Eamon Younis: “The Law Evidently Is Not Contrary To Faith”: Galatians And The Republication Of The Covenant Of Works

By Ben C. Dunson

[Ben C. Dunson is Associate Professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, Dallas, TX.]

Abstract

The meaning of the apostle Paul’s statement in Gal 3:12 that “the law is not of faith” has long been the subject of intense debate. Recently, vigorous debate has developed among Reformed scholars as to the significance of this phrase for understanding the nature of the Mosaic covenant and its place in the unfolding of God’s covenant plan of redemption. Some, such as Meredith Kline, have argued that the phrase points to a certain kind of meritorious principle inherent (“republished”) in the Mosaic covenant as a covenant administration (on the “national-typological” level). This article puts forward an alternative interpretation of Gal 3:12 and then situates this interpretation within the context of other statements about the Mosaic law within Galatians. It then employs two concepts set forth by post-Reformation Reformed theologians to clarify further the exegesis set forth in the article. In brief, this article claims that Paul’s antithesis between law and faith in Gal 3:12 is restricted to the matter of how an individual is justified, and that Paul does not in this verse articulate an absolute contrast between grace and the Mosaic covenant, whether on the national or individual level.

I. Galatians 3:12 And The Antithesis Between Faith And Law

Given that his topic is God’s law, Paul’s statement that “the law is not of faith” in the first half of Gal 3:12 is stark, even jarring. This phrase has become a point of dispute in much recent writing on Paul’s understanding of the Mosaic law, with many contending that this phrase is a programmatic statement of Paul’s view, and that with this phrase we are given insight into the theological essence of the Mosaic covenant. The present article will examine the meaning of Gal 3:12 and related texts in Galatians especially with reference to recent Reformed debates over whether or not the Mosaic covenant is a republication of the creational covenant of works.

Meredith Kline’s distinctive view of the role of the Mosaic covenant in redemptive history is largely responsible for putting the issue of “republication” on the current map of theological debates among Reformed writers. He lays out the central features of his view of Gal 3:12 in his book Kingdom Prologue:

The Mosaic economy, while an administration of grace on its fundamental level of concern with the eternal salvation of the individual, was at the same time on its temporary, typological kingdom level informed by the principle of works. Thus, for example, the apostle Paul in Romans 10:4ff. and Galatians 3:10ff. (cf. Rom 9:32) contrasts the old order of the law with the gospel order of grace and faith, identifying the old covenant as one of bondage, condemnation, and death (cf. 2 Cor 3:6–9; Gal 4:24–26). The old covenant was law, the opposite of grace-faith, and in the postlapsarian world that meant it would turn out to be an administration of condemnation as a consequence of sinful Israel’s failure to maintain the necessary meritorious obedience.[1]

Despite Kline’s view that “the Mosaic economy” is “an administration of grace on its fundamental level of concern with the eternal salvation of the individual,” he views the covenant itself as “the opposite of grace-faith.” Quoting Gal 3:12, Kline elsewhere makes a similar point: “The apostle thus saw in the Old Testament alongside the covenant of promise other covenants which were so far from being administrations of promise as to raise the urgent question whether they did not abrogate the promise.”[2] Simply put, Gal 3:12 reveals that “in itself” the Mosaic covenant is “a dispensation of the kingdom inheritance quite opposite in principle to inheritance by guaranteed promise,” which is not the same thing as saying that grace was unavailable to individual Israelites during the time of its administration.[3] Michael Horton argues similarly: “There is no mercy in the Sinaitic covenant itself. It is strictly an oath of allegiance by the people to personally perform everything commanded in the book of the law, with long life in the land promised as the blessing and exile and death as the curse.”[4]

Galatians 3:12, then, is a key text used to support a formulation of Reformed covenant theology where the Mosaic covenant, at the “national-typological” level, is a republication of the Adamic covenant of works, although its nature as a covenant of works is altered according to the different redemptive-historical situation of Israel.[5] This verse is not the only support for this formulation of covenant theology, but it is a central one.

The purpose of the present article is to challenge the view that Galatians (in particular Gal 3:12) provides evidence that the Mosaic covenant, on any level whether national-typological or individual, is non-gracious, or is based on a meritorious principle opposed to the graciousness of the covenant of grace. The central point of my argument is that the contrast entailed in Paul’s statement “the law is not of faith” (Gal 3:12) is a very narrow one: the law is completely opposed to faith with regard to justification. Paul simply does not speak of the Mosaic covenant in its entirety as a covenant administration in this verse or its immediate context, nor should a theological inference be drawn along the lines that Kline does. I will conclude by employing two distinctions made by Reformed orthodox theologians in order to further clarify the arguments made in this article.

II. The Context Of Galatians 3:12: Justification By Works Of The Law Or By Faith? (Galatians 2:16–3:9)

Why was Galatians written? The overall shape of the theological concerns is clear enough, despite widespread scholarly debates about the particular theological tenets being taught by Paul’s opponents. Certain people had entered the churches in Galatia teaching that the believers there had a deficient theology because it did not include within it a robust enough place for the Mosaic law. Most pointedly, the theology of the churches of Galatia, according to “some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel” (1:7), was defective because the Galatians had not been taught that at least a major part of the grounds for one’s justification must include taking on the yoke of the Mosaic law and faithfully keeping its stipulations (2:15–21; 3:10–14).[6] Paul spends the majority of his letter addressing this issue (and its implications); therefore, it provides us with the primary context for making sense of Paul’s phrase “the law is not of faith” in 3:12.

In Gal 2:15–21 Paul arrives at the key theological problem being urged upon him by the troublers: how is a person justified (declared to be in the right) before God? Galatians 2:16a–b gives the answer: being justified (δικαιόω) is not “by works of the law” (ἐξ ἔργων νόμου) but “through faith in Jesus Christ” (διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ). That is why “we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law” (2:16c–d: ἡμεῖς εἰς Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐπιστεύσαμεν, ἵνα δικαιωθῶμεν ἐκ πίστεως Χριστοῦ καὶ οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων νόμου). Why should one not attempt to be justified by works of the law? At this point in the letter Paul simply states that this is an impossible route to justification (2:16e); he will explain why this is the case in 3:10–14, although he hints at the answer in 2:19 when he writes of the law’s death-dealing nature, and in 2:21 when he states that the claim that righteousness (δικαιοσύνη) can be attained “through law” (διὰ νόμου) is tantamount to claiming that Christ died “for no reason” (δωρεάν).

Galatians 2:16 is the key text in Paul’s initial discussion of justification:

… yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

… εἰδότες [δὲ] ὅτι οὐ δικαιοῦται ἄνθρωπος ἐξ ἔργων νόμου ἐὰν μὴ διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, καὶ ἡμεῖς εἰς Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐπιστεύσαμεν, ἵνα δικαιωθῶμεν ἐκ πίστεως Χριστοῦ καὶ οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων νόμου, ὅτι ἐξ ἔργων νόμου οὐ δικαιωθήσεται πᾶσα σάρξ.

As is well known, debates swirl around the phrases “faith/faithfulness of Jesus Christ” (πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ) and “works of the law” (ἔργων νόμου). The generic-concrete pattern in Gal 2:16a points strongly toward “faith in Jesus Christ” as the correct interpretation for the former of these phrases.[7] First, Paul makes a generic statement in 2:16a–b: a person (ἄνθρωπος) is not justified (οὐ δικαιοῦται) by works of law (ἐξ ἔργων νόμου), but rather (ἐὰν μή) a person is justified (ἄνθρωπος δικαιοῦται is implied from 2:16a) through faith in/of Jesus Christ (διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ). Then Paul concretizes and personalizes this generic statement by noting that he and others (in context, Peter and all other believing Jews; see 2:15) have actually believed: “we have believed [ἡμεῖς ... ἐπιστεύσαμεν] in Christ Jesus [εἰς Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν] for the purpose [ἵνα] that we might be justified [δικαιωθῶμεν] by faith in/of Christ [ἐκ πίστεως Χριστοῦ] and not by works of law [ἐξ ἔργων νόμου].” The reason for mentioning the impossibility of justification by works of law a third and final time (2:16d) is that after writing of how “we” have been justified by faith in/of Christ rather than works of law (2:16c), Paul explains why “we” have sought justification in precisely this way: no human being (πᾶσα σάρξ) can be justified (οὐ ... δικαιωθήσεται) by works of law (ἐξ ἔργων νόμου). This last explanatory clause reverts to using generic terms (πᾶσα σάρξ) because it is conveying the general truth that no human being can be justified through works of the law.

Put differently, Paul is explaining why Peter’s action of separating from Gentiles at Antioch was so objectionable: he should have known (2:15–16) the principle (expressed in the generic statements in 2:16) that there is only one way of justification, and Paul reminds him that they both have actually found justification in exactly this way (expressed in the concrete-personal statements in 2:16). In 2:16, then, we have the first statement of Paul’s faith/works antithesis in Galatians: works of obedience to the law are absolutely opposed to faith when it comes to how a person is justified.

