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Re: Justification - Tom Wright / A book review

Re: Justification - Tom Wright / A book review

D.R.- I see what you are getting at (in your interpretation of Romans 2:14 and Romans 2:15 above) - but I don’t think it is the best interpretation - or even that the verses lend themselves to that interpretation.

Your interpretation of 2:14 depends on shifting physis ‘by nature’ to the first part of the clause from the second (where it is more commonly located). With this shift, you also interpret ‘by nature’ in its modern sense, as something that is a natural attribute, part of a person’s unchanging nature. If this were the correct interpretation, you would indeed need to shift the word from the second part of the clause to the first - since nobody obeys the Law (Torah) in that sense (of obedience being an innate attribute).

But physis isn’t consistently used this way by Paul (if at all). The best example of how it isn’t so used is 1 Corinthians:11:14 - where ‘nature’ as we would take it would teach us the exact opposite of the way Paul uses it (long hair being ‘natural’ for a man, not unnatural)!

If you take physis to mean, broadly, being consistent with who you are, (a rough stab at a meaning here), then the interpretation offered by Wright makes very good sense of 2:14b, continuing into 2:15. The natural question to ask would be: “Who are these people who practise the Law “by nature” - or “naturally flowing from who they are”?

The answer to the question, and the clincher for me, comes in verse 15, where “written in their hearts” is language of the new covenant, not the old - Jeremiah 31:33. Paul is beginning to come into the open about what he means - he is talking about Gentiles who fulfil the Law’s requirements through the operation of the Spirit in their lives, in a way that Jews could not have done, and neither did Gentile proselytes or converts, since the written Law was not designed to work that way - “because by observing the Law no-one will be justified/declared righteous” - Galatians 2:16 and “the righteous requirements of the Law (are) fully met in us (Jew and Gentile), who do not live according to the sinful nature, but according to the Spirit.” - Romans 8:4.