Having established himself as a trustworthy teacher, he speaks from now on with greater personal authority, drawing a comparison between the law and faith. Earlier he had said: I am amazed that you have so quickly departed.^[1] Now he says: O foolish Galatians. Then he was pregnant with indignation. Now, having made his defense of what pertained to him, he lets it burst into the open and brings it forth afterward for demonstration. And if he calls them fools, do not be surprised. In doing this, he does not transgress Christ’s law, which forbids one to call his brother a fool,^[2] but rather is protecting them. For who could have more justly deserved this term, when after so many great things they held to the former ways as though nothing had happened?

This indicates their previous zeal for piety and manifests the fatherly affection of the apostle. He grieves over them for their loss of wealth accumulated.

We must expound what follows—Who has bewitched you?—in a way worthy of Paul, who even if rough in his speech is not so in his understanding. It must not be interpreted in such a way as to make Paul legitimize the witchcraft that is popularly supposed to do harm. Rather he has used a colloquial expression, and as elsewhere so here he has adopted a word from everyday speech. . . . In the same way as tender infants are said to be harmed by witchcraft, so too the Galatians, recently born in the faith of Christ and nourished with milk, not solid food,^[1] have been injured as though someone has cast a spell on them.

Since Christ was crucified not in the Galatians’ territory but in Jerusalem, what does he mean by this phrase before whose eyes? He is illustrating the power of faith, which is able to see even things far off. And he said not crucified but portrayed as crucified, showing that with the eyes of faith they saw more accurately than those who were there and witnessed the events. . . . And he says this both to reprimand and to commend them. He commends them for having received the facts with such enthusiasm. He blames them because, having seen Christ stripped, crucified, nailed, spat on, mocked, drinking vinegar, insulted by thieves, pierced with a spear . . . they have forsaken this man and run back to the law, showing no awareness of Christ’s sufferings.

Christ is rightly said to be portrayed before us, since the whole chorus of Old Testament prophets spoke of his gallows and passion, his blows and whippings. . . . Nor was it a small number of Galatians who believed in the crucifixion as it has previously been portrayed for them. It was of course by this means that, reading the prophets continually and knowing all the ordinances of the law, they were led in due course to belief.

Paul says, in effect, For since you do not pay heed to high-flown words and will not consider the greatness of God’s gift, I want to persuade you through a concise argument with a very swift proof, since you seem to be utterly unaware.

He sets forth a tenet that could not at that time be denied: the Holy Spirit dwells in believers. This gift was manifested by God to recollect the rudiments of the faith, as it was at the beginning when it was practiced among the apostles and the other disciples.^[1] . . . On these the Holy Spirit descended and gave the capacity to speak in many tongues,^[2] with the gift of interpretation, so that no one dared deny the presence of the Spirit of God in them.

Here he begins to demonstrate in what sense the grace of faith is sufficient for justification without the works of the law. . . . But so that this question may be carefully treated and no one may be deceived by ambiguities, we must first understand that the works of the law are twofold; for they reside partly in ceremonial ordinances and partly in morals. To the ordinances belong the circumcision of the flesh, the weekly sabbath, new moons,^[1] sacrifices and all the innumerable observances of this kind. But to morality belong You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not bear false witness and so on.^[2] Could the apostle possibly not care whether a Christian were a murderer and adulterer or chaste and innocent, in the way that he does not care whether he is circumcised or uncircumcised in the flesh? He therefore is specially concerned with the works that consist in ceremonial ordinances, although he indicates that the others are sometimes bound up with them. But near the end of the letter he deals separately with those works that consist in morals, and he does this briefly, but he speaks at greater length regarding the [ceremonial] works. . . . For nothing so terrifies the mind as a ceremonial ordinance that is not understood. But when it is understood it produces spiritual joy and is celebrated gladly and in due season. It is read and treated only with a spiritual sweetness. Now every sacrament,^[3] once understood in this way, is applied either to the contemplation of truth or to good morals. The contemplation of truth is founded in the love of God alone, good morals in the love of God and the neighbor,^[4] and on these two precepts depend the whole Law and the Prophets.

What he means is, Whereas the advance of time should bring increase, you not only have not improved but have actually been pushed backward. For those who have begun from small things gradually proceed to greater ones. But you, on the contrary, beginning from great things, have been carried back to less . . . from performing spiritual signs back to practicing fleshly circumcision.

Such a subtle comment requires patience to understand. It both negatively reprimands and positively admonishes. He reprimands them by saying You have suffered so much in vain. At the same time he admonishes them by saying you have suffered so much, aware that they withstood many things with fortitude when they received faith.

