The Torah and Christ
Commentary on Galatians 3:15–29
Resources
I made use of the following commentaries:
- Martinus C. De Boer, Galatians: A Commentary, New Testament Library (Westminster/John Knox Press, U.S., 2011).
- J. Louis Martyn. Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 33A (Doubleday, 1997).
- Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians, Word Biblical Commentary 41 (Zondervan, 2015).
As well as of the exegesis in:
- Douglas A. Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Eerdmans, 2009), ch. 20.
Also relevant are some of my earlier articles (in descending order of relevance):
- Paul’s Pronouns: Galatians, the Torah, and the Stoicheia (I will not repeat its arguments for the referents of Paul’s pronouns in Galatians 3–4)
- “Not That There Is Another Gospel”… Except for This Distortion by ‘the Teachers’: A Summary Analysis of the Counterpart of Paul’s Gospel
- Romans 5:12–14: The Cosmic Powers of Sin and Death, and the Role of the Law (and this related shorter article)
- Romans 3 and the Faith of Christ: Universalism in Paul, Part 1
Introductory Notes
Before jumping into my exegesis, I want to give a disclaimer. I make many assumptions that I cannot defend here, but that have amply and, in my view, decisively been defended elsewhere — notably the liberative, resurrectionist construal of justification as ‘deliverance’ and the participatory, ‘subjective’ interpretation of pistis (Christou).¹
However, my primary concern here is with the Torah. Even though much more could be said about, for example, the famous verse 28 (“no male and female”…), I have focused the discussion on my most controversial exegetical decisions regarding the Torah — controversial, that is, relative to the standard ‘Lutheran’ reading which still holds sway in Pauline scholarship even over those who have nominally distanced themselves from it.
Finally, I have to start somewhere and end somewhere. Much more can, and perhaps will, be said about both the preceding and following passages. And of course, for my argument to work, it needs to be able to be integrated with a plausible interpretation of those passages and of Galatians (and Paul’s corpus) as a whole. That, however, is the work of an actual full-size commentary or monograph. Let me just say that I am confident that my reading can be integrated with the rest of Galatians (as well as key passages like Romans 7), as shown by the work of De Boer, Martyn, and Campbell, which needs to suffice for now.
The Message of Galatians
As a framework for our passage we need to consider the message of the letter as a whole. Paul writes in response to certain teachers who’ve entered the Galatian assembly and encouraged the Galatians to take up Torah observance and at the very least get circumcised, because that would cut off the ‘impulsive desire of the flesh’ and enable them to live righteous lives, do God’s will and thus be proclaimed ‘righteous’ on the final day of the resurrection and receive the reward of immortality.
The central question of Paul’s letter, following Martyn, is, “What time is it?”² The central imperative, in turn, is, “Don’t go back!” The answer to the first naturally leads to the second.
- What time is it? — It is the time of the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham and his offspring—the promise of blessing (3:8, 9, 14) consisting of inheritance (v. 18, 29), which has now taken the form of the Spirit (v. 14) and will ultimately encompass the whole new creation (6:15; cf. 5:5; also Rom 5:13).³ This promise has been attained by Christ’s obedience (‘fidelity’; v. 22), through which he received the fulfillment of the promise himself through the resurrection. That is, he was ‘raised’ to the position of celestial ruler over the cosmic inheritance (so the resurrection functions like the exodus into the promised land, but with a vertical — earth/heaven — dimension). Now Christ shares the blessing of his new, glorious, pneumatic life through his Spirit with all who believe in him and are baptized into him (v. 22, 27).⁴
- Don’t go back! — Accordingly, there is no need to resort to the Torah — notably circumcision — for the fulfillment of these promises; it is not the solution and it cannot deliver what the teachers say it will (righteous lives). In fact, the Torah was part of the oppressive situation from which the Galatians have been liberated; it was part of their sin-problem! Therefore, seeing what time it is, the Galatians should not go back (cf. graph 1).
With that summary of Paul’s message in mind, let us jump into our passage.
Interpretive Translation of Galatians 3:15–29
15 Brothers and sisters, let me give you an example from daily life.
Once a person’s will (diatheke) has been ratified, no one [other than the testator] gets to add a codicil to it or even annul it.
(16 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his seed.
It does not say, “And to seeds,” as referring to many, but as referring to one person, “And to your seed” [e.g. Gen 17:8], namely Christ.)
17 My point is this: the Torah, which came four hundred thirty years later, did not annul the covenant (diatheke) that was already ratified by God, nullifying the promise.
18 For if the inheritance comes from the Torah, it no longer comes from the promise [which is bound up with Christ], but God granted it to Abraham through promise.19 What, then, was the purpose of the Torah?
It was added for the sake of [bringing about] transgressions,
until the Seed [Christ] came to whom the promise had been made.
It was arranged by angels by the hand of a mediator [Moses].
20 A mediator, however, mediates between groups,
but “God is one”! [The Shema, Deut 6:4].21 Does the Torah then hinder God’s promises? Certainly not!
