Eschatology and Ethics in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians

This author’s whole dissertation, of which this paper is a part, explores the role of eschatology in the ethical arguments or teachings of St. Paul. Now it is widely acknowledged that Paul generally issues an imperative based on a given indicative or, in the language of this work, motivation. This indicative or motivation may be either a “warrant” or a “sanction”—categories that we have borrowed from L. Keck.1 Accordingly, for every moral appeal that Paul issues in the letter to the Galatians, we explore its motivations or “indicatives” that are eschatological in nature, that is, realities that pertain formally to the end-times or end-time realities that have already impinged on the present, and show how they inform or ground Paul’s moral appeals.