Romans 14:22-23

“ As to thee, thou hast faith;have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that judgeth not himself in that thing which he approveth! But he that doubteth is condemned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith. Whatsoever is not done by faith is sin. ”

The proposition: thou hast faith, might be taken in the interrogative sense; but there is more force in the simple affirmation. The Alexs. read ἥν, which, after πίστιν, faith. The meaning in that case is: “The faith which thou hast, keep.” The ancient versions do not favor this reading, and neither is it in keeping with the context, which requires that the two cases treated should be put expressly face to face with one another, with a view to the definite counsel to be stated for each. The words keep, etc. allude to the sacrifice which Paul had asked the strong to make in his external conduct. Paul reminds him that he does not in the least ask the abandonment of his internal conviction, and invites him to preserve it intact in his heart under the eye of God.

By the last words: Happy..., he gives him to understand that it is a feeling of gratitude and not of pride, with which he ought to be inspired by the degree of faith, and of liberty in faith, to which he has attained. Here, as elsewhere, the word κρίνειν must be translated by judge, and not by condemn. “To condemn oneself in what he adopts as good,” would be a contradictory idea. The subject in question is a simple inquiry as to the course which has been adopted once for all. Happy the man who no longer feels any scruple, nor puts any question of conscience to himself regarding the resolution he has taken. Δοκιμάζειν, to find good after examination.

Vv. 23 applies to the opposite case: that of doubt in regard to the line to be followed. Conscience has not reached oneness with itself; hence the term διακρίνεσθαι, to be divided into two men, the one of whom says yes, the other no.

Many give to the word πίστις, faith, the abstract sense of conviction. But there is nothing to authorize us to take from the word so common in Paul its religious signification. It refers, as always, to the acceptance of the salvation won by Christ. What a man cannot do as His redeemed one and in the joy of His salvation, must not be done at all. Otherwise this act, of which faith is not the soul, becomes sin, and may lead to the result indicated Romans 14:20: the total destruction of God's work in us.

Of the position of the doxology, Romans 16:25-27, at the end of chap. xiv.

A considerable number of documents place here, after Romans 14:23, the three doxological verses which, in the generally Received text, close the Epistle (Romans 16:25-27). These are the Mj. L, nearly 220 Mnn., the Lectionaria, the Philoxenian Syriac version, some ancient MSS. mentioned by Origen, finally, the Fathers of the Greek Church (Chrysostom, Cyril, Theodoret, etc. There may be added the MS. G and the Latin translation which accompanies it (g), which leave a blank here, as well as the Mjj. A and P and three Mnn., which read these three verses in both places. We shall complete these indications when we come to Romans 16:25. Should it be held that these verses have their original place here, and were afterward transposed from it to the end of the Epistle? Or did they, on the contrary, form originally the conclusion of the letter, and have certain copyists transferred them to this place for some reason or other? Or, finally, should we regard this passage as a later interpolation, which was placed sometimes at the end of chap. 14, sometimes at the end of chap. 16? There might be a fourth supposition, viz., that the apostle himself repeated at the end of his letter this passage, placed originally at the end of our chapter. But such a repetition would be without example or object. As to the apostolic origin of the passage, we shall examine it at Romans 16:27.

The question has more importance than appears at the first glance; for it has a somewhat close connection with that of the authenticity of chaps. 15, 16. If the apostle closed chap. 14 with this formula of adoration, it is probable that he meant thereby to terminate his Epistle; consequently all that follows would be open to the suspicion of being unauthentic. True, Reuss says, that even though the last three verses were placed at the end of chap xiv., “there would arise therefrom no prejudice unfavorable to the authenticity of chap. 15;” the apostle might have intended “to lay down the pen and close his discourse with a short prayer; then he bethought himself to add a few pages.” We doubt, however, whether a real example of such procedure can be quoted, and we think that if the true position of these three verses was indeed at the end of chap. 14, the fact would prove indirectly either that chaps. 15 and 16 are the work of an interpolator, or that, if they proceeded from the apostle's pen, they belonged originally to some other writing, whence they were transferred to this.

