j. louis martyn - apocalyptic antinomies in paul's letter to the galatians

http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 11 Sep 2014 IP address: 189.235.125.24

New Test. Stud. vol. 31,1985, pp. 410-424

J. LOUIS MARTYN

APOCALYPTIC ANTINOMIES IN PAUL'S

LETTER TO THE GALATIANS*

At several junctures in the history of its interpretation Paul's letter to theGalatians has been seen as the embarrassing member of the Pauline letter-family, the one refusing to be brought into line with the others, and even,in some regards, the one threatening the unity and good-natured comraderyof the family. Luther, to be sure, called on the familial image in an entirelypositive sense, when he confessed himself to be happily betrothed to theletter. Others have considered that betrothal the prelude to an unfortunatemarriage, in which Luther was led astray, or led further astray, by this in-tractable and regrettable letter.1

In our own century the dominant cause of the letter's being regretted isthe obvious fact that, when Paul wrote it, he was in a state of white-hotanger. More is involved here than merely the enlightened preference forequanimity, and thus for the Apostle's happy words in the final chapterof Philippians. There is notably the matter of Paul's stance toward theLaw of Moses. Christian exegetes have been repeatedly embarrassed whentheir Jewish colleagues cite Paul's intemperate and quasi-gnostic commentsabout the Law in Galatians. In the state of embarrassment more than oneChristian interpreter has turned to the seventh chapter of Romans, in orderto remind the Jewish colleagues that when Paul was in his reasonable andbalanced mind, he characterized the Law as holy, just, and good. Similarly,made uneasy by Paul's tendentious account of the Jerusalem meeting inGalatians 2, interpreters have frequently repaired, in one regard or another,to Luke's more even-handed account in Acts 15. And while all are pleasedwith the letter's characteristic celebration of freedom, some interpretersfeel somewhat embarrassed that Paul should have written the letter in astate of unrepentance for the inflexible and even hostile words he spoketo Peter in the presence of the entire church of Antioch (Gal 2. 11-14).All of these factors, and others as well, have led a number of interpretersto a degree of regret that Paul should have written such an angry, un-balanced, and unrepentant letter.

Recent decades have seen the emergence of a new reason for regretting

* Paper delivered at the 39th General Meeting of SNTS, August 1984.

http://journals.cambridge.org


APOCALYPTIC ANTINOMIES IN GALATIANS 411

Galatians: to a growing number of interpreters the letter is the unco-operative maverick, not because of its belligerent tone, but because itdoes not support the thesis of a Pauline gospel consistently focused onwhat is being called an apocalyptic view of the future. In two seminalessays of 1960 and 1962 Ernst Kasemann set the cat among thn pigeonsby identifying apocalyptic as the mother of Christian theology, and bytaking Paul as his crowning witness.2 Now, a number of years later, onewould have to admit that the pigeons are still circling, continuing theirdisturbance of the peace; and as regards Galatians the scene is particularlyunsettled. Kasemann wrote his articles without explicit reference to thetheology of Galatians (Gal 3. 28 is taken as the slogan of the pre-Paulinehellenistic community), and when his critics succeeded in eliciting fromhim a definition of apocalyptic, it proved to be 'the expectation of animminent Parousia',3 a definition that threatened to exclude Galatiansfrom the apocalyptic form of the Pauline canon by default.4 As Paulineexegetes have taken sides for and against Kasemann's apocalyptic Paul,the letter has sometimes been allowed its voice, but precisely as the mem-ber of the family who does not fit in. If one was opposed to the picture ofPaul as a thoroughgoing apocalyptic theologian, surely one could refutethat picture by citing the letter that contains no reference to an imminentParousia.s If one supported the picture of Paul as the consistent apocalypticthinker, one had to admit that Galatians was an embarrassment, to whichone would have to respond by questioning its right to be a bona fide mem-ber of the Pauline canon.

The chief witness to this new form of Galatian embarrassment lay beforeus recently in the first edition of J. Christiaan Beker's Paul the Apostle,the Triumph of God in Life and Thought (1980). This book is monumen-tal on a number of counts, mainly because it is thus far the thoroughgoingexploration of the thesis that apocalyptic is the heart of Paul's gospel.What, then, could be said of Galatians? That letter does not support thethesis, but Beker demonstrated a certain patience with its uncooperativecharacter, considering it to have been written in a situation that suppressed'the apocalyptic theme of the gospel' (x).

It may be well to return thanks for instruction received at the hands ofKasemann and Beker by suggesting another route. The thesis advanced andpowerfully developed by these two colleagues may be essentially correct:Paul's theology is thoroughly apocalyptic, and is different from the the-ology of early Christian enthusiasm primarily in its insistence a) that theworld is not yet fully subject to God, even though b) the eschatologicalsubjection of the world has already begun, causing its end to be in sight.To cite Kasemann, 'No perspective could be more apocalyptic.'6 One mayask, however, as Beker now sees - with characteristic openness - in the pref-ace for his second edition (1984), whether that thesis is to be maintained



412 J. LOUIS MARTYN

at the expense of Galatians, indeed whether it can be maintained withoutthe support of Galatians. And asking that question leads us to give theuncooperative letter another hearing. Could Galatians perhaps be allowedto play its own role in showing us precisely what the nature of Paul'sapocalyptic was?7

II

The question can be honestly posed if we are willing to begin with a cer-tain amount of ignorance as to the definition of apocalyptic, and of Paul'sapocalyptic in particular. One may be reminded of the Socratic dictum ofH.-G. Gadamer:

Urn fragen zu konnen,muss man wissen wollen, d.h.aber: wissen dass man nicht weiss.8

In a state of some ignorance, then, we turn to the text of the letter, takingour bearings initially from its closing paragraph.

