6 just as hAbraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”? 7 Know then that it is ithose of faith who are jthe sons of Abraham. 8 And the Scripture, foreseeing that kGod would justify3 the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, l“In you shall all the nations be blessed.” 9
So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2016), 갈 3:6–9.
- We now come to an important transition in Paul’s argument in Galatians. Paul reviewed his special calling and unique apostolic ministry from his encounter with the risen Christ near Damascus through his confrontation with Peter at Antioch. Here he concluded the opening historical section of his letter by stating clearly that justification was not secured by human works of any kind but only through faith in Jesus Christ (2:16). This was the central thesis Paul was defending against certain Jewish-Christian missionaries who had come into Galatia insisting that Paul’s converts there submit to circumcision and other observances of the Jewish law in order to achieve a right standing before God. Paul saw in this false teaching the sinister scheme of the Evil One and appealed to the Galatians to remember how the presence of the Holy Spirit was manifested among them as an act of God’s sheer mercy quite apart from any works they had done (3:1–5). Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 215.
6절) 아브라함이 의롭다 함을 받은것이 바로 믿음에 의한 것임을 바울은 논증한다. 족장 아브라함은 바울 서신에 19번이나 등장한다. 그는 유대인들에게도 자신들의 신학을 강화시키는데 증인이다. 아브라함이 자신의 독자 이삭을 바치는 순종을 통해서 자신의 의를 드러냈고 구원을 받았다라고 주장한다. 그래서 유대인들은 아브라함의 모습을 예로 들면서 율법에 더욱더 강력하게 순종할 것을 요구하고 있다. 그런데 바울은 그 관점을 조금 바꾸어서 아브라함이 의롭다 칭함을 받는 것이 율법의 행위로 인한 것이 아님을 강조한다.(창 15:6) 이 주장은 롬 4장과 아울러서 이신칭의 교리에 결정적으로 중요한 본문이 된다.
* 아브라함의 예로부터 배울 수 있는 믿음에 대한 중요한 세가지 원리
1) 믿음은 자랑을 배제한다. : 아브라함이 의롭다 칭함을 받은 것이 자신의 행위에 있다면 그는 자랑할 만 하다. 하지만…
2) 믿음은 이성을 초월한다. : 당시 루터는 하나님의 특별계시를 벗어나 독립된 원리로 신학을 하는 것에 대해서 경계하고 있는 것이다. 루터는 말한다. “잠잠하라. 판단하지 말고 다만 하나님의 말씀을 들어라. 그리고 이를 믿어라.”
3) 믿음은 순종에서 비롯된다. : “우리는 믿음으로만 의롭다 칭함을 받는다. 그러나 그 믿음은 홀로 의롭게 되지 않는다"
- The patriarch Abraham, who is mentioned nineteen times in Paul’s letters, is the pivotal figure in all of Paul’s arguments from Scripture in Galatians. But why Abraham? It has been suggested that Paul was exercising theological one-upmanship in his appeal to the father of the Jewish people. In other words, if his opponents claimed the authority of Moses, the giver of the law, he would do them one better by going even further back to Abraham.19 It is much more likely, however, that Paul developed his unique understanding of Abraham’s role in the history of salvation over against the appeal to Abraham in the theology of his opponents. Thus Paul’s main purpose was not so much to oppose Abraham to Moses as it was to set the Abraham of “faith alone” over against the Abraham of rabbinic exegesis who was blessed by God because of his meritorious deeds.20
In the postexilic period the Pentateuchal patriarchs became the focus of extensive study and speculation. In a time of national conflict and identity crisis, the Jewish people sought an answer to the question, What does it mean to be in covenant with the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”? Abraham, of course, was not only the father of the Jewish nation, but he also was the original source of blessing for the Jewish people. In the Jewish literature of this period Abraham is invariably depicted as the “hero of faith” whose fidelity and obedience merited the favor of God and brought divine blessing on him and his posterity. Abraham is extolled as the “friend of God,” a man of hospitality, virtue, and conviction.
