Paul’s Argument in Galatians and Romans Is Salvation-Historical, Not General in Nature

It is a big statement to make, but I believe that the vast majority of Christian interpreters of Paul’s teaching in Galatians and Romans have failed to understand Paul’s argument in the historical context of his day. The major theological issue for the early church (as the calling of the Council of Jerusalem proves) was the Judaizing issue. The issue was basically: Can Gentiles be saved as Gentiles, or do they have to come under the framework of the Mosaic covenant to be justified?

The key to understanding Paul’s argument in Galatians and Romans lies in realizing that his argument is a salvation-historical argument. That is, Paul was attempting to answer the question: How are people saved now that the new covenant in Christ has come? Reflecting the covenantal particularism of the orthodox Judaism of the day, the Christian Judaizers believed that, even though the new covenant had come in Jesus Christ, the new covenant fit neatly into the framework of the Mosaic covenant, leaving the law of Moses fully intact, and thereby restricting faith participation to those who were members of Israel. This is why they put pressure on Gentile Christians to be circumcised (if male) and to follow the law of Moses (Acts 15:1, 5). Paul’s argument is that the new covenant in Christ is actually co-extensive with the still yet earlier Abrahamic covenant, under which a gentilic faith response to God was possible (as proved by the faith of uncircumcised, gentilic Abraham himself).

In Galatians and Romans, Paul was concerned to contrast the requirement of faith under old covenant with the requirement of faith under the new covenant. The term law was Pauline and Jewish code for the Mosaic covenant, and the expression the works of the law was the standard Jewish way of referring to the covenant faithfulness that God required of Israel under the terms of the Mosaic covenant as per Ps 119:30, where the writer speaks of faith in terms of setting his heart on torah. Paul was primarily contrasting the old way of covenant faithfulness under the Mosaic covenant (which was required as the proper response under the old covenant, but had recently been superseded with the coming of Christ) with new (Abrahamic-type) way of covenant faithfulness to Jesus as revealed in the gospel, which Gentiles could participate in.

Paul sought to prove that the new covenant is more Abrahamic in nature than Mosaic. His main proof at this point was the evidence of word association in the Scriptures that linked the new covenant with the Abrahamic covenant. Employing a common rabbinic method of exegesis, Paul noted (as we see in Rom 1:16–17; 4:3, 9, 22; Gal 3:6, 11) that the word והאמן and he believed is used of Abraham in Gen 15:6, and the related word אמונה faith is used of the new covenant in Hab 2:4 (which is part of an eschatological prophecy). That common terminology allows us to link the Abrahamic and new covenants together, the implication being that, if Abraham could believe in God and be justified as a Gentile (i.e., before he was circumcised), then the same thing applies under the new covenant: Gentiles can be justified under the new covenant apart from submission to the law of Moses. Paul also argued that the Sinaitic covenant was just a temporary, intervening covenant (a kind of narrowing down of the Abrahamic covenant for the purpose of regulating the singular nation of Israel until the coming of Christ). Therefore, with the coming of Christ, the old covenant has been subsumed by the new covenant, thus allowing Gentiles to participate in salvation through faith in the Messiah. The new covenant is not just a continuation of the old covenant. The new covenant actually eclipses and supersedes the old, allowing righteousness to be opened up to the nations, in fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham (Gen 12:3).

Paul’s argument in Galatians and Romans is a salvation-historical argument that deals specifically with the major historical issue for the church in his day: the Judaizing problem. It is not a general argument about believing versus doing (as many Christian interpreters have traditionally taken it). We need to read and understand Paul’s argument in the historical context of his day, which also requires that we appreciate the Hebraic background of the key (Greek) terms that Paul employed. A greater sensitivity to the orthodox Hebraic concepts underpining Paul’s terminology, and a greater understanding of how the Mosaic covenant actually functioned, would greatly aid the Christian church in understanding the genius of this great apostle of faith.

Eschatological Torah in Romans

Having identified that a concept of eschatological torah exists in the Old Testament, and that Paul reflects the Old Testament teaching concerning this concept in his letters, it is interesting to consider how prominent the concept of eschatological torah is in Paul.

A good place to start is Paul’s epistle to the Romans. On my calculations, of the 74 instances of νóμοϛ (nomos) in Romans, it seems that around 5% of instances have eschatological or new covenant torah as their referent. The relevant instances are highlighted in bold in the following quotations.

For when Gentiles, who by nature do not have the law, do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law (Rom 2:14).

Gentiles by definition cannot keep Mosaic torah, so the law that the Gentiles keep (in accordance with Isa 2:2-3; 42:2; 51:4) must be eschatological torah.

Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith (Rom 3:27).

