The subject of justification by faith has fascinated me ever since I was a young girl, reading Paul and trying to comprehend the lines he draws between grace and works (chiefly in Galatians) and then turning a few books over to find James and his discussion of working faith. Not being of Lutheran background, it is hard for me to imagine the full weight of tension Lutheran students must wrestle with to hear a new perspective of Paul’s regard for Mosaic Law—but as a Catholic now, I can implement such a tension between the liturgical and juridical (canon) law of my church and the grace believed to be communicated through our sacramental theology. Being rather consumed by a fascination with covenants from my own dispensational background, I came to Schnelle’s depiction of justification by faith in Galatians hoping to discover that Paul considered Mosaic Law to be a further-revelation from God to His people, rather than a horrible, death-instilling mechanism which removed people rather from God, thus needed to be done-away with.

                Inspecting Schnelle’s careful explanation of the Galatian crisis, I think that Paul uses a heavy hand in dismissing the Law of Moses primarily for rhetorical purposes. Paul’s rhetoric seems very confusing in Galatians: on the one hand he seems to talk about the Law arousing sin and burdening the people of God, while on the other hand, the Law was from God and so could not be sinful in itself. I think the context and Paul’s purpose in writing to the Galatians explains much of why he drove a dichotomy between justification by faith and justification by law. I argue that this was mainly rhetorical dichotomy between the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic covenant, which are complementary rather than antithesized. I think Paul ultimately admits the complimentarity of these two covenants, but not until he has first established the point of his dichotomy: that Gentile believers are justified by faith without the prescriptions of Mosaic Law (primacy of Abraham’s covenant).

                For me to encounter Schnelle’s interpretation of the Jerusalem church’s resistance to the Torah-free Gentile mission made quite a lot of sense with my own readings of James and Peter’s actions as described by Paul. I can’t claim to understand a typical Lutheran reaction to Schnelle’s perspective, but discussing the Galatian crisis at my Dominican school posed significant conflict: my Catholic counterparts considered it heterodox at best to count Peter and the Jerusalem church as opposed to Paul, on the side of those who were agitating the Galatian acceptance of salvation by faith. Schnelle admits that there is “no direct literary evidence” (Schnelle 275) for the connections that he makes but thinks it is obvious that there must be “some kind of connection between the Jerusalem authorities and Paul’s opponents in Galatia.” (275) While Schnelle’s interpretation of Galatians stands under inquisition by my Catholic classmates, his discussion of the Jerusalem church’s theological and political motivation for supporting Paul’s opponents  makes sense to me.

                Since Paul’s rhetorical rejection of the Law is directed at his opponents, I think it fair to evaluate the possibility of interpreting the Jerusalem church as supporting the opponents. Schnelle has established throughout the entirety of his work on Paul thus far that since James, an orthopraxic Jewish Christian, was leader of the church in Jerusalem, it was most likely still entirely integrated into synagogue life and enjoying full privilege under the Jewish religious status. Since this church’s outlook on Christianity maintained its inclusion within the larger religion of Judaism, the issue of Gentile circumcision was quite volatile. Schnelle paints a competitive theological scene depicting a kind of context between Jewish and Gentile Christians over who were “exclusively the true people of God.” (275) Politically, Schnelle suggests that separation from the Jewish identity would put the church at risk for persecution from the government—so alerting the larger Jewish congregation to their divergent theology was to be avoided (275).

                Noting these as motivating factors for the opponents, most likely aligning with the agenda of the Jerusalem church, addressing the polemical urging for the Galatian Christians in order to partake in the Abrahamic covenant can be understood as a practical concern. Why was Paul so concerned with refuting the need for circumcision in order to partake of this covenant faith? Schenlle seems to indicate that it was Paul’s Christology which motivated his emphasis of Abraham over Moses. As Schnelle voices it, “the theological heart of the Galatian letter” depicts Paul wrestling “the question of what significance the law/Torah can have for Christians now that circumstances have changed, and with how the status of justification and sonship to God are attained.” (277) As Dr. Balch has suggested in class, Paul seems to be refuting a fundamentalist/literalist approach to Jewish understanding of justification through law. Perhaps the opponents (whom I assume were supported by the Jerusalem congregation) fell back upon a fundamentalist reading of Leviticus in hopes of remaining so Jewish that their divergence from traditional Jewish monotheistic theology would never be suspected.

