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| The Epistle to the Romans. St. Paul Cannot Help Using Phrases Which Bespeak the Justice of God, Even When He is Eulogizing the Mercies of the Gospel. Marcion Particularly Hard in Mutilation of This Epistle. Yet Our Author Argues on Common Ground. The Judgment at Last Will Be in Accordance with the Gospel. The Justified by Faith Exhorted to Have Peace with God. The Administration of the Old and the New Dispensations in One and the Same Hand.
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Chapter
XIII.—The Epistle to the Romans. St. Paul Cannot Help Using
Phrases Which Bespeak the Justice of God, Even When He is Eulogizing
the Mercies of the Gospel. Marcion Particularly Hard in Mutilation of
This Epistle. Yet Our Author Argues on Common Ground. The Judgment at
Last Will Be in Accordance with the Gospel. The Justified by Faith
Exhorted to Have Peace with God. The Administration of the Old and the
New Dispensations in One and the Same Hand.
Since my little work is approaching its termination,5785
I
must treat but briefly the points which still occur, whilst those which
have so often turned up must be put aside. I regret still to have to
contend about the law—after I have so often proved that its
replacement (by the gospel)5786
affords no argument
for another god, predicted as it was indeed in Christ, and in the
Creator’s own plans5787
ordained for
His Christ. (But I must revert to that discussion) so far as
(the apostle leads me, for) this very epistle looks very much as if it
abrogated5788
the law. We have,
however, often shown before now that God is declared by the apostle to
be a Judge; and that in the Judge is implied an Avenger; and in the
Avenger, the Creator. And so in the passage where he says: “I am
not ashamed of the gospel (of Christ): for it is the power of god unto
salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to
the Greek; for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith
to faith,”5789
he undoubtedly
ascribes both the gospel and salvation to Him whom (in accordance with
our heretic’s own distinction) I have called the just God,
not the good one. It is He who removes (men) from confidence in
the law to faith in the gospel—that is to say,5790
His own law and His own gospel. When, again,
he declares that “the wrath (of God) is revealed from heaven
against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth
in unrighteousness,”5791
(I ask) the wrath
of what God? Of the Creator certainly. The truth, therefore, will be
His, whose is also the wrath, which has to be revealed to avenge the
truth. Likewise, when adding, “We are sure that the judgment of
God is according to truth,”5792
he both
vindicated that wrath from which comes this judgment for the truth, and
at the same time afforded another proof that the truth emanates from
the same God whose wrath he attested, by witnessing to His judgment.
Marcion’s averment is quite a different matter,
that5793
the Creator in anger avenges Himself on the
truth of the rival god which had been detained in unrighteousness. But
what serious gaps Marcion has made in this epistle especially, by
withdrawing whole passages at his will, will be clear from the
unmutilated text of our own copy.5794
It is enough
for my purpose to accept in evidence of its truth what he has seen fit
to leave unerased, strange instances as they are also of his negligence
and blindness. If, then, God will judge the secrets of men—both
of those who have sinned in the law, and of those who have sinned
without law (inasmuch as they who know not the law yet do by nature the
things contained in the law)5795
—surely the
God who shall judge is He to whom belong both the law, and that nature
which is the rule5796
| 5796 Instar legis:
“which is as good as a law to them,” etc. | to them who know
not the law. But how will He conduct this judgment?
“According to my gospel,” says (the apostle),
“by (Jesus) Christ.”5797
So
that both the gospel and Christ must be His, to whom appertain the law
and the nature which are to be vindicated by the gospel and
Christ—even at that judgment of God which, as he previously said,
was to be according to truth.5798
The wrath,
therefore, which is to vindicate truth, can only be revealed from
heaven by the God of wrath;5799
so that this
sentence, which is quite in accordance with that previous one wherein
the judgment is declared to be the Creator’s,5800
cannot possibly be ascribed to another god
who is not a judge, and is incapable of wrath. It is only consistent in
Him amongst whose attributes are found the judgment and the wrath of
which I am speaking, and to whom of necessity must also appertain the
media whereby these attributes are to be carried into effect,
even the gospel and Christ. Hence his invective against the
transgressors of the law, who teach that men should not steal, and yet
practise theft themselves.5801
(This invective he
utters) in perfect homage5802
to the law of God,
not as if he meant to censure the Creator Himself with having
commanded5803
a fraud to be
practised against the Egyptians to get their gold and silver at the
very time when He was forbidding men to steal,5804
| 5804 Ex. xx. 15; see above, book iv. chap. xxiv. p.
387. | —adopting such methods as they are apt
(shamelessly) to charge upon Him in other particulars also. Are we then
to suppose5805
that the apostle
abstained through fear from openly calumniating God, from whom
notwithstanding He did not hesitate to withdraw men? Well, but he had
gone so far in his censure of the Jews, as to point against them the
denunciation of the prophet, “Through you the name of God is
blasphemed (among the Gentiles).”5806
But how absurd, that he should himself blaspheme Him for blaspheming
whom he upbraids them as evil-doers! He prefers even
circumcision of heart to neglect of it in the flesh. Now it is quite
within the purpose of the God of the law that circumcision should be
that of the heart, not in the flesh; in the spirit, and not in the
letter.5807
Since this is the
circumcision recommended by Jeremiah: “Circumcise (yourselves to
the Lord, and take away) the foreskins of your heart;”5808
and even of Moses: “Circumcise,
therefore, the hardness of your heart,”5809
—the Spirit which circumcises
the heart will proceed from Him who prescribed the letter also
which clips5810
the flesh; and
“the Jew which is one inwardly” will be a subject of the
self-same God as he also is who is “a Jew
outwardly;”5811
because the apostle
would have preferred not to have mentioned a Jew at all, unless he were
a servant of the God of the Jews. It was once5812
the law; now it is “the righteousness of God which is by the
faith of (Jesus) Christ.”5813
What means
this distinction? Has your god been subserving the interests of the
Creator’s dispensation, by affording time to Him and to His law?
