The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (128 page)

⁸¹
J. B. Lightfoot,
Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians
(London: Macmillan, 1921), 49.

⁸²
M. Luther,
Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans
, trans. J. T. Mueller (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1954), viii.

⁸³
A. Schlatter,
Romans: The Righteousness of God
, trans. S. Schatzmann (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1995).

⁸⁴
Compare Pss 31:1; 36:10; 40:10; 71:2; 88:10-12; 98:2-3; 143:1; Isa 46:13.

⁸⁵
Käsemann,
Romans
, 29; cf. Stuhlmacher,
Romans, 28—32.
Käsemann and his student Stuhlmacher were both influenced by the seminal work of Schlatter (
Romans
, 18—22) on the “righteousness of God.”

⁸⁶
Schreiner hesitantly interpreted the “righteousness of God” as God's saving power in his 1998 commentary on Romans but abandoned the view when writing his Pauline theology published three years later. Compare Schreiner,
Romans
, 63—70; and id.,
Paul: Apostle of God's Glory in Christ
(Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2001), 192—209.

⁸⁷
On the other hand, it could simply demonstrate that the works of humanity only deserve divine wrath, thus confirming the impossibility of salvation by works and the necessity of justification by faith in 1:17.

⁸⁸
These interpretations are fiercely contested by commentators who defend alternative views, especially when they insist on a single, narrow meaning for the phrase “righteousness of God” throughout the entire letter. For a more detailed defense of the attributive view, see Fitzmyer (
Romans
, 257—63), who demonstrated that the attributive interpretation has a rich history in the church, especially prior to the Reformation.

⁸⁹
For a more detailed defense of this handling of Rom 1:17 and Gal 3:11, see C. L. Quarles, “From Faith to Faith: A Fresh Examination of the Prepositional Series in Romans 1:17,”
NovT
45 (2003): 1—21, esp. 16—18. Scholars have long debated whether Paul saw the prepositional phrase “by faith” in Hab 2:4 as adjectival or adverbial, that is, as modifying “righteous” or “live.” The issue cannot be settled on grounds of syntax or word order. But throughout Romans and elsewhere in his writings, Paul far more frequently associates faith with righteousness than with life (1:17; 3:22,25—26,28,30; 4:3,5,9,11,13; 5:1; 9:30; 10:4,6,10; see Gal 2:16; 3:6,8,11,24; 5:5; Phil 3:9). This strongly suggests that he intended his readers to understand the Habakkuk quote as a reference to people who were declared righteous on the basis of faith and who enjoyed eschatological life because of that declared righteousness. Commentators who affirm that “by faith” is adjectival include Cranfield,
Romans
, 102; Moo,
Romans
, 78; and Käsemann,
Romans
, 32. A few suggest that the prepositional phrase modifies both the subject and the verb: R. M. Moody, “The Habakkuk Quotation in Romans 1:17,”
ExpTim
92 (1981): 205—8; and Dunn,
Romans
, 45—46. Although Schreiner
(Romans
, 74) took the prepositional phrase to modify “will live,” the view suggested here seems confirmed by the reasoning of Paul in 5:17.

⁹⁰
This was the view of the Reformers. It was so popular among Protestant commentators in the late nineteenth century that Charles Hodge could write, “This [the view that the righteousness of God was the righteousness that God imputed in justification] is the interpretation which is given substantially by all the modern commentators of note”
(Romans
, 31). The view was also affirmed in J. Murray,
The Epistle to the Romans
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 1:30.

⁹¹
Notice also the concentration of the accounting terms “count,” “gain,” and “loss” in Phil 3:2—11 where Paul also discussed “the righteousness from God based on faith.”

⁹²
This verb
logizomai
(“credit” or “charge”) was used in a soteriological sense 11 times in Romans, 9 in the passive voice. These are clearly instances of the divine passive in which God is the unnamed agent who performs the action of the verb.

⁹³
That God is the one who credits or imputes righteousness is made clear by the two occasions in Romans in which Paul used an active (deponent) form of the verb “credit” and explicitly identified a subject. In 4:6 “God credits righteousness,” and in Paul's quotation of Ps 32:2 in Rom 4:8, “the Lord” refuses to charge
(logizomai)
sin to the believer's account.

