Another lengthy piece from the archives. People often understand Paul’s letter to the Galatians in a timeless manner: salvation is (and always has been) by grace, not by works. But an ‘apocalyptic’ way of understanding Galatians, such as that of J. Louis Martyn, emphasises the fact that something has happened in space and time, and something new has been revealed (‘apocalypse’, ‘revelation’), in the coming of Christ. Through Christ, the new creation has started to invade the world, and this Christ-event has changed everything. This is a helpful emphasis, although Martyn has a tendency to stress God’s agency in salvation to such an extent that there is no room for human agency to be included within God’s saving acts.

Introduction

Galatians is a clear witness to a basic conviction of Paul: the gospel is not about human movement into blessedness, but about God’s liberating invasion of the cosmos.1

J. Louis Martyn (1925–2015) has been one of the leading figures in a movement known as ‘the apocalyptic Paul’, along with scholars such as Martinus de Boer, Beverly Gaventa, and Douglas Campbell.2 His commentary on Galatians (1997) has been described as ‘one of the great commentaries of the twentieth century’.3 Gaventa summarises how Martyn’s approach, centred on Galatians, differs from that of other interpreters:

In contrast to a growing tendency to emphasize salvation history in the interpretation of Paul, in which the apostle is credited with holding to a massive and enduring continuity between Israel’s history and the gospel of Christ (see, e.g., in the nineteenth century, J. von Hofmann and, in the late twentieth, N. T. Wright), [Martyn] draws attention to the thoroughly apocalyptic (i.e., divinely invasive and disjunctive) elements in Paul’s theology.4

Martyn’s interpretation of Galatians, particularly in relation to ‘apocalyptic’ themes, therefore stands at the heart of many contemporary debates about the interpretation of Paul.

In what follows, I will first seek to analyse Martyn’s use of apocalyptic themes in his interpretation of Galatians, before engaging in a critical response to his writings, in conversation with other interpreters. I will argue that Martyn’s reading is helpful, but that his sharp dichotomy between divine and human action is problematic.

Analysis

The theme of apocalyptic is one of the major motifs of Martyn’s reading of Galatians. Early in his commentary he writes, ‘It is true that, to a great extent, the cosmic antinomy between religion and apocalypse is the issue of Galatians.’5 This contrast serves to clarify what is, and is not, meant by ‘apocalyptic’. For Martyn, ‘religion’ refers to ‘the various communal, cultic means—always involving the distinction of sacred from profane—by which human beings seek to know and to be happily related to the gods or God’. It is thus ‘a human enterprise’, ‘the polar opposite of God’s apocalyptic act in Christ’.6 For Martyn, therefore, the language of ‘apocalyptic’ is a way of speaking about ‘divine activity’, as opposed to the ‘human activity’ of ‘traditioning’ and ‘Law observance’.7

There are echoes here of the polarity between faith and works identified by Martin Luther in his commentary on Galatians. Luther writes of Paul’s letter to the Galatians that

His intent in this Epistle is, to treat of the righteousness that cometh by faith, and to defend the same; again, to beat down the law, and the righteousness that cometh by works.8

Both for Martyn and for Luther, a right relationship with God could either be sought by human means (be that individual, communal, or cultic), or received through the action of God in Christ. Galatians was written to ‘beat down’ the former, and to ‘defend’ the latter.

There are also echoes of Karl Barth, in the sharp distinction between divine and human action. In the preface to the second edition of his book The Epistle to the Romans, Barth highlighted this distinction, writing that,

if I have a system, it is limited to a recognition of what Kierkegaard called the ‘infinite qualitative distinction’ between time and eternity, and to my regarding this as possessing negative as well as positive significance: ‘God is in heaven, and thou art on earth.’ The relation between such a God and such a man, and the relation between such a man and such a God, is for me the theme of the Bible and the essence of philosophy.9

Martyn’s emphasis on ‘God’s apocalyptic act in Christ’ places him in line with the Barthian tradition of ‘dialectical theology’, with its emphasis on ‘the inbreaking of God into history in divine strangeness and awe, over against human self-confidence and arrogance’.10 This is reflected when Martyn speaks in terms such as the following:

Paul insists throughout that the gospel was and is God’s immediate word—the word God himself speaks in the present moment—and this fact guards the gospel from ever becoming in its heart a tradition. … The gospel can never be turned, therefore, into a tradition as distinct from an immediate apocalypse.11

