It’s true that class and gender issues do not appear to have any relevance to Paul’s argument in Galatians - it seems to me quite likely that the three-fold pattern is formulaic and reflects debates elsewhere.

I have a feeling you’re trying to get too much out of Paul’s argument in this letter. It’s precarious to push the analogy between the three distinctions beyond the frame of the argument about inheriting the promise to Abraham because the categories are so different. As you say, being male and female is intrinsic to the original creation (not just as ‘image of God’ but also with respect to being fruitful and multiplying) in a way that is clearly not true for racial and social distinctions. Paul uses ‘new creation’ as a metaphor for the abrogation of the division between the circumcised and the uncircumcised, but surely it’s going too far to infer from that that the male-female duality is also abrogated.

The other problem I have with your argument is that the hope of renewed creation ought to have implications for how we are and how we relate to one another in the present - rather in the way that Paul uses the new creation metaphor in Galatians 6:15. We look at ourselves as ‘new creation’ and certain divisions, certain forms of behaviour, become unsustainable. Do we really want to say that the polarity of male and female becomes unsustainable - that the ideal Christian state is one of androgyny? I certainly don’t.

By your argument, any distinction that could in principle be used to exclude a person from sharing in the promise to Abraham must also be removed the new creation, which is going to end up as a rather bland affair, isn’t it?

What are you getting at in your last statement about making creation new rather than restoring the old?