OPP

What is Galatians about?  Augustine says that the question at stake was how to induct Gentiles into the people of God.  Paul circumcised Timothy, since “these rites and traditions [of Judaism] were not harmful to people born and raised in that way,” but for those who came from outside “those who were bound by no such requirement but came as it were from the opposite wall, that is, from those without circumcision, to that cornerstone, which is Christ, were forced into no such rites.”

The Galatian crisis erupted when “certain wicked people persuaded [gentiles] that they could not be saved without these words of the law,” that is, without circumcision and other rites and traditions of Judaism.  Paul insisted that they should not be “burdened by any such observances,” knowing that “adults fears such unheard-of practice, especially circumcision, and those who were not born so as to be initiated into such sacraments would have been deterred from the faith if they were made converts according to the earlier rite, as if those mysteries sill promised that Christ was coming.”  When the apostles decided that “gentiles should not be forced into such works of the law, certain Christians from the circumcision were displeased.”  They could not recognize that if the rites continued to be imposed on Gentiles, then “people would suppose either that they were not instituted as promises of Christ or that they were still promising Christ.”

New Perspective on Paul?  Hardly.