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Abstract
Critical scholarship has reached a virtual consensus in dividing the Epistle to the Galatians into two basic parts. The heart of the letter is located either in chapters three and four (where Paul contrasts faith to the law) or in chapters five and six (where Paul opposes Spirit to the flesh). Though faith and Spirit can easily be identified, most scholars associate the law and flesh with opposite problems, i.e. "nomism" and "antinomianism." The consequence of this perception of two problems addressed in two distinct parts of the letter is that one part or the other is deemphasized or more radically, a second audience within the churches is proposed. The deemphasis of one part or the other leads to the unsatisfactory conclusion that Paul qualifies Christian freedom even as he proclaims freedom for the believer, or that Paul does not fully understand the issue before the Galatian churches.
A third alternative is to label Galatians five and six as paraenesis. However, an investigation shows no clear beginning for a formal paraenesis; instead, there is a real continuity to Paul's argument and exhortations. Even Wilhelm Lutgert sensed a continuity, despite his assertion of a dual audience, when he suggested that Galatians is held together theologically by the problem of the law. The continuity of the whole argument is confirmed when one recognizes that "flesh" is a singularly appropriate term which suggests the problem of circumcision and can be polemically employed by Paul more readily than can "law."
My thesis is that Galatians 5:1-6:10 is best read not as an address to a second problem of the flesh but as a continuation of Paul's argument against the law. In 5:1-12, Paul establishes that faith and circumcision are incompatible. In 5:13-24, Paul argues that there is no place for the law in the regulation of Christian life. In 5:25-6:10, Paul stresses the responsibility of the Galatians to use the freedom of the Spirit for the Spirit.
To a congregation which believes its faith is inadequate, Paul argues that the Spirit offers all that his opponents claim for the law.
