Christ Crucified: A Theology of Galatians, by Thomas R. Schreiner. New Testament Theology, Crossway, 2024, xi + 158 pages, $24.99, paper.

Thomas Schreiner is one of the more prolific New Testament scholars today and adds to his corpus this summary outline of the theology of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Schreiner has already written a commentary on Galatians for the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament series, and those more detailed exegetical labors come to harvest in this readable, accessible, and helpful volume. This work would be a great book to consider at the outset of preaching or teaching through Galatians to get a sense of big issues and the whole letter.

Debates have raged in New Testament studies for a few decades now about the issues at stake in Galatians. The New Perspective on Paul, whose leading figures have included James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright, in many ways took its lead from innovative interpretations concerning the conflict within the Galatian churches, focusing both on what was disputed and on Paul’s solution. By contrast, Schreiner articulates the traditional understanding of the problem in Galatia as a form of legalism that endangered the doctrine of justification by faith alone by requiring circumcision as an act of law keeping that was required to be justified. In this respect, Schreiner’s first two chapters are some of the most helpful summary material for getting to grips with the problem in the church and with the point of the long narrative in the first two chapters of Galatians. Having preached through Galatians—and having found Schreiner’s commentary likely the most helpful among those that I consulted—the discussion in this book is arguably the clearest, briefest treatment of these issues available.

Schreiner also helps us navigate some newer debates in Pauline scholarship concerning whether Paul was an eschatological or an apocalyptic thinker. Scholars who argue that Paul used an eschatological framework contend that Paul saw Christ and his gospel as the fulfillment of longstanding divine promises, namely those given in the Old Testament Scriptures. Those who defend the newer idea that Paul reasoned apocalyptically suggest that he understood Christ and the gospel as an abrupt, sudden interruption of history. Schreiner argues that this debate rests upon a false dichotomy, explaining instead that Paul saw both eschatological fulfillment of redemptive history and a sudden intrusion of divine work as involved in Christ’s coming and mediatorial work. Readers of Ordained Servant will rightly gravitate toward the eschatological perspective. Still, Schreiner helps us to process newer scholarship as offering insights that can supplement that basic perspective.

The rest of the book focuses mostly on aspects of Paul’s explanation of salvation in Galatians. Schreiner defends the traditional Protestant view that the Galatian error involved legalistic tendencies to require some kind of work—namely, circumcision—as a condition of law keeping for justification. He works through how Paul refuted that error with a proper view of faith as the sole instrument of justification, which is a totally forensic (i.e., legal rather than transformative) reality. Some of the more contentious aspects of Schreiner’s previous work on justification is largely absent in this book, most especially his argument for final justification at the last day according to works. A few brief comments suggest that he still holds that view, but arguments for it do not appear here. Instead, focus is on justification by faith in Christ as a present reality that is bound into salvation.

There are a few points, mostly concerning passing comments in this book, that I would raise in hopes that Schreiner might clarify his position in future work. The first is the claim that “before the coming of Jesus, faith wasn’t directed particularly to him since he had not yet been revealed to the world.” (66) Admittedly, Schreiner is interpreting the language of Galatians 3:23–25, which causes pause in being critical. I am not sure that this statement is precisely calibrated though. In Galatians 3:8–9, Paul says that Abraham heard the gospel—presumably the same that comes to us. Paul’s appeal to Abraham in Romans 4 as the example of how we are justified would seem to require that faith had the same object for him and us if we are justified in the same way. These premises would explain why New Testament authors state Christ’s presence in the types, shadows, and events of the Old Testament (1 Cor. 10:1–6; Jude 5). Schreiner may have been using imprecise language. We should be clear, however, that justifying faith has always had Christ the mediator as its object.

Second, Schreiner defends justification by faith alone against the Galatian error by saying, “To insist on circumcision for salvation, then, is to turn the clock back in redemptive history” (88). Again, this instance might be another case of imprecise or unguarded language. The problem is that if Schreiner meant what the formulation suggests, it means that circumcision was a requirement for salvation in a previous era of redemptive history. The burden of Paul’s argument in Galatians 3–4, however, is that keeping the law could never have been a condition for receiving the promise because the promise came to Abraham before the law was given through Moses. So, the Galatian error was wrong in principle because circumcision was never a condition for believers to be justified. My assumption, given Schreiner’s familiarity with these passages and his intent to defend justification by faith alone, is that this claim is merely a less carefully framed point.

Finally, Schreiner’s discussion of circumcision as he outlines these issues clearly sits within his own Baptist framework. This point is less a criticism than an observation, made in hopes to clarify how the argument on this topic would fit more clearly in the Presbyterian system. When Schreiner explains that “the cross and circumcision represent two different pathways into the people of God” (47), he has understood the nature of that sign differently than Reformed theology would see it as an Old Testament sacrament. The truth that Schreiner rightly defends here is that Christ’s work is an entirely different way to be justified than how the false teachers had erroneously understood justification. Schreiner is right to make his point in this regard. Still, the more precise issue was that those false teachers saw circumcision as a condition for justification, rather than merely the sign of belonging to the covenant community. For sure, we should reject any sacrament as a condition for our right standing with God. We should still insist on a right understanding that circumcision in the Old Testament and baptism in the New Testament are not contrary to Christ’s work when seen as a seal of entry into the covenant rather than as a work that earns God’s favor. Schreiner occasionally phrases points as if he presumes that the Galatian error had correctly understood how circumcision functioned in the Old Testament. Although likely another instance of imprecise phrasing, we should be aware that Galatians (and Romans 4) suggests that they had misunderstood the biblical teaching on this matter. Paul was correcting a misunderstanding of what the law meant in the Old Testament and how that transitioned into the new covenant. Justification was always by faith alone.

These questions aside, which truly are latching onto details, this book is a helpful overview of the theology of Galatians. It will surely help many get an introductory understanding of this great New Testament letter.

Harrison N. Perkins is pastor of Oakland Hills Community Church (OPC), a Senior Research Fellow at the Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards, online faculty in church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, and visiting lecturer in systematic theology at Edinburgh Theological Seminary. Ordained Servant Online, February, 2025.