In 2:17–21 Paul writes of some of the central implications of seeking justification by faith rather than works, as well as what this means on a deeply personal level (2:20). He insists in 2:21 that seeking justification in Christ alone does not “nullify the grace of God” since (γάρ) righteousness could never be found “through law” (διὰ νόμου). If it could have been, Christ would have died for no reason (δωρεάν). In 3:2, Paul elaborates on the faith/law antithesis he introduced in 2:15–21 by posing to the Galatians the pointed question: did they receive (λαμβάνω) the Spirit “by works of the law” (ἐξ ἔργων νόμου) or “by hearing from faith” (ἐξ ἀκοῆς πίστεως)?

The key to determining the meaning of these two phrases in context is v. 3. Ἐξ ἔργων νόμου and ἐξ ἀκοῆς πίστεως in 3:2 correspond with the contrast between “by means of the flesh” (σαρκί) and “by means of the Spirit” (πνεύματι) in 3:3. In 3:2 Paul rules out reception of the Spirit ἐξ ἔργων νόμου, insisting that the Spirit can only be received ἐξ ἀκοῆς πίστεως. Paul assumes that the Galatians already know this through personal experience. In other words, he argues from the assumption that they have begun the Christian life by means of the Spirit’s power (ἐναρξάμενοι πνεύματι [3:3]). Paul then insists that it is just as impossible to “be perfected by the flesh” (σαρκὶ ἐπιτελεῖσθε [3:3]) as it is to receive the Spirit “by works of the law.”[8] In short, Paul’s talk of Spirit reception continues his polemic against justification by works of the law: if the Spirit cannot be received through obedience to the law, Paul insists, then the Galatians should have recognized that justification cannot be either.

In 3:6 Paul quotes Gen 15:6 (a text that speaks of Abraham’s justification by faith) as a confirmation of the faith/works-of-law antithesis stated in 3:5. Paul’s logic is this: reception of the Spirit is at the heart of the eschatological blessings promised to Abraham (see 3:8, 14) and heralded by the prophets (especially Isaiah). It is proof that the eschatological age has dawned in Christ.[9] Alongside of the eschatological outpouring of the Holy Spirit comes justification, which is just as eschatological; it is the arrival of the verdict of the final judgment in the present, received only by faith, which is what Paul focuses on in 3:6–9.[10] Those who have faith (οἱ ἐκ πίστεως [3:7]), like Abraham (the patriarchal forerunner of justification by faith), are justified when they believe in Christ. Faith, rather than obedience to the law, is the sole way to become a beneficiary of these blessings, whether justification or reception of the Spirit. Paul’s central claim is that it makes no sense to recognize that one has received the end-time blessing of the Spirit by faith, but then to assert that justification (an end-time blessing that cannot be divorced from Spirit-reception) can be received by works of the law.

In sum, Gal 2:16–3:9 serves to introduce the antithesis that lies at the heart of Galatians: a person is either justified by faith, or by works of the law. This antithesis is absolute and is limited to the issue of justification as we will see further in 3:10–14.

III. The Law Is Not Of Faith: Galatians 3:10–14

In Gal 3:10–14 Paul reaches the climax of the argument he has been developing since 2:16, turning to a discussion of the actual way in which a person is justified. Whereas he has already stated that justification is not possible through “works of the law” but is only received “by faith in Jesus Christ” (2:16), he now explains why that is the case in a five-step argument.

First, Paul states that “those who rely on works of the law” (3:10 ESV) are cursed by God. The Greek underlying the ESV’s “those who rely on works of the law” is ὅσοι ἐξ ἔργων νόμου εἰσίν. T. David Gordon argues that it is “entirely gratuitous (and entirely wrong) to add the words ‘rely on’ here in verse 10.”[11] While the truth of Gordon’s contention may initially seem obvious when one looks at the Greek (where the words “rely on” are not explicit), looking at the phrase in the broader context of 2:15–3:14 reveals the rightness of the ESV’s choice of translation. Paul has already used the phrase ἐξ ἔργων νόμου three times in 2:16, where he reiterates and elaborates on the impossibility of being justified ἐξ ἔργων νόμου. Paul has also insisted in 3:2 and 3:5 that reception of the Spirit cannot be ἐξ ἔργων νόμου.[12] At the heart of the theology of Paul’s opponents lay an opposite claim, namely, that justification was indeed ἐξ ἔργων νόμου, at least as a supplement to faith in Christ. Gordon is only half-correct, then, when he writes that “Paul does not condemn any alleged abuse of the Sinai covenant” in Gal 3:10–14. It is absolutely true that Paul’s quotation of Deut 27:26 in 3:10 simply states what the law itself demands, but it is equally true that Paul is attacking the way his opponents employ this truth: the fact that the law demands absolute perfection for justification should have led contemporary Jews (or Jewish “Christians” as is the case with the Galatian troublers) to flee to Christ in order to be justified, rather than to insist on some form of syncretism between Christ’s redemptive work and their own obedience to the law. That this kind of syncretism was urged by Paul’s opponents (and thus is an “abuse of the Sinai covenant”) is clear in Paul’s faith/works contrasts throughout 2:15–3:14. Paul is not arguing in 3:10 that everyone (without exception) under the Mosaic covenant administration was under a curse, but rather that everyone who fails to obey the law perfectly and who does not flee to Christ for justification will be cursed, because this constitutes “relying on works of the law” rather than on Christ’s fully sufficient sacrifice on the cross (3:13).[13] This reliance on one’s own law-keeping is exactly what the Galatian troublers have insisted on.

Why is justification impossible ἐξ ἔργων νόμου? Paul supports his claim that those who rely on the law are cursed by quoting part of Deut 27:26: unless a person carries out (ποιέω) “all things written in the Book of the Law” they will receive God’s curse.[14] Paul’s use of Deut 27:26 states things negatively: strictly speaking, the law can do nothing but curse those who do not obey it in its entirety. As will be seen below, Paul is not arguing that the Mosaic covenant considered as a covenant taught that perfect obedience would actually lead to justification. Rather, in response to the Galatian troublers, Paul insists that if one is going (foolishly) to turn to the law for justification one needs to read what the law actually says. Although the Mosaic covenant’s sacrificial system provided forgiveness for transgressors, the legal demands of the law itself can do nothing but curse those who do not obey them perfectly.

Galatians 3:11 gives us the second step in Paul’s argument, this time articulating the positive grounds for justification. Again quoting the OT Paul insists that justification “by the law” (ἐν νόμῳ) is impossible because “the righteous person shall live by faith” (Hab 2:4). In line with the recurring contrast between faith and works of the law in 2:15–3:14, Paul insists in 3:11 that justification is by faith alone and proves it by appealing to Scripture.

The third step in Paul’s logic is not as obvious at first, since it is implied. If it is true that, strictly speaking, the law can do nothing but curse those who do not obey it perfectly, the solution could simply be: “Keep it perfectly and then you will be justified.” In other words, why must Paul introduce faith in 3:11 as the sole instrument of justification when he has just written that it is mere obedience that prevents one from suffering God’s curse? There is a necessary (although unstated) premise at this point, which is this: no one has in fact kept the law perfectly as required by Deut 27:26.[15] This is why an alternative way of blessing is necessary.

Galatians 3:12 is the fourth step in Paul’s argument. In 3:11 Paul has said that a person is righteous by faith rather than by law. In 3:12 he explains exactly what it is about the law that prevents a person from being justified through obedience to its precepts: “the law is not of faith” (ὁ νόμος οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ πίστεως). As in 3:10, Paul again quotes the OT (Lev 18:5) in support of his claim. Regarding how a person is justified, this verse is taken as a summary statement of the law by stating that “the one who does them shall live by them.” While this is similar to the use of Deut 27:26 in Gal 3:10, the difference in 3:12 lies in that Paul is writing of what positively comes about through obedience to the law, namely, that one receives life, whereas 3:10 simply indicates what happens to those who do not obey the whole law.[16] While Paul does not view justification through obedience to the law as an actual possibility (because of universal sinfulness), he does contend that perfect obedience would be necessary if one were to attempt to find justification through law-keeping. Furthermore, he recognizes this principle of justification through obedience to be taught in the law itself, although again, only when viewed simply as a set of commands not situated within the broader framework of the Mosaic covenant. Put differently, 3:12 lays out the hypothetical grounds upon which a person could be justified; although, given the demand for perfection, Paul intends his readers to recognize that these grounds are in actuality unattainable.

