Bibliotheca
Sacra 147 (July 1990) 329-350.
Copyright © 1990 by
Who Were Paul's Opponents
in
Walt
Russell
Associate Professor of
New Testament
Why Is the
Identity of Paul's Opponents an Issue?
Paul's opponents in
tians because the epistle is
essentially a response to their threat to
the churches of
opponents are mentioned in every chapter (1:6-9;
2:4-5; 3:1; 4:17; 5:10,
12;
6:12-13). Conservative scholars have historically assumed that
these foes were Judaizers
and have interpreted the text in that
light. However, in the last 70 years a persistent
critique now gaining
widespread acceptance says that the Judaizer identity is totally
inadequate in explaining crucial verses like
Galatians 5:13, "For you
were called to freedom, brethren, only do not turn
your freedom into
an opportunity for the flesh, but through love
serve one another."
While Paul was apparently addressing
some sort of Judaistic
aberration in Galatians 3-4, these critics argue,
he was also overtly
attacking an antinomian aberration in Galatians
5-6, and the Judais-
tic identity cannot encompass this additional
aberration. Therefore
an increasing number of New Testament scholars are
advocating a
different identity for Paul's opponents in
should not blithely continue to assume the correctness
of the Judaizer
identity. They must see if their assumptions need
revision and if
this will aid in understanding the latter part of
Galatians.
The Three Major
Views of the Opponents' Identity
Three major views of Paul's
opponents in
merous minor views. The
traditional view is that the opponents
were "Judaizers"
pressuring Gentiles to live as if they were Jews.
329
330 Bibliotheca
Sacra / July—September 1990
The
two-opponent view holds that both Judaizers and libertinistic
"pneumatics" plagued Paul in
ish Christians view is that
there was one group of opponents with
both Judaistic and libertinistic traits in some of the peripheral
groups within Judaism and
THE
TRADITIONAL VIEW: JUDAIZERS
Since the second-century Marcionite Prologues
to Galatians (pre-
served only in Latin translations), it has been
inferred that Paul's
opponents were overzealous Jewish Christians from
advocated in
quiring Gentile Christians to
attach themselves to ethnic
identification was carefully confirmed
by John Calvin1 and more ca-
sually assumed by Martin
Luther.2 Since Calvin's and
Luther's day
the majority of Protestant scholars have identified
Paul's opponents
in some way with the Jewish Christians from
This identity was solidified in the
19th century by F. C. Baur of
the
tive key to all Paul's
writings. Baur's reconstruction of the history of
the early church does not so much pit Paul against
the
apostles, as is popularly understood, but against
the party of Jewish
Christians
identified with James and the
Judaizers had an Ebionite
tendency and had not broken out of the
limits of Judaism in their understanding of
Christianity and the suf-
ficiency of Christ's ministry.4
To Baur, the Epistle to the Galatians
was a microcosm of the massive struggle between
Pauline and Jewish
Christianity. So while Baur never wrote a commentary on Gala-
tians, his central and
emphatic identification of Paul's opponents in
opposed major portions of Baur's
reconstruction of early events.
Schmithals summarized the situation, saying,
There are few problems in the realm of New Testament introduc-
tion in which the scholars of all eras are so
unanimously and indis-
putably of one mind as here.
1
John Calvin, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians, Ephesians,
Philippians and
Colossians,
trans. T. H. L. Parker, Calvin's New Testament Commen-
aries 11, ed. David W.
Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance (1556; reprint,
Wm.
B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1965), pp. 4-7.
2 Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians, trans. Erasmus Middleton, ed. John P.
Fallowes (
1979, p. 2.
3 Ferdinand C. Baur,
Ausgenwahlte Werke in Einzelausgahen, ed. K. Scholder
(reprint,
4 Ferdinand C. Baur,
Paul, His Life and Works, trans. E.
Zeller, 2 vols. (
Williams and Norgate,
1875), 1:113, 129-30.
