The Upper Register

Savor the Greek New Testament: The Two Year Plan

As I have been doing every year since 2008, I have posted a new GNT calendar with daily reading assignments for 2012. If you follow this calendar you will be able to read the entire GNT in one year.

GNT One-Year Calendar 2012

However, the feedback I have received from many of you indicates that it is quite challenging to attempt to read the whole Greek New Testament in one year. The reading portions are too big. So this year I have created a new calendar for those who would like to go at a more leisurely pace. If you follow this calendar, you will read Matthew 1 through Acts 9 in 2012, followed by Acts 10 through Revelation in 2013.

GNT Two-Year Calendar, Year One 2012

You will notice that the reading portions are not all of equal length. This is owing to the desire, as far as could be practically achieved, to match the reading portions with the content-based divisions of the text.

I plan to upload Year Two 2013 at a later time.

Also, to assist you in reading, don't forget to check my Greek Syntax Notes:

http://www.upper-register.com/papers.html#GNT

I will personally be doing the slower 2-year pace this year (along with the Vulgate), so anyone who wants to join me, feel free to drop me a note.

Complaint denied by PCA Standing Judicial Commission

I was so busy this year with other pressing matters that I never blogged on something important that occurred this past March that was personally relevant to my ministry. Let me back up and begin the narrative in 2003 at the point where my trial in the OPC came to a conclusion.

In January 2003, I was found guilty (by a presbytery vote of 17 to 16) of violating my ordination vows by my teaching regarding the ten commandments. I appealed my conviction to the 70th General Assembly of the OPC, aka "the Synod of Dordt" (tongue-in-cheek because that GA was held at Dordt College in the middle of the cornfields in Souix Center, Iowa). On June 30, 2003, after a day-long debate on the floor my appeal was denied, even though the Advisory Committee had recommended with no dissenting votes that my appeal be granted. Since I could not in good conscience change my views, in October of that year I withdrew from the OPC. Technically, I renounced the jurisdiction of the OPC by declaring myself to be (temporarily) independent as provided by the BCO. 

The presbytery did not initially accept my renunciation of the jurisdiction and instead proceeded with the censure of indefinite suspension from the ministry. I went forward and dutifully submitted to having the censure read over me, as hard as it was to do so.

Initially, my intention was to continue serving as the pastor of the majority of the members of Redeemer OPC, where I had been serving as organizing pastor, but within a different denomination. But after much prayer and deliberation with my wife, I decided to take a break from the ministry in order to gain some perspective on what happened and to get some much needed rest after a very stressful ordeal. The sad part was that the mission work that Misty and I had been trying to plant was folded and the people had to find other churches to attend. 

After the presbytery elected a delegation to attempt to dissuade me from my course, and realizing that I wasn't planning to come back to the OPC, a few months later, in February 2004, the presbytery agreed to accept my decision to withdraw and erased my name from the presbytery's roll of ministerial members. This was the key action which I thought was straightforward and clear until it became muddied four years later -- as I'll explain in a moment. But this action of the presbytery was communicated to me in a letter from the clerk with the concluding remark, "May the Lord guide you as you seek new ways in which to labor for Him," and thanking me for my years of service in the ministry in the OPC.

The next month, March 2004, Misty and I became members of New Life Burbank (PCA), along with our two (at the time) non-communicant children. Misty and the children joined by letter of transfer and I joined by reaffirmation of faith. I had to join by reaffirmation of faith because technically, I was not a member of any particular visible church.

For several years, I was content to serve the church that we were now a part of as a layperson. I taught Sunday School on occasion. I went to the Philippines on short-term mission teaching at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Cavite outside of Manila. But I was not eager to jump back into the ministry. In fact, I was pretty sure that the Lord wanted me to take a break from the ministry and instead to work on deepening my own relationship with the Lord and to focus on being a better husband and father.

I was minding my own business when, in March 2007, along with four other men, I was nominated by the church's nominating committee (composed of laypeople) to consider going through a lengthy training process that could lead to standing for election as a ruling elder. I was not expecting this. It was not something I desired, nor did it ever occur to me that the Lord might be calling me to be a ruling elder. I had always thought of myself as a minister, and so if I were ever to consider seeking ordained office, it would be as a minister or teaching elder. But even though it had never crossed my mind to serve as a ruling elder, the congregation had recognized my gifts and wanted me to serve them in this way. This had an extraordinary effect on me, and I found myself desiring to serve the church in a way that I had not imagined.

