Stephen J. Patterson. The Forgotten Creed: Christianity’s Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism. Oxford University Press, 2018.
Stephen Patterson renders Galatians 3:26-28 as “For you are all children (sons) of God in the Spirit. There is no Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, there is no male and female; For you are all one in the Spirit” (29). These oft-debated verses serve as the subject of Patterson’s study that contends these lines may contain the oldest statement that followers of the Jesus movement professed at baptism and embraced as a galvanizing credo. In The Forgotten Creed: Christianity’s Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism, Patterson argues that this creed, often marginalized or re-interpreted to soften its implications for the social order, was central for earliest Christians. Patterson’s historical reconstruction of the early Jesus movement envisions these communities as embracing solidarity amidst a dominant culture bent on dividing and categorizing humans according to social hierarchies.
Patterson begins his exploration of the creed by examining its origins. The creed’s earliest and most recognizable textual variation, Galatians 3:26-28, appears within a larger, deeply complex discussion by Paul around the incorporation of non-Jewish followers into the Jesus movement. It is Patterson’s view that Galatians 3:26-28 is “one of the first statements of faith in the New Testament and perhaps the first such statement in all of Christian history” (p. 22). The creed, as Paul quotes it, is not entirely related to the overall argument of Galatians and takes a poetic turn from the otherwise argumentative style of the letter. Its somewhat awkward placement in Galatians has led many biblical scholars to believe the statement not to be Paul’s own creation but one already familiar to Paul’s Galatian audience as a baptismal creed. Patterson argues that Paul was committed to the binary of Jew and Greek, but he was not passionate about the slave/free and male/female binaries, further suggesting that Paul did not compose the creed as found in Galatians (p. 21). To arrive at his rendering, “in the Spirit,” Patterson claims that Paul might have taken editorial license by inserting “Christ Jesus” into the Galatians version. In I Corinthians 12:13, where Paul invokes another variation of the creed, “in one Spirit” is used. According to Patterson, this reflects the actual wording of the original creed (p. 28). Fundamental to Patterson’s project is his claim that the three dyads declare the unreality of race, class, and gender and affirm the reality of believers as the children of God.
In the second chapter, Patterson presents the creed’s dyads as a contrast to the assumptions of many ancients around race, class, and gender: “I thank God that I am not born a foreigner, a slave, or a woman” (p. 50). This “cliché” is Patterson’s reconstruction of a statement attributed to the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Philosophers. Here, Patterson introduces some of the historical, philosophical, rhetorical underpinnings of these social hierarchies that are elaborated in subsequent chapters. The project of othering ran deep in antiquity where those in power—ancient free men (mostly Greek or Roman)—so fiercely dominated foreign, women, and enslaved others. Patterson attributes this domination to fear: “Men fear what they do not understand. Ancient men were afraid of the foreign other, the slave, the women in the bed next to them, so they did what all men do, have done, will do…they faced down fear with power” (p. 49). Resistance to these power differentials emerged within early Christian communities where believers were committed to the idea that belief in Jesus rendered them “children of God.” Patterson’s third chapter is devoted to exploring how the opening words of the creed reflect and reinforce this belief. According to this account, being or becoming children of God was the central tenet around which Jesus followers galvanized long before any universal claims about Jesus were made. Patterson points to various Greco-Roman and ancient Jewish sources that also assert kinship to the deity to show that the claim of the early Jesus movement was not novel. The followers of Jesus embraced this claim and developed the ritual of baptism around it (p. 64). Baptism was the moment when followers of Jesus became children of God, and the baptismal credo emphasized this identity as a declaration of solidarity amongst followers “in spite of the differences normally used to mark and measure the human community” (p. 70). Patterson then goes on to argue for the brief and unsuccessful efforts to build Christ-following communities around this declaration.
The following chapters examine the struggles of early Christians to organize a community where hierarchies based on traditional power differentials are overturned. Patterson explores how followers of Jesus negotiated boundaries between Jews and Gentiles in their communities where deeply held hostilities came to the fore. Drawing on “New Perspective of Paul” scholarship, Patterson highlights the Jewish origins of the Jesus Movement and the vision of some early Jesus followers like Paul to create peaceable, mixed communities. According to Patterson, this vision was short-lived. The tragic legacy of Christian anti-Judaism has often interpreted “no longer Jew or Greek” as most importantly a cessation of Jewish identity rather than an equal divestment of both identifications. Patterson points to evidence from the book of Acts to support his claim (p. 95). Turning to the binary of enslaved and free, Patterson shows that despite early claims within the Jesus movement that radical class distinctions such as slave and free “do not, should not, cannot exist,” the desire to conform to dominant social norms undermined any efforts at subversion (pp. 118-19). Shifting to the subject of gender, Patterson focuses on the pivotal presence of women in the earliest generation of the Jesus movement. Patterson gestures to Paul’s mentioning of several women and their roles in Romans 16 as key evidence of women’s leadership in early Christian communities. Also, drawing evidence from texts like the Gospel of Mary and the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Patterson claims that some of the earliest portrayals of women sought to emphasize their persistence and faithfulness despite antagonism and violence from men within and without. By the first half of the second century, however, voices with a different vision of Christian communities advocated a model that replicated “the typical patriarchal household of the Roman Empire” (p. 150). The social radicalism of the earlier Jesus movement was an embarrassment for some (i.e. author of the Pastoral Epistles) who feared the unconventional women of the movement would attract critics (p. 151). Texts and traditions that emphasized women’s leadership roles in the movement were soon silenced and marginalized. Those like the Pastoral Epistles became canon.
Patterson’s final chapter focuses on the creed’s closing words, “You are all one.” These words are not a call to sameness or a shallow celebration of difference and diversity according to this account. The call to unity signifies solidarity. Patterson’s analysis posits a reading of these verses of Galatians as offering an alternative vision of communal life: “overcoming the distinctions that commonly underwrite the human tendency to denigrate the other, to disempower, disenfranchise, dehumanize, and even enslave another person on the flimsy grounds that he or she is different” (p. 157). Patterson’s reading seeks to reclaim an unrealized moral and ethical vision of a biblical passage that continues to be invoked today. It is digestible for the biblical studies non-specialist, but its exhaustive use of primary and secondary sources within biblical scholarship invites the reader to further discussion of how Patterson reconstructs the early Jesus movement. The Forgotten Creed speaks to a broad audience concerned about the implications of this biblical passage within our contemporary society plagued by racism and white supremacy, anti-Semitism, sexism, and xenophobia.
Nicholas A. Johnson received his Ph.D. in New Testament and Early Christianity from Drew University in Madison, NJ. He also teaches philosophy and religion at New Jersey City University and Rutgers University. An ordained Baptist minister, Nicholas is Pastor of Raritan Valley Baptist Church in Edison, NJ. He is President/Board Chair for the Center and Library for the Bible and Social Justice.