Who Were Paul's
Opponents in
The heretics in
mand the observance of the Jewish law on a greater or
lesser scale, but
in any case
including circumcision: thus they are Christians in whose
opinion
membership in the eschatological community of the Messiah
who has
appeared in Jesus depends upon membership in the national
cultic
union, constituted through the rite of circumcision, of the ancient
people of
the covenant. This thesis is the presupposition of the exege-
sis of the Galatian epistle in the commentaries, not its conclusion;
and
it can be
such a presupposition because no one would deny it.5
Schmithals
himself denies the traditional identity of Paul's
opponents, holding, instead, that they were
Gnostics. Before
Schmithals wrote in the 1970s and 80s, the status
of the Judaizers
identity was generally unquestioned. Ironically
some recent New
Testament
introductions have assumed some form of his position.6
Viewing Paul's Galatian
opponents as Judaizers seems supported
by strong internal evidence. Those who
"distort the gospel" in the
churches seem to have come from the outside (1:7)
and they confused
the churches (1:7; 5:10, 12). They seem to have
been Christians, since
they were offering "a different gospel"
(1:6) and desired to avoid
persecution from the Jewish community (6:12). Paul's
focus on
the opponents' origin from this area, though this
is not held as
firmly as other aspects of their identity. Their
Jewish roots seem
unassailable given their emphasis on
circumcision (5:2; 6:12-13), ob-
servance of the Mosaic Law (3:2;
5:4) and certain festivals (4:10), and
apparent interest in being "sons of
Abraham" (3:6-29; 4:21-31). With
its straightforward reading of Galatians and its
correlation with
Acts
15, many scholars continue to espouse this traditional view in
standard New Testament introductions,7
technical monographs,8 re-
cent commentaries on Galatians,9 and
recent journal articles.10
5 Walter Schmithals,
Paul and the Gnostics, trans. John E.
Steely (
Abingdon Press, 1972), p. 1 3.
6 E.g., Helmut Koester Introduction to the New Testament, vol. 2: History and Lit-
erature of Early Christianity (
Fortress
Press, 1982), pp. 118-19.
7 E.g., Werner Georg
Kummel, Introduction to the New
Testament, rev.
trans. Howard Clark Kee
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1975), pp. 298-301.
8 E.g., George Howard, Paul: Crisis in
graph Series 35 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1979), pp. 1-19.
9 E.g., Ronald Y. Fung,
The Epistle to the Galatians, The New
International Com-
mentary on the New Testament,
ed. F. F. Bruce (
lishing
10 E.g.,
J. Louis Martyn, "A Law-Observant
Galatians,"
Scottish Journal of Theology 38
(1985): 307-24, and John M. G. Barclay,
"Mirror-Reading
a Polemical Letter: Galatians as a Test Case," Journal for the Study
of the New Testament 31 (1988): 73-93.
332 Bibliotheca
Sacra / July—September 1990
Worthy of inclusion under this major
view is the position argued
by Johannes Munck.11 While he was
reacting against Baur's bifurca-
tion of the early church
into competing Pauline and Jewish segments,
Munck nonetheless saw Paul's Galatian
opponents as Judaizers. The
uniqueness of his view is that he saw these Judaizers as Gentile
Christians
from within
cumcised, according to Galatians
6:13, in which Paul used the present
participle of oi[
peritemno<menoi to describe them.13
While Munck per-
ceived himself to be opposite Baur with this particular view, his
identifying of Paul's opponents does not lead to any
substantial dif-
ference from Baur's in interpreting the epistle as a whole. The same
can be said of the similar position of A. E.
Harvey,14 who identifies
Paul's
opponents as "not Jews by birth, but Gentiles who have only
recently become Jewish proselytes, or who are
still contemplating do-
ing so."15
The uniqueness of
these proselytes were pressuring fellow Christians to
avoid persecu-
tion from the synagogue by
adopting Jewish practices, not Jewish
theology.
phasis on strict adherence to
Jewish practices, rather than to Jewish
orthodoxy.16 Paul's tactic was to show the theological
consequences
of embracing Jewish practices (Gal. 6:12-13).
THE
TWO-OPPONENT VIEW: JUDAIZERS AND ANTINOMIANS
In reaction to Baur's
dominant reconstruction of the early church,
Lutgert17
opposed the one opponent/Judaizers view by arguing
for the
additional resistance of a second group in
the existence of the Judaizers,
Lutgert was convinced that an even
more threatening group was the primary focus of
Paul's attack in
Galatians. Like Luther before him,18
though seeing them more as an
organized party, Lutgert
identified this second group of Christians
as the antinomians who "die Freiheit zum Antrieb fur das Fleisch
11 Johannes Munck, Paul and the Salvation of Mankind (
Press,
1959), pp. 87-134.
12 Ibid., p. 87.
13 Ibid., pp. 87-89.
14 A.
15 Ibid., p. 324.
16 Ibid., pp. 327-29.
17 Wilhelm Lutgert, Gesetz and Geist: Pine Untersuchung zur Vorgeschichte des
Galaterbriefes. Beitrage zur Forderung
christlicher Theologie, vol. 22, book 6
(Gi.itersloh:
Bertelsmann, 1919).
