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Apocalyptic Antinomies in Paul's Letter to the

Galatians
J. Louis Martyn
New Testament Studies / Volume 31 / Issue 03 / July 1985, pp 410 - 424
DOI: 10.1017/S0028688500013941, Published online: 05 February 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0028688500013941

How to cite this article:
J. Louis Martyn (1985). Apocalyptic Antinomies in Paul's Letter to the Galatians. New
Testament Studies, 31, pp 410-424 doi:10.1017/S0028688500013941
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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 the

Galatians has been seen as the embarrassing member of the Pauline letterfamily, the one refusing to be brought into line with the others, and even,
in some regards, the one threatening the unity and good-natured comradery
of the family. Luther, to be sure, called on the familial image in an entirely
positive sense, when he confessed himself to be happily betrothed to the
letter. Others have considered that betrothal the prelude to an unfortunate
marriage, in which Luther was led astray, or led further astray, by this intractable and regrettable letter.1
In our own century the dominant cause of the letter's being regretted is
the obvious fact that, when Paul wrote it, he was in a state of white-hot
anger. More is involved here than merely the enlightened preference for
equanimity, and thus for the Apostle's happy words in the final chapter
of Philippians. There is notably the matter of Paul's stance toward the
Law of Moses. Christian exegetes have been repeatedly embarrassed when
their Jewish colleagues cite Paul's intemperate and quasi-gnostic comments
about the Law in Galatians. In the state of embarrassment more than one
Christian interpreter has turned to the seventh chapter of Romans, in order
to remind the Jewish colleagues that when Paul was in his reasonable and
balanced mind, he characterized the Law as holy, just, and good. Similarly,
made uneasy by Paul's tendentious account of the Jerusalem meeting in
Galatians 2, interpreters have frequently repaired, in one regard or another,
to Luke's more even-handed account in Acts 15. And while all are pleased
with the letter's characteristic celebration of freedom, some interpreters
feel somewhat embarrassed that Paul should have written the letter in a
state of unrepentance for the inflexible and even hostile words he spoke
to 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 interpreters
to a degree of regret that Paul should have written such an angry, unbalanced, 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.

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Galatians: to a growing number of interpreters the letter is the uncooperative maverick, not because of its belligerent tone, but because it
does not support the thesis of a Pauline gospel consistently focused on
what is being called an apocalyptic view of the future. In two seminal
essays of 1960 and 1962 Ernst Kasemann set the cat among thn pigeons
by identifying apocalyptic as the mother of Christian theology, and by
taking Paul as his crowning witness.2 Now, a number of years later, one
would have to admit that the pigeons are still circling, continuing their
disturbance of the peace; and as regards Galatians the scene is particularly
unsettled. Kasemann wrote his articles without explicit reference to the
theology of Galatians (Gal 3. 28 is taken as the slogan of the pre-Pauline
hellenistic community), and when his critics succeeded in eliciting from
him a definition of apocalyptic, it proved to be 'the expectation of an
imminent Parousia',3 a definition that threatened to exclude Galatians
from the apocalyptic form of the Pauline canon by default.4 As Pauline
exegetes have taken sides for and against Kasemann's apocalyptic Paul,
the letter has sometimes been allowed its voice, but precisely as the member of the family who does not fit in. If one was opposed to the picture of
Paul as a thoroughgoing apocalyptic theologian, surely one could refute
that picture by citing the letter that contains no reference to an imminent
Parousia.s If one supported the picture of Paul as the consistent apocalyptic
thinker, one had to admit that Galatians was an embarrassment, to which
one would have to respond by questioning its right to be a bona fide member of the Pauline canon.
The chief witness to this new form of Galatian embarrassment lay before
us 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 monumental on a number of counts, mainly because it is thus far the thoroughgoing

exploration of the thesis that apocalyptic is the heart of Paul's gospel.

