Abstract
Take a piece of cotton and hold it over a lit match. The cotton catches fire, burns, and yields a blackened version of its former self. (If you did not use tongs, then perhaps your finger suffered a similar fate!) When asked to describe what happened in this brief experiment, most would call it a simple case of cause and effect. Fire, by its nature, burns cotton, and cotton, by its nature, turns black when burned.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
For an introduction to the Ash‘arite school and its most prominent personalities, see Neal Robinson, “Ash‘ariyya and Mu‘tazila,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), 1:519–23; Kojiro Nakamura, “Al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 4:61–68;
Michael E. Marmura, “Al-Ghazali,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography: Medieval Philosophers, ed. Jeremiah Hackett (Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1992), 205–13.
According to John Piper, The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1–23, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1993), 65–67, the clause negated in 9:6b is the second “Israel,” so that Paul in effect claims that none of those presently descended from Israel are in fact a part of Israel as it really is. This is impossible in light of Paul’s claim in Romans 11:1, however, that he and other elect Jews have indeed remained a part of Israel.
Most commentators agree with James D. G. Dunn, Romans, WBC 38B (Dallas, TX: Word, 1988), 2:681, that “all Israel” in Romans 11:26a refers to “Israel as a whole, as a people, whose corporate identity and wholeness could not be lost even if in the end there were some (or indeed many) individual exceptions.”
See C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, ICC 45/2 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1975), 2:577, who cites numerous supporters. For even more bibliography, see Jewett, Romans, 701–2. The evidence used to justify this interpretation is m. Sanh. 10:1, in which “all Israel” is said to have a share in the world to come, but a litany of exceptions follows. Biblical support is found in 1 Samuel 7:5, 25:1; 1 Kings 12:1; 2 Chronicles 12:1; and Daniel 9:11. Jewett, Romans, 701–2, is dubious of this view: “It seems most likely that Paul’s ‘mystery’ was believed to include all members of the house of Israel, who, without exception, would be saved.”
Many scholars feel compelled to apologize for this position before making it. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 10 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2002), 689, is exemplary: “To speak personally for a moment. When I began my study of Romans I was strongly committed to… understanding Paul to be saying that a very large number from national Israel would be saved at or around the time of the second coming, through the fresh revelation of the gospel that that event would supply. I changed my mind reluctantly, because of what seemed to me strong exegetical arguments; and, though this has put me in a minority even among my friends, let alone among the guild of New Testament scholars, I have seen no reason to change my mind again.”
Let me stress the word “facilitate,” because I do not believe this reading of Romans 9–11 understands Paul himself to be a supersessionist. Rather, it facilitates the use of Paul by post-Pauline Christian supersessionists. The difference is significant; as I understand it, Paul cannot be a Christian supersessionist because he has not yet conceptualized something other than Judaism that can therefore supersede Judaism. Yes, Paul is a critic of Judaism, indeed a severe one, but his critique comes from within Judaism, not from without. For more on Paul as a “Jewish cultural critic,” see the subsequent chapter, as well as Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 52. Only after the emergence of Christianity, conceptualized as something different from Judaism, can Christian supersession over Judaism be proclaimed. Once this has happened, then Paul’s understanding of the fulfillment of Judaism in Christ becomes the fulfillment of Judaism in Christianity—that is, Christian supersessionism.
For a fuller list of ancient advocates of this view, as well as a discussion of Augustine’s ambivalence on the matter, see Fitzmyer, Romans, 623–24; for the argument in modern times, see Hervé Ponsot, “Et Ainsi Tout Israel Sera Sauvé: Rom, XI, 26a,” RB 89 (1982): 406–17;
Francois Refoulé, “… Et Ainsi Tout Israel Sera Sauvés”: Romains 11:25–32 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1984); Wright, “The Letter,” 672–99; and Wright, Climax, 231–57.
Wright, Climax, 238. Although Wright’s rhyme is catchy and memorable, his choice of the term “race” is problematic. Presumably he means it to mark off inclusion in a community based, among other things, on the perception of shared physical descent from a common ancestor. The term “ethnicity” suffices to delineate this. While in previous generations it was popular to speak of Jews, both ancient and modern, in racial terms, obvious political circumstances have made the use of racial terminology with respect to Jews unpalatable and inappropriate, and in any case recent critical scholarship has suggested that race as a concept for categorizing people is a uniquely modern and political one and unhelpful in analysis of the ancient world. Others have challenged the value of “race” as an analytical category in the modern world as well. For a helpful introduction to this literature, see Denise Kimber Buell, Why This New Race? (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), especially 5–20. Buell correctly observes that “religion” and “ethnicity” are modern categories no less than “race,” and she therefore proposes that race be reinjected where appropriate into studies of antiquity, just as “ethnicity” and “religion” are. However, Buell fails to demonstrate how “race” should be distinguished from “ethnicity” in such studies, and resorts to using those terms interchangeably, often in the form “race/ethnicity.” In my estimation, until it can be shown why “race,” as opposed to “ethnicity,” is required for such studies—that is, how it facilitates a finer degree of understanding—we are better off avoiding it for the reasons suggested above.
