Romans
4:1-5, 13-17 (NRSV)
What then are we to say was gained by Abraham,
our ancestor according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified
by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For
what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him
as righteousness.”[Genesis 15:6] 4 Now to one who works, wages are
not reckoned as a gift but as something due. 5 But to one who
without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as
righteousness.
13 For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but
through the righteousness of faith. 14 If it is the adherents of the
law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. 15 For
the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.
16
For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest
on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of
the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father
of all of us, 17 as it is written, “I have made you the father of
many nations” [Genesis 17:5])—in the presence of the God in whom he believed,
who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not
exist.
Chapter 4
shows that justification by faith is the fulfillment of the Old Covenant by
using Abraham as the example. It becomes an illustration of what he said in
3:21-31. It becomes the basis for the universalistic thrust of the preaching of
Paul, for faith rather than Law, which only came centuries later, justified
Abraham. In that sense, the Gentile mission of Paul has its root in the
Israelite covenant. Paul will have to persuade his Jewish interlocutor at this
point, or he will remain unconvinced. Paul offers a Midrash on Genesis 15:6,
“Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Abraham
experienced rightness with God through faith, and not through either Law or
circumcision. Barth will point out again that the wealth of religion is its
danger, for instead of viewing itself as a sign that points beyond itself to
the God who establishes humanity, it erects a great pyramid at which it hopes
people will gaze. This passage will make one go to the letter of James in the
New Testament and wrestle with the quite differing ways in which these two
letters refer to Abraham. The point Paul is making is that the faith of
Abraham, rather than circumcision or his anticipatory fulfillment of the Law,
was the basis of his rightness before God. In the passage we again see that
father Abraham giving up his son is a reminder that in the cross the Father
acted to reconcile the world. The Father was at work in this event in order to
direct divinely the course of human history. Faith makes us righteous before
God only because it appropriates the saving work of God in Christ, and
especially the forgiveness of sins based on his atoning death, just as once
Abraham accepted in faith the promise that God had given him.[1]
What Paul
is doing is showing that righteousness by faith is not alien to the Jewish
tradition. He refers to the example of Abraham, whose faith in the promise of
God is reckoned to him as righteousness. In verses 1-5, Paul wonders what
Abraham gained. If he gained justification through works, he could boast before
people, but not before God. According to the witness of Genesis 15:6, Abraham
believed God, and God counted it (in the books that God keeps) as
righteousness. We should note that this passage is paradigmatic for the close
relation between faith and hope is the description of the faith of Abraham. The
point Paul makes is that if one works, one receives the wages due. However, if
one trusts God, who justifies the ungodly, then such reckoning or counting as
righteousness is a gift. Faith in God is more important for our righteousness
before God than works of the law. The circumcision of Abraham comes later. For
Paul, the true children of Abraham are those who live by faith.[2]
This righteousness (dikaiosunh) God
grants through faith, not self-righteousness that one earns through works. This
is to say that, again, God’s gracious initiative is at the heart of the matter.
Authentic human righteousness can only come from God, who alone is completely
righteous. Barth[3]
will say that Abraham, in receiving justification before he became a Jew,
verifies the point Paul is making. To take one’s stand under the Law of Israel
means to stand in the sphere of the divine wrath. Law means transgression of
the law. Where one has no Law, one has no condemnation.
Beginning in verse 6, Paul refers
to a Psalm that speaks of the blessedness of those who to whom God reckons or
counts righteousness apart from works, a psalm that stresses forgiveness. Paul
then asks if such blessedness is only for the circumcised. How did God reckon
or count the faith of Abraham as righteousness? He reminds us that this
reckoning occurred before his physical circumcision. He received the sign of
circumcision as a seal of the righteousness he had by faith and while he was
still uncircumcised. The purpose of the reckoning was that he would become the
ancestor of all who believe while still uncircumcised, as well as the ancestor
of the circumcised who believe. As Barth[4]
sees it, the Bible cuts the root of all the later conceptions that tried to
attribute to the faith of humanity a merit for the attainment of justification
or co-operation in its fulfillment, or to identify faith with justification.
The pardon of humanity is the work of God. It was not long until baptism had
become the Christian seal of faith. For
Barth,[5]
the true reality of all impressions of revelation consists in their being
signs, witnesses, types, recollections, and sign-posts to the revelation
itself, which lies beyond actual reality. Abraham participated also in this
typical concrete world, in circumcision, church and in religion. The church is
the canalization in history of that divine transaction in people that can never
become a matter of history. The wealth of religion has its own peculiar danger,
for its proper function may be misunderstood. Instead of pointing beyond itself,
one may erect it, like some great pyramid, as an immense stone. True religion
is a seal, reminding people that God has established them. It reminds them of
their dissolution and of their redemption.
Then, beginning in verse 13, Paul
begins a discussion of the promise, faith, and hope. Paul stresses that the
promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham through the
Torah, but through the righteousness of faith. If the heirs of the promise were
such through Torah, then faith is null and the promise void. The reason is that
Torah brings wrath (see 1:18-3:20), since without it one can have no violation.
