Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] We too acknowledge that the letter to the Galatians is the principal one directed against Judaism. We embrace the entire abolition of the old law there set out, holding that it too proceeds from the Creator's own arrangement, just as we have already argued repeatedly in this treatise regarding the new order of things foretold by the prophets of our God. For if the Creator himself promised that the old things would give way, obviously to make room for new things about to arise, and Christ marked out the moment of that transition ("law and prophets ran their course up to John"), setting in John the boundary line between the two orders — the old ceasing from that point and the new beginning — then it follows of necessity that the apostle too, in Christ revealed after John, weakens the old and confirms the new, and in doing so serves no other god's cause than the Creator's, at whose hands the passing of the old things had itself been foretold. [2] So then, both the destruction of the law and the construction of the gospel work in my favor even in this letter, bearing as they do on that presumption of the Galatians by which they had presumed to believe in Christ — the Creator's own Christ, naturally — while keeping the Creator's law intact, because it still seemed unbelievable that its own author would ever set the law aside. Now if they had heard of some altogether different god from the apostle, they would of their own accord have known straightaway that they must depart from the law of the god they had abandoned in favor of the other. For who would wait any longer to be taught that he must follow a new discipline, once he had already accepted a new god? [3] No — precisely because the same divinity was being preached in the gospel that had always been known in the law, though the discipline was not the same, this was the whole state of the question: whether the Creator's law ought to be excluded from the gospel of the Creator's own Christ. Remove this question and the whole controversy evaporates. And if the question had not existed — if everyone had readily agreed that they must depart from the Creator's order through faith in some other god — the apostle would have had no occasion at all to teach so pointedly what faith itself would have dictated on its own. [4] So the whole thrust of this letter teaches nothing other than the law's departure coming by the Creator's own arrangement, as we have been suggesting all along. Likewise, if it makes no mention anywhere of any new god — which it would have done nowhere more readily than here, so as to offer, as the reason for dismissing the law, this single and utterly sufficient definition of a new divinity — then it becomes clear what he means when he writes: "I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by grace for a different gospel" — different in conduct, not in religion; in discipline, not in divinity. For the gospel of Christ was meant to call people away from the law to grace, not away from the Creator to another god. [5] For no one had moved them away from the Creator, such that they could be seen as deserting to a "different gospel" as if they were being carried off to the Creator in the process. Indeed, by adding that there is no other gospel at all, he confirms as the Creator's the very gospel he defends as existing. For if the Creator too promises a gospel, saying through Isaiah: "Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good news to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good news to Jerusalem" — and again, of the persons of the apostles: "How timely are the feet of those who bring good news of peace, who bring good news of good things" — good news, of course, to the nations too, since it also says, "In his name," namely Christ's, to whom it says, "I have set you as a light for the nations," "the nations will hope" — then there is a gospel belonging to the new god too, the one you claim was being defended by the apostle at that point. So now we have two gospels answering to two gods, and the apostle would stand a liar for saying there is no other at all, when in fact there is another — when he could instead have defended his own gospel by demonstrating it, rather than by insisting there is only one. But perhaps, to dodge this, you will say he goes on to add: "Even if an angel from heaven should preach a different gospel, let him be accursed" — because he knew the Creator too was going to preach one. [6] Then you only entangle yourself the more. This is exactly the point that binds you. Confirming two gospels is not the act of a man who just finished denying any other exists. Still, the sense is plain enough from the one who put his own person forward first: "But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach a different gospel." For this was said by way of illustration. But if he himself was not going to preach differently, then certainly neither would an angel. He named an angel precisely so that men would be all the less to be believed — since if not even an angel, and not even an apostle, were to be trusted, still less would he be referring "the angel" to the Creator's gospel. [7] Going on from there, tracing the course of his own conversion from persecutor to apostle, he confirms the account given in the Acts of the Apostles, in which this very letter's subject matter is likewise recognized — namely, that certain people had come in claiming that circumcision was necessary and that the law of Moses must be observed, and that the apostles, consulted on this question, had by the authority of the Spirit declared that burdens must not be laid on men which even their own fathers had not been able to bear. And if the Acts of the Apostles agree with Paul on this point too, it is now clear why you reject them — namely, because they preach no other god than the Creator, and no other Christ than the Creator's, since the promise of the Holy Spirit is proved from no other source than the record of the Acts. And it is hardly likely that they would agree with the apostle in part — as they show, on his own testimony, the sequence of his career — and yet differ from him in part, by proclaiming the divinity in Christ to be the Creator's, as if Paul had not followed the preaching of the apostles from whom he received the very pattern for unteaching the law.
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