Galatians – The New Testament In Its World – Wright and Bird

All the information below is taken directly from The New Testament In Its World, NT Wright and Mike Bird, Zondervan/SPCK, 2020

The dense and dramatic argument of Galatians excites and confuses readers. This letter is sometimes perceived as the angry younger sibling of the more composed and reflective letter to Rome. Others have understood Galatians as the point at which Paul says ‘Farewell’ to his Jewish heritage. Still others use Galatians as the place to work out their own doctrinal debates, with themselves heroically cast as ‘Paul’ and their own opponents crudely characterized as ‘the Galatian intruders’. If we are to avoid making Paul a proto-Marcionite, and if we are going to refuse the temptation to project our own theological disputes into the letter, then we need to read Galatians very carefully, attentive to both its context and content.

In brief, Paul writes this letter to the Galatians after learning that certain agitators or intruders² have gained a foothold in these churches, urging the male gentile believers to be circumcised. The intruders are effectively trying to bring the Galatians into a closer relationship with the Jewish world in general, and with the Jerusalem church in particular. Paul’s animated response is that this not only constitutes a betrayal of the agreement that he reached with the pillar apostles in Jerusalem; it is also a flagrant departure from the truth of the gospel. Paul insists that you do not have to become physically Jewish in order to belong to the Messiah’s family—and that, if you try to do so, you are denying the crucified and risen Messiah himself. God saves gentiles by making them Messiah-people, not by making them Jews—a paradox, of course, but it is precisely the paradox of the crucified and risen Messiah. It was always God’s plan, Paul insists, to have a multi-ethnic family; that is the story scripture tells. That is why the Messiah died and rose. If ‘righteousness’, that is, the status of being forgiven and possessing a right standing within the covenant, could be gained or validated by means of observing Torah, the Jewish law, then the Messiah died for nothing. If, then, people get circumcised, they are putting themselves under obedience to Torah—but Torah itself, treated this way, offers only the curses of Deuteronomy, ending with exile itself.

Paul’s exhortation to the Galatians could be summarized as follows. By the Messiah’s death, believers have been rescued from the evil age. God’s new world has dawned, and with it a new community has come into being—but it is the community that God had always promised to create. The curses of Torah have been borne and broken on the cross, with the result that Jews and gentiles can be justified (reckoned ‘righteous’, within the covenant) by faith, receive adoption into Abraham’s renewed family, and fulfil the Torah in a new way, by life in the spirit. If one is ‘in the Messiah’, then one is in Abraham’s family; faith and spirit are the signs of belonging to God’s people; and justification and adoption are the benefits of belonging. Therefore, Paul urges, do not submit to circumcision. It effectively brings you into a new form of slavery. Instead, enjoy the freedom of the Messiah and the power of the spirit. To boil this down even further: justification by faith means fellowship by faith; Jesus, not Torah, is the fulcrum of God’s saving action; the real way to fulfil Torah is by the spirit, in the law of love.

While there are a number of reasons for either option, and a good commentary will spell out the arguments in full, we prefer the south Galatian hypothesis:⁶

1. Paul’s travels normally focused on large cities and their neighbouring satellite towns situated along the Mediterranean coast and connected to major Roman roads. Thus it makes sense that Paul would visit cities like Pisidian Antioch and nearby urban centres like Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe along the Via Sebaste.

2. The ‘churches of Galatia’⁷ would be a perfectly sensible designation for the churches of Derbe, Lystra, and Iconium since Paul appears to use Roman provincial terminology to describe geographical areas.⁸ The objection that Paul would not call non-ethnic Galatians ‘Galatians’ fails when we remember: (a) Paul could hardly call them all Phrygians or Lycaonians either; (b) there is inscriptional evidence that the entire region was referred to as ‘Galatia’; and (c) even the northern region of Galatia was not inhabited exclusively by ethnic Gauls, but had long since been populated with Syrians, Greeks, Romans, and Jews.

3. Luke’s mention of Paul’s visit to ‘Phrygia and Galatia’⁹ need not refer to two separate areas, but might signify the Phrygian part of Galatia, that is, Pisidian Antioch.

4. Christian tombstones in the southern area show evidence from very early times of men named ‘Paul’. This is not so in the northern region.

Date

The dating of the letter is even trickier. The main options are that Galatians was sent to:

1. the southern region of Galatia, after Paul’s first missionary journey (Ac. 13—14), before the Jerusalem council (Ac. 15), written from Antioch in around AD 48/9; or

2. the southern region of Galatia, after the Jerusalem council (Ac. 15), during an early phase of Paul’s Aegean mission (Ac. 18—19), composed perhaps from Corinth in AD 51–2; or

3. the northern part of Galatia, after the Jerusalem council (Ac. 15), during the later phase of Paul’s Aegean mission (Ac. 19—20), written from Ephesus or during Paul’s later visit to Macedonia in AD 54/5.

On balance we prefer the first of these.

Situation

The question of what precisely had been going on in the Galatian churches is directly related to the questions of destination and dating. We have already sketched a preliminary scenario and now need to amplify it.