18 Luther, Commentary
on Galatians, pp. 325-29.
Who Were Paul's
Opponents in
gebrauchen."19 The
thread that holds Galatians together as Paul
addressed this two-front battle is the subject of
the Law.20 Paul's ar-
guments with both the Judaizers and the antinomians involve the
Law and its relationship to the Christian life. Therefore, Lutgert
argued, Paul vacillated between addressing these two
groups as he
wrote Galatians. For example while Galatians 3-4 is
primarily con-
cerned with the Judaizers, Paul's focus on them ends at 5:6 and he be-
gan to address the
antinomians' abuses of the Law in 5:7.21 The ma-
jority of Galatians 5–6 is no
longer seen as Paul's defensive limitation
of the boundaries of freedom in light of possible Judaizers' criticism,
but rather as a much more aggressive and overt
attack on the antino-
mians' real abuses.22
Lutgert's
views were not broadly disseminated until Ropes
championed them in a small monograph in 1929.23
Ropes made only
minor adjustments to Lutgert's
thesis and sought to demonstrate it by
briefly but systematically going through
Galatians chapter by chap-
ter. Interestingly enough,
he perceived the break from the lengthy
Judaizers' discussion of Galatians 3–4 to be at
5:10, not 5:6 as Lutgert
had argued. Ropes suggests that Paul began the
practical section
with 5:11. "The transition to the next topic is
an important one,
sharper than any other transition in the
epistle. Our theory requires
the break to be made after verse 10, not after
verse 12."24 As
Fletcher
has wryly noted, "For such a sharp division, it does not
seem that it would be necessary to rely upon one's
presuppositions to
discern it."25 Weaknesses like
this have hindered acceptance of Lilt-
gert's and Ropes's
two-opponent view. Nevertheless their emphasis
on the presence of libertinistic
"pneumatici" or "spiritual
persons"26
helped shape the next reaction to the traditional
view.
THE
GNOSTIC/SYNCRETISTIC JEWISH CHRISTIAN VIEW
Though the identification of
Gnostics as Paul's opponents in Gal-
atia tends to be associated
with Walter Schmithals, other scholars
19 Lutgert, Gesetz und Geist, p.
16.
20 Ibid., p. 9.
21 Ibid., pp. 27-28.
22 Ibid, pp. 14-19.
23 James H. Ropes, The Singular Problem of the Epistle to the Galatians, Harvard
Theological Studies 14 (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1929).
24 Ibid., p. 38.
25 Douglas K. Fletcher, The Singular Argument of Paul's Letter to the Galatians
(PhD
diss., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1982), p. 42.
26
Ropes, The Singular Problem
of the Epistle to the Galatians, p. 10.
334 Bibliotheca
Sacra / July—September 1990
had previously written of a Gnostic presence in
Galatia.27 However,
it is Schmithals who
firmly ties Paul's ministry to the combating of
some form of first-century Gnosticism.28 Schmithals follows the Cor-
inthian/Galatian epistles' order of Lutgert's study and his identifi-
cation of Gnostics in both
communities. Like Lutgert, Schmithals
con-
siders that "the picture
of the Galatians heresy is to be filled out in
details from the Corinthian epistles."29
While building on Lutgert's
and Ropes's
identification of libertinistic pneumatics in
Schmithals (and others after him) significantly
deviates from that
theory by positing a single battlefront in
audience theory of the two-opponent view is
rightly criticized and
rejected as unsatisfactory.30 In its
place is offered a single group of
opponents who manifest both sets of
characteristics previously at-
tached to the Judaizers and antinomian pneumatics.
Rather than refuting the traditional
view of Judaizers in Gala-
tia, Schmithals's
strategy is to develop a coherent picture of Gnos-
tics in
Galatians. To do this, however, involves some
question-begging on
his part. For example in the traditional view
Galatians 3-4 is seen
as the heart of the argumentation against the Judaizers. Rather
than contesting the particulars of the Judaizer interpretation of this
section, however, Schmithals
virtually ignores it and alleges that
Paul
did not really understand his Gnostic opponents or he would not
have argued in this manner.31 Others who
adhere to this Gnostic
identification find that they too must
assert that their knowledge of
the Galatian opponents
exceeds Paul's because in Galatians 3-4 he
argued about the Law "in such a way as he might
have done if his
opponents had been Pharisaic Judaists, which they
obviously were
not."32 It is possible that a critic's
knowledge can exceed an author's
27 As noted by Bernard H. Brinsmead,
Galatians—Dialogical Response to
Opponents,
Society
of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 65 (
1982),
p. 10.
