Romans, Epistle to The:
This epistle was probably written at Corinth. Phoebe (Rom 16:1) of Cenchrea conveyed it to Rome, and Gaius of Corinth entertained the apostle at the time of his writing it (16:23; 1Cr 1:14), and Erastus was chamberlain of the city, i.e., of Corinth (2Ti 4:20).
The precise time at which it was written is not mentioned in the epistle, but it was obviously written when the apostle was about to "go unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints", i.e., at the close of his second visit to Greece, during the winter preceding his last visit to that city (Rom 15:25; Act 19:21; 20:2,3,16; 1Cr 16:1-4), early in A.D. 58.
It is highly probable that Christianity was planted in Rome by some of those who had been at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost (Act 2:10). At this time the Jews were very numerous in Rome, and their synagogues were probably resorted to by Romans also, who in this way became acquainted with the great facts regarding Jesus as these were reported among the Jews. Thus a church composed of both Jews and Gentiles was formed at Rome. Many of the brethren went out to meet Paul on his approach to Rome. There are evidences that Christians were then in Rome in considerable numbers, and had probably more than one place of meeting (Rom 16:14,15).
The object of the apostle in writing to this church was to explain to them the great doctrines of the gospel. His epistle was a "word in season." Himself deeply impressed with a sense of the value of the doctrines of salvation, he opens up in a clear and connected form the whole system of the gospel in its relation both to Jew and Gentile. This epistle is peculiar in this, that it is a systematic exposition of the gospel of universal application. The subject is here treated argumentatively, and is a plea for Gentiles addressed to Jews. In the Epistle to the Galatians, the same subject is discussed, but there the apostle pleads his own authority, because the church in Galatia had been founded by him.
After the introduction (Rom 1:1-15), the apostle presents in it divers aspects and relations the doctrine of justification by faith (Rom 1:16-11:36) on the ground of the imputed righteousness of Christ. He shows that salvation is all of grace, and only of grace. This main section of his letter is followed by various practical exhortations (Rom 12:1-15:13), which are followed by a conclusion containing personal explanations and salutations, which contain the names of twenty-four Christians at Rome, a benediction, and a doxology (Rom 15:14-16:27).
Romans, Epistle to The:
1. Its Genuineness
2. Its Integrity
3. The Approximate Date
4. The Place of Writing
5. The Destination
6. The Language
7. The Occasion
8. Some Characteristics
9. Main Teachings of the Epistle
(1) Doctrine of Man
(2) Doctrine of God
(3) Doctrine of Son of God-Redemption; Justification
(4) Doctrine of the Spirit of God
(5) Doctrine of Duty
(6) Doctrine of Israel
LITERATURE
This is the greatest, in every sense, of the apostolic letters of Paul; in scale, in scope, and in its wonderful combination of doctrinal, ethical and administrative wisdom and power. In some respects the later Epistles, Ephesians and Colossians, lead us to even higher and deeper arcana of revelation, and they, like Romans, combine with the exposition of truth a luminous doctrine of duty. But the range of Roman is larger in both directions, and presents us also with noble and far-reaching discussions of Christian polity, instructions in spiritual utterance and the like, to which those Epistles present no parallel, and which only the Corinthian Epistles rival.
1. Its Genuineness:
No suspicion on the head of the genuineness of the Epistle exists which needs serious consideration. Signs of the influence of the Epistle can be traced, at least very probably, in the New Testament itself; in 1 Peter, and, as some think, in James. But in our opinion Jas was the earlier writing, and Lightfoot has given strong grounds for the belief that the paragraph on faith and justification (Jas 2) has no reference to perversions of Pauline teaching, but deals with rabbinism. Clement of Rome repeatedly quotes Romans, and so do Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin. Marcion includes it in his list of Pauline Epistles, and it is safe to say in general Romans "has been recognized in the Christian church as long as any collection of Paul's Epistles has been extant" (A. Robertson, in HDB, under the word). But above all other evidences it testifies to itself. The fabrication of such a writing, with its close and complex thought, its power and marked originality of treatment, its noble morale, and its spiritual elevation and ardor, is nothing short of a moral impossibility. A mighty mind and equally great heart live in every page, and a soul exquisitely sensitive and always intent upon truth and holiness. Literary personation is an art which has come to anything like maturity only in modern times, certainly not before the Renaissance. In a fully developed form it is hardly earlier than the 19th century. And even now who can point to a consciously personated authorship going along with high moral principle and purpose?
2. Its Integrity:
The question remains, however, whether, accepting the Epistle in block as Pauline, we have it, as to details, just as it left the author's hands. Particularly, some phenomena of the text of the last two chapter invite the inquiry. We may-in our opinion we must-grant those chapters to be Pauline. They breathe Paul in every sentence. But do they read precisely like part of a letter to Rome? For example, we have a series of names (Ro 16:1-15), representing a large circle of personally known and loved friends of the writer, a much longer list than any other in the Epistles, and all presumably-on theory that the passage is integral to the Epistle-residents at Rome. May not such a paragraph have somehow crept in, after date, from another writing? Might not a message to Philippian, Thessalonian or Ephesian friends, dwellers in places where Paul had already established many intimacies, have fallen out of its place and found lodgment by mistake at the close of this letter to Rome? It seems enough to reply by one brief statement of fact. We possess some 300 manuscripts of Romans, and not one of these, so far as it is uninjured, fails to give the Epistle complete, all the chapters as we have them, and in the present order (with one exception, that of the final doxology). It is observable meanwhile that the difficulty of supposing Paul to have had a large group of friends living at Rome, before his own arrival there, is not serious. To and from Rome, through the whole empire, there was a perpetual circulation of population. Suppose Aquila and Priscilla (e.g.) to have recently returned (Ac 18:2) to Rome from Ephesus, and suppose similar migrations from Greece or from Asia Minor to have taken place within recent years; we can then readily account for the greetings of Ro 16.
Lightfoot has brought it out in an interesting way (see his Philippians, on 4:22) that many of the names (e.g. Amplias, Urbanus, Tryphena) in Ro 16 are found at Rome, in inscriptions of the early imperial age, in cemeteries where members of the widely scattered "household of Caesar" were interred. This at least suggests the abundant possibility that the converts and friends belonging to the "household" who, a very few years later, perhaps not more than three, were around him at Rome when he wrote to Philippi (Php 4:22), and sent their special greeting ("chiefly they") to the Philipplans, were formerly residents at Philippi, or elsewhere in Macedonia, and had moved thence to the capital not long before the apostle wrote to the Romans. A. Robertson (ut supra) comes to the conclusion, after a careful review of recent theories, "that the case for transferring this section.... from its actual connection to a lost Epistle to Ephesus is not made out."
Two points of detail in the criticism of the text of Romans may be noted. One is that the words "at Rome" (1:7,15) are omitted in a very few manuscripts, in a way to remind us of the interesting phenomenon of the omission of "at Ephesus" (Eph 1:1 margin). But the evidence for this omission being original is entirely inadequate. The fact may perhaps be accounted for by a possible circulation of Romans among other mission churches as an Epistle of universal interest. This would be much more likely if the manuscripts and other authorities in which the last two chapters are missing were identical with those which omit "at Rome," but this is not the case.
The other and larger detail is that the great final doxology (Ro 16:25-27) is placed by many cursives at the end of Romans 14, and is omitted entirely by three manuscripts and by Marcion. The leading uncials and a large preponderance of ancient evidence place it where we have it. It is quite possible that Paul may have reissued Romans after a time, and may only then have added the doxology, which has a certain resemblance in manner to his later (captivity) style. But it is at least likely that dogmatic objections led Marcion to delete it, and that his action accounts for the other phenomena which seem to witness against its place at the finale.
It is worth noting that Hort, a singularly fearless, while sober student, defends without reserve the entirety of the Epistle as we have it, or practically so. See his essay printed in Lightfoot's Biblical Studies.
3. The Approximate Date:
We can fix the approximate date with fair certainty within reasonable limits. We gather from Ro 15:19 that Paul, when he wrote, was in the act of closing his work in the East and was looking definitely westward. But he was first about (15:25,26) to revisit Jerusalem with his collection, mainly made in Macedonia and Achaia, for the "poor saints." Placing these allusions side by side with the references in 1 and 2 Corinthians to the collection and its conveyance, and again with the narrative of Acts, we may date Romans very nearly at the same time as 2 Corinthians, just before the visit to Jerusalem narrated in Ac 20, etc. The year may be fixed with great probability as 58 AD. This estimate follows the lines of Lightfoot's chronology, which Robertson (ut supra) supports. More recent schemes would move the date back to 56 AD.
