Celebrating Christian Centenaries
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 68, No. 1 - Fall 2025
Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
By John Anthony Dunne. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2025, 180 pp., $25.00.
The influence of Paul’s epistle to the Galatians casts a long shadow over the landscape of Christian theology and Biblical interpretation. Akin to its longer cousin Romans, Galatians has captured the minds and hearts of those who have read and studied its contents for the past two millennia. Because of Galatians’ massive impact upon the Christian tradition, many Christians have a sure understanding of the letter’s content–justification by faith in Christ instead of works of law. Yet, at the same time, many are less sure-footed on the particulars of the letter: how Paul’s arguments unfold and the circumstances around its composition.
In Reading Galatians, John Anthony Dunne, associate professor of New Testament at Bethel University, seeks to provide a more confident readership to Paul’s dynamic and peculiar letter. Dunne’s aim in the work is to provide a guide, distilling scholarship to propel further study and reflection on the letter (ix). The book’s outline supports the reader with a grid for thinking about the letter.
The first two chapters outline the letter’s structure (chapter 1, 1–17), and how Galatians has been interpreted historically, outlining the major trends in scholarship (chapter 2, 18–37). Dunne summarizes these approaches fairly, usually noting the major works associated with each approach and how they rightly highlight emphases of the letter. The sole caveat to this trend is his engagement with “Lutheran/Reformational” readings of Paul. Dunne’s approach is eclectic and encourages his reader to take a similar approach (37).
Chapters three through eight address the circumstances of the letter and its content from a chronological perspective, beginning with Paul’s initial visit to the Galatians in conversation with the book of Acts (chapter 3). Here, Dunne draws from Galatians the texts concerning Paul’s suffering in his ministry to the Galatians (4:14–16; 1:8–9, 13–14; 5:21). One aspect of this chapter I found insightful was Dunne’s use of relevance theory to address why Paul refers to this initial visit so elliptically (47). Dunne argues for a southern Galatian audience written before the Jerusalem council (52–60).
Chapter four focuses on the crisis in Galatia after Paul left and introduces the issues of mirror reading the letter. Dunne identifies the opponents as Jewish Christians (70) and suggests the pressures leading to their actions involved the prevalence of the imperial cult in provinces of Galatia and Asia (73). In this reading of the crisis, the Mosaic law and Judaism are historically respected ancient traditions within Roman Hellenism, and therefore, Jews were often exempt from the festivals and rituals involved in imperial cult worship.
Chapters five through seven focus on Paul’s response to the crisis in Galatia in his letter (82–124). In chapter five (83–93), Dunne focuses on the purpose of chapters 1–2 in Paul’s argument. Is Paul confronting false information about him provided by the agitators or presenting himself as an example for the Galatians to follow? Dunne suggests Paul’s use of Isaianic quotations indicative of his participation in and his continuation of the Messiah’s (Christos) mission and activity (Gal 1:15–16// LXX Isa 49:1b; Gal 1:24// LXX Isa 49:3; Gal 2:2// LXX Isa 49:4a). Paul is both inviting the Galatians to see him as a paradigm for how Jews and Gentiles relate to God through union with and faith in Christ (esp. 2:16–21), and to address the accusations from the agitators that Paul is dependent upon the Jerusalem apostles for his Gentile mission. Dunne also helpfully points out that Paul’s preaching in Acts within the cities that composed his Galatian audience also refers to Isaiah 49 (Acts 13:47// LXX Isa 49:6). In this chapter Dunne briefly addresses the debates of the meaning of pistis christou “faith in/faithfulness of Christ” and opts, I think correctly, for the “faith in Christ” interpretation of the phrase (91).
Chapter six (94–107) addresses the promise to Abraham and the function of the law in Galatians 3–4. Dunne quickly outlines the patristic, traditional Lutheran, new perspective, apocalyptic, and Paul within Judaism understandings of the function of the law in Galatians (94–95). Dunne states that the law should not apply to the Galatians because it did not determine their reception of the Spirit or justification by faith and therefore does not indicate who is adopted into Abraham’s family (96), as Galatians 3:6–14, 15–29, and 4:1–7 suggest (96–103). These are difficult passages to interpret, and I quibble with Dunne on a few points of interpretation. Overall, his emphasis on the reception of the Spirit and faith in Christ as means of the Abrahamic inheritance, so making the law not binding for Jews and Gentiles, is helpful. In Dunne’s interpretation of Galatians 4:21–5:1, he connects Paul’s reading of LXX Isaiah 54:1 cited in Galatians 4:27 with the Isaianic servant’s (i.e. Christ) suffering to make the realities of Isaiah 54 possible. Paul’s Galatians, like the Messiah and himself, share in these messinanic sufferings, demonstrating they are truly Abraham’s heirs (4:29; cf. Gal 3:4; 4:6).
Chapter seven (108–24) focuses on the function of the Spirit in the argument of the letter. The Messiah’s Spirit provides the life the law identifies but cannot itself offer in Galatians 3:21 (108–110). The Spirit’s connection with eschatological life by the Son’s resurrection (see Gal 1:1; 2:19–20) is prominent throughout the rest of the letter (Gal 3:21; 6:8, 14). The reason the law is no longer binding on Jews and Gentiles in Christ is that the law is only binding until death (e.g., Gal 2:19; cf. Rom 7:1–5). Thus, as Paul says in Gal 5:18, “those led by the Spirit are no longer under the law”. Jews and Gentiles in Christ effectively live within a new reality because Christ and the Spirit have come, demonstrating there is a “new creation” that is no longer bound to the requirements of the law’s authority, no longer experience its judgement because they are led by Christ and the Spirit (5:18; 6:2), and have for Paul become a new community empowered by God’s spirit (5:24–6:10).
Chapters eight and nine focus on what the Galatians did with the letter (chapter 8) and how we should apply the letter’s insights today (chapter 9). Paul is gravely concerned for the Galatians’ eschatological state (Gal 4:19; cf. 2:2). He anticipates divine judgement upon the opponents (1:6–9; 5:10, 12) and is motivated by their future eschatological prospects if they reject his message (e.g., Gal 1:4; 5:21; 6:8–10). While some like J. Louis Martyn have argued Paul’s ministry in Galatia was a failure, we see a glimmer of hope in 1 Corinthians 16:1–2 where Paul mentions the Galatians in his collection for the Saints in Jerusalem (cf. 2 Tim 3:10–12).
Dunne makes two general observations for application. First, Paul’s rejection of circumcision as the means of Abrahamic inheritance and blessing indicates that the blessings of Paul’s gospel is available to all. Second, in terms of the rejection of circumcision and the gift of the Spirit, Christians today can make similar leaps of judgment of cultural prerequisites for admission into Christian churches that are even on less sure biblical grounds than Paul’s opponents. Dunne applies insights from John Barclay’s work on grace as a gift in Paul, in ways that hold the two sides of divine action and human response in Galatians together. Namely, God’s divine action in grace obligates the recipient to an appropriate ethical response, which Paul defines as life in the Spirit (Gal 5:13–6:10). Strikingly, for Paul, God’s grace not only obligates the recipient but also empowers them to live accordingly to this gift (5:26).
As Dunne observes, Galatians has had a prized place within the Christian tradition and modern scholarship because “the way that Galatians has inspired so many different kinds of theological projects speaks to its generativity, if not its ambiguity…” (136). Dunne’s guided reading of the letter provides a helpful starting point for readers starting their journey.
