Abstract
Galatians has played an enormous role in Christian theology from the time of Augustine to the present. With Romans, it has been the key text for the church’s teaching on justification by faith. Consequently, a fresh approach to this letter would be welcomed, and that is what we get from N. T. Wright, one of the great Pauline scholars of our day. The author of more than eighty books, among which is his comprehensive Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Fortress, 2013—a two-volume work of 1658 pages), Wright has an encyclopedic knowledge of Paul. His work is not just another commentary, it is an interpretation of Galatians that fits into a story of Israel and Jesus that Wright has been developing for many years.
The central thesis Wright espouses can be stated in this way. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul is writing in the midst of a crisis that was occasioned by the appearance of teachers who questioned the gospel he taught to the Galatians. Moreover, they are requiring the Galatians to be circumcised because their uncircumcised status is compromising religious concessions the larger society has accorded circumcised Jews, thereby putting the Jewish community at risk. In response to this challenge, Paul writes to dissuade the Galatians from being circumcised and doing the works of Torah, reminding them that they have been incorporated into the family of Abraham through the death and resurrection of Israel’s Messiah. Through their incorporation into the family of the Messiah, they have attained a status of righteousness; they are Abraham’s descendants in whom God’s promises to the patriarch have been fulfilled. As members of the Messiah’s family, they do not live under the threat of the curses pronounced in the book of Deuteronomy. They have entered God’s new creation that embraces the entire world. What they await is that final moment of resurrection when this new creation will be made manifest in the kingdom of God.
Wright’s reading of Galatians has enormous ecumenical consequences for the church. First, it reminds the church that all who are in the Messiah belong to the family of Abraham, which is meant to manifest God’s new creation to the world. Second, this reading understands ultimate salvation in terms of the new creation that has come about by the Messiah’s death and resurrection. Thus, Wright’s expansive reading of Galatians calls the church to an all-embracing vision of salvation that touches the entire cosmos.
This interpretation of Galatians challenges the traditional Reformation reading that sees the issue in terms of justification by faith rather than by doing the works of the law. The Reformation view, Wright argues, reads the letter in light of the controversies of the sixteenth century about salvation: How am I justified? How am I saved? Am I saved by good works or by faith in Jesus Christ? How do I get to heaven? While there is a deep and abiding truth in this traditional reading of Galatians, Wright insists that the problem the Reformers addressed was not the one Paul was facing. And the way in which the Reformers (and Catholics) have thought of ultimate salvation (heaven) is not how Paul describes it. The issue for Paul was social and ecumenical as well as theological: How are gentiles incorporated into the family of Abraham? And his understanding of ultimate salvation has more to do with God’s new creation than with the salvation of the soul.
Wright begins with an introduction that explains in great detail what I have outlined. In the commentary proper, he begins each section with a fresh translation of the text, which manifests the exegetical decisions he makes. For example, Gal 3:21 is translated as follows: “Is the law against God’s promises? Of course not! If a law had been given that could have given life, then covenant membership [dikaiosynē; NRSV, “righteousness”] really would have been by the law.” Moreover, throughout this work Christos is always rendered “Messiah.” Following his translation, Wright introduces each section by highlighting the major issues it presents and its role in the rest of the letter. Next, he provides a verse-by-verse exegesis, after which he draws his conclusion and suggestions for how the letter can serve Christian formation within the church. Wright’s conclusion to the entire commentary is especially helpful, and I wish I had read it first. I encourage others to do so.
A central feature of Wright’s exegesis is history. He writes: “The answer to this problem is history. The serious, relentless determination to think into Paul’s world, into the first-century Jewish world, and, in the case of Galatians, into the world of the first century diaspora” (p. 17). Again, he states: “A biblical commentary is first and foremost a work of history” (p. 41). Finally, he notes: “As usual the answer to theological confusion is historical exegesis” (p. 119, emphasis original). Wright is correct when he insists on the need to enter the mindset of the world in which Paul wrote. But history is an imperfect science. For example, Wright is critical of the nineteenth-century German historical reconstruction of the Pauline churches. Can he be sure that his own reconstruction of history will not be viewed in a similar way a hundred years from now? Furthermore, history tells a story, and Wright is a very good storyteller. Over the years he has developed a captivating narrative of the Bible that makes sense of Israel and Jesus. And throughout this commentary, he interprets Galatians by telling this story. Consequently, his historical exegesis is intimately related to the story he tells. So, what is driving the exegesis of this commentary: history or story? Is the story Wright tells shaping his exegesis, or is history shaping his exegesis? I suspect it is a bit of both. For while exegesis necessarily requires historical investigation, as Wright correctly notes, it also entails the theological acumen that he displays throughout this work, as well as an engagement with the great tradition of the church developed in its patristic, medieval, and reformation heritage.
This is a strong commentary that has launched this series on a good trajectory, and I hope other volumes will succeed as well, for it is the kind of commentary that theological students and pastors will find helpful for their own formation and the formation of the church.