"The reader's attention is invited to this date. Broadly speaking, it was about 30 years at the most after the Crucifixion. Let anyone in middle life reflect on the freshness in memory of events, whether public or private, which 30 years ago made any marked impression on his mind. Let him consider how concrete and vivid still are the prominent personages of 30 years ago, many of whom of course are still with us. And let him transfer this thought to the 1st century, and to the time of our Epistle. Let him remember that we have at least this one great Christian writing composed, for certain, within such easy reach of the very lifetime of Jesus Christ when His contemporary friends were still, in numbers, alive and active. Then let him open the Epistle afresh, and read, as if for the first time, its estimate of Jesus Christ-a Figure then of no legendary past, with its halo, but of the all but present day. Let him note that this transcendent estimate comes to us conveyed in the vehicle not of poetry and rhetoric, but of a treatise pregnant with masterly argument and admirable practical wisdom, tolerant and comprehensive. And we think that the reader will feel that the result of his meditations on date and circumstances is reassuring as to the solidity of the historic basis of the Christian faith" (from the present writer's introduction to the Epistle in the Temple Bible; see also his Light from the First Days: Short Studies in 1 Thessalonians).
4. The Place of Writing:
With confidence we may name Corinth as the place of writing. Paul was at the time in some "city" (Ro 16:23). He was staying with one Gaius, or Caius (same place), and we find in 1Co 1:14 a Gaius, closely connected with Paul, and a Corinthian. He commends to the Romans the deaconess Phoebe, attached to "the church at Cenchrea" (16:1), presumably a place near that from which he was writing; and Cenchrea was the southern part of Corinth.
5. The Destination:
The first advent of Christianity to Rome is unrecorded, and we know very little of its early progress. Visiting Romans (epidemountes), both Jews and proselytes, appear at Pentecost (Ac 2:10), and no doubt some of these returned home believers. In Ac 18:2 we have Aquila and Priscilla, Jews, evidently Christians, "lately come from Italy," and probably from Rome. But we know practically nothing else of the story previous to this Epistle, which is addressed to a mission church obviously important and already spiritually advanced. On the other hand (a curious paradox in view of the historical development of Roman Christianity), there is no allusion in the Epistle to church organization. The Christian ministry (apart from Paul's own apostleship) is not even mentioned. It may fairly be said to be incredible that if the legend of Peter's long episcopate were historical, no allusion whatever to his work, influence and authority should be made. It is at least extremely difficult to prove that he was even present in Rome till shortly before his martyrdom, and the very ancient belief that Peter and Paul founded the Roman church is more likely to have had its origin in their martyrdoms there than in Peter's having in any sense shared in the early evangelization of the city.
As to Rome itself, we may picture it at the date of the Epistle as containing, with its suburbs, a closely massed population of perhaps 800,000 people; a motley host of many races, with a strong oriental element, among which the Jews were present as a marked influence, despised and sometimes dreaded, but always attracting curiosity.
6. The Language:
The Epistle was written in Greek, the "common dialect," the Greek of universal intercourse of that age. One naturally asks, why not in Latin, when the message was addressed to the supreme Latin city? The large majority of Christian converts beyond doubt came from the lower middle and lowest classes, not least from the slave class. These strata of society were supplied greatly from immigrants, much as in parts of East London now aliens make the main population. Not Latin but Greek, then lingua franca of the Mediterranean, would be the daily speech of these people. It is remarkable that all the early Roman bishops bear Greek names. And some 40 years after the date of this Epistle we find Clement of Rome writing in Greek to the Corinthians, and later again, early in the 2nd century, Ignatius writing in Greek to the Romans.
7. The Occasion:
We cannot specify the occasion of writing for certain. No hint appears of any acute crisis in the mission (as when 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, or Colossians were written). Nor would personal reminiscences influence the writer, for he had not yet seen Rome. We can only suggest some possibilities as follows:
(1) A good opportunity for safe communication was offered by the deaconess Phoebe's proposed visit to the metropolis. She doubtless asked Paul for a commendatory letter, and this may have suggested an extended message to the church.
(2) Paul's thoughts had long gone toward Rome. See Ac 19:21: "I must see Rome," words which seem perhaps to imply some divine intimation (compare 23:11). And his own life-course would fall in with such a supernatural call. He had always aimed at large centers; and now his great work in the central places of the Levant was closing; he had worked at Ephesus, Thessalonica, Corinth; he was at last to think of the supreme center of all. Rome must always have had a dominant interest for the "Apostle of the Nations," and any suggestion that his Lord's will tended that way would intensify it to the highest degree.
(3) The form of the Epistle may throw further light on the occasion. The document falls, on the whole, into three parts. First we have Romans 1-8 inclusive, a prolonged exposition of the contrasted and related phenomena of sin and salvation, with special initial references to the cases of Jew and non-Jew respectively. Then come Romans 9-11, which deal with the Jewish rejection of the Jewish Messiah, developing into a prophetic revelation of the future of Israel in the grace of God. Lastly we have Romans 12-16. Some account of the writer's plans, and his salutations to friends, requests for prayer, etc., form the close of this section. But it is mainly a statement of Christian duty in common life, personal, civil, religious. Under the latter head we have a noble treatment of problems raised by varying opinions, particularly on religious observances, among the converts, Jew and Gentile.
Such phenomena cast a possible light on the occasion of writing. The Roman mission was on one side, by its locality and surroundings, eminently gentile. On the other, there was, as we have seen, a strong Judaic element in Roman life, particularly in its lower strata, and no doubt around the Jewish community proper there had grown up a large community of "worshippers" (sebomenoi) or, as we commonly call them, "proselytes" ("adherents," in the language of modern missionary enterprise), people who, without receiving circumcision, attended Jewish worship and shared largely in Jewish beliefs and ideals. Among these proselytes, we may believe, the earliest evangelists at Rome found a favorable field, and the mission church as Paul knew of it contained accordingly not only two definite classes, converts from paganism, converts from native Judaism, but very many in whose minds both traditions were working at once. To such converts the problems raised by Judaism, both without and within the church, would come home with a constant intimacy and force, and their case may well have been present in a special degree in the apostle's mind alike in the early passages (Romans 1-3) of the Epistle and in such later parts as Romans 2-11; 14; 15. On the one hand they would greatly need guidance on the significance of the past of Israel and on the destiny of the chosen race in the future. Moreover, discussions in such circles over the way of salvation would suggest to the great missionary his exposition of man's reconciliation with a holy God and of His secrets for purity and obedience in an unholy world. And meanwhile the ever-recurring problems raised by ceremonial rules in common daily life-problems of days and seasons, and of forbidden food-would, for such disciples, need wise and equitable treatment.
(4) Was it not with this position before him, known to him through the many means of communication between Rome and Corinth, that Paul cast his letter into this form? And did not the realization of the central greatness of Rome suggest its ample scale? The result was a writing which shows everywhere his sense of the presence of the Judaic problem. Here he meets it by a statement, massive and tender, of "heaven's easy, artless, unencumbered plan" of redemption, grace, and glory, a plan which on its other side is the very mystery of the love of God, which statement is now and forever a primary treasure of the Christian faith. And then again he lays down for the too eager champions of the new "liberty" a law of loving tolerance toward slower and narrower views which is equally our permanent spiritual possession, bearing a significance far-reaching and benign.
(5) It has been held by some great students, notably Lightfoot and Hort, that the main purpose of Romans was to reconcile the opposing "schools" in the church, and that its exposition of the salvation of the individual is secondary only. The present writer cannot take this view. Read the Epistle from its spiritual center, so to speak, and is not the perspective very different? The apostle is always conscious of the collective aspect of the Christian life, an aspect vital to its full health. But is he not giving his deepest thought, animated by his own experience of conviction and conversion, to the sinful man's relation to eternal law, to redeeming grace, and to a coming glory? It is the question of personal salvation which with Paul seems to us to live and move always in the depth of his argument, even when Christian polity and policy is the immediate theme.
8. Some Characteristics:
Excepting only Ephesians (the problem of the authorship of which is insoluble, and we put that great document here aside), Romans is, of all Paul has written, least a letter and most a treatise. He is seen, as we read, to approach religious problems of the highest order in a free but reasoned succession; problems of the darkness and of the light, of sin and grace, fall and restoration, doom and remission, faith and obedience, suffering and glory, transcendent hope and humblest duty, now in their relation to the soul, now so as to develop the holy collectivity of the common life. The Roman converts are always first in view, but such is the writer, such his handling, that the results are for the universal church and for every believer of all time. Yet all the while (and it is in this a splendid example of that epistolary method of revelation which is one of the glories of the New Testament) it is never for a moment the mere treatise, however great. The writer is always vividly personal, and conscious of persons. The Epistle is indeed a masterpiece of doctrine, but also always "the unforced, unartificial utterance of a friend to friends."
9. Main Teachings of the Epistle:
Approaching the Epistle as a treatise rather than a letter (with the considerable reserves just stated), we indicate briefly some of its main doctrinal deliverances. Obviously, in limine, it is not set before us as a complete system either of theology or of morals; to obtain a full view of a Pauline dogma and ethics we must certainly place Ephesians and Colossians, not to speak of passages from Thessalonians, beside Romans. But it makes by far the nearest approach to doctrinal completeness among the Epistles.
(1) Doctrine of Man.