So far, Paul has spoken of the grounds for justification and what happens to those who would rely on the law, rather than faith, as the means of being justified. Faith itself, however, is not the ultimate basis for one’s justification. Rather, as we see in 3:13 (the fifth step in Paul’s argument regarding justification by faith), it is Christ’s work of redemption on the cross that diverts the curse of God from “everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Those who have faith will be justified because Christ took the curse they deserved for their disobedience. Paul sees the death of Christ as the fulfillment of all of the blessings that were promised to Abraham and as the basis for the pouring out of the Holy Spirit in the eschatological age (3:14).

To understand Gal 3:10–14 on the whole, and in particular the strong statement in 3:12 that “the law is not of faith,” one must not lose sight of the very specific issue that Paul is writing about. Since 2:15 he has had a single topic in view, namely, the way of justification. Galatians 2:15–21 (and 3:7–9) is an initial statement of the fact that justification is not by works of the law. Galatians 3:10–14 is the proof (taken from Scripture itself) of the impossibility of justification by law-works. In all of 2:15–3:14 Paul simply does not discuss broader issues related to the nature of the Mosaic covenant as a covenant administration. It is therefore illegitimate to argue that Paul’s faith/works antithesis extends to the level of the “essence” of the Mosaic covenant considered as a covenant administration, or that it teaches an actual principle of works-inheritance, even if one restricts this to the national, “typological” level.[17] The Pauline antithesis in 3:10–12 is about individual soteriology, not corporate, covenantal life.[18] Furthermore, the possibility of blessing is offered only to those who keep the law perfectly (i.e., this is a hypothetical situation not realizable by sinners). There is no mitigation of the absolute demand of God; on this point there is no adjustment to Israel’s (sinful) situation in the land.[19]

That being said, it is also illegitimate to insist that Paul is merely refuting a misunderstanding of the Mosaic law in this section of Galatians.[20] When approached as a means of justification the saving criterion of the law itself is perfection. Law and faith are absolutely and irreconcilably antithetical when it comes to how a person is justified. One is either justified by faith or by keeping God’s law. The latter option Paul takes to be an obvious absurdity since all of God’s end-time blessings must be received by faith, in line with the example of Abraham, to whom these promises of blessing were originally made.

In sum, in Gal 3:10–14 Paul both gives us an inspired description of the law’s own demands and corrects a Jewish (or better, a Jewish-“Christian”) misappropriation of the law. Commandments can justify no one because no one keeps God’s commandments perfectly. Paul’s opponents think otherwise. In this unit of text Paul never deviates from his narrow focus, which is the grounds of justification. Towards the end of the letter (Gal 5:1–4) Paul’s argumentation in 3:10–14 is further clarified when he concludes his argument against justification by works of the law. It is those who “accept circumcision,” those, in other words, who attempt to be justified (in part or in whole) through law-keeping, who reject Jesus Christ and his saving work (5:2). Such people are “obligated to keep the whole law” (5:3). Why? Because when one attempts to “be justified by the law” (5:4) one is in fact cutting oneself off from the atoning death of Christ and falling away from grace. Such a person will find that the law in its narrow, commanding function is emphatically “not of faith.” Rather, perfect obedience becomes the only possible way of justification for those “who attempt to be justified by the law”: “The one who does them shall live by them” (Gal 3:10).[21] Some in the Galatian church have disastrously concluded that such law-keeping is actually possible for sinners.

IV. Answering “Defeaters”: Galatians 3:15–4:31

Even if one accepts that Paul has limited his discussion to justification (rather than the essence of the Mosaic covenantal administration) when he expounds on the law/faith antithesis in Gal 2:15–3:14, Paul does not end his discussion of the Mosaic law in that section of the letter. The material beginning in Gal 3:15 and extending to the end of ch. 4, then, forms the basis for a series of potential “defeaters” to my claim that he does not extend his law/faith antithesis beyond the narrow issue of how a person is justified, to (for example) the level of a national principle of meritorious inheritance through obedience to the terms of the Mosaic covenant. I will address several of these “defeaters” as I trace Paul’s argument in Gal 3:15–4:31.

In Gal 3:15 Paul uses a “human example” (he speaks κατὰ ἄνθρωπον) to confirm his contention in the preceding verses that justification is by faith alone. Paul’s logic is as follows. First, he states a general principle: even with a human covenant or will (διαθήκη), it is not possible to make amendments after the covenant has been entered into.[22] In 3:16–18 Paul applies this general principle to the relationship between the Mosaic law and the Abrahamic covenant and promises. Ultimately God promised eschatological righteousness and the possession of the Holy Spirit, not to all of Abraham’s descendants indiscriminately, but to Jesus Christ (3:16). In 3:17 Paul explains (τοῦτο λέγω) what this means: the Mosaic law (νόμος) came 430 years after the Abrahamic covenant; therefore, since it is not possible that the terms of the Abrahamic covenant can be altered by later changes and stipulations (3:15), it is not possible to argue (as Paul’s opponents do) that enjoying the Abrahamic covenantal “inheritance” (κληρονομία [3:18], which includes the eschatological blessings of justification and the pouring out of the Spirit [3:7–9, 14]) comes “by law” (ἐκ νόμου). The reason for this is that the law was given after the promises were made to Abraham. In 3:18 Paul explains further (γάρ) why the Mosaic law does not nullify the Abrahamic covenant: the only way the Mosaic covenant could interfere with the reception of the Abrahamic promise would be if one turned to the law as an alternative principle of inheritance, one based on obedience to its commands. Such an attempt would indeed “void [καταργέω] the promise” (3:17), but, of course, such an attempt is futile because the law was not given for this purpose (3:21). In other words, Paul is not arguing that the Mosaic covenant in actuality introduces an alternative principle of inheritance into redemptive history. Instead, he is contending that an alternative principle of inheritance would be introduced if (and only if) one turned to the law to receive the blessings promised to Abraham, since that route to blessing (specifically justification) is closed to those who do not keep the law perfectly.[23]

Thus, while Gal 3:15–21 has the Mosaic law in view, it provides no difficulties for the interpretation of 3:12 offered above. Paul says nothing about the Mosaic covenant beyond making the point that it has not changed the principle by which God makes good on his promises to Abraham.[24] Put differently: 3:10–12 does in fact state the actual demands of the Mosaic law. In 3:17–21, however, Paul closes off the possibility that obedience to the law is an actual route to receiving the blessings of Abraham for sinners who have not kept that law perfectly. Furthermore, it is difficult to see how Paul’s point in 3:17–21 that on the individual (soteriological) level it is not possible for the law to void the promise (3:17), “make alive” (ζῳοποιῆσαι), or grant righteousness (3:21) would lead to the conclusion that on the corporate (typological) level the Mosaic covenant reveals a diametrically opposed principle, one of works-inheritance.[25] Maybe it does, but Gal 3:17–21 does not say this.

In 3:19–22 Paul anticipates two related questions likely to emerge based on what he has written in 3:15–19. First, if the Mosaic law could not provide the inheritance of justification and Spirit-reception, what was its purpose? “Why then the law?” (3:19). Paul’s response: God gave it to Israel “because of transgressions” (τῶν παραβάσεων χάριν προσετέθη) until the Messiah should come. The two most likely meanings of the phrase “because of transgressions” are (1) that the law was given “for the purpose of” transgression, that is, either to increase the transgressions among the Israelites or to mark sin out more clearly as a transgression (explicit violation of law), so as to reveal their hopeless situation and point them to salvation in a coming redeemer; or (2) that the law was given “because of” transgression, that is, in order to deal with Israel’s transgressions in some fashion (probably through the sacrificial system).[26] Only the first of these translations makes sense in light of Paul’s follow up rhetorical question in 3:21, asking whether the law is “contrary to the promises” (κατὰ τῶν ἐπαγγελιῶν) of God. If Paul has in view the law’s ability to deal with sin in a saving fashion (even through the sacrificial system), the question in 3:21 would not arise, because if Paul had said that the law could wipe away Israel’s transgressions no one would have doubted the law’s harmony with the Abrahamic promise. In other words, by stating that the law was given “for the purpose” of increasing or revealing transgressions Paul had reason to anticipate the objection stated in 3:21.

