Original scientific paper
Testimony of Scripture for Abraham’s justification of faith
Marijan Vugdelija
; Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Split
Abstract
The whole fourth chapter of the Letter to the Romans is
focused on the comment of Gn 15,6. The aim of that extensive
comment is the biblical foundation and explanation of the thesis
from Rm 3,21b: “God’s justice that was made known through
the Law and the Prophets has now been revealed outside the
Law.” Since God’s justice has been revealed outside the Law, it is
particularly important to show that the Torah is not against it,
which the Jewish collocutors most certainly reproached to Paul,
but that it explicitly testifies and lays foundation for the exclusion
of the “act of Law” at justification.
Abraham’s justification in Gn 15,6 corresponds to the justification
of Christians in threefold respect: first, it comes through
faith (Rm 3,22.28); secondly, just because it comes through faith
it realizes without any restrictions with all the people, only if
they believe in Christ (Rm 3,22.29 foll); thirdly, it happens, and
without exception, that sinners and godless become just (Rm
3,22b-23). On that basis he sets up, in two thought-directions
(ll 9-12 and 13-16), the universality of justice for the pagans
and Jews alike, and, according to it, the “exclusion” of the elitist
boasting of Jews on account of pagans, with a stress on the
signs of chosen people of Israel, i.e. circumcision and the Law. In
this way the Jewish thesis about Abraham as a father of proselytes
becomes the Christian thesis about Abraham as a father
of “all who believe”, the pagans and Jews alike.
The essential trait of that faith is that it does not rely on
one’s own, but completely and thoroughly on God, on his grace,
which gives and unconditionally fulfils the promise.
That the justification by faith in this threefold determination is
founded on Christ’s death and resurrection, that faith (Rm 3,26b)
and consequently the hermeneutic horizon of the whole testimony
of Scripture about Abraham is christologically founded, that that
christological aspect is here closely connected with that prevailing
theological aspect in ll 1-22, all that is undoubtedly expressed
in 22-25 and creates conditions for the whole explanation.
Keywords
Abraham; faith; justification; justness; promise; Law; Jewishness
Hrčak ID:
92955
URI
Publication date:
15.6.2006.
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