When the Fullness of Time had come...
When the Fullness of Time had come...
The Pregnant Meaning of the Advent in Galatians
Outside of Matthew and Luke, Galatians 4:4–5 may offer one of the most beautiful descriptions of the advent of Christ in the New Testament:
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons (ESV).
I first remember becoming aware of the phrase “the fullness of time” when pastors or Sunday school teachers would explain the historical circumstances that coincided with the coming of Christ and the early Christian mission. Historical conditions such as the Pax Romana, the Roman road network, and Koine Greek as the lingua franca, made the first century AD the opportune time for the spread of the gospel. In this interpretation, “the fullness of time” referred to God’s providential ordering of history that produced conditions for the rapid spread of the gospel in the first century AD.
On the one hand, there is nothing wrong and everything right about examining the unique historical and cultural context of early Christianity and how aspects of that context contributed to the development and spread of the Christian message. On the other hand, the view that the first century AD was a uniquely opportune time for the spread of the gospel can be easily challenged.
In fact, the New Testament itself prefers to emphasize that the first century AD was an uniquely inopportune time for the Christian message, but that God through the power of his Word and Spirit spread a message that seemed foolish and a stumbling block among the least influential people in the world (1 Cor 1–3). From this perspective, we only feel like the first century was “the fullness of time,” the uniquely opportune time, because it is the time in which God actually acted through Jesus Christ. Had God acted in a different set of historical circumstances, then we would feel like that was “the fullness of time.”
However, this discussion doesn’t actually apply to the phrase in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Whether we believe that the first century AD was a providentially opportune time or an inopportune time for the spread of the gospel, neither gets at what Paul is discussing when he refers to “the fullness of time.” What then did Paul mean when he wrote that God sent forth his Son “when the fullness of time had come"?
What time is it?
Without question, one of the primary issues that Paul confronts in Galatians is the relationship of the law and the gospel. Especially since the Reformation, the law/gospel polarity has been the primary way of reading the book of Galatians among Protestants. Interestingly, though, law/gospel is only one of a number of polarities that Paul identifies in Galatians.
Paul sees a cosmos at conflict between the human and divine, between works of the law and faith in Christ, between law and promise, between slavery and freedom, and between flesh and Spirit, and Paul’s main objective is to help the Galatian Christians see the cosmos the way he sees the cosmos. To evaluate the conflict in the world rightly, and to choose the right side in the war—the side of the true gospel, which God revealed to Paul and that Paul proclaimed to them.
J. Louis Martyn, one of the greatest Galatians scholars of the last century, has written that the “crucial issue of the entire letter” is the question “What time is it?”1 The primary question the Galatians needed to answer to understand their situation rightly was not “What should we believe?” “What should we do?” or “How should we live?” The primary question was about the time they were living in, and if they knew the time, then they would know what to believe, what to do, and how to live.
Galatians is a letter that is concerned with time from beginning to end. Paul begins the letter by saying that Jesus died “to deliver us from the present evil age” (Gal 1:4), and he ends the letter by saying that circumcision is irrelevant. All that counts is “a new creation” (Gal 6:15). Within the letter, time is not a passive element. As is suggested by the phrase “the present evil age,” this age is an active aggressor in the conflict of the cosmos, enslaving humanity through sin, the condemnation of the law, the stoicheia of the world (I take this to mean the elemental spirits that rule the world, that is demonic rulers), and the curse of death.
The present age is the time of enslavement to sin, Satan, the law, and death, but Jesus has delivered us through his death under the law for sin. Now we have the right to live in the new creation as adopted children of God, led by the Spirit and producing the Spirit’s fruit. The issue at stake when accepting another gospel, therefore, is what age the Galatians will live in—this age or the age-to-come.
In the Latter Days
Paul clearly believes that time is characterized by two ages. This is most clearly seen in Ephesians 1:21, where Paul writes that Christ has been seated far above every ruler, “not only in this age but also in the one to come.”
The concept of two ages was standard among Jews during the second temple period, although it is often characterized today as uniquely characteristic of an “apocalyptic worldview.” Many scholars have given the impression that the Jewish apocalyptic worldview was a development of the exile, seen in its infant stages in the books of Ezekiel and Daniel. Perhaps, it is suggested, that Jewish dialogue with the dualistic Zoroastrian religion of Persia developed into a Jewish apocalyptic worldview, especially among sects like the one that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls.