In modern usage, ‘apocalyptic’ can be taken to refer either to a form of literature, involving divine revelation through visions and dreams (for example), or to some eschatological themes, associated with such ‘apocalypses’.12 As Christopher Rowland explains,

In the light of this second approach, a widespread feature of the discussion of apocalyptic is its use as a way of describing a special expression of Jewish eschatology in which the following are characteristic features: a contrast between the present age and a new age, which is still to come; a belief that the new age is of a transcendent kind, which breaks in from beyond through divine intervention and without human activity; a universal concern; the belief that God has foreordained everything, and that the history of the world has been divided into epochs; and an imminent expectation that the present state of affairs is short-lived.13

In Martyn’s case, there is little interest in Galatians as an example of apocalyptic literature. Rather, the focus is on certain ‘apocalyptic’ themes in Galatians, particularly the way in which the new age is breaking into the present age ‘through divine intervention and without human activity’. Once again, the contrast between divine and human action is central.

What, then, is meant by ‘apocalyptic’, ‘apocalyptic theology’, or ‘apocalyptic eschatology’? Martyn draws heavily on the typology of Martinus de Boer, who draws a distinction between two ‘tracks’ of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology. This distinction is described by Martyn as ‘essential to the reading of Galatians’.14 De Boer presents these ‘two tracks’ as ‘heuristic models’, not wishing ‘to suggest that the various Jewish documents … can be assigned simply to one of the two tracks’, although he does find them ‘in nearly “pure” form’ in certain texts.15

According to the first ‘track’, cosmological apocalyptic eschatology, ‘evil, angelic powers’ have gained dominion over the world, and have led humanity into idolatry. However, ‘God will invade the world’ and defeat the ‘evil powers’ in a ‘cosmic war’, thereby ‘bringing about a new age in which He will reign unopposed’. The ‘righteous remnant, chosen by God’ are those who ‘bear witness to the fact that those evil cosmological powers are doomed to pass away’.16

According to the second ‘track’, forensic apocalyptic eschatology, the fundamental problem is framed not in terms of ‘evil, cosmological forces’, but in terms of ‘free will and decision’. People have sinned against God, but there is a remedy. ‘At the Last Judgment God will reward those who have acknowledged His claim and chosen the Law, while He will punish those who have not.’17

Martyn explains the relevance of these two ‘tracks’ to his interpretation of Galatians. Comparing Paul with those (‘Teachers’) who were preaching ‘a different gospel’ (1:6), Martyn writes:

A crucial issue is that of determining which of these two ‘tracks’ is dominant in a given source. In the course of the present commentary we will see that, whereas forensic apocalyptic eschatology is characteristic of the Teachers’ theology, Paul’s Galatian letter is fundamentally marked by cosmological apocalyptic eschatology.18

It will be clear that when Martyn speaks of ‘apocalyptic’, he has in mind primarily the first of de Boer’s ‘tracks’, i.e., ‘cosmological apocalyptic eschatology’.

Although Martyn’s interest in the theme goes beyond the occurrences of the word ‘apocalyptic’ and its cognates, such language is indeed found in Galatians, on four occasions. Paul received the gospel δι᾿ ἀποκαλύψεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (‘through a revelation of Jesus Christ’, 1:12); God was pleased, says Paul, ἀποκαλύψαι τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ ἐν ἐμοί (‘to reveal his Son to me’, 1:16); and Paul went up to Jerusalem κατὰ ἀποκάλυψιν (‘in response to a revelation’, 2:2). In his own translation, Martyn uses a combination of ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘revelation’ in the first two cases (‘apocalyptic revelation’ and ‘apocalyptically to reveal’, respectively), and is content to render the third simply as ‘a revelation’.19 This use of ‘revelation’ is fitting at these points: ‘revelation’ is about ‘unveiling something that was previously hidden’, and this happened to Paul when ‘God opened his eyes to the presence of the risen Lord Jesus Christ in the church’.20 But even this was something of an ‘invasive’ revelation: ‘In a word, the gospel happened to Paul when God stepped on the scene, invading his life in Christ’.21