In that paragraph Paul draws a final contrast between himself and thecircumcising Teachers who are now active among his Galatian congre-gations.9 He draws the contrast as though he intended to place before theGalatians a choice between two mystagogues, and thus a choice betweentwo ways of life:

Gal 6.13 f.. . . they wish you to be circumcised, in order that they might boast with regard to yourflesh. I, on the contrary, boast in one thing only, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ...

In the next breath, however, Paul does not speak of two alternatives be-tween which the Galatians might make a choice. He speaks, rather, of twodifferent worlds:

. . . the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,by which the world has been crucified to me,and I to the world.For neither is circumcision anything,nor is uncircumcision anything,but rather what is somethingis the New Creation.

Here Paul speaks, as I have just said, of two different worlds. He speaks ofan old world, from which he has been painfully separated, by Christ's death,by the death of that world, and by his own death; and he speaks of a newworld, which he grasps under the arresting expression, New Creation.10

These statements are of the kind to make the head swim. One mighteven wonder whether they do not constitute a flight from reality. To besure, Paul seems to bring these cosmic announcements into relationshipwith some sort of realism, by placing between them a statement directed




to what many interpreters consider to be the specific issue of the letter,circumcision as the sign par excellence of observance of the Law. To saythat some sort of realism is involved only makes it possible, however, todefine the major problem of Paul's closing paragraph. Exactly what sort ofrealism is involved? New Creation, after all, is the kind of expression thateasily trails off into the nebulous realm of pious rhetoric. We have, then,to ask Paul precisely how he understands his two cosmic announcementsto be related to the specific negation of circumcision and uncircumcision.

We begin to deal with that question by attending to the form of thenegation itself, for what is striking about the negation is exactly its form(cf. Gal 5. 6 and 1 Cor 7. 19). In the immediate context, as we have noted,Paul has just referred to the circumcising Teachers. One is prepared, there-fore, to find him striking a final blow, directly and simply, against obser-vance of the Law. Paul should say

Neither circumcision,nor the rules of kashrut,nor the keeping of the sabbathis anything.

As is so often the case, however, Paul says the unexpected. He surpriseshis readers by negating not merely Law-observance, but also its opposite,non-Law observance. In a word that to which Paul denies real existence is,in the technical sense of the expression, a pair ofopposites, what Aristotlemight have called an instance of Tdvavria.11

This observation may prove to be of considerable help in our efforts tohear the text as the Galatians themselves heard it. For when we note thatPaul speaks about a pair of opposites, and that he does so between themaking of two cosmic announcements, we may recall how widespread inthe ancient world was the thought that the fundamental building blocksof the cosmos are pairs of opposites. In one form or another we find thatthought in Greece, from Anaximander, to the Pythagoreans, to Aristotle;in Persia, from Zoroaster to the magi; in Egypt, from the Pythagorean tra-ditions to Philo; and in Palestine itself, from the Second Isaiah to Qoheleth,to Ben Sira, to the Teacher of Righteousness, to some of the rabbis.12

One might indeed pause to note the formula in Ben Sira, in which cos-mic duality is attributed, of course, to the creative hand of God.

. . . Trdfra ra gpya TOV V^LOTOV,5i5o 6uo,

. . . all the works of the Most High,are in pairs,one the opposite of the other (Ben Sira 33:15).13

This text is one of numerous witnesses to the theory that from creationthe archai of the cosmos have been pairs of opposites. We can say that in



414 J. LOUIS MARTYN

the world of Paul's day, the thought of archaic, cosmic polarity was verynearly ubiquitous. The Galatians, then, are almost certain to have known,in some form, the thought that the structure of the cosmos lies in pairs ofopposites; and that is precisely the pattern of thought which Paul presup-poses in our text.

He is making use of that theory, however, in a very peculiar fashion. Heis denying real existence to a pair of opposites, in order to show what itmeans to say that the old cosmos has suffered its death. One can bring thematter into sharp focus, if one can imagine, for a moment, that Paul is aPythagorean, who has been compelled by some turn of events to say aboutthe Table of Opposites, the OVOTOVXJLCU TCJV evavTtdrojv:

Neither limit nor unlimited is anything;straight is not the opposite of crooked:and odd and even do not really exist.

For a Pythagorean to say such things would certainly be grounds for himto announce that the cosmos had suffered its death. Mutatis mutandis forPaul the Pharisee to say that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision isanything is for him to make a cosmic statement no less radical. In makingthat statement Paul speaks in specific terms about the horrifying death ofthe cosmos. With that observation we have come far enough to advance anhypothesis:

Perhaps in this final paragraph Paul is telling the Galatians that the wholeof his epistle is not about the better of two mystagogues, or even aboutthe better of two ways, and certainly not about the failure of Judaism.He is saying rather, that the letter is about the death of one world, andthe advent of another. With regard to the former, the death of the cos-mos, perhaps Paul is telling the Galatians that one knows the old worldto have died, because one knows that its fundamental structures aregone, that those fundamental structures of the cosmos were certainidentifiable pairs of opposites, and that, given the situation amongtheir congregations in Galatia, the pair of opposites whose departurecalls for emphasis is that of circumcision and uncircumcision.

