By Joseph R. Wood

St. Paul worried about the Galatians. In his letter to them, he laments:

Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are not gods; but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years! I am afraid I have labored over you in vain. (4:8-11)

The distinction Paul emphasizes is between not knowing God, and knowing Him, and then being known by Him. That calls for close attention. But first, some preliminary points.

The phrase "beings that by nature are not god" catches the ear of anyone who has carefully read Aristotle. The Philosopher, as St. Thomas calls him, uses the phrase "by nature" repeatedly to describe men, who are rational animals by nature, and political or social animals by nature. We use our reason to know and seek a common good.

By the order of what it is to be human, the nature of being human, we have certain features that we don't choose ourselves.

Aristotle also tells us that certain human communities exist by nature: families and households, villages that bring together households, and cities or political communities. Each has its own good that it is supposed to realize, by the nature of what it is.

I'll leave it to the Scripture scholars to discern whether St. Paul intends the same thing with "by nature" as Aristotle. But the meaning has to be close, as Paul is using "nature" to distinguish different beings with different orders of existence, or we might say different "essences."

I'll leave it to the theologians to explain what are the "weak and beggarly elemental spirits," which are not gods. They are not divine; they are elemental or base; spirits (without bodies?) likened to the begging needy, yet having the power to enslave humans. And apparently the power to re-enslave them, perhaps in adhering to the cycle of the celebrations of the Old Covenant, even after they have come to know God by faith.

AI told me that last part about the Old Covenant. Paul may well have been concerned about reversion to Jewish practices among the Galatians. But I don't think that explanation really accounts for "elemental spirits." Those sound to me more like the Golden Calf that the Jews crafted while Moses was away and later rejected, or the detritus of the Greek and Roman (or Celtic) gods lingering in the Anatolian region.

To talk about Old Covenant enslavement, surely Paul would have discussed works of the law without faith. I'm hoping the theologians can do better than AI on all this.

In the Garden of Eden in Genesis, Adam and Eve are known to God, and they know Him. They speak with Him and receive instructions directly from Him.

After they violate the one rule God had given them, they immediately hide themselves and seek to avoid being known by God. Our Original Sin, then, causes us not to want to be known by God.

A pattern recurs throughout the Original Testament, as the Jews choose to know and be known by God, then refuse to be known by Him, then return to Him and His law.

A comparable story comes up in Plato's dialogue, Statesman. The visitor who guides the discussion about the true man of politics presents a myth wherein the universe has seen two ages or epochs.

In the first, a god or demiurge guides the events occurring in the universe as it rotates in one direction, and lesser gods are appointed to govern groups of men and provide for them. During this age, men have abundant food without labor. Because the gods provide for them, they have no need for constitutions or politics.

It's a scene reminiscent of Eden, though as one of my sharp seminarian students once pointed out, in Plato's myth, man has no responsibility for dominion over Creation, as he had in prelapsarian paradise.

At some point, the second age arrives: the gods withdraw their governance, the universe violently reverses it...