However, the final occurrence of an ‘apocalyptic’ term in Galatians does not fit this pattern. Paul speaks of the situation Πρὸ τοῦ … ἐλθεῖν τὴν πίστιν (‘before faith came’), when ‘we were imprisoned and guarded under the law’, εἰς τὴν μέλλουσαν πίστιν ἀποκαλυφθῆναι (‘until the coming faith would be revealed’, 3:23, ESV), or simply εἰς Χριστόν (‘until Christ [came]’, 3:24), and then speaks of the situation ἐλθούσης … τῆς πίστεως (‘now that faith has come’, 3:25). This, Martyn notes, is ‘inadequately represented’ by speaking of faith being ‘revealed’ or ‘unveiled’, because it is not that faith was already present, ‘eternally standing behind a curtain’. Instead, the way ἀποκαλύπτω is used in 3:23 (along with the references to God having ‘sent’—ἐξαπέστειλεν—his Son and the Spirit of his Son in 4:4, 6) suggests that, for Paul, ‘God has invaded the present evil age by sending Christ and his Spirit into it’.22 Hence, Martyn translates 3:23b as ‘until, as God intended, faith was invasively revealed’.23 This reflects the cosmic warfare themes of ‘cosmological apocalyptic eschatology’.

This idea of ‘cosmic warfare’ continues in the way Martyn views Christ’s death in Galatians. Martyn writes that, for Paul, ‘the motif of cosmic warfare is focused first of all on the cross, and it is from the cross that one perceives the contours of that warfare’.24 The relevance of de Boer’s distinction between cosmological and forensic apocalyptic eschatology becomes apparent at this point. Although Paul ‘can and does affirm’ that ‘Jesus’ death was a vicarious act “for our sins”’,25 Martyn believes that Paul at this point is quoting a well-known saying used by the Teachers, only ‘in order affirmatively to correct it by means of an additional clause’ (‘to set us free from the present evil age’).26 Paul does this because ‘he is concerned to offer an interpretation of Jesus’ death that is oriented not toward personal guilt and forgiveness, but rather toward corporate enslavement and liberation’.27 Martyn’s use of ‘not … but rather’ reflects the way in which the difference between cosmological and forensic apocalyptic eschatology plays such an essential role in his interpretation of Galatians.

The reference to ‘the present evil age’ in Galatians 1:4 draws attention to another key theme of apocalyptic theology, that of the ‘two ages’.28 As Martyn writes, ‘In Paul’s vocabulary the expression that stands opposite “the present evil age” is “the new creation” (6:15)’.29 There is thus an ‘eschatological dualism’ in Galatians, which can be seen in particular in 3:19–25, with its temporal references.30 The new feature compared with Jewish apocalyptic is ‘God’s invasion of the present evil age’.31 The focus of this ‘invasion’ is the cross: for Paul, Martyn writes, ‘the cross is the event that involved the death of the old cosmos and the birth of the new creation (1:4; 6:14–15)’.32 Given that the crucifixion was an event in the past, and given that, for Paul, ‘the motif of cosmic warfare is focused first of all on the cross’, this means that ‘the turn of the ages is no longer to be thought of solely as an event in the future’.33 So the ‘present evil age’ and the ‘new creation’ overlap with each other: ‘The basic characteristic of the present time is given, then, in the fact that it is the juncture of the new creation and the evil age.’34 This places believers in a conflict situation, involved in an ongoing battle between the Spirit and the Flesh (5:17), ‘characterized by a belligerent and liberating line of movement from the new creation into the present evil age’.35 Thus, although ‘new creation’ appears only once in Galatians, its effects may be discerned throughout the letter.

This overlap of the ages highlights ‘the matter of discerning the time’, which ‘lies at the heart of apocalyptic’. Thus, for Martyn, ‘All of the preceding motifs flow together in the question Paul causes to be the crucial issue of the entire letter: What time is it?’36 He continues:

What time is it? It is the time after the apocalypse of the faith of Christ, the time, therefore, of God’s making things right by Christ’s faith, the time of the presence of the Spirit of Christ, and thus the time in which the invading Spirit has decisively commenced the war of liberation from the powers of the present evil age.37

From this discussion it is clear that themes of ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘new creation’ are central to Martyn’s interpretation of Galatians. But is he right to emphasise them to such an extent?