                Schnelle sums up Paul’s basic theology of justification in Galatians as it has developed since the Jerusalem council: “Whereas he still acknowledged the coexistence of faith in Christ and loyalty to the Torah for Jewish Christians, he now maintains that no one can be justified before God by the works of the law/Torah.” (278) I question whether that was indeed the argument of the “Judiazers” (Jewish-Christian evangelists promoting Jesus + Torah gospel), for as we have noted in class, there was a plurality of forms of Judaism in Paul’s day. The perspective I was taught of Jewish thought regarding Mosaic Law never touched on the idea of justification (as a static sort of status one obtained), but rather a sense of dynamically maintaining one’s right standing before God. I wonder if perhaps the reading of Galatians wherein Paul’s opponents are assumed to be arguing justification as originating in the Law is not a modern-day Christian projection in retrospect. Perhaps that was never the point of the Judiazers’ mission—perhaps they were more concerned with the political predicament in Christianity; but also perhaps the message of the Mosaic Law as the justifying basis for their salvation was the misconstruing of the Galatian audience.

                Schnelle seems to indicate one reason that Paul so staunchly drove a dichotomy between faith and works of the law regarding justification was because of a desire to strengthen and build a distinctly Christian identity (279). It would seem, then, that Paul’s convoluted argument concerning the law and justification is really quite simple: the Mosaic Law does not provide soteriological life to man, not because the Law itself is not perfect, but man is incapable of keeping the Law perfectly. The Law works externally while man is in need of a mode of justification that will align his internal condition to the grace of God. Being unable to act according to the Law because he is “always already conditioned by sin” (281). Since all people are infected by sin, Schnelle’s reading of Galatians indicates that Paul is annulling “the special status of the Jews as righteous, having a righteousness mediated by the Torah” (283). Yet from my understanding of Judaism, the general understanding  of the Mosaic Law was that it never imputed righteousness; I am rather unclear in my own mind how the majority of Jewish people of Paul’s day (if such a unity can be fathomed) viewed righteousness. Indeed the revelation of the Torah to the Jewish people, God’s disclosing of Himself to a people of promise would be privilege enough without finding justification in the Law. Schnelle seems to make a typical Christian assumption of the Law as imputing righteousness for the Jews, though I think Paul himself would recognize the promise which dispensed Law, the promise of Abraham, imputed righteousness. Perhaps Paul was connecting an interpretation of fundamentalism towards the Law which arose within the church in a desperate socio-political situation.

                The identity concept Schnelle claims Paul to criticize amongst the Jewish Christians that “one’s relation to God to be ‘out of’ one’s own act, bound up with certain privileges” (282) rather by a faith granted by God. I hardly think that to be the situation of the Mosaic Law in relation to the Abrahamic covenant;  for both Law and promise were given by God. As for justification, how could a promise given by God, but acted upon by man, be summed up as justification by one’s own act? It would seem to me that Paul’s addition to the Jewish concept of justification adds Jesus to the equation, from the perspective that one’s relations with God are granted by Him vs. earned. Maybe it’s the influence of Catholicism on me, but I do believe that humans have “an active role in their relation to God” (283)—but not in the sense of our justification. I think justification is the some sort of spiritual stance which is perceived in the moment of conversion—perhaps of baptism. So to try and compare the Law and promise as means of justification fails, because the law was never meant to justify. Is Paul merely correcting a misinterpretation?

                Paul’s rhetorical move is, I think, to amplify  a false dichotomy between justification by Law and justification by promise (an impossible comparison) in order to push his Christological agenda of Jesus and the new means through which one approaches God. He is filling a place theologically which did not exist before the coming of Christ, or even the need for such a redemption realized: that the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise, the present existence of soteriological hope came in the human person of the Divine Jesus Christ. This is in the real-est sense, an innovation theologically (at least from a human point of comprehension) by God the Father. Abraham was justified by a future faith placed in the coming of a promise which had not yet occurred, but once the historical event of Jesus’ Christ’s life had come, Paul felt it to be the keystone to all previous theology—a missing link, if you will: since the promise was opened to all people (Jews and Gentiles) through Paul’s particular vocation of Apostleship, his desire to eradicate privileged status of persons in Christ developed as a rejection of Mosaic distinctives.