Let us examine the different hypotheses made on this subject:

1st. Hofmann has attempted to bring these three verses into the apostolic text by making them the transition from chap. 14 to chap. 15. According to him, the expression: “To Him that is of power to stablish you” (Romans 16:25), is in close connection with the discussion of chap. 14 relative to the strong and the weak; and the dative τῷ δυναμένῳ, to Him that is of power...is dependent on the verb ὀφείλομεν, we owe (Romans 15:1): “We owe to Him that is of power to stablish us to concur in His work by bearing the burdens of the weak.” The relation is ingeniously discovered; but this explanation is nevertheless inadmissible. Not only would this dative: to Him that is of power, be separated from the verb on which it depends by a doxological amplification out of all proportion, but especially the δέ, now then, which accompanies the verb we owe, indicates clearly the beginning of a new sentence.

2d. Baur, Volkmar, Lucht, place the doxology here, but as a later interpolation, and infer from this fact the total or almost total unauthenticity of chaps. 15 and 16. According to Lucht, the true conclusion of the Epistle, which immediately followed Romans 14:23, was suppressed by the elders of the church of Rome as too severe for the weak of chap. 14. But it was discovered again afterward in the archives of this church, and amplified in two different ways, in the form of the doxology Romans 16:25-27, and in the more extended form of the passage Romans 15:1 to Romans 16:24; these two conclusions, at first distinct, were afterward fused into one, which produced the now generally received form. Volkmar enters still more into detail. The true apostolic conclusion may, according to him, be found with certainty and in a complete form in chaps. 15 and 16. It consists of the two passages Romans 15:33 to Romans 16:2, and Romans 16:21-24. The rest of these two Chapter s embraces additions intended to co-operate in the pacification of the church. They proceed principally from two authors, the one in the east, who added the doxology about 145; the other in the west, who composed nearly all the rest about 120.

We are struck at once with the arbitrariness there is in the hypothesis of Lucht. What! elders take the liberty of suppressing the end of the apostolic writing! Then they preserve it in the archives of the church, and it becomes in the hands of some writer or other, along with some fragments of an Epistle to the Ephesians, the theme of our last two Chapter s! This is a romance which in any case could only gain some historical probability if we were to discover in chaps. 15 and 16 very positive proofs of their unauthenticity. Volkmar holds that the authentic conclusion has been wholly preserved, though mixed with a conglomerate of diverse interpolations. But would this close be sufficient? The apostle had introduced his didactic treatise with a long preamble in the letter form (Romans 1:1-15). Was it possible that in closing the writing he should not return, at least for a few moments, to the epistolary form with which he had begun? Now it is evident that the few words which Volkmar preserves as authentic by no means correspond to a preamble at once so grave and affectionate as the beginning of the Epistle. And it is impossible to understand how Paul could pass suddenly from the end of the practical treatise: “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Romans 14:23), to the words which, according to Volkmar, immediately followed: “The God of peace be with you all! Amen. I commend unto you Phoebe”...No, it was not thus the apostle composed.

3d. Since, then, it is impossible to find a place for this doxology in the didactic tissue of chaps. 14 and 15; and since, on the other hand, it cannot be held that it indicates the conclusion of the Epistle (at the end of chap. 14) it only remains to have recourse to a third solution. The weight of critical authorities makes the balance incline in favor of the position of these three verses at the end of chap. 16. What circumstance could have led to their migration, in a certain number of documents, to the end of chap. 14? If we keep account of the fact demonstrated by the study of the text of the whole N. T., that most of the errors of the Byz. documents arise from the tendency to adapt the text to the necessities of public reading, we shall be led to the supposition that in very ancient times the reading of our Epistle in the assemblies of the church stopped at the end of chap. 14, because from that point the didactic part, properly so called, terminated. But the reading could not end so abruptly. There was written therefore on the margin, for the use of the reader, the doxology which closed the entire Epistle; and, as has so often happened, it passed from the margin into the text at this place. So it has come about that it is found here in the documents of Byz. origin, and particularly in the Lectionaria, or collections of passages intended for public reading. It is objected, no doubt, that chaps. 15 and 16 appear in all our ancient lectionaries. But the period at which the omission of these two Chapter s would have taken place is long anterior to the date of the collections of pericopes which have been preserved to us. This way of explaining the transposition of the doxology seems to us preferable to the reasons stated by Meyer. If it is so, we understand how this doxology is found in both places at once in some documents, and how it is wholly wanting in some others. Certain copyists, doubtful about the position to be given to it, put it in both places; certain others, made suspicious by this double position, rejected it altogether. It is singular, we acknowledge, that it was not rather placed after Romans 14:13 of chap. 15, so as to embrace also in the public reading the passage we are now going to study (Romans 15:1-13). It is impossible at this date to discover the circumstance which has led to the choice rather of the end of chap. 14