...Christian faith, being God's witness in us, can be understood only as the answer to this interior and intimate self-witnessing of the God who opens up the secrets of his Heart as he gives himself to humanity. This is a first and most formal affirmation, and one which must proceed all those particular modalities which are related to man's concrete condition: his sinful turning away from God, his blindness and obstinacy, and finally, those things which grace works in him - his conversion, his breaking, his humbling and his exultation. Faith is participation in the free self-disclosure of God's interior life and light, just as the spiritual nature of the creature means participation in the unveild-ness of all reality, which in one way or another must also include the divine reality. The created spirit does not "deduce" this reality (in which God is included in whatever way) from indications and logical premises; as spirit, it is from the very start set in the light of this reality, at the same time thinking from within it and directing its thought toward it - (Hans Urs von Balthasar The Glory of the Lord p. 157).
We've gotten to the point where how we date Galatians and where we fit it into the narrative of Acts will affect our interpretation in a significant manner. The first question that we have to address is, which visit to Jerusalem is Paul recounting in Galatians 2:1-10 ? Is it the famine relief visit of Acts 11:27-30 or the Jerusalem council of Acts 15 ? First, I think it's worthwhile to point out that it's not all that obvious. Scholars are divided on this issue (even Evangelical scholars). In favor of the theory of Galatians 2:1-10 referring to the Acts 11 visit are the following: This visit clearly is prompted by a revelation by the Holy Spirit. The Acts 15 gathering seems to be a public gathering, where the one described in Galatians is private. Paul never alludes to a letter sent to the diaspora churches which could have definitively won the case for him. The issue of food laws was already decided by James. Why would men coming from him in Galatians 2:11-14 be advocat...
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