Romans 3:10-12 affirms: “as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God All have turned aside, together they have become useless There is none who does good, There is not even one.” On the other hand, those with faith in Christ as a result actually persevered in doing good as a result of the grace of the gospel. Later in chapter 3 Paul will specifically say that outside of faith in Christ there are none who do good or seek God. It is striking because it forgets that for Paul a truly moral life (or perseverance in doing good) is solely a result of faith in Christ. Here we learn that in spite of Irons’ earlier attempts to mollify concern about the hypothetical view taking the entire passage as hypothetical, the entirety of verses 7-11 or at least anything that they say about people who do good are also hypothetical.įor if we take the positive statements in v 7 (“to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life”) and v 10 (“glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek ”) as denoting actual individuals, then any Jews and Gentiles who have not responded in faith to the message of the gospel but who have lived moral lives would be saved. He is not saying that there will be people who do good and who, on that basis, obtain eternal life. In view of the broader context that we have been examining in chapters 1-4, I would argue that Paul is not – at this stage in his argument – describing real people. Vv 7-10: Jews and Gentiles alike: Those who do good eternal life Those who commit evil wrath V 6: “God will render to each person according to their deeds” We can summarize this paragraph in the following way: The one which I hold! (Following John Murray) Romans 2:13 is on my view clearly referring to godly Jews and is related to verse 12b in an explanatory fashion. This summary (as Irons himself admits on page 10) is far from comprehensive. (2) “Doers of the Law” (positive) ? “works of the Law” (negative) (1) Rom 2:13 is hypothetical (an empty set) Here is a summary of the various scholarly responses to the apparent contradiction: After some interruption I continue hear my critique of Irons’ paper entitled, Is Romans 2:13 Coherent? The page numbers are reference to his online paper. Thank you, gentleman, for your interest and comments.
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