                This leads me to a line of questioning that resurrects these same issues concerning the justification of Abraham that I am researching for my sacraments class. I am writing a paper that compares the justification of Abraham by faith in a future promise to the justification of Christians through a sacramental understanding of baptism which unites us to the life of this Promise Jesus as members of His Church. Sacramental baptism—at least from a Catholic perspective, I cannot speak to other sacramental traditions because the concept of sacrament is still so new to me—seems to  really be a participation in the death and resurrection of Christ, allowing one to be seated with Him in the heavenlies. What I ponder is the difference between our faith justification and Abraham’s (and if there is one), because his faith was on the coming of a Promised Seed, as Paul seems to interpret Genesis in Galatians, while my sacraments professor explained to me that Catholic theology considers justification of the Christian to occur at baptism, an event post-Promise, acting with Christ. So I wonder, has the nature of justification changed, with the nature of faith? For my context of Catholicism under the jurisdiction of Canon Law, I wonder about the means my church accepts as faith justification: the Catholic Church prescribes seven sacraments as reliable means of obtaining God’s grace and encountering His present, but do sacraments themselves limit the active grace of God to one necessary manifestation, or merely a dogmatic interpretation of the sacraments, as Paul refutes of the Mosaic Law interpreted from the Judaizers’ preaching?

                Having used the transition of Abrahamic to Christian justification as a segway into my ecclesiological reflection, I wonder whether Paul would recognize what every denomination calls church as “Church” today. What was in his mind when he wrote to different “churches.” Noting Paul’s interpretation of Jewish and Gentiles Christians as continuing the covenant of Abraham, would the church communities apart from Christological theology, really be any different from the Temple/synagogue communities? I think the discussion of Law in Galatians really highlights a creative theology, perhaps the beginnings of the distinctive Church. Since we see James and the Jerusalem church maintaining a rather low profile with the Christological distinctive of Christianity, Paul’s innovation of Gentiles into the structure of the Christ-communities really forces the issue of ecclesiology. What is Paul’s idea of Church? I’d say it’s nicely summed up in the final four verses of Galatians 3:

²⁶ for all of you are the children of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus, ²⁷ since every one of you that has been baptised has been clothed in Christ. ²⁸ There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither slave nor freeman, there can be neither male nor female -- for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ And simply by being Christ's, you are that progeny of Abraham, the heirs named in the promise.

While this still doesn’t address the issue of justification, or many of the questions I have raised for my own denomination, I think solidifying a better understanding of what sort of gatherings Paul referred to as “ekklesia” and what leadership and participatory distinctives he foresaw would greatly benefit further analogy of my Canon Law and sacraments exploration of grace. Paul’s theology of continuing the link between Abrahamic and Christological justification would be extremely important towards his theological conception of “church,” however.

Marcella Althaus-Reid’s Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics provided me much food for thought as I pursue my quest within Christendom to identify those who are rendered “invisible” in the process of inter-Christian othering, begging the question, which voices have/and are being silenced in the Church? Althaus-Reid introduces our chapter in the reader, “Indecent Proposals for women who would like to do theology without using underwear” with a question that frequently echoes through my own mind:  how is it that after centuries of Christian disagreement, each particular branch of the Christian Church tends to remain relatively uniformed as to the faith contributions of denominations with other perspectives? Addressing this as an issue of silencing, I will make allusions in this reflection to the type of thought system that enables such disabling of difference. I found the  analogy Althaus-Reid employed to describe silencing quite useful to understand the affect of totalizing belief systems on divergent opinions: that a covenant of silence was formed between those excluded from “orthodox” circles like that of “a silence of the magnitude of the planets, silenced as if by a set of Newtonian laws, replaced by a unified field theory and leaving behind anything outside the new cosmovation.”[1] To me, this speaks clearly of the progressive development of Christianity, and the gradual erasing of “heretical” voices, and casting out those that are “heterodox.” This analogy seems so apt because the language of “unified fields” and “particular laws” can be abstracted and applied to the universally encompassing claims of religion and the specific statues instituted to reinforce that totality.

Just a few days ago, I wrote a blog indirectly addressing ideas of particular theology: I proposed a conflict between personal inner truths (which I think are specifically individual and different to each human person) and one’s outer life, which I believe is characterized by relationality. The basis of my discussion in the blog was that each person’s experiences of and in the word are so incomparably unique that any attempt to present beliefs or creeds as a totalizing, all-encompassing expression of that belief seems to alienate some crucial components of individual meaning-formation through experience.  Therefore, I drew from my musings, why not maintain minimal creed and belief structures in any religion, with an understanding that what is usually considered “heterodoxy” is really the normal mode of belief for most people? So why not resist the temptation to universalize many, if any, beliefs and leave the experience and particular definition of such experience to its unsystematized organic state, were totality dissipates into plurality? In my mind this would allow for a more realistic unity: differing opinions being brought together in conversation would illumine the complimentary components of varying beliefs, resurrecting the dead value of one who is “other” or different rather than erasing the differences.

