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Sunday morning annoyance

And it came to pass that on the morning of the seventh day, Sven awoke to find that his website was overflowing with trackback spam, and he was greatly outraged.

He put on sackcloth and ashes and pondered in his heart what he should do, for he was wont to strike down upon his foes with great vengeance and furious anger so that they may be cut off from the face of the earth, and his heart was inclined against them, to do a mischievous evil.

Lo, suddenly an angel did appear unto Sven and spake thus:

"Fear ye not, young Sven, for these spammers who have thus afflicted you are naught but idolaters, gamblers, pornographers, and deviants who are destined for destruction." And then the angel showed him a vision of a lake of fire into which all spammers were cast, together with the beast and the false prophet, and Sven's heart was greatly encouraged by these things.

So Sven sent word throughout the land that all spammers were henceforth to be put to the sword, together with their servants, families, donkeys, goats, sheep, birds, clay pots, idols, gold coins, solicitors, and cats, and the people rejoiced at the news for they too were greatly distraught by this grievous evil.

Galatians 3 and the Atonement - part 3

Continuing a look at the atonement in Galatians 3. Part 1 here and part 2 here.

"Christ became a curse for us"

So now, back to the rather messy situation in Galatia. If the curse of the law is an exile designed to bring about a restored people who thus share in the Spirit and the blessing of Abraham (see especially 3:14) then the children of Abraham trace their history back through this long process of curse and restoration which has now culminated in Christ. But in what sense did Christ become a "curse for us"? First of all, it must be understood that the curse was not a retributive punishment simply to balance the scales of divine justice against human sin but that it was ultimately corrective and was designed to be restorative. Beyond the punishment of exile was always intended to be a new restored people without the disobedience and uncircumcised hearts of their predecessors. This theme is picked up in the other oft-quoted "proof" for penal substitution, namely Isaiah 53. Again the context is covenantal and presupposes the story of Abraham and the Torah. In Isaiah 53 however, the punishment (of the law) is borne by one individual, the Suffering Servant, and it is through him that the new covenant and restoration that Isaiah and the other prophets envisage is brought about. Ultimately, the whole OT story of how the blessing promised to the Gentiles via Abraham is bound up with Israel, but Israel does not walk the path set out for her and is cursed. It is through this curse however that the restoration (and by implication, the blessing promised to the Gentiles) comes. Moreover, this is not brought about by Israel as a whole, but by one Israelite in particular.

So then Galatians 3:13 can be more clearly understood now we have set out (however briefly) the OT framework for its interpretation. The Messiah, Jesus Christ, has borne the curse set out in the law himself, he has been cut off and rejected, and oppressed and crushed at the hands of pagan powers (both Jewish and Gentile) and in so doing has done what the curse of the law was intended to do - bring about a restored people who would inherit the blessing of Abraham and share in the Spirit, and thus constitute the people of God. so we find in 3:13-14 -

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit."

There is no mention here that Christ became a curse in order to satisfy a demand for divine justice, or as some kind of method of compensating God's honour. If Paul does have these things in mind, he is not interested in mentioning them. The issue, as I stated above, is "who constitutes the children of Abraham?" a question which must now be answered in terms of the Messiah and the Spirit and not, as Paul's opponents had been advocating, in terms of circumcision and other "works of the law".

So what about the works of the law then?

 We can now quite quickly clear up the main Galatian issue here, namely the issue of "works of the law". These works seem to involve circumcision and food laws (amongst other things) and are causing a division among Christians along the lines of Jew and Gentile. We are told that Peter has withdrawn from eating with Gentile Christians, and that the Gentile Titus was compelled to be circumcised (Gal 2). Such actions are dangerous because they are dividing the newly-established people of God. 'Works' such as circumcision marked Jews out from Gentiles, and served as a boundary marker between those who were "in" and "out" of the covenant people. If, as Paul has shown in chapter 3, the covenant people are now established by their receiving Christ and sharing of the Spirit, then any attempt to introduce circumcision and food laws as additional boundary markers are not only dividing up the body of Christ, but they are subverting the work of Christ himself. Hence 3:28-29:

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise."

All cannot be "one in Christ Jesus" if the church is split into Jewish and Gentile factions by introducing 'works of the law'. Indeed 3:10 quite clearly states that those who rely on these works remain under the curse of the law - but why would this be so? I would argue that since the law is not only a set of commandments, but that it also establishes a divinely-given narrative of curse-exile-restoration, Paul is criticising those who 'rely on the works of the law' because they are seeking to fulfil the law but in the wrong way. Fulfilling the law does indeed bring about life and justification (Lev 18:5, quoted in 3:12) but it does so because the law required that the exile and restoration happen in order for the blessing of Abraham to come to the whole world. This fulfilment has enacted by the person of Christ himself on behalf of Israel ('for us') and thus, by extension, for the whole world, and so any attempt to define the people of God in terms of "works of the law" is not only the wrong way of obeying the law anyway, but Christ has rendered such observances obsolete. Such a reading, I argue, also helps resolve the apparent contradiction between Paul's usage of Deut 27:26 and Lev 18:5 in Galatians 3.

Galatians 3 and penal substitution

 I hope it will be clear by now that if Galatians 3 does teach penal substitution, it does only in the sense that Christ bears the curse put upon Israel in order that Israel and the world be restored. It puts a great strain upon the text to read it as being 'about' how the divine demand for justice have been satisfied by Christ by the hammer of God's justice falling upon him rather than on the mass of sinful humanity, or by Christ making satisfaction, or whatever, and Paul does not reach these conclusions either. His answer to the question "why did Jesus become a curse for us?" is answered in 3:14: "so that the blessing promised to Abraham the the gift of the Spirit might come to the Gentiles" and so we need to be extremely careful of using these verses to support doctrines and theologies that they do not even necessarily support.

