In Galatians 4:3, Paul says something that has compelled not a few commentators to spill not a minor amount of ink. Having finished his illustration of an heir who has not yet come of age, Paul begins to apply the import of this illustration to his audience, saying, “In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world” (Galatians 4:3 ESV). Two things make this text complicated. First, who is Paul referring to with the first-person plural pronoun hēmeis—Jews or Gentiles? That Paul is a Jew and that the pronoun typically includes the author would suggest the former, but a survey of Paul’s use of pronouns quickly shows that the answer is not so obvious. At times, Paul seems to be using the “pastoral we,” including himself in his audience in an attempt to open their Gentile ears to his exhortation. Thus, hēmeis here may include Paul, but it also may be the case that its main referent is the Galatian Gentiles, context being the most important determining factor.
Second, standing behind the “elementary principles,” as the ESV renders it, is the infamous stroicheia tou kosmou. Does this phrase refer to the building blocks of the universe? Elementary elements of a particular teaching? Or does it refer to angelic beings? The issue in answering this question is that either way one turns, there are problems. As Doug Moo points out, “the particular problem in Gal. 4 is to find a lexically supported meaning that also fits the context (See Moo’s commentary on Gal 4:3). Those that lean heavily on the lexical background struggle with the context and vice versa. For example, one could connect the stoicheia to Jewish things like the Law or cultic calendars and, in so doing, successfully account for the parallelism verse 3 shares with verse 5. However, these types of readings have almost no wider lexical support. No amount of word studies or proposition tracing can undo this sort of gridlock, but perhaps that is the point.
Basic insights from Speech Act Theory could help to unlock this gridlock. As has become common to discuss today, words do not merely refer; they act. So, asking “what does this phrase refer to?” as many commentators do seems to set them in the wrong direction. Rather, one could ask “what is Paul doing with this phrase?” The thesis of this paper would be that asking the question this way balances the two issues. The phrase could maintain its Greek lexical range while also referring to the Jews because Paul would be using it to be the Jew and Gentile in the same pre-Christ sphere. His use of the stoicheia would be analogous to a modern Western Christian calling non-believers in their modern Western context “idolators.” The referent of “idol” is not the point. The point is to say that non-believers in the Western world are no better off than their Eastern counterparts, and so it seems with Paul.