Nonetheless, Paul emphatically rejects (μὴ γένοιτο) the notion that the law actually is contrary to God’s promises (3:21b). The law cannot grant eternal life or righteousness to anyone, but this is due to the inability of sinful humans to keep it, not to a defect in the law itself (3:21c–d). What Paul writes in 3:21 is not a contradiction of what he wrote in 3:10–12 where he stated that—strictly speaking—life and righteousness are to be found in obedience to the law (esp. 3:12). Rather, he is writing in 3:21 about Israel’s actual situation, a situation that assumes the presence of sin (see 3:22).[27] That is to say, since the Israelites are sinners, the hypothetical possibility of eternal life or justification through law-obedience stated in 3:10–12 is not a real possibility for them.[28] Put simply: life and righteousness are not available through obedience to the law (3:21) because no one keeps the law (which, again, is implicit in 3:10–12). The Israelites have been imprisoned “under sin” (ὑπὸ ἁμαρτίαν) by “the scripture” (ἡ γραφή) so that they might search for the promised salvation-inheritance by faith instead (3:22). Paul certainly posits a negative function for the law in these verses (revealing transgressions), but he does not make any attempt to infer a broad principle about the Mosaic covenant from this limited, negative function of the law.[29] There is no reason why the law’s function of showing people to be sinners should be taken as introducing a non-gracious principle into the Mosaic covenant as a whole, whether on an individual level or on a typological-national level. Even the fact that it is impossible to attain righteousness (δικαιοσύνη) through law-keeping (3:21) serves the purposes of redemption by pointing the Israelites to faith in Christ (3:22), just as the requirement for perfect obedience in 3:10–12 should have done.

Galatians 3:23–4:31 is an extended treatment of the theme of Israel’s existence under the law, brought into Paul’s argument to clarify his remark about Scripture imprisoning everything under sin (3:22). The argument has several distinctive components. In 3:23–29 Paul makes a historical contrast between the time of Moses and Jesus Christ, and the time after the coming of Christ. The time before Christ is the time “before the arrival of faith” (Πρὸ τοῦ ἐλθεῖν τὴν πίστιν).[30] This is a strong statement meant to indicate the captive (using the verb φρουρέω) condition of sinful Israel prior to Christ’s work of redemption. The contrast (“before” and “after” faith), however, does not indicate that the Mosaic covenant itself is wholly opposed to faith: the law-induced captivity that Paul writes of is a guardianship (the law is a παιδαγωγός) meant to point Israel away from its own (dis)obedience to the law itself so that Israelites might seek justification by faith instead (ἵνα ἐκ πίστεως δικαιωθῶμεν [3:24]). Now that faith (i.e., Christ) has come, the law has finished its narrowly circumscribed work of pointing to the impossibility of justification through obedience to the law.[31]

Put differently, the law serves the limited redemptive-historical purpose of pointing sinful Israel to the coming Messiah in whom alone they will find righteousness that avails before God. The time under the law, compared with the time after Christ’s coming, was for Israel a time of childhood under tutelage. Because Christ has come, true sons of God are no longer “under a guardian” (3:25).[32] That is to say, the Mosaic law has done its job; it has revealed to Israelites the impossibility of justification by their own law-keeping. Those who have believed have “put on Christ” (3:27) and are thereby “Abraham’s offspring,” heirs of the justification by faith and reception of the Holy Spirit, that were promised to Abraham and his descendants long ago (κατ᾽ ἐπαγγελίαν κληρονόμοι in 3:29, pointing back to τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν τοῦ πνεύματος in 3:14 [cf. 3:5–9]). It is unwarranted to extrapolate a broader covenantal principle (for instance, a national works-principle) from the limited “tutorial” role of the law described in these verses.

In Gal 4:1–11 Paul further explains the nature of Israel’s captivity under the law recounted in 3:23–29. As Moo notes, “each of these paragraphs [3:23–29 and 4:1–7] is dominated by a temporal contrast between a time of confinement and a time of freedom/inheritance, cast in terms of the maturation of a child. These parallels suggest that 4:1–7 is an elaboration of this key salvation-historical contrast in 3:23–29.”[33] What then is the nature of this expansion? As Paul puts it in 4:1, Israel, prior to receiving the promised Abrahamic inheritance (even though they were heirs to that promise) “differed in no way from a slave” (οὐδὲν διαφέρει δούλου), because Israelites living “under law” (4:5) were living under a guardian (ἐπίτροπος [4:2]). Furthermore, this time of childhood was a time of being “enslaved [δουλόω] to the elementary principles [τὰ στοιχεῖα] of the world” (4:3).[34] The language of slavery to “elementary principles” is striking, but its specific function in Paul’s argument must not be missed. Slavery to “elementary principles of the world” characterized the time Israel lived “under law” (ὑπὸ νόμον [4:5]). Why? Because redemption could never have been obtained through obedience to the law (3:21–22). Thus, Israel’s existence ὑπὸ νόμον is described using terms of tutelage. Their time under the law was a time of childhood instruction, the time of an heir waiting to become old enough to be eligible to receive an inheritance from his father (4:1–2). Such a child, Paul writes, while not actually a slave, is in the same position as a slave, since he currently is as unable to access his father’s wealth as is a slave.[35]

Paul’s talk of imprisonment and guardianship during the time of the law is comparative rather than absolute: it was not until Christ’s coming that redemption was actually accomplished (4:4–5). In comparison, everything prior to this point (even the types and shadows of the OT) can therefore be described as a time of childhood (even imprisonment) because it was a time in which sin had not been definitively dealt with. Christ alone brings redemption from the curse of God against all those who have fallen short of the law’s demands. As F. F. Bruce puts it (commenting on 4:5): “To be redeemed from existence ‘under law’ is to be redeemed from ‘the curse of the law’ (3:13).”[36] To turn to the law (even partially) for redemption is to turn to something that never had any inherent power to save (3:21), and is all the more abhorrent now that Christ has come (see 5:1–4). In 4:1–11 Paul does not contradict his insistence in 3:18 and 21 that the Mosaic law has not introduced an actually operative principle of soteriological inheritance through law-keeping. Attempting to infer this from the language of slavery is unwarranted.

Perhaps the most difficult “defeater” for those who would insist that Galatians does not teach that the Mosaic covenant is non-gracious in its essence is to be found in 4:21–31. The argument of those who say that the Mosaic covenant as described in these verses is non-gracious is simple: Paul writes that the Mosaic covenant (represented by Hagar) leads to slavery (4:22b, 23a, 24–25), while the Abrahamic covenant (represented by Sarah) leads to freedom (4:22c, 23b, 26–27), because it is based on a promise (4:28) rather than commandments.[37]

How should this argument be evaluated? To begin with, maintaining that the Mosaic covenant is not a national-typological covenant of works does not require one to deny that the Mosaic covenant has “at least some substantial differences in kind” with all other biblical covenants, including the Abrahamic covenant.[38] Gordon is correct to insist that “one might even raise the question of why God would inaugurate a covenant at Sinai, unless it were in some important ways different from the already existing Abrahamic covenant.”[39] The Mosaic law (note: not covenant) is clearly distinguished from the Abrahamic covenant in 4:21–31. The question is: what is the precise nature of this difference? Gordon admits that “Paul was not giving a thorough, comprehensive account of either covenant in Galatians 3.”[40] However, he sees the contrast between promise and law as warranting the conclusion that the Mosaic covenant is a “characteristically legal” covenant that is “different in kind” from the Abrahamic covenant, since in its essence it is capable of nothing but cursing a sinful people.[41]

The problems with this way of reading Gal 4:21–31 can be laid out as follows. After a personal digression (4:12–20) where Paul addresses the contention of some of the Galatians that he is mistreating them by insisting they adhere to certain teachings of his, he asks them a pointed question in 4:21: “Tell me, you who desire to be under the law [νόμος], do you not listen to the law?” What does the law say that should dissuade the Galatians from taking its yoke upon themselves? Paul has already told the Galatians what the law “says” earlier in the letter: “everyone who does not abide by everything written in the book of the law and do them is cursed” (3:10); “the one who does [what the law says] will live by them” (3:12); the law holds all transgressors “captive under the law” (3:23; cf. 4:5). Turning to the law, then, for justification is as absurd as it is impossible. In 4:21–31 Paul uses the stories of Hagar and Sarah to explain further what kinds of things those who would attempt to be justified by the law should listen for when they read it.

The controlling dynamic seen in the analogy of Hagar/Sarah is that of flesh versus promise, namely, what is possible according to natural human abilities and what is only possible because of the promise and power of God (thus Paul is returning to a theme introduced in 3:1–5, one which he will continue to develop in 5:16–25 and 6:7–9). In the context of 3:2–4:31, Paul is not making a generic statement about the superiority of promises to human endeavors.[42] Instead, he is using a biblical analogy to explain why human, fleshly effort cannot secure spiritual freedom and redemption.

