Introduction
Nearly three years ago Theopolis kindly published an article of mine in which I examined Douglas Wilson’s curious use of Paul’s Hagar-Sarah typology in Galatians 4:21–31. Pastor Wilson has now written a response to that article on his blog. I’m thankful for his interaction and wanted to reply to his response here. I’d like to think that if the young man who began devouring Blog & Mablog in Bible college a decade ago could see this exchange, he’d be delighted.
Keep Your Eye On The Ball
Throughout his response, Pastor Wilson appears to walk back or otherwise soften several of his more confident assertions about the so-called “Covenant with Hagar,” though he maintains that any apparent agreement with his objectors is really a sign they hadn’t understood his actual position. In my estimation, however, this new attempt at clarity has only served to further muddy the waters. Wilson’s response is still unclear which biblical-historical covenant he believes unbelieving Jews today are bound to. Any change in his position would be welcome, but unless he acknowledges that a change has occurred, we must allow his previous comments to stand. To that end, allow me to briefly review the playing field.
Wilson adheres to the majority Reformed reading of Romans 11 in which a mass conversion of the Jews to Christ ushering in the “latter day glory” remains in our future. The ongoing status and continuity of the Jewish people is therefore central to his eschatological paradigm. Because he also conceives of Jewish identity in terms of covenant rather than blood, he assumes that if the Jewish people are to be preserved until the time of their re-grafting they must be preserved as a people in covenant:
When the Jews are converted en masse, this will usher in the latter day glory, and the resurrection of the dead. In short, the status of the Jews with regard to faith and unbelief is relevant for the rest of the world…Now one of the questions that will naturally be asked is what covenantal category these severed Jewish branches could possibly have in the meantime.1
The Hagar covenant has been Wilson’s consistent answer to that question over the past several years. I appreciate his willingness to admit that on this point he has developed a novel argument in order to supplement the standard Reformed position:
The best way to answer this concern would be to say that I don’t think my position about unbelieving Jewry is a theological novum at all, but rather mainstream Reformed, and that rather I am bringing to that standard position an additional argument.
It’s clear, however, that the Hagar covenant is not merely an additional argument for Wilson; rather, it is the very means by which the Jews remain graftable in the future:
If [the Jews] are just a tangled pile of debris next to the field where the olive tree is located…how could they remain alive (thus providing graftable branches) for two millenia or more?…I envision them as being a tree of Ishmael, planted in the clearing in between the wild olive trees on the hillside, and the cultivated Abrahamic tree in the middle of the garden of the Master.2
If, then, by his “position about unbelieving Jewry” Wilson means only his futurist reading of Romans 11, then I will freely admit in turn: that is not a novum, nor have I claimed otherwise. If, however, he means the future conversion of the Jews in some way depending on them remaining a people in covenant, then “out on the skinny branches” is an understatement. Wilson has included as an appendix to American Milk and Honey a brief compilation of Reformed witnesses (mainly Puritans) to the futurist position. Notably, none of the men cited held to any form of present covenant for unbelieving Jews. That is a commitment alien to Reformed covenant theology.
For the Reformed futurists the promised conversion of ethnic Israel is typically grounded in God’s faithfulness to the covenant promises made to the Patriarchs (Rom 11:28), but never in a covenant to which unbelieving Jews currently belong. Within the federal system typical of Reformed futurism, there is a singular Covenant of Grace expressed under multiple administrations. The Abrahamic Covenant belongs to the older administration of the Covenant of Grace and is therefore fundamentally evangelical. The unconditional promises to Abraham include his natural seed, however, resulting in an ongoing corporate election of ethnic Israel that will be fully realized upon their incorporation into the New Covenant through faith in Christ. Thus, unbelieving Jews are beloved for the sake of their forefathers and retain a real historical identity, though not at present a covenantal identity. The fact that none of Wilson’s fellow futurists have thought to appeal to the Hagar covenant in order to bolster this position should give him real pause.
A further problem for Wilson is that Reformed futurism almost universally considers the future conversion of Israel to be the conversion of ethnic Israel. This is because the Old Covenant administration of the one Covenant of Grace has been abrogated entirely in favor of the New. If there is a people “Israel” to be converted in the future, they must be conceived of as an ethnic, rather than a covenant, people. If, however, Jewish identity is a matter of covenant and not blood, that identity must cease with the final abrogation of the Old Covenant in AD 70. A covenantal view of Jewish identity must therefore allow for a fulfillment of the promises to Israel in Romans 11 prior to the formal dissolution of the Old Covenant order. Wilson does not want to follow his futurist companions in a purely ethnic definition of Israel, which means he must find some other covenant by which to define them in the meantime. Hence, the “Covenant with Hagar.” But what covenant is this? That’s the crux of the issue, so keep your eye on the ball.