Assessment

While there is undoubtedly much of value in Martyn’s interpretation of Galatians, his work has met with a critical reaction in some quarters. One recurring motif in these responses is the suggestion that Martyn’s interpretation rests on false dichotomies. For example, James Davies, in his recent PhD thesis, argues ‘that the “apocalyptic Paul” movement is characterised at key points in each area by potentially false dichotomies, strict dualisms which unnecessarily screen out what Paul’s apocalyptic thought affirms’.38

As discussed above, the dominant dichotomy in Martyn’s reading of Galatians is that of divine versus human action. It is my contention that Martyn’s reading is helpful in its clear affirmation of redemption being a divine act, but is less helpful in its strong denial of the human side of redemption. This will be illustrated with reference to some responses to Martyn made by other New Testament scholars.

N. T. Wright, in his recent volume, The Paul Debate, is willing to go along with much of the content of an ‘apocalyptic’ reading of Paul. He sees belief in ‘fresh divine action to smash through the chaos and bring about new creation’ as present not only in Paul, but also widely within the Judaism of Paul’s day. Such beliefs, Wright claims, ‘did not mark off one particular group (“apocalypticism”) from other groups and movements known to us in this period’.39 But, Wright continues, belief in ‘sudden, cataclysmic divine action … was never set over against the belief in the fulfilment of ancient promises’.40 Wright rejects any notion of ‘salvation history’ that sees history ‘in terms of an inexorable “progress”’, and asserts that ‘There is no sense of that in Paul.’41 Wright therefore cautions against ‘the false antithesis between “apocalyptic” and the promises and purposes of the covenant God of Israel’.42

However, it is not clear that Martyn and Wright would be in fundamental disagreement about these points. Martyn also wrote against Heilsgeschichte (‘salvation history’), stating that, for Paul, ‘there is no affirmation of a salvific linearity prior to the advent of Christ’.43 But he also wrote explicitly that the advent of Christ is in fulfilment of ancient promises: ‘The God who is now rectifying the Gentiles by eliciting their faith is the same God who, in the voice of scripture, promised Abraham long ago that he would do that.’44 It would seem, so far, neither to be the case that Wright is a proponent of ‘salvation history’ (at least if that carries connotations of ‘progress’), nor that Martyn denies the importance of the promises given to Abraham. Where, then, is the disagreement?

Turning to another of Wright’s recent works, Paul and His Recent Interpreters, we find a more detailed engagement with the ‘apocalyptic’ Paul, and with Martyn in particular.45 Wright finds much to commend in Martyn’s reading of Galatians, highlighting the ‘deep-level agreement’ between them:

Nothing that I now say is intended to undermine Martyn’s emphasis—Paul’s emphasis!—on the gospel as, in that sense, apocalyptic event: that is, something that took place as a free and fresh gift of grace, something through which God’s new creation has burst upon a surprised and unready world, winning the victory over the forces of darkness and death. Paul says as much in 1 Corinthians 15.20–8, a passage I have long considered central to Paul, not peripheral as some see it. Martyn has emphasized this, and in that I rejoice.46

But Wright states that he and Martyn ‘agree on what should be affirmed, but not on what must be denied in order to make room for that affirmation’.47 The areas of disagreement centre around Martyn’s reliance on de Boer’s two ‘tracks’ of Jewish apocalyptic:48

Where de Boer is cautious, Martyn is adamant. There are two types of ‘apocalyptic’; Paul belongs to the first, his opponents in Galatia … belong to the second. … [Martyn] relies on de Boer’s analysis, shorn of the caveats and qualifying remarks de Boer himself inserted.49

Wright contests that Martyn’s assumptions about Paul and the Teachers are unfounded. According to Wright, Martyn assumes that ‘the Galatian “Teachers” whom Paul was opposing had embraced “forensic apocalyptic” and that Paul, in response, was occasionally using their language but subverting and transforming it with the “cosmic apocalyptic” he preferred’.50 Wright adds that Martyn takes the ‘Teachers’ to be ‘offering a covenantal and historical construal and that Paul was opposing them at just these points’, even though ‘de Boer never said anything about either ‘track’ of ‘apocalyptic eschatology’ entailing a rejection of history’.51

It is on this point that Wright, it seems, has the strongest critique of Martyn. As Wright says,

I do not think that the many ‘apocalyptic’ writers of the second-Temple period would recognize a statement of their major concern that did not include, as central elements, the question of Israel itself, the ongoing and ultimate divine purposes for Israel and the world, and the ways in which the long story of Israel was to be understood as falling under the divine sovereignty, with the promise of eventual dramatic rescue and reversal of fortune.52

Martyn might respond by emphasising the word ‘promise’ in Wright’s description: salvation was promised to Abraham, but the fulfilment was in the form of a ‘dramatic rescue’, again using Wright’s words. But Martyn’s emphasis on divine action in sharp contrast to human action certainly leads him to underemphasise the human aspects of the fulfilment of that promise.