Obviously one tests this hypothesis by re-reading the entire letter, and, inthe course of doing so, one sees that in Galatians Paul speaks of pairs ofopposites with astonishing frequency.15 Of the numerous references, threefurther texts lend themselves to comment within the scope of the presentessay.

The first is also the most obvious, the famous baptismal formula ofGal 3. 27-28, with its three pairs of opposites,

Jew / Greekslave / freemanmale / female.

To re-read this text in the light of our hypothesis is to see how thoroughly




harmonious it is with those cosmic announcements of the closing para-graph. Does Paul speak at the end of the letter of the death of the cosmos?So also here in 3. 27-28. There was a world whose fundamental structureswere certain pairs of opposites:

circumcision / uncircumcisionJew / Gentile

slave / freemanmale / female.

Thales, Socrates, and Plato - not to mention the later Rabbi Judah -finding themselves in such a world, may give thanks that they exist on thepreferable side of the divide.16 Those who have been baptized into Christ,however, know that, in Christ, that world does not any longer have realexistence.

And what of the second of those cosmic announcements in the letter'sclosing paragraph, that of the New Creation? Clearly Paul has it in mind ashe writes the second half of 3. 28. For, corresponding to the departure ofthe old world, with its divisive pairs of opposites, there is the advent ofanthropological unity in Christ:

You are, all of you,one in Christ Jesus.

The old world had pairs of opposites. The New Creation, marked byanthropological unity in Christ, does not have pairs of opposites.

A moment's thought will tell us that, important as this anthropologicalpattern may be, it presents only part of the picture. One thinks, forexample, of passages in which Paul refers to the Spirit and the Flesh. Paulspeaks of these two cosmic powers as one would speak of a pair of oppo-sites; and yet he clearly does not think of them as a pair of opposites thathas departed, to be replaced by some kind of unity.

We turn, then, to a second text, one of the major points in the letter atwhich Paul speaks of the Spirit and the Flesh, Gal 5. 16-17. For the sakeof brevity I give this text in a distinctly interpretive paraphrase:

Galatians 5. 16-17But - in contradistinction to the circumcising Teachers -I, Paul, say to you:Walk by the Spirit,and I promise you that, doing so,you will not carry to full completionthe Inclination of the Flesh.For the Flesh is actively inclined against the Spirit,and the Spirit against the Flesh.Indeed, these two powersconstitute a pair of opposites.. .(Tcwra yap dXX^Xotc ivrinenai...)



4 1 6 J. LOUIS MARTYN

In this polemical passage several points are pertinent to our subject: Thereis Paul's use of the technical term avrineLnai, by which he defines theSpirit and the Flesh as a pair of opposites. It seems highly probable thatPaul gives this emphatic definition in order to correct something theTeachers are saying about a pair of opposites. The Teachers are apparentlyusing the term 'flesh' in order to speak of the Evil Impulse, and in order toinstruct the Galatians about what they take to be a crucial pair of opposites,namely the fleshy Impulse and the Law. For the Teachers, the fleshy Im-pulse and the Law constitute a pair of opposites in the sense that the Lawis the God-given antidote to the fleshy Impulse.17

In the face of this teaching, what does Paul do? He implies clearlyenough that the fleshy Impulse and the Law form a pair of oppositescharacteristic of the old cosmos, the cosmos that met its death in thecross of Christ. To this extent one may be reminded of the pattern wehave seen in the baptismal formula of 3. 27-28: pairs of opposites charac-teristic of the old cosmos have disappeared.

There are, however, significant differences. Here, in 5. 16-17, the oldpair of opposites does not completely disappear, in order to be replacedby unity. The individual members of this old pair of opposites - the fleshyImpulse and the Law - continue to exist. They are thrown, however, intonew patterns. They are radically realigned, by getting new and surprisingopposites. The fleshy Impulse is not effectively opposed by the Law. In-deed the Law proves to be an ally of the Flesh! The effective opposite tothe fleshy Impulse is the Spirit of God's Son.18

Moreover, as the context shows, the Spirit and the Flesh are not only apair of opposites. They are a pair of warriors, locked in combat with oneanother (note especially Paul's use of the term d0oppiT? in 5. 13). And thiswarfare has been started by the Spirit, sent by God into the realm of theFlesh. Thus, the warfare of the Spirit versus the Flesh is a major character-istic of the scene in which the Galatians - together with all other humanbeings - now find themselves.

in

It is by inquiring further into that picture of the human scene that we cannow return to the question whether Paul's message to the Galatians is bestunderstood to be non-apocalyptic. On the one side it must be said that wehave encountered none of the apocalyptic motifs of 1 Thess4, 1 Cor 15,and Rom 8. On the other, however, we have seen that Paul speaks of theemergence of a new and strange pair of opposites, and when we probe moredeeply into the nature of this pair, we find ourselves dealing with motifsclearly apocalyptic.



APOCALYPTIC ANTINOMIES IN GALATIANS 4 1 7

1. There is first the connection of this pair of opposites with the dawnof God's New Creation, an expression at home in apocalyptic texts.19 TheSpirit and its opposite, the Flesh, are not the timeless first principles (con-trast the theory of the Pythagoreans mentioned above), nor do they inherein the cosmos as a result of their having been created by God at the begin-ning (contrast not only Ben Sira 33. 15, but also 1QS 3. 13-4. 26). As apair of opposites they have come newly on the scene.