The law of works is the law of Moses. The law of faith is the eschatological torah of the gospel, which breaks down the barrier of exclusive covenant membership that led to Jewish boasting.

For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2).

The law of sin and death is the law that brought death to Israel, i.e., the law of Moses. This is evident from the wider context as Paul has just argued in Rom 7 for the condemnatory and mortifying effect of the law of Moses on carnal Israel. By way of contrast to the law of Moses, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is nothing other than the eschatological torah that is written in the heart by the Holy Spirit that brings life through Christ Jesus, in accordance with the prophecies of Deut 30:11-14; Jer 31:33; and Ezek 36:26-27, which speak of the law being written on the heart of God’s people in the eschatological age, moving them to obedience, “so that [they] might live” (Deut 30:6).

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Rom 8:3-4).

The phrase the law in Rom 8:4 most likely refers back to the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus in Rom 8:2. That the referent of the pronoun us in Rom 8:4 presumably includes Gentiles confirms that it is probably best to take the phrase the law in Rom 8:4 to refer to eschatological torah.

Overall, therefore, the concept of eschatological torah is not frequently explicit in Paul’s letter to the Romans; but it is theologically very significant nonetheless.

A Salvation-Historical Approach to Paul: A Response to Dave Woolcott

Thanks, Dave. I understand where you are coming from more now. But there are a few things to think about.

You say that you do not believe that there is more than one covenant (one covenant of grace, I presume you mean), so therefore you take law in Romans to be the issue of law generally. I think Galatians should help you here. Please note Paul’s argument in Gal 4:21-26. Here Paul speaks of two covenants. Now I’m assuming that for you these two covenants correspond to the covenant of works versus the covenant of grace. If I’ve understood you correctly, I can see why you might do that; but it doesn't fit with the exegetical evidence right there in Gal 4:21-26.

Paul takes Isaac and Ishmael as symbolic of two covenants. What are these two covenants? “One is from Mount Sinai” who “corresponds to the present Jerusalem” (Gal 4:24-25). Ishmael is symbolic of the covenant made at Sinai, i.e., the Mosaic covenant, the covenant that enslaves “the present Jerusalem,” i.e., the Jews of Paul's day in their devotion to the Mosaic covenant. Isaac symbolizes “the Jerusalem above,” the new Jerusalem of the new covenant (Gal 4:26).

Now perhaps you will say, “Oh, but the Sinai covenant is singled out here as representing the covenant of works.” But this doesn’t fit the exegetical evidence either. Have a look at Paul’s argument in Gal 3:15-19. Notice what Paul says in Gal 3:17: “the law which came 430 years afterward [i.e., after the promises given to Abraham], does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.”

Paul is contrasting law with promise, and he means by this: Mosaic covenant (law) versus Abrahamic covenant (promise). Maybe I should call my approach to Paul not simply covenantal (since you claim that your approach is too, and it is) but rather salvation-historical covenantal. Paul is interested in the various covenants of salvation history: the Abrahamic versus the Mosaic versus the new. He wants to compare and contrast them. Why? I’ll talk about that later on below.

So your system of slicing all of the particular covenants of salvation history into two parts corresponding to the covenant of works and the covenant of grace is like obliterating the Lego blocks of salvation history originally put there by God. Your system is easy to follow, easily understood intellectually, but it’s not precise, and more importantly I think it gets in the way of understanding what Paul is on about.

But anyway, back to the rest of Gal 3. I can’t see with your view how you can interpret Gal 3:18 adequately. The law talked about in Gal 3:17 is definitely the Mosaic law, and it would be unnatural to change the sense of this term in the very next verse. Paul means in Gal 3:18 that the inheritance of eternal life cannot be limited to the law of Moses (i.e., the Mosaic covenant, which is exactly what the Judaizers were doing according to Acts 15:1, 5), otherwise the promise that God made to Abraham (the same promise of the inheritance of eternal life) would made void, and God would end up contradicting himself, and be seen not to be faithful to his promise to Abraham. The issue of the day, as Acts 15:1, 5 shows, was that the non-Christian Jews and Christian Judaizers thought that salvation and righteousness could only be obtained through the Mosaic covenant. Paul's argument in Galatians and Romans is directed at that specific issue. It's a salvation-historical issue. Is the Mosaic covenant the be-all-and-end-all of God’s soteric purposes?

Getting back to Gal 3:18, Paul is arguing that the inheritance of eternal life was promised to Abraham. The subsequent channeling of the promise of inheritance through the Mosaic covenant is a temporary narrowing, not a permanent narrowing of the stream of life to just Israel such that Gentiles can't participate in it unless they give up their Gentile citizenship to become Jews through circumcision and membership in the Mosaic covenant.

