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THE EXPOSITOR'S E

EDITED BY THE REV,

EDITOR OF

11

THE EXPOSITORt"

11

THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE," ETC.,

VOLUME II.

LONDON HODDER

AND

STOUGHTON

27 PATERNOSTER ROW 1900

ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS

THE EXPOSITOR'S

I

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES BY THE REV,

R.

J.

KNOWLING,

PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS, KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON

11

ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS BY THE REV.

JAMES DENNEY, D.D. PROFESSOR OF SYSTEMATIC AND PASTORAL THEOLOGY, FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, GLASGOW

Ill

ST. PAUL'S FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS BY THE REV.

G. G. FINDLAY, B.A. PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, EXEGESIS AND CLASSICS, HEADINGLEY COLLEGE

LONDON HODDER

AND

STOUGHTON

27 PATERNOSTER ROW 1900

ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE

ROMANS

INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH AT ROME.

OF the beginnings of Christianity in Rome nothing whatever is known on direct evidence. The tradition which assigns the founding of the Church there to Peter cannot possibly be maintained. In one form it assumes that Peter, on the occasion referred to in Acts xii. 17, travelled to Rome, and there propagated the Church from the synagogue as a centre. As this departure of Peter from Jerusalem took place, on the usual reckoning, about 42 A •.o., there would be time for his twenty-five years' episcopate of Rome, which was once the accepted Romish idea, though now given up even by Romish scholars. But it is clear from the book of Acts (chap. xv.) that Peter was in Jerusalem ten years after this, and it is equally clear from the Epistle to the Romans that he had not been in Rome when this letter was written, seven years later still. In face of a passage like chap. xv. 20 it is impossible to suppose that the Church of Rome had already been the scene of another Apostle's labours. Three years later, when Paul at length arrived in Rome, it had still been unvisited by Peter, to judge from what we read in Acts xxviii.; and even when he wrote the Epistle to the Philippians, towards the close of his first imprisonment, there is no indication that his brother Apostle had yet seen the capital. The earliest tradition represents Peter and Paul as in Rome together, and, indeed, as suffering together, in the Neronian persecution. All the evidence for this will be found in Euseb., Hist. Eccl., I I., xxv. What the worth of it is, it is not easy to say. It is not incredible that Peter may have been in Rome about the date in question, especially if Babylon in 1 Peter v. 13 means Rome, as it does in the Apocalypse. But in any case Peter can have had no direct part in founding the Church. In Iren., iii., 1, 2, Peter and Paul are spoken of as " preaching the Gospel in Rome, and founding the Church," at the time that Matthew published his gospel.

558

INTRODUCTION

That Christianity was there long before this time is indubitable, but the Roman Christians, it has been suggested (see Harvey's note on Iren. ad loc.), "appear neither to have had an ecclesiastical polity nor to have been under the regular regimen of the Church . . . . Several expressions in the epistle seem to indicate a crude, unsettled state of things there. . . . They are spoken of as depending rather upon mutual exhortation and instruction than upon any more authoritative communication of evangelical truth (xv. 14) . . . and the Apostle expresses his intention to visit them, according to a purpose entertained a:rro TroA'X.wv tTwv [tKavwv is the true reading] with the hope that he might come tv TrA'IJpwp.an e&A.oy[ac; (Toil e&ayyeA.(ou) Tou Xpt.~yw TOLS I!Ovww. Here the whole Church is addressed in its character as Gentile. To this it has been replied that the whole Church is not addressed here ; with &p.l:v 8€ Paul expressly turns aside to address only a part of the Church. If the words stood alone, this might be maintained, but the context is decisive in favour of the former meaning. In the continuation of the passage (see especially xi. 25-28) the Church as a whole is warned against contempt for the Jews; it is addressed in the second person (xi. 25, 28, 30 f.), without any suggestion of distinctions in it, whereas the