What, then, could be said of Galatians? That letter does not support the
thesis, but Beker demonstrated a certain patience with its uncooperative
character, 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 of
Kasemann and Beker by suggesting another route. The thesis advanced and
powerfully developed by these two colleagues may be essentially correct:
Paul's theology is thoroughly apocalyptic, and is different from the theology of early Christian enthusiasm primarily in its insistence a) that the
world is not yet fully subject to God, even though b) the eschatological
subjection of the world has already begun, causing its end to be in sight.
To cite Kasemann, 'No perspective could be more apocalyptic.'6 One may
ask, however, as Beker now sees - with characteristic openness - in the preface for his second edition (1984), whether that thesis is to be maintained

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J. LOUIS MARTYN

at the expense of Galatians, indeed whether it can be maintained without

the support of Galatians. And asking that question leads us to give the
uncooperative letter another hearing. Could Galatians perhaps be allowed
to play its own role in showing us precisely what the nature of Paul's
apocalyptic was?7
II

The question can be honestly posed if we are willing to begin with a certain amount of ignorance as to the definition of apocalyptic, and of Paul's
apocalyptic in particular. One may be reminded of the Socratic dictum of
H.-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, taking
our bearings initially from its closing paragraph.
In that paragraph Paul draws a final contrast between himself and the
circumcising Teachers who are now active among his Galatian congregations.9 He draws the contrast as though he intended to place before the
Galatians a choice between two mystagogues, and thus a choice between
two ways of life:
Gal 6.13 f.

. . . they wish you to be circumcised, in order that they might boast with regard to your
flesh. 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 between which the Galatians might make a choice. He speaks, rather, of two
different 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 something
is the New Creation.

Here Paul speaks, as I have just said, of two different worlds. He speaks of
an 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 new
world, which he grasps under the arresting expression, New Creation.10
These statements are of the kind to make the head swim. One might
even wonder whether they do not constitute a flight from reality. To be
sure, Paul seems to bring these cosmic announcements into relationship
with some sort of realism, by placing between them a statement directed
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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 say
that some sort of realism is involved only makes it possible, however, to
define the major problem of Paul's closing paragraph. Exactly what sort of
realism is involved? New Creation, after all, is the kind of expression that
easily trails off into the nebulous realm of pious rhetoric. We have, then,
to ask Paul precisely how he understands his two cosmic announcements
to be related to the specific negation of circumcision and uncircumcision.
We begin to deal with that question by attending to the form of the
negation 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, therefore, to find him striking a final blow, directly and simply, against observance of the Law. Paul should say
Neither circumcision,
nor the rules of kashrut,
nor the keeping of the sabbath
is anything.

As is so often the case, however, Paul says the unexpected. He surprises

his 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 Aristotle
might have called an instance of Tdvavria.11
This observation may prove to be of considerable help in our efforts to
hear the text as the Galatians themselves heard it. For when we note that
Paul speaks about a pair of opposites, and that he does so between the
making of two cosmic announcements, we may recall how widespread in
the ancient world was the thought that the fundamental building blocks
of the cosmos are pairs of opposites. In one form or another we find that
thought in Greece, from Anaximander, to the Pythagoreans, to Aristotle;
in Persia, from Zoroaster to the magi; in Egypt, from the Pythagorean traditions 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 cosmic 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 creation
the archai of the cosmos have been pairs of opposites. We can say that in

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J. LOUIS MARTYN

the world of Paul's day, the thought of archaic, cosmic polarity was very
nearly ubiquitous. The Galatians, then, are almost certain to have known,
in some form, the thought that the structure of the cosmos lies in pairs of
opposites; and that is precisely the pattern of thought which Paul presupposes in our text.
He is making use of that theory, however, in a very peculiar fashion. He
is denying real existence to a pair of opposites, in order to show what it
means to say that the old cosmos has suffered its death. One can bring the
matter into sharp focus, if one can imagine, for a moment, that Paul is a
Pythagorean, who has been compelled by some turn of events to say about
the 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 him