Is the “Now” in the hands of Him to whom belonged
the “Then”? Surely, then, the law was His, whose is
now the righteousness of God. It is a distinction of dispensations, not
of gods. He enjoins those who are justified by faith in Christ
and not by the law to have peace with God.5814
| 5814 Tertullian, by
the word “enjoins” (monet), seems to have
read the passage in Rom. v. 1 in the hortatory sense with ἔχωμεν, “let us
have peace with God.” If so, his authority must be added to
that exceedingly strong ms. authority which
Dean Alford (Greek Test. in loc.) regrets to find overpowering
the received reading of ἔχομεν, “we
have,” etc. We subjoin Alford’s critical note in
support of the ἔχωμεν, which (with
Lachmann) he yet admits into his more recent text: “AB
(originally) CDKLfh (originally) m 17 latt (including F-lat); of the
versions the older Syriac (Peschito) (and Copt;of the fathers,
Chrysostom, Cyril, Theodoret, Damascene, Thephylact, Œcumenius,
Rufinus, Pelagius, Orosius, Augustine, Cassiodorus,” before whom
I would insert Tertullian, and the Codex Sinaiticus, in its
original state; although, like its great rival in authority, the
Codex Vaticanus, it afterwards received the reading
ἔχομεν. These second
readings of these mss., and the later Syriac
(Philoxenian), with Epiphanius, Didymus, and Sedulius, are the almost
only authorities quoted for the received text. [Dr. H.
over-estimates the “rival” Codices.] |
With what God? Him whose enemies we have never, in any
dispensation,5815
been? Or Him
against whom we have rebelled, both in relation to His written law and
His law of nature? Now, as peace is only possible towards Him with whom
there once was war, we shall be both justified by Him, and to Him also
will belong the Christ, in whom we are justified by faith, and through
whom alone God’s5816
enemies can ever be
reduced to peace. “Moreover,” says he, “the law
entered, that the offence might abound.”5817
And wherefore this? “In order,” he says, “that (where
sin abounded), grace might much more abound.”5818
Whose grace, if not of that God from whom
also came the law? Unless it be, forsooth, that5819
| 5819 Nisi si: an ironical
particle. |
the Creator intercalated His law for the mere purpose of5820
producing some employment for the grace of a
rival god, an enemy to Himself (I had almost said, a god unknown to
Him), “that as sin had” in His own dispensation5821
“reigned unto death, even so might
grace reign through righteousness unto (eternal) life by Jesus
Christ,”5822
His own antagonist!
For this (I suppose it was, that) the law of the Creator had
“concluded all under sin,”5823
and had brought in “all the world as guilty (before God),”
and had “stopped every mouth,”5824
so
that none could glory through it, in order that grace might be
maintained to the glory of the Christ, not of the Creator, but of
Marcion! I may here anticipate a remark about the substance of Christ,
in the prospect of a question which will now turn up. For he says that
“we are dead to the law.”5825
| 5825 Rom.
vii. 4; also Gal. ii. 19.
This (although a quotation) is here a Marcionite argument; but there is
no need to suppose, with Pamelius, that Marcion tampers with
Rom. vi. 2. Oehler also supposes that this is
the passage quoted. But no doubt it is a correct quotation from the
seventh chapter, as we have indicated. | It
may be contended that Christ’s body is indeed a body, but not
exactly5826
| 5826 Statim (or, perhaps,
in respect of the derivation), “firmly” or
“stedfastly.” | flesh. Now,
whatever may be the substance, since he mentions “the body of
Christ,”5827
whom he immediately
after states to have been “raised from the dead,”5828
none other body can be understood than that
of the flesh,5829
| 5829 In this argument
Tertullian applies with good effect the terms “flesh” and
“body,” making the first [which he elsewhere calls the
“terrena materia” of our nature (ad Uxor.
i. 4)] the proof of the reality of the second, in opposition to
Marcion’s Docetic error. “Σὰρξ is not = σῶμα, but as in John i. 14, the material of which man
is in the body compounded” (Alford). | in respect of which
the law was called (the law) of death.5830
But, behold, he bears testimony to the law, and excuses it on the
ground of sin: “What shall we say, therefore? Is the law
sin? God forbid.”5831
Fie on you,
Marcion. “God forbid!” (See how) the apostle recoils
from all impeachment of the law. I, however, have no acquaintance with
sin except through the law.5832
| 5832 This, which is really
the second clause of Rom. vii.
7, seems to be here put as a
Marcionite argument of disparagement to the law. | But how high an
encomium of the law (do we obtain) from this fact, that by it there comes to
light the latent presence of sin!5833
| 5833 Per quam liquuit
delictum latere: a playful paradox, in the manner of our author,
between liquere and latere. | It was not the
law, therefore, which led me astray, but “sin, taking occasion by
the commandment.”5834
Why then do you, (O
Marcion,) impute to the God of the law what His apostle dares not
impute even to the law itself? Nay, he adds a climax: “The law is
holy, and its commandment just and good.”5835
Now if he thus reverences the Creator’s law, I am at a loss to
know how he can destroy the Creator Himself. Who can draw a
distinction, and say that there are two gods, one just and the other
good, when He ought to be believed to be both one and the other, whose
commandment is both “just and good?” Then,
again, when affirming the law to be “spiritual”5836
he thereby implies that it is prophetic, and
that it is figurative. Now from even this circumstance I am bound to
conclude that Christ was predicted by the law but figuratively, so that
indeed He could not be recognised by all the Jews.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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