Galatians 3:2
This only would I learn of you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
Open Galatians 3:2 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Hoc solum a vobis volo discere : ex operibus legis Spiritum accepistis, an ex auditu fidei ?
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- τοῦτο μόνον θέλω μαθεῖν ἀφʼ ὑμῶν, ἐξ ἔργων νόμου τὸ πνεῦμα ἐλάβετε ἢ ἐξ ἀκοῆς πίστεως;
Haydock's commentary
Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law? As if he said, you esteem it a great favour to have received those spiritual gifts of working miracles, &c. When you were made Christians, had you these favours by the works of the law, or was it not by the hearing of faith, and by the faith of Christ, that you had such extraordinary graces? and when you have begun thus happily by the spirit of Christ and his spiritual gifts, are you for finishing and thinking to make yourselves more perfect by the exterior works of the law, the circumcision of the flesh, and such like ceremonies? (Witham)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom The Commentary and Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Galatians and Ephesians, Galatians 3:1
Ver. 2 . “This only would I learn from you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by the hearing of faith?” As ye do not attend, says he, to long discourses, nor are willing to contemplate the magnitude of this Economy, I am desirous, (seeing your extreme ignorance) to convince you by concise arguments and a summary method of proof. Before, he had convinced them by what he said to Peter; now, he encounters them entirely with arguments, drawn not from what had occurred elsewhere, but from what had happened among themselves. And his persuasives and proofs are adduced, not merely from what was given them in common with others, but from what was especially conferred on themselves. …