God and Israel

Providence and Purpose in Romans 9–11

Todd D. Still

• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781481307024
• eBook ISBN:
  9781481307048
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost consciously seeks to "justify the ways of God to men." The Apostle Paul's magisterial letter to the Romans does not so much intend to defend God's ways as to declare God's Word--a Word made public in the gospel. In Romans 9-11 this declaration occurs within the context of God's troubled relationship with Israel, both past and future.  God and Israel traces the ways in which providence and purpose are realized as God's Word to and about Israel in Romans 9-11. Written by gifted and tested Pauline interpreters, the volume offers a fresh reading of this vexed and vexing part of Paul in the context of Romans and the Pauline witness. God and Israel squarely tackles the questions of Paul's understanding of salvation-historical time (L. Ann Jervis); the faithfulness and sovereignty of the covenantal God (Michael Wolter); Paul's mythic rhetoric of "ingrafting" (Davina C. Lopez); the disputed relation between Israel and her "enemies," the Gentiles (J. Ross Wagner); the role of Christ in God's purposes and his relation to the nation of Israel (Simon Gathercole); and, finally, the unfailing eschatological hope for Israel's full inclusion (Jonathan A. Linebaugh). If only simple solutions are sought for the challenges Paul's gospel and his letters pose, frustration will result. But if readers follow the Apostle to the Gentiles as he wrestles with ultimate questions of God's purposes in his own anguish over kith and kin, then wisdom will be found.

1

Promise and Purpose in Romans 9:1-13

Toward Understanding Paul’s View of Time

L. Ann Jervis

In what follows I ask a question of Paul for which he offers neither a direct answer nor explicit discourse: what is the apostle’s conception of time?1 Despite the necessity—shared by all Pauline interpreters—of working with hints rather than clear evidence, this is a question that begs to be asked for at least two reasons: First, interpreters of Paul are heavily invested in the apostle’s view of time. Second, there is currently a stalemate in Pauline scholarship between the salvation historical and apocalyptic interpretative frameworks. I will begin by examining the first reason, and will then move on to the second.

Scholars with salvation historical or apocalyptic convictions about Paul, in particular, interpret certain passages in relation to their views concerning Paul’s conception of time.2 Salvation historical interpreters regard Paul’s conception of time as linear: Time moves forward under the direction of God. Time, understood as human history, is progressing ahead in divinely ordained stages.3

The apocalyptic reading claims that Paul is convinced, in the words of one of the most generative of current apocalyptic interpreters M. de Boer, that “believers . . . live at the juncture of the ages where the forces of the new age . . . are in an ongoing struggle with the forces of the old age.”4 In this view, Paul adapted Jewish apocalyptic eschatology in light of Christ. And believers in Christ know that “the future has invaded the present.”5 Apocalyptic interpreters claim, then, that Paul conceived of the present time as having been invaded by the future time,6 and so, as it is often said, time is now “already/not yet.”7 As de Boer describes, there is “tension between an ‘already’ (God has already acted apocalyptically to liberate human beings from enslaving powers) and a ‘still more’ (God has not yet finished the job).”8 This tension will end when what is now only inaugurated is all that remains. Apocalyptic interpreters typically speak of what has been inaugurated but not completed as the future, new age9 or the new creation.10

Moreover, the apocalyptic reading connects space and time: the two ages are both “temporal categories” and “spatial categories.”11 Thanks to de Boer,12 Pauline apocalyptic interpreters typically understand the two ages in light of Jewish cosmological apocalyptic eschatology in which “the two ages are not simply, or even primarily, temporal categories, referring to two successive, discontinuous periods of world history (‘ages’): they are also spatial categories, referring to two spheres or orbs of power, both of which claim sovereignty over the world.”13 The two ages (the present age and the future/new age/new creation) are structured by different powers: this age by anti-god powers14 and the age to come by God. These two interpretative frameworks about Paul’s view of time deeply affect interpretation of his letters.15

The second pressing reason for interrogating Paul’s view of time follows from the first: the current stalemate in Pauline scholarship between the salvation historical and apocalyptic interpretative frameworks. It seems the right moment to raise the question again. I will now speak to Paul’s use of the concepts of promise and God’s purpose of election in Romans 9:1-13 in hopes of offering some fresh suggestions about how Paul might have thought about time.16

Briefly, let me emphasize that I am exploring what Paul might have thought about time. Before engaging with my investigation, then, it may be necessary for my readers to identify their assumptions about what time may or may not be—assumptions based on education in physics or philosophy, based on ordinary experience of time, or based on theological convictions such as are evidenced in the salvation historical and apocalyptic interpretations.

