What does Paul mean by the phrase stoicheia tou kosmou , “elementary principles of the world”? We get a clue by looking at the meaning of related Greek works.

Stoicheion is related to a set of words that carry the connotation of “rank” or “series” or “order.” Stoichos (used by Herodotus) means “rank”; s teicho means “to go in ranks” or “to march,” especially in military array; stoichein comes to mean “to belong to a series,” and is used in botanical as well as a military contexts. Through this usage, it comes to have a transferred sense of “agree” or “be in harmony.” Thus the stoich- root has connotations of ordered classification. The verb describes the act of ordering, while the noun connotes those things ordered. Interestingly, stoichein sometimes means “to be in agreement with ancestors,” that is, to conform oneself, order oneself to ancestral traditions.

Paul uses the verb stoichein in Galatians 5:25: If we live by the Spirit, we should “order ourselves” according to the Spirit. The verb is used again in 6:16, where Paul pronounces peace upon those who “order themselves by this rule.” In these passages, the verb carries the sense of “orient yourself to” or more actively “keep in step with” or “follow the marching orders of.”The rule in view seems to be that of verse 15, the principle that there is no circumcision or uncircumcision, but only a new creation. The weak and beggarly stoicheia (4:9) that used to order life are now replaced by an order of life that comes from the Spirit, that conforms to the new creation.

A related verb is sustoicheo , which is used in military contexts in a sense similar to steicho , but comes to mean an arrangement of things in a series, a classification of things that “march together” or a series of related concepts. The sense of taste and the particular taste “sweetness” go together ( sustoicheo ) as do “seeing” and “white,” according to Aristotle ( de sensu ).

Paul uses this verb too, in the allegory of Galatians 4. Verse says that Hagar “corresponds to” ( sustoicheo ) present Jerusalem. That means that there is a conceptual parallel, a yoking or marching together of Hagar with Jerusalem, slavery, flesh. But the verb also suggests antithesis (Aristotle, Metaphysics 1066a uses the phrase hereta sustoichia , “opposing concepts”), and so Hagar not only corresponds to certain concepts but stands in opposition to, on the other side of the ledger from, Sarah, the Jerusalem above, freedom, Spirit.

We are no longer under the stoicheia , Paul says, but that doesn’t mean that there is no order. The world is no longer ordered by the oppositional forms of the old system (Jew/Gentile, circumcision/uncircumcision), but it is ordered by the Spirit, who goes before and calls us to “march” along or to “keep in harmony with” Him.