This salvation-historical approach makes sense, then, of Gal 3:19. The Jewish comeback to Paul would be: okay, if God already promised life to Abraham, what's the point of Sinai? Why the law of Moses and the Mosaic covenant? Isn’t that the pinnacle of God's purposes? No, says Paul. The law of Moses was given to Israel to increase the problem of sin, not to solve it, until the promised Messianic offspring arrived on the scene.

Jump over to Gal 3:23-29. How can you explain with your approach the fact that Paul could talk about a time before faith came except by sucking out of Paul’s words his intended sense of temporality? “Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law” (Gal 3:23). The phrase the law here, following on from the discussion in Gal 3:15-19, is the law of Moses, not law in general. Notice also how the term faith is christologically defined in Gal 3:23-25. “Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed” (Gal 3:23), which parallels “until Christ came” (Gal 4:24). The coming of Christ historically means the coming of faith (by the way, just as Hab 2:4 prophesied).

In Paul’s way of thinking faith existed while Abraham was a Gentile, but the Mosaic covenant put Israel under the works of the law, but with a view to everything reverting back to faith with the coming of the Messiah. Paul’s law/faith distinction here is not anthropological, but salvation-historical. The law of Moses was “our guardian,” i.e., a guardian over Israel, “until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith” (Gal 3:24). “But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian” (Gal 3:25). Paul is not talking about abstract theological concepts, but the flow of the covenants in the salvation-historical time-space continuum.

You say that every covenant has law. That is true as a theological statement. But we need to understand Paul on his own terms. His use of terms such as law, faith, works, grace, promise, etc., is typical of a Jewish rabbi who would take a key word in a passage of Scripture to designate the whole of that section of Scripture or a particular epoch in salvation history. You say faith always exists through history, that law always exists. That is true theologically, but not true of Paul’s usage. For Paul promise solely designates the Abrahamic covenant (even though theologically and in terms of literary genre God's revelation to Abraham contains elements of both promise and law). In a similar way law generally stands for the Mosaic covenant. Grace stands for the new covenant age. Faith is the appropriate response in the ages of promise and grace. Theologically speaking faith also existed in the age of law, but Paul in his Jewish rabbinical way doesn’t use his language that way. For him, works (i.e., Mosaic faith) are the appropriate response to law. He is actually taking key terms from Scripture to designate by them the salvation-historical epochs in which they occur.

Please also consider Rom 5:12-21. On your view, how can you say that “sin was in the world before the law was given” (Rom 5:13)? For you law has always been around, but that is not Paul’s usage. Clearly in Rom 5:13, the law in question is the Mosaic law. The period where there was sin but no law corresponds in Rom 5:14 with the period from post-fall Adam to Moses at Sinai. Notice how Paul is interested in the epochs of salvation history.

Please understand Rom 5:20. This is a key verse: “the law came in to increase the trespass” in order that grace might abound. The term the law here must be defined in the context of the law in Rom 5:13. In other words, the law is the law of Moses. The trespass in the context is the trespass of the one man, Adam. Paul’s meaning is this: the Mosaic law was given to Israel in order to compound the fall of Adam, in order to highlight the grace of God revealed in Christ. It's a salvation-historical argument.

I limit Paul’s use of the law to the Mosaic law in the vast majority of instances because the exegetical evidence points that way, as does the historical evidence of Acts 15:1, 5. Romans 7 is about fleshly Israel, i.e., old covenant Israel. Romans 8 is about how enslaved Israel (and the Gentiles) can be set free (the Gentiles set free from sin in Adam) by the new covenant in Christ. That is true to Paul’s own personal experience. The law of Moses that he was serving, which he thought was the way of life, actually “deceived” him and led him to oppose Christ. He thought he was serving God, but was doing the exact opposite. But then finally he saw the risen Lord Jesus, and realized that Jesus was the Messiah, and that the Jewish zeal for the law of Moses was leading the Jews astray.

Paul is primarily talking about the law of Moses, not law in general. But there is a connection between the two—somewhat. For Paul, there is a connection between the law and the commandment. For Paul the commandment (at least in Rom 5:12-21) stands for the law given to Adam. Paul in effect argues in Rom 5:20 and Rom 7:7-11 that the Mosaic law replicates and compounds the effect of Adamic law, so there is a connection, but we have to see the salvation-historical connections before we get to that point, otherwise we are not doing justice to Paul’s use of language and his teaching.

Why is Paul interested in comparing the various covenantal epochs of salvation history? Because Jewish devotion to the Mosaic covenant was getting in the way of them receiving Christ, and getting in the way of his ministry to Gentiles. More significantly, by sticking to Moses, the lordship of Christ, God’s word, and God’s sovereignty in having the right to structure salvation history in the manner of his choosing, were being denied. The problem that Paul was dealing with in Galatians and Romans is primarily the problem of Jewish zeal for the law of Moses: see Rom 10:2 and Acts 21:20.

Now having said all that, I strongly agree with you, however, concerning how we as Christians are made to be slaves of righteousness through Christ and the Spirit. Paul obviously believed that the promise of Jer 31:33 was fulfilled in Christians. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (eschatological torah, i.e., the gospel) has set you (Jews) free from the (Mosaic) law of sin and death (Rom 8:2). Just as Jer 31:31-33 prophesies, the law of Moses (which brought about the sin and death of Israel, which compounds the problem of sin in Adam) has been transformed by Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit, that with the (eschatological) law (of the gospel) written in our hearts, we have been set free to serve God as slaves of righteousness. And the same applies to the Gentiles in Adam.

It’s ironic that, in some ways, the situation for the Jews was worse than that of the Gentiles. The Gentiles were bound up in sin through Adam, but the Jews doubly bound: in Adam and also through the law of Moses! But “thanks be to God through Jesus Christ,” who sets us free from the commandment of sin and death in Adam, as well as the law of sin and death in Moses. Gentile and Jew, both equally set free through the new covenant in Christ!

Dave Woolcott's Covenantal Approach to Understanding Paul

This is a copy (in gray text) of main comment no. 7 by Dave Woolcott found in the comments section of my post entitled “A Response to Dave Woolcott's Critique of My View of Justification: Part One.” I thought I should repeat it here as I will interact with it in my next post. Dave has a covenantal approach to Paul, but I would want to contrast that with a salvation-historical covenantal approach.

Over to Dave:

Steve, sorry for any confusion but I was not meaning that a covenantal view of Romans is nonsensical, but rather holding to the law in Romans being only the Mosaic law. I will try and briefly explain my view to see if it helps. By the way, I have not gven up trying to understand you yet!

My understanding of Romans (I have not looked at Galatians as closely but see many similarities) is that Paul is not just dealing with the Mosaic law, but all ‘law’. I do not believe that there is more than one covenant and follow Bill Dumbrell’s understanding of God ‘causing his covenant to stand’ rather than beginning a new covenant at each new mention of covenant. As a result, Romans is to do with circumcision, the Mosaic law, the law written on the hearts of Gentiles (all people). So when I see Paul talk about the works of the law, yes I can try and narrow it down to speak of a specific covenant or law (e.g. Romans 7:7 would appear to be Mosaic), but if I say that the truth Paul is speaking is only relevant to the Mosaic Law, then I have reduced the impact of what Paul is saying too much. After all, Romans 7:7 is an example of how any law (be it written in our hearts or on tablets of stone) when combined with our flesh leads to sin and death.

To me, this is keeping a true covenant paradigm, because wherever there has been covenant, there has been law, and what Christ has done impacts all of this covenant (or covenants according to your view).

Now, to explain my view further, I think you are right when you say, “Paul presents a powerful and devastating argument that the Mosaic covenant was not able to bring the fullness of salvation to Israel. In fact, it made things worse, simply compounding the problem of sin in Adam that Israel also shared in.” I just do not see why you limit it to the Mosaic Covenant. Has there been any covenant (in your multi-covenant view) that has not made things worse? Paul also makes statements that are true for any law (Romans 7:14-20) and makes it clear that no one has been free from the impact of ‘law’ with flesh (Romans 2:14).

Paul makes it clear in Romans that no one will ever be righteous following the law (except Jesus ) because the law, combined with our flesh only brings sin and death. I believe that the wretched man in Romans 7 is not a comment on Paul or anyone else as a believer or non believer, but rather someone in the flesh. And being in the flesh, for Paul is something that is true for believers and non believers alike. As Paul says, the law increases sin, because of our flesh. BUT – in Christ we are released from the law (it is met in Christ). We are no longer slaves to sin, because the law, with its negative influence on us is dealt with. BUT – are we free to abuse this grace? No. Rather we are to take on the new commandment, the only debt that remains outstanding (Romans 13:8-10). As it happens, this new commandment is what has been at the heart of the ‘law’ since Adam was a boy! I find it rather ironic – we could not keep the law, so Jesus released us from the law – so we could keep the law!

This is why I so strongly stress that our ’slavery to righteousness’ comes as a result of what Christ has done. It is not helpful to say to believers that they must live out righteousness if it is not within the context of what Christ has done. To do so is to simply place them again under law, meaning that sin and death will have power again.

I also believe that my view is truly covenantal!

I would love you to explain your view as I have with mine above (I hope it was clear!). I would love to know from your perspective how you view law before and after Christ and how this interacts with living as a believer.

I hope this has been helpful!