Demented 4 Ever

For today’s blog post we were assigned the task of determining the rhetorical situation and the rhetorical appeals of one of Paul’s letters, known as the epistles, found in the Bible. This proved to be harder than I thought. I grew up Lutheran, did the whole Sunday school thing for a while, ended up stopping going to that because I thought it was too easy. My parents ended up letting me join the rest of the adults during the church service from a pretty young age and, for a while, I loved going to Church. When I was in middle school I even wanted to be a pastor. But on the day of my Confirmation, I looked at all the other boys in my class and realized I didn’t really want to be part of this church or really be Christian anymore. Our group was really cliquey and consisted of almost all jocks, with the exception of me and one other kid, who was in the church choir with me. During a camp retreat we were all forced to go to as part of our confirmation class, I witnessed all the jocks throw rocks at the other choir kid who had previously been crying because he missed his family. Despite us studying the Bible together for three years, in which I know for a fact we went over John 8:7, they still felt like casting stones. So on the day of my confirmation with a headful of parables and the Ten Commandments in my heart, I took my confirmation money and ran. Fifteen years later I would say that the only thing keeping me branched to Christianity is watching Norman Jewison’s Jesus Christ Superstar at three in the morning whenever I can’t sleep, and Cecil B. Demille’s Ten Commandments. Though yesterday, when I was helping my parents move, I found my old study Bible from my confirmation days. It was one of those Bibles that has all sorts of notes and summaries in it, so I figured I would use that for this assignment. After reading through the brief summaries of each letter, I settled on the book of Galatians, Paul’s letter to the people of Galatia. 

To analyze the rhetorical situation (the author, the audience, the issue, the purpose, and the medium), my memory of Paul was a little hazy. I remember them teaching us in confirmation class that Paul used to be called Saul until he suddenly went blind while walking one day, changed his name to Paul, and became one of Jesus’ disciples. I could attempt to go back and try and find my notes that I wrote during confirmation, but I had the tendency to write in highlighter and not fully pay attention to what the youth leader was saying. Instead, I figured I would look to the internet to fill in the blanks. Thank God for Molly Lackey! Lackey, a social media and special projects assistant at the Concordia Historical Institute, wrote an article for the Lutheran Witness that summed everything up perfectly and helped me remember everything I forgot. Before he became Paul, Saul was a Jewish persecutor of Christians who was first mentioned in the book of Acts, in which he watched St. Stephan get stoned to death. Later in Acts it mentions him actively hunting Christians when he is blinded by the light and hears the voice of Jesus. He is then given his eyesight back once Jesus sends a Christian named Ananias to baptise him. Paul then traveled from Rome to many parts of the Middle East sharing the Gospel of Jesus. This all took place after Jesus was crucified (which explains why he wasn’t in Jesus Christ Superstar and why I forgot who he was). During his travels, and later during his imprisonment, Paul wrote several letters to various churches he had started, which would then most likely be read to the members of the Christian and Jewish communities. In total, there were thirteen of these letters. According to the notes that came with my Bible, it was certain that seven of these epistles were written by Paul, but there is some speculation that the other six might have been written by other followers in his style.          

Galatians was one of those that was certainly written by Paul. Through the preface of this chapter found in my Bible, I was able to ascertain that the Galatians were members of the church Paul had started in Galatia and were a mixture of Jews and Gentiles (non-Jewish people). A series of Jewish leaders who also followed the word of Jesus came to this congregation and told them that in order to be saved they had to follow the Jewish traditions started by Moses, including Kosher food laws, as well as circumcisions for the men. Paul wrote the letter to the Church to dismiss these claims, as well as to establish that Christians are saved through faith in God, not through the actions they commit, and that all Christians are equal in the eyes of the Lord. 

To further understand the rhetoric being used we have to look at Paul’s rhetorical appeals of Ethos (Authority), Pathos (Emotions), and Logos (Logic). Paul’s foremost appeal to Ethos can be found right at the beginning of the letter. “Paul is sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father…”. There he is saying that these are not just his own thoughts but that of Jesus and God. He also furthers this appeal by later telling of his time as a persecutor of Christians, and then the redemption he found. In a way, this point of argument is his way of saying ‘I see my past lives (Saul) in you and I want to turn you into Pauls’. He also would appeal to both Pathos and Ethos at the same time. In Galatians 4:19 he considers the audience his children, which would be an appeal to Ethos. He then compares the pain they are causing him to that of childbirth, saying he will feel this pain “until Christ is formed in you”. Throughout the letter there is this paternal tone that can be at times loving and comforting, like in the introduction where he is gracing them with God’s love. But his tone shifts immediately after to a stricter tone where there is this great feeling of applied guilt: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one you called you in the grace of Christ…” But because he causes them to feel low and guilty, he can build them up to feel better by telling them that they can be freed from this guilt if they remain faithful in Christ. 

Much of the Logos in this letter is rooted in the Old Testament parables like that of Abraham and Isaac, or Hagar and Sarah. Both of which are not only faith-based, but according to Christian and Jewish faiths, their direct lineage. There is also an appeal to those from Galatia who witnessed Christ first hand, with him basically saying do not go against what you yourselves have witnessed. 

In the future in this blog we plan on doing a further analysis of Paul’s works. In the meantime I am left wondering about my own faith, and if through my own lapse of faith I am indeed saved. 

              Work Cited:

Lackey, Molly. “Our Great Heritage: Paul the Apostle.” The Lutheran Witness, 10 June 2024, witness.lcms.org/2024/paul-the-apostle/. 

Lutheran Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Augsburg Fortress, 2009.