For if a Torah had been given given with the power to give life, then ‘righteousness’ would really have come from the Torah [as these teachers say].
22 But Scripture in fact imprisoned everything under the power of Sin,
and as a result, the promise “from the fidelity” [Hab 2:4] of Jesus Christ is given to those who come to share in his fidelity.23 Now before fidelity came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the Torah until the coming fidelity was revealed.
24 Therefore the Torah was our disciplinarian until Christ [came],
and as a result, it is “from fidelity” [Hab 2:4] that we are delivered.
25 But we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian now that fidelity has come,
26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through fidelity.27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
28 There is no longer Jew or Greek;
there is no longer slave or free;
there is no “male and female” [Gen 1:27],
for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to the promise.
NRSVue, heavily modified
Commentary
3:15
Paul sets up a comparison between a human testament or will and the divine covenant to Abraham, which are the same word in Greek: διαθήκη. Importantly, in Paul’s time, a testator was free to annul it or append a codicil to it, if so inclined. So, a testament was revokable, but only by the testator himself.⁵ Accordingly, what Paul is saying here, presuming that he was aware of the legal practices of his day, is that third parties cannot annul or append codicils to an already ratified will; that would amount to “illegitimate tampering” that would do nothing to invalidate the will.⁶ Paul primes the reader, therefore, to interpret any third-party additions to the Abrahamic covenant as, in effect, ‘illegitimate tampering’!⁷ In verse 17a and 19a, Paul frames the Torah as just such an addition.
3:16
But first, in somewhat of a parenthesis, Paul provides a rather unusual and even questionable exegesis of certain texts in Genesis (such as 17:8) in which God is said to promise the inheritance to Abraham “and to his seed/offspring” (see table 1).
The very point that Paul is trying to make — that the seed is grammatically singular and therefore refers to a particular person, namely Christ — seems to be undercut by the rest of Genesis 17:8, as it goes on to use the plural ‘them’ in saying: “And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land that you inhabit as a resident alien, all the land of Chanaan, for a perpetual holding, and I will be a god to them” (NETS).⁸
At any rate, Paul’s point is that there are not two separate recipients of the promised inheritance but only the one ‘Christ’ (cf. v. 28). (He probably arrived at this singular, ‘messianic’ reading of ‘seed’ by way of 2 Samuel 7:12, which also uses the singular ‘seed’ and similar language as in Genesis,⁹ in combination with texts like Psalm 2 which depict the Davidic king as the ‘Son of God’ inheriting the earth.)
3:17–18
Paul then applies the principle of verse 15 about human wills to the Abrahamic covenant of promise: the Torah was “added” to the promise 430 years later and is not valid as an added codicil. But why would it not be valid? Codicils are only invalid if they are not added by the original author but by third parties, in which case they amount to illegitimate tempering (see on verse 15 above). In other words, as Paul will explain in verses 19b-20, the argument implies that God is not the author of the Torah!⁵ The reasoning can be laid out as follows (see table 2):¹⁰
Paul further explains how the ‘codicil’ of the Torah would effectively ‘annul’ the original covenant of promise. Now it is important to realize that the Torah-as-codicil was effectively the rival teachers’ position! They would have proclaimed to the Galatians something along the lines of: “You’re only Abraham’s seed and will therefore only receive his promises if you get circumcised and follow the Torah” (cf. 3:1–5). Now, exegetically speaking, this may be a more accurate rendering of the Abrahamic covenant, at least when it comes to the role of circumcision. (Paul gets much deeper into this issue in Romans 4, but doesn’t fundamentally resolve it; in other words, in today’s scholarly perspective, Paul’s circumcision-touting opponents might have the better exegesis!) However, for Paul, such added conditions (like a codicil) would effectually destroy the promise and annul the covenant (which seem to be equivalent), because now it is no longer a unilateral promise on God’s part, but more akin to a contract: you’ll get the benefits if you do this and that. For Paul, God’s gift (‘grace’) does not work like that (cf. 5:4; Rom 11:6).¹¹
In effect, then, verse 18 opposes two ‘gospels’ (cf. Gal 1:6–9): ‘inheritance based on the Torah’ (the Teachers) versus ‘inheritance based on the promise’ (Paul). If you read a bit along, it becomes clear that ‘inheritance’ here is roughly interchangeable with ‘deliverance’/resurrection (which inaugurates that inheritance), and that what was ‘promised’ was ‘[Christ’s] fidelity’ — in other words, we end up with ‘justification by faith’, or rather ‘deliverance by fidelity’ (see 2:15–21). Now it becomes clear that verse 16 was not just a parenthesis but that it supports the point implicit in verse 18, namely that the promise and its fulfillment were bound up with Christ and his Spirit, who were sent by God (4:4 and 6, respectively). Therefore, not only would the Torah effectively destroy the promise-nature of the Abrahamic covenant, but God has in fact already made good on his promise, in Christ and the Spirit. Any Torah-as-codicil proclamation or behavior would therefore denigrate God’s work in Christ (cf. 5:2, 4) that has already taken place on the cross and is being spread through the Spirit who draws people into the faithful Son.
