NOTES for Gal 6:11-18

Paul says directly that the teachers who demand mandatory circumcision from the Galatian Christians want, on the one hand, to avoid unnecessary problems and even persecutions, and on the other, to boast about those members of the church community who were circumcised at their urging, as though this were some achievement of their own. The first point was connected with the fact that circumcision was the sign of belonging to the Jewish community.

Circumcised meant Jewish. The synagogue existed quite legally throughout the Roman Empire, and although a certain antisemitism was present both in Roman society and in Roman authority, there was still no question of systematic persecution. The uncircumcised, however, automatically found themselves outside the Synagogue and therefore outside the Roman legal field: the communities that had separated from the Synagogue had no other basis for legal activity. Here one could expect problems, even direct conflict with the authorities.

In this sense, being circumcised was safer than remaining uncircumcised: then any Christian church gathering could pass for a synagogue gathering, especially since the authorities were usually not inclined to go into the subtleties of synagogue life. But there was something else as well: the desire to demonstrate one's own "achievements" as teachers and mentors. Indeed, spiritual work is not quick and often not especially visible; spiritual changes in a person usually happen slowly and cannot be seen from the outside. Moreover, genuine spiritual work is almost always, so to speak, individual work; there is usually no room here for mass scale, which so catches the eye and therefore is so beloved by many.

Religious propaganda and calls to observe one or another religious norm or prescription, even the same circumcision, are a completely different matter: the call is quite concrete, the response is also quite concrete, the result is visible to everyone at once, and it may even become massive if the preacher is active enough. This is probably why religious preaching in all communities and at all times has attracted preachers, especially beginners, far more than properly spiritual work has. But religion does not replace spiritual life, although sometimes it can substitute itself for it. And Paul speaks sharply against such substitution, because it cuts a person off from the Kingdom and from its life.

The apostle Paul does not often speak about the Cross, and when he does, he tries to be brief. But his words make one feel that, for him, the manifestation of the Son of God's love on the Cross is the very thing that feeds his faith. There is nothing more important, nothing more worthwhile, nothing the apostle would rather share with people than his knowledge that God died for us. When he comes to people, the apostle brings them exactly this message: "Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ be made void. For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God... for I resolved to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified," he writes at the beginning of the First Letter to the Corinthians. Yet for the apostle the Cross is much more than a sign of love; for him it is an event both of history and of his own life.

At the end of the Letter to the Galatians, as we read today, the apostle speaks about what, in his view, people boast in. To boast means precisely to display something good that has a direct connection to you. The Judaizing preachers with whom the apostle Paul is arguing try to boast that they are turning people toward a proper life under the Law; other people boast in their talents or knowledge, in spiritual or material wealth, in strength of body or character. Modern psychology calls this the need for positive self-esteem. Each person seeks it in his own way; each person finds in his life something for which, as it seems to him, he ought to be loved. In essence, all of us are seeking justifications for our own existence in this way.

And here the apostle says that our being needs no other justifications or even explanations except the Cross, on which God gives us His life. This is the foundational fact in our relationship both to ourselves and to others.

The Torah calls circumcision a "sign of the union," a "sign of the covenant." Paul says that in Christ neither circumcision nor its absence means anything. What does he want to say by this? The first thing that comes to mind is this: now that the Kingdom has entered the world through Christ, the former signs cease to play their role. Christ and the Kingdom are witnessed not by some special signs, even traditional ones filled with deep meaning, but by life itself, by word and deed.

However, Paul, as a rule, when speaking about circumcision, has Judaism in mind, and Judaism becomes for him a model of religion as such. He contrasts the circumcised with the uncircumcised in the same sense in which we today contrast religious people with secular people. By the uncircumcised the apostle means pagans, but it is important to keep in mind that the pagans of Paul's time were not especially religious in any way. They did, of course, sometimes remember their gods, but did not particularly believe in them. On holidays they still offered sacrifices to them by tradition, even publicly, but in everyday life the pagans of that time rarely remembered their gods.

This does not trouble the apostle at all: he considers that in Christian life religiosity is not the main thing, that the meaning of Christianity lies elsewhere, that it is not a religion. The main thing in Christian life is spiritual renewal; what matters is to become what Paul calls a "new creation." The life of the Kingdom, permeated by the breath of God, renews a person if he comes to share in this life, changing his very nature, physical and psychological. A person quite really becomes different, and if this is not visible, it means that the person either has not yet become a Christian in the strict sense of the word, or the changes in him have not yet become noticeable.

Religion here can both help and hinder, like everything present in a person's life. In itself it is neither good nor bad; it can become an instrument helping a person on his way into the Kingdom, but it can also turn out to be an obstacle on that way. Before the apostle's eyes there were examples of both, and therefore he does not idealize religion, but neither does he demonize it, leaving it the place it deserves: the place of an instrument that each person uses either for his own benefit or to his own harm.