What about Galatians?

Last updated on: July 17, 2016 at 7:31 pm by Gerald McDermott

What about Galatians? 2016-07-17T19:31:01-04:00 Gerald McDermott

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I have not finished my exposition of Mark 7.19b. This will continue in the next few days. But in the meantime, let me address the book of Galatians.

This book has been a stumbling block for millennia to those who try to understand these questions. For Paul there says to the Galatians, “If you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. . . . You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ, you have fallen away from grace. . . . For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love” (Gal 5.2-6).

The subject here is circumcision not food laws, but the two always go together. For they are two boundary markers for Jews, two requirements of Mosaic law for Jews. This is why they were both discussed at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.

So if Paul says circumcision is meaningless anymore, and in fact tells the Galatians NOT to get circumcised, doesn’t this prove that he has rejected Mosaic law?

It does, if he is talking to Jews.

But there is good evidence in this letter that the little church at Galatia was made up of Gentiles, and so Paul’s audience is Gentile. Then Paul’s words about circumcision make perfect sense. Mosaic law never told gentiles to get circumcised. Its instructions were for Jews.

The Judaizers were telling gentiles that in order to really be sure you are saved, you gentiles must convert to Judaism and get circumcised. Paul said, No, that misunderstands grace. We are saved by the “faithfulness of Jesus messiah” (pisteos Iesou christou; 2.16). Period. Gentiles are saved by Jesus, not by becoming Jewish. They are not saved by “works of the law” (2.16; 3.2, 4), which was a technical term for circumcision, keeping kosher, and Sabbath observance.

This is why Paul says, If you get circumcised, then you are obligated to obey the whole law (5.3). That means that if you become a Jew by being circumcised, then you must live like a Jew and obey the whole Mosaic law. His point is, Count the cost. It is not just circumcision, but all the other 612 Mosaic commandments that are required. But you don’t need to do any of that because you are gentiles, and messiah’s works are plenty sufficient to save you. No need to become Jewish!

Now . . . if Paul really means that Jews no longer need to circumcise their sons, why did he years later get Timothy circumcised (Acts 16.3)? And why did he later pay for the vows for four young Jews and purify himself with Mosaic purity rites at the Temple and pay for their sacrifices in order to prove that he did NOT tell Jews “to forsake Moses” and stop circumcising their sons and observing the “customs” which included kosher (Acts 21.17-26)?

These actions of Paul make no sense if he had earlier in Galatians meant that Mosaic law was defunct for Jews and that circumcision was meaningless.

But all of this makes perfect sense if Paul was talking to Gentiles. They were never expected to keep Mosaic law by circumcising themselves or keeping kosher.

Now . . . how do we know that Galatians was addressed to gentiles?

Here are the clues. First of all, as EP Sanders has written in Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, there is evidence that these Galatians had been attending a synagogue before their conversion, and so had already been performing some “works of the law” before Paul came to them.

But the first clear sign is Paul’s mention of the giving of the law to Israel through angels (3.19). This has no precedent anywhere in Jewish sources (John G Gager, Reinventing Paul, 89). But the idea of angelic mediation of the law to Gentiles and of the law as negative for them (“all who rely on works of the law are under a curse”) is not uncommon in the Jewish writings of Paul’s era.

Second, no Jew would ever imagine that the Law was against the promises of God to Abraham (3.21). Jews rather routinely spoke of the law bringing life to Israel but death to gentiles. So Paul’s explanation that the law was not against the promises would have been needless for a Jewish audience.

Third (and most telling), “we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe” (4.3), “you did not know God” (8), “you were in bondage to beings that are by nature no gods” (8), would never have been said about Jews. Jews believed they knew the true God, were never slaves of any other spirits if they were trying to keep the covenant, and certainly were not in bondage to other gods if they were in that covenant and not worshiping the gods of the pagans.

On the other hand, Jews routinely said all these things were true of the pagan gentiles.

Why would Paul say “we”? This was his rhetorical way of identifying with his audience, common in that period for rhetors and common for Paul.

Fourth, Paul’s warning that if they got circumcised they would have to keep the whole law–this was a traditional rabbinic saying to Gentiles. These words are in several rabbinic texts: “A proselyte who accepts all commandments of the Torah except for one is not accepted.” (Gager, 98) But, lest you think that Paul or the rabbis expected perfect obedience, listen to EP Sanders and Gager on this: “These texts imply only that one must accept all of the commandments, not observe them all perfectly” (Gager, 98).

So friends, Galatians is not proof that Paul dispensed with Torah. Quite the opposite. It actually shows that he agreed with what the rabbis were already saying and had said for centuries: that Torah is for Jews only.

That didn’t mean that gentiles had no way to share in the world to come. As I have mentioned before, there was a long rabbinic tradition that the Noahide commandments were for the Gentiles, and that if they observed them, they could be “righteous gentiles” who would have a share in the world to come.

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