Seeing the tight connection between deliverance and inheritance (see intro), we can now see that Paul made the very same point in Galatians 2:21 (see table 3):
3:19
Paul then asks the logical question: “If the promises [of blessing etc.] do not come about through the Torah, what then even was the purpose of the Torah?” Paul answers that “it was added for the sake of [bringing about] transgressions” (cf. Rom 5:20).¹² In other words, the Torah was put in place as a sinister ally of the power of Sin (see 3:22 below; cf. Rom 5:20; 7:5; 1 Cor 15:56). This is a shocking version of the origin story of the Torah, and Paul is quick to dissociate the Torah from God. He does not say that “God gave the Law” (cf. NIV), but instead that “it was added”, and before one could misread that as a ‘divine passive’,¹³ Paul goes on to explain that the Torah was “arranged by¹⁴ angels by means of [lit. by the hand of] a mediator” (3:19), namely Moses.¹⁵
As we will further discuss below, Paul notes the limited temporal scope of the Torah: after the Abrahamic promises, until Christ.¹⁶ However, this does not mean that there was a natural development from the promises through the Torah to Christ; rather, as we will see below, the Torah is something from which Christ had to deliver us in order to get us to the ‘promised land’, as it were.
Moreover, Paul again notes that Christ was the one to whom the promise had been made, as he is Abraham’s singular seed (v. 16). Christ received the promise of blessing and the inheritance through his resurrection, as he was raised up to being Lord at the right hand of the Father. This promise could be said to have sustained Christ in his faithfulness on the cross, as he trusted that God would be faithful in fulfilling his promise to him.¹⁷
3:20
The concept of a mediator allows Paul to further dissociate the Torah from God. A mediator is “of more than one”, that is, arguably, they mediate between pluralities,¹⁸ that is, between two groups of people. God, however, is not a plurality or a group; he is “one” (Heb.: echad), as the core Jewish confession, the Shema, goes (Deut 6:4). Paul’s stunning inference (see table 4) is: Moses did not mediate between the Israelites and God but between the Israelites and angels! This explains the negative relation of the Torah to the promises.¹⁹
3:21
Since Paul has just argued that the Torah came from angels to bring about transgressions, Paul’s next question is: “Is the Torah then against God’s promises [of blessing etc.]?” In formulating this question, Paul is not thinking on a theoretical level, as if he is assessing the compatibility of the content of the Torah with that of the promises (i.e. whether the Torah contradicts the promises). Interpreters might have been predisposed to such a reading by later church-historical, anti-Marcionite concerns.²⁰ However, this is not warranted in the context of Paul’s argument against the Sinaitic Law.²¹ In other words, Paul is not taking a step back in his argument by making a concession — the promises do not come about through the Torah but neither are they contradicted by it — but is rather building and elaborating on his argument: if the Torah was put in place to bring about transgressions, did it, in doing so, effectively block the fulfillment of the promises?
Excursus: Kata in Romans 8:31 and Galatians 5:23
In my interpretation of kata, I am following Martyn and De Boer. I’d argue that precedence for their reading can be found in Romans 8:31. There Paul speaks about God being “for us” and therefore no one being (able to be) “against us”. However, there clearly are beings who are ‘against us’ in that they oppose us and bear malevolence toward us — see Paul’s list in verses 38–39 (and his discussion of suffering throughout)! Therefore, for Paul’s statement to make sense, ‘for’ and ‘against’ must denote not (just) attitudes like benevolence or malevolence, support or opposition. The question is not whether there are beings who oppose us, but whether they are effective in doing so. This ‘being for/against us’ therefore needs to be understood through their concrete referents, their effectuality: the fact that God is for us is effectively revealed in his deliverance of us (v. 33) through the faithful death of Christ (v. 34).²² Similarly, the fact that certain powers were against us was effectively shown in their condemnation of us (cf. 8:1) and their separation of us from God’s love (v. 39). That condemnation, however, has given way to liberation (8:2) and that separation to intimate union (cf. v. 15). ‘God is for us’ in that God has lovingly delivered us, so that now ‘no one is against us’ in that, even though they may oppose us and inflict hardship on us, they can no longer condemn us and separate us from God’s love.Importantly, in Galatians 3–4, the Torah is just such an entity that is opposed to ‘us’. So, when we read in Galatians 5:23b that “the Torah is not against such things [the fruit of the Spirit]”, we should understand it in the sense that the Torah does not effectively hinder the growth of the fruit of the Spirit. This reading is corroborated by the logic of Paul’s argument in verses 17–18: “[W]hat the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the Torah.” You might wonder what the Torah is doing in this context. Paul seems to imply that, if you are not led by the Spirit, you are presumably subject to the Torah and thus to the Flesh with its opposition to the Spirit (cf. Rom 7:5). Again, a concrete reading of ‘against’ is more plausible than a theoretical reading²³; the latter does not make sense of Paul’s actual argument. “The Torah is not against such things”²⁴ in that it cannot effectively oppose them through its alliance with the Flesh when we are led by the Spirit (and where the Spirit is, there is freedom).