Two incidents in Abraham’s life were singled out as illustrations of his faithful obedience and worthiness before God. The first event is referred to in a lyrical passage from the apocryphal book called Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), where Abraham is praised as one of the great heroes of Israel’s past:
Great Abraham was the father of many nations;
no one has ever been found to equal him in fame.
He kept the law of the Most High;
he entered into covenant with him,
setting upon his body the mark of the covenant;
and, when he was tested, he proved faithful.
Therefore, the Lord swore an oath to him,
that nations should find blessing through his descendants,
that his family should be countless as the dust of the earth
and be raised as high as the stars,
and that their possession should reach from sea to sea,
from the Great River to the ends of the earth. (Sir 44:19–21, NEB)
The “mark of the covenant” that was set upon Abraham’s body is an explicit reference to Abraham’s acceptance of circumcision as recorded in Gen 17:4–14. This was doubtless a critical text for Paul’s opponents, for it suggested that circumcision was an indispensable sign of the covenant. If Gentile converts wanted to receive the full blessing of the people of God, they had to submit themselves to the God-ordained sign of his covenant as Father Abraham had done long ago. The text from Sirach also declares that Abraham had “kept the law of the Most High.” Of course, Abraham lived before the actual giving of the Mosaic law, but it was believed that he had fulfilled it proleptically through his exemplary obedience and faithfulness before the Lord.21
Abraham’s anticipatory obedience of the law was further illustrated by the ten trials or tests that proved Abraham’s trustworthiness, the ten trials corresponding to the Ten Commandments, which would be broken by the children of Israel.22 In rabbinic writings the last of the ten trials was always the “Aqēdâ Isaac,” the “binding” and sacrifice of Abraham’s beloved son as recorded in Gen 22:1–19. These two things, Abraham’s obedience to the law and his sacrifice of Isaac, were brought together in the story of Mattathias, the father of Judas Maccabeus, who organized an army of liberation to wage guerilla war against the Gentile invaders of Israel. First Maccabees 2 describes how these “freedom fighters” swept through the land, pulling down pagan altars and forcibly circumcising all the uncircumcised boys found within the frontiers of Israel. Thus they “saved the law from the Gentiles and their kings and broke the power of the tyrant.” On his deathbed Mattathias gathered his sons about him, exhorting them to be zealous for the law and give their lives for the covenant of their fathers. He reviewed the catalog of Israel’s heroes whom God blessed because of their obedience to the law: Joshua kept the law and became a judge in Israel; Elijah was zealous for the law and was taken up to heaven; Daniel was an observant Jew in a pagan culture and was rescued from the lions’ jaws. At the head of the list, of course, stands Abraham: “Did not Abraham prove steadfast under trial, and so gain credit as a righteous man?” (1 Macc 2:45–64). Here again is the standard portrayal of Abraham—the valiant warrior of faith who received the reward of righteousness because of his obedience and steadfastness under testing, even to the limits of sacrificing his own son.
No doubt Paul was well aware of this traditional portrait of Abraham. Very likely it had been cast in his teeth by his Judaizing opponents. Paul did not ignore their appeal to Abraham, but he shifted the point of departure to an earlier event in Abraham’s life. Nowhere did Paul refer explicitly to Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, nor in Galatians did he cite the covenant of circumcision mentioned in Gen 17.23 For Paul the critical verse was Gen 15:6: “He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” This quotation is introduced by the correlative conjunction kathōs, “just as,” which connects the faith of Abraham to the experience of the Galatians that Paul had just reviewed. He was saying, in effect, that just as the Galatians had trusted God’s Word, which they heard through Paul’s preaching, so also Abraham believed what God said and was counted righteous, just like the Galatians, through the “hearing of faith,” not by the doing of deeds.