Covenants are Real
Plenty of Reformed ink has been spilled in an attempt to discover the best, most comprehensive definition of covenant. Wilson’s own definition一that covenants are “solemn bonds, sovereignly administered, with attendant blessings and curses”一is fairly standard.3 Despite some variance on the particulars, what is agreed upon virtually without exception is that the biblical covenants are established by God in history. They involve tangible realities and have identifiable parties. Covenants have attendant signs. Covenants have sanctions. Covenants can be kept, and covenants can be broken. When a biblical covenant is established, its scope, terms, and parties are clearly communicated for us in Scripture. In other words, covenants are real.
The Bible can, of course, use the language of covenant metaphorically (e.g., Job 5:23; 31:1; Is 28:15, 18; Jer 33:20–21). This cannot be the case in Galatians 4, however, because Paul tells us explicitly which way the allegory runs. In the structure of his argument, it is the women who are allegorical; the covenants they typify are not. Further, if the covenant that Hagar represents is metaphorical rather than real, the covenant represented by Sarah must likewise be metaphorical. This is an untenable solution. Much of my original article, therefore, was dedicated to exploring which real biblical covenant Hagar represents. In his response, Pastor Wilson rejects my conclusion—which is informed by historic Reformed readings—that Hagar is the Old Covenant, and argues instead that Hagar is the Old Covenant as experienced by an unregenerate heart in particular:
But this is not Moses pitted against Moses. No, not a bit of it. It is Moses as seen and understood by an unregenerate heart and Moses as seen and understood by a regenerate heart. But in presenting the law to us in this way, God knew that the law would be approached and understood in these two different ways. God budgeted for these two different ways of looking at His Word…There was therefore a covenant to be kept by faith alone, and there was also a “covenant” to break covenant, doing so by twisting the law into a system of self-justification.
The question, given the established function of Wilson’s “Covenant with Hagar,” should be obvious: do unbelieving Jews have a covenantal status, or a “covenantal” status? Are “covenants” established in the same way as covenants? Are “covenants” real? In multiple places throughout his response Wilson appears to engage in equivocation on the nature of covenant in order to suit his argument:
What Hagar typified was a distorted approach to the old covenant, and that distorted approach most certainly exists today. How could it not?
***
So I agree that the Hagar Covenant did not begin in 40 A.D. It was a perennial thing, going back to Genesis, and it did not end in 70 A.D. We still have Jews, we still have Moses being read, we still have a veil of unbelief.
***
Now people who wanted to [live under the Mosaic Law] were around in Paul’s day, and they are still around in ours.
By arguing this way, Wilson has not-so-subtly exchanged the defined category of biblical covenant for a vague notion of “approach” or “condition.” In so doing, he has made the question of covenant status merely psychological rather than one rooted in history and reality. The condition of the Jews—looking in vain to the law for a justification that is according to the flesh—may remain, but conditions are not covenants. Nor is the contrived “approach” of modern Jews to a non-existent biblical covenant. Paul says these two women are two covenants, after all, not two approaches to the Old Covenant. There are, of course, significant parallels between the condition of unbelieving Jews in Paul’s day and ours, but a mere condition cannot result in ongoing covenantal life for severed Jewish branches.
The men Paul was addressing had rabbis, and rabbinical schools of thought, and synagogues, and the Hebrew language, and genealogies, and a shared rejection of the Christian gospel. We still have all of that. So what about 70 A.D. would make this passage inapplicable?
This is more than a little like saying, “They were sleeping together then and they’re sleeping together now, what does the intervening divorce have to do with anything?” Put simply, doing “covenant things” does not a covenant make. Jews reading Moses in a synagogue does not make them a covenant people any more than cohabitating with a woman makes her my wife. The destruction of the temple in AD 70 put a decisive end to the ability of the Jews to carry out divinely instituted Levitical worship, signaling the formal dissolution of the Old Covenant order (Heb 8:13). Therefore, whether Hagar is the Old Covenant simpliciter or the Old Covenant considered under some aspect (i.e., in the experience of the unregenerate) makes no difference. If the Old Covenant simpliciter, there remains no covenant status for unbelieving Jews, because the Old Covenant has been abrogated. If the Old Covenant under some aspect, there still remains no covenant status for unbelieving Jews, because the Old Covenant has been abrogated.
If all Wilson intends to say is that Jews today operate in unbelief as they did in Paul’s day, there’s little room for disagreement. That would require, however, that he actually retract much of what he has argued to this point.
Will the Real Hagar Please Stand Up?
