Cu. LJ THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 9
[ might seem to be deterred by the contempt in which the Gospel is held, and by the prospect of my own humiliation as its preacher, I am not ashamed of it.” The transition occupies Vv. 16,217:
The Gospel. Omit of Christ.
Power (dvvayuis). Not merely a powerful means in God’s hands, but in itself a divine energy.
First. Not principally, nor in preference to the Greek ; but first 7 point of time. Compare John iv. 22; Rom. iii. 1; ix, Ls Matt. xv. 24.
17. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed (Sixatocvyn yap Ocod ev dvt@ arroxad’rrerat). Rev., more cor- rectly, therein is revealed a righteousness of God. The absence of the article denotes that a peculiar kind of righteousness is meant. This statement contains the subject of the epistle : Leighteousness is by faith. The subject is not stated formally nor independently, but as a proof that the Gospel is a power, ete.
This word dixatoovvn righteousness, and its kindred words dixavos righteous, and Sixarow to make righteous, play so im- portant a part in this epistle that it is desirable to fix their meaning as accurately as possible.
CrassicaL usage. In the Greek classics there appears an eternal, divine, unwritten principle of right, dwelling in the human consciousness, shaping both the physical and the moral ordering of the world, and personified as Themis (O€us). This word is used as a common noun in the phrase Iéuis orl it is right fundamentally and eternally), like the Latin fas est. Thus Homer, of Penelope mourning for Ulysses, Séuis éoti ryuvaixos it rs the sacred obligation of the wife (founded in her natural relation to her husband, ordained of heaven) to mourn (“‘ Odyssey,” xiv., 130). So Antigone appeals to the unwritten law against the barbarity of refusing burial to her brother.
“* Nor did I deem thy edicts strong enough, That thou, a mortal man, shouldst overpass The unwritten laws of God that know not change.” SOPHOCLES, ‘“‘ Antigone,” 453-455.
10 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Cra
See, also, “Odyssey,” xvi, 91; Aristophanes, ‘‘Clouds,” 140 ; * Antigone,” 880.
This divine ordering requires that men should be shown or pointed to that which is according to it—a definite circle of duties and obligations which constitute right (d/en).* Thus what is S¢eavos righteous, is properly the expression of the eternal Themis. While dien and Séuss are not to be distin- guished as human and divine, den has a more distinctively human, personal character, and comes into sharper definition. It introduces the distinction between absolute right and power. It imposes the recognition of a moral principle over against an absolutely constraining natural force. The conception of dic is strongly moral.t Adxavos is right ; dixavoctvn is rightness as characterizing the entire being of man.
There is a religious background to the pagan conception. In the Homeric poems morality stands in a relation, loose and undeveloped indeed, but none the less real, to religion. This appears in the use of the oath in compacts; in the fear of the wrath of heaven for omission of sacrifices; in regarding refusal of hospitality as an offence against Zeus, the patron of stran- gers and suppliants. Certain tribes which are fierce and un- civilized are nevertheless described as dias righteous. “The characteristic stand-point of the Homeric ethics is that the spheres of law, of morals, and of religion are by no means separate, but lie side by side in undeveloped unity” (Nagelsbach).
In later Greek literature this conception advances, in some instances, far toward the christian ideal; as in the fourth book of Plato’s “ Laws,” where he asserts that God holds in His hand the beginning, middle, and end of all things; that justice always follows Him, and punishes those who fall short of His laws. Those who would be dear to God must be like Him. Without holiness no man is accepted of God.