Hence I turn again to Althaus-Reid: Is it truly necessary to create what she terms as “Grand Narratives” in order to “sustain everyday life”[2]? What are these “Grand Narratives”? According to my redefinition, they are binary systems of totalizing belief that alienate one side of the binary, silencing its disagreement with the label “other” and attempting to force its conformity or assimilation. Althaus-Reid’s article is set in the context of colonial Latin American theology, which was imposed upon the natives by invasive European forces who brutalized the natural conditions of the natives into a state of marginalized other-ness through heartless imposition of the “Christian Grand Narrative.”[3] I think Althaus-Reid’s concept of “Grand Narrative” encapsulates many parts of Levinas’ philosophy of “othering” through its attempts to assimilate and annihilate difference. Taken with a colonial sort of mindframe, “Grand Narratives” were always externally constructed systems of control imposed upon invaded peoples (both spatially invaded and intellectually, which better serves my purposes) attempting to erase differences and form an undisturbed totality that maintained peace with force and silence, but kept human beings in states of inequality and lacking relationship. In my blog that I referenced, I question the need of a “Grand Narrative” at all: perhaps a few principles from a totalitarian mental state need to be erected, or at least general commonalities in order to read a communal, diversified, conversational unity, but the imposition of such a structure violates the very peace it is attempting to create or maintain. In my mind, any sort of true unity is related is dissolved with institution of force.  Althaus-Reid writes in specific objection to the normalization of heterosexual patriarchy through the Christian “Grand Narrative” enforced by colonialism in Latin America.

Althaus-Reid objects to this normalization on behalf of females who have been subjugated to male authority by posing what she terms as an “indecent” theology, comparing the concept of decency to the female wearing on underwear to deter male gaze. Upon a first read, I mused as to what kind of indecency Althaus-Reid was proposing… pondering the possibility of her objections leading the kind of extremism purported by bra-burning feminist theories. Finding this not to be the case as neither heterosexuality nor Christian theological foundations were Althaus-Reid’s points of contention, while the analogy of the panty-less female theologian could conjure the image of a flirt rather than a thoughtful reformer, the idea of defying a totalitarian concept of “decency” for the sake of diversity is quite appealing. Perhaps I can extract certain criticisms of totalitarianism structures which erase human individuality which Althaus-Reid eloquently voices as “an understanding based on hierarchy and submission by a process of affirmation by subtraction.”[4] Contrasting my own suggestions regarding personal truth, universality and Christian belief with Althaus-Reid’s thoughts, I too might find myself questioning the human organization of religion as a system of corrupted hierarchy and submission. At some level, there will always be human authority, and from my conception of human relations, this authority should gladly partake in a relationship of mutual submission between authorities and subordinates in order to avoid assimilation or annihilation of a valuable “other” human person.

Althaus-Reid makes an interesting criticism of heterosexuality as a system operating on an internal logic of false dichotomies—a criticism I find hard to evaluate because of my own state of being, but which I do recognize as a valid criticism of totalitarian systems in general. It would seem that universalizing one concept or perspective would force a choice of decision between things which may not be as separated or antithesise-able as presented in the system.[5] Mentioning Ricoeur’s analysis of Christianity as built around a “living metaphor,” Althaus-Reid seems agrees that “symbolic constructions develop quasi-biological life.”[6] Thus, in a real-world organization of Christianity (as distinguished from theologies, ideas, or binaries abstracted from such Christianity) human authority must reproduce itself in order to maintain a self-perpetuating order. This indicates a dangerous tendency of Christian interpretation which Althaus-Reid identifies as “a linear, terminal conception of Christian narratives”[7] that silenced the life-giving message of the Gospel, reducing its organically flourishing capacity to a dogmatic imposition of static, redundant interpretations of Scripture and tradition. I believe I would characterize such in a derogatory manner as “fundamentalism,” keeping a skeptical attitude towards dogmatism that could unwittingly breed malevolence within human relationships.

As the essay continues, Althaus-reid employs her earlier image of “indecent theology” in the native female lemon-seller whose refusal to wear undergarments rebukes male presumption to define decency, as equalizing the hierarchy/submission model of “othering”: “without an understanding of submission, there is no submission; without sexual constructs there are no Others.”[8] It would seem that without the structures defining totality, Althause-Reid would argue there are no majority opinions which would overwhelm minorities; I do not read her as suggesting that without definition, there would be no difference between male and female. Althaus-Reid makes a practical plea to revoke an enslaving “othering” in Latin America: through such totalizing, the Christian narrative remained linear, so as to define the natives as sub-human and permit oppressors to symbolically redefine the requirements of salvation in Christ to maintain that diminutive “other” distinction through economic and sexual exploitation.