Later that same year, New Life Burbank's associate pastor (Joel Fick) decided to take a call to be the full-time pastor of an OPC mission work in Gainesville, Florida. The senior pastor at the time (Owen Lee) asked me to consider going through the process of seeking re-ordination as a teaching elder in the PCA in order to succeed Joel Fick as associate pastor. Since my heart was already being opened up to serve the congregation as a ruling elder, I began to think that perhaps the Lord may be calling me to serve New Life as an associate pastor. In December 2007, I submitted my application to come under care of the Pacific Presbytery of the PCA. I explained the situation regarding my trial in the OPC to the Candidates and Credentials Committee. As expected, the C&C committee did their due diligence by contacting my old presbytery, the Presbytery of Southern California (PSC-OPC).

This is when the heretofore clear waters got terribly muddied. I was not privy to the communications that were taking place at this time between the Pacific Presbytery (PP-PCA) and my old presbytery (PSC-OPC). All I know is that in May 2008, the PSC-OPC wrote a letter to the PP-PCA that was terribly misleading, implying that I was still under censure -- which is wild since in the same letter they also acknowledge that I was no longer under their jurisdiction. The letter concludes with the warning to the PP-PCA to consider the ramifications of inter-church relations between the OPC and the PCA. This self-contradictory but highly charged letter was read on the floor of the PP-PCA in a meeting held in executive session, so I was unable to respond or give my perspective. Not surprisingly, the PP-PCA declined to process my application to come under care on that grounds that "Mr. Lee Irons is currently under indefinite suspension as a Teaching Elder" in a fellow NAPARC church.

In view of these events, the session decided that the best course of action was to drop the idea of calling me as an associate pastor and instead to continue with the original plan of becoming a ruling elder. This whole time the training of the ruling elder candidates had continued. The four ruling elder candidates, including myself, were interviewed by the session in June 2008 and approved to be set before the congregation for election. We were elected in July 2008, and ordained and installed in September 2008.

When the PP-PCA learned that I had been ordained as a ruling elder a few months after they had rejected my application to come under care with the goal of becoming a teaching elder, the presbytery erected a committee in January 2009 to determine whether there were any constitutional irregularities in the session's action. The study committee reported in May 2009 its finding that the session of New Life Burbank had not acted contrary to the constitution of the PCA, but suggesting that it would have been wise for the session to have communicated with the PSC-OPC first. There was also a minority report signed by one member of the committee arguing that the session did err in ordaining me as a ruling elder.

On May 2, 2009, the PP-PCA adopted the majority report. But the presbytery also enjoined the session of New Life Burbank to contact the PSC-OPC to pursue rapprochement and clarification. Rather than waiting to see how the communication between the session of New Life Burbank and the PSC-OPC would go, on May 14, 2009, several men filed a complaint against the PP-PCA for concluding that there were no constitutional errors or irregularities in my ordination as a ruling elder. 

In August 2009, the session of New Life, as instructed by the presbytery, wrote a letter to the PSC-OPC explaining why in its view I was available as a candidate for ordination as a ruling elder in the PCA. In September 2009, the complaint was denied by the PP-PCA, and the complaint was appealed to the Standing Judicial Commission.

Meanwhile, the PSC-OPC received the letter from the session and at its February 2010 meeting (at which I was present) my old presbytery responded with a brief but decisive letter that undid its harmful letter of May 2008 and finally unmuddied the waters. While hoping that I might still reconsider my views which led to the parting of ways, they acknowledged the PCA's "right to evaluate the doctrine of Mr. Irons and to duly call him to ordained service." I am grateful to the Clerk, Rev. Mike Pasarilla, for drafting this letter and putting it forward for the presbytery's consideration. For more on the events that transpired that day, see this blog post.

Finally, in March 2011, the PCA's Standing Judicial Commission denied the complaint with no dissenting votes. In its reasoning and opinion, the SJC wrote:

"We find that the Session of NLB had the appropriate jurisdiction to make a determination of whether Irons should stand for election to the Office of Ruling Elder. The PSC voted to accept Irons's renunciation of its jurisdiction on February 7, 2004. Upon PSC's taking this action, Irons ceased to be a member of the PSC and was no longer subject to its jurisdiction. He was free to join with any other Church, and in fact he did so when he was received into the membership of NLB. As a member in good standing of NLB, Irons was eligible for nomination and election to the Office of Ruling Elder just as any other male member in good standing of NLB."