The Atonement and Galatians 3 - part 2

Contiuing to look at Galatians 3 and the atonement. See part 1 here and part 3 here.

What is the nature of the curse of the law?

This is the easy(ish) part of an exegesis of this passage. If the curse is that set out in the law, we need go no further than the law to find out. The law contains a wide range of curse, ranging from the curses on individuals for various acts of immorality (e.g. Lev 18) to curses affecting the whole people such as disease and crop failure (Deut 28). In both Leviticus and Deuteronomy the size and scale of the curse is on both and individual and corporate level, but in both books the curses snowball into one climactic national curse, the curse of exile:

 "You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.  Then the LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. 65 Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart."  (Deut 28:64-68)

and in Leviticus 28:

'If in spite of these things you do not accept my correction but continue to be hostile toward me, 24 I myself will be hostile toward you and will afflict you for your sins seven times over. 25 And I will bring the sword upon you to avenge the breaking of the covenant. [...] I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. [...] You will perish among the nations; the land of your enemies will devour you. 39 Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their fathers' sins they will waste away."

  The curse of the law is multi-faceted and extensive, but the disobedience of Israel and the subsequent curses upon her will lead to the final act of curse, namely the expulsion of Israel from the Land, and her defeat and oppression at the hands of foreigners. This is the full and final outworking of the curse which the law holds out for Israel, and must be borne in mind what Paul has in mind when he evokes the idea of covenant and curse in Galatians 3. Read this way, it becomes difficult to see how the "curse" can be read as some kind of divine legal penalty which rests on all of humanity at all times. The curse and restoration It must be remembered that the law is not an open book as regards the future of Israel. It does not seem to offer a will-they-won't-they? situation where Israel may in fact fulfil the law and so (it must be remembered) bring the blessing promised to Abraham to the entire world. Neither Moses nor God himself expect Israel to obey what has been set out for them to do, and indeed the law closes with solemn pronouncements that Israel will indeed disobey the law and all the curses therein will come upon her (see Deut 31-32).

The curse of the law is an inevitability, but equally the law also envisages that following the curse of exile there will also come a time of restoration (Deut 30:1-10, Lev 26:40-45). This idea is picked up and anticipated by the exilic and post-exilic prophets in turn who envisage that after the exile, a new people of God will be born; they will have the Spirit, and they will be obedient to all that God has set forth. Ultimately, God will have a people who share in the blessing promised to Abraham, who have the Spirit, and who are obedient but this is not accomplished in the usual manner of sacrifice and repentance as set out in the law (apologies to N T Wright for stealing this idea) but rather God envisages a people who will come into being only after the process of exile is completed and there is restoration.

Go to part three.

The Atonement in Galatians 3

I've learned the lesson of writing lengthy posts - they never get read fully and a lot of work goes to waste- so I've split this one up into three bitesize chunks which will hopefully be more nourishing. Part 2 here and part 3 here.

Reading Paul

Following on from my post on works of the law in Galatians, here's a few thoughts on the atonement in Galatians 3. Following the controversy over Steve Chalke's book The Lost Message of Jesus, the Evangelical Alliance held a symposium on the atonement (see here). Among the papers making a defence of penal substitution was this one by I Howard Marshall. Although I still on the whole disagree with his conclusions, he presents a good case and corrects some unhelpful errors that have arisen in some expressions of the doctrine, even in the writing of  notables such as Wayne Grudem and also other theologians who have inseparably bound up the idea of penal substitution with a doctrine of limited atonement.


Marshall drew on one of the key texts for a scriptural defence of penal substitution by quoting Galatians 3:13, about which he states: "if this is not penal substitution, I do not know what is." Indeed this has been the normative reading of this Galatians text throughout most of evangelical exegetical history, although after having studied it as part of my thesis I'm less convinced that such a reading of the text really accurately conveys what Paul is trying to say.

Paul is not a systematic theologian, and we severely handicap our reading of him if we attempt to approach him as such. Christian dogmatic theology should not be a matter of simply cooking up a selection of verses and then, voila, producing a doctrine. That is to say nothing of attempts to create a doctrine first and then seek biblical texts to support it (pioneers of teetotalism as a Christian dogma being a good example of this in my own tradition). We will better understand Paul if rather than blending his writing into some kind of doctrinal purée (nourishing as it may be), we read his works as a whole and seek to understand the history, stories, and underlying ideas he brings to bear in his writings.

For instance, when Paul says 'the curse of the law' in Galatians 3:10-14 he is not talking about some general divine pronouncement on humanity, or on those who may try and earn their salvation by merit, and far less some kind of post mortem fate that awaits the unfaithful. In a passage that evokes the history of God's dealings with his people from Abraham onwards and the blessing-curse theme of the covenant (the OT quotes are in 3:10 and 3:12 are from Deut 27:26 and Lev 18:5 respectively), the curse of the law that Christ bears 'for us' (more on who the 'us' is presently) has to be understood as the covenantal curse set out in the Torah, which enables us to think much more contextually and specifically about the 'curse' than interpretations of this text which want to turn the curse into some general sense of divine displeasure with the behaviour of sinners. This is not to say that there is no sense of judgement and wrath taken into account in the atonement, but that this is not what Paul is saying here.

Read more...

Short break

Excuse the lack of posts over the last couple of days, I had a very hectic weekend full of all kinds of chaos and this week we're having all our windows removed and replaced. Not only does this mean the house is open to the elements all day long (not fun in January I assure you) but tomorrow my room is being done so I won't be able to access the net or (horror) be able to do my thesis. Normal service should resume on Wednesday.