to announce that the cosmos had suffered its death. Mutatis mutandis for
Paul the Pharisee to say that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is
anything is for him to make a cosmic statement no less radical. In making
that statement Paul speaks in specific terms about the horrifying death of
the cosmos. With that observation we have come far enough to advance an
hypothesis:
Perhaps in this final paragraph Paul is telling the Galatians that the whole
of his epistle is not about the better of two mystagogues, or even about
the 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, and
the advent of another. With regard to the former, the death of the cosmos, perhaps Paul is telling the Galatians that one knows the old world
to have died, because one knows that its fundamental structures are
gone, that those fundamental structures of the cosmos were certain
identifiable pairs of opposites, and that, given the situation among
their congregations in Galatia, the pair of opposites whose departure
calls for emphasis is that of circumcision and uncircumcision.
Obviously one tests this hypothesis by re-reading the entire letter, and, in
the course of doing so, one sees that in Galatians Paul speaks of pairs of
opposites with astonishing frequency.15 Of the numerous references, three
further texts lend themselves to comment within the scope of the present
essay.
The first is also the most obvious, the famous baptismal formula of
Gal 3. 27-28, with its three pairs of opposites,
Jew
slave
male

/ Greek
/ freeman
/ female.

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

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harmonious it is with those cosmic announcements of the closing paragraph. 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 structures
were certain pairs of opposites:
circumcision
Jew
slave
male

/
/
/
/

uncircumcision
Gentile
freeman
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 the
preferable side of the divide.16 Those who have been baptized into Christ,
however, know that, in Christ, that world does not any longer have real
existence.
And what of the second of those cosmic announcements in the letter's
closing paragraph, that of the New Creation? Clearly Paul has it in mind as
he writes the second half of 3. 28. For, corresponding to the departure of
the old world, with its divisive pairs of opposites, there is the advent of
anthropological unity in Christ:
You are, all of you,
one in Christ Jesus.

The old world had pairs of opposites. The New Creation, marked by
anthropological unity in Christ, does not have pairs of opposites.
A moment's thought will tell us that, important as this anthropological
pattern may be, it presents only part of the picture. One thinks, for
example, of passages in which Paul refers to the Spirit and the Flesh. Paul
speaks of these two cosmic powers as one would speak of a pair of opposites; and yet he clearly does not think of them as a pair of opposites that
has departed, to be replaced by some kind of unity.
We turn, then, to a second text, one of the major points in the letter at
which Paul speaks of the Spirit and the Flesh, Gal 5. 16-17. For the sake
of brevity I give this text in a distinctly interpretive paraphrase:
Galatians 5. 16-17
But - 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 completion
the Inclination of the Flesh.
For the Flesh is actively inclined against the Spirit,
and the Spirit against the Flesh.
Indeed, these two powers
constitute a pair of opposites.. .
(Tcwra yap dXX^Xotc
ivrinenai...)

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J. LOUIS MARTYN

In this polemical passage several points are pertinent to our subject: There
is Paul's use of the technical term avrineLnai, by which he defines the
Spirit and the Flesh as a pair of opposites. It seems highly probable that
Paul gives this emphatic definition in order to correct something the
Teachers are saying about a pair of opposites. The Teachers are apparently
using the term 'flesh' in order to speak of the Evil Impulse, and in order to
instruct 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 Impulse and the Law constitute a pair of opposites in the sense that the Law
is the God-given antidote to the fleshy Impulse.17
In the face of this teaching, what does Paul do? He implies clearly
enough that the fleshy Impulse and the Law form a pair of opposites
characteristic of the old cosmos, the cosmos that met its death in the
cross of Christ. To this extent one may be reminded of the pattern we
have seen in the baptismal formula of 3. 27-28: pairs of opposites characteristic of the old cosmos have disappeared.
There are, however, significant differences. Here, in 5. 16-17, the old
pair of opposites does not completely disappear, in order to be replaced
by unity. The individual members of this old pair of opposites - the fleshy
Impulse and the Law - continue to exist. They are thrown, however, into
new patterns. They are radically realigned, by getting new and surprising
opposites. The fleshy Impulse is not effectively opposed by the Law. Indeed the Law proves to be an ally of the Flesh! The effective opposite to
the fleshy Impulse is the Spirit of God's Son.18
Moreover, as the context shows, the Spirit and the Flesh are not only a
pair of opposites. They are a pair of warriors, locked in combat with one
another (note especially Paul's use of the term d0oppiT? in 5. 13). And this
warfare has been started by the Spirit, sent by God into the realm of the
Flesh. Thus, the warfare of the Spirit versus the Flesh is a major characteristic of the scene in which the Galatians - together with all other human
beings - now find themselves.