Advocates for the view that Paul envisions a future salvation of Jews basically fall into two camps, though variations are found within each. According to one camp, Jews will be saved because some way or another they will come to faith in Christ. According to the other, they will be saved by means of an unspecified Sonderweg (Ger. “special way”) whose precise nature will be understood only once it has occurred. The latter approach is associated most often with Krister Stendahl, Meanings: The Bible as Document and as Guide (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1984), especially 213–15; and
Franz Mussner, Traktat über die Juden (München: Kösel, 1979), 60. For a thorough critique of the Sonderweg position,
see Reidar Hvalvik, “A ‘Sonderweg’ for Israel. A Critical Examination of a Current Interpretation of Romans 11.25–27,” JSNT 38 (1990): 87–107.
Paul does not rest at reciting the facts, however. He also discloses why the generations turned out as they did. Isaac and Jacob were not chosen on the basis of their own merits, but according to the discretion of God. Indeed, God decreed the supplanting of Jacob over Esau while they were still in the womb, before either could demonstrate his worthiness, thus indicating that membership in God’s people is not only irrespective of physical descent, it is unaffected by works as well. In this section, of course, Paul is again communicating with a Gentile interlocutor. I do not know if this is the same Gentile interlocutor with whom Paul conversed in Romans 2–4. According to Jewett, Romans, 581, he is “traditionally identified as an unbelieving Jew,” citing Fréderic Godet, Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, ed. T. W. Chambers (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1977), 351; Piper, The Justification of God, 70–73. I do not think the identity of the interlocutor is as important here as it is in Romans 2–4, for Paul’s argument would be the same no matter who he is. 18. See Fitzmyer, Romans, 624: “The understanding of ‘all Israel’ in such a spiritual sense, however, is scarcely correct; it goes against the meaning of Israēl in the rest of Romans … and especially that in the immediately preceding v 25c.” Jewett, Romans, 701, makes a similar claim: “Some interpreters have proposed that ‘all Israel’ refers to elect believers, whether Jews or Gentiles, but in all of the earlier references to ‘Israel’ in Romans, the ethnic Israel is in view.” Yet, when commenting on Romans 9:6b, Jewett, Romans, 575, claims that there is a distinction “‘between believing and physical Israel’ as determined by their response to the ‘word of God.’”
Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 721, offers a savvier version of the argument. In light of the reevaluation of terminology in Galatians 6:16 and Philippians 3:3, he concedes that Paul would have been capable of applying the name “Israel” to those who believe in Romans 11:26a, but it cannot be so because it would have militated against Paul’s exhortation against Gentile arrogance. To grant them the title of “Israel” would have made them more arrogant, however, not less.
Those advocating the “kingdom of God” include William Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, ICC 45 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1895), 335; Cranfield, Critical and Exegetical Commentary, 2:576; Fitzmyer, Romans, 622. Those preferring an eschatological pilgrimage include
Roger D. Aus, “Paul’s Travel Plans to Spain and the ‘Full Number of the Gentiles’ of Rom xi.25,” NovT 21, no. 3 (1979): 251–52;
Cristoph Plag, Israels Wege zum Heil. Eine Untersuchung zu Römer 9 bis 11 (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1969), 56–58;
Heikki Räisänen, “Römer 9–11. Analyse eines geistigen Ringens,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.25.4 (1987): 2922.
Occasionally it has been argued that houtōs anticipates the kathōs in the following verse, so that Paul provides the manner of Israel’s salvation in the subsequent proof text. Paul rarely uses this inverted construction, however. See Peter Stuhlmacher, “Zur Interpretation von Röm 11:25–32,” in Probleme biblisher Theologie, ed. Hans W. Wolff (Munich: Kaiser, 1971), 555–70.
Classic commentaries that see a temporal succession of events include, among others, Cranfield, Critical and Exegetical Commentary, 2:575. See also Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), 314;
C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 2nd ed., BNTC 6 (London: A & C Black, 1991), 206.
Pieter W. van der Horst, “‘Only Then Will All Israel Be Saved’: A Short Note on the Meaning of kai houtōs in Romans 11:26,” JBL 119 (2000): 521–25, has shown a few instances in which Greek authors from Thucydides to Irenaeus impute a temporal function to houtōs, but such usage pales in comparison to the number of examples of houtōs in the standard modal sense, particularly in the Pauline corpus. Van der Horst adduces just two examples from Paul, 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 and 1 Corinthians 14:25. In 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17, Paul writes: “The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a command, with a voice from an archangel and a trumpetblast from God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who remain alive will be snatched up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so (houtōs) we will be with the Lord forever.” As
Abraham J. Malherbe, The Letters to the Thessalonians, AB 32B (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 277, has observed, the “so” in this case does not introduce a new stage in a temporal sequence, but it “summarizes what precedes … and adds that the association with the Lord will be eternal.” The term operates similarly in 1 Corinthians 14:25, which describes the experience of a stranger in a church: “The hidden matters of his heart become exposed and so (houtōs) he will fall on his face and worship God, proclaiming, ‘God is truly among you!’” Again, the person’s prostration and proclamation do not follow the exposure of his heart as a discrete event, but these events describe the way in which his heart is laid bare. In any case, whereas these two cases are debatable, there is no dispute that Paul presumes the modal sense of houtōs on the sixty other occasions he employs the term.