What then does Paul mean when he writes in 4:24 that “these women are two covenants [δύο διαθῆκαι]”? He explains this analogy in 4:25–28.[43] Hagar, which in Paul’s illustration represents Mount Sinai, “corresponds to the present Jerusalem” who is presently “in slavery with her children” (4:25). That is to say, Hagar is not actually said to represent the Mosaic covenant, but rather to symbolize unbelieving Israelites in Paul’s own day.[44] These Israelites are enslaved because they look to their own obedience to the law for a freedom it is incapable of providing. Paul’s allegory is not a generic statement about previous generations of Israelites living under the Mosaic covenant, although it is certainly true that Paul emphatically warns against any attempt to find life from that covenant in the New Covenant age.[45] To place oneself under the Mosaic covenant after the coming of Christ would be to attempt to find life from commandments of the law abstracted from the gracious covenantal framework in which these were originally promulgated (as manifested primarily in the sacrificial system).[46] The law itself, no doubt, enslaves unbelieving Israelites in the present day, but only because they are “born of the flesh” just as Ishmael was (4:29). They are attempting to live under an obsolete covenant and are striving to be justified by their own (imperfect, and hence inadequate) obedience to the law (cf. 5:4). In contrast, the “Jerusalem above” (i.e., those who trust in Christ) is free (4:26–27). The Galatian believers participate in spiritual freedom because they are “children of promise” (ἐπαγγελίας τέκνα [4:28]), that is, “heirs according to the promise” (κατ᾽ ἐπαγγελίαν κληρονόμοι [3:29]). They are those who have received the “promised Spirit” (τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν τοῦ πνεύματος) “through faith” (διὰ τῆς πίστεως [3:14]), and who like Abraham have been justified by faith (3:7–9).

Paul focuses so much attention on the Mosaic law in 4:21–31 because the “troublers” are insisting that believers must complete their own justification through obedience to works prescribed within that covenant. He is not writing about whether or not the Mosaic covenant, considered on its own terms, in its own day, entailed a gracious arrangement for Israel. He has not suddenly begun a digression on the essence or nature of the Mosaic covenant. Rather he is providing an additional angle on the point he has been making throughout chs. 3–4: one is either lost in the spiritual slavery of fleshly striving after self-justification, or one has been ushered into freedom by the working of the Spirit, who is the gift God promised to Abraham and his seed.[47] Paul knows that most present-day Israelites live under this bondage because they live without redemption in Christ. If obedience to the law could not usher Israel into spiritual freedom (3:21–22), then it certainly will not do so for the Galatians (“you who desire to be under the law” [4:21]). Paul’s argument, then, throughout 4:21–5:4 is that obedience to the law cannot bring freedom or justify. What the entire Mosaic covenantal system can or cannot do is beside the point.

When Paul transitions into concrete applications of his teaching in ch. 5 it becomes all the more obvious that 4:21–31 must be understood in light of a limited contrast between Spirit and flesh: ch. 5 is an extended discussion of what real spiritual freedom looks like in practice, where those who “walk by the Spirit ... will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (5:16). Refraining from gratifying the desires of the flesh (because one is truly free) is precisely what it means for a person to be out from “under the law” (ὑπὸ νόμον [5:18]). Such believers are not enslaved by their flesh in the way they were before they received the Spirit (cf. 6:7–8). This freedom from sin’s mastery stands as the foundation of progressive sanctification. It is not a generic freedom from law or conditions that Paul describes.

V. Theological Reflections

The argument above can be summed up like this: Gal 3:12 reveals a very narrow and specific contrast when it places the Mosaic law in antithesis to faith.

It is wrong to deny the antithesis, but it is equally wrong to expand the antithesis beyond the narrow bounds with which Paul has circumscribed it in his articulation of the principle that law and faith are absolutely antithetical as a means of justification. Paul claims nothing more than this about the Mosaic covenant when he writes that “the law is not of faith.”

In this section I will highlight two important distinctions made by Reformed orthodox theologians, using Francis Turretin and John Owen as examples, that are helpful in further elucidating the meaning and theological implications of the exegesis offered in this article.

1. The Mosaic Law: Strictly Vs. Broadly Considered

First, an important idea found in Francis Turretin’s Institutes of Elenctic Theology provides a complementary perspective to the one offered above, a perspective that further elucidates Paul’s law-faith antithesis in Galatians.[48] In Instit. 12.7.28 Turretin puts forward for analysis a vital question, namely “whether the decalogue promulgated on Mount Sinai contained nothing except the covenant of grace and its pure stipulation.”[49] He first answers this question negatively since “no mention either of a surety or promise of salvation to be given to sinners occurs; but a bare promise of life to those doing and a threatening of death to transgressors.”[50] In support of this contention Turretin appeals to Gal 3:12 which he takes to encapsulate Paul’s belief that “the law of faith and the promise of grace” is “everywhere contradistinguished” from “the law of works (comprised in the decalogue).”[51] Put differently: “So great is the contrariety between these two means that they are wholly incompatible with each other.”[52]

What does Turretin mean when he states that the Mosaic law and faith are “wholly incompatible”? In the next section he explicitly rules out the notion that “the decalogue ... was nothing else than the covenant of works itself, renewed for the purpose of recalling the people to it, that they might seek life from it.”[53] In fact, “it is rightly said that the Decalogue belonged to the covenant of grace.”[54] In what sense then is the Mosaic law “wholly incompatible” with faith? To answer this question Turretin employs a distinction between the Mosaic covenant considered “strictly” and considered “broadly”:

It is one thing for the old covenant strictly taken to differ essentially from the new.... It is however another thing (when broadly considered as to economy) to be opposed as to substance, which we deny.... There is not the same opposition throughout between the Old and New Testaments as there is between the law and the gospel. The opposition of the law and the gospel (in as far as they are taken properly and strictly for the covenant of works and of grace and are considered in their absolute being) is contrary.... Although the law more broadly taken and in its relative being is subordinated to the gospel.... The opposition of the Old and New Testaments broadly viewed is relative, inasmuch as the Old contained the shadows of things to come (Heb. 10:1) and the New the very image.[55]

Turretin’s point is that we must look at the Mosaic law in two ways. Viewed narrowly (or strictly) simply as the commandments of God, the law is a “ministration of condemnation” because (when abstracted from the gracious covenant in which it is embedded) it reveals “what men owed [to God] and what was to be expected by them on account of the duty unperformed.”[56]

This is exactly the law-faith antithesis Paul describes in Gal 3:10–14: the law is not of faith with regard to how a person is justified because the law “strictly considered” simply commands obedience and threatens judgment for disobedience. It is the law, strictly considered, to which Paul points his merit-seeking opponents in Galatians (5:2–4). However, when we consider the law “broadly ... as to economy” the antithesis disappears because the law as a covenant charter for Israel contained within it the shadows of the salvific realities to come in Christ.[57] Paul does not focus on this broad use of the law in Galatians because of the very specific rhetorical purposes of the letter. He is not writing a systematic theological treatise on the role of the Mosaic covenant in the divine plan;[58] rather, he is passionately pleading with the Galatians to prevent them from turning to the law (even partially) for their justification. A nuanced discussion of how the law “broadly considered” “belonged to the covenant of grace” would perhaps have been counterproductive for Paul in this instance given the dire theological error being entertained by the Galatians.[59]

2. The Mosaic Covenant: Republished Declaratively Vs. Republished Covenantally

Second, we can turn to a comment John Owen makes on the relationship of the Mosaic covenant to the Adamic covenant of works, a comment which is representative of an important doctrinal distinction in Post-Reformation thought on the Mosaic covenant. In Owen’s Doctrine of Justification by Faith, he distinguishes between two possible ways one could understand the notion that the covenant of works originally made with Adam was restated, or republished, in the Mosaic covenant. Adam, Owen writes, broke the original covenant of works between himself and God. At this point the covenant of works is abrogated. Owen puts it this way:

It is also true, that God did never formally and absolutely renew or give again this law [the covenant of works with Adam] as a covenant a second time. Nor was there any need that so he should do, unless it were declaratively only, for so it was renewed at Sinai; for the whole of it being an emanation of eternal right and truth, it abides, and must abide, in full force for ever. Wherefore, it is only thus far broken as a covenant, that all mankind having sinned against the commands of it, and so, by guilt, with the impotency unto obedience which ensued thereon, defeated themselves of any interest in its promise, and possibility of attaining any such interest, they cannot have any benefit by it. But as unto its power to oblige all mankind unto obedience, and the unchangeable truth of its promises and threatenings, it abideth the same as it was from the beginning.[60]

The fundamental distinction is as follows. God entered into a covenant with Adam promising him the immutable possession of eternal life on the condition that he keep the covenant perfectly. Adam, of course, broke this covenant. After Adam’s violation of the covenant, God never again entered into a covenant with anyone based on the same terms as the covenant of works. This includes Israel as a nation. Although Owen maintains that God did “give again this law” under the Mosaic covenant (“for so it was renewed at Sinai”), he insists that it was “declaratively only” (emphasis added).[61]

In other words, God’s absolute standard of righteousness was restated, or re-declared, at Sinai, as was the necessity of perfect and total righteousness for justification. However, this declarative restatement of the demands of God’s law cannot be restricted to the era of the Mosaic covenant; it is, as Owen says, “in full force for ever.” The Mosaic covenant (with its extensive legal code) may declare the demands of God’s law in a more pronounced fashion than was the case in other eras, but this “declarative republication” began the moment Adam sinned, and remains in place until Christ’s return.[62] It is not something that obtains merely for Israel during the time of the Mosaic covenant.