The significance in Galatians of the promise given to Abraham was not simply that it was a promise made to one person, rather than to many; it was a promise made to Abraham’s ‘offspring’, which speaks of human descent (3:16). Moreover, the one who came in fulfilment of that promise was not simply the Son of God, but also the ‘Christ’, i.e., Israel’s long-awaited Messiah. This Messiah was not simply sent into the world ‘under the law’, but was ‘born’—‘born under the law’ and ‘born of a woman’—language which once again highlights the human side of God’s act of deliverance (4:4). Thus, although Martyn rightly draws attention to the ‘monumental’ difference between ‘human movement into the covenant’ and ‘God’s movement into the cosmos’, he appears to overemphasise the dichotomy between human and divine in his understanding of the latter.53

John Barclay also draws attention to this ‘polarity … between divine and human agency’ in Martyn’s reading of Galatians.54 Galatians, Barclay notes, is ‘characterized by starkly antithetical rhetoric’: ‘God–humanity, Spirit–flesh, freedom–slavery, Christ–Law, πίστις Ἰησοῦ–ἔργα νόμου, new creation–world’.55 Interpretations of Galatians differ depending on how they organise the polarities of the letter.56 Thus, for Martyn, ‘The other “antinomies” in Galatians cluster around’ the ‘central polarity’ between divine act and human act.’57

Where Martyn stresses the ‘priority of grace’, even seeking ‘to attribute the agency of believers to God’,58 Barclay prefers to emphasise ‘the counterintuitive character of the Christ-gift’,59 and the way this gift is ‘given without regard to worth’ (‘incongruity’).60 Contrasting his own interpretation with Martyn’s, Barclay writes:

By reducing the Galatian polarities to a foundational antithesis between the initiative of God and the initiative of humans, Martyn threatens to make Paul’s statements of believer-agency problematic, and to overload these with hidden reference to divine causality. Of course, for Paul, all believer-agency is founded on the Christ-event. But his chief concern in Galatians was not human agency per se, but the transformation in values effected by incorporation into the act of God in Christ.61

As Barclay makes clear in a volume on Divine and Human Agency in Paul, it is not necessary to see divine and human agency as competing with each other. According to one way of relating the two, ‘created human agencies are founded in, and constituted by, the divine creative agency, while remaining distinct from God’.62 This provides one way of affirming the supremacy of divine agency, without thereby denying the significance of human agency.

A further area in which Martyn’s dichotomy manifests itself is in his construal of the human plight. For Martyn, the fundamental problem faced by humanity is ‘enslavement under the might of anti-God powers, the curse of the Law, Sin, and the elements of the cosmos’.63 So, according to Martyn, Paul ‘sees liberation rather than forgiveness as the fundamental remedy enacted by God’.64 Thus, while not denying the need for forgiveness, Martyn writes that ‘The root trouble lies deeper than human guilt, and it is more sinister’, because humanity is ‘enslaved under the power of the present evil age’.65

Jason Maston challenges Martyn’s understanding of the human plight. He writes that ‘one version of the apocalyptic Paul has maintained that the human plight, according to Paul, is fundamentally about enslavement to the Powers and not guilt and disobedience’. But 2 Corinthians 5:18–21 ‘clearly identifies the plight as transgressions’. However, this plight ‘cannot be resolved by virtue of a renewed attempt at obedience’: ‘Because God took the initiative, this reveals to Paul that the human was incapable of restoring the relationship.’66 Maston continues:

If this reading has any merit, then it follows that the dichotomy between a plight of enslavement to the Powers and one of human disobedience must be rejected. … In addition, the dichotomy between a solution in terms of liberation and one that is forensic must be rejected. … The in-breaking of God in the Son is precisely to address the forensic problem of human disobedience and guilt. Such a plight necessitated such a profound solution, but it is only because of the profoundness of the solution that the depth of the plight becomes known.67

Once again, this dichotomy in Martyn stems from his appropriation of de Boer’s two ‘tracks’ of Jewish apocalyptic, and their different conceptions of the human plight.