How did Paul understand Abraham’s faith? In Rom 4:3 he again quoted this same text from Genesis and described more fully how faith became the instrument of Abraham’s justification. Thus the best commentary on Gal 3 is Rom 4. Looking at both passages in the total context of Paul’s theology, we can learn three important principles about faith from the example of Abraham.24
1. Faith excludes boasting. The theme of boasting is a major motif in Paul’s writings, not only in Galatians and Romans but also in the Corinthian correspondence and Philippians as well.25 To boast is to glory, to take credit for, to claim the right of self-determination, to brag about one’s autonomy and self-sufficiency. While few people are so brazen as to claim outright, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my ship” (Thomas Henley), this thought lies just beneath the surface in every unregenerate heart. But the faith by which Abraham was justified stands in absolute contradiction to every kind of self-glorification. Just prior to quoting Gen 15:6 in Rom 4, Paul made this very point. If indeed Abraham had been justified by works, he would have had reason to boast. Yet this is precisely what Abraham could not do because God called him, as Paul would show later in Gal 3, four hundred thirty years before the law was given, even twenty-nine years, according to the reckoning of the rabbis, before the sacrifice of Isaac. Thus, contrary to the traditional interpretation, Paul did not present Abraham as a paragon of virtue or a model of religious activism. Rather, it happened this way: God spoke, Abraham heard and believed, and on the basis of mere faith (sola fide) he received God’s justifying verdict.
2. Faith transcends reason. In his exegesis of this verse, Martin Luther introduced a second antithesis: not only faith versus works but also faith versus reason. “To attribute glory to God is to believe in him, to regard him as truthful, wise, righteous, merciful, and almighty, in short, to acknowledge him as the Author and Donor of every good. Reason does not do this, but faith does.… Faith slaughters reason and kills the beast that the whole world and all the creatures cannot kill.”26 Such language can easily be misunderstood if we take it as a blanket condemnation of logical thinking or rational discourse. Both Paul and Luther made good use of their God-given ability to think clearly and argue cogently by means of human reasoning. But Luther was right to oppose faith to reason where the latter is understood as an autonomous principle of doing theology apart from the special revelation of God in his Word.
Abraham’s faith was not based on his independent inquiry into the structure of reality nor his construal of various arguments for or against the existence of God. Abraham’s listening to God and finding God in the right was thus “contrary to all self-assessment and the verdict of human probability.”27 In Rom 4 Paul gave the example of Abraham’s trust that God would fulfill his promise to give him descendants as numerous as the stars in the heavens or the sands along the seashore even when he and Sarah were well past the normal age of childbearing. When reason would have counseled doubt and despair, Abraham “was fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised” (Rom 4:21). The sacrifice of Isaac must be interpreted along these same lines. Abraham was willing to slay his son of promise at God’s command, believing that, if necessary, God could raise him back to life in order to fulfill his word. This is the kind of faith Jesus spoke of when he announced that, contrary to every canon of reason, God was able to raise up sons to Abraham by the power of his word from inanimate objects such as lifeless stones. Thus Luther invites us to enter with Abraham into “the darkness of faith,” saying to reason, “You keep quiet. Do not judge; but listen to the Word of God, and believe it.”28
3. Faith issues in obedience. By emphasizing so strongly the unilateral action of God in justifying sinners by faith alone apart from works, did not Paul undercut the basis of Christian morality and leave himself open to the charge of antinomianism? Clearly he faced just such an objection in his own day as he himself indicated: “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!” (Rom 6:1–2). In Gal 5 and 6 he would spell out the dimensions of the Spirit-led life and encourage his readers to “test their own actions, serve one another in love, and fulfill the law of Christ” (6:4; 5:13).
19 This, for example, is the suggestion of J. Stott (Only One Way: The Message of Galatians[Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1968], 72). Paul does not mention Moses by name in Galatians, although he is referred to by inference in 3:19–20. For other Pauline references to Moses see especially Rom 5:13–14 and 2 Cor 3:6–18. On the place of Moses in Paul’s covenant theology, see P. Démann, “Moïse et la loi dans la pensée de saint Paul,” in Moïse, l’homme de l’alliance, ed. H. Cazelles (Paris: Desclé, 1955), 189–242.
20 On this theme see the excursus and literature cited in Betz, Galatians, 139–40, and Longenecker, Galatians, 110–12. On Paul’s use of Abraham as a key figure in the development of his theology see G. W. Hansen, Abraham in Galatians: Epistolary and Rhetorical Contexts (Sheffield: JSOT, 1989), and the excellent summary article by N. L. Calvert on “Abraham” in DPL, 1–9.
