Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission > Status Update

"Paul rebukes the Galatians who, having already received the Spirit, reverted to the flesh when they subjected themselves again to the Torah. They had been redeemed from flesh, like Israel coming from Egypt, but some have now returned to Egypt. Those who died to the law go back to live under the law, returning to the system that killed them in the first place. By Paul's lights, they cannot remain in the Spirit when they return to Torah. Reverting to fleshly institutions, they revert to flesh. Reversion to Torah suppresses the Spirit and undoes what Christ accomplished in his death. This logic shows, as I argued in chapter two, that Paul does not set "institutional" arrangements in opposition to "nature." That which is born of flesh is naturally flesh, and being "born" of stoicheia is being born of flesh. Humans whose lives are shaped by the elementary things cultivate a fleshly nature, even if they were once born by the Spirit into a new creation beyond stoicheia."

"This is the apostasy of Galatianism. Paul indicates that it is possible to leave the Christian era [the new age of humanity established in the justification of Christ, the New Adam], to re-erect the boundaries and divisions of Torah [or other "elements"/stoicheia], to leave Eden after being re-admitted and to re-establish the dividing walls between nations that Jesus broke down (Eph 2). It is possible to die to Torah and then revert to life under Torah. It is possible to die to death, to be justified from Torah by the faith of Christ and then choose to return to the grave."

"Israel alone is the target of the curse and the beneficiary of Jesus curse-busting curse-bearing. Israel is the only people who suffer the curse of Torah. The curse that Paul describes does not come on everyone but only those who are "of the works of the law" those whose lives have been formed by what the law does among a people who are in the flesh. If Israel is the people under curse, they are the ones who must be redeemed from the curse. Jesus' curse-bearing is for "us," that is, for Paul's people, Israel (Gal 3:14). Removing Israel from Paul's account of atonement distorts and dehistoricizes his argument. Jesus' death has universal effect, but it is an error, a profound and common one, to universalize the curse and the redemption from the curse prematurely. Goďs promise is universal, to "justify the Gentiles by faith," but that universal promise is realized only in the fulfillment of the particular promise that the blessing will come through Abraham's seed."

"Once that curse is removed, Israel is renewed; the removal of the curse implies a resurrection from the curse of death. Israel is delivered, receives the promised blessing of the Spirit, and from Israel that blessing flows to the nations. That is the justification of Israel by the faithful Messiah."

"Even those who do not respond to the faith of Jesus in faith live in a world under new management, under the Lordship of Christ and the reign of the saints. As Paul says in Romans 5, Jesus' obedience resulted in justification for all people (Rom 5:16, 18), a new regime of justice."

"The gift of the Spirit to the Gentiles fulfills Yahweh's promise to justify the Gentiles by faith. Reception of the Spirit is justification for the nations. Since justification is the outpouring of the Power-Spirit of God, first in the resurrection of Jesus (1 Tim 3:16), then in the resurrection of fleshly human beings into new life, it cannot be mere words. Justification occurs for the Gentiles as the wind of the Spirit blows from Jesus' New Israel to the Gentile world, judging and delivering the Romans from their fleshly honor games, their libido dominandi, their culture of death. Justification is what happened to Jesus: in his death, God condemned sin in the flesh, and by raising him the Father declared Jesus just by rescuing him from his death sentence. Justification is also what happens to Gentiles: they are justified (rescued from sin and death) by the outpouring of the Spirit."

"The Abrahamic promise of blessing to the "one seed" (Gal 3:16-20) does what the one God ought to do. The creation of the "one" is one aspect of the "justification of the Gentiles." By the faithful work of the Son and the gift of the Spirit, God has judged fleshly division and rescued humanity from all the evils of that division. As the blessing and inheritance promised to Abraham, the Spirit is a power of unity broader and stronger than flesh. As soon as he comes at Pentecost he begins to form a new sort of social body not organized by flesh but unified by being animated by a single Spirit, the Spirit of the Creator God."

"Continuing under their tutelage after the faith has arrived, after God has sent the Son and Spirit (Gal 4:4, 6), is to lengthen childhood beyond what is ftting. By resubmitting to ta stoicheia, the Galatians place themselves in a state of arrested development and extended immaturity. The immaturity has to do particularly with the command and use of the inheritance that the father promises when his children are grown. Children who have not received inheritance are fully heirs (Gal 4:1; cf, Gal 3:29), and with inheritance comes rule. In minority, children are like slaves though they are lords of all (kyrios pantôn); now, no longer minors, they are in fact what they have always been in principle. If we place Paul's argument in its fullest biblical framework, he is describing the advancement of humanity from Adamic service to full Adamic dominion through the coming of the Last Adam. Like Adam in the garden, Israel was heir of all things but treated as no better than a slave during her childhood."

"The "guardians" keep the child in a condition of slavery (doulos), and life under the elements is a form of slavery. If we press the analogy, we might conclude that the elements are beings (angels, note the plural) who guard and manage children in their minority. Prior to the coming of the Son and Spirit, some guardians, angelic or demonic, trained and prepared the sons who were to become lords. Jews received the Torah, Paul has just indicated, through angels (Gal 3:19); and Gentiles too were under beings that are "by nature no gods" (Gal 4:8; cf. 1 Cor 10:19-22, where Paul claims that Gentiles sacrifice to demons)."

"There does not seem any need to choose between an exclusively personal and impersonal interpretation of the various images that Paul employs. Torah is not a person, but Torah came through the agency of angels (Gal 3:19; cf, Acts 7:53), so that submission to Torah involves submission to Torah's angelic mediators. For Jews, stoicheic life involves both childish subjection to beings who are not God (angels) and subjection to certain pattern of life and worship laid out in the written law. For Gentiles too, ta stoicheia involved both subjection to demons and a pattern of life and worship somehow analogous to Torah."

The Gentile world, serving demons and obeying their elementary rules and regulations ("taste not, touch not"), were in bondage to Satan, the ruler of that age. The Jews, under the care of angels and obeying the Torah put in place through them, were heirs of everything and yet still children, not having reached maturity yet.

"Even if stoicheic institutions had not been abused, they would become useless once the promise of the Spirit was realized, once the Abrahamic promise came to fruition. Once the gate of Eden is opened again, there is no need for sacrifice; the cherubim lay down their flaming swords and let those who are in Christ enter freely. Once Jesus has borne the curse for Israel and opened up the flood of the Spirit to the Gentiles, thus creating "the one" that Moses did not mediate, the structures that distinguish Jew from Gentile are pointless. Maintaining such structures is, by Paul's lights, worse than pointless. Anyone who sets up barriers at Eden's gate is trying to reverse the work of Jesus. Anyone who re-erects stoicheic barriers between Jew and Gentile is trying to split "the one" that was formed by the Son and Spirit, and implicitly denying the Shema, denying that God is one by denying that his people is one. Galatianism is the heresy of heresies because it is denying the fundamental truth of the gospel: that in the full÷ness of time God sent his Son to die and rise to justify humanity from sin, to redeem from stoicheia, to bring children to maturity."