Fireside Romans Chats: Romans 3:1-20

3:1-20
The first twenty verses of Romans 3 end the preceding section. In Romans 2 Paul has argued that circumcision does not benefit a person in relation to justification before God unless a person practice [the] Law (2:25). On the other hand, if an uncircumcised person should watch the righteous requirements of the Law, that person may just as well be considered circumcised.

But this argument raises the question of what benefit there is then to being a Jew at all (3:1). Paul addresses this question in 3:1-8). [By the way, notice how Paul's style typically presents a point and then addresses questions that arise from that point.] If justification before God is simply a matter of the "righteous requirements of the Law," whatever that might be, then what benefit is there to circumcision at all?

Well, there is the honor of being those to whom God has entrusted the oracles of God (3:2). And if some were unfaithful, that doesn't negate God's faith with Israel (3:3).

Here Paul makes an important point for him. Some have accused him of teaching that we should do evil things so that good things will come (3:8). Paul is not arguing for sin--violation of the righteous requirements of the law. God's wrath is revealed against the ungodliness of humanity (1:18). And his arguments do not make void [the] law because justification is on the basis of faith (3:31).

The beginning of 3:9 has spawned much discussion. Should it be translated, "What then? Are we better off? Not at all"? Should it be, "What then? Are we worse off? Not at all"? Should it be translated, "What then should we plead in defense?" (Dahl, Dunn, Gaston)? Dunn then seems to take "Not at all" as an interpolation that was not in the original text. There is textual variance for this verse, but there are no readings that have this option, so this suggestion seems shaky from an evidentiary perspective.

The reading that makes best sense of the flow to me is the way it is usually rendered, "What then? Are we [Jews] better off? Not all all." Dunn suggests that Greek literature doesn't translate the word "to be better off" this way. I haven't pursued the matter to know if he's right on this idea. So barring further study, I'll go with this translation generally used in most English versions.

But then from a Jewish perspective, Paul's argument could be a little strange in the rest of 3:9. If he is saying that Jews are not okay with God because of their overall (with room for some failure) faithfulness to the covenant on the basis of God's grace, then he is departing radically from previous Jewish perspective and indeed, from the Old Testament. Perhaps he is saying more generally that justification involves God's grace for anyone, whether you are a Jew or not. Jews would have agreed with this idea.

No one is off the hook just for being a Jew. Both Jew and Greek are "under sin" (3:9). "Not even one person is righteous" (3:10). The law "stops the mouth" of all, so that all are under the judgment of God (3:19). The Law simply gives all a knowledge of sin but does not provide for justification before God. On the basis of "works of law," (3:20), no flesh will be justified before God (3:20). All have sinned, and as a result, no human has the glory God intended humanity to have in the creation (3:23; cf. Psalm 8).

This passage gives rise to several questions. For example, none of the verses that Paul cites here (with the possible exception of Ecclesiastes 7:20) refer to all humans or even all Jews. It is a pastiche of quotes from Psalms 14:1-3; 5:9; 140:3; 10:7; 36:1; and Isaiah 59:7-8, all of which refer to groups of wicked individuals rather than all humanity. I suspect Paul is again very generally presenting the sense that sin and wickedness is a universal phenomenon that is not just limited to non-Jews.

Another question arises in relation to what Paul means by "works of law" in Romans 3:20? He is quoting Psalm 143:2, but has added these words [by the way, anyone who has problems with dynamic equivalence translations has to give it up in the face of how drastically Paul and other NT authors rework the OT]. That question will have to wait until the next chat on Romans 3:21-31, one of the thickest and most argued over part of the New Testament.