2. This pair of opposites owes its birth, therefore, not to God's creativeact, but rather to God's new-creative act. It is born of the new event, God'ssending both his Son and the Spirit of his Son.

3. The advent of the Son and of his Spirit is also the coming of faith, anevent that Paul explicitly calls an apocalypse (note the parallel expressions'to come' and 'to be apocalypsed' in 3. 23). Indeed it is precisely the Paulof Galatians who says with emphasis that the cosmos in which he previouslylived met its end in God's apocalypse of Jesus Christ (1. 12, 16; 6. 14). Itis this same Paul who identifies that apocalypse as the birth of his gospel-mission (1. 16), and who speaks of the battles he has to wage for the truthof the gospel as events to be understood under the banner of apocalypse(2. 2, 5, 14). It is also clear that Paul brings this apocalyptic frame of ref-erence to his remarks about the Spirit and the Flesh. There was a 'before',and there is now an 'after'; and it is at the point at which the 'after' meetsthe 'before' that the Spirit and the Flesh have become a pair of opposites.We will do well, therefore, to refer to the Spirit and the Flesh not as anarchaic pair of opposites inhering in the cosmos from creation, but ratheras an apocalyptic antinomy characteristic of the dawn of God's NewCreation.

4. The dynamism of this apocalyptic antinomy is given not only in itsbeing born of an event, but also in its being a matter of warfare begun withthat event.20The motif of warfare between pairs of opposites could remindone of the philosophy of Heraclitus (TrdXe/xo? irdvToov nev irarrip ion; Fr.53) or, perhaps closer to Paul, of the theology of Qumran, in which thereis strife (y)) between the two Spirits. But in both of these views thestruggle is thought to inhere in the cosmos; indeed in the perspective ofQumran the warring antinomy of the Spirit of Truth versus the Spirit ofFalsehood, stemming as it does from the original creation, will find in theNew Creation not its birth, but rather its termination (1 QS 4. 16, 25).For Paul the picture is quite different; the Spirit and the Flesh constitutean apocalyptic antinomy in the sense that they are two opposed orbs ofpower, actively at war with one another since the apocalyptic advent ofChrist and of his Spirit. The space in which human beings now live is anewly invaded space, and that means that its structures cannot remainunchanged.

5. It follows that Christians who are tempted to live as though the




effective opposite of the fleshy Impulse were the Law are in fact personswho are tempted to abandon life in the Creation that has now been madewhat it is by the advent of Christ and of his Spirit. It is they who are notliving in the real world. For the true war of liberation has been initiatednot at Sinai, but rather in the apocalypse of the crucified one and in thecoming of his Spirit.

6. All of the preceding motifs come together in the question that Paulcauses to be the crucial issue of the entire letter: What time is it? Onehardly needs to point out that the matter of discerning the time lies atthe very heart of apocalyptic; and as the preceding motifs show, in noneof his letters does Paul address that issue in terms more clearly apocalypticthan in Galatians. What time is it? It is the time after the apocalypse of thefaith of Christ, the time therefore of rectification by that faith, the timeof the presence of the Spirit, and thus the time of the war of liberationcommenced by the Spirit.

To probe deeply into the nature of Paul's antinomies is, then, to seethat Galatians, far from threatening the picture of Paul the apocalypticevangelist, enriches and expands that picture. Indeed the picture is furtherenriched when we ask whether, in addition to the Spirit and the Flesh,there are yet other apocalyptic antinomies that have now emerged withthe dawn of the New Creation.

That question takes us to our final text, Galatians 4. 21-5. 1, Paul'sinterpretation of the traditions about Abraham's two sons. Here again weCan be brief, not least because we already have the keenly crafted study ofthis passage by C. K. Barrett.21

First, as in the preceding text, so also here, Paul is almost certainlyfollowing, to a large degree, in the steps of the circumcising Teachers. Hehas learned that the Teachers are using the scriptural traditions aboutAbraham's two sons, and for his own reasons he decides to use the sametraditions.

Second, neither the Teachers nor Paul will have needed to be taughtthat the traditions about Abraham's two sons are made to order, so tospeak, for interpretation focused on pairs of opposites. Indeed, at a crucialpoint in his own interpretation Paul employs the technical term ovoroixei*),thus telling the Galatians that he himself intends to speak of a Table ofpaired Opposites.22 There are two sons, two mothers, two covenants, anda number of other pairs of opposites as well, not least the pair we have justnow discussed, the Spirit and the Flesh. In the proper sense Paul speakshere of the OVOTOLXUIL of the New Creation, the two parallel columns ofopposites characteristic of that New Creation. There are, as I have said,two sons, two women, and under these two women the two columns runas follows:




Hagar

slavethe covenant fromMt. Sinaithe present Jerusalem[i.e. the False Brothers in theJerusalem church, as sponsorsof the Law-observant mission toGentiles]23

children of the slave woman,born into slaveryone born in accordancewith the Fleshthe slave woman and her son[i.e. the Teachers, who areto be expelled]

[Sarah]

freethe covenant of God's promiseto Abraham (3. 17)the Jerusalem above, our mother[an apocalyptic expression inRev 3. 12;21.2]

children of thefree womanone born in accordance with theSpirit, i.e. the promise of Godthe son of the free woman[i.e. the Galatians as those bornof the promised Spirit]

Moreover, at several points the way in which Paul presents these columnsof opposites seems clearly to imply that he is correcting a similar table ofopposites propounded explicitly or implicitly by the Teachers:

Hagar Sarah

slave freeGentiles Jews

[cf. Jubilees 16. 17-18]The Nations the church of the circumcised

[i.e. the ruling powers of theJerusalem church and the Law-observantmission sponsored by them]

Given the Teachers' Table of Opposites, one comes back to Paul's view ofthings by noting that Paul makes in verse 25 an explicit correction:

Now Hagar, by name, stands for Mt. Sinai in Arabia;she is also located in the same oppositional columnwith the present Jerusalem (ovomixel 8e 777 wv 'lepovodkrm),for like it she is in a state of slavery with her children.