Returning to Gal 3:21, we can now understand Paul’s meaning. He has just argued that angels arranged the Torah through Moses (v. 19–20). This then raises the question: “Was the Torah against God’s promises in that it obstructed their fulfillment?”²⁵ Clearly not! Paul explains why not in the following verses.
First, he postulates a counterfactual scenario: if the Torah had the power to give life, ‘righteousness’ would have come from the Torah — in the Teachers’ sense of righteous behavior and/or the righteous status conferred by God on the last day, attendant on eternal life.²⁶ But as it is, the Torah does not have that power, and therefore ‘righteousness’ does not come from the Torah. It might be worth adding that the power to give life is a divine power, since the creator God is the source of life (cf. Gen 2:7; Rom 4:17). This verse therefore seems to imply that, if the Torah had come from the creator God — i.e., had been “[God-]given” — then it would have had the power to give life, but as it is, it was not given by God. It is of course not a deductively valid argument — God could have given the Torah without imparting his life-giving power to it, as Paul indeed seems to imply elsewhere. In the context of the preceding verses, however, the above implication does seem plausible.
3:22
But if the Torah could not and did not produce ‘righteousness’, what did it do? What powers did it have? “The Scripture” — here used, in a rare case, as synonymous to the Torah²⁷ — “imprisoned everything under the power of Sin.” That ‘the Scripture’ is indeed used here as synonymous to the Torah becomes clear from the following two parallels (see table 5):
- Paul related the Torah positively to ‘transgressions’ (v. 19; see above) as he now relates the Scripture positively to Sin (marked red in the table); and
- Paul will apply the exact same verb, synkleio, to the Torah (v. 23) as he now relates to the Scripture (marked green in the table).
Excursus: The Scripture, the Torah, Sin
In Paul, normally speaking, ‘the Scriptures’ refer to the Hebrew Bible as a whole (in its contemporary form), whereas ‘the Scripture’ refers to a single passage from the Scriptures. In the latter case, Paul always follows it up with a quotation (Rom 4:3; 9:17; 10:11; 11:2–3; Gal 3:8; 4:30). However, in our present case, he does not do so. It would stretch beyond plausibility if the reader had to (understand that they had to) go back to one (which?) of Paul’s scriptural quotations in verses 10–13 — which, importantly, don’t even testify to this specific point — or to supply a quotation of their own, such as Psalm 143:10.De Boer interprets the phrase in such a way that “the Scripture shut up all things under Sin” comes to mean “the Scripture testifies to the fact that all things are shut up under Sin” (as in Romans 3:9–10). However, if Paul had meant to say that, it seems he could have been much clearer. With the text as we have it, Paul does not just personify Scripture, as he does in 3:8 (on which, see footnote 21), but arguably ascribes agency to Scripture in the act of imprisoning us, not just in testifying from the sideline to that fact. In context, Paul makes extensive use of the metaphor of the Torah as a jailor and disciplinarian (see table 6), and it therefore only makes sense that “the Scripture shut up all things under Sin” would express that same line of thought.
Argumentatively speaking, this would follow nicely on the previous verse (the Torah did not give life, but imprisoned), whereas it would be very weird if Paul all of a sudden dropped the topic of the Torah in verse 22. De Boer tries to remedy this by including the Torah in the “all things” that are testified by Scripture to be shut up under Sin, but Paul provides no such testimony, not here and not in context.
Importantly, De Boer’s reading would foreground the power of Sin, whereas Paul’s argument in context focuses not on the oppressive agency of Sin, although it is latently present, but on that of the Torah. (That in fact constitutes one of the main differences with Romans, where Sin’s agency features prominently.) Paul’s gospel is that we have been delivered from our sins (1:4), but in context he is discussing our deliverance from the Torah that produces those sins (v. 19) (see also below on the difference with some texts in Romans).
We could explain the singular ‘Scripture’ as Paul aligning it with the singular ‘Torah’, but why did Paul decide to use ‘Scripture’ instead of ‘Torah’ in the first place? It does not suffice to say it’s just a literary variation. Most plausibly, it hearkens back to the final part of verse 19: “…arranged by angels by the hand of a mediator.” The connection between ‘hand’ and ‘writing’ is easy to make (see also 6:11), and Paul therefore uses ‘Scripture’ to emphasize that the Torah was written down, namely by a mediator who received it transmitted from angels.²⁸ The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life, he might have said (see 2 Cor 3:6 and, on the written nature of Torah, verses 3 and 7).
