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  • From: "Daniel P. Bailey" <DanPBailey AT aol.com>
  • To: corpus-paul
  • Subject: RE: HILASTERION
  • Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 16:55:24


On 02/21/00, ""Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT mail.gvi.net>" wrote:
> Dear Dan,
> I appreciated the argument of your abstract. I wonder if you engaged
> the argument of Stan Stowers' A Rereading of Romans, pp. 206-13. If
> so, I wonder if you might recite some of the agreements and
> disagreements of your investigation of this matter. His reading
> departs from the standard views on Romans but not 4 Macc., if I
> remember correctly, and it would be helpful to see how yours
> interacts with his reading in both cases.
> Thanks,
> Mark Nanos
> Kansas City

Dear Mark:
Thanks for your response. Stan Stowers is indeed one of the few "spirited"
opponents of the mercy-seat interpretation of Rom 3:25. Most others don't
so much oppose it as doubt its definiteness, preferring to translate
HILASTERION by the vague expression "means of expiation" (which the mercy
seat is not: it does not expiate sin, rather, the high priest does so). My
copy of Stowers in still buried in boxes after a move from England, so for
now I'll just tell you where he fits into my dissertation (sorry, I can't
remember what Stowers says about 4 Macc 17:22).

There is no mention of Stowers in my main chapters because he does not
focus properly on lexicography: like many since Dodd, he studies the verb
HILASKESTHAI etc. with little focus on the substantive HILASTERION. This
verb-based approach is reflected in Stowers's translation of Rom 3:25. See
S. K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans (1994), p. 208:

"whom God purposed [or 'set forth'] as an act of propitiation [or
'conciliation'] by means of [Jesus’] faithfulness in his blood."
(Bracketed material original to Stowers.)

My first objection is that I cannot make sense of this in English. At the
beginning it seems to say that God "set forth" Jesus and that this "setting
forth" was GOD's "act of propitiation," which apparently means that God
propitiated, appeased, or conciliated himself. But then at the end it seems
that Jesus may have propitiated God "by means of his faithfulness in his
blood." So I am confused as to where Stowers locates the primary agency in
this verse. I would understand it to lie with God the Father, as subject of
the verb PROETHETO. See also Rom 8:3.

(By the way, the best English-language treatment of Paul's emphasis on
GOD's initiative in providing for atonement or redemption is in Arland
Hultgren, Paul's Gospel and Mission, chapter entitled "God's Work in
Christ," with special reference to Rom 3:25.)

But my more pointed criticism of Stowers is that he assigns an impossible
(or at least unattested) meaning to HILASTERION, translating it by "an ACT
of propitiation [or 'conciliation']." As I say in the first paragraph of my
Ph.D. abstract (forthcoming in TynBul 51.1 [April 2000]), a HILASTERION is
never an ACTION in ancient Greek sources.

This lexical-semantic observation also creates some difficulties for those
who would refer the PISTIS in Rom 3:25 to Jesus' own faithfulness. Bruce
Longenecker translates "whom God put forward as an atoning sacrifice,
[accomplished] though (Jesus') faithfulness by means of his blood" (see NTS
39 [1993] 478-480). Once again in English, "sacrifice" can mean the act of
sacrifice, and thus it makes sense to say that Jesus made or accomplished
the sacrifice by an exercise of his faithfulness. But this can hardly be
the meaning of the Greek, since in Greek a HILASTERION is an object and
therefore not something that can be accomplished or performed. In fact, it
is GOD who caused Jesus to become the new HILASTERION. We thus have a
person-object symbolism, in other words, a metaphor, rather than simply a
functional description of the accomplishment of sacrificial atonement.

I could say the same thing against Ian Wallis, The Faith of Jesus Christ
(SNTSMS), p. 85, who speaks of "atonement...achieved 'through [sc.
Christ's] faith at the cost of his blood.'" This once again is the English
language speaking, not the Greek. "Atonement" can indeed by "achieved," but
a HILASTERION cannot be "achieved" if a HILASTERION is a concrete object.

Back to Stowers. I did not mention him in the body of the dissertation
because I focused on lexicography and he didn't. But I did mention Stowers
in my conclusion because he is one of the few scholars to point out where
the discussion of Rom 3:25 is likely to go -- or at least where it should
go -- in the future. Stowers rejects the image of "Jesus as the mercy seat"
because he thinks that this dispossesses Judaism, superseding the Jerusalem
temple and pointing out its lack of a "mercy seat" (this cultic object went
missing in the exile along with the ark and was not restored in Herod's
temple, in keeping with prophesy: cf. Jer 3:16). Paul supposedly could not
have thought about Judaism in this way. But this is precisely where I think
we might have some interesting discussion. Here's how I worded the call for
further discussion in the conclusion to my thesis ("Jesus as the Mercy
Seat," diss. Cambridge, 1999, pp. 222-23):

"Much of the energy of twentieth-century scholarship on our passage has
been spent debating the reference and meaning of Paul’s term HILASTERION.
But less has been done in assessing the significance of the mercy-seat
typology once it has been established. I have devoted myself to
philological arguments which I hope will severely weaken the alternatives
and put the idea of Jesus as the mercy seat beyond the doubt of most
scholars [NOTE: this is not as arrogant as it sounds, since half of today's
scholars already accept that Jesus is the new mercy seat according to Rom
3:25]. But a new phase in the debate could just be beginning. In some North
American works the mercy-seat interpretation is rejected largely because it
is "politically incorrect," embodying notions of the supersession of
Judaism by Christianity that Paul (and his true spiritual heirs) supposedly
would not have countenanced [footnote reads: "Cf. Stowers, Rereading,
209–210: Paul is free of the 'supersessionism' that the mercy-seat
interpretation presupposes."]. This issue of supersession or "Überbietung"
needs to be addressed by a wider range of scholars. Perhaps something could
also be made of the idea that Jesus represents the recovery of the mercy
seat that Israel lost in the exile."

So I ask in conclusion: Is it really so politically expedient to eliminate
from our discussions the typology of Jesus at the renewed mercy seat
accessible to both Jews and Gentiles "through faith"? Or is this option
inherently too "supersessionist" to represent Paul's true opinion?

Definitions are all-important in this type of discussion. One person's
"supersession" is another's "restoration." But as for me, I don't see how
the recovery in Jesus of the mercy seat that Israel lost in the exile could
be construed as bad news for Israel.

I look forward to our ongoing discussions.

All the best,

Dan Bailey
Milwaukee, Wisconsin






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