B. The moralist (2:1–16)
B. The moralist (2:1–16)
Paul’s style is that appropriate to the type of composition which the ancients called diatribē, in which questions or objections are put into the mouth of an imagined critic in order to be answered or demolished.4
One can almost envisage him as he dictates his letter, suddenly picking out the complacent individual who has been enjoying the exposure of those sins he ‘has no mind to’, and telling him that he is no better than anyone else. He imagines an interruption by some objector, and turns to refute his objection, first squashing it with ‘By no means!’ (‘Perish the thought!’) and then giving a reasoned reply to it. He starts a new phase of his argument with such a rhetorical question as ‘What shall we say?’ or ‘What then?’5 And all the time his thought races ahead of his words, so that his words have to leap over a gap to catch up with his thought. We can only try to imagine how Tertius’s pen kept up with the apostle’s words. No wonder that, especially in impassioned moments, his Greek is full of breaks in construction and unfinished sentences.
We know that there was another side to the pagan world of the first century than that which Paul has portrayed in the preceding paragraphs. What about a man like Paul’s illustrious contemporary Seneca, the Stoic moralist, the tutor of Nero?6 Seneca might have listened to Paul’s indictment and said, ‘Yes, that is perfectly true of great masses of mankind, and I concur in the judgment which you pass on them—but there are others, of course, like myself, who deplore these tendencies as much as you do.’
Paul imagines someone intervening in terms like these, and he addresses the supposed objector: ‘My good sir, in judging others you are passing judgment on yourself, whoever you may be, for in principle you do the same things as you condemn in them.’ And how apt this reply would have been to a man like Seneca! For he could write so effectively on the good life that Christian writers of later days were prone to call him ‘our own Seneca’.7 Not only did he exalt the great moral virtues; he exposed hypocrisy, he preached the equality of all human beings, he acknowledged the pervasive character of evil (‘all vices exist in all men, though all vices do not stand out prominently in each man’), he practised and inculcated daily self-examination, he ridiculed vulgar idolatry, he assumed the role of a moral guide. But too often he tolerated in himself vices not so different from those which he condemned in others—the most flagrant instance being his connivance at Nero’s murder of his mother Agrippina.
Even in this section of chapter 2, however, as more explicitly from verse 17 onwards, Paul is thinking chiefly of a Jewish critic. Such denunciation of pagan idolatry as we find in chapter 1 was common form in Jewish propaganda. Religious Jews found ample scope for passing adverse moral judgment on their Gentile neighbours.
That Paul has a Jewish critic more particularly in mind is evident from his repetition of the words ‘the Jew first and also the Greek’ (see 2:9 and 10), in which he emphasizes that the Jews are the first to experience the judgment of God as well as the first to receive the good news of his saving grace (1:16). This twofold primacy of the people of Israel, in salvation and judgment alike, was taught by the prophets in earlier days; eight centuries before this Epistle was written, for example, we hear the word of God to his people through Amos: ‘You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities’ (Amos 3:2).
We have seen how the portrayal of pagan idolatry in chapter 1 echoes the book of Wisdom. Similarly now, in turning to convict the Jews of their moral bankruptcy, Paul takes up themes from the same book. According to the author of Wisdom, God afflicted the Gentiles (such as the Egyptian oppressors of Israel in the days of Moses) by way of retribution for their wickedness, whereas the same afflictions were remedial in intention when they fell on the Israelites:8
For thou didst test them as a father does in warning,
but thou didst examine the ungodly as a stern king does in condemnation …
So while chastening us thou scourgest our enemies ten thousand times more,
so that we may meditate upon thy goodness when we judge,
and when we are judged we may expect mercy’
(Wisdom 11:10; 12:22).
‘Agreed’, says Paul; ‘you do well to acknowledge God’s goodness to you in spite of all your disobedience, but do you not realize that his goodness is intended to give you an opportunity to repent? Beware of despising his goodness and presuming on his mercy. If, instead of repenting, you maintain a hard and impenitent heart, then be sure that you are simply storing up for yourself an accumulation of divine wrath which will be discharged on you at the judgment day.’