The ‘Scripture’/Torah, then, functioned as a jailor, putting us in the prisonhouse of Sin. Importantly, there is no sense in Galatians, contrary to in some places in Romans (e.g., 7:8, 11, 13),²⁹ that the Torah was instrumentalised by Sin to produce sins — i.e., that the Torah was hijacked by Sin for another purpose than the one for which it was intended. We do have superhuman powers involved— though not Sin but angels — , but they do not use an already given Torah, but arrange it in the first place for a purpose which it continues to carry out by itself, namely produce sins. In other words, the Torah, by bringing about transgressions, is working as intended. So, importantly, the agency in the jailing lies with the Torah and not with a power lurking behind it and working through it. (On the Torah’s relation to the stoicheia, see here.)
This cosmic oppression applied not just to ‘us’, but to all things, the whole cosmos, including both Jews and pagans. Since the Torah was such a cosmic jailor, it had also previously enslaved the Galatians (cf. 4:1–10). This is a key premise in Paul’s broader argument: don’t go back to the slavery in which you once were but from which Christ has now liberated you (5:1)!
As a result³⁰ (hina, “so that”; similarly in 3:24), the promise of new creation life comes about, not through the Torah, but through the delivering death of Christ (‘fidelity’), in which the recipients of that deliverance come to participate (‘believe’; see 3:7). Accordingly, the promise was both gifted to Christ and through Christ to those who come to participate in him. He was obedient to death and was resurrected by God as the image of the new humanity, ruling at God’s right hand over the new creation (cf. Psalm 2, 8, 110). Now he shares the pneuma of his resurrection life through Paul’s proclamation of him (cf. 3:1–5).
The answer to the question of verse 21, then, is this: the Torah did not obstruct the fulfillment of the promises, because, first of all, it didn’t have the divine creative power to fulfill them, and even though it had the power to imprison us for a while, the promises have in fact been fulfilled: we have been delivered through Christ!
3:23
Then from verse 23 on, Paul introduces, or rather makes explicit, a temporal contrast, a ‘before’ and ‘after’, with the turning point being the ‘coming’ of the Seed (3:19), fidelity (3:23, 25) and the Son (cf. 4:4), all of which refer to Christ. Before the coming of the faithful Christ, the Galatians were enslaved under the power of the Torah and Sin. After the coming of the faithful Christ, the Galatians were resurrected, delivered, adopted as sons, etc., all of which refer to God’s singular act of salvation through Christ, encapsulated in their baptism (3:27). Importantly, Paul’s reasoning goes in the other direction: in light of Christ’s ‘solution’, he reflects on the ‘problem’.
A big question looms: was there a progression from the ‘before’ to the ‘after’? That is to say, was there a linear movement from point A (slavery) to B (deliverance)? The answer must be a firm ‘no’.³¹ There is no contribution to liberation from within the prison. Rather, the liberating coming of Christ into the world was a singular invasion (apokalyptō, 1:16; 3:23; Rom 1:17; cf. Rom 3:21)³² that brought about the death of the old cosmos (6:14) and the birth of the new creation (6:15). There was no process to which the Torah could have contributed that would have prepared for, or been the precondition of, or accelerated the coming of, this event. The bottom line for Paul here is that the Torah was part of the problematic situation into which Christ came (4:4) and from which he brought deliverance; he took the curse and defeated it, so that the promised inheritance could be given to those who come to participate in him (3:13–14). The curse was not positively involved in the fulfillment of that promise; it was at most an obstacle to be overcome that was in fact overcome by Christ, and a parenthesis that came to an end with Christ.
Accordingly, eis should not be interpreted as final (‘unto’) but temporal (‘until) (also in verse 24).
3:24
This means that we have to interpret Paul’s use of the ‘pedagogue’-metaphor accordingly.³³ Within Paul’s argument to the Galatians, the metaphor serves three purposes.
- Firstly, it integrates with the larger ‘familial’ metaphors in play: God the ‘Father’, Christ the ‘Son’, salvation as ‘adoption as sons’, the Spirit as ‘inheritance’, et cetera.
- Secondly, it denotes an oppressive state, as it is parallel to being imprisoned (v. 22, 23), guarded (v. 23), and enslaved under certain powers (4:1, 3, 7, 8, 9).
- Thirdly, it reflects the ‘predestined’ transfer, after a certain amount of time, to a new state marked by freedom and ownership rather than subjection.
Paul does not highlight any educative or maturing processes leading up to this transfer. There is no sign, then, of the ‘pedagogue’ working in service of or for the purposes of the ‘father’ (even though that is how pedagogues usually work). Rather, the transfer is a singular, unilateral action in the ‘fullness of time’ (4:4) planned in advance by the father (4:2).³⁴ At this point, one must be careful to distinguish the possible uses of the broader metaphor from its actual deployment in this specific context.
