The Epistle of ST Paul to the Romans
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Preface
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HE who attempts to expound the Epistle to the Romans, when his
sacred task is over, is little disposed to speak about
his Commentary; he is occupied rather with an ever
deeper reverence and wonder over the Text which he has been
permitted to handle, a Text so full of a marvellous
man, above all so full of God. But
it seems needful to say a few words about the style of the running
Translation of the Epistle which will be found
interwoven with this Exposition. The
writer is aware that the translation is often rough and formless.
His apology is that it has been done with a view not to
a connected reading, but to the explanation of details.
A rough piece of rendering, which would be a
misrepresentation in a continuous version, because it would be out
of scale with the general style, seems to be another
matter when it only calls the reader’s attention to a
particular point presented for study at the moment.
Again, he is aware that his rendering of the Greek article in many
passages (for example, where he has ventured to
explain it by “ our ,” “ true ” (etc.), is open to
criticism. But he intends no more in such places than a suggestion;
and he is conscious, as he has said sometimes at the
place, that it is almost impossible to render the
article as he has done in these cases without a certain
exaggeration, which must be discounted by the reader.
The use of the article in Greek is one of the simplest and most
assured things in grammar, as to its main principles.
But as regards some details of the application of
principle, there is nothing in grammar which seems so easily to
elude the line of law.
It is scarcely necessary to say that on questions of literary
criticism, which in no respect, or at most remotely,
concern exposition, this Commentary says little or
nothing. It is well known to literary students of the Epistle that
some phenomena in the text, from the close of ch. 14
onwards, have raised important and complex questions.
It has been asked whether the great Doxology (Romans 16:25-
27) always stood where it now stands; whether it should stand at the
close of our ch. 14; whether its style and wording allow
us to regard it as contemporary with the Epistle as a
whole, or whether they indicate that it was written later in St.
Paul’s course; whether our fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, while
Pauline, are not out of
place in an Epistle to Rome; in particular, whether the list of
names in ch. 16 is compatible with a Roman destination.
These questions, with one exception, that which affects the list of
names, are not even touched upon in the present
Exposition. The expositor, personally convinced that the
pages we know as the Epistle to the Romans are not only all genuine
but all intimately coherent, has not felt himself called
to discuss, in a devotional writing, subjects more
proper to the lecture room and the study; and which
certainly would be out of place in the ministry of the pulpit.
Meantime, those who care to read a masterly debate on the literary
problems in question may consult the recently published
volume (1893) “Biblical Studies,” by the late Bishop
Lightfoot of Durham. That volume contains (pp. 287-374) three
critical Essays (1869, 1871), two by Bishop Lightfoot, one by the
late Dr. Hort, on “The Structure and Destination of the
Epistle to the Romans.” The two illustrious friends, —
Hort criticising Lightfoot, Lightfoot replying to Hort, —
examine the phenomena of Romans 15-16. Lightfoot advocates the
theory that St. Paul, some time after writing the
Epistle, issued an abridged edition for wider
circulation, omitting the direction to Rome, closing the document
with our ch. 14, and then (not before) writing, as a
finale, the great Doxology. Hort holds to the
practical entirety of the Epistle as we have it, and reasons at
length for the contemporaneousness of Romans 16:25 - 27
with the rest.
We may note here that both Hort and
Lightfoot contend for the conciliatory aim of the Roman
Epistle. They regard the great passage about Israel (9-11) as in
some sense the heart of the Epistle, and the doctrinal passages
preceding this as all more or less meant to bear on
the relations not only of the Law and the Gospel, but
of the Jew and the Gentile as members of the one Christian Church.
There is great value in this suggestion, explained and
illustrated as it is in the Essays in question. But
the thought may easily be worked to excess. It seems plain to the
present writer that when the Epistle is studied from within its
deepest spiritual element, it shows us the Apostle
fully mindful of the largest aspects of the life and work
of the Church, but also, and yet more, occupied with the problem of
the relation of the believing sinner to God. The
question of personal salvation was never, by St. Paul,
forgotten in that of Christian policy.
To return for a moment to this Exposition, or rather to its setting;
it may be doubted whether, in imagining the dictation
of the Epistle to be begun and
completed by St. Paul within one day we have not imagined “a hard
thing.” But at worst it is not an impossible thing, if
the Apostle’s utterance was as sustained as his thought.
It remains only to express the hope that these pages may serve in
some degree to convey to their readers a new Tolle ,
Lege for the divine Text itself; if only by suggesting
to them sometimes the words of St. Augustine, “ To Paul I appeal
from all interpreters of his writings. ” |
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