Re-reading Galatians

In this article, I want to invite us to reconsider what Paul was talking about in Galatians, once some standard presuppositions that have shaped the traditional reading are set aside. Let’s start with the classic passage of Galatians 3:1-6 that is a principal source for the letter’s misreading.

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? So also Abraham ‘believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’

It’s commonplace—in fact, it’s almost guaranteed—that most evangelical preachers addressing this text will take for granted what Paul is talking about here. Namely, how the Reformers, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, read it. For them, Paul’s target was what they took to be Jewish legalism (so-called “works-righteousness”—the idea that “good works” could justify a person and get them to heaven) and the Apostle was contrasting that with justification by faith in Christ alone.

The Reformers’ context was the corruptions of the mediaeval Catholic church, to which they saw a direct parallel. In other words, it seemed obvious to them that what Paul had experienced in the first-century church was what they were experiencing in the sixteenth-century church.

This standard way of reading it pretty much held sway for many centuries, until the last fifty years or so. However, recent scholarship (generally known as “the new perspective on Paul,” or “Paul within Judaism”) has led to a massive revision of those assumptions (albeit, still only rarely reflected in popular evangelical preaching). This new perspective starts from reading Paul within his native Jewish context—not least because the first-century Jesus-following groups to which he was writing in the New Testament period were a stream within Judaism at the time—and re-reading the literature of the period, including more recent discoveries.   

Let’s be clear at the outset: good works do not get someone to heaven. Legalism is antithetical to authentic Christian faith and the nature and character of God. But here’s the thing: it’s antithetical to the Jewish faith and its understanding of the nature and character of God as well. And always has been. Faithful Jewish believers—before, during, and after the time of Jesus—never believed anything different. One of the Old Testament verses most quoted in the New Testament is Habakkuk 2:4: “The righteous shall live by faith”—that’s where Paul got it from (it wasn’t a new idea that emanated from Jesus). Undoubtedly there were legalists in first-century Judaism, reflected in many of the religious leaders Jesus clashed with, but we all know there are plenty in twenty-first-century Christianity as well. It’s a human trait that plagues all religions, but it’s not an inherent characteristic of Jewish faith.

To understand what Paul was concerned about when he wrote these words to the Galatians we need to start by “following the rules” of reading the Bible well, and specifically, that means reading Galatians in context. Misreading what Paul was talking about comes from thinking we “already know” what a passage is “obviously” all about, and then “reading that in” to what it says—or rather, into what it appears to say when we read it through those prior assumptions. In biblical interpretation, a decontextualized reading will almost always come up short. Taking verses and passages out of context and interpreting and applying them regardless is probably the major shortcoming in everyday Christian preaching. The Bible is only the Word of God when we are getting its meaning right, which starts from how it would have been heard and understood at the time.

Luther, Calvin, and the other Reformers were not wrong in their critique of the mediaeval Catholic church. There is no doubt that the Holy Spirit “spoke” to them through Galatians to reveal the church’s shortcomings and to bring revival and restoration to authentic Christian faith. Where they were wrong was in their assumption that Paul’s situation vis-à-vis first-century Judaism was pari passu with their own. The Spirit spoke meaningfully to them through a passage such as this one, but that was not its original meaning in its context.

The first element of the context is Paul’s audience. Remember that here, as elsewhere, Paul was not writing context-free timeless theology textbooks. He was writing pastoral letters to specific groups of Jesus followers in specific places and situations, often responding to specific issues. That influences our interpretation of what he wrote. Throughout his letters, including Galatians, he mostly writes to gentile believers, not Jewish believers—and still less to all believers everywhere.   

The second element is what Paul has in mind in two key phrases. By “the works of the law,” he means the commandments that we call Torah, which is the basis of the covenant between God and Israel. Torah means “teaching” or “instruction” and was a comprehensive framework for “how to live as God’s people,” given to Israel by God following the Exodus from Egypt. It was never a set of human legalistic ideas as to how individuals can get to heaven by their own “good works” (that’s just a crass stereotype). King David could so often say “Oh how I love your law” (Psalm 119), because all Israel did—Torah was God’s precious gift to them, the identity markers of what it meant to be God’s people. And by “the flesh” here, Paul means Jewish identity, as the basis of being included in God’s people. (In other contexts, the Greek word can convey other meanings, such as “carnal,” “worldly,” or “the physical body”).    

The third element of the context is the significance that Paul attributes to the charismatic activity of the Holy Spirit: specifically, the gentile Galatian believers having “received” the Spirit—God having “given” them the Spirit and performed works of power amongst them at the outset of their faith in Christ.