3:25–26
Now that “fidelity” has come, the Galatians are no longer subject to the pedagogue of the Torah, because “through fidelity” and “in Christ Jesus”, or even “through the fidelity that is in Christ Jesus”, they are sons of God. This argument does not work on the face of it, because being a son and being under a pedagogue are of course not incompatible. The underlying logic is that being under a pedagogue is like being a slave, whereas being a son means being free, as well as owning and ruling the father’s property (v. 28). Notably, then, ‘being delivered’ (v. 25) and ‘becoming sons of God’ are part of one and the same salvific movement: from slavery, to sonship in freedom (cf. the parallels in table 4 above).
3:27–28
Just as Paul argued in verse 16 that there is only one recipient of the promise, Christ, so here he stresses the unity of those ‘in Christ’. Following the proclamation of Christ by Paul, brimming with pneumatic power (3:1–5), they were “baptized into” the Spirit-filled body of the crucified-and-resurrected Christ and came to believe.³⁵ They now are a family united as ‘sons’ of the Father in the singular Son through his pneuma/spirit in them (see 3:26–29; 4:1–7).
3:29
The final verse is a good summary statement: if you belong to Christ who is the seed, then you will also share in his inheritance promised to the seed (cf. Rom 8:17). In other words, Paul reassures the Galatians that there is no need to worry that they fail certain conditions for receiving Abraham’s blessing (he is not positing a condition of his own!). They already have the Spirit, they already belong to Christ, and therefore they may hope, through the Spirit, in the footsteps of Christ, for the deliverance to come (5:5).
1. For more on these interpretations of justification and faith, see (i.a.):
- Campbell, The Deliverance of God.
- Martinus C. De Boer, Paul, Theologian of God’s Apocalypse: Essays on Paul and Apocalyptic (Cascade Books, 2020).
- J. Louis Martyn, Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Bloomsbury 2005).
- Michael J. Thate, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, and Constantine R. Campbell, (eds.), “In Christ” in Paul: Explorations in Paul’s Theology of Union and Participation (Eerdmans, 2018).
- Everything by Michael Gorman
I apologize in advance for the inconvenience of reading endnotes on Medium and the scrolling involved; there currently is no better way to format it. If you want to read the notes as you go, you could open the article in a separate tab and scroll down to the notes, and switch between the tabs.
2. Martyn, 23. He adds the question: “In what cosmos do we actually live?”. From the answer to that question a similar imperative can be seen to flow: “Don’t try to go back to living according to the principles of a cosmos that no longer is!” (cf. 6:14). This dimension of Paul’s letter is more related to the interpretation of 3:28 and of the stoicheia kosmou in ch. 4, which I’ve taken up elsewhere and will not be the focus here.
The two questions together could be rendered as “In what time and place are we?”, or even shorter, “When and where are we?”.
3. Deliverance or resurrection could also be said to be part of the promises to Abraham (see esp. Rom 4); becoming like the stars, ruling over the cosmos in pneumatic bodies (see 1 Cor 15), presupposes being ‘raised up’, glorified, etc. To use a related example, if we talk about ‘bringing prisoners home’, that presupposes liberating them. However, that promise of raising up acquired an extra liberating dimension after the arrival of Torah and the oppression by Torah and Sin, and therefore merits a separate depiction in graph 1 (see below).
On the ‘stars’, pneuma, and resurrection, see the works of David A. Burnett, such as “So Shall Your Seed Be”: Paul’s Use of Genesis 15:5 in Romans 4:18 in Light of Early Jewish Deification Traditions,” Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters 5 (2): 211–236, and “A Neglected Deuteronomic Scriptural Matrix for the Nature of the Resurrection Body in 1 Cor 15:39–42,” in Linda L. Belleville and B.J. Oropeza (eds.), Scripture, Texts, and Tracings in 1 Corinthians (Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019), ch. 11.
4. As they await their final deliverance into the new creation, they remain faithful in the meanwhile, thus living out Christ’s fidelity amid suffering (so 5:5–6). However, this is a distinctly muted theme in Galatians compared to other letters of Paul, as also noted by Martyn. Accordingly, this hard-to-map already/not-yet dimension of Paul’s argument is not included in graph 1 (see below).
5. See Longenecker: “…a διαθήκη could be revoked or changed by its testator, whereas it was the Greek μετὰ τὴν τελευτήν, the Roman donatio mortis causa, or the Jewish mattĕnat bārîʾ that was irrevocable.” (Whenever I refer to De Boer, Martyn, or Longenecker using just their names, I am referring to their commentary on that specific passage — in loco, to use the technical term.)
I kept the masculine pronoun (“the testator himself”) because of the ancient patriarchal inheritary system. Throughout my discussion, I have not been totally consistent in either retaining the original masculine language or using gender-neutral language to indicate the gender-inclusiveness of Paul’s argument; both are worth keeping in mind.
