R. M. Boyd.
ADOPTION {vloBeirla) is a word used by St. Paul to desirrnate the privilege of sonship bestowed by God on His people. While Jesus Himself and the New Testament writers all speak frequently and emphatically of our blessings and duties as sons or children of God, no other of them employs this special term, which occurs in five places in the Epistles of St. Paul (Gal 4», Ro S"- ^^ 9^, Eph l"). It seems to express a distinct and definite ide.T in that apostle s mind ; and since adoption was, in Roman law, a technical term for an tict that had specific legal and social eflects, there is much probability that he had some reference to that in his use of the word. The Romans maintained in a very extreme way the rights of fathers over their children as practically despotic ; and these did not cea.se when the sons came of age, or had families of their own, but while the father lived could only be terminated by certain legal proceedings, analogous to those by which slaves were sold or redeemed. The same term {manci- 7)a^io) was applied to a process of this kind, whether a man parted with his son, or his slave, or his goods. Hence a man could not be transferred from one family to another, or put into the position of a son to any Roman citizen, without a formal legal act, which was a quasi sale by his natural fatlio'-, and buying out by the person who adopted
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him. If he waa not in the power of a natural father, bnt independent {sui Juris), as, e.g., if his father were dead, tlien he could only be put in the place of 8on to another by a solemn act of the sovereign people assembled in their religious capacity (c(miitia curiata). For each family had its own religious rites, and he must be freed by public authority from the obligation to fulfil those of one, and taken bound to observe those of another. That transaction was, however, properly called arrogatio, while adoptio strictly denoted the taking, by one man, of a son of another to bo his son. This, though not requiring an act of legislation, had to be regularly attested by wit- nesses ; and in old form one struck a pair of scales with a piece of copper as an emblem of the primitive process of sale. Adoption, when thus legally performed, put a man in every respect in the position of a son by birth of him who had adopted him, so that he possessed the same rights and owed the same obligations.
No such legal and complete transference of filial rights and <luties seems to have existed in the law of Israel ; though there may have been many ca-ses of the informal adoption known among us, as when Mordecai took the orphan Esther, his uncle's daughter, to be his (Est 2'). The failure of heirs was provided for by the leWrate law.
Now, since St. Paul represents the Christian's adoption as carrying with it certain definite privi- leges which would not be involved in such an act as Mordecai's, and since he may well have been cu;qnainted with the Roman practice in this matter, it seems probable that he may have had it in view. (See Dr. \V. E. Ball in Contemp. Rev., Aug. 1891).
The earliest instance of his use of the word is in liis Epistle to the Galatians, in a passage in which ■everal names of huiuan relations are u.sed to illus- trate those between God and man, and where the apostle expressly says, ' I speak after the manner of men ' (3^*), i.e. I use a human analogy to make my argument plain. The terra that he first employs after this remark is that rendereil covenant, or testament (6ia^i)«r7j), here probably in the general sense of di.sposition, without emphasis on the peculiarities either of a covenant or of a testament. In virtue of this disposition, which was one of promise, given to Abraham and his seed, the blessing comes to all who are united to Christ by faith ; for the promise, St. I'aul argues, was not to the physical descendants of the patriarch as a multitude, but to a unity, the one Messiah, who was to gather all nations to Himself. According to this disposition of Go<I, believers are sons and heirs (S'-"- ^). But before their faith in Christ they were kept in ward under the law, which was not intended to add a condition to the covenant of promise, but to bring their latent sin to a head in transgressions (3"), so that they might not seek to be justified by works, but mi^ht accept the ble-ssing as of God's free grace througn Christ, who became a curse for us that He might redeem us from the curse of the law (3'^- '^'''*). This seems to bo clearly the general line of the argument. But the position of men under the law appears to be roprc- sented by St. I'aul in twodilferent wavs, sometimes as bond -servants under the curse (."j^"- " 4'- '), and sometimes as children under age (4'"'). The ex- planation of this may be found in the consideration that St. Paul never meant to deny that Abraham, Darid, and other believers in OT times were really justified (see Ro 4'"') ; while as many as were of the works of the law were under the curse. The former were like children under age, not j-ot enjoying the full privileges of sonship ; tlie latter were like bond-servants. To both alike the blessing brought by Christ in the fulness of the time is called adoption 'Gal 4'), and this sei-ins to