21 Cf. Jubilees 23:10: “For Abraham was perfect in all his deeds with the Lord, and well-pleasing in righteousness all the days of his life.”
22 The following dialogue between Moses and God is reported by Rabbi Abin as an example of the merit of Abraham’s faithfulness: “But Moses pleaded: ‘Lord of the Universe! Why art thou angry with Israel?’ ‘Because they have broken the Decalogue,’ He replied. ‘Well, they possess a source from which they can make repayment,’ he urged. ‘What is the source?’ He asked. Moses replied: ‘Remember that Thou didst prove Abraham with ten trials, and so let those ten [trials of Abraham] serve as compensation for these ten [broken commandments]’ ” (Exod Rab 44.4).
23 In a suggestive article, however, M. Wilcox has pointed to several possible allusions of the sacrifice of Isaac in Paul’s writings including the word for “cross” or “tree” (ζύλον) in Gal 3:13 (“ ‘Upon the Tree’—Deut 21:22–23 in the New Testament,” JBL 96 [1977]: 85–99). This word can also mean “wood,” which was used in Midrashic interpretations to refer to the wood of the burnt offering that Abraham loaded onto Isaac for their excursion to Mount Moriah. Tertullian spells out the significance of this act for Christian typology: “Isaac, when led by his father as a victim, and himself bearing his own ‘wood’ (lignum) was even at that period pointing to Christ’s death; conceded, as he was, as a victim by the Father; carrying, as he did, the ‘wood’ of his passion” (Adversus Iudaeos 10.6). Wilcox also finds a Pauline reference to Isaac in Rom 8:32, where God is described as the one “who did not spare his own son, but handed him over for the sake of us all.”
24 In interpreting Gal 3 by means of Rom 4, I presuppose the essential coherence of Paul’s thought while allowing for the occasional and contextual character of both Galatians and Romans. Important differences exist in the way Paul treated the Abraham story in these two epistles, but his interpretations are complementary rather than contradictory. J. C. Beker has argued that Paul’s polemical attack against the law in Galatians reflects the contingency and particularity of his defense of the gospel against the Judaizers (Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980], 99). Romans, on the other hand, is more irenic and positive in its treatment of circumcision and the law because it was written as a dialogue with converted Jews rather than as an apologia for Gentile Christians. While Beker’s analysis is helpful in accounting for the different tone and nuances of the two letters, he goes too far in claiming that “Romans 4 allows for the continuity of salvation-history, whereas Galatians 3 focuses on its discontinuity.” In neither Romans nor Galatians did Paul ever lose sight of the Jews’ and Gentiles’ special place in God’s salvific economy. H. Hübner proposed a developmental scheme of Paul’s thought that bifurcates Galatians and Romans in an even more extreme manner (Law in Paul’s Thought [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1984], 51–57). He sees great inconsistency in Paul’s treatment of the law in these two letters and attributes this disjunction to the apostle’s fundamental rethinking of the relationship of Gentile Christianity to its Jewish counterpart. Galatians was written rather late in Paul’s apostolic career even if, as we have argued, it may have been the first of his extant letters. By the time he wrote Galatians, he had behind him many years of missionary preaching, the synod on the Gentile mission at Jerusalem, and the confrontation with Peter at Antioch. It is inconceivable that he would not yet have given thought to the “inconsistencies” in his attack on the law on the one hand and his appeal for the unity of Jewish and Gentile Christianity on the other. Galatians reflects a mature, if passionate, theology that is anything but half-baked.
25 See R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament (New York: Scribners, 1955); E. Käsemann, Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 64. Cf. Gal 6:13–14; Rom 2:23; 3:21–31; 4:1–6; 1 Cor 1:29–31; 2 Cor 10:7–18; 11:16–30; Phil 3:3–9.
26 LW 26.227–28. On the various ways Luther used the word “reason” (ratio, Vernunft). See the excellent study of B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979). See also H. Oberman, ed., Luther: Sol, Ratio, Erudio, Aristoteles (Bonn: Bovier, 1971).