6. So De Boer, 228, and in loco.
7. Longenecker gets it almost right; he goes only wrong in the italicized part: “Perhaps one could explain this discrepancy [between Paul’s statement that testaments are irrevocable and the legal practices of his day] by positing that the annulment or alteration Paul had in mind had to do with an attempt made by a party not involved in the original drafting of the διαθήκη. It might be argued, for example, that Paul thought of the angels as a third party, who were not able to alter a legal disposition of inheritance once it had been ratified — i.e., using the tradition of the angels’ involvement in the giving of the law (cf. 3:19) and playing on the dual meaning of the word διαθήκη as both “will” and “covenant,” without really intending to suggest the logical conclusion that the angels were then acting apart from God.” This is indeed the logical conclusion, and we treat Paul fairly if we allow logical conclusions to follow from his statements.
8. A similar thing could be said in relation to Genesis 15:4, which Thiessen also connects to 2 Samuel 7:12 (on which, see below). In verse 3, Abram says to God: “Since you have given me no offspring [seed], my male homebred will be my heir” (NETS). In response, God says: “This one shall not be your heir, but one who shall come out of you, he shall be your heir.” So far, so good for Paul’s argument: Abram will have one heir. However (even letting go of the fact that it obviously refers to Isaac), in the very next verse, famously, God brings Abram outside and says to him: “Look up to the sky, and number the stars, if you will be able to count them. So shall your offspring [seed] be.” Clearly then, as noted by Thiessen, ‘seed’ in these Genesis texts functions as a collective singular, referring to a group of people “as [numerous as] the sand that is by the seashore” (Gen 22:17).
9. See Matthew Thiessen, A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles (Baker Academic, 2023), ch. 6, also referring to Matthew V. Novenson, Christ Among the Messiahs: Christ Language in Paul and Messiah Language in Ancient Judaism (Oxford University Press, 2012).
10. Just to be clear, the metaphor works as follows:
11. For the distinction between ‘covenant’ and ‘contract’, see the works of Campbell. The distinction goes back to James B. Torrance, “Covenant or Contract: A Study of the Theological Background of Worship in Seventeenth-Century Scotland,” SJT 23 (1970): 51–76.
12. The translation of charin as ‘for the sake of’ is preferable over ‘because of’, since Paul connects the Torah positively, not negatively, to Sin in verse 22, and the whole tenor of the argument is that the Torah made things worse, not better. Also, as De Boer notes (230), the notion of transgression seems to presuppose the existence of a law that is transgressed, and so this verse must refer to transgressions that occurred after the arrival of the Torah. However, the Torah did not just ‘cause’ transgressions in a technical sense, namely by giving pre-existent actions a new status as transgressive, but by actively imprisoning people under Sin and causing transgressions in a more active (and sinister) sense. That is the kind of Torah from which we would need to be liberated (4:5).
13. The preceding argument in vv. 15–18 also precludes this; see above.
14. Cf. De Boer, 229n332: “On this use of the preposition dia (instead of hypo) with a passive verb, see BDAG 224–25; BDF #223; 1 Cor 1:9 provides an example: ‘God is faithful, through [dia] whom you were called’ (AT).”
15. For the expression ‘by the hand of Moses’ in the Pentateuch, Longenecker references Lev 26:46; Num 4:37, 41, 45, 49; 9:23; 10:13; 15:23; 17:5; 33:1; 36:13; Josh 21:2; 22:9; Judg 3:4; 1 Chr 16:40; 2 Chr 33:8; Ps 76:21; 2 Apoc. Bar.2.28.
16. Cf. v. 17: “the Torah, which came four hundred thirty years later”; in 3:21, Paul does say that it was “given”, but he only mentions this in a hypothetical, counterfactual scenario (see below). Cf. Rom 5:20, where the Law is said to have “entered by a side door” (so Martyn, 364), again highlighting the parenthetical function of the Torah in God’s plan.
17. This would be similar to what we read in Hebrews 12:2: “Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of fidelity, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross…” On Christ as ‘trusting’ or ‘believing’, see 2 Cor 4:13 (“I believed, and so I spoke”), discussed by Campbell in Deliverance, ch. 21.3.2, and “2 Corinthians 4:13: Evidence in Paul That Christ Believes,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 128 (2), 337–356. On the connection between Christ’s faithfulness and God’s faithfulness, see N.T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Fortress Press, 2015), ch. 10.
18. Cf. Longenecker. His arguments against this position are the following: “The second [option] falters because angels were never thought of in Judaism as being the principal cause or originators of the Torah, even though the tradition arose as to their being an efficient cause or agents of what took place at Sinai. Furthermore, the second view makes Moses only a functionary of the angels, which seems hard to countenance not only for Jews but also for Christians.” The first is a non sequitur: “Jews never thought like this, so Paul could not have thought like this.” In other words, Paul’s originality is circumscribed by the pre-existing Jewish tradition, which is not at all a necessary thing to do for historians. Humans do not just receive the horizon of their tradition(s), but actively rework it as well; they can be creative! The second is an argument from orthodox comfortability, so to say; Longenecker just finds it hard to stomach and thinks other people from the Jewish and Christian traditions would too.
