Salvation History in Galatians? A Response to Bruce W. Longenecker and Jason Maston

Abstract

Bruce W. Longenecker and Jaston Maston both propose that Paul's letter to the Galatians contains salvation history but they disagree markedly about its nature. Given the ambiguity of Paul's language, particularly in his use of the first-person plural (whether as pronoun or as verbal suffix), Longenecker's proposal represents a possible reading of Paul's letter. Questions may, however, be raised about Longenecker's exegesis of passages used to support the proposal. Maston's proposal that the period of the law was a period of Unheil makes his use of the term salvation history to describe this period highly problematic. Questions may also be raised with respect to the exegesis of specific texts. Given his rhetorical agenda, the Paul of Galatians has no interest or stake whatsoever in explicitly (or even implicitly) attributing the origin of the law to God. For the same reason, he is also not interested in articulating a notion or theory of salvation history with respect to the people of the law, Israel. That issue falls beyond the purview of Paul's argument in Galatians.