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  • From: "Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: passing over sins
  • Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2001 19:04:07 -0500


Dear John,

You write:

> I have several questions concerning the concept of a divine
>overlooking/passing-over of the sins of a prior time. The notion, of
>course, is found in Paul in Rom 3:25 and was attributed to him in Acts
>17:30. I ask for responses to the following questions: 1) Do the two
>statements refer to the same motif? How do others read them? 2) If 'yes'
>to (1), to what extent may this notion be understood as a 'feature' of
>Paul's conception of those (gentiles?) before (without?) Christ? The fact
>that both statements appear in paradigmatic accounts of Paul's teaching
>is suggestive, is it not? 3) What parallels to this notion are found in
>contemporary Jewish or non-Jewish literature? If possible, please point me
>toward primary texts rather than secondary ones.

HH: These are interesting questions for which I do not have much of an
answer. It seems that the two verses can be related. If God passed over
sins (Rom 3:25), then He could easily have passed over certain sins of
pagans committed in ignorance. Yet He also judged many of their sins, as in
Amos 1-2. So it may be that the chief interest of Rom 3:25 is to speak of
the atonement for sins past that only the cross could provide. No one in
the pre-cross era lost the possibility of eternal life by God insisting on
giving him the eternal judgment due his sins. God looked ahead to the
atonement that Jesus would accomplish and took that fact into account when
dealing with human beings.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard







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