Beyond Continuity and Discontinuity: The Apocalyptic Paul in Galatians

Jared Neusch offers a fresh reading of Paul’s theology, particularly concerning pistis, time, and his rereading of the Scriptures, arguing that the opposition between salvation history and apocalyptic, continuity and discontinuity imposes misleading frameworks on Paul’s thought. Drawing on Relevance Theory for semantic analysis and engaging with key voices in Pauline scholarship, Neusch critiques prevailing temporal assumptions and proposes Relationalism as a useful temporal framework that more accurately accounts for Paul’s apocalyptic epistemology.

Neusch thus focuses on Galatians 3, making a critical argument regarding Abraham, Christ, and pistis. With a defining of the much-contested term “apocalyptic,” a challenging of the controlling continuity vs. discontinuity paradigm, the introduction of Relationalism as a new way forward for considering time in Paul, and finally, a rereading of pistis (and thus Abraham), Neusch provides a fresh reading of Paul in Galatians, unconstrained by binary paradigms, that sufficiently accounts for the impact of the revelation of Christ in Paul.