The situation behind the letter appears to be that Paul had earlier on won a victory for the principle of male gentiles not needing to be circumcised. This agreement was hammered out at a Jerusalem meeting, with the pillar apostles (Peter, James, and John) recognizing Paul’s ministry and message.¹⁰ But that gain was short-lived when certain people arrived in Antioch from James, and Peter and Barnabas withdrew from table-fellowship with gentiles. Paul saw this as hypocrisy (Peter had earlier been happy to eat with gentile believers, but now was ‘play-acting’ by pretending to take a different line), and he opposed Peter in person.¹¹ Shortly afterwards news reached Paul that a group of teachers, perhaps one individual in particular, had been trying to persuade the male gentile believers in the Galatian churches to get circumcised. Their motives were, we may surmise, a rich mixture of (what we call) theology and (what we call) politics.

They may have been horrified that Jews were sharing fellowship with ‘gentile sinners’, a practice which might not only pollute the Jews in question but could, by this treasonous behaviour, delay yet further the long-awaited divine act of justice and salvation.

The safety of Jewish groups in a Roman territory like southern Asia depended on keeping up good appearances, being good citizens, and exercising responsibly their official exemption from the state cult. If the authorities realized that the new Jesus-movement was claiming the same exemption, but without the normal ethnic rationale, there was no knowing what reprisals might ensue. The important thing, therefore, was to get those puzzling gentile Jesus-believers to come into line. If they wanted to claim the Jewish exemption, they would have to become complete Jews, full proselytes, by getting circumcised (in the case of males) and following the normal distinctive Jewish customs such as the food laws and sabbath observance.

 It is highly likely that the intruders wanted the Galatians to undergo male circumcision in order to resolve their ambiguous position, as neither pagans nor Jews. We recall how, in ordinary pagan contexts, people who failed to worship the gods would be blamed for any disasters that might strike. Thus, urging the ex-pagan Galatians to get circumcised was necessary to resolve the ambiguous status in which they were not quite Jewish but not proper pagans either. Circumcision would mean that they would enjoy the normal Jewish exemption from local civic cults. Everyone would be happy.

1. Greetings and reason for writing (1.1–10)
   Galatians begins with explosive fervour. Paul bluntly reiterates his apostolic authority as something derived from Jesus and God, not conferred from any human institution (1.1). His subsequent greeting is terse and omits any thanksgiving for the Galatians themselves, emphasizing rather the rescue of believers from the present evil age (1.2–5): Paul is thinking in good Jewish fashion of the ‘present age’ and the ‘age to come’, and celebrating the fact that, by Jesus ‘giving himself for us’, believers have been rescued from the former so that they now belong to the latter. Paul then raises the central issue, namely his bewilderment and anger that the Galatians are abandoning God and turning to a different gospel, giving ear to intruding Jewish-Christian missionaries who are urging the men among them—perhaps with threats—to get circumcised in order to be justified, to be part of God’s true family. These intruders, Paul insists, are not perfecting his gospel; they are perverting it.

2. The origin of Paul’s gospel (1.11–24)
   Paul now gets into his stride (see box: ‘The rhetoric of Galatians’). His gospel, he says, was not his own invention, nor was it something given to him by the Jerusalem church. Rather, he received it as a revelation from Jesus (1.11–12). Paul then recounts his conversion experience, describing how in his former life as an ultra-zealous Jew he persecuted the church. But then God had revealed his son, literally, ‘in me’, in order that Paul might preach Jesus among the gentiles (1.13–16a). Paul’s response to this revelation was not to consort with anyone from the Jerusalem church. Instead, he went off to Arabia, presumably to Mount Sinai, as Elijah had done when his ‘zeal’ had ended badly; then, like the prophet, he returned to Damascus (1.16b–17).17 Throughout this brief autobiographical fragment Paul is careful to echo passages from the Prophets. Anyone suspecting him of being disloyal to Israel’s traditions will find that he is consciously and carefully living out his own role within what he sees as the ongoing scriptural narrative.

3. The Jerusalem meeting with Peter, James, and John (2.1–10)
   Paul now describes his second Jerusalem visit. He had not been summoned; he went in response to a ‘revelation’, probably the prophetic message about the coming famine (Ac. 11.27–30), not (as many have supposed) to the ‘Jerusalem conference’ of Acts 15. The question of how gentiles could be included in the new messianic family—substantially the same issue that was haunting Galatia—had come up then, because Paul and Barnabas had taken with them Titus, an uncircumcised gentile believer. Some in Jerusalem wanted to have him circumcised, but Paul had recognized this as a threat to the gospel itself.

4. The incident at Antioch (2.11–14)
   Paul then refers to the very recent incident when Peter, having arrived in Antioch and taken part in the multi-ethnic church fellowship, withdrew after certain persons had come from James, drawing ‘even Barnabas’ along with him. This wasn’t just a squabble between two ways of interpreting one comparatively trivial point. It involved the very heart of the gospel. Peter was in effect ‘compelling gentiles to judaize’, saying to male non-Jewish believers, ‘If you want to be part of the forgiven, new-covenant family of God, you’ll have to get circumcised.’ Paul is determined to show how wrong this was (see ‘Portals and parallels: the question of circumcision for male converts to Judaism’).