⁹⁴
In other words, even if the modifier in the phrase “righteousness of God” is a subjective genitive rather than a genitive of source, this would not necessarily preclude viewing this righteousness as the righteousness that God imputes to the believer.

⁹⁵
Commentators such as Sanday and Headlam (
Romans, 24-25)
, Moo (
Romans, 74—75)
, and Schreiner (
Paul
, 202) opted for the first view.

⁹⁶
See the concern expressed by Cranfield,
Romans
, 98—99.

⁹⁷
See also 2 Cor 5:21 and the similar construction in Phil 3:9.

⁹⁸
The Council of Trent stated that justification is “not the remission of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man.” See also Fitzmyer (
Romans
, 347), who stated: “The sinful human being is not only ‘declared upright,’ but is ‘made upright’ (as in 5:19), for the sinner's condition has changed.”

⁹⁹
See Cranfield,
Romans
, 1:182, n. 4 and 183, n. 1. For a similar usage, see 1 Cor 4:4. See also use of
tsadaq/tsadiq
(MT) and
dikaioē/dikaios
(LXX) in a court context from the law of Moses in Deut 25:1; and the use of
tsadaq
in Ps 51:4.

¹⁰⁰
E.g., Dunn, Romans, 1:153—55. A similar interpretation that equates the “works of the law” with ceremonial law was first advanced by Pelagius. See M. F. Wiles,
The Divine Apostle: The Interpretation of St. Paul's Epistles in the Early Church
(Cambridge: University Press, 1968), 67—69.

¹⁰¹
A convenient summary of Dunn's view of the “works of the law” appears in
The Theology of Paul the Apostle
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 354-71.

¹⁰²
Exceptions to this general rule were so few that the Mishnah lists them: those who deny the resurrection; those who deny the heavenly origin of the law; those opposed to rabbinic teaching; three kings (Jeroboam, Ahab, and Manasseh); four commoners (Balaam, Doeg, Ahitophel, and Gehazi); the generations of the flood and the dispersion; the men of Sodom; the spies; and the wilderness generation.

¹⁰³
C. L. Quarles, “The Soteriology of Rabbi Akiba and E. P. Sanders’
Paul and Palestinian Judaism,” NTS
42 (1996): 185—95; id., “The New Perspective and Means of Atonement in Jewish Literature of the Second Temple Period,”
CTR 2
(2005): 39-56.

¹⁰⁴
The verbs used to describe the obedience that the law requires (
prassē
, “practice”;
teleē
, “keep”) in 2:17—29 indicate that Paul had the law's moral requirements and not only boundary markers in view. This is even clearer in 2:26 where Paul spoke of Gentiles who were uncircumcised keeping the “law's requirements” so that they were regarded by God as circumcised even though they were uncircumcised.

¹⁰⁵
So also Moo,
Romans
, 173.

¹⁰⁶
The adjective “ungodly” and the related noun “ungodliness” characterize the behavior of both Gentiles (1:18) and Jews (11:26), both the uncircumcised and the circumcised.

¹⁰⁷
Paul's use of the verb
prasso
(“done”) in this context confirms that the verb describes actions of a moral nature as argued above.

¹⁰⁸
The dative
tē autou chariti
(“by his grace”) is probably a dative of cause as in Eph 2:8. See Wallace,
Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics
, 167—68.

¹⁰⁹
E. E. Ellis,
Paul's Use of the Old Testament
(Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), 46.

¹¹⁰
Quarles, “From Faith to Faith.”

¹¹¹
See the discussion in Dunn (
Romans
, 1:43—46), whose entire treatment repays careful study. Dunn suggested that the phrase
ek pisteos eispistin
represents Paul's interpretation of Hab 2:4 and that this interpretation is to be understood against the background of the tension between the Hebrew original of Hab 2:4 and the rendering of the passage in the Greek Septuagint. Specifically, the question was, “Whose faithfulness was in mind in this passage?” The Hebrew text referred to the righteous man, while the Septuagint referred to God. Paul omitted explicit reference to either the believer or God, yet most likely his way of putting things—“from faith to faith”—represented an effort to hold the roles of God and the believer in proper tension by interpreting Hab 2:4 as indicating that God's righteousness extended
“from
faith” (i.e., God's faithfulness)”to faith” (i.e., the faith response of the believer). Thus Paul navigated the Scylla and Charybdis (dangerous extremes) of the history of interpretation of Hab 2:4 by affirming God and his faithfulness as the
source
of salvation and believers’ faith as the proper
response
to God's covenant faithfulness expressed in sending Christ.