in
It is by inquiring further into that picture of the human scene that we can
now return to the question whether Paul's message to the Galatians is best
understood to be non-apocalyptic. On the one side it must be said that we
have 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 the
emergence of a new and strange pair of opposites, and when we probe more
deeply into the nature of this pair, we find ourselves dealing with motifs
clearly apocalyptic.

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1. There is first the connection of this pair of opposites with the dawn
of God's New Creation, an expression at home in apocalyptic texts.19 The
Spirit and its opposite, the Flesh, are not the timeless first principles (contrast the theory of the Pythagoreans mentioned above), nor do they inhere
in the cosmos as a result of their having been created by God at the beginning (contrast not only Ben Sira 33. 15, but also 1QS 3. 13-4. 26). As a
pair of opposites they have come newly on the scene.
2. This pair of opposites owes its birth, therefore, not to God's creative
act, but rather to God's new-creative act. It is born of the new event, God's
sending 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, an
event that Paul explicitly calls an apocalypse (note the parallel expressions
'to come' and 'to be apocalypsed' in 3. 23). Indeed it is precisely the Paul
of Galatians who says with emphasis that the cosmos in which he previously
lived met its end in God's apocalypse of Jesus Christ (1. 12, 16; 6. 14). It
is this same Paul who identifies that apocalypse as the birth of his gospelmission (1. 16), and who speaks of the battles he has to wage for the truth
of 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 reference 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' meets
the '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 an
archaic pair of opposites inhering in the cosmos from creation, but rather
as an apocalyptic antinomy characteristic of the dawn of God's New
Creation.
4. The dynamism of this apocalyptic antinomy is given not only in its
being born of an event, but also in its being a matter of warfare begun with
that event.20The motif of warfare between pairs of opposites could remind
one 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 there
is strife (y)) between the two Spirits. But in both of these views the
struggle is thought to inhere in the cosmos; indeed in the perspective of
Qumran the warring antinomy of the Spirit of Truth versus the Spirit of
Falsehood, stemming as it does from the original creation, will find in the
New 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 constitute
an apocalyptic antinomy in the sense that they are two opposed orbs of
power, actively at war with one another since the apocalyptic advent of
Christ and of his Spirit. The space in which human beings now live is a
newly invaded space, and that means that its structures cannot remain
unchanged.
5. It follows that Christians who are tempted to live as though the