Lest he should seem to despair needlessly, he has corrected his own reprimand by saying if indeed it is in vain. For they could be corrected. If so, what they have suffered will not be without meaning. The meaning they will have will be perseverance in faith, the prize and the confirmation of promises derived from faith in Christ.

At that time believers were subject to reproach from others, whether at home or abroad, being pointed out as guilty of treason.^[1] Hence the Galatians, who had likewise suffered a great deal, were more perverse than those who had been spared, because they had lost the merit of their suffering by their resubmission to the law.

His opponents had turned this about and upside down by saying that faith is of no avail if the law is not added. He shows, on the contrary, that if the law’s precepts are added, faith will no longer be of any use.

After confirming that they have suffered and consequently that the Spirit has been given to them, he rightly goes on to ask whether God worked virtues in them from the works of the law or from the hearing of faith. Obviously not from works, [he says], for it was not from yourselves that any works proceeded, but you heard in faith and were attentive to faith. And for this reason God worked virtues in you; and if he worked, he gave you the Spirit.

Since the argument was about the law, Paul develops another highly controversial argument, bringing Abraham to the fore, and most effectively. . . . For the power of faith, he says, is shown by the miracles that occurred among you; but if you wish I shall also try to convince you from the ancient records. . . . There was no law then, he says, and now too there is no law. . . . Just as in Abraham’s time the law was not yet given, so now, having been given, it has ceased. And since they thought it a great thing to be descended from Abraham and were afraid that if they abandoned the law they would be deprived of their kinship, Paul turns this argument on its head and dissolves fear by showing that it is faith above all that produces affinity with Abraham.

Every mystery which is enacted by our Lord Jesus Christ asks only for faith. The mystery was enacted at that time for our sake and aimed at our resurrection and liberation, should we have faith in the mystery of Christ and in Christ. For the patriarchs prefigured and foretold that man would be justified from faith. Therefore, just as it was reckoned as righteousness to Abraham that he had faith, so we too, if we have faith in Christ and every mystery of his, will be sons of Abraham. Our whole life will be accounted as righteous.

For since they were perturbed by the greater antiquity of the law and the fact that faith came after the law, he destroys this surmise of theirs, showing that faith is older than the law. That is obvious from Abraham, since he was justified before the appearance of the law. . . . The one who gave the law, he says, in effect was the one who decreed before the law was given that the Gentiles should be justified. And Paul does not say revealed but preached the gospel [beforehand to Abraham], so that you may understand that even the patriarch rejoiced in this kind of righteousness and greatly desired its advent.

God, providing that the descendants of Abraham should not be mixed with the other nations . . . marked off the Israelite people by a particular rite: circumcision. . . . After that for forty years no one was circumcised in the wilderness. They were living without any intermixing with other nations. . . . As soon as the people crossed the river Jordan and the host poured out onto the territory of Judea in Palestine, he made provision by a necessary circumcision against the future error from miscegenation with the Gentiles. But the fact that the people are said to have been circumcised a second time by their leader Joshua^[1] signifies that circumcision had ceased in the wilderness, though practiced in Egypt for a good reason. Believers now are cleansed by our Lord Jesus Christ through a spiritual circumcision.

The greatest cause for triumph in Abraham was that, before his circumcision, faith was reckoned to him for righteousness.^[1] This is most correctly referred to the promise that All nations shall be blessed in you,^[2] meaning of course by the following of his faith, by which he was justified even before the ordinance of circumcision, which he received as a token of faith, and long before the servitude of the law,^[3] which was given much later.

Paul has thus eulogized faith and shown what fruits it has from the gracious gifts of the Spirit. He also has shown that it is older than the law from the witness of the law itself—for the Old Testament describes the events concerning Abraham. Finally, he sets the law alongside faith, showing how it differs.

From his saying works of the law we are to understand that there are also good works in the Christian life, especially those that the apostle frequently commends, such as that we should be mindful of the poor and the other precepts for living that are contained in this very letter. The fulfillment of all these works is the calling of every Christian. The cursed works of the law referred to here are therefore other things: obviously observations [of days,] sacrifices of lambs and other such works that they perform concerning circumcision and the choice of foods. But now the paschal feast has been consummated through Christ.

The words they are under a curse mean that in the law there was a curse against Adam’s transgression, until the advent of the one who came from above and who, clothing himself with a body from the mass of Adamic humanity, turned the curse into blessing.

This dissolves the fear, cleverly and shrewdly turning it on its head. . . . For they said that the one who does not keep the law is cursed, while he shows that the one who strives to keep it is cursed and the one who does not strive to keep it is blessed. They said also that the one who adheres to faith alone is accursed, while he shows, on the contrary, that the one who adheres to faith alone is blessed.