INTRODUCTION Jews are spoken of throughout in the third. Furthet•, when Paul speaks of the Jews in chaps. ix.-xi., it is as "my brethren,''" my kinsmen according to the flesh," not ours nor yours, as would have been the case had the bulk of the Church been of Jewish origin. (d) Chap. xv. 15 f. TOhfJ.'I)pOTEpws 8€ eypmJ!a &p.'i:v K.T.h. Here Paul justifies himself, in closing, for writing as he has done-especially, perhaps, for writing so decidedly in chap. xiv.-xv. 13- to the Romans. The reason he gives is unmistakable. He is a ministe~ of Jesus Christ, a priest in the service of the Gospel; the offering he has to lay on the altar is the Gentiles, and he writes to the Romans because they are Gentiles, to further them in their faith, that when they are presented to God it may be an acceptable offering, sanctified in the Holy Spirit. There is no evading this argument; to say that in vers. 17-20 Paul's justification of this presentation of himself as minister of Jesus Christ €tS Tcl e8Vlj is directed against Jewish-Christian suspicions and insinuations (cf. 2 Cor. x. 12-18, xii. 11, 12) may or may not be true, but is quite irrelevant ; even if there were such suspicions, and even if they had begun to find acceptance in Rome, the Gentile character of the Church at Rome as a whole is here put beyond question. (e) Less stress can be laid on passages like vi. 17 f. (~Te 8ou'ho~ T~S &p.apTias), though they have undoubtedly something which recalls the e~ e8vwv &p.apTw'hol of Gal. ii. 15. By the time he has reached chap. vi. Paul is quite entitled to assume that his readers were once slaves of sin, without suggesting anything about their nationality. Neither do the suggestions of particular sins (e.g., in vi. 12-14) throw any real light on the question. All kinds of bad things are done both by Gentiles and Jews. But discountjng weak and uncertain arguments, there is a plain and solid case for maintaining that the great bulk of the Church at Rome was of Gentile origin. 2. Evidence for the Jewish-Christian character of the Church. (a) There are passages in which Paul includes himself and his readers in the first person plural ; now no one, it is to be observed, is included with him in the superscription, so that "we '' must mean "you and I". Thus iii. 9 1rpoexop.e8a; are we (Jews) surpassed? But it is very natural to suppose that Paul here, as is his rule, allows his opponents (real or imaginary) to state their own objections in their own person, the "we" neither including himself nor his readers; or if he speaks in his own person, it is the natioJlal consciousness of the Jew, which Paul of course shared, and not the joint consciousness of Paul and his readers, which is conveyed by the plural. Another passage of the same kind is iv. 1 : 'A~paO.p. Tcw

INTRODUCTION 11'pomhopa ~p.wv Kcm\ uapKa.

Here also the explanation is the same. Paul says "our" forefather because he has no choice. He could speak of his fellow-countrymen as " my ldnsmen according to the flesh " ; but it would have been obviously absurd for him to speak of Abraham as " my " forefather. It is only through his relation to the nation that he can claim a connection with Abraham, and hence the "our" in iv. 1 is national, not individual, and has nothing to do with the Romans. Cf. the precisely similar case in ix. 10 (lsaac our father). The same use of the first person plural is found in 1 Cor. x. I (All our fathers were under the cloud), which no one doubts was written to a thoroughly Gentile Church. As far therefore as passages like these are concerned, they do not invalidate in the least the evidence adduced for the Gentile character of the Church at Rome. (b) Not so simple are those passages which speak either in the first or second person plural of the relation of the readers, or of Paul and his readers alike, to the law. The most important of these is chap. vii. 1-6. Paul here speaks to his readers as persons yww' &¥ a.ya.'ll'n 6eou. The same MS. also omits TOL'> ev Pwflon in ver. 17. This is part of