In a word, Paul says that when one seeks to interpret the traditions aboutAbraham's two sons, the major exegetical issue is the true identification ofthe two oppositional columns. To the Galatians Paul says, in effect,

The Teachers have indeed shared with you the traditions, from the Law,about Abraham's two sons; and they are right to interpret these tra-ditions allegorically, that is to say by noting columnar correspondences.They have told you that Hagar is in the same column with slavery, andso she is. But they have not caused you really to hear the Law; for theyhave not told you the astonishing truth, that Hagar the slave woman, isalso in the same column with Mt. Sinai, the locus of the genesis of theLaw, and that Hagar the slave woman is in the same column with thepresent Jerusalem itself! Whoever sees the oppositonal columns, the




ovoTOixiai TCJV ivaunoTcov, as they actually stand in the dawning ofthe New Creation of the Spirit, will see that the present Jerusalem isconnected with Mt. Sinai by being connected with slavery, and, that,being so connected, the present Jerusalem is bearing children into slavery.

Paul's polemic is unmistakable. What is important for our present concernis the nature of that polemic. It is crucial to see that the polemic is notfocused on Judaism, but rather on pairs of opposites. The advent of theSpirit has brought into being a new set of oppositional columns, a newset of antinomies, so that these antinomies have in fact replaced the oppo-sitional columns characteristic of the old cosmos.

Moreover, the motif of struggle, two opposing powers being presentlylocked in combat with one another, is apparent throughout the passage.Indeed, the motif of combat finds its climax with great specificity in 4. 30,where Paul says that the Galatians, perceiving the ovoTOi\Lai of the NewCreation, are to act out these OVOTOIXLCLI in everyday life by expelling thecircumcising Teachers from their congregations. The New Creation hasdawned; but in true apocalyptic fashion its Jerusalem is, as yet, above.The freedom of those born of the Spirit is altogether real; but, given thecontinuing presence of the present Jerusalem, the threat of slavery is stillat hand, and there are still battles to be fought, in the power of the Spirit.These motifs give us every reason to say about the theology of Galatians,'No perspective could be more apocalyptic.'24

IV

We come now to the conclusion by returning to the twin announcementsat the close of the letter, the announcement of the horrifying death of thecosmos, and the announcement of the surprising dawn of the New Creation.If the interpretive lines we have followed are generally valid, Paul is farfrom allowing those announcements to be lodged in the hazy mists ofpiety, or even, properly speaking, in the realm of religion. The letter, tosay it yet again, is not an attack on Judaism; nor is it even an apologeticletter, in the sense of its being designed to convert its readers from onereligion to another.25 Interpreted in the light of Paul's frequent recourseto the form of the apocalyptic antinomy, the two cosmic announcementsstand at the conclusion of a letter fully as apocalyptic as are the otherPaulines.26 The motif of the triple crucifixion - that of Christ, that of thecosmos, that of Paul - reflects the fact that through the whole of Galatiansthe focus of Paul's apocalyptic lies not on Christ's parousia, but rather onhis death.27 There are references to the future triumph of God (5.5, 24; 6.8), but the accent lies on the advent of Christ and his Spirit, and especiallyon the central facet of that advent: the crucifixion of Christ, the eventthat has caused the time to be what it is by snatching us out of the grasp




of the present evil age (1. 4). Paul's perception of Jesus' death is, then, fullyas apocalyptic as is his hope for Jesus' parousia (cf. 1 Cor 2. 8). Thus thesubject of his letter to the Galatians is precisely an apocalypse, the apoca-lypse of Jesus Christ, and specifically the apocalypse of his cross.

Paul writes the letter, confident that by hearing it the Galatians willonce again be seized by that apocalypse, will once again be known by God(4. 9). So known, they will themselves know what time it is, therebycoming once again to live in the real world.28 For, knowing what time it is,they will perceive that they are in fact former Gentiles who, in Christ, areunited with former Jews. They will know that although they are unitedin Christ, the advent of the Spirit has caused the world in which they areliving to be the scene of antinomous warfare on a cosmic scale. They willlearn once again where the front line of that cosmic warfare actually lies.And they will be summoned back to their place on that battle front, per-ceiving experientially the pairs of opposites, the apocalyptic antinomies,that are its hall-mark.

For a congregation that is living in accordance with the antinomies thatfind their genesis in the old world is like a company of soldiers who arearmed with the wrong weapons, and who are fighting on the wrong front.In the first instance such soldiers do not need exhortation about choosingthe better of two ways. They need once again to be seized by the apoca-lypse of Jesus Christ, that invasive disclosure of the antinomous structureof the New Creation.29 Paul writes a letter, therefore, that is designed tofunction as a witness to the dawn of the New Creation, and, specifically,as a witness to the apocalyptic antinomies by which the battles of thatNew Creation are both perceived and won.