In great measure this resolves itself into the doctrine of man as a sinner, as being guilty in face of an absolutely holy and absolutely imperative law, whether announced by abnormal revelation, as to the Jew, or through nature and conscience only, as to the Gentile. At the back of this presentation lies the full recognition that man is cognizant, as a spiritual being, of the eternal difference of right and wrong, and of the witness of creation to personal "eternal power and Godhead" as its cause, and that he is responsible in an awe-inspiring way for his unfaithfulness to such cognitions. He is a being great enough to be in personal moral relation with God, and able to realize his ideal only in true relation with Him; therefore a being whose sin and guilt have an unfathomable evil in them. So is he bound by his own failure that he cannot restore himself; God alone, in sovereign mercy, provides for his pardon by the propitiation of Christ, and for his restoration by union with Christ in the life given by the Holy Spirit. Such is man, once restored, once become "a saint" (a being hallowed), a "son of God" by adoption and grace, that his final glorification will be the signal (in some sense the cause?) of a transfiguration of the whole finite universe. Meanwhile, man is a being actually in the midst of a life of duty and trial, a member of civil society, with obligations to its order. He lives not in a God-forsaken world, belonging only to another and evil power. His new life, the "mind of the Spirit" in him, is to show itself in a conduct and character good for the state and for society at large, as well as for the "brotherhood."
(2) Doctrine of God.
True to the revelation of the Old Testament, Paul presents God as absolute in will and power, so that He is not only the sole author of nature but the eternal and ultimately sole cause of goodness in man. To Him in the last resort all is due, not only the provision of atonement but the power and will to embrace it. The great passages which set before us a "fore-defining" (proorisis, "predestination") and election of the saints are all evidently inspired by this motive, the jealous resolve to trace to the one true Cause all motions and actions of good. The apostle seems e.g. almost to risk affirming a sovereign causation of the opposite, of unbelief and its sequel. But patient study will find that it is not so. God is not said to "fit for ruin" the "vessels of wrath." Their woeful end is overruled to His glory, but nowhere is it taken to be caused by Him. All along the writer's intense purpose is to constrain the actual believer to see the whole causation of his salvation in the will and power of Him whose inmost character is revealed in the supreme fact that, "for us all," "he spared not his Son."
(3) Doctrine of Son of God-Redemption; Justification.
The Epistle affords materials for a magnificently large Christology. The relation of the Son to creation is indeed not expounded in terms (as in Col), but it is implied in the language of Romans 8, where the interrelation of our redemption and the transfiguration of Nature is dealt with. We have the Lord's manhood fully recognized, while His Godhead (as we read in 9:5; so too Robertson, ut supra) is stated in terms, and it is most certainly implied in the language and tone of e.g. the close of Romans 8. Who but a bearer of the Supreme Nature could satisfy the conception indicated in such words as those of 8:32,35-39, coming as they do from a Hebrew monotheist of intense convictions? Meantime this transcendent Person has so put Himself in relation with us, as the willing worker of the Father's purpose of love, that He is the sacrifice of peace for us (Romans 3), our "propitiatory" One (hilasterion, is now known to be an adjective), such that (whatever the mystery, which leaves the fact no less certain) the man who believes on Him, i.e. (as Romans 4 fully demonstrates) relies on Him, gives himself over to His mercy, is not only forgiven but "justified," "justified by faith." And "justification" is more than forgiveness; it is not merely the remission of a penalty but a welcome to the offender, pronounced to be lawfully at peace with the eternal holiness and love.
See JUSTIFICATION; PROPITIATION.
In closest connection with this message of justification is the teaching regarding union with the Christ who has procured the justification. This is rather assumed than expounded in Romans (we have the exposition more explicitly in Eph, Col, and Gal), but the assumption is present wherever the pregnant phrase "in Christ" is used. Union is, for Paul, the central doctrine of all, giving life and relation to the whole range. As Lightfoot has well said (Sermons in Paul's, number 16), he is the apostle not primarily of justification, or of liberty, great as these truths are with him, but of union with Christ. It is through union that justification is ours; the merits of the Head are for the member. It is through union that spiritual liberty and power are ours; the Spirit of life is from the Head to the member. Held by grace in this profound and multiplex connection, where life, love and law are interlaced, the Christian is entitled to an assurance full of joy that nothing shall separate him, soul and (ultimately) body, from his once sacrificed and now risen and triumphant Lord.
(4) Doctrine of the Spirit of God.
No writing of the New Testament but John's Gospel is so full upon this great theme as Romans 8 may be said to be the locus classicus in the Epistles for the work of the Holy Ghost in the believer. By implication it reveals personality as well as power (see especially 8:26). Note particularly the place of this great passage, in which revelation and profoundest conditions run continually into each other. It follows Romans 7, in which the apostle depicts, in terms of his own profound and typical experience, the struggles of conscience and will over the awful problem of the "bondage" of indwelling sin. If we interpret the passage aright, the case supposed is that of a regenerate man, who, however, attempts the struggle against inward evil armed, as to consciousness, with his own faculties merely, and finds the struggle insupportable. Then comes in the divine solution, the promised Spirit of life and liberty, welcomed and put into use by the man who has found his own resources yam. "In Christ Jesus," in union with Him, he "by the Spirit does to death the practices of the body," and rises through conscious liberty into an exulting hope of "the liberty of the glory of the sons of God"-not so, however as to know nothing of "groaning within himself," while yet in the body; but it is a groan which leaves intact the sense of sonship and divine love, and the expectation of a final completeness of redemption.
(5) Doctrine of Duty.
While the Epistle is eminently a message of salvation, it is also, in vital connection with this, a treasury of principle and precept for the life of duty. It does indeed lay down the sovereign freedom of our acceptance for Christ's sake alone, and so absolutely that (Ro 6:1,2,15) the writer anticipates the inference (by foes, or by mistaken friends), "Let us continue in sin." But the answer comes instantly, and mainly through the doctrine of union. Our pardon is not an isolated fact. Secured only by Christ's sacrifice, received only by the faith which receives Him as our all, it is ipso facto never received alone but with all His other gifts, for it becomes ours as we receive, not merely one truth about Him, but Him. Therefore, we receive His Life as our true life; and it is morally unthinkable that we can receive this and express it in sin. This assumed, the Epistle (Romans 12 and onward) lays down with much detail and in admirable application large ranges of the law of duty, civil, social, personal, embracing duties to the state, loyalty to its laws, payment of its taxes, recognition of the sacredness of political order, even ministered by pagans; and also duties to society and the church, including a large and loving tolerance even in religious matters, and a response to every call of the law of unselfish love. However we can or cannot adjust mentally the two sides, that of a supremely free salvation and that of an inexorable responsibility, there the two sides are, in the Pauline message. And reason and faith combine to assure us that both sides are eternally true, "antinomies" whose harmony will be explained hereafter in a higher life, but which are to be lived out here concurrently by the true disciple, assured of their ultimate oneness of source in the eternal love.
(6) Doctrine of Israel.
Very briefly we touch on this department of the message of Romans, mainly to point out that the problem of Israel's unbelief nowhere else in Paul appears as so heavy a load on his heart, and that on the other hand we nowhere else have anything like the light he claims to throw (Romans 11) on Israel's future. Here, if anywhere, he appears as the predictive prophet, charged with the statement of a "mystery," and with the announcement of its issues. The promises to Israel have never failed, nor are they canceled. At the worst, they have always been inherited by a chosen remnant, Israel within Israel. And a time is coming when, in a profound connection with Messianic blessing on the Gentiles, "all Israel shall be saved," with a salvation which shall in turn be new life to the world outside Israel. Throughout the passage Paul speaks, not as one who "will not give up a hope," but as having had revealed to him a vast and definite prospect, in the divine purpose.
It is not possible in our present space to work out other lines of the message of Romans. Perhaps enough has been done to stimulate the reader's own inquiries.
LITERATURE.
Of the Fathers, Chrysostom and Augustine are pre-eminent as interpreters of Romans: Chrysostom in his expository Homilies, models of eloquent and illuminating discourse, full of "sanctified common sense," while not perfectly appreciative of the inmost doctrinal characteristics; Augustine, not in any continuous comm., but in his anti-Pelagian writings, which show the sympathetic intensity of his study of the doctrine of the Epistle, not so much on justification as on grace and the will. Of the Reformers, Calvin is eminently the great commentator, almost modern in his constant aim to ascertain the sacred writer's meaning by open-eyed inference direct from the words. On Romans he is at his best; and it is remarkable that on certain leading passages where grace is theme he is much less rigidly "Calvinistic" than some of his followers. In modern times, the not learned but masterly exposition of Robert Haldane (circa 1830) claims mention, and the eloquent and highly suggestive expository lectures (about the same date) of Thomas Chalmers. H. A. W. Meyer (5th edition, 1872, English translation 1873-1874) among the Germans is excellent for carefulness and insight; Godet (1879, English translation 1881) equally so among French-writing divines; of late English interpreters I. A. Beet (1877, many revisions), Sanday and Headlam (1895, in the" International" series) and E. H. Gifford (admirable for scholarship and exposition; his work was printed first in the Speaker's (Bible) Comm., 1881, now separately) claim particular mention. J. Denney writes on Romans in The Expositor's Greek Test. (1900).