However, as is often the case, if New Testament scholars would take the time to actually read Paul’s own Bible—what we call the Old Testament—through Paul’s own eyes, they would find what Paul sees there, going all the way back to the books of Moses.
In both Numbers and Deuteronomy, God reveals to Moses what will happen “in the latter days” (Num 24:14; Deut 4:30). The Hebrew phrase bǝʾaḥărît hayyāmîm (“in the latter days”) was translated into Greek as ep eschatou tōn hemerōn. Even if you don’t know Greek, you may recognize the word eschatos or “last,” from which we get the word eschatology—the doctrine of last things. Even from Moses’ perspective, time was coming to an end, at which point God would finally fulfill all his promises, despite the sins of Israel.
The prophets pick up this phrase from Moses and direct Judah, a nation with judgement hanging over its head, to find its comfort “in the latter days” (Isa 2:2; Jer 23:20; 30:24; 48:47; 49:39; Ezek 38:16; Dan 2:28; 10:14; Hos 3:5; Mic 4:1). These last days split history into two ages—the present age where sin and judgment reign and the future age when God will make all things right. Far from being a post-exilic innovation, the concept of two ages is standard Hebrew doctrine.
Isaiah makes this quite explicit when he talks about “the former time” or “the former things” in contrast with what is “new” (e.g., Isa 9:1; 41:22; 42:9; 43:9, 18). The entire book comes to a glorious climax, “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind” (Isa 65:17). To Isaiah, the present age is rapidly coursing toward its end and will be replaced by a new age in a new creation.
Apocalypse Now
Paul in particular and early Christianity in general departed from other Jewish movements in that they believed the age-to-come had already been inaugurated by Jesus of Nazareth. The apocalypse was not in the future. The apocalypse was now.
Paul gets at this incredible reality in Galatians 4. While Paul does not mention Bethlehem or the manger, he nevertheless chooses a phrase that evokes pregnancy and birth. “The fullness of time” (to plērōma tou chronou) reflects similar expressions used by Luke to describe the births of John and Jesus. We see this more clearly in the King James translation of the texts:
Now Elisabeth’s full time came (eplēsthē ho chronos) that she should be delivered; and she brought forth a son (Luke 1:57 KJV).
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished (eplēsthēsan hai hēmerai) that she should be delivered (Luke 2:6 KJV).
Both verses use verbal forms from the same root (plēroō) as Galatians 4:4, meaning “to fill, fulfill, accomplish, bring to completion.” Labor and delivery brings the time of pregnancy to its fullness, its fulfillment, its completion, its telos.
While Jesus is “born of woman,” the actor in the sentence is not Mary. It is God the Father. “The fullness of time” does not describe the completion of Mary’s pregnancy in Galatians 4:4. It describes the fulfillment of a pregnancy that was centuries, or rather eternity, in the making—the pregnant expectation of God’s own purposes for creation and history. When God sent forth his Son, he redeemed us from our slavery to sin and the law, and he freed us to the adoption of sons. Through the death of Jesus, we have been delivered from the present evil age and ushered into the new creation, evidenced by the second sending in Galatians 4—the sending of the Spirit into our hearts (Gal 4:6–7).
The temptation the Galatian Christians faced was a temptation to go back into the former times, to take upon themselves again the yoke of slavery to the present evil age. While Cher may have wished she could turn back time, Paul sees that as spiritual suicide. To go back to the former times by enduring circumcision and submitting to the law is to abandon the gospel, to deny the advent of God the Son into the world.
For Paul, the advent of Christ is a story about the present time becoming the former time, even as we still live in it. The entire purpose of the former time was brought to its completion at the coming the Son, born as a human to die for humanity, and now that the sending of the Son and the Spirit has taken place, the only true option is to move forward into the new time through faith in Christ and the reception of the Spirit.
The advent of the One who is himself the beginning and the end marks the end of time and the beginning of new time. When Mary delivered her child, God delivered us all from the oppression of time in this fallen, sinful age. When the creatures in the stable gathered round to witness the birth of a new Adam, they also beheld the birth of a new age. When the shepherds bowed and the kings of the earth brought their treasures, they hailed the dawn of a new creation.
For when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son to deliver us from this age and bring us into the age-to-come.
J. Louis Martyn, “Apocalyptic Antinomies in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians,” New Testament Studies 31.3 (1985): 418.