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Drawing on Augustine’s Epistolae ad Galatas Expositionis Liber Unus, I would like to explore two insights into the therapeutic understanding of persona trauma. First, for Augustine, Paul’s past turbulentas contentiones are not in and of themselves stigmata domini Iesu Christi. What, then, is the meaning and significance for Augustine of Paul’s statement “For I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body” (Gal 6:17)? Secondly, Augustine recognizes that Paul has been fighting his “alios conflictus et certamina”. What is his struggle and how does it relate to the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ in the body? In traumatic experiences, our hearts may be troubled by the guilt of the traumatic experiences (for example, by asking questions like: “Did I do something wrong to cause this?”). Paul is able to recognize and reject anyone (or anything) that might tempt him to return to the accusation of the law, hence the declaration: “De cetero, inquit, laborem nemo mihi praestet”. I argue that by interpreting the metaphorical sense of ad coronam uictoriae proficiebant, Augustine pronounces Christ’s victory on the Cross over sin and death by explaining Paul’s proclamation of his hermeneutic of Christ’s stigmata. Through this soteriological lens, Augustine brings his interpretation of Galatians to its climax by proclaiming “Gratia domini nostri Iesu Christi cum spiritu uestro, fratres, Amen” (Gal 6:18).

Gregory’s Homily 12 on the Song of Songs offers one opportunity to trace the legacies of the compelling claim, in Galatians 6:17, that Paul bears “the marks of Christ” on his body. Gregory appeals to this verse to aid his exegesis of Song 5:7 (a violent passage he calls “repellant in its plain sense”) and develop his claims that “the wound”, after all, is “an admirable thing”. My paper probes social and ethical dimensions of this exegetical and cultural conceptual lineage. It surveys wounds and marks in Homily 12; suggests how other works by Gregory support “striking and wounding” as enacting spiritual healing (ἴασιν); considers contexts for violence in the name of guardianship and instruction in late antiquity; and closes by considering violence enacted in the name of Christianization and “civilization” in Canada’s residential schools. This study embeds Gregory’s treatment of Gal 6:17 in a larger attempt to raise critical questions about the persistence of benevolent understandings of trauma and violence across diverse Christian exegetical contexts and the harms such understandings may perpetuate.

This essay considers the blunt and controversial statement of Paul at the conclusion of Galatians (Gal 6:17). Paul says, “from now on, let no one trouble me, for I bear on my body the marks (stigma, brand or tattoo) of Christ.” Scholars agree that Paul is speaking metaphorically about the scars he received in ministry. By calling his scars “tattoos,” Paul makes an odd sort of honour claim, since tattoos typically were inflicted on low-status slaves in the Roman empire as a mark of ownership and punishment. This essay looks at a common thread of trauma and violence in the letter to the Galatians. Paul works through the traumas he received in two ways. First, he presents a variety of traumatic episodes in the Galatian community – at times, lashing out at his opponents. Second, he deliberately inverts honor and status categories. By boldly claiming to be Christ’s slave Paul asserts his status and finds meaning and vindication in his suffering. This essay takes a more wholistic view of the letter to the Galatians that has previously been done.

A hypothesis is proposed regarding the conflict between Peter and Paul in Antioch referred to in Galatians 2,1114. It is placed after the assembly in Jerusalem (cf. Acts 15,1-29). There is no mention of it in Acts, but a sign of what happened can be seen in the separation between Paul and Barnabas (cf Acts 15,36-40), who is linked to Peter and the Church of Jerusalem. The conflict starts from the decisions taken in Jerusalem, which do not conform to Paul's thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expression “the fullness of time/times” is problematic because it was used for the first time in all of Greek literature by Paul, the Apostle to the Nations. A similar expression can be found only in certain papyri, where “the completion of times” was the expression used to call, among others, the end of a loan period. The only key to understanding the connotation of “the fullness of time/times” is an in-depth analysis of the immediate textual contexts of both Galatians 4:4 and Ephesians 1:10, the two places where this novelty is found. This article is an attempt to interpret the “fullness of time/times” in Galatians 4:4 and Ephesians 1:10 (with the addition of Mark 1:15). Our conclusion is that in Galatians 4:4 “the fullness of time” should be considered as “the end of the domination of Law.” As for Ephesians 1:10, there are multiple valid proposals for explaining “the fullness of times”, and we have not limited ourselves to any one in particular.