Promise, But Not Fulfillment

In what follows we will see that Paul refers to promise/s without, as one would expect, also referring to fulfillment of the promise/s. I will suggest that this says something about Paul’s view of time. Paul thinks of God’s promise/s chiefly in the context not of the human linear experience of time, but rather in the context of the life of God—God’s time.

Promise in Romans 9:4-13. One of the curiosities, among many, of Romans 9–11 is that though Paul affirms that the promises belong to the Israelites (οἵτινές εἰσιν Ἰσραηλῖται, ὧν . . . αἱ ἐπαγγελίαι, 9:4), he does not speak of those promises being fulfilled. Given Paul’s aim in these chapters, this seems curious indeed.

In Romans 9–11 Paul ponders the mysterious state of affairs in which God’s people have not accepted the one the apostle believes is their Messiah. Given this, we might then rightly expect that after Paul’s statement, the promises belong to the Israelites that in service of this argument he would introduce also the idea of fulfillment. Yet Paul’s discourse—which climaxes in the claim that God has not rejected God’s people (11:1) and that all Israel will be saved (11:26)—is not structured by a promise-fulfillment scheme.17 Paul claims that the promises belong to Israel, but he does not say that they are fulfilled. (Neither does he say that Scripture is fulfilled.) I suggest that this curious fact may indicate something of Paul’s view of time.

A promise-fulfillment scheme (such as is found so plenteously in, for instance, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and even John, as well as in Acts) relies on a linear conception of time—an event happens following another event (the fulfillment after the promise). So, for instance, in the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus sends his disciples to find an ass and a colt in preparation for his entry into Jerusalem, Matthew writes, “This happened in order that the word of the prophet might be fulfilled [πληρωθῇ], saying, ‘Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass’ ” (Matt 21:4-5).18

Promise-fulfillment, which is fundamental to the salvation historical interpretative framework, works with a conception of time as an entity that moves linearly forward, in this case from potential to actuality (from the promise of something that is not yet, to the coming into existence of what is promised).

In Romans 9–11, however, Paul does not speak of the promises that belong to the Israelites as being fulfilled by God’s action in Christ. Neither at 9:4, nor elsewhere in chapters 9–11, or indeed the rest of Romans, does Paul connect the promise with fulfillment.19 Paul says simply that the promises belong to the Israelites, along with other divinely given attributes, including “the Messiah according to the flesh”—which Messiah, it should be noted, Paul does not describe as the fulfillment of the promises (9:5). The promises belong to the Israelites, along with gifts from God that, as Paul will affirm, are permanent—“the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (11:29). The promises are an aspect of the identity of the Israelites, but Paul does not claim that they need to be or are being fulfilled. This raises the question of whether Paul thought of the promises in a context other than a promise-fulfillment scheme.

At Romans 9:8-9 we again see this use of the concept of promise. Paul does not speak of the children of the promise as a fulfillment. The promise in the phrase “the children of the promise” is, rather, contextually equated with “the word of God” (9:6). This is made clear when at 9:9 Paul combines “the word” with “promise”—“the word of promise.” Promise here appears, then, not with the idea of fulfillment but with the concept of “word”: ἐπαγγελίας γὰρ ὁ λόγος οὗτος.

Paul frames 9:6-13 with his assertion of the certainty of ὁ λόγος τοῦ θεοῦ. Using the perfect tense, Paul affirms that the word of God has not failed (9:6). That is, the word of God is continually certain. The “word of God” at Romans 9:6 presumably does not stray far from the meaning it has in 2 Corinthians 4:2, where it is equivalent to “the truth,” and so an entity that lacks no completion.