After all of the misleading things that have been said about my case, those were extremely gratifying words to read.

I want to personally thank the following teaching elders for advocating on my behalf in the Pacific Presbytery over the past several years:  Owen Lee, Bob Bjerkaas, Charles Sy, and Geoff Shaw. And I also want to thank my fellow ruling elders on the session of New Life Burbank. Thank you, brothers.

My SBL Paper on November 19, 2011

In two weeks, I'll be reading a paper at the 2011 SBL Annual Meeting in San Francisco titled Is "Righteousness" a Relational Concept in the Hebrew Bible?

This is for the Biblical Lexicography Program Unit, the theme of which this year is "50 years of Barr's Semantics of Biblical Language (1961)."

To see the other papers for this unit, go to

http://www.sbl-site.org/meetings/Congresses_ProgramBook.aspx?MeetingId=19

And search for "Irons."

Geerhardus Vos's Reformed Dogmatics

From the Logos website:

Geerhardus Vos' Reformed Dogmatics (5 vols.) represents the mature theological thought of one of the premier Reformed thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Originally self-published in five volumes in 1896, under the title Gereformeerde Dogmatiek (also known as Dogmatiek) this important piece of Reformed theology has never been available to an English audience.

Throughout his life, Vos was connected with a number of important Reformed institutions. He was the first alumnus of Calvin Seminary (then Theological School) to earn a doctoral degree and also the first Calvin Seminary faculty member to have an advanced degree. Before his appointment at Calvin, Vos was invited by Abraham Kuyper to take the chair of Old Testament Theology at the newly formed Free University (Vrije Universiteit) in Amsterdam.

After teaching at Calvin, Vos accepted a position at Princeton during the days of the Old Princeton Theologians. He held the chair of Biblical Theology there from 1892 until 1932. Vos is perhaps best known to English speakers for his books Pauline Eschatology, published in 1930, and Biblical Theology: Old and New Testament, published in 1948. Vos' strong grounding in biblical scholarship and biblical theology makes his Reformed Dogmatics unique, bringing a fresh biblical perspective. Though these five volumes are systematic in nature, Geerhardus Vos brings the skills and acumen of a biblical theologian to the task.

Logos Bible Software is pleased to announce the first ever English translation of Geerhardus Vos' Gereformeerde Dogmatiek. Using the Pre-Pub Process for this project allows us to invest resources in translating Gereformeerde Dogmatiek only if there is sufficient demand.

If you would like to see it in English translation, place your pre-pub order today.

Luther and Melanchthon on Imputation

I recently learned that many scholars think Luther did not hold to the concept of imputed righteousness. The scholars who belong to this camp are typically associated with the so-called “Luther Renaissance” that took place in the first half of the 20th century, mainly under the influence of the German church historian Karl Holl (1886–1926).

Holl argued that Luther’s discovery of the Protestant doctrine of justification occurred earlier than typically thought, during the time of his lectures on the Psalms (1513-14), before his lectures on Romans (1515-16), and before the 95 theses (1517). The problem is that at this early stage, Luther had not yet made his break with Rome. He was an Augustinian but not yet a Protestant. In his lectures on the Psalms and on Romans, he confuses justification and sanctification, views justification as a process of moral transformation, and does not affirm imputation. Holl elevated the young Luther as the benchmark of Luther’s thought, and explained the rise of the doctrine of imputed righteousness by claiming that this was Melanchthon’s creation and that this doctrine of Melanchthon was then later made the standard of Lutheran orthodoxy in the Augsburg Confession and the Formula of Concord. It is the Lutheran version of the (now discredited) “Calvin vs. the Calvinsts (aka Reformed scholastics)” thesis.

The Holl thesis has influenced many. For example, Mark A. Seifrid, in his chapter in the book Justification: What's At Stake in the Current Debates (ed. Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier [IVP/Apollos, 2004], 137-52), argues that Melanchthon is the father of the concept of imputed righteousness, and that this is a betrayal of Luther's more dynamic view in which justification is a verdict that takes place through the event of the cross and resurrection.

