‘For freedom Christ has set us free’: The Gospel of Paul versus the Custodial Oversight of the Law and Human Philosophies

Introduction

The culmination of Paul’s argument in Galatians, and particularly from 3.1-4.31, is: ‘For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ (Galatians 5.1). This essay seeks to understand Paul’s opposition to a continuing custodial role for the Law and a use of human philosophies to deal with sinful passions and desires.  His arguments against these are found in Galatians and Colossians.  By focussing on the problem of the Law and of philosophy, we can better understand Paul’s theology.  He believed that the Gospel was the only way to deal with sin not simply in terms of our actions but more basically in terms of our sinful desires and passions of the flesh.

The task ahead is to understand several large-scale matters in Paul’s theology, those having to do with a right understanding of the human plight and a right understanding of God’s solution.  So much Protestant theology has articulated this in terms of sin and justification, and this, once justification is understood properly as both ‘justifying the sinner’ and ‘making the sinner righteous’, can get to the heart of the matter.  However, I would argue that Paul’s understanding might better be articulated as follows:

·       the human plight is a bondage to both sinful acts and the sinful desires that produce them;

·       God’s solution is both a forgiveness of sins or justification of the sinner and an inward transformation in Christ and through the Holy Spirit. 

The problem and solution are moral, not just juridical.  The moral solution is not in custodial oversight and regulations but in the person and work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.  If we misunderstand Paul on these matters, we end up with a view of the Christian life as one of a sinner continuing in sin but forgiven by God’s grace.  This is only partly true, but it misses the deeper truths that Paul is at pains to explain and that I hope to articulate with a look at Galatians and Colossians together.

Galatians

In Galatians 4.1-2, Paul compares life under the Law to the life of a son who, though he is the ‘owner of everything’ remains ‘under guardians and managers until the date set by his father’.  The underage son had no rights but, like a slave, was under the hand of the father.  In fact, the paidagōgos that Paul mentions in Galatians 3.24-25 as equivalent to the Law was a slave.  The slave was, in some regard, was for a time above the future heir.

The nature of sonship was first introduced into the theological argument in Galatians 3.7.  The status of an underage son, not just the role of the slave who has been entrusted with his care, is in view a few verses later in Galatians 4.1-7:

I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, ² but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. ³ In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles [stoicheia] of the world. ⁴ But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, ⁵ to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. ⁶ And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” ⁷ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who lived in the latter part of the first century BC, argued that Roman law was far stronger than Greek law in the power that a father could exercise over a son.  Going back in time to the origins of Rome, he described the laws enacted by Romulus for the Romans:

But the lawgiver of the Romans gave virtually full power to the father over his son, even during his whole life, whether he thought proper to imprison him, to scourge him, to put him in chains and keep him at work in the fields, or to put him to death, and this even though the son were already engaged in public affairs, though he were numbered among the highest magistrates, and though he were celebrated for his zeal for the commonwealth (Roman Antiquities 2.26.4).

Dionysius even says that the law gave ‘greater power to the father over his son than to the master over his slaves’ (2.27.1).  The father could even sell his son three times.  Once sold, the son might regain his freedom only to be sold again by his father.  (After three times, the son would be considered free.)

While a very ancient custom or law among the Romans, Dionysius says, this law of paternity was reaffirmed when it was recorded in the Twelve Tables (in the fourth table) (2.27.4) in the mid-5^th c. BC.  Dionysius’ point is that this and other such laws are ancient and foundational for the Roman people.  He refers to them as ‘ancestral customs and laws’ (tous patrious ethismous te kai nomous).  I suggest that this gets at the meaning of ‘stoicheia’ in Galatians.

The Galatian church was at fault for returning to live under the authority of the Law, such as the law of circumcision or the observance of days, months, seasons, and years (4.10; 5.2, 6, 11-12; 6.12-15).  These are Jewish laws and customs, but Paul includes Gentile converts in regard to such when he says, ‘Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods’ (4.8).  Such fundamental customs and laws Paul calls stoicheia, which the ESV translates as ‘elementary principles’ (4.3, 9; cf. Colossians 2.8, 20) having been set free from the elemental customs and laws that guided and controlled a person.

Why would a person—or someone teaching others—want to reintroduce the Law?  The issue was not a desire on the part of some to be Jewish and to make Gentile converts live under Jewish laws.  Paul’s argument does, of course, have to do with the Law, but his more general reference to the stoicheia under which both Jews and Gentiles lived means that the issue is more than Jewishness, or separating Christians from Jewish particularity (food laws, circumcision, Jewish calendrical observances).  The issue was that children need guidance and control; they need law.  The issue was ethical, not cultural or ethnic.  The reason for turning back to the Law was that those promoting the Law for Christians hoped to introduce the sort of ancient oversight that some were arguing control human passions and desires.  He writes, ‘Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions...’ (Galatians 3.19a).  One of the errors of the so-called New Perspective on Paul was to focus on the ethnic element in the view of Paul’s opponents rather than the moral point at issue.  Both sides were attempting to answer the question, ‘How do we deal with sin?’  The opponents reintroduced the Law as a custodian. Paul had no issue with the moral teaching of the Law; his concern was that seeing the Law as a moral custodian of sinners totally undermined the Gospel.  It denied the effectiveness of Christ’s death and the power of the Spirit in believers’ lives.