My own question of the necessity of totalitarian thought systems tends to draw a negative conclusion, finding such systems to be stiflingly repressive and oppressive rather than freeing; yet, at the same time, this conflicts with my ideas and beliefs about the nature and possibility of salvation in Christ Jesus. Towards the end of Althaus-Reid’s first chapter of Indecent Theology, I deeply appreciated her movement from a universalizing study of anthropology to “Mujeriology, for the sake of love of differences, not equalities.”[9] Upon each re-read, that one line expressing a value of difference without concern for equality resurrected multiple philosophical and religious questions which I battle almost daily. Althaus-Reid emphasizes difference because “equal discourse confronts us with the fact that the center fixes the equation for the margins.”[10] This seems to suggest two things: first that “equality” tends to inherently contain some justifying idea of proportionality, and second that whatever is accepted in the totalizing system as “normal” sets the standards for what is marginalized. The first idea of justifying proportionality allows for unbalanced treatment for “normative” and “other,” permitting for the marginalization of “other” so long as the “normative” is proportionately regarded to a greater extent than the other, the scales of antithesis balance out. Using the introduced discussion of inter-Christian other-ing, one could say that “orthodox” and “heretical” are being compared together against inequality, but perhaps the favoring of one over the other should lead to contrast against one another. If “decency” becomes the persecutor of variation, such as Althaus-Reid feels heteronormative patriarchal standards are to Latin American women, perhaps an indecent treatment of marginalized issues would equalize the proportionality between major and minor differences. Erasing a smooth totality by exerting an extreme difference seems a desperate type of interruption, but perhaps the marginalization of “heretical” considerations has become so normative at this point that only such an interruption will attract attention. Thus I close my reflection by wondering what types of interruption would be most effective within Christian denominations to shock off assumed normativity and bring about critical reevaluation of totalitarian belief systems without causing further break in

            The Apostle Paul caused quite a controversy in his day by maintaining a theology inclusive of Gentile peoples without requiring them to first convert to Judaism. In the epistle to the Galatians, one finds the tenuous agreement between Paul and orthopraxic Jewish Christians to a “two gospel”[1] version of the Gospel of Christ ruptured by certain parties whom commentators commonly term as “Judiazers,” trying to convince the Galatians that circumcision is necessary to enter into the covenant of Christ. Recounting his own conversion story in the first chapter of the epistle to add certainty to any speculation about his call to preach Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, Paul recounts his own perspective of the events which were addressed at the Jerusalem Council in the second chapter. In his passionate style, recounts his interaction with the Apostles, particularly Peter, in strong language when Peter relapsed from an ecumenical practice on circumcision to segregating the Gentile Christians. Paul’s tone is authoritarian and defensive, suggesting that the conflict between the apostle and infant church, that the Galatians are tempted to depart from the gospel Paul has preached to them. What is this gospel and what distinctions between it and the message of his opponents does Paul resurrect? Both of these questions can be answered from a careful exegetical study of Galatians 3.18-25, revealing Paul’s own exegesis of Hebrew scriptures: while his opponents exegete a harmony between the Abrahamic covenant of Genesis and the Mosaic covenant in Exodus, they perpetrate that one must follow the law (receive the sign of circumcision) in order to enter into the promises of Abraham, while Paul reverses the preferencing,  inclusively uniting both Jew and Gentile on the basis of faith to be rendered righteous in Christianity.

            While some commentators, such as Walter Hansen, suggest that the conflict of Galatians was a return to paganism because of Paul’s words about “exchanging their experience of the Spirit for dependency on the flesh,”[2] Udo Schnelle and the majority of commentators I read believe that  Paul’s references to being perfected by the flesh in Galatians 3.3 are linked to Jewish Christians, commonly referred to as Mosaic, who believed that all Gentile Christian converts must conform to the rites of the Mosaic covenant mediated through Moses.  Beginning our exegesis with Galatians 3.18, Paul states a radical position in opposition to the “evangelization” of his orthopraxic Jewish-Christian opponents: that the inheritance of salvific relationship with God does not come from the law. Rather, here Paul introduces a new exegetical movement in his reading of the Torah: a preferencing of the Abrahamic covenant, blessings by faith, over the necessity follow Mosaic law. From this position, Paul supports his argument that the Gentile converts do not need to receive circumcision to enter into the covenant that God made with Abraham.