When divine judgment comes, it will be absolutely impartial. God will render to every man according to his works’ (2:6). While, for Paul, forgiveness and eternal life are utterly of God’s grace, divine judgment (as uniformly in the Bible) is always passed in accordance with what men and women have done. Every material factor is taken into consideration. People are held accountable for such knowledge of the truth as was accessible to them, not for what was not accessible. Jews, says Paul, will be judged on the basis of the written law, for they had access to that source of divine knowledge. Gentiles will be judged by another criterion, for among them too God did not leave himself without witness. If the knowledge of God’s character was available to them through the starry heavens above (cf. 1:20), it was available to them also through the moral law within. They did not have the law of Moses, as the Jews had, but they had the law of conscience, the distinction between right and wrong, engraved on their hearts. When they violate that law, says Paul, they know that they are doing wrong, and by that knowledge they will be judged on the day when the inmost secrets of hearts are brought to light. Whether the will of God is known by the law of Moses or by the voice of conscience, knowledge of his will is not enough; it is the doing of his will that counts.
4. God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance. Cf. Wisdom 11:23, ‘But thou art merciful to all, for thou canst do all things, and thou dost overlook men’s sins, that they may repent.’ See also Romans 11:22.
6. For he will render to every man (better, ‘every one’) according to his works. Cf. Job 34:11; Psalm 62:12; Proverbs 24:12; Jeremiah 17:10; 32:19 for Old Testament statements of this principle; it recurs in the New Testament in Matthew 16:27; 1 Corinthians 3:8; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Revelation 2:23; 20:12; 22:12. See also Romans 14:12.
7. To those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, he will give eternal life. Paul is not teaching salvation by works here, but emphasizing God’s impartiality as between Jew and Gentile. Cf. Peter’s surprised confession in Acts 10:34–35: ‘Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.’ God showed his acceptance of the Gentile Cornelius, to whom these words were spoken, by sending Peter to him with a message by which he and his household would be saved (Acts 11:14).
8. For those who are factious. The NEB rendering, ‘for those who are governed by selfish ambition’, does more justice to the basic sense of eritheia, which is derived from erithos (‘hireling’). Even in antiquity, however, its meaning tended to be assimilated to that of eris, ‘strife’ (‘faction’, ‘contention’).
11. God shows no partiality. Cf. Deuteronomy 10:17; 2 Chronicles 19:7; Job 34:19; Acts 10:34; Galatians 2:6; Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 3:25; 1 Peter 1:17. Our Lord stated the same truth graphically when he described how the Father in heaven ‘makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust’ (Matt. 5:45).
12. All who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law. Sin unchecked leads to perdition one way or another, but Gentiles will not be condemned for failure to conform to a law-code which was not accessible to them. The principle is laid down that men and women are judged by the light that is available to them, not by light that is not available.
13. It is … the doers of the law who will be justified. Paul may have in mind Leviticus 18:5, ‘You shall therefore keep my statutes and my ordinances, by doing which a man shall live’—a scripture which he quotes later in 10:5. The course of his argument goes on to indicate that, while one who was a ‘doer’ of the law would be justified, yet, since no-one does it perfectly, there is no justification that way. The antithesis between merely hearing the law and actually doing it is elaborated in James 1:22–25. The expression ‘the doers of the law’ is found in Qumran literature (cf. p. 86, above).
14. When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires. The word order strongly suggests that ‘by nature’ (physei) is to be construed with ‘do’ (as in RSV); since, however, it comes between the two clauses in the Greek text it could just be taken with what precedes. Gentiles, that is to say, are born with no knowledge of the law, but when they come to faith in Christ they do, not ‘by nature’ but by the Spirit (cf. 8:4), what the law requires (see Cranfield, ad loc.). But this construction is less probable. Despite the dark picture drawn above (1:18–32), Paul and his readers knew pagans who led upright lives in accordance with the dictates of conscience (although this was not their ground of justification before God).
15. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts. An echo of the prophecy of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31:33 (see p. 163). K. Barth holds that Gentile Christians are in view here9 (similarly Cranfield, ad loc.), but this scarcely suits the context.
Their conscience also bears witness. The word ‘conscience’ (syneidēsis) is not current in classical Greek. It belonged to the vernacular tongue and attained literary status only a short time before the beginning of the Christian era. It meant ‘consciousness of right or wrong doing’, but Paul uses it (and perhaps he was the first to do so) in the sense of an independent witness within, which examines and passes judgment on one’s conduct. In Christians this examination and judgment should be specially accurate because their conscience is enlightened by the Holy Spirit (cf. 9:1).