Thus, the reason that Paul so opposed a return to the childlike existence of being under the Law was that the Law failed to help people control their sinful desires.  His understanding of Christian freedom was that it did not simply free Christians from the Law but that Christ and the Spirit solved the problem of sinful desire.  Much of the argument that Paul makes in Galatians is toward this point.  He says,

For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. ²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ²¹ I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose (Galatians 2.19-21).

 Later, Paul says, 

And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Galatians 5.24).

 A few verses earlier, Paul said, ‘But I say to you, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh’ (5.16).  The next verse, taken on its own, can easily be misinterpreted.  It stands as the equivalent of a longer passage in Romans 7.7-25, which is misinterpreted more often than not.  In neither text is Paul saying that the state of the Christian is in constant tension between wanting to do what is right but failing to do so because of the power of sin.  Rather, Paul’s point is that, without Christ, people are in such a state.  They also have the Law, but it is powerless to change them.  Instead, all the Law does for sinners is point out their sin.  The Gospel Paul preaches is release from this bondage to sin, the Law, and death and freedom in Christ and the Holy Spirit. 

 In Romans, Paul follows his description of the human condition outside of Christ in 7.7-25 with his description of the believer’s situation in Christ and the Spirit in 8.1-17 (or all the way through the end of the chapter, v. 39).  In Galatians 5.17, Paul acknowledges the opposition between the desires of the flesh and the Spirit, with the result that one in such a situation does not do what he wishes.  Paul’s answer was already stated in the previous verse: ‘walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh’, and he repeats this in the following verse, ‘But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law’.  The Law, like the slave custodian, is there to control the child.  One needs no such custodian when the Spirit leads.  The contrast is not only between the Law and the Spirit but also between the sinful desires and the Spirit.  When the Spirit replaces the desires of the flesh, the Law is no longer needed to guide transgressors.

 Colossians

 At this point, we might introduce the somewhat related letter of Colossians.  Whether Paul is more concerned about a Gentile or a Jewish teaching that undermined Christian teaching in this letter, his is, once again, addressing an issue of believers thinking that they need to live under some authorities other than Christ.  As with the Galatians, the Colossians wished to introduce some teaching to control sinful passions and desires.  In this letter, however, the problem involves, at least in part, the idea that philosophy may be the answer.  As in Galatians, Paul speaks of the stoicheia that offer an alternative to Christ for the control of desire.  In this letter, however, they have to do with philosophy.  Instead of Jewish Law, can philosophy control human desire that leads one to sin?

 Paul’s response to this was, ‘No’.  He said, 

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ (Colossians 2.8).

 Whereas the ESV translates stoicheia with ‘elemental principles’ in Galatians, it translates the word with ‘elemental spirits’ in Colossians.  The thought is that such principles can be personalised, and that in Colossians the thought is more to do with the spiritual powers called thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities in Colossians 1.16.  However, philosophy is one source for answering the question how people ought to live well.  People sought answers from philosophical teaching and in ancient laws of a people, and they believed that spiritual forces or beings stood behind their laws.

Paul mentions the stoicheia both in 2.8 (above) and again in 2.20: 

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations….

This verse indicates that, as in Galatians, Paul does still have the idea of laws in view.  Whatever these stoicheia are, they require submission to their regulations.  I will leave aside speculation at this time as to whether there is a personal side to these regulations that lies in Greek and Roman mythology, but Paul’s primary concern is to do with living under certain regulations.  He provides an example of what he means, asking why they submit to rules such as

Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” ²² (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? (Colossians 2.21-22).

What, then, is the connection between philosophy (2.8) and regulations (2.20)?  The answer is that in antiquity philosophy largely had to do with the regulation of life, and Paul dismisses philosophy in this regard.  For example, the Pythagoreans practiced self-control by looking at sumptuous food and not eating it (Diodorus Siculus, History 10.5.2), and they taught that indulging in the pleasures of love meant not being master of oneself (10.9.4).  Pythagoras called his principles not ‘wisdom’ but ‘love of wisdom’--philosophia (10.10.1; cf. Col. 2.8).  The Stoics opposed the Epicurean teaching that what is morally good is determined by the senses—in other words, that we should follow our desires and seek pleasure.  They condemned ‘men who are slaves to their appetites and their lusts’ (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius CXXIV.3, ‘On the True Good as Attained by Reason’).  Instead of pleasure, the Stoics taught that reason, the mind not the senses, would guide people to what is truly good.  Seneca says, 

Reason, however, is surely the governing element in such a matter as this; as reason has made the decision concerning the happy life, and concerning virtue and honour also, so she has made the decision with regard to good and evil (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius CXXIV.4).

Such rules, claimed Paul, were entirely futile.  The reason was that the problem of sin lay deeper than in actions but lay in desires.  In Ephesians, Paul says,  

we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Ephesians 2.3).

