§ 91. The Epistles to the Galatians.
Comp. the introduction to my Com. on Gal. (1882).
Galatians and Romans discuss the doctrines of sin and redemption, and the relation of the law
and the gospel. They teach salvation by free grace and justification by faith, Christian universalism
in opposition to Jewish particularism, evangelical freedom versus legalistic bondage. But Galatians
is a rapid sketch and the child of deep emotion, Romans an elaborate treatise and the mature product
of calm reflexion. The former Epistle is polemical against foreign intruders and seducers, the latter
is irenical and composed in a serene frame of mind. The one rushes along like a mountain torrent
and foaming cataract, the other flows like a majestic river through a boundless prairie; and yet it
is the same river, like the Nile at the Rapids and below Cairo, or the Rhine in the Grisons and the
lowlands of Germany and Holland, or the St. Lawrence at Niagara Falls and below Montreal and
Quebec where it majestically branches out into the ocean.
It is a remarkable fact that the two races represented by the readers of these Epistles—the
Celtic and the Latin—have far departed from the doctrines taught in them and exchanged the gospel
freedom for legal bondage; thus repeating the apostasy of the sanguine, generous, impressible,
mercurial, fickle-minded Galatians. The Pauline gospel was for centuries ignored, misunderstood,
and (in spite of St. Augustin) cast out at last by Rome, as Christianity itself was cast out by Jerusalem
of old. But the overruling wisdom of God made the rule of the papacy a training-school of the
Teutonic races of the North and West for freedom; as it had turned the unbelief of the Jews to the
conversion of the Gentiles. Those Epistles, more than any book of the New Testament, inspired
the Reformation of the Sixteenth century, and are to this day the Gibraltar of evangelical
Protestantism. Luther, under a secondary inspiration, reproduced Galatians in his war against the
"Babylonian captivity of the church;" the battle for Christian freedom was won once more, and its
fruits are enjoyed by nations of which neither Paul nor Luther ever heard.
The Epistle to the Galatians (Gauls, originally from the borders of the Rhine and Moselle,
who had migrated to Asia Minor) was written after Paul’s second visit to them, either during his
long residence in Ephesus (a.d. 54–57), or shortly afterwards on his second journey to Corinth,
possibly from Corinth, certainly before the Epistle to the Romans. It was occasioned by the
machinations of the Judaizing teachers who undermined his apostolic authority and misled his
converts into an apostasy from the gospel of free grace to a false gospel of legal bondage, requiring
circumcision as a condition of justification and full membership of the church. It is an "Apologia
pro vita sua," a personal and doctrinal self-vindication. He defends his independent apostleship
(Gal.1:1–2:14), and his teaching (2:15–4:31), and closes with exhortations to hold fast to Christian
freedom without abusing it, and to show the fruits of faith by holy living (Gal. 5–6).
The Epistle reveals, in clear, strong colors, both the difference and the harmony among the
Jewish and Gentile apostles—a difference ignored by the old orthodoxy, which sees only the
harmony, and exaggerated by modern scepticism, which sees only the difference. It anticipates, in
grand fundamental outlines, a conflict which is renewed from time to time in the history of different
churches, and, on the largest scale, in the conflict between Petrine Romanism and Pauline
Protestantism. The temporary collision of the two leading apostles in Antioch is typical of the battle
of the Reformation.
At the same time Galatians is an Irenicon and sounds the key-note of a final adjustment of
all doctrinal and ritualistic controversies. "In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything,A.D. 1-100.