5. Paul’s response to Peter’s compromise (2.15–21)
   The point, Paul insists, is about who you are in the Messiah. Are the true people of God all who belong to the Messiah? Or are the people of God only Jewish Christians (including proselytes, that is, gentiles who have converted to Judaism), with gentile Christians remaining second-class citizens? For Paul, God’s true people are summed up in one person: the Messiah. He is the faithful one. He is the true Israelite. That is why a person is not justified ‘by works of the law’ (keeping Israel’s Torah), but by ‘the faithfulness of Messiah Jesus’. The only badge of membership in the rescued, forgiven family is the corresponding ‘faith’. Believing gentiles are therefore on the same level as believing Jews.

6. Paul’s defence of the gospel and warning to the Galatians (3.1—5.12)
   Paul now advances his main argument, starting with two solid points. God has given the Galatians his spirit, indicating that they are already God’s heirs (3.1–5); they are already Abraham’s true children on the basis of their faith (3.6–9). The intruders might have countered that Torah was incumbent upon all Abraham’s children. Torah itself had set before Israel the options of life and death, with the promise of life for obedience as in Leviticus 18.5. Paul, probing deeper into the story, sees that God’s promise to Abraham wasn’t simply about the Jews; it was designed for all the nations. But Abraham’s family had themselves disobeyed God, and so were suffering Torah’s curses (as any first-century Jew could see). What was needed was not more Torah but for the curse of the Torah to be removed.

When the Messiah comes, the age of ‘faith’ has arrived, and God’s promise to Abraham can be kept through the Messiah-shaped faith, baptism, and single family, with no need any longer for Torah to look after God’s people. ‘You are all one in the Messiah, Jesus’ (3.26–28 NTE/KNT). Like Israel in Egypt, the whole world was formerly in captivity, but God sent his son and his spirit, revealing his true nature in redemptive action (4.1–7). Any step back from that is a step into some kind of paganism (4.8–11), idolizing the ‘elements of the world’, the parts of the old creation upon which the Jew–gentile separation was based (see ‘Portals and parallels: Juvenal and Justin Martyr on the Jews’).

7. Paul’s exhortation to live by the spirit (5.13—6.10)
   Paul’s opponents are implying that there are only two ways to live: the Jewish way, observing Torah, or the gentile (pagan) way, still enslaved to idols. No, says Paul, there is a third way: a double freedom, into which you are released and transformed by the new exodus that God has accomplished in Jesus the Messiah. That results in love, and in the ‘fruit of the spirit’ as opposed to the ‘works of the flesh’ (5.13–26). This will give rise to a mutually caring society (6.1–10).

8. Conclusion and letter closing (6.11–18)
   Paul rounds off the letter in his own writing (6.11), contrasting his own ‘boast’ in the gospel with the intruders’ desire to ‘boast’ (that is, put on a good face in public) in the new outward status for the gentile Messiah-believers. The message of the cross, he says, renders all that irrelevant. Ethnic signs and symbols no longer matter; what matters now is only God’s new creation (6.14–15).

GALATIANS AND THE BIG PICTURE
Galatians drives us to look at scripture’s big picture and to live out the spirit-led life in the ways that Paul instructs. Here we focus on freedom, identity, and ethics.

First, Galatians is a manifesto for Christian freedom. The German biblical scholar Ernst Käsemann wrote a brief, polemical survey of the New Testament called Jesus Means Freedom. Despite the author’s angry tone, the title sums up Paul’s leitmotif: ‘For freedom Christ has set us free’ (Gal. 5.1 NRSV; see 2 Cor. 3.17). Galatians is fundamentally concerned with breaking the bonds of slavery and setting captives free.

Second, although Paul argues ferociously about justification by faith, the key question he is dealing with is, ‘Who are God’s people and how do you know?’ He is, in other words, talking about identity. What matters is being a Messiah-person; that is the key to forgiveness, status, and hope. God has launched his new creation in which the old differences, necessary for the time, cease to matter.

The single greatest sign that God’s kingdom has taken root in a sceptical and suspicious world is that the church, in all of its manifold diversities, comes together, eating at the same table, announcing one lord, one faith, one baptism, and worshipping with one voice. That is the sign that God has been faithful to the promises he made to Abraham and we are all invited, by faith in Christ, to become sons and daughters of Abraham.

Third, Paul’s letter is packed with reference to the spirit. We received the spirit by faith, so we should not try to attain perfection through the flesh (Gal. 3.2, 14). The spirit works miracles among the churches by leading people to believe the message of the gospel (Gal. 3.5). The spirit is our adoption to divine sonship (Gal. 4.6).

Galatians is thus far more than doctrine; it is about how to live a spiritually fruitful life, and the proper resources to do it.