28
Walter Schmithals, Paul and James, trans. Dorothea M.
Barton, Studies in Bibli-
cal Theology, no. 46 (Naperville, IL: Alec R. Allenson, 1965), pp. 103-17; idem, Paul
and the Gnostics, pp. 13-64; and idem, "Judaisten
in Galatien?" Zeitschrift fur die
Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 74 (1983): 27-58.
29 Schmithals, Paul and the Gnostics, p. 59, n. 134.
30 Ibid., p. 17.
31 Ibid., p. 18.
32 Willi Marxsen, Introduction to the New Testament,
trans. G. Buswell
(Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1968), p. 53. In fairness to Marxsen,
it should be noted
that he changed his view in the fourth edition of Einleitung in das Neue Testament
(Gutersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1978), pp. 56-71 to one similar to Hans Dieter Betz
(to be dis-
cussed shortly).
Who Were Paul's
Opponents in
knowledge of the subject matter, but this is not to be confused with
the critic's thinking that his knowledge of the
author's meaning is
superior.33 Schmithals
and some who have followed him seem to
lapse into this hermeneutical error at times.
Before looking at support for this
view of Paul's opponents, the
closely related identity of syncretistic Jewish
Christians should be
discussed. This view came into particular
prominence through the
writing of Frederic R. Crownfield.34
He identified Paul's Galatian
opponents as a group that combined Christianity
with a mystical
understanding of following Torah and
Jewish legal practices.35 The
"Judaizers" and "spirituals" were actually
the same group. The
leaders of this group are theorized to have been
early converts to
Christianity,
and although not followers of the earthly Jesus, were
nonetheless connected with
they were adherents of Jewish mystery cults seeking
spiritual illu-
mination through legalism. As he
built on Lutgert's thesis to de-
velop his view, Schmithals also built on Crownfield's
work and
specified it to Gnostic groups. Both writers
tended to correlate the
Colossian
errorists with those of
rites with laxity in morals.36 A similar
view is held by Heinrich
Schlier in his commentary on Galatians.37
He embraces an identity
for the opponents that explains their nomism coupled with their lib-
ertinistic tendencies as an early
stage of Gnosticism demonstrating a
sort of Jewish apocalypticism
similar to that found at Qumran.38
This
is not far from the view of Brinsmead, who sees
Paul's oppo-
nents as possessing an Essene theology and ethics that espoused a
"nomistic enthusiasm."39
Brinsmead's elaborate picture of the Gala-
tian intruders has been
devastatingly criticized by several scholars.40
33 See
Edwin D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in
Interpretation (
( versity Press, 1967), pp.
19-23.
34 Frederic R. Crownfield,
"The Singular Problem of the Dual Galatians," Journal of
Biblical Literature 64 (1945): 491-500.
35
Ibid., pp. 492-93.
36 Ibid., p. 493, and Schmithals,
Paul and the Gnostics, pp. 44-46.
37 Heinrich Schlier, Der Brief an die Galater, 5th ed., Kritischexegetischer
Kom -
mentar uber
das Neue Testament 7 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1971).
38 Ibid., pp. 21-24.
39 Brinsmead, Galatians—Dialogical Response to Opponents,
pp. 164-78.
40 E.g., David E. Aune,
"Review of Galatians Dialogical
Response to Opponents,"
Catholic Biblical
Quarterly
46 (1984): 145-47; E. A. Russell, "Convincing or Merely
Curious? A Look at Some Recent Writing on
Galatians," Irish Biblical Studies 6
(1984):
156-76; and Barclay, "Mirror-Reading a Polemical Letter: Galatians as a
Test
Case,"
pp. 81-83.
336 Bibliotheca
Sacra / July–September 1990
Following this trajectory is Dieter Georgi, who sees the troublers
of the Galatian churches
as pneumatics using Christian elements as
the ultimate completion of a Jewish syncretism
previously enriched
with Gentile motives.41 Against Schmithals, who sees Paul's oppo-
nents as Jews who were never
baptized,42 Georgi views these false
brethren as a faction within the
circumcision of Gentile Christians.