Barth[6]
says that whenever people suppose themselves conscious of the emotion of
nearness to God, whenever they speak and write of divine things, whenever
sermon-making and temple-building are thought of as an ultimate human
occupation, whenever people are aware of divine appointment and of being
entrusted with a divine mission, sin abounds. Being an heir of the promise,
then, must depend on faith, so that the promise rests on grace toward those who
share the faith of Abraham, who is father of us all, even as the promise finds
its fulfillment. The God in whom he believed gives life to the dead and calls
into existence the things that do not exist. In a sense, the essence of God is
not available to us apart from this revelation, that God raised Jesus from the
dead.[7]
Here is an area in which neither individuals nor communities can co-operate.
Giving life to the dead is an act of God alone. Paul, as Pannenberg[8]
sees it, puts the resurrection of the dead alongside creation out of nothing.
The Easter event and the resurrection on which Christina hope is set are no
less limitless than creation. Only the Creator can awaken the dead, and
resurrection from the dead shows what it means to be Creator. The act of
creation finds consummation in the resurrection. Resurrection is the supreme
enactment of the will of the Creator that wills the existence of creatures.
Indeed, by using this imagery, Paul makes a connection between God overcoming
the childlessness of Abraham and Sarah (“gives life to the dead”) with creation
(“calls into existence the things that do not exist”). The Eighteen
Benedictions have this theme as well, a prayer Paul likely had memorized. The
dynamic of God’s grace and Abraham’s faith operating in 4:16-17 helps
substantiate what goes before in the passage. In simplest terms, Paul is
telling his audience that when it comes to God’s promises it is not what we do
to earn them, but what God does graciously to bestow them. This is reinforced
by at least three ways that Paul uses language to develop his argument.
Then, beginning in verse 18, Paul
stresses that hoping against hope that Abraham would be the father of many
nations. Yet, becoming an example to us all, the faith of Abraham did not
weaken when he did not consider his own 100-year-old body when he received the
promise of an heir. He did not distrust or waver concerning the promise of God.
Rather, he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully
convinced that God was able to do what God had promised. Therefore, God
reckoned or counted his faith as righteousness. The promise to reckon or count
was not just for him, but was also for us. Pannenberg[9]
says that confession of Jesus as Lord gives hope of deliverance in connection
with belief in the apostolic proclamation that God has raised him from the
dead, and by this faith, we are righteous before God. This implies a personal
relation of individuals to Jesus Christ, as well as membership in the church
founded by the apostolic missionary proclamation and adherence to its common
confession of the apostolic faith. As
Paul continues, God will reckon our faith as righteousness when we believe in
the God who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. God handed him over to death
for our trespasses, and God raised him for our justification. Pannenberg[10]
thinks that this suggests expiation. Further, the Father giving up the Son
reminds us that in the death of Jesus, God the Father acted to reconcile the
world. God the Father was at work in this event according to divine
providential directing of the course of history. The sending of the Son by the
Father aims at the vicarious expiatory death on the cross. dia,
the Greek Fathers understood the resurrection of Christ as the cause of
justification. Many Latin Fathers
attempted to integrate the two ideas, death and resurrection, but this attempt
unfortunately minimized the causality of the resurrection, for it came to be
regarded only as an appendage or even as an exemplary confirmation of Jesus’
death, which they considered to be the real cause of the forgiveness of sins
and justification.
The
only difference between hope and believing trust in the God who promises is
that the relation to the self that is implicit in this trust in God is made a
theme in the case of hope. It is oriented to the content of the promise as the
future of salvation that concerns believers themselves. Based on faith it is
essential that this should happen, for faith itself depends on the promise of
God and becomes saving faith only as believers accept the promise as pertaining
to themselves. In the act of faith, we first see this relation to the self as
the expression of the promise as the word of God addressing and reaching the
self, and then it becomes a theme in hope as hope looks to the saving blessing
that God promised. Hence, Christian hope rests on faith. Further, the example
of Abraham points to an important aspect of hope. The promise of God to him for
a son corresponds to the desire he had for a long time. His example shows that
the divine promise is not always contrary to human desire. The promise of God
runs contrary to the hopes that we set on life here. The promise carries our
human tendency, which is open and has no definite goal, beyond the incomplete
present to the future actualization. The promise of God, who from the very
first is our Creator, actualizes the tendency and gives precision to its
object, reorienting it but not outdating our nullifying it. An appeal to the
promises of God would deprive them of any meaning if they did not respond to
our deepest wants and needs. Yet, we cannot accomplish on our own and by our
own action our salvation, the wholeness and fulfillment of our existence, its
identity with its destiny to be truly itself. No more can we rationally expect
the changes and chances of life to do this for us. The hope of fulfillment, of
salvation, transcends all that is possible by what we do or in the ordinary
course of things. To that extent, we have here a hope against all hope that
normal who gives to life to the dead and being to what is not. Paul found this
promise expressed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, for the
significance of this event puts the situation the situation of all of us in a
new light. In contrast, one could found the promises in what is attainable in
the course of things and by human action.[11]
[1]
Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 72; Systematic Theology, Volume III, 225.
[2]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume
III, 63.
[3]
Church Dogmatics, II.2 [34.2],
215-16.
[4]
Church Dogmatics, IV.1 [61.4],
614-15.
[5]
Romans, 129.
[6]
Romans, 136.
[7]
Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 130.
[8]
Systematic Theology Volume I, 417.
[9]
Systematic Theology Volume III, 232.
[10]
Systematic Theology Volume II, 418,
438.
[11]
Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume
III, 173-74, 176-77.
No comments:
Post a Comment