Galatians; A Participatory Study Guide. Bruce G Epperly
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Jesus, we create the meaning of grace in light of the concrete challenges and stresses of our time. In the spirit of their Hebraic parents, the New Testament authors experienced God’s presence in life-changing ways and shared that experience from their own particular perspective on Jesus’ message and work of salvation, and so do we.
Paul’s words to the Galatian communities are passionate, life-transforming, and faith-defining but they are not inerrant. No doubt Peter, whom Paul criticized, felt just as inspired by God as did Paul. James, the brother of Jesus and leader of the Jerusalem church, may have found both Peter and Paul too open-minded and liberal in their openness to Gentile culture and experience.
Paul’s passion and imaginative use of scripture invites us to be innovative in our scripture reading. A living word requires us to go beyond the words of scripture to discover God’s Spirit speaking in what is said and unsaid. In my own encounter with scripture, I read scripture as a source book of spiritual affirmations and pathways to discipleship. Read affirmatively, Galatians and its New Testament companions are good news revealing God’s loving vision to people in the first century as well as our own. They liberate us from the constraints of an unhealthy and irrelevant past and open us to God’s new creation.
I believe that God’s revelation is ongoing, global, and constantly new. As the United Church of Christ motto proclaims, “God is still speaking” and we need to listen to God’s many voices in scripture, science, literature, culture, and religious experience. Paul believed that his word was authoritative, but not final. Paul assumed our understanding of God was incomplete. “We see in a mirror dimly” and “know only in part” and will more fully understand when we come face to face with God (1 Corinthians 13:9-12). In that spirit, my own reading is progressive, open-spirited, evangelical, and mystical in orientation. I recognize that my approach is one of many possible interpretations of Paul’s passionate letter. Others will discover hints of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, salvation by Christ alone, Christian superiority, or Pauline paternalism and sexism as they turn the pages of Galatians. Still others will find in Galatians a word of welcome, liberating us to be ourselves honestly and authentically in relationship to God and one another.
I believe that we can, like Paul, encounter God and be forever changed. That’s ultimately why I am writing this commentary; so that all who read this may experience transformation through encountering the living Christ in their encounter with Galatians.
I am grateful to many people for the writing of this text. First, I thank the community of faith that gathers at South Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, in Centerville, Massachusetts.4 Many of my thoughts were formulated in preparation and response to the Sunday morning and Tuesday noon Bible studies. I am grateful to this historic white-steeple Cape Cod congregation for supporting my integration of pastoral ministry and theological reflection. I am also grateful to creative New Testament scholars Greg Carey and Ronald Farmer for their insights. Jody and Henry Neufeld at Energion Publications have been supportive of my work and have improved this text by their editorial comments.
I give thanks for pastors who have shaped my own vocation as a scholar-pastor – in particular, John Akers, Ernie Campbell, George Tolman, George “Shorty” Collins, Clayton Gooden – as well as teachers whose pastoral care enabled me to claim my role as a pastoral theologian – John Cobb, Marie Fox, David Griffin, Jack Verheyden, and Richard Keady. As always I give thanks for the companion of lifetime, Kate Gould Epperly, whose ministerial vocation has shaped the evolution of my own life as a scholar, pastor, spiritual guide, parent, and now grandparent of two small boys.
1 For a picture of the early church see Bruce Epperly, Transforming Acts (Gonzalez, FL: Energion Publications, 2013).
2 N.T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, volume 1, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 359.
3 Richard Hays, Galatians. The New Interpreter’s Bible. XI. (Nashville: Abingdon, 2000), 183.
4 http://southcongregationalchurch-centerville.org/
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