If Hagar is a covenant (rather than an approach or condition) and that covenant is real, what remains is to establish which real covenant she represents. I maintain my initial position that Hagar is the Old Covenant understood in light of the New, but will take the opportunity here to engage more fully with the text of Galatians in relation to several of Pastor Wilson’s recent comments.
At the outset, we should note that, while the Westminsterian system has much to commend it, imposing its strict categories on the Apostle Paul would be anachronistic. Westminster’s framework may well arise out of the text of the New Testament taken as a whole, but the work of identifying Hagar in Paul’s argument must in the first instance be an exercise in the biblical theology of Galatians.
In Westminsterian Federalism, the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants are treated together under the older administration of the one Covenant of Grace (WCF 7.5). While that synthesis has biblical merit, in Galatians Paul is contrasting the economies of the biblical Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants. For Paul, the Abrahamic Covenant is one of promise, whereas the Mosaic is an administration of law (Gal 3:17–18). When Paul speaks elsewhere of the “Old Covenant,” he is speaking of the Mosaic economy in particular (2 Cor 3:14–15). For Paul, therefore, the “law” and the “Old Covenant” are frequently synonymous. Further, everywhere else the New Testament employs a two-covenant paradigm it is always with reference to two real covenants—the Old and the New—never to two “aspects” of the old administration of the Covenant of Grace (e.g. 2 Cor 3:6–18; Heb 8–10). This should inform our reading of the two covenants in Galatians 4:24–31.
Wilson goes on:
What are these two covenants? The one that “gendereth to bondage” cannot be the old covenant simpliciter. The old covenant understood rightly, that is, by faith, is all about Christ一Christ being the telos of the law (Rom 10:4). So Christ is not bondage; He is liberation itself…So the Mount Sinai referenced here is the Mount Sinai that is being stared at in the light of Leviticus 18:5.
***
I think there is likely some kind of linguistic or historical connection between the word Hagar and the word Sinai, one that we are not aware of. So Paul somehow connects the two, and says that this particular blind vision of Sinai is characteristic of the Jerusalem that “now is.”
I suggest that we understand the Mount Sinai referenced in Galatians 4:24–25 not so much in the light of Leviticus 18:5, but in light of the whole argument of Galatians 3. Paul has already introduced there a discussion of the law’s advent with Moses, making an appeal to some unknown linguistic connection unnecessary for understanding the relevance of Sinai to his train of thought.4 Remembering that for Paul the “Old Covenant” is the Mosaic administration, it becomes clear how his juxtaposition of law and promise throughout chapter 3 could lead seamlessly into a consideration of the two covenants in chapter 4. The law was given through Moses at Sinai, and Paul says that Hagar is the covenant from Sinai. Paul does appeal to Leviticus 18:5, but its force in his argument is universal, not merely a description of those with a distorted approach to the law:
For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us一for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”一so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith (Gal 3:10–14).
The Judaizers (and those tempted to Judaize in Galatia) were not persuaded to reject Jesus as the Jewish Messiah promised and prefigured in Israel’s law. Rather, they were under the illusion that they could have Christ while at the same time remaining bound to the law’s ceremonial obligations, chiefly circumcision. Paul warns the Galatians that if they accept circumcision, Christ will in fact be of no advantage to them, for “every man who accepts circumcision…is obligated to keep the whole law” (Gal 5:2–3).
Paul therefore does condemn a particular approach (relying on works of the law, 3:10), but his citation of Leviticus and Deuteronomy does not function merely as a description of that approach. Rather, Paul demonstrates the futility of relying on works of the law for justification by appealing to what the law does objectively. The law requires a life of obedience and as such brings all men under its curse. The law imprisons all things under sin (Gal 3:22; see also Rom 3:19–20; 4:15; 5:1; 7:7–25). Christ redeems all who believe from the curse of the law by taking its curse upon himself; those who had made a misuse of the law and those who patiently awaited the coming faith alike (Gal 3:23).
Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith (Gal 3:21–26).
Paul’s description of Hagar as a covenant “bearing children for slavery” (Gal 4:24) should be no surprise given the categories introduced here only a chapter earlier. The law holds its members captive; as a guardian it imprisons in anticipation of the coming faith. Paul does not present this as dependent on perspective or approach; this was an objective function of the law in redemptive history. Those held captive under the law were in a state of slavery (Gal 4:1; 5:1). This is certainly not the only thing the law did, but it is the function under consideration in Galatians, and we should interpret like terms throughout Paul’s argument alike.
Wilson continues:
If Hagar is the covenant, then in what way was she failing to keep it? Why was she put away?…If Hagar was the covenant, period, then what was Sarah? Sarah represents OT covenant faithfulness and Hagar represents OT covenant works-righteousness.