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J. LOUIS MARTYN

effective opposite of the fleshy Impulse were the Law are in fact persons
who are tempted to abandon life in the Creation that has now been made
what it is by the advent of Christ and of his Spirit. It is they who are not
living in the real world. For the true war of liberation has been initiated
not at Sinai, but rather in the apocalypse of the crucified one and in the
coming of his Spirit.
6. All of the preceding motifs come together in the question that Paul
causes to be the crucial issue of the entire letter: What time is it? One
hardly needs to point out that the matter of discerning the time lies at
the very heart of apocalyptic; and as the preceding motifs show, in none
of his letters does Paul address that issue in terms more clearly apocalyptic
than in Galatians. What time is it? It is the time after the apocalypse of the
faith of Christ, the time therefore of rectification by that faith, the time
of the presence of the Spirit, and thus the time of the war of liberation
commenced by the Spirit.
To probe deeply into the nature of Paul's antinomies is, then, to see
that Galatians, far from threatening the picture of Paul the apocalyptic
evangelist, enriches and expands that picture. Indeed the picture is further
enriched when we ask whether, in addition to the Spirit and the Flesh,
there are yet other apocalyptic antinomies that have now emerged with
the dawn of the New Creation.
That question takes us to our final text, Galatians 4. 21-5. 1, Paul's
interpretation of the traditions about Abraham's two sons. Here again we
Can be brief, not least because we already have the keenly crafted study of

this passage by C. K. Barrett.21

First, as in the preceding text, so also here, Paul is almost certainly

following, to a large degree, in the steps of the circumcising Teachers. He
has learned that the Teachers are using the scriptural traditions about
Abraham's two sons, and for his own reasons he decides to use the same
traditions.
Second, neither the Teachers nor Paul will have needed to be taught
that the traditions about Abraham's two sons are made to order, so to
speak, for interpretation focused on pairs of opposites. Indeed, at a crucial
point in his own interpretation Paul employs the technical term ovoroixei*),
thus telling the Galatians that he himself intends to speak of a Table of
paired Opposites.22 There are two sons, two mothers, two covenants, and
a number of other pairs of opposites as well, not least the pair we have just
now discussed, the Spirit and the Flesh. In the proper sense Paul speaks
here of the OVOTOLXUIL of the New Creation, the two parallel columns of
opposites characteristic of that New Creation. There are, as I have said,
two sons, two women, and under these two women the two columns run
as follows:

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[Sarah]
free
the covenant of God's promise
to Abraham (3. 17)
the Jerusalem above, our mother
[an apocalyptic expression in
Rev 3. 12;21.2]

Hagar

slave
the covenant from
Mt. Sinai
the present Jerusalem
[i.e. the False Brothers in the
Jerusalem church, as sponsors
of the Law-observant mission to
Gentiles]23
children of the slave woman,
born into slavery
one born in accordance
with the Flesh
the slave woman and her son
[i.e. the Teachers, who are
to be expelled]

children of the
free woman
one born in accordance with the
Spirit, i.e. the promise of God
the son of the free woman
[i.e. the Galatians as those born
of the promised Spirit]

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

slave
Gentiles

Sarah

free
Jews

[cf. Jubilees 16. 17-18]

The Nations
the church of the circumcised
[i.e. the ruling powers of the
Jerusalem church and the Law-observant
mission sponsored by them]

Given the Teachers' Table of Opposites, one comes back to Paul's view of
things 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 column
with 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 about
Abraham's two sons, the major exegetical issue is the true identification of
the 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 traditions allegorically, that is to say by noting columnar correspondences.
They have told you that Hagar is in the same column with slavery, and
so she is. But they have not caused you really to hear the Law; for they
have not told you the astonishing truth, that Hagar the slave woman, is
also in the same column with Mt. Sinai, the locus of the genesis of the
Law, and that Hagar the slave woman is in the same column with the
present Jerusalem itself! Whoever sees the oppositonal columns, the

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J. LOUIS MARTYN

ovoTOixiai TCJV ivaunoTcov, as they actually stand in the dawning of

the New Creation of the Spirit, will see that the present Jerusalem is
connected 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 concern
is the nature of that polemic. It is crucial to see that the polemic is not
focused on Judaism, but rather on pairs of opposites. The advent of the
Spirit has brought into being a new set of oppositional columns, a new
set of antinomies, so that these antinomies have in fact replaced the oppositional columns characteristic of the old cosmos.
Moreover, the motif of struggle, two opposing powers being presently
locked 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 New
Creation, are to act out these OVOTOIXLCLI in everyday life by expelling the
circumcising Teachers from their congregations. The New Creation has
dawned; but in true apocalyptic fashion its Jerusalem is, as yet, above.
The freedom of those born of the Spirit is altogether real; but, given the
continuing presence of the present Jerusalem, the threat of slavery is still
at 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 announcements

