Translation of the word "Mediator" (Part 3 of 5)

Scholarly Opinions on Gal 3:19-20

This discussion puts forward two very different and incompatible interpretations of the Greek word translated ‘mediator’. The first article, by A. Perry, argues that the word has the sense of ‘intermediary’. The last article in the set, by P. Wyns, argues for the sense of ‘reconciler’. These two articles also illustrate two different ways of going about the business of interpretation. The two articles in between the first and the last are included for background information.

Introduction

The most difficult ‘mediator’ text in the NT is Gal 3:19-20. Commentators recognize the existence of many different interpretations of Gal 3:19-20.[1]  In this article, we will survey two—those of N. T. Wright[2] and M. Bachmann.[3]

N. T. Wright

N.T. Wright offers an ingenious interpretation of Gal 3:19-20 that is based on an attempt to redefine how ‘seed’ is understood in v.16,

Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,” who is Christ.

The ‘seed’ in Gal.3:16 should, according to Wright, not be understood as the individual Christ but as the ‘family’ of God that is incorporated in Christ.  Wright sums it up as follows,

The problem with this passage, which emerges in most translations, is the word ‘seed’, which I have translated here as ‘family’.  This is in fact the only way to make full sense of Paul’s argument. God made promises ‘to Abraham and his seed’; the ‘seed’ is singular, meaning the Messiah – who, for Paul, represents God’s people, so that the ‘singular seed’ means the single family, incorporated into the Messiah, that God always intended..[….] The point of the very difficult verses 19 and 20 is then as follows. The law was given through the agency not only of angels (this is, for Paul, a way of saying that the law was indeed God’s law, wonderful and holy) but also of the ‘mediator’, that is, Moses. Moses, though cannot be the mediator through whom God creates the ‘one’, the single family he always wanted; but God is one, and so (as Paul explains in Romans 3.29-30) he desires a single family, not many families.[4]

According to Wright a paraphrase of v. 20 would look something like this; “Now he (Moses) is not the mediator of one (i.e., the single family of God compromised of Jew and Gentile) but God is one (there is only one family in God)”.

Ostensibly, this makes sense of a very difficult passage; however, there are a number of problems. Predominately, Paul makes it clear with the phrase ‘who is Christ’ (v. 16) that he has a particular individual in mind and that he is contrasting the individual with the ‘many’. The emphasis on the singular seed is not “a purely semantic trick”, nor is the statement ‘who is Christ’ a mere “explanatory note”.[5]  Wright dismisses the singular argument (i.e., Christ as the referent of seed) as weak:

And if v. 16 is as weak as this, the argument of the whole passage is weakened also: Paul’s line of thought appears to run ‘the promises are made to Abraham’s seed; Christ is Abraham’s seed (v. 16); you belong to Christ (vv. 26-29a); therefore you are heirs to the promises (v. 29b)…[6]

However, in explaining the statement ‘who is Christ’ Wright himself appeals to a similar line of reasoning;

Christ is the ‘seed’ because, and insofar as, the promised single family of Abraham is brought into being in and through him alone. It therefore finds its identity in him and him alone.  He is its incorporation…[7]

On this reading, the ‘seed’ refers to the ‘family’ (in Christ) and also to Christ?? Even in the time of Abraham the seed had a singular focus “in Isaac your seed shall be called” (Gen 21:12), natural descent (cf. Ishmael) from Abraham was insufficient to qualify for inheritance (Rom 9:7); only faith sufficed for incorporation into Christ (Gal 4:28).

If ‘Christ’ becomes synonymous with the ‘corporate family’, then the distinction between the singular ‘seed’ and the ‘many’ becomes blurred and this cannot have been the intention of Paul’s contrast in v. 16. Moreover, when ‘family’ is applied to the interpretation of v. 19, the ostensible reason seems to be forced:[8]

Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions until the family should come to whom it had been promised.[9]

This seems to me to be setting the horse behind the cart as the family could only come into existence once the promise had been fulfilled by the seed (singular).  The many are indeed incorporated into the ‘seed’ but only after the sacrifice of Christ (Abraham saw this “afar off” and did not receive the promise; cf. Gen.22:4; Heb 11:13)—the focus of the promise(s) is Christ—the family is the result of his faithful work.

As A. A. Das observes, it is not until v. 29[10] that Christians are incorporated into the one seed. Therefore, a natural ‘sequential reading’ of the text does not prepare the reader for a collective understanding of ‘seed’ in v. 16.[11]  Wright objects that if the ‘seed’ in v. 16 refers to Christ then, “it seems to imply that the promises meant nothing at all until the coming of Christ”.[12] This is indeed correct, for although the promise(s) may have had a partial typological fulfilment in Isaac, Solomon etc., the promise(s) meant nothing at all until they were confirmed by God in Christ (Gal 3:17). Note that Paul does not say “confirmed by God in the seed” – he is quite explicit in naming Christ as the confirmation and seal of the promise. So for Paul, Christ was the ‘seed’ (singular, “who is Christ”) to whom the promise was given, and the resurrected Christ himself (not the family) was the confirmation of that promise.

Wright’s exegesis is however entirely correct in highlighting the divisiveness caused by the Law and the fact that the Law was an obstacle to the promised incorporation of the Gentiles and therefore to the unity of the one God and the one ‘family’ of God.