NOTES

[1] See Eric W. Gritsch, Martin - God's Court Jester (1983), chap 7, 'The Gospel and Israel', andliterature cited there. In his lectures on Galatians Luther often spoke in one breath of the Jews, theTurks, and the papists. No careful reader of Luther's lectures can fail, however, to learn much aboutGalatians.[2] E. Kasemann, 'Die Anfange christlicher Theologie', ZThK 57 (1960) 162-85;ET 'The Begin-nings of Christian Theology', 82-107 in New Testament Questions of Today (1969); 'Zum Themader urchristlichen Apokalyptik',Z77i£ 59 (1962) 267-84; ET 'On the Subject of Primitive ChristianApocalyptic', 108-37 in New Testament Questions of Today.[3] New Testament Questions of Today, 109 n 1.[4] It is important, however, to see that Kasemann himself found 'the relics of apocalyptic the-ology . . . everywhere in the Pauline Epistles' (NTQT 131; emphasis added). An appreciative ana-lysis and critique of Kasemann's views are given in Martinus C. de Boer, 'The Defeat of Death:Paul's Apocalyptic Eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5. 12-21* (Dissertation, UnionTheological Seminary, 1983).[5] I have encountered this argument several times in oral discussions.[6] Kasemann, New Testament Questions of Today, 133.[7] J. Louis Martyn, review of J. C. Beker, Paul the Apostle, in Word and World 2 (1982) 194-8,p. 196.

[8] H.-G. Gadamer, Wahrheit undMethode (3l972) 345.




[9] On the Teachers see Martyn, 'A Law-Observant Mission to Gentiles: the Background of Gal-atians', Michigan Quarterly Review 22 (1983) 221-36, reprinted in SJT 38 (1985); E. E. Ellis, TheCircumcision Party and the Early Christian Mission', chap 7 in Prophecy and Hermeneutic in EarlyChristianity (1978).

[10] Taken by itself the expression New Creation scarcely decides the issue we are addressing, butit is pertinent to note that the expression is at home in apocalyptic. See P. Stuhlmacher, 'Erwagungenzum ontologischen Charakter der kaine ktisis bei Paulus', EvTh 27 (1967) 1-35; cf. also G. Schnei-der, 'Die Idee der Neuschopfung beim Apostel Paulus und ihr religionsgeschichtlicher Hintergrund',TrThZ 68 (1959) 257-70. On the triple death in Gal 6.14 see P. S. Minear, 'The Crucified World:The Enigma of Galatians 6,14', 395-407 in C. Andersen and G. Klein (eds.), Theologia Crucis -Signum Crucis (1979).

[11] Aristotle spoke of riu/avria, 'the contraries', as one of the modes of opposition, Metaphysics1018a; cf. 1004b and 986a. He also spoke of pairs that admit an intermediate, such as black, grey,white (M«TO{u; dvd. niaov). Gal 5. 3 shows that Paul does not understand Law-observance and non-Law-observance to admit the intermediate phenomenon of partial Law-observance. Nor in 6. 15does Paul think of complementarity in the sense that circumcision and uncircumcision encompassthe whole of humanity (contrast Gal 2. 7-9 and the captatio benevolentiae of Gal 2.15; contrastalso the Greek expression "E\\rive<; «al p&ppapoi and Jewish references to DVlSJil riDXl ^KIIT).As we will see below, Paul embraces as a major factor in his theology the pattern of mutually ex-clusive opposition. The concern of the present essay is to approach the question of 'Paul and apo-calyptic' by taking one's bearings from pairs ofopposites, a task as pertinent to the study of theother letters as it is to the study of Galatians. The path followed is distinct from the one that ispursued in studies of the antithesis as a rhetorical form, although there are points of contact. Seeparticularly 30-31 of N. Schneider, Die rhetorische Eigenart der paulinischen Antithese (1970),and Schneider's references to earlier literature.