Such a declarative restatement of the demands of God’s law (that was initially given to Adam in the covenant of works) is precisely what we have seen in Gal 3:10–14. In order to prove to sinful humans that they cannot be justified by law-keeping, Paul repeats the demand for perfect righteousness found in the law itself: “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them” (Deut 27:26 in Gal 3:10) and “the one who does them shall live by them” (Lev 18:5 in Gal 3:14). Since the demand contained within the covenant of works is “an emanation of eternal right and truth, it abides, and must abide, in full force for ever”[63] and as such was restated at Sinai. The covenant of works itself, however, was not reinstituted on the covenantal level at Sinai, although, again, Paul does not provide us with arguments for this fact in Galatians, since it was not within the scope of his purpose in writing the letter. Paul is writing about individual soteriology, not covenantal dispensations, when he juxtaposes Hab 2:4 and Lev 18:5 in Gal 3:11–12. That is to say, his argument that the individual cannot be justified by the law unless he obeys it perfectly provides no warrant for transferring this principle of individual soteriology to corporate Israel and claiming that Israel actually entered into a renewed covenant of works (on the typological level or not).[64]

VI. Conclusion

John Calvin’s comment on Gal 3:12 serves as a fitting conclusion to this study. Addressing Paul’s declaration that “the law is not of faith” Calvin writes:

The law evidently is not contrary to faith; otherwise God would be unlike himself; but we must return to a principle already noticed, that Paul’s language is modified by the present aspect of the case. The contradiction between law and faith lies in the matter of justification. You will more easily unite fire and water, than reconcile these two statements, that men are justified by faith, and that they are justified by the law. “The law is not of faith;” that is, it has a method of justifying a man which is wholly at variance with faith.[65]

Calvin captures the essence of Paul’s law-faith antithesis in Galatians perfectly: narrowly speaking the Mosaic law can do nothing but condemn those who do not keep it perfectly.[66] This is indeed a republication, or even better, a restatement of the demands of the original covenant of works. But that is not the whole story of Scripture, since broadly speaking, the Mosaic covenant (especially in prefiguring Christ’s sacrifice through its own sacrificial system) is an administration of the covenant of grace, and as such, is not opposed to faith in any way whatsoever.[67] Any attempt to describe the Mosaic covenant as republishing the principle of works found in the covenant of works must include this twofold distinction. It is incorrect (and as likely to obscure the full truth as it is to elucidate it) to contend that the Mosaic covenant is a renewed covenant of works and that Israel has actually entered into a new covenant of works, even if one restricts this to a national (or “typological”) level.

