For in Christ Jesus you are all children of
God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed
yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer
slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in
Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:26-28 NRSV)
Commenting
on Gal 3:26-28 and how water baptism is the instrumental means by which we are
both “clothed” with Christ and made “one” with fellow believers, Stephen Patterson
(at the time of writing, George H. Atkinson Professor of Religious and Ethical
Studies at Willamette University) wrote:
Galatians 3:27 is about baptism. This is not
a particularly attention-grabbing detail, for most people assume that early
followers of Jesus were baptized. Why shouldn’t Paul mention it. But students
of Galatians usually note that this particular reference to baptism seems to
come from out of the blue. The letter does not otherwise discuss or even
mention baptism. The matter that separates Paul from his opponents in Galatia
is the question of circumcision, not baptism. Must Gentiles be circumcised?
What does baptism have to do with this? Nothing. We nowhere learn that Paul’s
antagonists in Galatia have another view of baptism that he felt he must
correct or dispute. Nor does Paul here or anywhere else argue that baptism
could replace circumcision, as a few scholars have assumed must have been the
case. The argument in Galatians simply is not about baptism. So why bring it
up? Paul brings up baptism in 3:27 because Galatians 3:26-28 formed the heart
of a baptismal creed. The great
scholar of Galatians, Hans Dieter Betz, avers that Paul probably took these
verses from an early Christian baptismal liturgy (Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia
[Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984], 184). In the argument about
whether Gentiles ought to be circumcised, Paul apparently wanted his readers to
remember these particular words from a baptismal liturgy with which they may
have been familiar: “there is no longer Jew or Greek.” The other clauses—“no
longer slave or free” and “no longer male and female”—simply came along for the
ride. (Stephen J. Patterson, The
Forgotten Creed: Christianity’s Original Struggle Against Bigotry, Slavery, and
Sexism [New York: Oxford University Press, 2018], 17-18)
Elsewhere,
commenting on v. 27 (“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put
on Christ”) and how it is Paul’s addition to a creedal statement, again,
showing that water baptism is the instrumental means of bringing about the promised
results (salvific union with Christ; being "one" with one's fellow believers, etc), Patterson wrote:
First, verse 27 is a kind of explanation. It
reveals that the creed has to do with baptism—it is through baptism that these
distinctions are exposed as false. Now, let us suppose that the creed does have
to do with baptism—that it was used, say, in a baptismal ceremony. When they
were actually using the creed in that context, would anyone have needed to
explain that it had to do with baptism? They were baptizing—while saying the
creed. Most people could have caught on. But when it is plucked out of its
original setting and used in a letter, then an explanation is needed. None of
the other, more formulaic clauses refer to baptism, so Paul tells them: it is
in baptism that all are united as one, that all are seen as children (“sons”) of
God.
Second, the explanatory nature of the verse
is also indicated by its syntax; it begins with the word “for”—gar in Greek. Greeks used the word gar to attach an explanatory sentence or
clause. Notice that verse 26 beings with the same word, “for,” or gar. That is because Paul is using the
creed in its entirety to say why Gentile Christ followers can be included by
virtue of their faith. That makes our second gar in verse 27 stand out all the more. That is just one too many gars—an explanation of an explanation.
It works, but it is just a little awkward—enough to signal that Paul is adding
explanations to the original creed.
A third reason for seeing verse 27 as an
addition to the cred is its very different register. The first line, verse 26,
says, “You are all children of God . . .” Notice the tense: present. Notice
also to who the line is spoken: “you . . .all” (you, plural). It is as though the speaker is addressing a group of
initiates about to be baptized. That is indeed how it was probably used. But
verse 27 is different. It speaks not of “all,” everyone, but “as many of you as
were baptized,” as though others are present who were not baptized.
Furthermore, it does not use the present tense, but the Greek aorist, or simple
past tense. This line, then, speaks to a group of people, some of whom (but not
all) had been baptized sometime in the past. In other words, it does not
presuppose the original setting of the creed, a baptismal ceremony, but the
setting of the letter itself. In this sentence, Paul interrupts the creed to
address the Galatians, some of whom would have been baptized sometime in the
past.
Finally, the statement that one is baptized “into
Christ” has a very distinctive Pauline ring to it. When Paul speaks of the
followers of Jesus, he very often uses the phrase “in Christ” to describe them,
as in “there is no judgment for those who are in Christ” (Rom 8:1). Scholars sometimes refer to this as Paul’s “participation”
theology, a phrase coined by E.P. Sanders (see esp. E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison
of Patterns of Religion [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977], 453-63]).
Paul thought of the followers of Christ as somehow participating in Christ’s
continuing existence. One way Paul imagined it was to see the community of
believers as the new body of Christ, inhabited by Christ’s spirit. To be
baptized “into Christ” meant being baptized into his “body.” Consider how Paul
expresses the concept in 1 Corinthians:
For just as the body is one and has many
members, but all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body,
so it is also with Christ. For in one spirit we all were baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and
all were made to drink of the one spirit . . . But you all are the body of
Christ and each of you is a part of it.
1 Cor 12:12-13, 27
Another way he thought about it was to
imagine that the life of Christ and the life of the believer had somehow merged
and become one. Consider:
For the love of Christ possesses us, for we
have decided on this: that one man has died for all; therefore, all have died.
And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for
themselves, but for the one who died for them and was raised . . .So, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new
creature.
2 Cor 5:14-15, 17a
In this passage, Paul alludes to another
interpretation of baptism, which he discusses more fully in Romans 6. There he
says, “Don’t you know that as many of you as were baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death?” (Rom 6:3). Notice how the first part of this
statement is almost exactly the same as Galatians 3:27. This is just how Paul
typically talks about being a follower of Jesus—and how he talks about baptism.
The Christ followers exist in Christ.
Therefore, when they are baptized, they are baptized into Christ. That is a pretty firm Pauline fingerprint and all of
this adds up to a fairly clear picture: verse 27 was not part of the original
creed. Paul added it to make the creed work better in the context of the
letter. (Ibid., 24-26)
Further Reading on the Salvific Efficacy of
Water Baptism