at the close of the letter, the announcement of the horrifying death of the
cosmos, and the announcement of the surprising dawn of the New Creation.
If the interpretive lines we have followed are generally valid, Paul is far
from allowing those announcements to be lodged in the hazy mists of
piety, or even, properly speaking, in the realm of religion. The letter, to
say it yet again, is not an attack on Judaism; nor is it even an apologetic
letter, in the sense of its being designed to convert its readers from one
religion to another.25 Interpreted in the light of Paul's frequent recourse
to the form of the apocalyptic antinomy, the two cosmic announcements
stand at the conclusion of a letter fully as apocalyptic as are the other
Paulines.26 The motif of the triple crucifixion - that of Christ, that of the
cosmos, that of Paul - reflects the fact that through the whole of Galatians
the focus of Paul's apocalyptic lies not on Christ's parousia, but rather on
his 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 especially
on the central facet of that advent: the crucifixion of Christ, the event
that has caused the time to be what it is by snatching us out of the grasp

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of the present evil age (1. 4). Paul's perception of Jesus' death is, then, fully
as apocalyptic as is his hope for Jesus' parousia (cf. 1 Cor 2. 8). Thus the
subject of his letter to the Galatians is precisely an apocalypse, the apocalypse of Jesus Christ, and specifically the apocalypse of his cross.
Paul writes the letter, confident that by hearing it the Galatians will
once 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, thereby
coming 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, are
united with former Jews. They will know that although they are united
in Christ, the advent of the Spirit has caused the world in which they are
living to be the scene of antinomous warfare on a cosmic scale. They will
learn 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, perceiving experientially the pairs of opposites, the apocalyptic antinomies,
that are its hall-mark.
For a congregation that is living in accordance with the antinomies that
find their genesis in the old world is like a company of soldiers who are
armed with the wrong weapons, and who are fighting on the wrong front.
In the first instance such soldiers do not need exhortation about choosing
the better of two ways. They need once again to be seized by the apocalypse of Jesus Christ, that invasive disclosure of the antinomous structure
of the New Creation.29 Paul writes a letter, therefore, that is designed to
function as a witness to the dawn of the New Creation, and, specifically,
as a witness to the apocalyptic antinomies by which the battles of that
New Creation are both perceived and won.
NOTES
[1] See Eric W. Gritsch, Martin - God's Court Jester (1983), chap 7, 'The Gospel and Israel', and
literature cited there. In his lectures on Galatians Luther often spoke in one breath of the Jews, the
Turks, and the papists. No careful reader of Luther's lectures can fail, however, to learn much about
Galatians.
[2] E. Kasemann, 'Die Anfange christlicher Theologie', ZThK 57 (1960) 162-85;ET 'The Beginnings of Christian Theology', 82-107 in New Testament Questions of Today (1969); 'Zum Thema
der urchristlichen Apokalyptik',Z77i 59 (1962) 267-84; ET 'On the Subject of Primitive Christian
Apocalyptic', 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 theology . . . everywhere in the Pauline Epistles' (NTQT 131; emphasis added). An appreciative analysis 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, Union
Theological 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.