And the fourth element is the nature and identity of “the troublemakers” whose presence caused Paul to feel the need to write in the first place. It’s commonly assumed that these people were traditional Jews who were saying that gentiles needed to convert to become fully and properly Jewish to be included in the people of God; the whole nine yards, including circumcision. More likely, however, is that they were Jesus followers; possibly Jewish, but more likely, gentile “God-fearers”—gentiles who admired the Jewish faith and had chosen to associate with the life of a synagogue (this was not uncommon in urban centres in the Greco-Roman world). Given that “Christianity” (as we now call it) was recognized as a stream within Judaism at the time, it is likely that the earliest gentile Jesus followers would have come from the ranks of God-fearers.

Either way, these Jesus followers from Jerusalem were arguing that gentile believers needed to adopt at least some of the lifestyle aspects of Torah. Why? Because Torah was held in such high regard; the gift of God that had defined a relationship with the God of Israel for hundreds of years. Why would you suddenly dump it overnight? Only if you already thought it was rubbish and couldn't wait to be liberated from it by the Messiah (which no one did, Paul included).

The traditional reading of Galatians starts from anti-Jewish theological assumptions (“bad” old Judaism, versus “good” new Christianity—the latter liberating everyone from the former) that became embedded in Protestant thinking through the centuries. These assumptions were centred on a negative stereotyping of the Jewish faith as epitomizing hypocritical, legalistic “works-righteousness,” a view that (thanks to misreading Galatians) the Apostle Paul was wrongly presumed to share. Paul was not rejecting Torah for Jews such as himself; still less was he denigrating it or those who practised it. He was railing against the idea that “bits of Torah” needed to be “bolted on” to the faith of gentile Jesus followers when God himself had quite clearly not required that (of which the anointing of the Holy Spirit was the evidence).  

The “big question” that the early church had to grapple with was how God’s wonderful gift of Torah “fitted” with God’s wonderful new gift of Jesus, for both Jews and gentiles, in their respective ways (see, for example, the big debate about that in Jerusalem in Acts 15). The “troublemakers” in Galatia were insisting on a traditional, conservative interpretation—that Torah had to be adopted by gentile Jesus followers for them to be accepted as part of the people of God. These conservatives derided Paul as a “liberal”—a “revisionist”—who was undermining traditional standards in favour of a more populist, less demanding kind of faith.

Paul’s perspective was significantly influenced by seeing the moving of the Holy Spirit in power upon non-Torah-following gentiles in response to the gospel. He was saying, “If God himself has affirmed these people as they are—welcoming them into a relationship with him as they are, by pouring out the Holy Spirit on them as they are—then who are we to question it, just because it doesn’t fit with what we’ve traditionally believed and assumed?”  

Paul is saying to these gentile believers:

“When you heard the message of Jesus, remember how the Holy Spirit came upon you? Remember the miracles you experienced? That you are experiencing, in fact.” (Notice that in Galatians 3:5 Paul uses the present tense). “This was God himself welcoming you into relationship with him without you needing to adopt Torah first—without you needing to become Jewish. He sovereignly “bypassed” Torah, did he not? The Holy Spirit didn’t move in power among you through a relationship with God defined by Torah, but one solely defined by Jesus; so respect what God has done. Don’t be bullied into thinking that you need to adopt aspects of what it has traditionally meant to be Jewish when God himself has clearly chosen to leave that out. How Torah now “fits” with our historic faith in the light of Jesus is a massive question for Jewish people like me. If Torah is not a requirement for you gentiles in your relationship with God through Jesus, then what are the implications for us as Jews? Does it continue to have a role in defining our identity as God’s people? But figuring all that out is our problem, not your problem! Just go with the flow of what God is doing amongst you.”        

So how did Paul “sell” theologically what he was saying to these gentile Jesus-followers whose consciences were struggling with the idea of “bypassing” Torah? Paul points them to Abraham—who, although he was the father of the Jewish faith, was also recognised to have been a gentile. Abraham’s relationship with God preceded the Jewish identity of God’s people as Israel. So Paul says, “Take your points of reference for the authenticity of a relationship with God that is not defined by Torah from Abraham—from his relationship with God, that also wasn’t defined by Torah. We Jews take our points of reference both from Abraham and from Moses (through whom we received Torah), but you gentiles don’t need to.”

But it was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that the Galatians were experiencing as gentiles (a feature of Jewish end-times expectations) that for Paul was the ultimate validating evidence.