[12] For Greece the first collection of pertinent texts was made by E. Kemmer, DiePolare Aus-drucksweise in der Griechischen Literatur (1900); we have now the finely nuanced interpretationby G. E. R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy (1966). The traditions of primary importance are those ofHeraclitus, the Pythagoreans, Parmenides, the Hippocratic corpus, Plato, and Aristotle, the lastbeing our major source for the role of polar structure in Pythagorean philosophy. See also theorphic papyrus discussed by O. Schiitz, Archiv fur Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete 13(1939) 210-12, and for Stoic traditions on the iLvruceifxeva J. von Arnim, Stoicorum VeterumFragmenta (1903) 2, 70-83, and M. Polenz, Die Stoa (1948) 48 ff. For Persia see notably GeoWidengren, 'Leitende Ideen und Quellen der iranischen Apokalyptik', 77-162 in David Hellholm(.ed.), Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East (1983); cf. in the same volumethe article by A. HultgSrd, 'Forms and Origins of Iranian Apocalypticism' (387-411); also K. G.Kuhn, 'Die Sektenschrift und die iranische Religion', ZThK (1952) 296-316. Vor Egypt one notescertain recurrent antitheses in ancient Egyptian religion (Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy 29 n 3), andabove all Philo's use of the Pythagorean tradition ofopposites, once in order to show Moses' priorityto Heraclitus (Who is the Heir 207-14), and elsewhere in order to enrich the doctrine of the TwoWays {On Flight and Finding 58; Questions and Answers on Exodus 23; cf. 1QS 3.13-4. 26). FoiPalestine see Isaiah 45. 7, where God is the one who now creates light and darkness, salvation andwoe (a pre-figurement of opposites in the new age? cf. Carroll Stuhlmueller, Creative Redemptionin Deutero-Isaiah, 1970); Ecclesiastes 3. 1-9; and especially 7. 14;BenSira 11. 14; 33.14-15; 42.24-25 [Ben Sira provides the classic example of the use of the theory of cosmic polarity in serviceof the doctrine of the Two Ways; note also the motif of complementarity in the last passage, re-flecting Ben Sira's concern to avoid a split in God by affirming that God created a split world; cf.Herm Mand 5-8; cf. Th. Middendorp, Die Stellung Jesu Ben Siras zwischen Judentum und Hellen-ismus (1973); M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism (1974) I, 146; J. Hadot, Penchant Mauvais etVolunti Libre dans La Sagesse de Ben Sira (1970); G. Maier, Mensch und freier Wille (1971)]; inQumran literature the major text is 1QS 3. 13-4. 26, where one finds a connection between pairsof opposites and the expectation of the New Creation: the struggle between the two Spirits ischaracteristic of the cosmos until God establishes the New Creation by destroying the Spirit ofEvil; the New Creation is thus connected with the termination of cosmic polarity. The wisdomtraditions show the thought of archaic polarity serving the doctrine of the Two Ways; Qumran canrepresent the tendency in apocalyptic traditions to use the thought of archaic polarity also in theservice of the doctrine of the Holy War (cf. also the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, note 13below); from the numerous treatments of Qumran dualism two items: H. G. May, 'CosmologicalReference in the Qumran Doctrine of the Two Spirits and in Old Testament Imagery', JBL 82(1963) 1-14; J. Licht, 'An Analysis of the Treatise on the Two Spirits in DSD', Scripta Hiero-



APOCALYPTIC ANTINOMIES IN GALATIANS 4 2 3

solymitana 4 (1965) 88-100); the pertinent rabbinic data, fully collected and arranged, whereverpossible, by date, would make a study in themselves; it will suffice to mention the continuation ofthe use of pairs of opposites to serve the doctrine of the Two Ways; Aboth 2. 9; 5. 7; 5.19; and thesometimes philosophical discussions of the flljlt in which the accent generally lies on complemen-tarity rather than on opposition, e.g. Midrash Rabba 11.8, where the Sabbath asks God for a part-ner (JIT), and is given Israel as a partner; (cf. Pesikta Rabbati 23. 6); Ecc 7. 14 is taken up in severalplaces, e.g. Hagigah 15a, where, however, under the name of Akiba, the motif of opposition isadded to that of cosmic complementarity (cf. Midrash Bahir 129 and Midrash Temurah 2). It iswell known that the so-called doctrine of the syzygies was a favourite of the gnostics and also playsan important role in Jewish-Christian traditions now found in the Pseudo-Clementine literature; seee.g. G. Strecker, Das Judenchristentum in den Pseudoklementinen (31981).

[13] The formula is also cited in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Asher 1. 4; 5. 1); cf.further Judah 19. 4; 20. 1; Levi 19. 1; Naph 2. 10; 3. 5; Joseph 20. 2; Benj 5. 3. In Ben Sira42.24-25 the formula is used to express complementarity rather than opposition, a tendency to somedegree characteristic of the interpretation of duality in wisdom traditions and in rabbinic literature(see preceding note), not to mention the important role complementary duality plays in Greekphilosophy (e.g. Heraclitus) and in the history of medicine from the Hippocratic corpus to thewritings of C. G. Jung.

[14] See especially Aristotle, Metaphysics 986a, where the ten principles of the Pythagoreans arelisted in two columns of opposites (OVOTOIXUU)-[15] The letter opens with the ancient pair of God/human being, and closes with the strange pairof flesh/cross (6.13-14). Some of the pairs of opposites involve the expressions OVK . . . &\\a; ov...£av J177; TJ; aiinin Si; others appear simply by opposed datives (e.g. 2. 19) or adverbs (e.g. 2. 14).[16] The traditions connecting the famous three reasons for gratitude to Thales, Plato, and RabbiJudah (active ca. 130-160 C.E.) are conveniently cited in W. A. Meeks, The Image of the Andro-gyne', HR 13 (1973/4) 167-8. The two major interpretive alternatives for Gal 3. 28 arise fromtaking its background to be gnosis, on the one hand, and apocalyptic, on the other. Meeks' learnedarticle travels the former route; the present essay the latter. Nothing in the text or context of Gal3. 28 indicates that the thought is that of re-unification. See also 1 Cor 15. 46.[17] The conviction that the Law is the antidote to the Evil Impulse is very old and very wide-spread, stretching at least from Ben Sira (e.g. 15. 14-15) and the Qumran literature (e.g. CD 2.14-16) to the Epistle of James (e.g. 1. 22-25) and rabbinic traditions [F. C. Porter, The Yecerhara', Biblical and Semitic Studies (1901) 128]. That Christian Jews held this conviction is clearfrom the Epistle of James; see Joel Marcus, The Evil Inclination in the Epistle of James', CBQ 44(1982) 606-21, and the article by Martyn cited in note 9 above.