Notes

Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006), 109; cf. 110: “The covenant with Adam, like the typological Israelite reenactment of it, would have been a covenant of law in the sense of works, the antithesis of the grace-promise-faith principle.” Cf. Meredith G. Kline, God, Heaven and Har Magedon: A Covenantal Tale of Cosmos and Telos (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006), 128-29, where he speaks of the “Sinaitic covenant of works” which is a purely law-based covenant, although in that capacity it serves as “a sub-administration of the Covenant of Grace” by convicting “all of their sinful, hopeless estate.”
Meredith G. Kline, “Law Covenant,” WTJ 27 (1964/1965): 7. Kline’s phrase “other covenants” is a reference to the Mosaic covenant. Cf. Meredith G. Kline, By Oath Consigned (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 23: the Sinaitic covenant “made inheritance to be by law, not by promise—not by faith, but by works.”
Kline, By Oath Consigned, 22 (emphasis original). The full quote: “The Sinaitic administration, called ‘covenant’ in the Old Testament, Paul interpreted as in itself a dispensation of the kingdom inheritance quite opposite in principle to inheritance by guaranteed promise.”
Michael S. Horton, God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 50; Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007), 15 (emphasis original): “The Sinai covenant itself, then, is a law covenant.” Cf. the comments of T. David Gordon, “Abraham and Sinai Contrasted in Galatians 3:6-14, ” in The Law Is Not of Faith: Essays on Works and Grace in the Mosaic Covenant, ed. Bryan D. Estelle, J. V. Fesko, and David VanDrunen (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2009), 240-58, who argues that the Mosaic covenant is only able to condemn those subject to its terms, since “the Sinai covenant requires doing” whereas the Abrahamic covenant “is promissory, requiring nothing of Abraham or Sarah as a condition of the promise being kept by God” apart from “merely believ[ing] in the trustworthiness of the promising God” (248, emphasis original).
On Israel’s unique redemptive-historical situation see, e.g., Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 20.
“Those who trouble you” (Gal 1:7) are in common usage referred to as Judaizers, although using Paul’s own language, those who “Judaize” (Ἰουδαΐζω) are Gentiles who either are tempted to seek their own justification through obedience to the Mosaic law (primarily circumcision and the food laws), or who have already given in to this temptation. I will refer to them throughout as “the troublers.”
Fully entering into recent debates over the meaning of πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (and variations) and ἔργων νόμου is beyond the scope of this article. For further defenses of reading πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ as “faith in Christ” (rather than “faithfulness of Christ”), see R. Barry Matlock, “The Rhetoric of πίστις in Paul: Galatians 2.16, 3.22, Romans 3.22, and Philippians 3.9,” JSNT 30 (2007): 173-203; Matlock, “‘Even the Demons Believe’: Paul and Pistis Christou,” CBQ 64 (2002): 300-318; Matlock, “Detheologizing the Pistis Christou Debate: Cautionary Remarks from a Lexical Semantic Perspective,” NovT 42 (2000): 1-23; Moisés Silva, “Faith versus Works of Law in Galatians,” in The Paradoxes of Paul, vol. 2 of Justification and Variegated Nomism, ed. D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 217-48; Francis Watson, “By Faith (of Christ): An Exegetical Dilemma and Its Scriptural Solution,” in The Faith of Jesus Christ: Exegetical, Biblical and Theological Studies, ed. Michael F. Bird and Preston M. Sprinkle (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009), 147-63. For defenses of interpreting ἔργων νόμου as “works demanded by the law” (rather than “covenantal boundary markers” or “legalism” per se), see Silva, “Faith versus Works”; Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 300-321; Jason C. Meyer, The End of the Law: Mosaic Covenant in Pauline Theology (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Academic, 2009), 147-57.
In 3:5 Paul reiterates the fact that the Spirit can only be received ἐξ ἀκοῆς πίστεως.
Paul likely has Isa 44:3 (and similar texts from Isaiah) in mind when he speaks of the “promised Spirit” and Abrahamic blessing in Gal 3:14. On this, see Rodrigo J. Morales, The Spirit and the Restoration of Israel: New Exodus and New Creation Motifs in Galatians, WUNT 2.282 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 109-14; Thomas R. Schreiner, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 99-100.
On justification as the verdict of the final judgment brought into the present (where it is received by faith alone), see Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 161-66; Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1994), 54-58; Richard B. Gaffin Jr., By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2013), 91-92, 120-22.
Gordon, “Abraham and Sinai,” 244.
On this, see F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 157.
On this, see further Moisés Silva, “Faith versus Works,” 241-44; Moisés Silva, Interpreting Galatians: Explorations in Exegetical Method, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 192-95, 227-28. See also Herman Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2010), 4.4.52.
The form in which Paul quotes Deut 27:26 is this: ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ὃς οὐκ ἐμμένει πᾶσιν τοῖς γεγραμμένοις ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τοῦ νόμου τοῦ ποιῆσαι αὐτά. Although there are minor differences, this is very close to the LXX: ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ἄνθρωπος ὃς οὐκ ἐμμενεῖ ἐν πᾶσιν τοῖς λόγοις τοῦ νόμου τούτου τοῦ ποιῆσαι αὐτούς. The LXX itself is not substantially different from the MT: אָרוּר אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יָקִיס אֶת־דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה־הַזֹּאת לַעֲשׂוֹת אוֹתָם.
Rightly, G. Walter Hansen, Galatians (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 93-95; Udo Schnelle, Apostle Paul: His Life and Theology, trans. M. Eugene Boring (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 293; Hans Hübner, Law in Paul’s Thought, trans. James C. G. Greig (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1984), 19; Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians, WBC 41 (Nashville: Nelson, 1990), 118. On the nature of Paul’s “enthymemic” argumentation (arguments built upon unstated premises) in 3:11-12, see Marc Debanne, Enthymemes in the Letters of Paul, LNTS 312 (London: T&T Clark, 2006): 157, 166, and ch. 6 in general.
Already in the OT Lev 18:5 was interpreted to refer to the granting of eternal life. On this, see Preston M. Sprinkle, “Law and Life: Leviticus 18:5 in the Literary Framework of Ezekiel,” JSOT 31 (2007): 275-93; Preston M. Sprinkle, Law and Life: The Interpretation of Leviticus 18:5 in Early Judaism and in Paul, WUNT 2.241 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008); Simon J. Gathercole, “Torah, Life, and Salvation: Leviticus 18:5 in Early Judaism and the New Testament,” in From Prophecy to Testament: The Function of the Old Testament in the New, ed. Craig A. Evans (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 126-45. Paul certainly speaks in Gal 3:12 of eternal life, which is the final outcome of those who are justified.
This is exactly what Gordon (“Abraham and Sinai,” 244-46; cf. Mark W. Karlberg, “Legitimate Discontinuities Between the Testaments,” JETS 28 [1985]: 14) does when he insists that the Mosaic covenant is characterized by curses (as opposed to the Abrahamic covenant, which is characterized by blessing). Gordon clearly intends to characterize the entire Mosaic administration as one of cursing as opposed to blessing, and simply inserting statements that this is true “in some sense” does not mitigate that characterization. On the problematically vague use of the phrase “in some sense” to characterize the Mosaic covenant as a republication of the covenant of works, see Cornelis P. Venema, “The Mosaic Covenant: A ‘Republication’ of the Covenant of Works? A Review Article: The Law is Not of Faith: Essays on Works and Grace in the Mosaic Covenant,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 21 (2010): 57 and passim.
Contra Kline, Kingdom Prologue, 322-23.
Contra Kline, ibid., 20.
Contra, e.g., Daniel P. Fuller, “Paul and ‘The Works of the Law,’” WTJ 38 (1975): 40.
In 5:4 Paul is clearly only speaking of a person who attempts to obey the law in order to be justified. That the present tense verb δικαιόω should be understood conatively (something attempted) is clear in context: Paul obviously does not believe that anyone in the Galatian church is being justified by law. He does, however, believe that some, by taking on the yoke of the law (as focused in the act of circumcision [Gal 5:1-3]) are attempting to do so. Cf. Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 534-35; BDF § 319. Paul’s argument in Rom 9:30-10:8 is very similar: those, like Israel (9:31-32; 10:3), who attempt to be justified by law-keeping are shown that God’s law demands perfection in this regard (10:5). That is very different from claiming that the Mosaic covenant placed Israel under an actual (individual or national) covenant of works.
The precise type of human διαθήκη that Paul writes of is difficult to determine and is not important for my purposes. For the options, see Longenecker, Galatians, 128-30 (cf. Douglas J. Moo, Galatians, BECNT [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013], 227-28, who rightly reminds the interpreter that despite any difficulties “the point of Paul’s example is clear: that God established his covenant with Abraham in an irrevocable manner, so it can never be annulled or added to.”)
Kline wrongly reads Paul to be affirming in 3:17-18 that the law actually is opposed to the promise, which is the very point Paul is arguing against. The γάρ in 3:18 shows this to be true: 3:18 is a proof for Paul’s statement in 3:17 that the Mosaic covenant does not nullify the Abrahamic promise. The promise would only be nullified if (εἰ) the inheritance comes by law, which is not true, as the latter half of 3:18 proves: “but God gave it [the inheritance] to Abraham through the promise.” See, e.g., Meredith G. Kline, “Gospel until the Law: Rom. 5:13-14 and the Old Covenant,” JETS 34 (1991): 436: “On the classic covenantal understanding, the law that came 430 years later did not disannul the promise (Gal 3:17)—not because the old covenant did not really introduce an operative works principle, but because works and faith were operating on two different levels in the Mosaic economy.” Again, Paul is ruling out the inheritance of justification through law-keeping in 3:17-18; he is not writing about any other “level” in which the law might actually be “operative” (however valid talk of different covenantal levels might be, based on other texts).
Contra Gordon, “Abraham and Sinai,” 250, who argues the following (appealing to Gal 3:12 in support): “the Sinai covenant [is] distinctively (albeit perhaps not exclusively) legal.” Cf. ibid.: the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants “are dissimilar in kind: one is characteristically promissory; the other is characteristically legal.” However, Gordon does “not deny that each may have other aspects to it.” Both of Gordon’s caveats fall flat: he is illegitimately extrapolating “characteristic features” of the Mosaic covenant from the narrow principle stated in Gal 3:12 (or the way this principle is discussed with reference to the Abrahamic covenant in 3:15-19).
Contra Kline, “Gospel until the Law,” 435-36.
On the options, see Moo, Galatians, 233-34.
On this, see Witsius, Economy of the Covenants, 1.9.19-20; 4.4.49; cf. O. Palmer Robertson, Christ of the Covenants (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1980), 173-75.
As Longenecker, Galatians, 143, points out, it is clear that Paul is speaking hypothetically when he writes “if a law was given which could grant life, then righteousness would indeed be by law” (3:21) since he uses a “second class ‘contrary to fact’ conditional ... which assumes the condition to be untrue.”
Contra Longenecker, Galatians, 138, who states that describing the Mosaic law as “added” to the Abrahamic covenant in Gal 3:19 “signals a note of disparagement and suggests that the law was not of the essence of God’s redemptive activity with humankind.” This is only true of the law narrowly considered as bare commandment (on this see the “Theological Reflections” section below).
Many interpreters see an exclusively redemptive-historical contrast in 3:23 between the time of the Mosaic law and the time after Christ’s coming. See, e.g., Hans Dieter Betz, Galatians, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 175-77; Martyn, Galatians, 361-63. On this reading τὴν πίστιν refers metonymically to Christ’s coming (3:24: “until Christ came”). It is possible that τὴν πίστιν, with its anaphoric article, should be read as signifying the personal coming to faith of an individual who believes in Jesus, with the article pointing back to the mention of personal faith in Christ in 3:22 (3:24 also speaks of an individual being justified by faith). Perhaps it is best not to read Paul’s language in exclusively redemptive-historical or existential-personal terms. Paul appears to combine both conceptions freely in this context (cf. Bruce, Galatians, 181).