Luther's lectures on Romans, delivered in 1516-1517 and long supposed lost, have been recovered and were published by J. Ficker in 1908. Among modern German commentators, the most important is B. Weiss in the later revisions of the Meyer series (9th edition, 1899), while a very elaborate commentary has been produced by Zahn in his own series (1910). Briefer are the works of Lipsius (Hand-Kommentar, 2nd edition, 1892, very scholarly and suggestive); Lietzmann (Handbuch zum N T, interest chiefly linguistic), and Julicher (in J. Weiss, Schriften des NTs, 2nd edition, 1908, an intensely able piece of popular exposition).
A. E. Garvie has written a brilliant little commentary in the "(New) Century" series (no date); that of R. John Parry in the Cambridge Greek Testament, 1913, is more popular, despite its use of the Greek text. F. B. Westcott's Paul and Justification, 1913, contains a close grammatical study with an excellent paraphrase.
The writer may be allowed to name his short commentary (1879) in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and a fuller one, in a more homiletic style, in the Expositor's Bible, 1894.
Written by Handley Dunelm
Romans, Epistle to The:
(1.) The date of this epistle is fixed at the time of the visit recorded in Acts 20:3 during the winter and spring following the apostle's long residence at Ephesus A.D. 58. On this visit he remained in Greece three months.
(2.) The place of writing was Corinth.
(3.) The occasion which prompted it, and the circumstances attending its writing, were as follows:- St. Paul had long purposed visiting Rome, and still retained this purpose, wishing also to extend his journey to Spain. Romans 1:9-13; 15:22-29. For the time, however, he was prevented from carrying out his design, as he was bound for Jerusalem with the alms of the Gentile Christians, and meanwhile he addressed this letter to the Romans, to supply the lack of his personal teaching. Phoebe, a deaconess of the neighboring church of Cenchreae, was on the point of starting for Rome (Romans 16:1-2) and probably conveyed the letter. The body of the epistle was written at the apostle's dictation by Tertius (Romans 16:22) but perhaps we may infer, from the abruptness of the final doxology, that it was added by the apostle himself.
(4.) The origin of the Roman church is involved in obscurity. If it had been founded by St. Peter according to a later tradition, the absence of any allusion to him both in this epistle and in the letters written by St. Paul from Rome would admit of no explanation. It is equally clear that no other apostle was like founder. The statement in the Clementines-that the first tidings of the gospel reached Rome during the lifetime of our Lord is evidently a fiction for the purposes of the romance. On the other hand, it is clear that the foundation of this church dates very far back. It may be that some of these Romans, "both Jews and proselytes," present. On the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:10) carried back the earliest tidings of the new doctrine; or the gospel may have first reached the imperial city through those who were scattered abroad to escape the persecution which followed on the death of Stephen (Acts 8:4; 11:10). At first we may suppose that the gospel had preached there in a confused and imperfect form, scarcely more than a phase of Judaism, as in the case of Apollos at Corinth (Acts 18:25) or the disciples at Ephesus (Acts 19:1-3). As time advanced and better‐instructed teachers arrived the clouds would gradually clear away, fill at length the presence of the great apostle himself at Rome dispersed the mists of Judaism which still hung about the Roman church.
(5.) A question next arises as to the composition of the Roman church at the time when St. Paul wrote. It is more probable that St. Paul addressed a mixed church of Jews and Gentiles, the latter perhaps being the more numerous. These Gentile converts, however, were not for the most part native Romans. Strange as the: paradox appears, nothing is more certain than that the church of Rome was at this time a Greek and not a Latin church. All the literature of the early Roman church was written in the Greek tongue.
(6.) The heterogeneous composition of this church explains the general character of the Epistle to the Romans. In an assemblage so various we should expect to find, not the exclusive predominance of a single form of error, but the coincidence of different and opposing forms. It was: therefore the business of the Christian teacher to reconcile the opposing difficulties and to hold out a meeting‐point in the gospel. This is exactly what St. Paul does in the Epistle to the Romans.
(7.) In describing the purport of this epistle we may start from St. Paul's own words, which, standing at the beginning of the doctrinal portion, may be taken as giving a summary of the contents (Romans 1:16-17). Accordingly the epistle has been described as comprising "the religious philosophy of the world's history "The atonement of Christ is the centre of religious history. The epistle, from its general character, lends itself more readily to an analysis than is often the case with St. Paul's epistles. While this epistle contains the fullest and most systematic exposition of the apostle's teaching, it is at the same time a very striking expression of his character. Nowhere do his earnest and affectionate nature and his tact and delicacy in handling unwelcome topics appear more strongly than when he is dealing with the rejection of his fellow country men the Jews. Internal evidence is so strongly in favor of the genuineness of the Epistle to the Romans that it has never been seriously questioned.
Justification:
jus-ti-fi-ka'-shun (tsedheq, verb tsadheq; Septuagint and New Testament dikaioma, dikaiosis, verb dikaioo, "justification" "to justify," in a legal sense, the declaring just or righteous. In Biblical literature, dikaioun, without denying the real righteousness of a person, is used invariably or almost invariably in a declarative or forensic sense. See Simon, HDB, II, 826; Thayer, Grimm, and Cremer under the respective words):
I. THE WRITINGS OF PAUL
1. Universality of Sin
2. Perfection of the Law of God
3. Life, Work and Death of the Atoning Saviour
(1) Paul's Own Experience
(2) The Resurrection Connected with the Death
(3) Faith, Not Works, the Means of Justification
(4) Baptism Also Eliminated
(5) Elements of Justification
(a) Forgiveness of Sins
(b) Declaring or Approving as Righteous
(6) Justification Has to Do with the Individual
II. THE OTHER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS
1. The Synoptic Gospels
2. John's Writings
3. 1 Peter and Hebrews
4. Epistle of James
III. THE OLD TESTAMENT
IV. LATER DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOCTRINE
1. Apostolic and Early Church Fathers
2. Council of Trent
3. Luther
4. Schleiermacher
5. Meaning and Message to the Modern Man
LITERATURE
I. The Writings of Paul.
1. The Universality of Sin:
In this article reference will first be made to the writings of Paul, where justification receives its classic expression, and from there as a center, the other New Testament writers, and finally the Old Testament, will be drawn in. According to Paul, justification rests on the following presuppositions:
The universality of sin. All men are not only born in sin (Eph 2:3), but they have committed many actual transgressions, which render them liable to condemnation. Paul proves this by an appeal to the Old Testament witnesses (Ro 3:9 ), as well as by universal experience, both of the heathen (Ro 1:18-32) and Jews (Ro 2:17-28; 3:9).
2. Perfection of the Law of God:
The perfection of the Law of God and the necessity of its perfect observance, if justification is to come by it (Ro 3:10). The modern notion of God as a good-natured, more or less nonchalant ruler, to whom perfect holiness is not inexorable, was not that of Paul. If one had indeed kept the law, God could not hold him guilty (Ro 2:13), but such an obedience never existed. Paul had no trouble with the law as such. Those who have tried to find a difference here between Galatians and Romans have failed. The reminder that the law was ordained by angels (Ga 3:19) does not mean that it was not also given by God. It might be reckoned in a sense among the elements of the world (kosmos, Ga 4:3), as it is an essential part of an ordered universe, but that does not at all mean that it is not also holy, right and good (Ro 7:12). It was added, of course, on account of transgressions (Ga 3:19), for it is only a world of intelligent, free spirits capable of sin which needs it, and its high and beautiful sanctions make the sin seem all the more sinful (Ro 7:13).
3. Life, Work and Death of the Atoning Savior:
It was fundamental in Paul's thinking that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures (1Co 15:3). In due season He died for the ungodly (Ro 5:6); while we were yet sinners He died for us (Ro 5:8); we are justified in His blood (Ro 5:9), and it is through Him that we are saved from the wrath (Ro 5:9). While we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son (Ro 5:10), being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God set forth as a propitiation (Ro 3:24,25). There is no reconciliation, no justification, except through and by and for Christ.
(1) Paul's Own Experience.
