1.15-17

In this first chapter of Galatians Paul is concerned to establish that his authority is direct from God rather than through the Jerusalem community or the Jerusalem apostles. The Christians of Galatia were being persuaded - only too successfully - to revert to the Jewish practices advocated by James' party and to desert Paul's gospel that salvation is through faith in Christ, independently of any Jewish boundary-markers of the Chosen People.

In this passage he uses two arguments. Firstly he alludes to the vocation of the prophet Jeremiah and of the Servant of the Lord in Deutero-Isaiah to claim that his own call, too, was direct before his birth, reinforcing this with the statement that God revealed his son in him (not merely to him) directly, presumably referring to the experience (if it was a single experience) which Luke dramatizes in the vocation-experience on the road to Damascus. Secondly Paul denies that he needed to 'check out' his vocation with any human authority, namely that of those who were apostles before him. Paul sees himself as the apostle of the gentiles, possibly ploughing a lonely furrow after the dispute at Antioch. Later the collection, of which we hear so much in Romans and Corinthians, may have been intended as a token of reconciliation between gentile and Jewish Christians.

Paul may also be alluding to Is 49.1, one of the servant songs. His vocation as Servant of the Lord is very important to him, and the suffering he undergoes is constantly used by him as testimony to the truth of his apostolate, e.g. 2 Cor 10. The Servant in Isaiah also, like Paul, has a mission to the nations.

Paul does not directly say that he was in Damascus before he went off to 'Arabia' (which could designate Nabatea rather than the wider Arabian peninsula). The verb could suggest a return to the same city, but could be used more loosely of a return to the same vague general area of Syria-Palestine; the passage cannot be used to reinforce the account in Acts. The incident when the governor of Damascus under Aretas tried to seize Paul (2 Cor 11) could have occurred on either occasion.

The expression 'son of God' is of great importance to Paul. In Semitic idiom it does not, of course, necessarily have the sense which it bears in later Christian theology. Its biblical usage includes angels, judges, Israel itself, designating more a special link, task and closeness to God. For Paul it is the clue to the adoption of Christians as sons of God through their share in Christ's life in his Spirit.

2.11-12

This passage describes the crux of the controversy at Antioch (Paul's base community) over table-fellowship between Christians drawn from the circumcision and gentile Christians. Paul maintained that the only criterion of belonging to the true Israel was faith, which made the previous boundary-markers of the Chosen People (principally Sabbath, circumcision and dietary restrictions) obsolete. He points out that Peter/Cephas (the Aramaic form of the name) at first indicated his agreement because he habitually ate with gentile Christians at Antioch until he began to withdraw under the influence of James' envoys. James seems to have been left in charge of the Jerusalem community when Peter departed, and was presumably the leader of the Judaising party. James may have held that full Jewish observance was necessary even for Christians, or at any rate that Jewish Christians might not share tables with gentile Christians.

That the former was a delicate point in early Christianity is shown by numerous passages. While Mark has Jesus 'declare all foods clean', Matthew withdraws from this assertion. The Acts shows Peter receiving the unexpectedly and unpalatable revelation at Joppa that he may no longer call any foods unclean, as a preliminary to his receiving Cornelius' household into the fold, an action he is called upon to justify before the Jerusalem community. The stress placed upon this novelty suggests that it still needed stating in Luke's time. On the latter point the 'Letter from Jerusalem' in Acts 15 puts forward some restrictions to make association with gentile Christians more acceptable for Jews.

It would have strengthened Paul's case immeasurably had he been able to say that Peter accepted his rebuke. Here the argument from silence is strong that Peter did not do so. After the incident it seems that Paul, at least for some time, went his own way, so that CK Barrett's description of him as 'the most hated man in the ancient world' may be justified. It is an interesting speculation how many of these differing attitudes remained acceptable, at least for some time, within the Christian communities.

3.10-14

The central theological question of Galatians and Romans is how people are justified. Paul has just explained that 'those from faith' enjoy the blessing of Abraham. He now goes on to make the contrast, perhaps turning the argument of his opponents against themselves: it would be normal for the strict Jew to argue that those outside the Law are accursed. Paul, on the other hand, argues precisely the opposite: 'those from the Law' are the ones who are accursed - that is, if they put their trust in anything but faith in Christ. Paul here uses for the first time the slogan from Habakkuk which will be the kernel of Romans.