Paul’s argument regarding Mosaic Law in Galatians 3.18-25 finds itself embedded in the larger context of a polemical epistle most likely written to the Gauls in Northern Galatia. Paul is arguing against doubts the Galatian church is harboring about their part in the salvific covenant God made with Abraham because they have not received the external sign of circumcision with which God sealed this covenant to the Jewish people. Recounting the results of the Antioch conflict over Gentile circumcision debated at the Jerusalem Council, Paul asserts that since the council, Peter and others have gone against the agreed position that Jewish converts would maintain their religious distinctive as Christians, but Gentiles were not bound to take on these distinctions.[3] Paul seems greatly distressed over a conflict in which some Judaizers[4] have raised doubts in the minds of the Galatians both to the truth of Paul’s preaching and validity of his apostleship, as well as the validity of their own faith without circumcision. Paul maintains his argument that circumcision is not necessary to be included in the inheritance of the Abrahamic covenant. This being said, Paul insists that the Mosaic Law was still divinely inspired; simply that it did not instill in human nature the ability to follow in its righteous directing to right relationship with God.

Ultimately, Paul faults the fallen condition of man to find complementarity between the Mosaic Law and the Abrahamic covenant, though he does make the controversial distinction that the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises in Christ make Law observance extraneous and even detrimental to the faith of those who were not first under the Law. Asserting the oneness of God and Christ as the Promised Seed of the Abrahamic covenant, Paul opposes his fellow Jewish Christians in regards to the necessity of entering into faith in Christ through the Law of Moses. Recognizing that Moses’ Law was inspired by God for His Chosen People the Jews, Paul equalizes the places of Jew and Gentile before God as sinners. Though the Jews had the path of Righteousness in the Law, they lacked the ability to walk in that path, and therefore were worse off in sin than the Gentiles because they had knowledge of it. Paul frames his argument regarding the Galatian’s assurance of co-inheritance with Christ by addressing the doubts Judaizers have instilled in their minds regarding Law observance and Gentile faith conditions.

Verse 18 of the selected passage addresses Paul’s overall conclusion regarding the Law: If one must pass through the requirements of Mosaic Law to embrace the faith of the Abrahamic covenant, negates the Abrahamic promises. Paul contrasts the term “ἐκ νόμος” (through the Law) with “ἐκ  ἐπαγγελία” (through the promise)to point out that if the inheritance of righteousness comes through the Law, God has nullified His previous covenant to Abraham.[5] Madera indicates that this verse contains the only undisputed reference to “κληρονομία”[6] in all of Paul’s epistles, referring to an inheritance of “the promised Spirit” mentioned in Galatians 3.14.[7] Given the overall context of the passage, it indicates that the blessing of Abraham through its fulfillment in a person of promise, Jesus Christ, allowed both Jew and Gentile to “receive the promised Spirit through the faith.”[8] Recognizing the Spirit of Jesus as the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise, Paul affirms that God gave Abraham this inheritance through promise. “χαρίζομαι”[9]translated as “has given” or “granted” is set in the present tense, though God obviously made His covenant with Abraham ages ago. Madera notes that this ”points to the gracious and enduring aspect of God’s promise to Abraham.”[10]

Verse 19 ponders why Mosaic Law observance for the Galatians would negate faith in the Abrahamic promises, and why was the Law given at all. The Law, as an impossible standard of righteous living to all sinful men, brought Jewish awareness to the fact that their condition was as sinful as the next Gentile. Inability to fulfill the Law spurned Jewish expectancy of the Promised Seed of Abraham; Paul plays on the singularity of the term “σπέρμα”[11] to introduce Christ as the seed promised to Abraham.[12] Not only did the Law bring about realization of sin amongst God’s chosen people, but Paul also points out its lesser status to the Abrahamic promises because it was given through mediation rather than direct communication. In verse 19, Paul rhetorically questions the purpose of the law, considering that he has asserted that Jewish and Gentile salvation come through the covenant of promise God made with Abraham. This verse is packed with Paul’s exalted Christology, pointing to Christ as the promised offspring of Abraham, who fulfilled the promise made. Paul makes note of two pieces of information with regard to the giving of the law in this verse: first, that “it was added because of transgressions” and that “it was put into place through angels by an intermediary.”[13] These are two negative purposes, the first regarding transgressions more controversial than the law’s subservient status to the Abrahamic promises because of mediation. What does Paul mean that the Law was given “because of transgressions?” Paul uses the Greek work “παράβασις,”[14] which is translated “transgressions,” which has two different meanings in Greek: to go over or to disregard or violate.[15] The second meaning seems to indicate a relation to law, and a developed state of mind in which sins “take on the character of transgressions, and thereby the consciousness of sin be intensified and the desire for redemption be aroused.”[16] Along with this premise, Paul supplies a second, that of the Law being given through angels and communicated by an intermediary, is lesser than the directly given promise from God to Abraham.