27 G. Ebeling, The Truth of the Gospel: An Exposition of Galatians (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 176.
28 LW 26.228. In his excoriation of unbridled reason, Luther sometimes praises faith in a way that seems inappropriate as when he calls it “the creator of the deity, not in the substance of God but in us.” Early in his reforming career Luther had broken with the mystical doctrine that within every human soul there remained a spark of divinity. His language about “faith creating deity” represents an awkward attempt to read an evangelical meaning into a pre-Reformation conceptual framework. See T. George, Theology of the Reformers (Nashville: Broadman, 1988), 62–73.
Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 216–221.
7절) 믿음으로 말미암은 자들은 아브라함의 자손이다. 이 고백 속에 사라와 하갈, 이삭과 이스마엘의 이야기가 떠오른다.
- Abraham is the father of God’s people not because he is the biological ancestor of the Jews but because he has a family of spiritual children who follow in his footsteps by believing as he did. God promised Abraham that he would bring life from his dead body (see Romans 4). Thus Abraham is a living OT prophecy of the gospel: he was not an Israelite but a pagan, and God justified him by faith. Crossway Bibles, The ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008), 2249.
바울의 대적자들은 갈라디아의 이방 교인들을 향해서 이렇게 말한다. “너희가 그리스도인이 되기 원하냐? 그렇다면 할례를 받고 율법을 준수해라” 하지만 이에 대해서 바울을 이렇게 대답한다. “아브라함이 의롭다 칭함을 처음 받았을때가 언제인가? 그가 할례를 받았기 때문에, 율법을 준수했기 때문에 의롭다 칭함을 받은 것인가? 그렇지 않다. 아브라함은 절대로 자신의 거룩한 행위로 인정받은 것이 아니라 오직 하나님을 믿음으로 의롭다 함을 받은 것이다. 그가 의롭다 칭함을 받았을때 그는 할례에 대해서 알지도 못했고 단지 하나님의 말씀에 순종해서 약속의 땅으로 첫번째 스텝을 내디뎠을 뿐이다. 그가 유대인들의 조상이 되었지만 그가 의롭다 칭함을 받았을때 그는 여전히 갈라디아인과 같이 이방인이었다."
- Appealing to the traditional Jewish exegetical tradition about Abraham, Paul’s opponents had evidently been saying to the Gentile believers of Galatia: “So you want to become Christians? Great! We will show you how to become true sons of Abraham. You must receive the seal of circumcision, the indispensable sign of God’s covenant with his people, and, like Father Abraham, keep the commands of the holy law.” Against this “orthodox” theology of Abraham, Paul offered a counterinterpretation. “All right,” he said; “you think being a son of Abraham is such a big deal? Well, let’s go back to Abraham himself. How was he declared righteous before God in the first place? Was it because he forsook his fatherland, his family, and all his friends back in Ur of the Chaldees? Was it because he accepted circumcision and observed the law? Was it because he was ready, at the command of God, to sacrifice his son Isaac? No! Abraham was justified not on account of his outstanding virtues and holy works, but solely because he believed God. And his faith was reckoned as righteousness long before he knew anything about circumcision or had taken the first step in his long journey toward the promised land. Although he became the father of the Jews, he was justified when he was still a Gentile!—just like you Galatians, who were justified and received the Holy Spirit through the hearing of faith, not through works of the law.” Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 223.
결국 진정한 아브라함의 자손, 자녀는 하나님과의 관계를 가장 중요하게 여기는 믿는 사람들인 것이다. 그렇기에 그들의 존재는 바로 믿음에 기초한다.
8절) 본문의 말씀은 창 12:3과 18:18절을 융합, 인용한 것이다. 본문에서 바울의 ‘성경’에 대한 이해를 옅볼 수 있다. 하나님께서 이방을 믿음으로 말미암아 의로 정하실 것을 알았고 또한 아브라함에게 모든 이방인(족속)이 너로 말미암아 복을 받을 것임을 말씀하셨다. 이것이 성경을 통해서 이미 증거된 것이다.
