Paul and the Patriarch: The Role of Abraham in Romans 4

Abstract

In Rom. 4 Paul has the whole of Gen. 15 in mind, and expounds it in relation to the covenantal promise of a single worldwide family. This forms a key part of his demonstration that Israel’s God has been faithful to the covenant, and Paul’s language of δικαιοσύνη reflects that. His reference to Abraham’s ‘reward’ (μισθός) in 4.4 is an allusion to Gen. 15.1, where the ‘reward’ is the large family; he is not, then, refuting a view of justification which involves ‘earning’ a righteous status. One may then read 4.1 (modifying Hays’s earlier proposal) as ‘Have we found Abraham to be our ancestor in a human, fleshly sense?’, with 4.16-17 as the eventual answer to that question, not a parenthesis. ‘The justification of the ungodly’ in 4.5 is then a reference, not to Abraham’s own justification, but to the divine promise to include Gentile sinners within his family.

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