Caroline Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 143. See also her earlier contribution in “Olive Trees and Ethnicities. Judeans and Gentiles in Rom 11.17–24,” in Christians as a Religious Minority in a Multicultural City, ed. Jürgen Zangenberg and Michael Labahn (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 77–89.
All these examples are mentioned by Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 25, 143–44: Homer, Illiad, 6.145–49, in LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 1:284; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, viii.12.3, in LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934), 498–500; Demosthenes, LX.4, in LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 7:8; Philo, On Sobriety, 65, in LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), 3:476;
Philo, On Husbandry, 6, in LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), 3:110.
Ibid., 22–26 and 143–45. Consider, too, the words of W. D. Davies, Jewish and Pauline Studies (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1984), 154: “Drawing upon ancient Semitic concepts of solidarity, Paul indicates that the character of the root of a plant or body carries over into the plant or body itself (the branches). A living organism such as a tree cannot be divided into root and branches, as if these were distinct entities: the quality of the root determines the quality of the tree and its branches.”
Theophrastus, Enquiry Into Plants, 1.6.10, in LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916), 1:48, describes the procedure in which cultivated shoots were grafted into wild trees in order to produce the best fruit. Columella, On Agriculture, 5.9.16, in LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), 2:84–86, attests to the practice of grafting wild shoots into cultivated trees as a means of rejuvenating them. According to Philip Esler, “Ancient Oleiculture and Ethnic Differentiation: The Meaning of the Olive-Tree Image in Romans 11,” JSNT 26, no. 1 (2003): 103–24, Paul intentionally reversed the well-known practice mentioned by Theophrastus so as to comport with his rhetorical aim. On the other hand,
A. G. Baxter and John A. Ziesler, “Paul and Arboriculture. Romans 11.17–24,” JSNT 24 (1985): 25–32, think Paul draws on the practice described by Columella, suggesting that Israel, as it was, required invigoration by Gentiles. For the oft-repeated view that Paul, an urban man, knew little of horticulture,
see C. H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, MNTC 6 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1932), 180.
The Elder Seneca, Controversiae, 2.4.14, in LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 1:315, tells of an adoption whose legitimacy was being challenged on the grounds that the adoptee was of too low a birth to merit the new relationship, having been born of a prostitute. The orator speaking against the adoption, Porcius Latro, proclaims that the boy “is being grafted from the lowest depths into the nobility by means of the adoption.” I am indebted to Michael Peppard for bringing this text to my attention. On the basis of this and other evidence—for example, the connection Philo draws between adoption and grafting (On Husbandry, 6)—Peppard argues in The Son of God in the Roman World: Divine Sonship in Its Social and Political Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 51–57, that the grafting metaphor was a commonplace in Roman rhetoric about adoption. See further James M. Scott, Adoption as Sons of God: An Exegetical Investigation into the Background of YIOӨE∑IA in the Pauline Corpus, WUNT II 48 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 81.
Adoptio enim naturam imitatur. The Institutes of Justinian 1.11.4 (ed. Thomas Collett Sandars, 2nd ed. [London: John W. Parker and Son, 1859], 118).
Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, V.xix.9, in LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927), 1:438, as translated in Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs, 30. This translation, in turn, is drawn from
Jane F. Gardner, Family and Familia in Roman Law and Life (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 127. The ceremony described is an adrogatio, an adoption of a man who is his own master, as opposed to an adoptatio, in which a man already under the authority of a father is adopted. See further Peppard, Son of God, 57, who suggests that there is no way to assess how common this formula was. Papyri and inscriptions do not corroborate it, though, indicating that it was probably not normative.
Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, ed. Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 279.
Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1984).
See, for example, Scott Bader-Saye, Church and Israel after Christendom (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), especially 28–51.
MT Melakhim 11:4 (uncensored). The passage is translated in the introduction to The Code of Maimonides, Book Fourteen, trans. Abraham M. Hershman, Yale Judaica Series (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1949), xxiii–xxiv. Maimonides outlines an understanding of history in which the role of Christianity is to disperse Jewish monotheism throughout the world (albeit in a contaminated form), in order to facilitate widespread acceptance of God’s rule in the messianic age. For more on Maimonides’ attitude toward Christianity (and Islam), see David Novak, Maimonides on Judaism and Other Religions (Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997), 1–21. In a more modern context, although in very different terms,
Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, trans. Barbara E. Galli (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), 438–40, also has articulated the idea of Christian partnership with Jews in a shared religious purpose.
Copyright information
© 2012 Joshua D. Garroway
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Garroway, J.D. (2012). Romans 9–11. In: Paul’s Gentile-Jews. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137281142_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137281142_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-44805-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-28114-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)