3. The way of righteousness: the universal need met (3:21–5:21)
3. The way of righteousness: the universal need met (3:21–5:21)
Horace, Ars Poetica 131f.
I owe the quotation from Luther to T. R. Glover, Jesus in the Experience of Men (1921), p. 72.
Westminster Shorter Catechism, from Answer to Question 33.
See L. Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (31965), pp. 1–52; also his The Atonement (1983), pp. 107–110. In LXX this word and its cognates are frequently used of redemption by one who is under a special obligation because of kinship or some comparable relation to the person redeemed—by a gō’ēl, to use the Hebrew word (e.g. Lev. 25:47–49).
John Bunyan, Grace Abounding, §§ 257.
Cf. C. H. Dodd, ad loc.; also in The Bible and the Greeks (1935), pp. 82–95; for a defence of the rendering ‘propitiation’ and a full discussion of the subject see L. Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross3, pp. 143–213; also his The Atonement, pp. 151–176.
Cf. J. N. Darby’s New Translation: ‘whom God has set forth a mercy-seat’. See also E. K. Simpson, Words Worth Weighing in the Greek New Testament (1944), pp. 10–12; W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (1948), pp. 237–242. Against this interpretation see G. A. Deissmann, ‘Mercy Seat’, Encyclopaedia Biblica III (1902), cols. 3033–3035; L. Morris, ‘The Meaning of hilastērion in Romans 3:25’, NTS 2 (1955–56), pp. 33–43; The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross3, pp. 184–202; C. E. B. Cranfield, ad loc.
T. W. Manson, ‘Hilastērion’, JTS 46 (1945), pp. 1–10 (p. 5).
R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, I (1952), p. 46.
E. Käsemann, ad loc.; ‘Zum Verständnis von Röm 3, 24–26, ZNW 43 (1950–51), pp. 150–154.
R. St. John Parry, ad loc., translates Paul’s phrase ‘just even when He justifies him that hath faith in Jesus’. R. V. G. Tasker approves this rendering because it brings out the tension between the justice and mercy of God involved in the mystery of atonement (‘The Doctrine of Justification by Faith in the Epistle to the Romans’, EQ 24 (1952), pp. 43f.).
‘So halten wir nun dafür, dass der Mensch gerecht werde ohne des Gesetzes Werke, allein durch den Glauben’ (Luther’s Bible). Cf. Romans 11:20, RSV (‘you stand fast only through faith’); Galatians 2:16, NEB (‘but only through faith in Christ Jesus’). A parallel to this use of ‘faith’ in the sense of ‘faith alone’ is adduced from Diogenes Laertius in W. Bauer, Griechisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments (51958), s. v. pistis.
Cf. further C. T. Rhyne, Faith Establishes the Law (1981).
Cf. Anselm’s words to Boso in Cur Deus Homo 1.21: ‘nondum considerasti quanti ponderis sit peccatum.’
This principle might have moved some rabbis to adduce a third text—Psalm 106:30–31, where Phinehas’s drastic intervention in the Baal-peor apostasy ‘has been reckoned to him as righteousness from generation to generation for ever’. But this would not have been appropriate to Paul’s argument.
Even proselytes, who might have been regarded as Abraham’s children by adoption, were not permitted to call him ‘our father’; in the synagogue liturgy they called the patriarchs ‘your fathers’ when those who were Jews by birth referred to them as ‘our fathers’.
Thirteen years after Ishmael’s birth (Gen. 17:25; cf. 17:1, 24, with 16:16). And the narrative sequence of Genesis implies that Ishmael’s conception (Gen. 16:3–4) came after the promise of Genesis 15:4–5, that Abraham would yet have a son of his own to be his heir and that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. It was through believing acceptance of this promise that Abraham was justified (Gen. 15:6).
Suitability to the context is the determinant factor. In 14:19 the strongly attested indicative diōkomen (‘we pursue’) must be rejected in favour of the less well attested diōkōmen (‘let us pursue’) because only the latter makes sense in the context. Such variations are common because, with the strong stress accent on the antepenultimate syllable (as in Byzantine and Modern Greek), the distinction between the long and the short vowel in the penultimate syllable disappears in pronunciation. When copying was done by dictation the reader might intend one form and the scribe write down the other.
For another angle on the subject of reconciliation see the full treatment by L. Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (31965), pp. 219–250; also his later book, The Atonement (1983), pp. 132–150.
Quoted by E. K. Simpson, The Pastoral Epistles (1954), p. 47.
See comments on 1:23 (p. 91); 7:7–13 (pp. 150–153).
Cf. H. W. Robinson, Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel, revised edition (1981); also J. W. Rogerson, ‘The Hebrew Conception of Corporate Personality: A Re-examination’, JTS, new series 21 (1970), pp. 1–16.
Two monographs on Romans 5:12–21 are K. Barth, Christ and Adam (E.T., 1956), and J. Murray, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin (1959). Murray also devotes Appendix D of his commentary on Romans (I, pp. 384–390) to a critique of ‘Karl Barth on Romans 5’. Another critique of Barth’s monograph, from a standpoint far removed from Murray’s, is R. Bultmann, ‘Adam and Christ according to Romans 5’, in Current Issues in New Testament Interpretation, ed. W. Klassen and G. F. Snyder (1962), pp. 143–165. See also C. K. Barrett, From First Adam to Last: A Study in Pauline Theology (1962); R. Scroggs, The Last Adam: A Study in Pauline Anthropology (1966); S. H. Quek, ‘Adam and Christ according to Paul’, in Pauline Studies, ed. D. A. Hagner and M. J. Harris (1980), pp. 67–79.
See also C. E. B. Cranfield, ‘On Some of the Problems in the Interpretation of Romans 5:12’, SJT Supp 22 (1969), pp. 324–341.
J. Calvin, Romans, E.T. (1961), pp. 114f.
This word (dikaiōma) is used in a variety of senses—‘justification’ in verse 16, ‘decree’ in 1:32 (cf. ‘precept’ in 2:26); ‘just requirement’ in 8:4.
See L. C. Allen, ‘Isaiah 53:11 and its Echoes’, Vox Evangelical 1 (1962), pp. 24–28.
From First Adam to Last, p. 93.
C. E. B. Cranfield, ‘St. Paul and the Law’, SJT 17 (1964), pp. 46f.—especially, he considers, because it tempts sinners ‘to try to use it as a means to the establishment of a claim upon God’.