While Paul’s Judaizer opponents “probably appealed to both these traditions (the Abrahamic covenant of promise and the Deuteronomic covenant of blessings/curses under law) to persuade the Galatians that their lack of circumcision was a breach of God’s covenant and Law, and thus, in accordance with the witness of scripture, brought them under the Law’s curse.”[17] It is likely that these Judaizers prefaced entrance into sharing the Abrahamic covenant with the Jewish people, and the chief seed of Abraham (Jesus Christ), with conformity to Mosaic code, a physical affiliation. Paul spiritualizes the idea of being a “progeny of Abraham” by making the requirement faith rather than circumcision (Galatians 3.9).  Paul’s purpose in subordinating the Mosaic code to the Abrahamic promise is not to nullify the Mosaic code as a central observance in Jewish faith, serve his polemical agenda. Verse 20 continues Paul’s explanation of the subordinance of the Mosaic law to Abrahamic by further discussion of mediation as a negative factor in the giving of the law. How does “but God is one”[18] affirm “an antithesis to what is said about the mediator” of the Mosaic covenant[19]?  It seems that Paul’s point of controversy about the mediation of the Law is that to preference a covenant which was given through angelic parties and indirectly mediated through Moses to the Jews would divide the God of the Jews from the God of the Gentiles, demonstration that “it is fitting that He should provide one way of salvation for both—the way of faith.”[20] Verse 20 supplies an explanation of why mediation makes the Law secondary to faith. While commentators speculate about the mediatorship remark, but seem to indicate that the affirmation “God is one” means that both Jew and Gentile operate on the same playing field when approaching righteous living. Thus faith in Christ as the one means of fulfilling the Abrahamic promises for both: “it is fitting that He should provide one way of salvation for both—the way of faith.”[21]

Affirming that God is the same for Jew and Gentile, Paul’s insistence that righteousness living under the law is no greater than those who follow Christ without the law, but then turns to say that since the Mosaic law and the Abrahamic promises are both of God, they cannot oppose one another.  Paul’s “innovation” as it were, is the conclusion that “the law as a means of justification and life, in terms of Lv. 18.5, has been superseded by faith in terms of Hab 2.4.”[22] Paul seems to be reading Habakkuk 2.4 as his own scriptural proof text against a legalistic reading of Leviticus 18.5, saying the just will live by faith, not that life is only found when one keeps the laws and customs of the Mosaic law.[23] Yet he does not separate the Abrahamic promises and Mosaic Law, noting that if one could give life by a law, “righteousness would indeed be by the Law.”[24]  Paul insists that it is not possible to find the law to be a source of righteousness, because the nature which the law is to direct is more fundamentally corrupted than the law can compensate for. Thus Paul says, if one could follow the law, it would maintain a righteous course. This argument strikes at Paul’s opponents, who have been trying to persuade the Galatians that to enter into the Abrahamic covenant,  

            Verse 21 proposes that if there is only one way into the salvific covenant of promise, do the requirements of the Mosaic Law contradict the Abrahamic promises? No, Paul responds, for if one were capable of fulfilling the Law, one would be living righteously. The problem is not the presence of the Law, but rather human nature: reception of Mosaic Law does not perfect fallen human nature; rather, it draws out the inability of man to please God of his own initiative. Thus the Law is unable to “ζῳοποιέω,”[25] impart life, but in more than a physical sense, a righteousness “of the spirit, quickening as respects the spirit, endued with new and greater powers of life;”[26] inferring from context a sense that the Law was incapable of providing the sort of spiritual and physical resurrection required by human nature. Linking the first clause of this verse to the second, Paul says if the Law could give life, righteousness, “the state of him who is as he ought to be…the condition acceptable to God,”[27] would come from the Law. Since it would seem that the Law was not intended to provide righteousness, the Law merely “offers apparent righteousness devoid of life.”[28] Paul’s negative description of the Law as not providing life from which righteousness would spring as a transformative effect of the life points towards the effects of faith after the heritage of Abraham.