I found out the hard way about Seifrid's dependence on the Holl thesis when I received his comments on my dissertation as the external reader. Seifrid was criticial of me for being too influenced by classic Reformed theology and not grasping the interpretation of Luther promoted by "the Luther renaissance," which Seifrid seems to equate with his reading of Paul's view. Seifrid also lamented the fact that this view of Luther is widely accepted in Europe but hardly known in America.

I was taken aback by Seifrid's comment and decided to dig into this issue a bit. I discovered three good responses to the view that Melanchthon and Luther were widely different on the issue of imputation:

Armand J. Boehme, “Tributaries into the River JDDJ: Karl Holl and Luther’s Doctrine of Justification,” Logia 18.3 (2009): 9ff.

Lowell C. Green, How Melanchthon Helped Luther Discover the Gospel (Fallbrook: Verdict Publications, 1980). [I want to thank John Fesko for alerting me to this helpful book. It’s a little hard to find, but used copies are available at various online used bookstores. Providentially, Fesko's lecture at the ETS Far West Region Meeting this past April was on Melanchthon's understanding of union with Christ.]

R. Scott Clark, “Iustitia Imputata Christi: Alien or Proper to Luther’s Doctrine of Justification?” Concordia Theological Quarterly 70 (2006): 269-310.

Clark writes:

“Scholars have too often focused on what Heiko Oberman called the ‘romantic and unrealistic’ notion of a ‘one-time breakthrough.’ For example, Holl failed to recognize the development of Luther’s theology in the period 1513–1521. As a consequence, he used as a baseline to determine Luther’s doctrine of justification things Luther said in that period but that he later rejected. It is more historical to say that gradually, from 1513 to 1521, Luther came to reject the doctrine of progressive justification in favor of the forensic doctrine of definitive justification” (287-88).

According to Clark, the three places where Luther most clearly expounds his mature doctrine of justification are his lectures on Galatians (1535) (especially his comments on Gal 2:16) and in two disputations on justification (both held in 1536). To give one quote from the second disputation of 1536 in the home of Johannes Bugenhagen, right at the very outset, Melanchthon asks Luther if he believes that man is righteous by intrinsic renewal, as Augustine taught, or by a truly gracious imputation which is outside of us. Luther’s response is straightforward and unambiguous: 

“I think this, and am most persuaded and certain that this is the true opinion of the Gospel and of the Apostles, that only by a gracious imputation are we righteous before God” (sola imputatione gratuita sumus iusti apud Deum) (quoted by Clark, 303).

The Latin text of this disputation is found in Melanchthon’s supplemental writings, and is available on Google books (go to page 344).

The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God

Some helpful observations by D. A. Carson on the love of God:

If people believe in God at all today, the overwhelming majority hold that this God – however he, she, or it may be understood – is a loving being. But that is what makes the task of the Christian witness so daunting. For this widely disseminated belief in the love of God is set with increasing frequency in some matrix other than biblical theology. The result is that when informed Christians talk about the love of God, they mean something very different from what is meant in the surrounding culture. 

I do not think that what the Bible says about the love of God can long survive at the forefront of our thinking if it is abstracted from the sovereignty of God, the holiness of God, the wrath of God, the providence of God, or the personhood of God – to mention only a few nonnegotiable elements of basic Christianity. The result, of course, is that the love of God in our culture has been purged of anything the culture finds uncomfortable. The love of God has been sanitized, democratized, and above all sentimentalized.

If the love of God is exclusively portrayed as an inviting, yearning, sinner-seeking, rather lovesick passion, we may strengthen the hands of Arminians, semi-Pelagians, Pelagians, and those more interested in God’s inner emotional life than in his justice and glory, but the cost will be massive.

D. A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Wheaton: Crossway, 2000), 9-11, 22.

ETS Far West Region Meeting, April 8

I’ll be in Escondido tomorrow at Westminster Seminary California for the Far West Region Meeting of ETS. At 5:00pm, I will be reading a paper in which I summarize the chapter of my dissertation where I analyze the language of righteousness (and the righteousness of God) in the Old Testament.