We perceive that the apostle, as elsewhere, has written down the sense of the passage rather than the words. We consider it uncertain whether the seventy interpreters [of the Septuagint] have added everyone and in all or whether it was in the old Hebrew and deleted by the Jews. What makes me suspect this is that the apostle, a man skilled in Hebrew learning, would never have added these words everyone and all as if they were necessary to his meaning in the proof that all who perform the works of the law are accursed, unless they were in the Hebrew copies. Therefore, reading over the Hebrew copies of the Samaritans, I found the word kōl written, which means all or in all and concurs with the Seventy.

The law leads to knowledge of sin and at length to the transgression of the law itself. It is thus with the knowledge and increase of sin that grace may be sought through faith.

All have sinned and are under a curse.^[1] Yet he does not say this, lest he should seem to be running ahead of his own demonstration. He establishes it by a testimony that succinctly proves both that no one fulfills the law (and therefore they are accursed) and that faith justifies. . . . For the prophet did not say, The just shall live from law but from faith.^[2]

This means the one who follows the law will live and not die for the present. But the righteousness which is from faith makes one righteous in God’s sight, so that one may be rewarded eternally in the age to come.

Since no one could obey the law, all were convicted by the curse of the law, so that it was right to punish them. But Christ, born as a man and offered for us by his Father, redeemed us from the devil. He was offered for those who were liable to the curse of the law. Jesus was made a curse in the way that under the law a victim offered for sin is said to be sin. . . . Thus he did not say cursed for us but made a curse.

It is not that the Lord was changed into these things—for how could that be?—but because he underwent them, taking up our transgressions and bearing our sicknesses.^[1]

The holy apostle, revealing again how the appearance in the flesh and the cross fulfilled the plan for the loosing of the curse and how this was written beforehand in the law and prophesied as coming, then fulfilled in the Savior, has clearly proved that the law is not alien to the Savior.

For the people were liable to punishment since they had not fulfilled the whole law. Christ satisfied a different curse: the one that says Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree.^[1] Both the one who is hanged and the one who transgresses the law are accursed. Christ, who was going to lift that curse, could not properly be made liable to it yet had to receive a curse. He received the curse instead of being liable to it and through this lifted the curse. Just as, when someone is condemned to death, another innocent person who chooses to die for him releases him from that punishment, so Christ also did. . . . Just as by dying he snatched from death those who were going to die, so also when he suffered the curse he released them from the curse.

It would not be right that the grace of the Spirit should come to one who was graceless or full of offense. We are blessed first by the taking away of the curse. Then, justified by faith, we receive^[1] the grace of the Holy Spirit. So the cross has dissolved the curse, faith has brought righteousness, and by God’s own righteousness the grace of the Spirit has been given.

The apostle, who was made all things to all men^[1] . . . is also made a fool for the Galatians, whom he a little while before called fools. For he does not employ the arguments that he used with the Romans but simpler ones and such as the stupid could understand. . . . [He means,] What I am about to say I say not according to God. I do not speak with regard to the deepest wisdom and those who can eat solid food^[2] but with regard to those who feed on milk because of the tenderness of their stomachs.

The value that a testator’s death has for confirming his testament is final, since he cannot then change his mind. This is the value that the immutability of God’s promise has in confirming the inheritance of Abraham, whose faith was reckoned for righteousness.

The promise made to Abraham is called a testament^[1] in the ancient Scripture and so cannot suffer addition, subtraction or dissolution through the imposition of the Mosaic law, which was given a very long time after Abraham. Now the promise was that the God of all would bless the nations through the offspring of Abraham. And this offspring is Christ the Lord, since the promise found its destination in him through whom the nations received a blessing. But all the others, such as Moses, Samuel, Elijah and in a word all who traced their descent from Israel, were called his offspring according to nature, but [this genetic fact] is not what brought the fount of blessings to the nations. . . . The fact that those men too trace their race to Abraham does not mean that they are rightly called his offspring, but this man has that appellation in the proper sense, as being the only One through whom, according to the promise, God has bestowed blessing on the nations.

Passing my eyes and memory over all the Scriptures, I nowhere find offsprings written in the plural but everywhere the singular, whether in a good sense or a bad. . . . If anyone carefully collates the Hebrew Scriptures with the [Greek version of the] Seventy, he will find that where testament is written, what is meant is not testament but covenant. . . . Whence it is clear that the apostle has done as he promised, not using deeper meanings but everyday ones, and even trivial ones which (if he had not said beforehand I speak humanly) might have displeased the intelligent.

The words and to his offspring are found to be strictly fulfilled in Christ in their straightforward sense, since he is Abraham’s offspring by nature, as are all those who derive their stock from that source. We, believing in him, are therefore enrolled as children of Abraham and thereby receive fellowship in the blessing. The result is that what appears to be said to one can in fact be understood commonly of many, insofar as all who derive from that source are of Abraham. This promise is completely fulfilled in Christ in the light of the actual events.