To summarise, whether in the relationship between the Christ-event and Israel (as with Wright), in the relationship between divine agency and human agency (as with Barclay), or in the relationship between liberation and forgiveness (as with Maston), Martyn’s sharp polarity leads him to push his reading of Galatians too far in one direction.

Conclusion

Martyn presents a powerful reading of Galatians, emphasising God’s apocalyptic act of new creation in the cross and the gospel of Christ. However, Martyn reads Galatians through the lens of a sharp dichotomy between divine and human agency, informed by an overly enthusiastic use of an artificial distinction between two different types of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology. But, with an awareness of these limitations, his interpretation is of great value in drawing attention to certain emphases that have historically been neglected.

William Baird writes that Martyn ‘may be faulted, and rightly so, for his decision to view the Pauline corpus through the lens of Galatians. He presents the polemical, indeed, the angry Paul.’68 However, Martyn is careful to read Galatians along with other letters in the Pauline corpus. This is particularly the case with Romans, which Martyn sees, in part, as ‘an interpretation of Galatians made by Paul himself’.69 Given the different settings, and given the evidence Martyn finds that Paul’s letter to the Galatians might not have been received favourably, Martyn suggests that ‘in writing to the Romans, Paul clarified, supplemented—perhaps one should even say modified—some of the things he had said to the Galatians about the Law and about Israel’.70

Nonetheless, it is not inappropriate to pay attention to Paul when he is speaking polemically. If there were situations in Paul’s time that would have justified such a mode of address, there will also be situations in other times that warrant such an approach. Both Barclay and Wright suggest ways in which an appropriation of the polemical Paul may have been appropriate for Martyn’s context. So Barclay writes: ‘While supportive of the emancipatory movements that have engaged the churches in America since the 1960s, Martyn is wary lest the church’s social and political action becomes disengaged from its source, God’s action in Christ.’71 Wright, while less sympathetic to Martyn, offers a not dissimilar assessment of Martyn’s motives:

What was Martyn anxious to ward off? He did not say. … One might hazard a guess—mirror-reading Martyn as he mirror-reads Galatians!—that it could have something to do with his implicit opposition to (a) a casual, cheap-and-cheerful evangelicalism or fundamentalism which is constantly fussing about sin and salvation, defining its own group tightly and ignoring larger, cosmic issues, and (b) the easy-going socially conformist liberalism of the mainstream churches.72

A healthy emphasis on God’s invasive, cosmic act of salvation in Christ could easily be seen as appropriate in these contexts. As with Barth’s reading of Romans, it is in his attempt to allow the text to speak powerfully to a contemporary context that Martyn’s reading of Galatians is most to be commended.

All biblical quotations are taken from the NRSV, except when stated otherwise.

  1. J. Louis Martyn, ‘The Apocalyptic Gospel in Galatians’, Interpretation, 54 (2000), 246–266 (p. 246). ↩

  2. James P. Davies, ‘Paul Among the Apocalypses? An Evaluation of the ‘Apocalyptic Paul’ in the Context of Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic Literature’, PhD thesis, University of St Andrews, 2015, p. ii. ↩

  3. William Baird, History of New Testament Research, Volume 3: From C. H. Dodd to Hans Dieter Betz (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), p. 610. ↩

  4. Beverly Gaventa, ‘Martyn, J. Louis’, in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, ed. by John H. Hayes, 2 vols. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), ii, 133–134. ↩

  5. J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Bible 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1997), p. 38, emphasis in original. ↩

  6. Ibid., p. 37n67, cf. p. 588. ↩

  7. J. Louis Martyn, ‘Events in Galatia: Modified Covenantal Nomism Versus God’s Invasion of the Cosmos in the Singular Gospel: A Response to J. D. G. Dunn and B. R. Gaventa’, in Pauline Theology Volume 1: Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians, Philemon, ed. by Jouette M. Bassler (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), pp. 160–179, p. 165. ↩

  8. Martin Luther, A Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (Philadelphia: John Highlands, 1891), p. 35. ↩

  9. Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. by E. C. Hoskyns, 6th ed. (Oxford: OUP, 1933), p. 10. ↩

  10. T. Bradshaw, ‘Dialectical Theology’, in New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic, ed. by Martin Davie and others, 2nd ed. (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 2016), pp. 255–258 (p. 256). ↩