Which reminds me — both of my mentors (Drs. Hagner and Kim) and the external reader have examined my dissertation, “ΔΙΚΑΙΟΣΥΝΗ ΘΕΟΥ: A Lexical Examination of the Covenant-Faithfulness Interpretation.” The first two passed it as superior and the third passed it as adequate. Part of the third reader's concern with my dissertation flows from the fact that, although he is a fellow critic of the New Perspective on Paul, he questions the Reformed interpretation of righteousness as a gift from God, isolated from Christ, and wishes to recover Luther’s own view of Christ himself as our righteousness, which (he argues) does not rely on the concept of imputation. Nevertheless, he had some very helpful and detailed criticisms that I will need to ponder more carefully. In any event, it is a relief to know that I have passed. So, it looks like I will be graduating this June. 

Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?

The question has been raised and answered in the affirmative in Allah: A Christian Response by Miroslav Volf. In addition to this helpful review, I thought it would be nice to get Calvin's perspective on this issue. The context is Calvin's distinction between the knowledge of God the Creator and the knowledge of God the Redeemer in Christ. At first this distinction might seem to support the notion that adherents of the great monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam - all worship the same Creator God. But in light of Calvin's teaching concerning man's depravity, which has plunged him into spiritual blindness that leads to the creation of false notions of God, i.e., idols, it becomes clear that for Calvin, God cannot be truly known and worshipped even as Creator apart from Christ. He writes:

Christ tells his disciples to believe in him, in order that they might have a distinct and complete belief in God, “Ye believe in God, believe also in me” (John 14:1). For although, properly speaking, faith rises from Christ to the Father, he intimates, that even when it leans on God, it gradually vanishes away, unless he himself interpose to give it solid strength. The majesty of God is too high to be scaled up to by mortals, who creep like worms on the earth. Therefore, the common saying that God is the object of faith (Lactantius, lib. 4 c. 16), requires to be received with some modification. When Christ is called the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15), the expression is not used without cause, but is designed to remind us that we can have no knowledge of our salvation, until we behold God in Christ ... What I wish to impress upon my readers in this way is, that the first step in piety is, to acknowledge that God is a Father, to defend, govern, and cherish us, until he brings us to the eternal inheritance of his kingdom; that hence it is plain, as we lately observed, there is no saving knowledge of God without Christ, and that, consequently, from the beginning of the world Christ was held forth to all the elect as the object of their faith and confidence. In this sense, Irenaeus says, that the Father, who is boundless in himself, is bounded in the Son, because he has accommodated himself to our capacity, lest our minds should be swallowed up by the immensity of his glory (Irenaeus, lib. 4 cap. 8) ... God is comprehended in Christ alone. The saying of John was always true, “whosoever denieth the Son, the same has not the Father” (1 John 2:23). For though in old time there were many who boasted that they worshipped the Supreme Deity, the Maker of heaven and earth, yet as they had no Mediator, it was impossible for them truly to enjoy the mercy of God, so as to feel persuaded that he was their Father. Not holding the head, that is, Christ, their knowledge of God was evanescent; and hence they at length fell away to gross and foul superstitions betraying their ignorance, just as the Turks in the present day, who, though proclaiming, with full throat, that the Creator of heaven and earth is their God, yet by their rejection of Christ, substitute an idol in his place. (Institutes II.vi.4).

Seed of David, Son of God (Rom 1:3-4), Part 10

I have argued that the original Christological formula quoted by Paul went as follows: 

“born of the seed of David, according to the flesh;
marked out Son of God, according to the Spirit of holiness”

The point of the primitive formula was to explain the identity of Jesus in terms of his two natures, human and divine, using two of his most important titles as keywords:  “seed of David” and “Son of God.”

In focusing on the two natures of Christ, my view is similar to the Hodge-Warfield view. Yet it is slightly different in that I do not take “the Spirit of holiness” as denoting the divine nature of Christ but rather the Holy Spirit. The divine nature of Christ is denoted by the term “Son of God.”

In keeping with this, I argued that the verb horizo is to be translated “marked out,” since it would not make sense to say that he was “appointed” the divine Son of God. Rather, he was marked out as such by the Spirit’s powerful activity in his earthly ministry.

Now, perhaps you may be questioning the validity of taking “Son of God” in an ontological/divine sense rather than a functional/messianic sense. After all, the Davidic king was a “son of God” in some sense without making him divine (2 Sam 7:14; Ps 2:7). This is a widely-held interpretation of the title “Son of God.”

For example, Schreiner argues that

“The appointment of Jesus being described here [in Rom 1:3-4] is his appointment as the messianic king … The title huiou theou in verse 3 is a reference not to Jesus’ deity but to his messianic kingship as the descendant of David.”