This faction viewed the Law as a
source of speculative wisdom, not simply for the Jews,
but as the norm
for the universe. However, their goal was the
attainment of pneu-
matic completion through
individualistic and ascetic religious expe-
riences.43 Wegenast
holds a view similar to that of Georgi and un-
derscores the importance of
circumcision and the Law to these oppo-
nents.44 This represents a basic
following of the general thesis of
Crownfield in this area against Schmithals,
while still working
within the general Gnostic identity championed by the
latter.
Both the Gnostic and the
syncretistic Jewish Christian identifi-
cations consider that Paul was
primarily addressing the sarkic con-
duct of his opponents and that this libertine
lifestyle, not the legal-
istic theology, was the basic
threat facing the Galatians.45 Follow-
ing Lutgert,
Schmithals focuses on passages like Galatians 4:9 and
5:1
that seem to point to this threat. However, of
particular impor-
tance are these verses.
"And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that
he is under
obligation to keep the whole Law" (5:3).
"For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your
freedom
into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one
another"
(5:13).
"But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the
desire of
the
flesh" (5:16).
"For those who are circumcised do not even keep the Law them-
selves, but
they desire to have you circumcised, that they may boast in
your
flesh" (6:13).
Following Schmithals's
basic identification Betz asserts that
the fundamental problem facing the churches of
conflict of the Spirit and the flesh. He proposes
that the churches
were wrestling with how being e]n
pneu<mati conflicted with life's
daily realities: "How can the pneumatiko<j coexist with
'trespasses'
41 Dieter
Georgi, Die
Geschichte der Kollekte des
Paulus fur
Forschung, vol. 38 (Hamburg: Evangelischer
Verlag, 1965), p. 35.
42 Schmithals, Paul and the Gnostics, p. 14.
43 Georgi, Die Geschichte der
Kollekte des Paulus fur
44 Klaus Wegenast, Der Verstandnis der Tradition bei Paulus und in den
Deuteropaulinen, Wissenschaftliche
Monographien zum Alten and Neuen Testament,
no. 8 (Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1962), p.
39.
45 E.g., Schmithals, Paul and the Gnostics, pp. 51-55.
Who Were Paul's
Opponents in
in his daily life?"46
Paul's opponents were answering
this question
with the security that Torah offered. By accepting
Torah and cir-
cumcision, the Galatians would
then become partakers of the safety
offered by the Sinai Covenant.47 One
can see with this reconstruction
and emphasis that Galatians 5-6 becomes the
specific recommenda-
tion that Paul made to the
Galatians. The focal point of Galatians
in Galatians 3-4, associated with the traditional
view of Judaizing
opponents, has shifted to a focal point in
Galatians 5-6 in this third
major view. Methodologically the procedure is to seek
to wrap the
remainder of Galatians around the primary core in
chapters 5-6.
While
Betz essentially subscribes to this third view (though not
emphasizing the opponents' identity in his
exposition), his master-
ful literary analysis of
Galatians locates the body of the epistle in
chapters 3-4.48 This runs contrary to
his belief that chapters 5-6
have real force for the Galatians' problems. The
mere polemic
against accepting circumcision and Law in 2:15-5:12
"does not do jus-
tice to the Galatian trouble." 49 However, the force of
Betz's identi-
fication of the problem in
erary analysis, as Fletcher
has noted.50 A similar
problem is shared
by Schlier. He accepts a
conservative version of the Gnostic iden-
tity, but interprets
Galatians as if Paul were addressing Judaizers.51
Solving the Identity Crisis
The goal in identifying Paul's
opponents in
for all the particulars of the epistle in the most
comprehensive way.
In
seeking to do this, Barclay has delineated three major problems in
this kind of "mirror-reading": (1) Paul
did not directly address his
opponents but talked to the Galatians about the
opponents. (2) Gala-
tians is a fierce polemic and
the intense rhetoric may tend to distort
the opponents' actual positions. (3) Readers
encounter the linguistic
distortion of hearing only one partner in the
conversation.52
46 Hans
Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on
Paul's Letter to the Churches in
47 First set forth in Hans Dieter Betz, "2 Cor. 6:14–7:1: An Anti-Pauline Fragment?"
Journal of Biblical
Literature
92 (1973): 88-108, and in idem, "Spirit, Freedom, and
Law:
Paul's Message to the Galatian Churches," Svensk exegetisk arsbok 39 (1974):
154-55.
48
Betz, Galatians:
A Commentary on Paul's Letter to the Churches in
14-25.
49
Ibid., p. 273.
50 Fletcher, The Singular Argument of Paul's Letter to the Galatians, pp. 82-83.
51 Schlier, Der Brief an die Galater, pp. 20-24.