  11. Martyn, Galatians, p. 151. ↩

  12. Christopher Rowland, ‘Apocalyptic’, in The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology, ed. by Ian A. McFarland and others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 23–24. ↩

  13. Ibid., p. 23. ↩

  14. Martyn, Galatians, p. 97n51. ↩

  15. Martinus C. de Boer, ‘Paul and Jewish Apocalyptic Eschatology’, in Apocalyptic and the New Testament: Essays in Honor of J. Louis Martyn, ed. by Joel Marcus and Maion L. Soards (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), pp. 169–90 (p. 176), emphasis in original. ↩

  16. ibid., pp. 180–181; cf. Martyn, Galatians, pp. 97–98n51, 587. ↩

  17. de Boer, ‘Paul and Jewish Apocalyptic Eschatology’, p. 181; cf. Martyn, Galatians, pp. 98n51, 587–588. ↩

  18. Martyn, Galatians, p. 98n51. ↩

  19. Ibid., pp. 3–4, 98. ↩

  20. Ibid., p. 99. ↩

  21. Ibid., p. 144. ↩

  22. Ibid., p. 99, emphasis in original. ↩

  23. Ibid., pp. 6, 99. ↩

  24. Ibid., p. 101. ↩

  25. Ibid., p. 101. ↩

  26. Ibid., p. 90, cf. pp. 3, 81, 88–90. ↩

  27. Ibid., p. 101. ↩

  28. Ibid., p. 163. ↩

  29. Ibid., p. 98. ↩

  30. Ibid., p. 98n52. ↩

  31. Ibid., p. 100. ↩

  32. Ibid., p. 278, emphasis in original. ↩

  33. Ibid., p. 101. ↩

  34. Ibid., p. 102. ↩

  35. ibid., pp. 99–100, emphasis in original. ↩

  36. ibid., p. 104; J. Louis Martyn, Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (London: T&T Clark, 1997), p. 121. ↩

  37. Martyn, Galatians, pp. 104–105. ↩

  38. Davies, ‘Paul Among the Apocalypses?’, p. ii. ↩

  39. N. T. Wright, The Paul Debate: Critical Questions for Understanding the Apostle (London: SPCK, 2016), p. 55. ↩

  40. Ibid., p. 55. ↩

  41. Ibid., pp. 55–56. ↩

  42. ibid., p. 56, emphasis in original. ↩

  43. Martyn, ‘Events in Galatia’, p. 174. ↩

  44. Ibid., p. 174. ↩

  45. N. T. Wright, Paul and His Recent Interpreters (London: SPCK, 2015), pp. 133–218. ↩

  46. ibid., p. 168, emphasis in original. ↩

  47. Ibid., p. 168. ↩

  48. Ibid., p. 160. ↩

  49. Ibid., p. 168. ↩

  50. Ibid., p. 169. ↩

  51. Ibid., p. 169. ↩

  52. Ibid., p. 171. ↩

  53. Martyn, ‘Events in Galatia’, p. 168. ↩

  54. John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), p. 345. ↩

  55. Ibid., pp. 337–338. ↩

  56. Ibid., p. 338. ↩

  57. Ibid., p. 346. ↩

  58. ibid., p. 150, emphasis in original. ↩

  59. Ibid., p. 355. ↩

  60. ibid., p. 350, emphasis in original. ↩

  61. Ibid., p. 445. ↩

  62. John M. G. Barclay, ‘Introduction’, in Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment, ed. by John M. G. Barclay and Simon J. Gathercole (London: Continuum, 2006), pp. 1–8 (p. 7). ↩

  63. Martyn, Galatians, p. 373. ↩

  64. Ibid., p. 90. ↩

  65. Ibid., p. 105. ↩

  66. Jason Maston, ‘Plight and Solution in Paul’s Apocalyptic Perspective: A Study of 2 Corinthians 5:18–21’, in Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination, ed. by Ben C. Blackwell, John K. Goodrich and Jason Maston (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), pp. 297–315 (p. 314). ↩

  67. Ibid., pp. 314–315. ↩

  68. Baird, History of New Testament Research, Volume 3: From C. H. Dodd to Hans Dieter Betz, p. 622. ↩

  69. Martyn, Galatians, p. 31. ↩

  70. Ibid., p. 31. ↩

  71. Barclay, Paul and the Gift, p. 150. ↩

  72. Wright, Paul and His Recent Interpreters, p. 185. ↩

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