[18] By giving the identity of the true opposite to the fleshy Impulse, Paul exposes the power ofGod that makes certain the promise of Gal 5.16. Thus Paul does not speak of an anthropologicaldoctrine in the proper sense (H. D. Betz, Galatians, 1979, 278), but rather of the advent of Christ'sSpirit. Cf. J. S. Vos, Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Paulinischen Pneumatologie(1973), 76-84; Paul W. Meyer, The Holy Spirit in the Pauline Letters', Interpretation 33 (1979)3-18, especially 11; D. J. Lull, The Spirit in Galatia (1980).

[19] See note 10 above, and John Koenig, The Motif of Transformation in the Pauline Epistles'(Dissertation, Union Theological Seminary, 1970) 38-43.

[20] It is worth noting that Geo Widengren identifies as the two main motifs of apocalyptic thought(1) cosmic changes and catastrophies and (2) the war-like final struggle in the cosmos, David Hell-holm (ed.), Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East (1983), 150. See B. Bar-bara Hall, 'Battle Imagery in Paul's Letters' (Dissertation, Union Theological Seminary, 1973).

[21] C. K. Barrett, The Allegory of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar in the Argument of Galatians',1-16 in J. Friederich, W. Pohlmann, P. Stuhlmacher (eds.), Rechtfertigung, Festschrift Kasemann(1976).

[22] See e.g. Aristotle, Metaphysics 986a. Paul's method of interpretation, especially because ofhis explicit reference to allegory (4. 24), has often been compared with allegorical exegesis in Philo.More pertinent may be Philo's interest in a series of paired opposites; see note 12 above.

[23] See note 9 above. [24] See note 6 above.

[25] To a considerable extent Paul causes the letter to be focused on the issue whether the adventof Christ has introduced a new religion, as the circumcising Teachers think, or whether that eventmarks the end of all religion by terminating holy times (4. 10), food laws (2. 11-14) etc. Note the




sharp irony with which Paul employs in a polemical fashion the terminology of religious conversionin 4. 9 (D. Georgi in ThEH 70,1959, 111 ff.). Our analysis of pairs of opposites in Galatians showsthat Paul's use of this pattern does not fall in the line of wisdom tradition, with its marraige of thepairs to the doctrine of the Two Ways, but rather in the line of apocalyptic, in which the pairs areseen to be at war with one another. Gal 5. 19-23 does not present a list of vices to be avoided,matched by a list of virtues to be followed, as though the letter offered a new edition of the doc-trine of the Two Ways. Paul speaks, rather, of the activities of two warriors, the Flesh and theSpirit.

[26] We have noted above that in composing Galatians Paul employs at crucial points the noundnoK&\v\l>i(; and the verb diroicaKviTTLJ. It is strange that in the investigation of apocalyptic patternsin Paul's thought relatively little attention has been given to the Apostle's use of these vocables;but see now Richard E. Sturm, 'An exegetical study of the Apostle Paul's use of the words apo-kalypto /apokalypsis.' (Dissertation, Union Theological Seminary, 1984).

[27] In Galatians the cross repeatedly forms an apocalyptic antinomy with circumcision (e.g. 5.11), just as Christ's death forms an apocalyptic antinomy with the Law (e.g. 2. 21): Beverly R.Gaventa, "The Purpose of the Law: Paul and Rabbinic Judaism' (M.Div. Thesis, Union TheologicalSeminary, 1973).

[28] Epistemology is a central concern in all apocalyptic, because the genesis of apocalypticinvolves a) developments that have rendered the human story hopelessly enigmatic, when perceivedin human terms, b) the conviction that God has now given to the elect true perception both ofpresent developments (the real world) and of a wondrous transformation in the near future, c) thebirth of a new way of knowing both present and future, and d) the certainty that neither the futuretransformation, nor the new way of seeing both it and present developments, can be thought togrow out of the conditions in the human scene. For Paul the developments that have rendered thehuman scene inscrutable are the enigma of a Messiah who was crucified as a criminal and the in-comprehensible emergence of the community of the Spirit, born in the faith of this crucifiedMessiah. The new way of knowing, granted by God, is focused first of all on the cross, and also onthe parousia, these two being, then, the parents of that new manner of perception. Galatians is astrong witness to the epistemological dimension of apocalyptic, as that dimension bears on thecross. See J. Louis Martyn, 'Epistemology at the Turn of the Ages: 2 Corinthians 5. 16', W. R.Farmer, C. F. D. Moule, R. R. Niebuhr (eds.), Christian History and Interpretation: Studies Presen-ted to John Knox (1967) 269-87; L. E. Keck, 'Paul and Apocalyptic Theology',Interpretation 38(1984) 234 n 17.

[29] Galatians provides one of the clearest indications in the corpus that Paul's understanding ofapocalyptic is focused primarily not on God's uncovering of something hidden from the beginningof time (1 Cor 2. 10), but rather on God's new act of invading the human orb, thus restructuringthe force field in which human beings live. In other words, more important than the etymology ofthe verb diroKaMrtrtJ is Paul's using it in parallel with the verb £\8eu> (Gal 3. 23). Faith is apoca-lypsed by coming newly on the scene. Thus the knowledge spoken of in the preceding note isknowledge of an invaded cosmos.


j. louis martyn - apocalyptic antinomies in paul's letter to the galatians

Documents

interpretation pauls

unrepentant letter

regrettable letter

pauline letterfamily

bytaking paul

pauls intemperate

pauls tendentious account

matter of pauls stance