***
The two women do stand for two Jerusalems, the earthly and the heavenly. And they do stand for two covenants because the old covenant is a covenant of grace, and that’s Sarah. So what is Hagar then?
***
And if you make Hagar the complete representative of the old covenant, then you have rejected WCF 7.4–5, and have no place in the older economy, or in the allegory, for a faithful Sarah.
The law, as it functioned in Israel’s covenant life prior to the Incarnation, was never contrary to the promises of God (Gal 3:21). The law did not nullify the covenant of promise made with Abraham (Gal 3:17). Rather, the law served as a guardian under which Israel was enslaved until the coming of Christ and the arrival of the promised inheritance (Gal 3:18, 24). Nevertheless, the law prefigured Christ and prepared Israel for His advent in history. The law’s condemnation was to excite Israel to faith in the God who justifies the ungodly, and by faith the ordinances of that administration were efficacious for salvation, bringing the saving benefits of Christ to bear even on the Old Testament Church. All of this was according to the gracious plan of God for the fullness of time (Gal 4:4–7), and therefore justly deserves its place in the Reformed tradition as an administration of the one Covenant of Grace.
It is in the New Covenant, however, that the promises made to Abraham and his offspring are realized in history. The New Covenant is nothing less than the covenant of promise fulfilled. It is here that heirs, once no different than slaves, receive adoption as sons (Gal 4:1–7). For Paul, therefore, what was once available under the Old Covenant by way of promise is now exclusive to the inaugurated New Covenant. Just as Hebrews teaches to apostatize to Judaism is to return to a covenant in which there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins (Heb 10:26), Galatians teaches that to be under the law is to be bound to a covenant in which there no longer remains an efficacious promise, for what was promised has come. The Old Covenant does not remain a Covenant of Grace once surpassed by the New Covenant: “what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it” (2 Cor 3:10). To go under circumcision’s knife is an act of covenantal regression, to submit again to a yoke of slavery (Gal 5:1).5 From Paul’s vantage, standing between the inauguration of the New Covenant at Pentecost and the formal dissolution of the Old in AD 70, what the Old Covenant could offer was slavery and only slavery.
With this framework in mind, Paul’s use of Hagar and Sarah is fairly straightforward. Pastor Wilson obscures the argument when he presses the allegory beyond its intended purpose. Paul and his Galatian audience lived in a unique period in which two covenant economies were running concurrently. The New Covenant was alone spiritually efficacious, while what remained of the Old Covenant was its outward administration—an administration of bondage. In the same way, there were at one time two women in Abraham’s household, one a free woman and the other a slave. The slave woman bore a slave son, just as Old Covenant Jerusalem in Paul’s day was in slavery with her children. Sarah is the New Covenant, announced to Abraham by way of promise and now established in the fullness of time. Her children, like Isaac, are free.
Conclusion
Paul encourages the beleaguered Galatians by underscoring the prophetic force of Genesis 21:10 for their time. Although they are taunted by the son of the slave woman and tempted to enter into her bondage, the Scripture says that she will be cast out along with her son (Gal 4:30). That Scripture was fulfilled in AD 70 when any remaining semblance of covenant identity for the unbelieving Jews was violently extinguished. The Hagar covenant, like the Second Temple, is no more. To call the vestigial Talmudic religion any kind of real covenant is without biblical or Reformed historical merit. What does remain for our Jewish friends is not Hagar, but the knowledge that they are invited—like every other tribe—to become sons of Sarah through repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the true seed of Abraham.
Gabe Harder is Pastoral Intern at Christ Covenant Church of Chicago (CREC). He aspires to write more frequently at Gabriel Harder | Substack . Gabe and his wife Sarah live in the suburbs with their daughters.
NOTES
- Douglas Wilson, American Milk and Money (Moscow: Canon Press, 2023), 120–121. ↩︎
- Wilson, American Milk and Honey, 121, 123. ↩︎
- Douglas Wilson, Reformed Is Not Enough: Recovering the Objectivity of the Covenant (Moscow: Canon Press, 2002), 63. ↩︎
- Several commentators have discussed a connection between the name “Hagar” and the “Hagrites,” apparently a nomadic Arabian people (1 Chr 5:10, 19; Ps 83:6). This may further explain why Paul emphasizes Mount Sinai in Arabia, but cannot alone ground the rationale behind introducing Sinai. ↩︎
- I’ve deliberately said nothing here of the comparison between Israel’s life under the law and the experience of the Gentiles, both of which were “enslaved to the elementary principles of the world” (Gal 4:3, 8–10). For a full treatment, see Peter J. Leithart, Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2016). ↩︎