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  • From: "Justin Dombrowski" <jedombrowski AT msn.com>
  • To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Audience of Romans/Symbolic Paul
  • Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 15:31:03 -0400

Tim wrote:

In other words, just because Abraham
was not weak in faith, that means
that "weak in faith" necessarily means
failure to believe in the resurrection?
It seems to me that is a rather
large assumption.

Yet this is exactly what Paul's language implies. Why
was Abraham "strong"? For believing in God's ability
to give life to Sarah's dead womb (4:19-21).
Christians are likewise strong for believing in
Christ's resurrection (4:23-25). How could this be any
clearer?

JD: I'm with Tim here: this is a real stretch, especially since in Rom 14 those in question have "weak" faith, not "no faith." The people under discussion in Rom 14 are different than Rom 9-11.

It seems much more natural to
recognize that Paul defines "weak"
in ch. 14 itself - the weakness is
characterized by believing one may
only eat vegetables, for example
(14.2).

And yet this is exactly what Paul's language does
**not** imply. If eating vegatables and abstaining
from meat were "weak", why would Paul advise doing so,
without reservation, in honor of God? The weak do
these things, because they're Judeans, but their
"Jewishness" itself isn't the weakness.


JD: Paul doesn't "advise" people to continue the dietary habits because it's a good thing. Rather, (a) he's addressing the strong, and (b) he advises them to permit to "weak" to continue to a point for their sake. It's a pastoral move--that's the "honoring God" part.

It seems much more likely that these are believing Jews a la Galatians under discussion here, not unbelieving ones.





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