Paul's own experience cannot be left out of the account. He lived through the doctrine, as well as found it through illumination of the Spirit in the Old Testament. It was not that he had only outwardly kept the law. He had been jealous for it, and had been blameless in every requirement of its righteousness (Php 3:6). What was borne in upon him was how little such blamelessness could stand before the absolute standard of God. Just how far he was shaken with doubts of this kind we cannot say with certainty; but it seems impossible to conceive the Damascus conversion scene in the case of such an upright man and strenuous zealot without supposing a psychological preparation, without supposing doubts as to whether his fulfilling of the law enabled him to stand before God. Now, for a Pharisaically educated man like himself, there was no way of overcoming these doubts but in a renewed struggle for his own righteousness shown in the fiery zeal of his Damascus journey, pressing on even in the blazing light of noonday. This conversion broke down his philosophy of life, his Lebensgewissheit, his assurance of salvation through works of the law done never so conscientiously and perfectly. The revelation of the glorified Christ, with the assurance that He, the God-sent Messiah, was the very one whom he was persecuting, destroyed his dependence on his own righteousness, a righteousness which had led him to such shocking consequences. Although this was for him an individual experience, yet it had universal applications. It showed him that there was an inherent weakness in the law through flesh, that is, through the whole physical, psychical and spiritual nature of man considered as sinful, as working only on this lower plane, and that the law needed bracing and illuminating by the Son, who, though sent in the likeness of the flesh of sin, yet (as an offering) for sin condemned sin and cast it out (Ro 8:3), to the end that the law might be fulfilled in those who through Him walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit (Ro 8:4). That was the glory of the new righteousness thus revealed. If the law had been able to do that, to give life, Christ need not have come, righteousness would have been by the law (Ga 3:21). But the facts show that the law was not thus able, neither the law written on the heart given to all, nor the law given to Moses (Ro 1:18-3:19). Therefore every mouth is stopped, and all flesh is silent before God. On the ground of law-keeping, what the modern man would call morality, our hope of salvation has been shattered. The law has spoken its judgment against us (Ga 3:10). It cannot therefore lead us to righteousness and life, nor was that its supreme intention: it was a pedagogue or tutor ("paidagogos") to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith (Ga 3:24; see Ihmels in RE3, 16, 483-84). What made Paul to differ from his companions in the faith was that his own bitter experience under the revelation of Christ had led him to these facts.
(2) The Resurrection Connected with the Death.
It was remarked above that the ground of justification according to Paul is the work of Christ. This means especially. His death as a sacrifice, in which, as Ritschl well says (Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, 3. Aufl., 1899, II 157), the apostles saw exercised the whole power of His redemption. But that death cannot be separated from His resurrection, which first awakened them to a knowledge of its decisive worth for salvation, as well as finally confirmed their faith in Jesus as the Son of God. "The objective salvation," says Ritschl (p. 158), "which was connected with the sacrificial death of Christ and which continued on for the church, was made secure by this, that it was asserted also as an attribute of the resurrected one," who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification (Ro 4:25). But this last expression is not to be interpreted with literal preciseness, as though Paul intended to distinguish between the forgiveness of sins as brought about by the death, and justification, by the resurrection, for both forgiveness and justification are identified in Ro 4:6-8. It was the resurrection which gave Christians their assurance concerning Christ (Ac 17:31); by that resurrection He has been exalted to the right hand of God, where He maketh intercession for His people (Ro 8:34), which mediatorship is founded upon His death-the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Re 13:8; compare Greek text).
B. Weiss well says: "It was by the certainty of the exaltation of Christ to Messianic sovereignty brought about by the resurrection that Paul attained to faith in the saving significance of His death, and not conversely. Accordingly, the assurance that God cannot condemn us is owing primarily to the death of Christ, but still more to His resurrection and exaltation to God's right hand (Ro 8:34), inasmuch as these first prove that His death was the death of the mediator of salvation, who has redeemed us from condemnation..... The objective atonement was accomplished by the death of Christ, but the appropriation of it in justification is possible only if we believe in the saving significance of His death, and we can attain to faith in that only as it is sealed by the resurrection" (Biblical Theology of the New Testament, I, 436-37).
(3) Faith, Not Works, the Means of Justification.
The means or condition of justification is faith (Ro 3:22,25,26,28, etc.) which rests upon the pure grace of God and is itself, therefore, His gift (Eph 2:8). This making faith the only instrument of justification is not arbitrary, but because, being the receptive attitude of the soul, it is in the nature of the case the only avenue through which Divine blessing can come. The gifts of God are not against the laws of the soul which He has made, but rather are in and through those laws. Faith is the hand outstretched to the Divine Giver, who, though He sends rain without our consent, does not give salvation except through an appropriate spiritual response. This faith is not simply belief in historical facts, though this is presupposed as to the atoning death (Ro 3:25), and the resurrection (Ro 10:9) of Jesus, but is a real heart reception of the gift (Ro 10:10), and is therefore able to bring peace in our relation to God (Ro 5:1). The object of this faith is Jesus Christ (Ro 3:22, etc.), through whom only comes the gift of righteousness and the reigning in life (Ro 5:17), not Mary, not angels, not doctrine, not the church, but Jesus only. This, to be sure, does not exclude God the Father as an object of faith, as the redeeming act of Christ is itself the work of God (2Co 5:19), whose love expressed itself toward us in this way (Ro 5:8). Faith in the only one God is always presupposed (1Co 8:6), but it was the apostolic custom rather to refer repentance to God and faith to Christ (Ac 20:21). But the oneness of God the Father and Christ the Son in a work of salvation is the best guaranty of the Divinity of the latter, both as an objective fact and as an inner experience of the Christian.
The justification being by faith, it is not by works or by love, or by both in one. It cannot be by the former, because they are lacking either in time or amount or quality, nor could they be accepted in any case until they spring from a heart renewed, for which faith is the necessary presupposition. It cannot be by the latter, for it exists only where the Spirit has shed it abroad in the heart (Ro 5:5), the indispensable prerequisite for receiving which is faith. This does not mean that the crown of Christianity is not love, for it is (1Co 13:13); it means only that the root is faith. Nor can love be foisted in as a partial condition of justification on the strength of the word often quoted for that purpose, "faith working through love" (Ga 5:6). The apostle is speaking here only of those who are already "in Christ," and he says that over against the Galatian believers bringing in a lot of legal observances, the only availing thing is not circumcision or its lack, but faith energizing through love. Here the interest is, as Ritschl says (II, 343), in the kingdom of God, but justification proper has reference to the sinner in relation to God and Christ. See the excellent remarks of Bruce, Paul's Conception of Christianity, 1894, 226-27. At the same time this text reveals the tremendous ethical religious force abiding in faith, according to Paul. It reminds us of the great sentence of Luther in his preface to the Epistles to the Romans, where he says: "Faith is a Divine work within us which changes and renews us in God according to Joh 1:13, ?who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.' This destroys the old Adam and makes new creatures of us in heart, will, disposition, and all our powers. Oh, faith is a living, active, jealous, mighty thing, inasmuch as it cannot possibly remain unproductive of good works" (Werke, Erl. Ausg., 63, 124-25).
(4) Baptism also Eliminated.
Not only are good works and love removed as conditions or means of justification of the sinner, but baptism is also eliminated. According to Paul, it is the office of baptism not to justify, but to cleanse, that is, symbolically to set forth and seal the washing away of sin and the entrance into the new life by a dramatic act of burial, which for the subject and all witnesses would mark a never-to-be-forgotten era in the history of the believer. "Baptism," says Weiss (I, 454), "presupposes faith in Him as the one whom the church designates as Lord, and also binds to adherence to Him which excludes every dependence upon any other, inasmuch as He has acquired a claim upon their devotion by the saving deed of His self-surrender on the cross." So important was baptism in the religious atmosphere at that time that hyperbolical expressions were used to express its cleansing and illuminating office, but these need not mislead us. We must interpret them according to the fundamental conceptions of Christianity as a religion of the Spirit, not of magic nor of material media. Baptism pointed to a complete parting with the old life by previous renewal through faith in Christ, which renewal baptism in its turn sealed and announced in a climax of self-dedication to him, and this, while symbolically and in contemporary parlance of both Jew and Gentile called a new birth, was probably often actually so in the psychological experience of the baptized. But while justification is often attributed to faith, it is never to baptism.
(5) Elements of Justification.
What are the elements of this justification? There are two:
(a) Forgiveness of Sins
Forgiveness of sins (Ro 4:5-8; compare Ac 13:38,39). With this are connected peace and reconciliation (Ro 5:1,9,10; compare Ro 10:11).
(b) The Declaring or Approving as Righteous
The declaring or approving as righteous or just (Ro 3:21-30; 4:2-9,22; 5:1,9-11,16-21, etc.). C.F. Schmid is perfectly right when he says that Paul (and James) always uses dikaioun in the sense of esteeming and pronouncing and treating as righteous, both according to the measure of the law (Ro 2:13; 3:20) and also according to grace (Biblical Theology of the New Testament, 1870, 497). The word is a forensic one, and Godet goes so far as to say that the word is never used in all Greek literature for making righteous (Commentary on Romans, English translation, I, 157, American edition, 95). This is shown further by the fact that it is the ungodly who are justified (Ro 4:5), and that the justification is a reckoning or imputation (logizesthai) of righteousness (Ro 4:6,22), not an infusing or making righteous. The contrast of "to justify" is not "to be a sinner" but is "to accuse" or "to condemn" (Ro 8:33,14), and the, contrast of "justification" is "condemnation" (Ro 5:18). Besides, it is not the infusing of a new life, of a new holiness, which is counted for righteousness, but it is faith which is so counted (Ro 4:5; Php 3:9). That upon which God looks when He justifies is not the righteousness He has imparted or is to impart, but the atonement He has made in Christ. It is one of the truest paradoxes of Christianity that unless a righteous life follows, there has been no justification, while the justification itself is for the sake of Christ alone through faith alone. It is a "status, rather than a character," says Stevens (The Pauline Theology, 1892, 265); "it bears the stamp of a legal rather than of an ethical conception," and he refers to the elaborate and convincing proof of the forensic character of Paul's doctrine of justification," in Morison, Exposition of Romans, chapter III, 163-200. An interesting illustration of how further study may correct a wrong impression is given by Lipsius, who, in his Die Paulinische Rechfertigungslehre, 1853, maintained that righteousness or justification meant not "exclusively an objectively given external relation to God, but always at the same time a real inner condition of righteousness" (p. 10), whereas in his Lehrbuch der evangelisch-protestantischen Dogmatik, 1876, 3. Aufl., 1893, he makes the righteousness of God properly an "objective gift of grace, not simply in the sense in which the Old Testament just one judged his position of salvation as a gift of grace, but as a righteousness specially reckoned and adjudicated by way of grace and acknowledged before the judgment (or court, Gericht) of God (Ro 4:6; compare Ro 4:1-8,11; 3:23; Ga 3:6). This is always the meaning of dikaioun, dikaiousthai, or dikaiosis in Paul. It consists in the not-reckoning of sins," etc. (p. 658). Of course justification is only a part of the process of salvation, which includes regeneration and sanctification, but these are one thing and justification is another.
