to 1897 is listed in detail in the book of St. Galakhova. In 1912, the “Public Explanation of the Sequence” appeared. to the Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Philippians" Rev. Zefirova (Mogilev). You might be interested in: