Review in: Interpretation
2012 66: 319
Review door: Ronald
D. WitherupGevonden op: http://int.sagepub.com/content/66/3/319.full.pdf+html
Galatians: A Commentary
by Martinus C. de Boer The New Testament Library. Westminster John Knox, Louisville, 2011.
461 pp. $60.00. ISBN 978-0-664-22123-2.
THIS LATEST ADDITION to The New Testament
Library series is an admirable exposition of one of Paul’s most personal and
emotional letters. Although the commentary is erudite, technical and sometimes
dense, engaging in dialogue with other experts over disputed points of
interpretation, it is nevertheless a very useful commentary for teachers,
pastors, and seminary students because it is a largely successful attempt to
understand Galatians on its own terms but for a modern audience. The commentary
is unapologetically historical in nature. Martinus de Boer attempts to read
Galatians in its historical context in order to discern how the first audience
would have understood Paul’s message. Thus, the new translation offered in the commentary
is as literal as possible but idiomatic where necessary.
De Boer
believes Galatians was written around 51 c.e., probably from Corinth, to a
group of Gentile Christians Paul had evangelized in the ethnic region of
Galatia (modern day central Turkey). He thus opts for the North Galatia theory,
despite the evidence seemingly offered in Acts 13–14. The precipitating cause
of the letter was the arrival in Galatia of “new preachers” who dogged Paul’s
footsteps in order to correct his gospel message and to insist on observance of
the Mosaic law, especially circumcision, among the Gentile converts. These
missionary opponents of Paul were likely allied to the Jerusalem church, and
they could be persuasive and seductive in their own preaching (3:1), undermining
Paul’s authority. Paul consequently writes a strong, polemical letter that
oscillates in tone from stern reprimand and exasperation with the Galatians to
parental affection for them and exhortations to remain faithful to the gospel
of Jesus Christ. Paul is at pains to defend “the truth of the gospel” (2:5, 14)
he had preached so effectively in Galatia, but which was now under serious
threat after a relatively short time (1:6). At risk is the very freedom
obtained by Christ, a point Paul had driven home to his converts.
Although
de Boer does not ignore the rhetorical features of Galatians, his primary
interest is the letter’s theological message. Thus, he painstakingly exegetes
every passage, often listing various interpretative options succinctly but thoroughly.
It is clear that de Boer engages many previous commentators, ancient and
modern, but he acknowledges having benefited especially from the works of E. De
Witt Burton, H.D. Betz, R.N. Longenecker, and J.L. Martyn. Nineteen superb
excurses are scattered throughout the commentary. They offer detailed
information on debated issues and also provide a convenient means to enumerate
alternative interpretations, from which de Boer either chooses a preferred
solution or adds a novel one of his own.
There is
much to commend in this useful commentary. De Boer attempts to avoid reading
Galatians through the lens of Romans, which is not easily done, given the
thematic relationship between the two letters and the overwhelming influence of
Romans in Pauline theology. Moreover, de Boer takes seriously the letter format
of Galatians, avoiding the urge to classify it specifically as a particular
type of rhetorical speech, whether deliberative, forensic, or epideictic. He
rightly concludes that Galatians has a mixed format, which is also heavily
influenced by an apocalyptic outlook through which Paul discerns a distinct
discontinuity between the old age, characterized by the Mosaic law, and the
“new creation” (6:15) rooted in justification by faith. The letter is Paul’s
clarion call to the Galatians to come to their senses, shake off the seductive
teaching of the new preachers, and return to the truth of the one and only
gospel proclaimed by Paul. This is the thesis announced at the beginning of the
letter (1:6–10).
Crucial
to understanding Galatians is Paul’s central teaching of justification by
faith. De Boer clearly sees a forensic meaning to the expression, thus rightly
putting the emphasis on God’s gracious act of declaring or making the believer
“righteous.” He also joins the growing number of exegetes who interpret the
ambiguous expression “the faith of Jesus Christ” (pistis Iesou Christou, 2:16;
cf. 3:22) as a subjective genitive—“the faithfulness of Jesus Christ”— despite
the preference of many English translations for the objective genitive (NRSV,
RSV, NIV, NJB, NAB). The excursus on this important expression is masterful
(pp. 148–50). Indeed, de Boer holds that, for Paul, pistis in Galatians
is always a shorthand designation for the full expression of pistis Christou
(and equivalents), with the sole exception of 5:22, where the term clearly
refers to human “faithfulness” as a virtue that flows from life in the Holy
Spirit. What is essential for Paul is that Christ’s fidelity, especially
through his suffering and death on the cross, is the gracious act whereby
believers have been saved, justified, and set free to live apart from “works of
the law” (2:16; 3:2, 5, 10) by means of the Holy Spirit. Paul is disgusted with
the preachers who have tried to undermine this basic truth, which is why he
becomes so impatient with his opponents and their insistence on circumcision,
that he angrily wishes they would castrate themselves (5:12), knowing full well
that such an act would be repulsive in the Galatians’ eyes.
One of
the challenges of interpreting Galatians is what to make of Paul’s sometimes
contorted argumentation, especially in chapters 3–4. De Boer points out that
the “new preachers” most likely considered Scripture as the authoritative voice
of God. Thus, it was essential for Paul himself to utilize scriptural
argumentation to refute his opponents and to defend his own preaching as rooted
in the same scriptural authority, as well as in the authority of his personal
call by the risen Lord to be an apostle, clearly explained at the beginning of
the letter (1:6–24). De Boer shows how Paul’s complex allegorical reading of
the story of the two women (4:21–31), in which he contrasts being descendants
of the free woman (Sarah) with the descendants of the slave woman (Hagar), is
really an ingenious move to affirm the use of Scripture by Paul’s opponents,
but turning their argument on its head: “Paul now concedes that the new
preachers in Galatia and the church they represent are also Abraham’s
offspring—but of the wrong branch!” (p. 288, emphasis original). In
fact, de Boer captures well the emotion of Paul’s argumentation at several
points in Galatians. Paul has a knack for pulling the rug out from under his
opponents precisely by his creative, if sometimes confusing, exegesis of Old
Testament passages. For there is nothing less at stake for Paul than his
intense desire to halt the Galatians’ abandonment of the freedom they have
obtained through the gospel of Jesus Christ to return to the “slavery” of the
Law. Paul exhorts them strongly not to succumb to the attraction of reverting
to circumcision. They need not become Jews in order to be disciples of Jesus
Christ.
Some
interpreters may well demure from certain interpretive decisions in the
commentary. For instance, de Boer holds that the expression “church of God”
(1:13) is likely the Jerusalem church, rather than the Christian community in
general (p. 87). He rejects the three possible standard explanations of the
terms en emoi in the expression, “[God] was pleased to reveal his Son
[to, in, or within] me” (1:16) in favor of his own understanding, “in my former
manner of life,” that is, as a persecutor of the church (p. 92). This may be
going a bit farther than the text warrants. However, his explanation of the
term “the Israel of God” (6:16) as a probable reference to law-observant Jewish
Christians who are related to “the churches of Judea that are in Christ” (1:22)
is convincing, given Paul’s recognition of the missionary outreach to Jews
conducted by Peter and some of the other apostles (2:7–8). Also, his
explanation of the “elemental spirits of the world” (ta stoicheia tou kosmou,
4:3, 9) as the physical elements of the universe (earth, water, air, fire),
which in conjunction with observance of various calendrical feasts represent
the Galatians’ former pagan religious views, is well taken. In every case, the
reasons for such exegetical decisions are well explained, even if some points
tend to be peripheral rather than central to his arguments. Most important is
that de Boer has given readers a reliable and interesting commentary on
Galatians through the optic of its first hearers/readers. It will help the
letter continue its powerful reverberation through history, a great witness to
Paul’s passionate, uncompromising defense of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
RONALD
D. WITHERUP, S.S.
SÉMINAIRE
SAINT-SULPICE
PARIS, FRANCE
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