Since the seminal works of WD Davies and EP Sanders it has become clear that the frequent Christian caricature of Judaism as earning salvation by building up credit through obeying the Law must be abandoned. The Jewish attitude to the Law was rather a matter of showing that one is within the Law and responding to it by conforming to the customs of Israel, what Dunn calls the 'cultural hegemony' of Israel. Paul, however, claims that it is impossible fully to observe the Law.

The argument that Christ became a curse for us must be similarly an ad hominem argument against Jewish Christians who held that gentiles were all under a curse: Christ showed his solidarity with them by putting himself in the same position. Or rather, that Christ fulfilled the whole Law by concentrating its demands upon himself. For Paul Christ was the spearhead of Israel, the seed of Abraham, constituting Israel in himself alone. This position has been joined to the statement of 2 Cor 5.21 'God made Christ to be sin who knew no sin' for the claim that Paul considered even Christ to be in some sense subject to sin. But that passage is best interpreted as 'sacrifice for sin', since the same Hebrew word can bear the two meanings. An alternative explanation builds on the Temple Scroll of the Qumran texts, where crucifixion is repeatedly mentioned as the punishment envisaged for law-breaking: in one act Christ dealt with all transgressions.

4.4-6

Adoption as sons and heirs is a consequence of solidarity with Christ. Already in Judaism, of course, Israel was seen as God's son; but in Christianity there is an extension of this idea. It becomes more personal and intimate. Jesus himself is seen as using this familiar family greeting in Mark's account of the Agony. The usage itself was not, as Jeremias claimed, wholly unique in Judaism; the uniqueness consisted in the intimate term being used on its own, without other honorific titles. In any case Paul shows that the Aramaic term was adopted even by Greek-speaking Christians as a sort of talisman (as also 'Maranatha'). The adoption and invention of a series of - words shows that Paul sees the Christian, by sharing Christ's Spirit, to take on the rhythms of Christ's life, baptised into his death, crucified, buried, raised, heir and one body with him.

Paul's thought, as that of the first generation of Christians as a whole, was basically eschatological, regarding Christ's coming as the fullness of time. As in the attitude to the Kingship of God in the gospels and in Jesus' own teaching, the problem was that in some sense the Kingship had already come, in some sense it was still to be completed. The burden of Mark's account of the Empty Tomb is basically to show that the eschaton has broken in already. The terminology of 'revelation' is also that of the end-time, for at Qumran and elsewhere the revelation of the secret was to take place only at the end of time. In Thessalonians Paul regards the final coming as imminent, as though the end-time was virtually present; he must have seemed to the Thessalonians to have taught that it would not be delayed for a generation. Here he seems to regard the eschaton as already complete.

The terminology 'sent his Son' can be understood as the sending of a pre-existent Son. But such a thought would be unexpected in Paul at this stage, and it can also be understood of a prophetic sending on a mission, so not implying pre-existence.

6.1-2

In the concluding part of his letters Paul normally gives some moreal teaching and exhortation. In this little passage urgency is given by the sudden change into the singular second person.

The µ is one who is under the Spirit of Christ. It is most fully explained in 1 Cor 15, where it refers to the Christian risen after the model of Christ, and transferred into the sphere of the divine (no longer transitory but unchanging, not longer contemptible by glorious, no longer weak but powerful, no longer but µ). This cannot exactly be the sense here, though it must designate one who already shares in the life of Christ.

The duty to care morally for others is stressed in similar terms also in Matthew's chapter 18 on the community, where he uses the image of the Lost Sheep (differently from Luke) to underline the duty of the Christian to search out the lost. Paul stresses that this correction must be done in the spirit of humility, that is awareness of one's own fallibility.

The sense of the Law of Christ is difficult. Paul uses the expression only here. Has the Christian been freed from the Torah only to become subject to another Law? The Christian tradition was scarcely sufficiently formed to be considered a comparable fixed and defined body of commandments. The use of the two words µ and may refer back to the one commandment in which the whole law is fulfilled, the law of love in 5.14.