While the principle of the law pointing to the necessity of being justified by faith that Paul sets forth in 3:23-25 may be applicable by analogy even after Christ’s coming, that does not appear to be the main point Paul is trying to express in these verses.
For more on the παιδαγωγός imagery, see Linda L. Belleville, “‘Under Law’: Structural Analysis and the Pauline Concept of Law in Galatians 3:21-4:11, ” JSNT 26 (1986): 59-63.
Moo, Galatians, 257. In other words, 4:1-7 is not introducing an entirely different idea into the letter, but is simply expanding upon the previous section.
On τὰ στοιχεῖα, see Bruce, Galatians, 193-94.
I take Gal 4:8-11 to apply the general concepts found in 4:1-7 to Gentiles.
Bruce, Galatians, 196.
See, e.g., S. M. Baugh, “Galatians 5:1-6 and Personal Obligation: Reflections on Paul and the Law,” in The Law Is Not of Faith, 266: “It is obvious from Galatians 4:21-31 that the law delivered on Mount Sinai was a covenant of law.” Cf. Bruce, Galatians, 220: “The identification of Hagar with Sinai means simply that she and her descendants represent the law, which holds men and women in bondage.” See also Michael S. Horton, “Law and Gospel,” The Confessional Presbyterian 8 (2012): 156-58.
Gordon, “Abraham and Sinai,” 253.
Ibid.
Ibid., 250.
Ibid., 251. Again, cf. Horton, God of Promise, 50: “There is no mercy in the Sinaitic covenant itself.” Contrast this with Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. and trans. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., 2 vols. (Bellingham, MA: Lexham, 2012-2014), 2:128-29: “The Sinaitic covenant is not a new covenant as concerns the essence of the matter, but the old covenant of grace established with Abraham in somewhat changed form.”
Contra Gordon, “Abraham and Sinai,” 245-46, 249-50.
It is significant that Paul writes of Sarah and Hagar “allegorically” (ἀλληγορέω [4:24]). In other words, he employs them for illustrative purposes, rather than entering into a disquisition on how the fundamental nature of the Mosaic covenant is opposed to that of the Abrahamic covenant. The point of the illustration must be kept in focus: those who have the Spirit are spiritually free; those who do not are fleshly-minded slaves. Ronald Y. K. Fung, The Epistle to the Galatians, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 206-7, rightly points to the NIV’s capturing the nuance of Paul’s use of ἀλληγορέω: “These things may be taken figuratively.”
Rightly, J. Louis Martyn, “The Covenants of Hagar and Sarah: Two Covenants and Two Gentile Missions,” in Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul [London: T&T Clark, 1997], 200, although I do not follow Martyn’s overall theological argument, which (for instance) does not recognize that the law is opposed to faith with regard to justification. See also Moo, Galatians, 303-4.
Cf. Silva, “Faith versus Works,” 243-44. Indeed, if one were to insist that Gal 4:24 be interpreted as an absolute and comprehensive contrast between the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants “we would have no reason to credit the apostle with a belief in the divine election of the ancient people of Israel. Indeed precisely the opposite” (Martyn, “The Abrahamic Covenant, Christ, and the Church,” in Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul, 172). On this point, see also Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1975), 128-29.
On which, see Vos, Dogmatics, 2:130-31, where he insists that by Jewish misuse of the types and shadows of the sacrificial system “the covenant of grace of Sinai was in fact made into a Hagarite covenant, a covenant giving birth to servitude, as Paul describes it in Galatians 4:24. There he has in view not the covenant as it should be, but as it could easily become through misuse” (p. 131, emphasis added).
Cf. Graham Stanton, “The Law of Moses and the Law of Christ: Galatians 3:1-6:2, ” in Paul and the Mosaic Law, ed. James D. G. Dunn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 109.
See further, J. Mark Beach, Christ and the Covenant: Francis Turretin’s Federal Theology as a Defense of the Doctrine of Grace (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 262-72. For a survey of how this distinction was employed by many Puritan theologians, see Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2012), 270, 283-87.
All English translations are from Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger, 3 vols. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1992-1997), vol. 2.
Ibid., 12.7.28.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., 12.7.29.
Ibid., 12.7.30.
Ibid., 12.8.12, 15.
Ibid., 12.8.8; 12.7.31. Anthony Burgess, in commenting on the same strict/broad distinction, notes that the antithesis between law and gospel obtains only when the commands of the law are “abstracted from Moses” (i.e., the Mosaic covenant) on the whole. That is to say, when one looks at the commands of the Mosaic law outside of the whole context of the Mosaic covenant as an administration of the covenant of grace, “it was not of grace, but workes.” Anthony Burgess, Vindiciae legis: or, A vindication of the morall law and the covenants, from the errours of papists, Arminians, Socinians, and more especially, Antinomians (London, 1646), 223, cited in Mark Jones, “The ‘Old’ Covenant,” in Drawn into Controversie: Reformed Theological Diversity and Debates Within Seventeenth-Century British Puritanism (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 190. See also Turretin, Instit. 12.12.18; Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 3.222; Venema, “Mosaic Covenant,” 67-68.
As Guy Waters puts it: “Paul considers the moral demands of the Mosaic law, in distinction from the gracious covenant in which they were formally promulgated, to set forth the standard of righteousness required by the covenant of works. This is not to say that Paul believed that God placed Israel under a covenant of works at Mount Sinai.” See Guy P. Waters, “Romans 10:5 and the Covenant of Works,” in The Law Is Not of Faith, 211. Cf. the remarks of John Colquhoun: “The covenant made with the Israelites at Sinai could not be the covenant of works. God could not consistently, either with His own honor or with the nature of the covenant of works, renew or make again that covenant with persons who, by breaking it in the first Adam, had already subjected themselves to the penalty of it. He could, indeed, display it in its terror before condemned sinners, but could not again make it with them.” Colquhoun’s last sentence describes (using different words) the Mosaic law “strictly considered,” which is indeed displayed or restated within the Mosaic covenant. See John Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Law and Gospel (Grand Rapids: Soli Deo Gloria, 2009), 51-52. See pp. 55-64 for more on how the covenant of works is “repeated and displayed” to Israel, but not “renewed” as a covenant. Thanks to my former student Joseph Fogarty for bringing this passage to my attention.
Understanding the phrase “the law is not of faith” (Gal 3:12) in an unqualified sense is to read Paul in just this way
Turretin, Instit. 12.7.30. Michael S. Horton, “Which Covenant Theology?,” in Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry: Essays by the Faculty of Westminster Seminary California, ed. R. Scott Clark (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2007), 213, describes the broad/narrow distinction like this: “The Reformers, however, spoke of νόμος (Torah) in both a wide and a narrow sense: law as a principle of works-righteousness and law as God’s specific commandments to Israel.” Thus, for Horton, both the broad and the narrow senses of the law are centered on what God’s people must do to receive something from him. In contrast with Horton, the normal way the “broad” side of the distinction is applied by Reformed theologians is in emphasizing the graciousness of the Mosaic administration considered as a covenant.
John Owen, The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, vol. 5. of The Works of John Owen (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1965), 244, cited by Beeke and Jones, Puritan Theology, 297; cf. Jones, “The ‘Old’ Covenant,” 199-202. Compare Owen’s claim that God “did never formally and absolutely renew or give again this law [i.e., the Mosaic covenant] as a covenant a second time” with Kline’s statement (“Law Covenant,” 6 [emphasis original]): “In the Mosaic covenants ... ‘covenant’ ... denoted at the formal level the same kind of relationship as did the vassal covenants on which they were modeled. That is, ‘covenant’ ... denoted a law covenant.”
Cf. Geerhardus Vos, “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” in The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1980), 255: God “has repeated that promise [of the covenant of works] hypothetically and consequently has held up before us constantly the ideal of eternal life to be obtained by keeping the law, a lost ideal though it be.” Cf. Vos, Dogmatics, 2:133. J. V. Fesko, “The Republication of the Covenant of Works,” The Confessional Presbyterian 8 (2012): 197 (emphasis original), argues similarly to Owen: “The Mosaic covenant is part of the covenant of grace but republishes the covenant of works. Republication is different from re-administration.” This, however, is not republication as defined by Kline, who contends that the covenant of works was re-administered at Sinai, although at the national-typological level.
Cf. Westminster Larger Catechism 92 (citing Lev 18:5 as quoted in Rom 10:5 in support): “The rule of obedience revealed to Adam ... and to all mankind in him ... was the moral law.” Thus, this “declarative republication” is of the moral law, and cannot be said to be a feature present exclusively in the Mosaic economy (rightly, Robert Shaw, An Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith [Ross-Shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 1992], 195). Witsius, Economy of the Covenants, argues similarly to Owen, contending that although there was a “repetition of the doctrine concerning the law of the covenant of works” (4.4.47, emphasis added) at Sinai “we are not, however, to imagine, that the doctrine of the covenant of works was repeated, in order to set up again such a covenant with the Israelites” (4.4.49). In other words, “the covenant made with Israel at mount Sinai was not formally the covenant of works ... because that cannot be renewed with the sinner” (4.4.51). Cf. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 298: “The Sinaitic covenant included a service that contained a positive reminder of the strict demands of the covenant of works. The law was placed very much in the foreground, giving prominence once more to the earlier legal element. But the covenant of Sinai was not a renewal of the covenant of works; in it the law was made subservient to the covenant of grace.” If the only sense in which the Mosaic covenant “recapitulates” or “republishes” the Adamic covenant of works is that it “highlight[s] the miserable state of Adamic humanity so that grace might abound ‘all the more’ through the work of Christ” (David VanDrunen, “Israel’s Recapitulation of Adam’s Probation Under the Law of Moses,” WTJ 73 [2011]: 319), then this is not in fact a distinctive feature of the Mosaic covenant, since God’s law (whether seen in nature or in Scripture) has always served this purpose; contra ibid., 320: “this divine purpose of recapitulation was unique to Mosaic-era Israel” (emphasis original).
Owen, Justification, 244.
Contra Kline, “Gospel until the Law,” 435: “The law’s principle of works was not just something hypothetical. It was actually applied [to Israel]—and with a vengeance.” Bryan Estelle recognizes that Paul is talking about individual soteriology in Gal 3:11-12, but still applies Paul’s law-faith antithesis to the life of corporate Israel. Paul simply does not make this connection, as plausible as it might seem. See Bryan D. Estelle, “Leviticus 18:5 and Deuteronomy 30:1-14 in Biblical Theological Development: Entitlement to Heaven Foreclosed and Proffered,” in The Law Is Not of Faith, 134-37. Fesko (“Republication,” 204) correctly summarizes the historic Reformed view: “Proponents of republication historically discuss the concept in terms of soteriology and the function of the law.”
John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, trans. William Pringle (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 90. Cf. Silva, “Law Versus Works,” 242.
Cf. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, trans. John Owen (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 298 (commenting on Rom 8:15): “And then, if the law be viewed in itself, it can do nothing but restrain ... by the horror of death; for it promises no good except under condition, and denounces death on all transgressors.”
One example of how Calvin applies the broad/narrow distinction (without using this terminology) is seen in his comment on Rom 10:5 (Romans, 386): “The law has a twofold meaning; it sometimes includes the whole of what has been taught by Moses, and sometimes that part only which was peculiar to his ministration, which consisted of precepts, rewards and punishments.” See further John Calvin, Instit. 2.7.3, 5, 6, 8, 9 (narrow meaning); Instit. 2.10.1-23 (broad meaning). On this point, see I. John Hesselink, Calvin’s Concept of the Law (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 1992), 157-58.

Eamon Younis

Friday 14 January 2022

“The Law Evidently Is Not Contrary To Faith”: Galatians And The Republication Of The Covenant Of Works

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