David Aune on Galatians 3:28 and the Problem of Equality

New Testament scholars in a variety of specialties will be pleased to see that a second collection of the essays of David Aune has been released this year by Mohr Siebeck: Jesus, Gospel Tradition and Paul in the Context of Jewish and Greco-Roman Antiquity. I will say more about this rich volume as a whole in a later post. For now I focus on the final essay of this volume, “Galatians 3:28 and the Problem of Equality in the Church and Society” (pp. 524-549), in which David Aune provides some important context for understanding the notion of equality in Christ that Paul outlines in Gal 3:28. The real heart of the issue is the extent to which Paul was only advocating a kind of equality coram deo (before God) in which all have equal access to the possibility of being “in Christ” but which has no significant impact in concrete social relationships; or whether Paul was suggesting that this equality before God must also be somehow physically manifested in concrete social relationships between males and females, slaves and free, Jews and Gentiles, within the churches.

To shed light on Paul’s views, Aune reviews the teaching and example of Jesus with regard to equality and the erasing of hierarchical distinctions. He also reviews contemporary Jewish and Greco-Roman views on each of the relationships of the Gal 3:28 triad: Jew/Gentile, slave/free, male/female.

Most illuminating is comparing Gal 3:28 with what Paul says elsewhere about these distinctions. Notably, in 1 Cor 7 Paul addresses each of the three elements of this triad of conventional hierarchies. Further, by reading Gal 3:28 in light of Paul’s conflict with Peter over table fellowship between Jews and Gentiles (Gal 2:11-14), Aune suggests that Paul fully expected that the abolishment “in Christ” of these conventional social hierarchies would be played out in practice in the real relationships of believers with one another. 

“The very fact that Paul thought national differences were irrelevant for those who belonged to the new people of God suggests that the two other areas of equality, ‘neither slave nor free’ and ‘neither male nor female,’ not only reflect equal status before God, they also signal changed attitudes toward others that ought to prevail in the life of the Church” (549)

Paul’s letter to Philemon offers another concrete instance of Paul’s expectation that being “in Christ” would have concrete implications in the relationships of Christians with one another. How the tensions this expectation created would be resolved is not so clearly addressed by Paul (at least not in the case of Onesimus and Philemon). Aune explains,

“While Paul does not resolve the tension that would have existed between those two quite different roles [i.e. being a slave in the flesh vs. being a spiritual brother in Christ], a transformation of social relationships is surely in view” (549).

Aune thus provides a helpful way of positioning Paul within his first-century context and within the context of early Christian writers. Paul, though surely influenced by the conventions of his day, points to a new way of relating to one another within the community of believers. The dynamic tensions inherent within these new ways of relating will, it seems, need to be addressed in the day to day lives of each new generation of believers who live within the social structures of the world but also find themselves “one in Christ Jesus.”