Book Review: Reading Galatians

John Anthony Dunne calls Galatians “a place both wonderful and strange” as well as “Paul’s most untamed letter” (ix). In this book, he takes readers on a journey toward understanding the “untamed” book of the Bible. Reading Galatians isn’t a traditional verse-by-verse commentary, but Dunne delves into the letter at a granular level and shows careful exegesis throughout his reflections and analysis. This book is a great resource for someone looking to deeply understand what Paul is saying—without getting bogged down in painstaking detail or endless quibbles over Greek translation.

Reading Galatians begins with an overview of what exactly makes Galatians so “wonderful and strange.” He compares Galatians with other Pauline letters, noting the many differences, but also the underlying similarities that may be hard to see at a glance. Next, he covers the different interpretive approaches to Galatians over the centuries of Christian scholarship. This section of the book is the most academically dense and may be difficult to follow for those new to Biblical interpretation or the scholarly debates in the field. Still, Dunne’s summary of each interpretive approach distills a lot of complex information into a reasonably coherent overview.

After these two introductory chapters, Dunne begins his analysis of Galatians. He approaches the letter not in order of the text itself, but from a chronological perspective: First, he covers Paul’s initial ministry to Galatia and what we can learn about it from Galatians and other parts of the New Testament. He then moves to what happened after Paul left Galatia and the events that prompted Paul to write such a scathing letter about the “troublemakers” advocating for Gentile circumcision in Galatia. While Dunne acknowledges that we cannot know much for certain about the events that preceded Paul’s writing of Galatians, he shows evidence for his conclusions and differentiates his more-certain conclusions from his less-certain conclusions.

The following three chapters dive deep into textual analysis and center around Paul’s three main arguments in Galatians: himself as a paradigm for imitation, the law in relationship to Abraham, and the law in relationship to the Spirit. Dunne provides compelling exegesis and historical detail to support all his points throughout these chapters—and is honest when he says that some parts of Galatians remain a little bit of a mystery!

The next chapter speculates about how the Galatians themselves may have received Paul’s letter and what happened to the churches in Galatia after that. This chapter is the most vague, simply because there is not much evidence to draw from. However, Dunne points out a few interesting texts that may hint as to what happened in Galatia after Paul’s letter arrived.

Lastly, Dunne concludes with a chapter about the relevance of Galatians to our modern-day lives. It is only in this chapter that Dunne references gender much at all, but he gives a convincing argument that Paul isn’t focusing solely on men in Galatians. He points out that mothers participated in infant circumcision, so they would have been part of the audience of the letter (139). In addition, Dunne highlights Paul’s emphasis on baptism as an “equalizing force”: a ritual in which anyone, regardless of gender, can participate (140). In fact, Dunne continues, baptism includes women, single people, and couples without children in a way that circumcision cannot (140). Throughout the book, whenever Dunne does reference gender, he emphasizes equality and refuses to see Galatians as a male-centered letter.

The ultimate point of Galatians, Dunne argues, is that all believers must be Spirit-led, not confined to the law—but also not free to follow our own whims and desires. “As Christians,” he writes, “we ought to allow the Spirit to continually energize our lives” (142).