19. This does not place the coming of the Sinaitic Law outside the realm of God’s sovereignty; God did indeed have a plan, we may suppose, but whatever the role of the Law was in that plan is not discussed here.
20. Cf. Longenecker: “Paul must now protect his readers from any Marcionite type of thinking…”
21. Similarly De Boer.
22. See 5:8–9a: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been delivered by his blood…” Campbell references Dahl on the structural connection between Romans 5 and 8: Nils A. Dahl, “Appendix I: A Synopsis of Romans 5:1–11 and 8:1–39,” in Studies in Paul: Theology for the Early Christian Mission (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1977), 88–90.
23. I.e. that the Torah does not forbid or speak against the fruit of the Spirit.
24. This argument holds even if verse 23b is translated as “there is no law against such things”; the Torah would then simply be an instance of such a law.
25. See Martyn, De Boer.
26. See Martyn’s reconstruction of ‘the Teachers’ in Comment #6, “The Teachers”, a version of which appears as “A Law-Observant Mission to the Gentiles” in Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul.
27. In 3:8 Paul also personified Scripture, fulfilling the role of God. This might lead one to think that Paul is saying in 3:22 that God shut up all things under Sin, which sounds very similar to Romans 11:32, where God is said to shut up everyone in disobedience (see Martyn, Comment #39, “The Old Orb of Power as Slave Master and as God’s Servant”). However, in the context of the argument here, Paul gives no indication of divine providential purpose at work in the cursing and imprisoning work of the Torah. Accordingly, hina merely conveys a result within Paul’s argument: since the Torah oppressed, deliverance and inheritance came through Christ (and not through the Torah, contra the Teachers).
In Romans 11:32, which I have extensively discussed elsewhere, Paul does describe a divine providential scheme: “For God has imprisoned (synekleisen) all (tous pantas) in (eis) disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” However, besides arguably minor differences with Gal 3:22 (eis instead of hypo, tous pantas instead of ta panta):
(1) Paul writes this in conclusion to a long and specific argument about Israel and the pagans, summed up in verses 30–31: “Just as you [pagans] were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their [Israel’s] disobedience, so also they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy.” In these verses at least, Paul does not ascribe divine purpose to the pagans’ disobedience before Christ (as is the topic in Gal 3:22a), but only to Israel’s disobedience after Christ — the very problem he is wrestling through in Rom 9–11 (see graph below). We should be hesitant, then, to read the following conclusion (v. 32) as a generic statement like in Galatians 3:22 describing the situation leading up to Christ as marked by pagan disobedience, since it’s written in the context of a complicated and specific eschatological scenario taking place after and in response to the coming of Christ.
(2) Whatever divine purpose there was in the pagans’ disobedience before Christ as “vessels of wrath”, they have now turned into “vessels of mercy” (Rom 9:22–23) because of the divine call (9:24), which did not build on anything within the situation of disobedience — it was not based on works (11:6). The pagans were not even running after righteousness (9:30)!
(3) Just after writing this Paul transitions into a doxology in which he praises God’s mysterious ways as Paul has reached the end of his finite mind’s reach. It would be strange, at the very least, if Paul dropped a practically equivalent conclusion midway of an argument in Galatians (though perhaps explicable because of the hasty rhetorical nature of Galatians).
28. Cf. Campbell, Deliverance, 1163n135, for a similar hint.
29. Martyn, 31–32, notes this same difference between Paul’s discussion of the Law in Galatians and Romans: “Writing to the Gentile Christians in Galatia and being concerned about their incipient adherence to the Law as the means of salvation, Paul portrayed the Law itself as an enslaving tyrant… [I]n Romans he clarifies — to some extent modifies — what he had said in Galatians. The Law is connected with tyranny, but only by way of Sin. For the tyrant itself is Sin, even the holy and spiritual Law being the instrument in Sin’s hands, and, in that sense, Sin’s effective power (cf. 1 Cor 15:56).” I would agree, though I think that Paul in 5:20, 6:14–15 and 7:1–6 still expresses a ‘Galatian’ view of the Torah in Romans, and only from 7:7 on course-corrects.
30. There is no purpose involved from the side of the Torah, because in this argument God is not behind the Torah (and deliverance was surely not the intent of the angels).
31. In Campbell’s terms, there was no movement from ‘Box A’ to ‘Box B’.
32. On the connection of the apokalypsis-word group with ‘invasion’, see Martyn, e.g. 99, and De Boer, “Excursus 6: Paul’s Language of Apocalyptic Revelation,” 79–82.
33. For a decisive treatment of the pedagogue metaphor, see Campbell, Deliverance, ch. 20.6.5.
34. Or, as Martyn would call it, ‘punctiliar’.
35. On the relation between the faith/fidelity of Abraham, Christ, and believers, see Campbell, Deliverance, ch. 18 (on Romans 4) and ch. 20 (on Galatians 3).