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[9] On the Teachers see Martyn, 'A Law-Observant Mission to Gentiles: the Background of Galatians', Michigan Quarterly Review 22 (1983) 221-36, reprinted in SJT 38 (1985); E. E. Ellis, The
Circumcision Party and the Early Christian Mission', chap 7 in Prophecy and Hermeneutic in Early
Christianity (1978).
[10] Taken by itself the expression New Creation scarcely decides the issue we are addressing, but
it is pertinent to note that the expression is at home in apocalyptic. See P. Stuhlmacher, 'Erwagungen
zum ontologischen Charakter der kaine ktisis bei Paulus', EvTh 27 (1967) 1-35; cf. also G. Schneider, '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, Metaphysics
1018a; cf. 1004b and 986a. He also spoke of pairs that admit an intermediate, such as black, grey,
white (MTO{u; dvd. niaov). Gal 5. 3 shows that Paul does not understand Law-observance and nonLaw-observance to admit the intermediate phenomenon of partial Law-observance. Nor in 6. 15
does Paul think of complementarity in the sense that circumcision and uncircumcision encompass
the whole of humanity (contrast Gal 2. 7-9 and the captatio benevolentiae of Gal 2.15; contrast
also 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 exclusive opposition. The concern of the present essay is to approach the question of 'Paul and apocalyptic' by taking one's bearings from pairs ofopposites, a task as pertinent to the study of the
other letters as it is to the study of Galatians. The path followed is distinct from the one that is
pursued in studies of the antithesis as a rhetorical form, although there are points of contact. See
particularly 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 Ausdrucksweise in der Griechischen Literatur (1900); we have now the finely nuanced interpretation
by G. E. R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy (1966). The traditions of primary importance are those of
Heraclitus, the Pythagoreans, Parmenides, the Hippocratic corpus, Plato, and Aristotle, the last
being our major source for the role of polar structure in Pythagorean philosophy. See also the
orphic 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 Veterum
Fragmenta (1903) 2, 70-83, and M. Polenz, Die Stoa (1948) 48 ff. For Persia see notably Geo
Widengren, '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 volume
the 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 notes
certain recurrent antitheses in ancient Egyptian religion (Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy 29 n 3), and
above all Philo's use of the Pythagorean tradition ofopposites, once in order to show Moses' priority
to Heraclitus (Who is the Heir 207-14), and elsewhere in order to enrich the doctrine of the Two
Ways {On Flight and Finding 58; Questions and Answers on Exodus 23; cf. 1QS 3.13-4. 26). Foi
Palestine see Isaiah 45. 7, where God is the one who now creates light and darkness, salvation and
woe (a pre-figurement of opposites in the new age? cf. Carroll Stuhlmueller, Creative Redemption
in 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 service
of the doctrine of the Two Ways; note also the motif of complementarity in the last passage, reflecting 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 Hellenismus (1973); M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism (1974) I, 146; J. Hadot, Penchant Mauvais et
Volunti Libre dans La Sagesse de Ben Sira (1970); G. Maier, Mensch und freier Wille (1971)]; in
Qumran literature the major text is 1QS 3. 13-4. 26, where one finds a connection between pairs
of opposites and the expectation of the New Creation: the struggle between the two Spirits is
characteristic of the cosmos until God establishes the New Creation by destroying the Spirit of
Evil; the New Creation is thus connected with the termination of cosmic polarity. The wisdom
traditions show the thought of archaic polarity serving the doctrine of the Two Ways; Qumran can
represent the tendency in apocalyptic traditions to use the thought of archaic polarity also in the
service of the doctrine of the Holy War (cf. also the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, note 13
below); from the numerous treatments of Qumran dualism two items: H. G. May, 'Cosmological
Reference 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-