In context Paul’s use of the phrase “word of promise” at 9:9 suggests that he is seeking to view the promise from God’s perspective. While from human perspective the promise might be described as fulfilled (Sarah gives birth to Isaac), fulfillment is not where Paul puts his attention. Paul focuses rather on the promise as “the word,” presumably God’s word. It is the promise in and of itself, an entity that is an aspect of the certainty of God’s word and the continuance of God’s purpose of election (9:11), to which Paul attends. Paul is, I submit, thinking of the promise from God’s, and not from a human, perspective. The promise is, and it is certain in and of itself. And so the children of the promise (9:8; spoken of not as a fulfillment) are evidence of God’s unfailing word and abiding purpose. The promise itself, then, is not an entity of potential, but an one of actuality. Promise here might be understood as an abiding vow, such as one makes in a marriage ceremony. The promise/vow is foundational: it is enough in itself (as long as the one who made the promise does not break it).

As mentioned, a promise-fulfillment scheme fits an understanding of time as an entity that moves from what is not to what is, and so is linear. In the context of fulfillment, a promise is a pledge to be fulfilled at a moment down the line—it signifies potential. In a promise-fulfillment scheme, a promise looks ahead to its completion at the moment when it is fulfilled.

Paul’s use of promise here, however, teases our minds to ponder whether the apostle is thinking of the promises not as awaiting completion, but as already sufficient and complete—and so to imagine that Paul conceived of time in a manner other than the linear progression that a promise-fulfillment format assumes.

Promise Elsewhere in Romans. Let us take a necessarily brief look at what Paul says elsewhere in Romans about promise.

(1) Rom 4:13-20: For the promise to Abraham and his seed . . . is not through law but through righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs . . . the promise is nullified. . . . On account of this it is from faith, in order that it might be according to grace, in order that the promise might be confirmed/firm [εἰς τὸ εἶναι βεβαίαν τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν] for all the seed. . . . Yet, with respect to the promise of God he . . . grew strong in faith.

Paul’s claim that the promise to Abraham and his descendants is “through righteousness of faith” (4:13) declares that this promise is to be believed in. For Paul, God’s promise must be understood as being entirely in God’s hands, an entity that is to be believed; it is to be recognized as a gift (“according to grace”), and so not something on which humans have any purchase, particularly not through obedience to the law (4:13). The appropriate response to God’s promise is to know that it is certain—that it is confirmed—for all of Abraham’s descendants (4:16).20

At Romans 4:13-16 Paul’s point is that the promise is certain, not that it will be seen to be certain once it is fulfilled. It is certain now. This, I venture, is why Paul does not couple promise with fulfillment. Fulfillment indicates that something has come about that was not before, whereas confirmation indicates that something is and is being attested to. There is a distinct absence of a sense of future in Paul’s use of promise here—the focus is on promise as the solid ground that can be trusted.

The sense of promise here is that it is complete in itself (without fulfillment). This accounts for Paul’s pronouncement that it could be nullified (κατήργηται, 4:14)—not if it were unfulfilled, but if it were misunderstood. The promise would be made ineffective as promise if it were the case that Abraham and his seed were inheritors of the world ἐκ νόμου—on the basis of law (4:14). Abraham’s response of continuously strengthening faith is the right response to the promise (4:20). The promise is and is to be trusted in.

(2) Romans 15:8-9: For I tell you, Christ has become a servant of the circumcision on behalf of the truthfulness of God in order to confirm the promises and [a servant] with respect to the Gentiles on behalf of the mercy [of God] [in order] to glorify God.21

The notoriously difficult grammatical and semantic tangle of Romans 15...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1. Promise and Purpose in Romans 9:1-13: Toward Understanding Paul’s View of Time
• Chapter 2. “It Is Not as Though the Word of God Has Failed”: God’s Faithfulness and God’s Free Sovereignty in Romans 9:6-29
• Chapter 3. Grafting Rhetoric: Myth and Methodological Multivalence in Romans 11
• Chapter 4. “Enemies” Yet “Beloved” Still: Election and the Love of God in Romans 9–11
• Chapter 5. Locating Christ and Israel in Romans 9–11
• Chapter 6. Not the End: The History and Hope of the Unfailing Word in Romans 9–11
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index of Scripture and Ancient Sources
• Notes