- What was it that the Scriptures “foresaw” and “preached beforehand” to Abraham? Simply this: the good news of salvation was to be extended to all peoples, including the Gentiles, who would be declared righteous by God, just like Abraham, on the basis of faith.35 Thus Paul interpreted the Genesis quotation “All nations will be blessed through you” in a far richer sense than traditional Jewish exegesis allowed. Through the Jewish people the world had received many wonderful benefits, above all the sacred Scriptures and the religion of monotheism. However, Paul went much further when “he simply identifies the blessing with God’s ‘grace’ and his ‘justification by faith.’ ”36 Abraham was special because centuries before Jesus was born he received in this word from God the promise of the Messiah and believed. Paul’s exegesis at this point is really a commentary on the declaration of Jesus: “Abraham was overjoyed to see my day; he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56, NEB). In Paul’s mind, of course, the “day” of Christ had inaugurated a new epoch in the history of salvation which, as he had shown already in Gal 1, included his own calling and special mission to the Gentiles. He was now ready to apply the lesson of Abraham to the Gentile Christians of Galatia.
35 Betz notes that προευηγγελίσατο is a hapax legomenon in the NT, although it does occur in Philo (Galatians, 143). Cf. J. Locke’s paraphrase of this text: “For it being in the purpose of God to justify the Gentiles by faith, he gave Abraham a foreknowledge of the gospel” (J. Locke, Paraphrase of Paul [Oxford: Clarendon, 1987]), 136–37).
36 Betz, Galatians, 142.
Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 225.
9절) 그러므로 믿음의 사람들은 믿음의 사람 아브라함과 같이 은혜를 받게 됩니다. 첫째로 아브라함의 자손, 가족은 하나님이 허락하신 은혜에 의한 믿음을 통해서 된다라는 사실을 강조한다. 다른 말로 하면 진정한 아브라함의 자손은 혈통이 아니라 그 영의 형제들이다라는 것입니다. 둘째로 그 복이 아브라함을 통해서 모든 민족에게 임한다는 것을 약속한다.
- This verse presents the conclusion (“so,” Gk., hōste) to the Abraham-argument Paul introduced in v. 6. Clearly he was not through with Abraham, as the unfolding of his argument in Gal 3 and 4 will show. However, in these few short verses he had already made two critical points that will be elaborated in the following passages. First, he redefined the Abrahamic family in such a way as to undercut the appeal of his opponents to this biblical paradigm. The true children of Abraham are those who, like the great patriarch, have been declared righteous by faith, that is, by God himself in his grace. Put otherwise, “the authentic descendants of Abraham are soul brothers rather than merely blood brothers.”37 Second, Paul interpreted the blessing promised through Abraham to “all the nations” as a prophecy of his own law-free mission to the Gentiles. Through the unerring word of God, Abraham not only received the promise of the gospel but also anticipated its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, a fulfillment that was being realized in part among the Galatians themselves who had been justified by faith through their hearing of the gospel by the ministry of Paul.38
37 P. R. Jones, “Exegesis of Galatians 3 and 4,” RevExp 69 (1972): 476.
38 This point has been well made by J. M. G. Barclay in his excellent study, Obeying the Truth: A Study of Paul’s Ethics in Galatians (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), 87–88.
Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 225–226.
- Paul’s entire argument in this passage hinges on one tremendous assumption: the continuity of the covenant of grace. It is not surprising that Marcion, for all his adulation of Paul, wanted to excise all reference to Abraham as the prototype of faith.39 By rejecting the Old Testament completely, Marcion presented Christianity as the religion of the “alien Father” of Jesus, a deity who stood in total opposition to the God of the Old Testament as well as to the world of matter that he had neither created nor was interested in redeeming.
39 See Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem (chap. 4): ANF 3.435–38. In Gnostic exegesis of this passage, Paul’s reference to Abraham is taken as a figurative representation of the demiurge while the “children of Abraham” are the psychics, those unenlightened souls who can only believe since they are not yet “in the know.” The early Gnostic commentator Heracleon rejected justification by faith, snidely remarking, “The demiurge believes well” (Pagels, Gnostic Paul, 106).
Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 226.