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solymitana 4 (1965) 88-100); the pertinent rabbinic data, fully collected and arranged, wherever
possible, by date, would make a study in themselves; it will suffice to mention the continuation of
the use of pairs of opposites to serve the doctrine of the Two Ways; Aboth 2. 9; 5. 7; 5.19; and the
sometimes philosophical discussions of the flljlt in which the accent generally lies on complementarity rather than on opposition, e.g. Midrash Rabba 11.8, where the Sabbath asks God for a partner (JIT), and is given Israel as a partner; (cf. Pesikta Rabbati 23. 6); Ecc 7. 14 is taken up in several
places, e.g. Hagigah 15a, where, however, under the name of Akiba, the motif of opposition is
added to that of cosmic complementarity (cf. Midrash Bahir 129 and Midrash Temurah 2). It is
well known that the so-called doctrine of the syzygies was a favourite of the gnostics and also plays
an important role in Jewish-Christian traditions now found in the Pseudo-Clementine literature; see
e.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 some
degree 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 Greek
philosophy (e.g. Heraclitus) and in the history of medicine from the Hippocratic corpus to the
writings of C. G. Jung.
[14] See especially Aristotle, Metaphysics 986a, where the ten principles of the Pythagoreans are
listed in two columns of opposites (OVOTOIXUU)[15] The letter opens with the ancient pair of God/human being, and closes with the strange pair
of 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 Rabbi
Judah (active ca. 130-160 C.E.) are conveniently cited in W. A. Meeks, The Image of the Androgyne', HR 13 (1973/4) 167-8. The two major interpretive alternatives for Gal 3. 28 arise from
taking its background to be gnosis, on the one hand, and apocalyptic, on the other. Meeks' learned
article travels the former route; the present essay the latter. Nothing in the text or context of Gal
3. 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 widespread, 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 Yecer
hara', Biblical and Semitic Studies (1901) 128]. That Christian Jews held this conviction is clear
from 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 of
God that makes certain the promise of Gal 5.16. Thus Paul does not speak of an anthropological
doctrine in the proper sense (H. D. Betz, Galatians, 1979, 278), but rather of the advent of Christ's
Spirit. 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 Hellholm (ed.), Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East (1983), 150. See B. Barbara 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 of
his 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 advent
of Christ has introduced a new religion, as the circumcising Teachers think, or whether that event
marks the end of all religion by terminating holy times (4. 10), food laws (2. 11-14) etc. Note the

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sharp irony with which Paul employs in a polemical fashion the terminology of religious conversion
in 4. 9 (D. Georgi in ThEH 70,1959, 111 ff.). Our analysis of pairs of opposites in Galatians shows
that Paul's use of this pattern does not fall in the line of wisdom tradition, with its marraige of the
pairs to the doctrine of the Two Ways, but rather in the line of apocalyptic, in which the pairs are
seen 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 doctrine of the Two Ways. Paul speaks, rather, of the activities of two warriors, the Flesh and the
Spirit.
[26] We have noted above that in composing Galatians Paul employs at crucial points the noun
dnoK&\v\l>i(; and the verb diroicaKviTTLJ. It is strange that in the investigation of apocalyptic patterns
in 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 apokalypto /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 Theological
Seminary, 1973).
[28] Epistemology is a central concern in all apocalyptic, because the genesis of apocalyptic
involves a) developments that have rendered the human story hopelessly enigmatic, when perceived
in human terms, b) the conviction that God has now given to the elect true perception both of
present developments (the real world) and of a wondrous transformation in the near future, c) the
birth of a new way of knowing both present and future, and d) the certainty that neither the future
transformation, nor the new way of seeing both it and present developments, can be thought to
grow out of the conditions in the human scene. For Paul the developments that have rendered the
human scene inscrutable are the enigma of a Messiah who was crucified as a criminal and the incomprehensible emergence of the community of the Spirit, born in the faith of this crucified
Messiah. The new way of knowing, granted by God, is focused first of all on the cross, and also on
the parousia, these two being, then, the parents of that new manner of perception. Galatians is a
strong witness to the epistemological dimension of apocalyptic, as that dimension bears on the
cross. 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 Presented 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 of
apocalyptic is focused primarily not on God's uncovering of something hidden from the beginning
of time (1 Cor 2. 10), but rather on God's new act of invading the human orb, thus restructuring
the force field in which human beings live. In other words, more important than the etymology of
the verb diroKaMrtrtJ is Paul's using it in parallel with the verb \8eu> (Gal 3. 23). Faith is apocalypsed by coming newly on the scene. Thus the knowledge spoken of in the preceding note is
knowledge of an invaded cosmos.

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