In his letter to Titus, Paul repeats a similar statement regarding the human predicament:  

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another (Colossians 3.3).

We can state Paul’s soteriology in terms of the problem of sinful acts and the solution of God’s justification of the sinner, but this neither touches the depths of Paul’s theology nor the connection it had to Jesus’ ethic of the heart.  The problem of the human condition for Paul was of sinful desires and passions that led to sinful acts, and the solution from God was to transform us in Christ and through the Holy Spirit.

This solution was diametrically opposed to submitting to philosophy just as much as to the Jewish Law.  In Plato’s work called Phaedo, this function of philosophy is clearly stated:  

And self-restraint—that which is commonly called self-restraint, which consists in not being excited by the passions and in being superior to them and acting in a seemly way—is not that characteristic of those alone who despise the body [68d] and pass their lives in philosophy?” (Phaedo 68c, d).

Perhaps the key to Paul’s criticism of philosophy is the idea of Protagoras that virtue can be taught:

Seeing then that so much care is taken in the matter of both private and public virtue, do you wonder, Socrates, and make it a great difficulty, that virtue may be taught?’ (Plato, Protagoras 326e).

 'Civic art' (the art of living well together), argued Protagoras, does not come naturally to society (322a and following; 323c). People need to be taught virtues and punished so as to deter them from vices like injustice, impiety, and whatever 'is opposed to civic virtue'. (323e-324a). Protagoras asks,

Or is there not, some one thing whereof all the citizens must needs partake, if there is to be a city?’ [and he answers] ‘justice and temperance and holiness—[325a] in short, what I may put together and call a man's virtue; and if it is this whereof all should partake and wherewith everyone should proceed to any further knowledge or action, but should not if he lacks it; if we should instruct and punish such as do not partake of it, whether child or husband or wife, until the punishment of such persons has made them better,[325b] and should cast forth from our cities or put to death as incurable whoever fails to respond to such punishment and instruction....’ (Protagoras 324e-325b).

Paul, on the other hand, criticises human precepts and teaching (Colossians 21-22).  In fact, in Ephesians Paul speaks of being ‘learning Christ and being ‘taught Christ’:

But that is not the way you learned Christ!— ²¹ assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, ²² to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, ²³ and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, ²⁴ and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4.20-24). 

 In Romans, Paul states the human problem as a debased mind, meaning persons given over to their passions (like homosexuals) so that they do not know natural from unnatural: 

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to aa debased mind to do what ought not to be done (Romans 1.28).

The solution, worked out over many chapters, comes to this: a transformed mind.  Paul says, 

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12.2).

 Yet this should not be misconstrued.  He does believe in ethics and teaching right and wrong (e.g., 1 Th. 4.1ff).  His criticism is that there is a need for life in Christ to infuse in believers Christian virtues.  The power of Christ, not regulations about what to handle, taste, or touch, is needed to conquer sin.  The point is one he made already to the Galatian church.

 Jesus had insisted that the rules and regulations of the scribes and Pharisees did not touch the human predicament of sin.  His ethic called for an ethic of the heart.  What Paul further articulated—and this dependent on teaching in the Old Testament, such as Isaiah 59.20-21, Jeremiah 31.31-34, and Ezekiel 36.24-27—was that only God could transform the heart.  The New Covenant that replaced the Old Covenant was about this divine transformation of the inner being such that the righteous commandments of God might be obeyed.

 In Greek and Roman philosophy, discussion of the human problem in terms of an inward desire was common.  Yet the various philosophers believed that their philosophies could explain desire and teach how to control it.  In the century before Paul, Cicero, a Roman Stoic, wrote:

… while the whole field of philosophy is fertile and productive and no portion of it barren and waste, still no part is richer or more fruitful than that which deals with moral duties; for from these are derived the rules for leading a consistent and moral life (De Officiis 3.5). 

Paul’s opposition to philosophy was that it was in fact unfertile and unproductive in leading to a consistent and moral life.  The Gospel was not a philosophy but was about Jesus Christ.  It offered not principles but a ‘power at work within us’ (Ephesians 3.20).  It was the ‘power of God for salvation to everyone who believes’ (Romans 1.16).

 Some sought the achievement of the Good Life through pleasure (Epicureans).  Some sought it through reason (Stoics).  Some sought it through the custodial care of the Jewish Law (the Jews and Paul’s Christian opponents).  Some sought it through obeying foundational laws and customs of a people (e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus).  For Christians, Paul argued, the Good Life is not something achieved in these ways but something worked in us by Christ Jesus through the Holy Spirit.  The human problem is far worse than other teachings acknowledged: we are under the control of our sinful passions and desires and cannot overcome them through custodial oversight of the Law or philosophical principles and laws.  We need divine help, and this has been given in Christ and the Spirit.  The Christian is not just a ‘believer’ but someone set free from bondage to the flesh, the Law trying to control the flesh, and the death that comes by disobeying the Law.  Having been set free, Paul says to Christians, ‘do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another’ (Galatians 5.3).