the evidence on which Lightfoot relied to show that Paul had issued chaps. i.-xiv. of this Epistle as a circular letter with all local allusions (such as these, and the many in chaps. xv. and xvi.) omitted. See Introduction, p. 578. 2 For li'II'Ep read 'll''s which have been assigned to it atte~pt to justify themselves as relevant, or inevitable, by connecting themselves with the context as a whole. There can be no doubt that the fundamental religious problem for the Apostle -that which made a Gospel necessary, that the solution of which could alone be Gospel-was, How shall a sinful man be righteous before God? To Luther, who had instinctive experimental sympathy with the Pauline standpoint, this suggested that BLKO.LOCTVV'IJ 9eoii meant a righteousness valid before God, of which a man can become possessed through faith; for such a righteousness (as the condition of salvation) is the first and last need of the sinful soul. In support of this view reference has been made to ver. r8, where aCTEj3e•o. and c18LK£o. c1v9p~'ll'wv are represented as the actual existing conditions which the 8'"· 9eoii has to replace. No one can deny that a righteousness valid before God is essential to salvation, or that such a righteousness is revealed in the Gospel; but it is another question whether 8'"· lleoii is a natural expression for it. The general sense of scholars seems to have decided against it ; but it seems quite credible to me that Paul used 8'"' 9eoii broadly to mean " a Divine righteousness," and that the particular shade of meaning which Luther made prominent can be legitimately associated even with these words. Until lately, scholars of the most opposite schools had agreed in finding the key to the expression 8LK. 6eoii in two other Pauline passages, where it is contrasted with something else. Thus in chap. x. 3 8'"· 9eoii is opposed to man's 1 8 (a. BLKO.Louof' CD 3 KL, vulg., Syr., is omitted by ~ 1 ABD 1 G fuld,l On !>0'11V9ET011\;o 2

Probably a gloss

3 Westcott and Hort suppose some primitive error probable here; see their N. T., vol. 2, Appendix, p. roS. For 1I'OLovaLv ••• V D, ovK eyvw, and would have none of Him ; and He in turn gave them up to a voil> 0.8oKLf-'O>, a mind which is no mind and cannot discharge the functions of one, a mind in which the Divine distinctions of right and wrong are confused and lost, so that God's condemnation cannot but fall on it at last. voil> is not only reason, but conscience ; when this is perverted, as in the people of whom Paul speaks, or in the Caananites, who did their abominations unto their Gods, the last deep of evil has been reached. Most of the words which follow describe sins of malignity or inhumanity rather than sensuality, but they cannot be classified. Ta_ f-'~ K9~KOVTC> COVers all, Kn9~KOVTC> is the Stoic word which Cicero renders officia. Ke>K01J9(n, the tendency to put the worst construction on everything (Arist. Rh. ii. 13), and KnK(n are examined in Trench's Synonyms,§ xi.,and vj3pLO'T~ •• v11'ep~cf>nvo>, nAn!;wv in § xxix. Oeo TO 8LO.

0 '

~

Ka.L O'TEVOXWpta., em 1Ta.O'a.V 'f'UX'IJV uV pw1rou TOU , , louoa.LOU "' ' ~ TO, Ka.KOV, TE 1rpWTOV Ka.L' •E'' 1\/\'r)VOS' 10. 8o~a. 8€ Ka.l np.~ Ka.l elp~V'I] 11'a.VTl T.. The TE indicates that this confidence is the immediate and natural result of what precedes : it is not right, in view of all the N.T. examples, to say that '!l'e'!l'oL6a.wO"L..a, tepOO'UAELS; 23. 'll'nvTas; see Win er, p. 521. thing to evangelic righteousness. It is For 8taO"ToA..j, cf. x. 12. The righteousplain that in this expression v6p.os does ness of God comes to all on the terms of not signify the 0. T. revelation or religion faith, for all alike need it, and can receive as such, but that religion, or any other, it only so. V er. 23. {jp.a.pTov must be rendered conceived as embodied in statutes. It is statutory obedience which (as Paul has in English "have sinned"; see Burton, learned by experience) cannot justify. Moods and Tenses, § 54· .UuTEpovvTat Hence vop.o> has not exactly the same expresses the consequence= and so come sense here as in the next clause, fl'll'o Toil · short of the glory of God. To emphasise v6p.ov "· TWV 11'pO'J'!'WV, where the whole the middle, and render "they come short, expression is equal to the O.T., and the andfeelthattheydoso,"thoughsuggested meaning is that the Gospel is not alien by the comparison of Mt. xix. 20 with Lk. to the religion of Israel, but really finds xv. 14 (Gifford), is not borne out by the attestation there. This is worth remark- use of the N.T. as a whole. The most ing, because there is a similar variation one could say is that sibi is latent in VOL. II. 39

610 I

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Ill.

~a6~r~·.t T~S 80s'I)S TOU 0Eou, 24. 8LKO.LOOfLEVOL 8wpEav TU a.thou xapm, Sui 7; R ev. T~S a:rroAuTpWaEws T~S olv XpL