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Simplifying the Righteousness of God: A Critique of J. C. O'Neill's Romans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Nigel M. Watson
Affiliation:
House 3 Ortnond CollegeParkville Victoria 3052Australia

Extract

J. C. O'Neill is already well known for his strikingly original studies of various books of the New Testament, and his latest work, a commentary on Romans, is no exception. It is immediately obvious that this is a commentary with a difference, a commentary which argues a thesis, viz., ‘that the words of the epistle handed down to us were not written by one man, were not written at one time, were not written to one audience’. On the contrary, he suggests, Paul's original letter has been subjected to two sorts of corruption, each of which has added new material to the text. First, glosses have been copied into the text by mistake in later years. Second, interpolations have been added by later editors, usually from old traditions, in order to supplement the epistle and make it more suitable for general use (p. 14). Some of the interpolations which O'Neill claims to identify are of considerable length. For example, 10.16–11.32 is attributed in its entirety to a theologian of the second century. Indeed, out of chapters 9–14, containing 148 verses in the form of the letter that we know, O'Neill assigns only twenty-one verses to Paul.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1977

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References

page 453 note 1 Paul's Letter to the Romans (Penguin Books, London, 1975), p. 11.Google Scholar

page 454 note 1 It is interesting to see how recent commentators handle this problem. Cranfield acknowledges it but offers no solution. See Cranfield, C. E. B., Romans (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1975), vol. I, p. 168.Google Scholar Kuss concedes that theft, adultery and temple robbery cannot be said to have been characteristic of Jews of that time but points to 5.12–21 as a more adequate formulation of Paul's thought and admits that Paul gets there by somewhat laborious and devious routes. See Kuss, O., Der Römerbrief (2nd ed.; Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg, 1963), vol. I, pp. 87f.Google Scholar

page 455 note 1 Romans, pp. 53f. O'Neill thinks that in its original form it was not intended to show the utter moral bankruptcy of Judaism.

page 455 note 2 cf. his reconstruction of the original letter on pp. 264–71.

page 456 note 1 See pp. 80–4. O'Neill's version of Käsemann's position fails to do justice to the side of Kasemann's thought which comes to expression in the following quotation: ‘Faith is constituted by the fact that, with the proclamation of the Gospel, the Lord who establishes the Gospel comes on the scene and claims lordship over us. … Faith is living by the word which attests his lordship, no more and no less’ (own translation). See Käsemann, E., An die Römer (2nd ed.; J. C. B. Mohr, Tübingen, 1974), p. 101.Google Scholar

page 457 note 1 See e.g. Kuss, , Römerbrief, vol. I, p. 22Google Scholar; Käsemann, E., ‘God's Righteousness in Paul’, New Testament Questions of Today (S.C.M. Press, London, 1969), p. 180Google Scholar; also An die Römer, pp. 21–8; Black, M., Romans (Marshall, Morgan and Scott, London, 1973), pp. 44f.Google Scholar For the view (which dates back to Luther) that ‘righteousness’ here means a status of men resulting from God's action see Cranfield, Romans, pp. 96–98. I believe v. 17 is essentially a restatement of v. 16. While v. 16 speaks of the power of God working through the gospel to effect salvation in every believer, v. 17 speaks of the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel, calling for faith and faith alone and leading to eternal life. God's righteousness in v. 17 thus corresponds to his power in v. 16.

page 457 note 2 ibid.; cf. p. 26: ‘The whole section is dominated by the word “faith”.’

page 457 note 3 ibid. He argues in the next section that the passage beginning with v. 18 is not the work of Paul.

page 458 note 1 See below, pp. 464–467.

page 458 note 2 Romans, p. 62; cf. p. 264: ‘But if our unrighteousness finds a way to adopt a righteousness acceptable to God, what shall we say?’

page 459 note 1 cf. esp. Gal. 2:18.

page 459 note 2 See my review article on Ziesler, J. A., The Meaning of Righteousness in Paul (C.U.P., Cambridge, 1972) in N.T.S. 20 (1973/74). p. 219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 460 note 1 So e.g. by Black, Romans, p. 138.

page 460 note 2 Leenhardt, F. J., The Epistle to the Romans (Lutterworth Press, London, 1961), p. 265.Google Scholar

page 460 note 3 Kertelge, K., ‘Rechtfertigung’ bei Paulus (Aschendorff, Münster, 1967), pp. 97f.Google Scholar

page 460 note 4 An die Römner, p. 269.