(6) Justification Has to Do with the Individual.
Finally it is asked whether justification in Paul's mind has to do with the individual believer or with the society or Christian congregation. Ritschl (II, 217 f) and Sanday-Headlam (The Epistle to the Rom, 122-23) say the latter; Weiss (I, 442), the former. It is indeed true that Paul refers to the church as purchased with Christ's blood (Ac 20:28, or God's blood, according to the two oldest manuscripts and ancient authorities; compare Eph 5:25), and he uses the pronoun "we" as those who have received redemption, etc. (Col 1:14; Eph 2:18); but it is evident on the other hand that faith is an individual matter, a thing first between man and his God, and only after a man has been united to Christ by faith can he enter into a spiritual fellowship with fellow-believers. Therefore the subject of justification must be in the first place the individual, and only in the second place and by consequence the society. Besides, those justified are not the cleansed and sanctified members of churches, but the ungodly (Ro 4:5).
As to the argument from baptism urged by Sanday-Headlam, it must be said that Paul always conceives of baptism as taking place in the Christian community with believers and for believers, that that for and to which they are baptized is not justification, but the death and resurrection of Christ (Ro 6:3,4), and that the righteousness of God has been manifested not through baptism but through faith in Jesus Christ unto all that believe (Ro 3:22), being justified freely, not through baptism, but through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Ro 3:24). With Paul baptism has always a mystical significance as symbolizing and externally actualizing union with the death of the Lord, and would be both impossible and impertinent in the case of those not already believers in Christ and thus inwardly united to His society.
II. The Other New Testament Writings.
So much for Paul. Let us now take a glance at the other New Testament books. It is a commonplace of theology that is called "modern" or "critical," that Paul and not Jesus is the founder of Christianity as we know it, that the doctrines of the Divinity of Christ, atonement, justification, etc., are Paul's work, and not his Master's. There is truth in this. It was part of the humiliation of Christ as well as His pedagogical method to live, teach and act under the conditions of His time and country, on the background of Palestine of 30 AD; and it was specially His method to do His work and not His disciples', to live a life of love and light, to die for the sins of the world, and then go back to the Father that the Holy Spirit might come and lead His followers into all truth. A full statement of the doctrines of Christianity on His part would have been premature (Joh 16:12), would have been pedagogically unwise, if not worthless. First the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear (Mr 4:28). It would also have been spiritually and philosophically impossible, for Christianity was not a set of teachings by Christ-but a religion springing out of His life, death, resurrection, ascension, intercession, mediatorial activity in history through the Spirit who works in His disciples and on the world through and by that life, death, etc. The only question is whether the apostles were true to the spirit and content of His teachings in its moral and religious outlines. And especially in this matter of justification, a teaching by Christ is not to be looked for, because it is the very peculiarity of it that its middle point is the exalted Lord, who has become the mediator of salvation by His death and resurrection. Did the Pauline doctrine fit into the concrete situation made by the facts of Christ mentioned above, and was it the necessary consequence of His self-witness? Let us look into the Synoptic Gospels.
1. The Snyoptic Gospels:
So far is it from being true, as Harnack says (What Is Christianity? 2nd edition, revised, New York, 1901, 68), that the "whole of Jesus' message may be reduced to these two heads: God as Father, and the human soul so ennobled that it can and does unite with Him," that an essential part of His message is omitted, namely, that salvation is bound up in His (Christ's) own person. (The reader is asked to verify the references for himself, as space will not allow quotation.) See Mt 10:37-39; 16:24-27. Confession of Him (not simply of the Father) determines acknowledgment above (Mt 10:32), where judgment is rendered according to our attitude to Him in His unfortunate ones Mt 25:35 ff). No sooner was His person rightly estimated than He began to unfold the necessity of His death and resurrection (Mt 16:21). The evening before that death occurred, He brings out its significance, perpetuates the lesson in the institution of the Supper (Mr 14:24), and reenforces it after His resurrection (Lu 24:26). Paul himself could hardly have expressed the fact of the atonement through Christ's death more decisively than Mt 20:28; 26:28. With this foundation, could the Christian doctrine of salvation take any other course than that it actually did take? Instead of referring men to the Father, Christ forgives sins Himself (Mt 9:2-6), and He reckons all men as needing this forgiveness (Mt 6:12). While the time had not arrived for the Pauline doctrine of righteousness, Jesus prepared the way for it, negatively, in demanding a humble sense of sin (Mt 5:3), inner fitness and perfection (Mt 5:6,8,20,48), and positively in requiring recourse to Him by those who felt the burden of their sins (Mt 11:28), to Him who was the rest-giver, and not simply to God the Father, a passage of which Ro 5:1 is an echo. For it was specially to those to whom, as to the awakened Paul, the law brought condemnation that He came, came to heal and to save (Mr 2:17; Mt 9:13; Lu 15:7). It was for sinners and to sinners that He came (Lu 15:2; 7:39; 19:7; Mt 11:19), just as Paul understood; and the way for their salvation was not better law-keeping, but trusting prayer in the confession of sin (Lu 18:13), really equivalent to faith, the humble heart and a hunger for righteousness =( faith). See Mt 5:3,6. He who brings most of himself, of his own pride and works, is the least likely to obtain the kingdom of heaven (Mt 18:3,1; Mr 10:14). Not only entrance, but the final reward itself is of grace (Mt 19:30; 20:1-16), a parable in the true spirit of Paul, and in anticipation of whose message was the promise of Paradise to the penitent robber (Lu 23:43). At the very beginning the message sounded out, "Repent ye, and believe in the gospel" (Mr 1:15), the gospel which was summed up in Christ, who would gather the people, not directly to God the Father, but to Himself (Mt 23:37). All this means justification through that faith in Himself, in His Divine-human manifestation (Mt 16:13-16), of which faith He expresses Himself with anxiety in Lu 18:8, and the presence of which he greeted with joy in Mt 8:10. Ihmels is right therefore in holding (RE3, XVI, 490) that Paul's proclamation was continuous with the self-witness of Jesus, which conversely pointed as a consequence to the witness of Paul.
2. John's Writings:
Justification by faith is not more implicit in John's Gospel than in the first three; it is only more explicit (Joh 3:14-16). Eternal life is the blessing secured, but this of course is only possible to one not under condemnation (Joh 3:36). The new Sonship of God came also in the wake of the same faith (Joh 1:12). The Epistles of John vary from Paul in word rather than in substance. The atoning work of Jesus is still in the background; walking in the light is not conceivable in those under condemnation and without faith; and the confession of sins that leads to forgiveness seems only another name for the justification that brings peace (1 Joh 1:9,10; compare 2:1,2). Everything is, as with Paul (Eph 2:7; Tit 3:4), led back to the love of God (1 Joh 3:1), who sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 Joh 4:10).
3. 1 Peter and Hebrews:
Seeberg's point that the "Pauline doctrine of justification is not found in any other New Testament writer" (History of Doctrine, I, 48) is true when you emphasize the word "doctrine." Paul gave it full scientific treatment, the others presuppose the fact, but do not unfold the doctrine. Peter's "Repent ye, and be baptized.... in the name of Jesus Christ" (Ac 2:38) is meaningless unless faith were exercised in Christ. It is He in whom, though we see Him not, yet believing, we rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable (1Pe 1:8), receiving the end of our faith, the salvation of our souls (1Pe 1:9). It is only, however, through the precious blood as of a lamb without blemish, even that of Christ (1Pe 1:19), and is only through Him that we are believers in God (1Pe 1:21). The familiar expression, "Come to Jesus," which simply means have faith in Jesus for justification and salvation, goes back to Peter (1Pe 2:4). The Epistle to the Hebrews has other interests to look after, but it does not deny faith, but rather exhorts us to draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith (10:22), which it lays at the foundation of all true religion, thinking and achievement (Hebrews 11). The writer can give no better exhortation than to look unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith (12:2), an exhortation in the true spirit of Paul, whose gospel of faith for justification is also summed up in 4:16.