¹¹²
E.g., Sanday and Headlam,
Romans
, 113.

¹¹³
So Cranfield,
Romans
, 245; Fitzmyer,
Romans
, 386.

¹¹⁴
E.g., Philo,
Spec. Leg. 4.187.

¹¹⁵
Thus “call…as” functions as the equivalent to “counts” or “considers”
(logizomai).
According to Käsemann, similar suggestions have been made by Zahn, Kühl, Billerbeck, and entertained by Michel. Moo (
Romans
, 281—82) and Käsemann
(Romans
, 122—24) viewed the construction as an allusion to the creative activity of God in salvation. Fitzmyer (
Romans
, 386) suggested that it refers to God's act of creating children of Abraham out of Gentiles.

¹¹⁶
See the similar treatment in L. W. Hurtado,
Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 111-12.

¹¹⁷
The original text lacks punctuation, and scholars continue to debate the correct punctuation. The manner in which modern editors and translators punctuate this text significantly impacts its meaning. Paul's theology, style, and the literary context support the punctuation of the text as it appears in the HCSB (rather than the margin). Paul clearly affirmed Jesus’ deity in texts such as Rom 10:9; Phil 2:6—11; Col 2:9; and Titus 2:13. Paul's doxologies are normally dependent (Rom 1:25; 11:36; 2 Cor 11:31; Gal 1:15; Eph 3:21; Phil 4:20; 1 Tim 1:17; 2 Tim 4:18). All of the instances of the adjective
eulogētos
(“blessed”) in the OT, Apocrypha, and NT (98 occurrences) place the adjective before the noun referring to God when independent (Ps 68:19-20 [LXX Ps 67:19—20]) is mispunctuated and not an exception). Paul's construction in 9:5 most closely parallels 2 Cor 11:31, which is clearly not independent.

¹¹⁸
Most church fathers and many modern commentators interpret this passage in this fashion; e.g., Moo,
Romans
, 655; Fitzmyer,
Romans
, 590; Cranfield,
Romans
, 2:525; Schreiner,
Romans
, 558—59.

¹¹⁹
Morris,
Apostolic Preaching
, 9—26; I. H. Marshall, “The Development of the Concept of Redemption in the New Testament,” in
Reconciliation and Hope
, 153.

¹²⁰
Moo,
Romans
, 229—30, n. 51. Paul's usage of the concept of redemption to describe the consequences of Jesus’ death was likely influenced by his knowledge of the Jesus tradition (see Mark 10:45; Matt 20:28).

¹²¹
Notice also the discussion of divine wrath in 5:9. Believers are justified now through Jesus’ sacrificial death and will be saved from God's wrath in eschatological judgment.

¹²²
This is another of the forensic terms Paul used in Romans to describe God's salvific work.

CHAPTER 14

CORE KNOWLEDGE

Basic Knowledge:
Students should know the key facts of Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon. With regard to history, students should be able to identify each book's author, date, provenance, destination, and purpose. With regard to literature, they should be able to provide a basic outline of each book and identify core elements of each book's content found in the Unit-by-Unit discussion. With regard to theology, students should be able to identify the major theological themes in Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon.

Intermediate Knowledge:
In addition to mastery of the core content identified in Basic Knowledge above, students should be able to present the arguments for historical, literary, and theological conclusions. With regard to history, students should be able to discuss the evidence for Pauline authorship, date, provenance, destination, and purpose. With regard to literature, they should be able to provide a detailed outline of each book. With regard to theology, students should be able to discuss the major theological themes in Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon and the ways in which they uniquely contribute to the NT canon.

Advanced Knowledge:
In addition to mastery of the core content identified in Basic Knowledge and beyond the Intermediate Knowledge noted above, students should be able to interact with alternative proposals concerning the literary integrity of Philippians, the authorship of Ephesians and Colossians, and the nature of Ephesians as a circular letter. Students should also be able to assess critically proposals concerning the nature of the “Colossian heresy” and its relation to the letter's purpose, discuss the interpretive options with regard to the phrase “the circumcision of Christ” in Col 2:11, and be prepared to adjudicate the possible occasions for Paul's letter to Philemon.