page 460 note 5 See Arndt, and Gingrich, , A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament (U. of Chicago Press, Chicago/C.U.P., Cambridge, 1957)Google Scholar, sub katalambanō, 16.

page 460 note 6 O'Neill's case for his interpretation of 10:3f is further weakened, if one does not excise 10:5ff, as he proposes to do. See below, pp. 462–464.

page 461 note 1 See Bultmann, R., ‘Neueste Paulusforschung’, Theologische Rundschau, 8 (1936) p. 12Google Scholar; also Theology of the New Testament (S.C.M. Press, London, 1952), vol. I, p. 46.Google Scholar Cf. Käsemann, E., ‘Zum Verständnis von Römer 3:24–26’, Z.N.W. 43, (1950/1951), pp. 150154Google Scholar; reprinted in Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen I (Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1960), pp. 96f.Google Scholar For a full account of the support given to this hypothesis (mainly by German-speaking scholars) see Young, N. H., ‘Did St. Paul Compose Rom. iii:24.f?Austr. Bibl, Rev. (22, 1974), p. 25, note 7.Google Scholar

page 461 note 2 See especially the detailed statement of the case by Reumann, J., ‘The Gospel of the Righteousness of God’, Interpretation 20 (1966), pp. 432452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 461 note 3 See Käsemann, , An die Römer, p. 93.Google Scholar

page 462 note 1 Kümmel, W. G., ‘Paresis and endeixis, A Contribution to the Understanding of the Pauline Doctrine ofJustification’, Journal for Theology and the Church 3 (1967), pp. 113Google Scholar; cf. Käsemann, An die Römer, p. 91.

page 462 note 2 Romans, p. 87. For a perceptive discussion of the difficulties implicit in the notion of imputing righteousness in the sense of goodness, see Taylor, V., Forgiveness and Reconciliation (2nd ed.; Macmillan, London, 1946), pp. 56f.Google Scholar

page 462 note 3 cf. my review article mentioned above, p. 459, n. 2.

page 462 note 4 cf. my review article, p. 219.

page 463 note 1 Sanday, W. and Headlam, A. C., Romans (5th ed.; T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1902), p. 289.Google Scholar

page 463 note 2 This point is stated correctly at the top of p. 170.

page 464 note 1 cf. his caustic comments on Käsemann on p. 89, made in his exegesis of 4:17: ‘This is an admirable theological sentiment but not by Paul, and certainly not a licence to think that belief is a static passive pose by which a man expects to be created from nothing every day by the call of God (Käsemann).’

page 464 note 2 cf. also the criticisms made in my review of the book in Austr. Bibl. Rev. 24 (1976), pp. 41f.

page 465 note 1 In spite of his insistence, on p. 157, that ‘God's mercy is not diminished by being sought and striven for’.

page 466 note 1 O'Neill usually takes the present tenses of the verb ‘justify’ to refer to the future, at least in the genuinely Pauline passages. I find this interpretation very forced in 3:24. Rom. 3:30, to which he appeals in support, can well be taken as a logical future. O'Neill also omits ‘now’ in 8:1.

page 467 note 1 Moody, C. N., The Mind of the Early Converts (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1920).Google Scholar Note especially his comment on p. 246: ‘The contrast between Law and Faith was understood by none but Marcion; and by him it was misunderstood.’

page 467 note 2 Torrance, T. F., The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers (Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1948).Google Scholar

page 467 note 3 Wiles, M. F., The Divine Apostle (C.U.P., Cambridge, 1967).Google Scholar

page 467 note 4 The Divine Apostle, p. 139.

page 468 note 1 Romans, pp. 177f, 184.

page 468 note 2 Romans, p. 14; cf. pp. 275–9.

page 468 note 3 A similar argument is advanced by Ernest Best against E. Schweizer's theory, based on a reference in a letter of Polycarp, that 2 Thessalonians was originally written to the Philippians. Best argues that if the truth about the destination of the letter was known as late as A.D. 135, or even as late as 110, some trace of the original address would surely have been left in the textual evidence. A fortiori, I argue, if a massive interpolation into Romans was made as late as the time of Marcion and Justin, the textual evidence would surely have preserved some traces of it. See Best, E., The First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians (A. & C. Black, London, 1972), p. 41.Google Scholar