4. Epistle of James:
We come lastly to the core of the matter in regard to New Testament representations of justification-the famous passage in Jas 2:14-26, which at first sight seems a direct blow at Paul. Here we are met by the interesting question of the date of James. As we cannot enter into this (see JAMES, EPISTLE OF), what we say must be independent of this question. A careful look at this vigorous and most valuable letter (valuable in its own place, which is not that of Paul's letters, in comparison with which it is a "right strawy epistle," as Luther truthfully said (Erl. Ausg., 63, 115; see also pp. 156-57), in saying which he did not mean to reject it as useless (straw has most important uses), but as giving the doctrine of salvation, for which we must look to Paul) will show us that contradiction on the part of James to Paul is apparent and not real.
(1) In this section James uses the word faith simply for intellectual belief in God, and especially in the unity of God (2:19; see also context), whereas Paul uses it for a saving trust in Christ. As Feine well says (Theol. d. New Testament, Leipzig, 2 1911, 660-63), for Paul faith is the appropriation of the life-power of the heavenly Christ. Therefore he knows no faith which does not bring forth good works corresponding to it. What does not come from faith is sin. For James faith is subordination of man to the heavenly Christ (2:1), or it is theoretic acknowledgment of one God (2:19). Justification is for James a speaking just of him who is righteous, an analytical judgment. (Feine also says that James did not understand Paul, but he did not fight him. It was left to Luther through his deep religious experience first to understand Paul's doctrine of justification.)
(2) James uses the word "works" as meaning practical morality, going back behind legalism, behind Pharisaism, to the position of the Old Testament prophets, whereas Paul uses the word as meritorious action deserving reward.
(3) When James is thinking of a deeper view, faith stands central in Christianity (1:3,6; 2:1; 5:15).
(4) Paul also on his part is as anxious as James vitally to connect Christianity and good works through faith (1Th 1:3; Ga 5:6; 1Co 13:2; Ro 2:6,7; see Mayor, The Epistle of Jas, 1892, lxxxviii ff; Franks, in DCG, I, 919-20; Findlay in HDB, 1-vol edition, 511).
(5) The whole argument of James is bent on preserving a real practical Christianity that is not content with words merely (2:15-16), but shows itself in deeds. He is not trying to show, as Paul, how men get rid of their guilt and become Christians, but how they prove the reality of their profession after they receive the faith. He is not only writing to Christians, as of course Paul was, but he was writing to them as Christians ("my brethren," 2:14), as already justified and standing on the "faith of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2:1), whereas Paul was thinking of men, Gentile and Jew, shivering in their guilt before the Eternal Justice, and asking, How can we get peace with God? "There is not," says Beyschlag (New Testament Theology, Edinburgh, 1895, I, 367-68), "an objective conflict between the Pauline and Jacobean doctrines; both forms of teaching exist peacefully beside each other. James thought of justification in the simple and most natural sense of justificatio justi, as the Divine recognition of an actually righteous man, and he thought of it as the final judgment of God upon a man who is to stand in the last judgment and become a partaker of the final soteria (?salvation'). Paul also demands as a requisite for this last judgment and the final soteria right works, the love that fulfills the law and the perfected sanctification, but he (except in Ro 2:13) does not apply the expression dikaiousthai (?to be justified') to the final judgment of God, which recognizes this righteousness of life as actual. He applies it rather to that first sentence of God with which He graciously receives the believing sinner returning to Him, and takes him into fellowship with Himself." Beyschlag rightly insists that James undoubtedly taught with the first apostles that whoever believes in Christ and is baptized receives the forgiveness of sins (Ac 2:38; 3:19; 10:43), and that he would not have contested the Pauline idea of justification by grace on account of faith, insisting only that works must follow. Theologically, the chief if not the only difference is that James has not yet made the cross of Christ the center of his point of view, while the atonement was fundamental with all Paul's thinking.
See, further, JAMES, EPISTLE OF.
III. The Old Testament.
A word in conclusion as to the Old Testament. All the New Testament writers built on the Old Testament. That there should be a cleft or contradiction between the Old Testament and what we call the New Testament would have been to them inconceivable. But they realized that that was the early dawn, while they lived in the light of day. Abraham believed in Yahweh; and He reckoned it to him for righteousness (Ge 15:6; Ro 4:3). Who does not keep all parts of the law all the time is condemned (De 27:26 Septuagint; Ga 3:10; compare Ps 14; 143:2; Ro 3:20; see 3:9-20, and the references to the Old Testament in the American Standard Revised Version). The prophets insisted upon the practical works of righteousness-"What doth Yahweh require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?" (Mic 6:8). No religious attitude or services could take the place of uprightness of life. This does not mean that the Old Testament writers understood that men were justified simply by their good deeds, for it was always believed that underneath all was the mercy and lovingkindness of God, whose forgiving grace was toward the broken and contrite spirit, the iniquities of whom were to be carried by the Servant of Yahweh, who shall justify many (Ps 103:8-13; 85:10; Isa 57:15; 53:11, and many other passages). IV. Later Development of the Doctrine.
1. Apostolic and Early Church Fathers:
A brief statement now on the development of the doctrine in the Christian church. It is humiliating to confess that the witness immediately after the apostles (the apostolic Fathers) did not reach the serene heights of Paul, or even the lower levels of his brethren. There are passages which remind one of him, but one feels at once that the atmosphere is different. Christianity is conceived as a new law rather than as a gospel of the grace of God. We cannot go into the reasons for this: suffice it to say that in GentileChristendom the presuppositions for that gospel failed, and the New Testament writings were not yet in the consciousness of the church to the extent that they dominated her thinking. The fine passage in Clement of Rome (97 AD, chapter xxxii: "They all therefore (i.e. Abraham and other early saints) were glorified and magnified, not through themselves or their own works or the righteous doings which they wrought, but through His (God's) will. And so we, having been called through His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified through ourselves or through our own wisdom or understanding or piety or works which we wrought in holiness of heart, but through faith, whereby the Almighty God justified all men that ever have been from the beginning; to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.") is not at all on a paragraph with his whole Epistle, as he coordinates faith with other virtues in chapter xxxv, makes hospitality and godliness the saving virtues for Lot in chapter xi, couples hospitality and faith together as equal for Rahab in chapter xii, and represents forgiveness of sins through keeping commandments and love in chapter l. Ignatius (about 110-15 AD) speaks in one place about Jesus Christ dying for us, that believing on His death we might escape death (Tral. 2), but with him the real saving things are love, concord, obedience to bishops, and the indwelling God = Christ, though he has also the excellent passage: "None of these things is hidden from you if ye be perfect in your faith and love toward Jesus Christ, for these things are the beginning and end of life-faith is the beginning and love the end, and the two being found in unit are God, while all things else follow in their train unto true nobility" (Eph 1:4). The so-called Barnabas (date uncertain) puts the death of Christ Jesus at the foundation of salvation, which is expressed by the remission of sins through His blood (Eph 5), the kingdom of Jesus being on the cross, so that they who set their hope on Him shall live forever (Eph 6), while at the time even believers are not yet justified (Eph 4), for which finally a whole series of works of light must be done and works of darkness avoided (Eph 1:9). The Shepherd of Hermas and the Ancient Homily = 2 Clem are even more moralistic, where with whatever praise of faith we have the beginning of merit. The same legalistic tone sounds through that invaluable little roll found by Bryennios in 1873 and first published by him in Constantinople in December, 1883, The Teaching (Didache) of the Twelve Apostles. That Catholic trend went forward till it is almost full-fledged as early as Tertullian (fl. 200 AD) and Cyprian (250 AD). See a full statement in my Cyprian, 1906, 146 ff. And thus it continued until-as far as our outline is concerned-it struck Augustine, bishop of Hippo (396 ff), who in a masterly and living way united, so far as they could be united, the Pauline thoughts of sin, grace, and justification with the regular Catholic legalism. His book, De Spiritu et Litera (412 AD), was largely after Paul's own heart, and the Reformers hailed it with joy. But the Catholic elements he still kept, as for instance, that in justification a good concupiscence and a good-will are infused, that justification grows, that our merits must be taken into the account even though they are God's merits, that the faith which justifies is a faith which works by love, that faith is the holding true what God (and the church) says, though occasionally a deeper view of faith is seen, and that works are emphasized, as in De fide et operibus, in a Catholic fashion. With profound and thoroughly Christian thoughts, Augustine had not so worked himself clear of his Catholic inheritance that he could reproduce Paul purely. He made a bridge by which we could go either back to Paul or forward to Aquinas. As Harnack well says, Augustine experienced, on the one hand, the last revival in the ancient church of the principle that "faith alone saves," and, on the other, he silenced that principle for a thousand years. The very Catholic theologian who stood nearest to that principle overcame it (Zeitschrift f. Theol. u. Kirche, 1891, 177). His misunderstanding of Paul's "faith that worketh through love" had momentous consequences.
2. Council of Trent:
Those consequences are best seen in the decrees of the Council of Trent (Session 6, 1547), to which we now turn, and which are the definite and final crystallization of the medieval development, so far as that development was Catholic.