Once the promise had been established, the law was given subsequently, not so that it could undermine the promise but so that it might point to what was to be fulfilled and when it would come.

If the law justifies, Abraham was not justified, since he lived long before the law. Since they cannot say this, they are forced to admit that a man is justified not by works of the law but by faith. And he compels us to understand that all the ancients who were justified were justified from the same faith. For as we are saved by believing partly in a past event, that is, the first coming of the Lord, and partly in a future one, that is, his second coming, they believed the whole of it, that is, both comings as events. The Holy Spirit reveals this for their salvation.

The Jews maintain two opposing tenets. For in no way and by no argument can they be persuaded that the promise to Abraham was rendered void by the law, and they are right. But in their short-sighted vanity they maintain another contrary principle, thinking that justification could not come without the practice of the law. They know that Abraham, who is the type [of justification], was justified through faith alone, without the practice of the law. . . . The heirs to the promise of Abraham are therefore those who are his successors in the adoption of the faith by which Abraham was blessed and justified. The testimony of the promise to Abraham is therefore called a covenant [to signify] that after his death there would be heirs in the promise, made sons of Abraham through faith.

This question should be read as a personification. What you want to know, he says, is why the law was imposed. I shall tell you. . . . It was imposed for the tutelage of the race from which that offspring was going to sprout according to the flesh.

It was after the offense of the people in the wilderness, after the adoration of the calf and their murmurings against God, that the law came to forbid transgressions.^[1]

Here arises a rather pertinent question: if faith justifies and even the former saints, who were justified before God, were justified through it, what need was there for the law to be given? . . . The law was given to a proud people, but the grace of love cannot be received by any but the humble. Without this grace the precepts of the law cannot possibly be fulfilled. Israel was rendered humble by transgression, so that it might seek grace and might not arrogantly suppose itself to be saved by its own merits; and so it would be righteous, not in its own power and might but by the hand of the Mediator who justifies the ungodly. ^[1] WHETHER GOD GAVE THE LAW BY MEANS OF THE ANGELS. Nestorius: [It is said that] God gave the law^[1] and by means of angels the Law was given.^[2] They are not lies, nor are they contradictory one to another. It is not that he calls the angels God or that an angel calls himself God. But because he appeared by means of the angels, both are truly said. ^[3]

By angels he means God’s messengers—that is, Moses, [Joshua] son of Nun and the other prophets up to John the Baptist.^[1] . . . Through these, therefore, the Law and Prophets are ordained and disposed by God in the hand, that is, the power, of the Savior. For he is the Mediator, the reconciler of God and humanity, so that he may save whom he will out of those who have received the law from the angels.

It was imposed through the ministry of angels, and Moses assisted in this imposition. For Moses is the one that is called an intermediary.^[1] . . . For the God of all set Michael over them, as taught by the blessed Daniel.^[2] And to the great Moses he promised to send with him an angel to the people.^[3]

Now every dispensation of the Old Testament was given through angels, the Holy Spirit working in them and in the very Word of truth, though not yet incarnate, yet never departing from some true ordering of providence. This law was given through angels, sometimes acting in their own person, sometimes in that of God, as was also the way of the prophets. . . . The children [of Abraham] were put in the hand of [Christ] the Mediator so that he himself might liberate them from sin when they were forced by their transgression of the law to admit that they needed grace and mercy from the Lord.

Without doubt, a mediator, that is, arbiter, is not of one but two. For when two peoples^[1] were contending against one another, always at odds and enemies because of the disparity in their doctrines, the Savior came as their Mediator, taking from each people the cause of discord so that they might be at peace. So he took from the Gentiles the plurality of gods and cult of the elements, and he took from the Jews the works of the law, that is, new moons, circumcision, the keeping of the sabbath, the distinction of foods and other things that the Gentiles abhorred. And thus those who were formerly enemies came to be at peace. If then this is the case, how could the Galatians be so dull-witted as to violate this reconciliation by conversion back to Judaism?

For [Moses] mediated between God and the people. But God is the one who both gave the promise to Abraham and imposed the law, and he has shown us the destination of the promise. For it was not one God who dispensed the former and another who dispensed the latter.

Because this situation had made the Galatians turn to the law, so as to confess one God without the mystery, as if it were inimical to the law for Christ to be called God, he says: An arbiter (that is, a mediator) is not of one but of course of two. You however, having turned to the law, have rejected the arbiter. God, however, is one. By saying this, he bears witness that he is not preaching Christ in such a way as to make him another God or confess two but that there is one God, as the law itself attests.