M. Bachmann

M. Bachmann offers a different analysis to that of Wright. He avers, for example, that the NKJV has inserted certain words (indicated by italics) that are absent from the original Greek:

It was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator (3:19c)
Now a mediator does not mediate for one only, but God is one (3:20a)

Many versions have done some sort of inserting for these verses. Bachmann observes, “One of the reasons this passage has become a crux interpretum clearly emerges here: one feels urged, as the additions…show, to supplement an enormous amount; the text is formulated extremely succinctly”.[13]  This can be clearly appreciated with a literal rendition of the original Greek of 3:20,

BNT (3:20) o` de. mesi,thj e`no.j ouvk e;stin( o` de. qeo.j ei-j evstinÅ
YLT (3:20) And (de.) the mediator is not of one, and (de.)  God is one[14]

Bachmann offers an analysis of Paul’s reasoning in terms of syllogism, a kind of logical argument in which one proposition (the conclusion) is inferred from two or more others (the premises) of a certain form.

Bachmann is sceptical of scholars who treat the two clauses of v. 20, both commencing with a de., as the minor and major premises of an incomplete syllogism.[15] He gives his reading as follows:

Moses did not mediate the law to the one seed, which was last mentioned in 3:19 and has already been equated with Christ in 3:16, but rather, not surprisingly, to Israel. In view of this joint relationship of God, Moses, and Israel, at least the difference from the conventional approach ought now to be in plain view: 3:20a is not about a general concept of a mediator but concretely about the mediator Moses…[16]

Bachman’s paraphrase of Gal 3:20 would be,

(Now a mediator [Moses] does not mediate for one [Seed (i.e., for Jesus) …but for many/ Israel], but God is one)[17]

This is less forced as a reading and the confessional statement (God is one) demonstrates that God is both behind the Promise and the Law. In this construct the numeral ‘one’ has Jesus (seed) as the first referent and God as the second. Nowhere does Paul deny that God is behind both the Promise and the Law, the weakness of this proposal is that it does not further Paul’s argument regarding the superiority of the Promise.

Furthermore, the argument seems to be that Moses was a mediator for the many (Israel) but that Moses did not mediate for the one (Jesus), presumably because he is already part of the Godhead (God is one). This would make the verse a statement on the divinity of Christ rather than on the inadequacy of the Law. If Moses was mediator for the many (Israel) but not for the one (Jesus) then Jesus was effectively outside the Law, yet Paul is quite clear that Jesus was under the Law (cursed by the Law). Again, the function of the mediator is critical—Moses was only the delivery mechanism— the agent of Law giving. Moses did not mediate forgiveness (either for the ‘many’ or, for ‘the one’) for transgressing the Law. On these grounds Bachman’s reading can be rejected as contextually weak and theologically unsound.

Conclusion

In this brief analysis of two scholarly views, we have closed down some erroneous paths in interpretation. Each scholar’s reading is given greater justification than our extracts, but our purpose has been just to illustrate some choices in interpretation that have been made when making sense of Gal 3:19-20. Wright brings the idea of the multitudinous seed too early in Paul’s reasoning; and Bachmann chooses to make the reference of ‘the mediator’ solely the individual Moses.

[1] The modern classic work in this area is H. D. Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979); and 2 Corinthians 8 and 9: A Commentary on Two Administrative Letters of the Apostle Paul (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985).

[2] N. T. Wright, Paul for everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians, (London: SPCK, 2004); The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (London: T&T Clark, 1991).

[3] M. Bachmann, Anti-Judaism in Galatians? Exegetical Studies on a Polemical Letter and on Paul’s Theology (trans., R. L. Brawley; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).

[4] Wright, Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians, 36-37.

[5] Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, 159, 166.

[6] Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, 158.

[7] Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, 166.

[8]See J. S. DeRouchie and J. C. Meyer, “Christ or Family as the ‘Seed’ of Promise? An Evaluation of N. T. Wright on Galatians 3:16” SBJT 14/3 (2010): 36-48 (41), who state “This wording accentuates the awkwardness of Wright’s interpretation, because the actual flow of Paul’s thought prohibits such a translation”.

[9] Wright, Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians, 35.

[10] [Ed. AP]: Choosing v. 29 looks wrong to me; there are better start-points earlier in the discourse.

[11] A. A. Das, Paul, the Law, and the Covenant (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2001), 72–73, n 9.

[12] Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, 159.

[13] Bachmann, Anti-Judaism in Galatians?, 66.

[14] [Ed. AP]: Young’s literal translation is itself making an interpretive choice about the translation of the o` de structure; the choice of ‘and’ is dependent on how an interpreter-translator reads the rhetorical flow of the passage. Elsewhere, ‘but’ is often chosen for this structure—see the RSV of Gal 3:12 or KJV and NASB of Gal 5:10. For Gal 3:20, both the KJV and NASB have ‘Now’ because they sense a pause equal to Gal 3:16 which has the same opening structure. This ‘pause and move on’ in the reasoning is shared between Gal 3:16 and 20 and is important.

[15] Bachmann, Anti-Judaism in Galatians?, 65; he gives the missing conclusion as “the mediator is not God’s” (66). [Ed. AP]: The fact that the conclusion is supposedly missing gives the lie to the syllogistic approach; Bachmann’s own reason is that Gal 3:20 is not written in the way that Paul normally presents syllogistic reasoning, but his example of such reasoning (Gal 3:28d-29a) is not syllogistic.

[16] Bachmann, Anti-Judaism in Galatians?, 69. [Ed. AP]: In rejecting the reading that Paul is referring to the role/function of mediator Bachmann is starting off down the wrong track.

[17] [Ed. AP]: In choosing ‘for one’ as the sense of the Greek ‘of one’, Bachmann is not seeing that ‘of one’ cites ‘of one’ in Gal 3:16 to dissociate the role of mediator from what is ‘of one’. Also, he is not proceeding intertextually and adding Heb 2:11 to his matrix of texts. Doing so illustrates the superiority of the intertextual method in exegesis but it presumes the inspiration of Scripture.