(1) Justification is a translation from a natural state to a state of grace. With this works prevenient grace, awakening and assisting, and with this in his man cooperates and prepares himself for justification. This cooperation has the merit of congruity, though the first call comes before any merit.
(2) Faith is an element in justification. "Receiving faith by hearing, they of free will draw near to God, believing those things to be true which have been Divinely revealed and promised." Faith as a living trust in a personal Saviour for salvation is lacking. Among the truths believed is the mercy of God and that He wishes to justify the sinner in Christ.
(3) This faith begets love to Christ and hatred to sin, which are elements also of the justifying process.
(4) Now follows justification itself, "which is not a bare remission of sins, but also sanctification and renewal of the inner man through the voluntary reception of grace and of gifts."
(5) But this renewal must take place through baptism, which, to the prepared adult, both gives and seals all the graces of salvation, forgiveness, cleansing, faith, hope and love.
(6) Justification is preserved by obeying the commandments and by good works, which also increase it.
(7) In case it is lost-and it can be lost, not by venial, but by mortal sin and by unbelief-it can be regained by the sacrament of penance.
(8) To get it, to keep or regain it, it is also necessary to believe the doctrines as thus laid down and to be laid down by this Council (see the decrees in any edition, or in Mirbt, Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums, 2. Aufl., 206-16, or in Buckley's or in Waterworth's translations, and for an admirable and objective summary see Seeberg, History of Doctrine, II, 433-38).
3. Luther:
Recent researches in Luther's early writings have shown that almost from the beginning of his earnest study of religious questions, he mounted up to Paul's view of justification by faith alone (Loofs, DG, 4. Aufl., 1906, 696-98). Faith is the trust in the mercy of God through Christ, and justification is the declaring righteous for His sake, which is followed by a real making righteous. From the beginning to the end of his life as a religious teacher these are the elements of his doctrine. Speaking of 1513-15, Loofs says (p. 697): "Upon these equations (to justify = to forgive, grace = mercy of the non-imputing God, faith = trust in His mercy) as the regulators of his religious self-judgment, Luther's piety rests, and corresponding to them his view of Christianity, and even later" (than 1513-15); and he adds that "to reckon as righteous" (reputari justum) must not be understood with Luther as an opposition "to make righteous," for his "to be justified without merits" in the sense of "to forgive" (absolvi) is at the same time the beginning of a new life: remissio peccati.... ipsa resurrectio. "His constantly and firmly held view, even more deeply understood later than in 1513-15, that ?to be justified without merit' =? to be resurrected (to be born again)' =? to be sanctified' is a pregnant formulation of his Christianity." So much being said, it is not necessary to draw out Luther's doctrine further, who in this respect "rediscovered Christianity as a religion," but it will suffice to refer to the Histories of Doctrine (Seeberg gives a full and brilliant exposition), to Kostlin, Luthers Theologie, 2. Aufl., 1901 (see Index under the word "Rechtfertigung," and I, 349), and especially to Thieme, Die sittliche Triebkraft des Glaubens: eine Untersuchung zu Luthers Theologie, 1895, 103-314.
From Luther and the other reformers the New Testament doctrine went over to the Protestant churches without essential modification, and has remained their nominal testimony until the present. A classic expression of it, which may be taken as representing evangelical Christendom, is the 11th of the 39 Articles of Religion of the Church of England: "We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings: wherefore that we are justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine and very full of comfort; as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification." It is true that at one time Wesley's opponents accused him of departing from this doctrine, especially on account of his famous Minute of 1770, but this was due to a radical misunderstanding of that Minute, for to the last he held staunchly Paul's doctrine (for proof see my article in Lutheran Quarterly, April, 1906, 171-75).
4. Schleiermacher:
A new point of view was brought into modern theology by Schleiermacher, who starts from the fundamental fact of Christian experience that we have redemption and reconciliation with Christ, which fact becomes ours by union with Christ through faith. This union brings justification with other blessings, but justification is not considered as even in thought a separate act based on Christ's death, but as part of a great whole of salvation, historically realized step by step in Christ. The trend of his teaching is to break down the distinction between justification and regeneration, as they are simply different aspects of union with Christ.
Ritschl carried forward this thought by emphasizing the grace of the heavenly Father mediated in the first instance through the Son to the Christian community, "to which God imputes the position toward him of Christ its founder," and in the second instance to individuals "as by faith in the Gospel they attach themselves to this community. Faith is simply obedience to God and trust in the revelation of his grace in Christ." This brings sinners into fellowship with God which means eternal life, which is here and now realized, as the Fourth Gospel points out, in lordship over the world (compare Franks in DCG, I, 922-23). The judicial or forensic aspect of justification so thoroughly in-wrought in Paul's thought is denied by Ritschl. "In whatsoever way we view the matter," he says, "the attitude of God in the act of justification cannot be conceived as that of a judge" (Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, English translation, 1900, 90). W.N. Clarke agrees with Schleiermacher in eliminating justification as a separate element in the work of salvation, and harks back to the Catholic view in making it dependent on the new life and subsequent to it (Christian Theology, 407-8). No book has had as much influence in destroying the New Testament conception of justification among English-speaking readers as that of J. H. Newman, Lectures on Justification, 1838, 3rd edition, 1874, which contains some of the finest passages in religious literature (pp. 270-73, 302, 338-39), but which was so sympathetic to the Catholic view that the author had nothing essential to retract when he joined Rome in 1845. "Whether we say we are justified by faith, or by works, or by sacraments, all these but mean this one doctrine that we are justified by grace which is given through sacraments, impetrated by faith, manifested in works" (p. 303).
5. Meaning and Message to the Modern Man:
Lastly, has the New Testament conception of justification by faith any message to the modern man, or is it, as Lagarde held, dead in the Protestant churches, something which went overboard with the old doctrine of the Trinity and of Atonement? After an able historical, survey, Holl concludes (Die Rechtfertigungslehre im Licht der Geschichte d. Protestantismus, Tubingen, 1906, 40-42) that there are two principles thoroughly congenial to modern thought which favor this doctrine, namely, that of the sanctity and importance of personality, the "I" that stands face to face with God, responsible to Him alone; and second, the restoration of the Reformation-thought of an all-working God. Whoever feels the pressure of these two principles, for him the question of justification becomes a living one. "The standard on which he must measure himself is the Absolute God, and who can stand in this judgment? Not simply on account of single acts, but with his ?I' and even with his good-willing. For that is just the curse which rests upon a man that his ?I' is the thing with which alone he wills and can seek God, and that it is this very ?I' which by its willfulness, vanity and self-love poisons all his willing. Accordingly, it remains true, what the Reformers said, that man is entirely corrupt, and that he can do no otherwise than to despair when the majesty of God dawns upon him" (p. 41). There is, then, no other solution than the venture of faith that the same God who crushes our self-deceit lifts up with His sovereign grace, that we live through Him and before Him. Luther is right that religiously we can find no hold except on the Divine act of grace, which through faith in the Divine love and power working in us and for us ever makes us new in Christ. To give up the doctrine of justification, says Holl rightly (p. 42), is to give up conscious personal religion. Holl writes as a liberal, and he quotes a stronger liberal still, Treitschke, as saying that in the 19th century it was the orthodox preachers who proclaimed this doctrine, who built better than the liberals. Nor, says Holl in another book (Was hat die Rechtfertigungslehre dem modernen Menschen zu sagen? Tubingen, 1907, 26), can anyone who has experienced justification as an inner transformation be misled into moral unconcern. A moral ideal becomes his, much stronger and more compelling than worldly ethics. The new attitude toward God constituted by justification impels to an unending movement in the service of God and man. The doctrine has not had its day. It is a part of the eternal gospel. As long as sinful man has to do with an all-holy God, the experience of Paul, Luther and Wesley becomes in a sense normative for the race.
LITERATURE.
Besides the books mentioned in the text, the following on justification itself may be consulted (those marked with a star are Protestant, those with a dagger are Catholic or High Church Anglican): Goodwin, new edition, with preface by Wesley, 1807; Junkins, 1839; Hare, new edition, 1839 (1st edition with preface by Jackson, 1817); Kerwick, t 1841; Heurtley, 1846 (Bampton Lectures for 1845); McIlvaine, 1861, 3rd edition, 1868 (Righteousness of Faith, important); Buchanan, 1867 (important); Body, 1870; Bunyan, new edition, 1873; Harkey, 1875; Davies, 1878; Sadler, 1888; and Holden, 1901. Besides these, Laurence, Bampton Lectures for 1804, sermon 6; Drummond, Apostolic Teaching and Christ's Teaching (see index); Schlatter, New Testament Theology, 2 volumes, 1909-10; the various systematic Theologies; Theologies of the New Testament, and Commentaries may be consulted; also Menegoz, Die Rechtfertigungslehre nach Paulus und nach Jakobus, 1903; Kuhl, Die Stellung des Jakobusbriefes z. alttest. Gesetz u. z. Paulinischen Rechtfertigungslehre, 1905.
Written by John Alfred Faulkner
He is a cross pendant.
He is engraved with a unique Number.
He will mail it out from Jerusalem.
He will be sent to your Side.
Emmanuel
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