            Interestingly in verse 22, Paul notes that “Scripture (γραφή)[29] imprisoned everything under sin,”[30]not the Law (νόμος)[31]. Matera describes Paul’s use of Scripture over Law as “a personification of God’s will.”[32] So what is this Scripture Paul is employing to say that man is trapped in a sinful condition? Habakkuk 2.4 is cited as the main proof text his assertion that the only way out of man’s sinful condition is to partake in the “promise by faith of Jesus Christ.” Matera notes that Paul cites other passages from the Hebrew Scriptures regarding the sinful condition of man in Roman 3.9-28: Proverbs 1.16, 20.9; Psalms 5.9, 10.7, 14.1-3, 36.1 53.1-3, 140.3; Jeremiah 5.16; Isaiah 59.7-8.[33] Based on these Scriptural backings, Paul feels confidant to claim that faith in Jesus, then, is a continuation of the Abrahamic covenant of promise. Paul structures his argument employing the term “ἵνα,”[34]which allows the conclusion to be derived “that the promise is given to those who believe.”[35] Referring back to verse 19, the coming of Jesus as “the seed…to whom the promise (of Abraham) was made,” could be seen as the solution to man’s transgressions which were exemplified as unsolvable by the Law because He brought a new nature and adoption as sons for those with faith. Paul here is reinterpreting the faith of Abraham by “the subjunctive genitive, ‘faith in Christ.”[36]

            Referring to the time “before faith came,”[37] Paul changes from speaking of the expectant faith of Abraham to the presence of Christ, the fulfillment of the promises in faith. Speaking of the Jewish people’s condition in verse 23, Paul changes his discussion of faith from Abraham to Jesus, saying that since the Law did not provide solutions to transgressions, the Jewish people under the Law were cut off from the realization of faith as a means of renewing their natures, returning to God. In a way, the Law incubated a helpless state of incapacitated obedience amongst the Jewish people since they were unable to maintain salvific promises. Thus to be “’under Law’ is in practice to be ‘under sin’—not because law and sin are identical, but because law, while forbidding sin, stimulates the very thing it forbids.”[38] Painting the weight of the Law as a kind of captivity from which the redemption of Christ is liberating, Paul’s emphasis that all are under sin brings all into the judgment of the Law, in need of liberation. Yet at the same time, the presence of the Law under which both Jews and Gentiles are “captive” draws a separation between Jews and Gentiles by subjecting all to penalization, but keeping: “the Gentiles out of the privilege of God and kept Israel apart from the rest of mankind; this divisive force has been overcome by the unifying effect of Christ’s redemptive act.”[39]

            Calling the Law a schoolmaster or guardian in verse 24, Paul credits the presence of the Law with giving the Jewish Christian enough realization of their sins to know Law observance was impossible without faith, and that this faith found its justification in Jesus Christ without necessarily navigating through the Mosaic Law. The supervision of the Law is given in a temporal context, “εἰς Χριστόν” best translated “until Christ.”[40] The temporality of this phrase indicates that a kind of supervision was necessary (or perhaps fortification) until the object of promise, Abraham’s Seed, arrived as the fulfillment of his offspring’s inheritance of faith. F.F. Bruce considers the fulfillment of this promise to be the act of justification that was expected by Abraham[41] when his faith was accredited as righteousness before the coming of the promise. Interpreting “the appearance of Christ gave effect to the purpose of God—‘that we (Jews and Gentiles without distinction) should be justified in faith,’ in accordance with the promise to Abraham.”[42] According to Paul, God’s justification of the Abrahamic covenant through faith in Christ removes the Law as a distinction between Jews and Gentiles, uniting them in a common inheritance with Abraham in Christ.  

            Paul draws his Law and Promise discourse regarding the legitimacy of Gentile inheritance of the Spirit through Abraham-like faith draws to a conclusion in verse 25, demonstrating to the Galatians that the Mosaic Law brought about the realization that man could do nothing on his own to achieve inheritance-status in the Abrahamic covenant. While the Law would prepare the people for a leap of faith by disclosing their own depravity, Paul exegetes Genesis to claim that the Seed promised to Abraham would complete the righteous justification man needed in order to maintain obedience to God. Thus for the Jews, the coming of Jesus as the Promised Seed of Abraham would bring about a culmination of their entire expectant history, while for the Gentiles, Paul draws opposite conclusions. It is all very well and good for the Jewish converts to observe the Mosaic Law since it is part of their redemptive history with God. For the Galatian Gentiles, however, Paul says that to turn to Mosaic Law in order to partake in the Abrahamic covenant to which they have already been enjoined by faith in Christ would be a denial rather than an acceptance of the promise of Christ. As Schnelle notes, “Paul’s Christ hermeneutic necessarily presupposes that the Law/Torah as a soteriological principle has been annulled, for otherwise Christ would have died for nothing.”[43]