(Are we to sin, because we are not under law, but under grace ?) vii. 7 (What shall we say then? Is the law sin 2), xi. 1 (I say then, Hath God cast off His people ?). There are two obvious reasons why Paul should have developed his gospel by this dialectical process apart from the assumption that he is meeting the anticipated objec- tions of his readers. One is, that he was a Jew himself, and justified his gospel instinctively, as he went along, against the primd facie objections to it which arose in hisown mind. Here, again, however we must remember that though Paul was a Jew he was a man; and it does not strike one as rigorously historical, but as somewhat absurd, to characterise as Jewish or as Jewish-Christian the criticism of grace which comes natural to every human being. The other reason is, that Paul had heard already in other places most of the objections to his gospel which he answers in this epistle. There is oniy one express reference to this, in iii. 8 (As we are slandered, and as some affirm that we say, Let us do evil that good may come: for τινες here, cf. 2 Cor. iii. 1, Gal. ii. 12); but that Paul’s gospel was assiduously and energetically counterworked we know quite well, and he may have heard (through some of his friends in the city) that his adversaries were forestalling him at Rome. These reasons fully explain the nature of his arguments ; and in view of the direct evidence for the Gentile character of the Church they prove nothing on the other side.
(d) Great stress was laid by Baur on chaps. ix.-xi. in this connec- tion. These, it was argued, were the real kernel of the epistle— the part for the sake of which it was really written, and by relation to which the rest has to be explained; and these, moreover, have no interest, or none worth speaking of, for a Gentile Church. It was only to a Jewish-Christian consciousness that this vindication of God’s wonderful ways in the history of redemption required to be or could be addressed. Plausible as this may sound, the facts are against it. For whatever reason, it is precisely and unambiguously to the Gentiles that all this section is addressed. In ix. 1 f£., x. 1 f. Paul speaks of the Jews in the third person (my prayer to God for them, etc.). He calls them my kinsmen, not yours or ours. He quotes himself, but not his readers (xi. 1), as proof that God has not cast off His people, which he would hardly have done had they also been Christian Jews (but see note on this verse). He uses the fate of the Jews, the natural branches, to warn his readers, grafted into the tree of life contrary to nature, against contempt, pride, and unbelief. Whatever the motive of these chapters may have been, it cannot have been that the bulk of the Romish Church was Jewish in