O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ has been openly set forth, crucified among you?
All Commentaries on Galatians 3:1 Go To Galatians 3
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
O foolish Galatians. "Each province," says S. Jerome, "has its characteristic. Epimenides notes that the Cretans are liars. The Latin historian charges the Moors with frivolity, Me Dalmatians with ferocity. All the poets condemn the cowardice of the Phrygians. Cicero ("pro Flacco") asserts that the Greeks are frivolous by nature and empty by education. In the same way the Apostle, it seems to me, charges the Galatians with their racial defect in describing them as untearable, stubborn, and slow to wisdom." S. Jerome again says that Hilary, an impartial witness, calls the Gauls intractable; and again he insists that the stupidity of the Galatians is evident from their inclination to all sorts of foolish heresies. "Whoever has seen, as I have done, Ancyra, the metropolis of Galatia, will bear out my statement that it is torn with schisms. To say nothing of the Cataphrygians, the0phites, the Borborites, and the Manichæans, whoever in the whole Roman world besides knows more than the names of the Passalorinctæ, the Ascodrobi, the Artotiræ, and other monstrous sects? The traces of ancient folly remain to this day" (in Ep. Galat, Preface, lib. ii.).
Observe that this reproach of the Apostle"s springs, not from indignation, but from charity; it is a material and not a formal rebuke. Cf. Gregory, Past. iii8.
Parents who use a thong to punish their sons may still more use their tongue, and burn out their vices by sharp words. Christ called the scribes hypocrites (S. Matthew 22:18), and S. Paul called Elymas a child of the devil ( Acts 13:10). The keenness, however, of the rebuke is toned down here by the following words—"Who hath bewitched you?"—which attribute their folly to the influence of the Jews.
Who hath bewitched you? The Greek word here signifies (1.) to, envy. "What Jew has envied you your Gospel liberty?" (Theophylact and Anselm). It denotes (2.) to fascinate, charm, bind the eyes, so as to make them to see what is not, or not to see what is. This second sense better suits the context—before whose eyes Christ hath been evidently set forth. It was through the fixed look of the person casting the spell that the charm was commonly made to work. Virgil refers to this in the line, "Some eye is casting its spell on my tender lambs." S. Paul"s question then means: "What evil eye has seduced you, 0 Galatians , yet young in the faith, to the delusion of Judaism?" "The evil eye," says Jerome, "is peculiarly hurtful to infants, and those of tender years, and who cannot yet run alone."
Evidently set forth. The Vulgate is prscriptus, which is rendered by Anselm, disinherited; by Ambrose, spoiled, in the sense: You have deprived Christ of His lawful inheritance, the Church.
S. Augustine, according to Erasmus, understands the word to allude to legal prescription, by which, after a certain time (three years in the case of movables, ten years in the case of immovables), possession gave a title to ownership. Christ, by the prescription of the Old Law, which for so many hundreds of years enjoyed the name of the Free Law, was shut out from His possession, the Church. But Erasmus has misread S. Augustine, as is evident from the best MSS. The latter reads proscriptus, and comments on it thus: "The Jews took away His inheritance, and drove Him out," which is an act of proscription, not of prescription.
S. Jerome interprets prscriptus to mean that the death of Christ was predicted by the prophets and in the sacraments of the Old Law.
But there is a third and better meaning. Christ was put by writing, or by a picture, before your very eyes, crucified. The Galatians had not been spectators of the actual Crucifixion, but Christ had by preaching and faith been represented to them as crucified. This interpretation makes it necessary to supply as though before crucified.
The sense, then, is: Though crucified at Jerusalem in fact, yet Christ has been represented as though crucified before you, 0 Galatians , by my preaching and your faith. By the eyes of faith you have seen Christ hanging on the Cross more clearly than did the Jews who stood at its foot. Who, then, has cast a spell upon those eyes which have so clearly seen Christ crucified?
It is possible, however, that the words are to be taken literally. In your own age, in the presence perhaps of some of you, and in a country not far removed, Christ was marked out by the instruments of His Passion, and depicted as your Saviour. While the colours then are so fresh on the canvas, how can you be so bewitched as to forget so great and so recent a benefit?
In this sense Christ Himself crucified Isaiah , as it were, a picture or a book in which He is described in blood-red letters. Do you wish to know who Christ is and what He is like? Open this book, look at the Cross, see the title, Jesus of Nazareth—i.e, Consecrator, who has consecrated us to God—King of the Jews. You will find it written. "Christ was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." He alone bore and expiated our sin, for what is sin but Christicide or Deicide? You will read too in this book, in the wounds and blood of Christ, that it was love of you which formed and coloured Him so. In His whole body you will see love written, nay, engraved. This book, in short, will show to one who reads and looks well all the wisdom of Christ, and the very depths of Christian philosophy.