[Thomas Schreiner, Romans (BECNT; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 42].

I’m not accusing Schreiner of heresy but he has bought into this notion of a functional “messianic sonship” (at least in this text - I’m sure he would acknowledge higher meanings elsewhere). But this category, as applied to Jesus, just does not exist in the NT. I would challenge anyone to look up all 131 references to Jesus as “Son,” “the Son,” “Son of God,” “Son of the Most High God,” “My Son,” etc., in the NT. If you do that, you will see that the title “Son of God” – when applied to Jesus in the NT – is primarily about ontological not functional status. It has to do with his status as the eternal, divine Son. This is not only true in the Pauline epistles (17x), the Gospel of John (27x), the Johannine epistles (24x), and Hebrews (12x), where we might expect such divine nuances. It is also true in the Synoptic Gospels, including the most primitive layers of the tradition – Matthew (22x), Mark (11x), Luke (14x).

An excellent discussion of the meaning of the title “Son of God” in the Gospels can be found in chapter 12 of George Eldon Ladd’s Theology of the New Testament. Ladd argues that the two titles, “Son of God” and “Messiah,” are not equivalent in the Gospels.

For example, at the beginning of his public ministry, immediately after being baptized by John, the voice from heaven declares:  “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mk. 1:11). In what sense is Jesus here designated God’s Son? It is tempting to think that at his baptism, Jesus became God’s Son in the messianic sense, that is, he was appointed to messianic sonship in the sense of Psalm 2:7.

But Ladd argues that the while Psalm 2:7 is alluded to, it is only quoted partially. “I have begotten you” is left out. Instead, a clause from Isaiah 42:1, “with whom I am well pleased,” is added. Ladd argues that this clause should be translated, “whom I have chosen” (cp. LXX). Ladd writes: 

“The heavenly voice may therefore be rendered, ‘This is my only Son; him I have chosen.’ Sonship and messianic status are not synonymous. Rather, sonship is the prior ground and the basis of Jesus’ election to fulfill his messianic office … He does not become the Son; he is the Son. Sonship is antecedent to messiahship” (163-4).

[George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (rev. by Donald A. Hagner; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993.]

He is the eternal Son of God. The eternal Son is chosen to be the Messiah. At his baptism, the voice from heaven proclaims that the eternal Son of God is now appointed Messiah.

This is reinforced by Jesus himself in the following pericope found in all three Synoptic Gospels:

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, ‘“The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet’? If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” (Matt 22:41-45 ESV).

Yes, Jesus is the son of David, the anointed King, the Messiah. But he is much more than that. He is not only David’s son; he is also David’s Lord who as deity is worthy to sit at the right hand of God. Whose son is he? He is David’s son (as to his human nature) and he is God’s Son (as to his divine nature). The Jews expected a purely human messiah, a political deliverer, but not a divine Savior who would die as a ransom for sinners and be raised and exalted to the right hand of God to be the object of faith and worship.

Let’s return to the primitive formula. That formula, I argue, was used by the earliest Jewish Christian community as a handy way of summarizing who Jesus is. Just as the baptism of Jesus distinguishes the two aspects of Jesus’ identity – eternal Son of God, then appointed Messiah – so the Christological formula quoted by Paul in Rom 1:3-4 explains the identity of Jesus in terms of his two sonships, but in reverse order:  “seed of David” (or Messiah) as to his human nature, but much more than that – he was also marked out the divine “Son of God,” as evidenced by the powerful operation of the Spirit given to the Son “without measure” (which operation of the Spirit, Paul adds, was powerfully demonstrated at his resurrection).

Seed of David, Son of God (Rom 1:3-4), Part 9

Using Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (UC Irvine), in conjunction with the assistance of good ole LSJ, I have examined the verb horizo in extra-biblical Greek. Here are the results of my study. There are nine main usages, and these nine can be subdivided into two groups – the first six and the last three.

First, to mark out land by boundaries

“For when he learned of Polycrates’ death, first he set up an altar to Zeus the Liberator and marked out around it that sacred enclosure which is still to be seen in the suburb of the city” (Herodotus 3.142). A sacred enclosure (temenos) is a piece of land marked off from common uses and dedicated to a god.

Second, to limit the range/extent of something

“Now that you have seen fit to confiscate the property of Erasiphon, I relinquish two-thirds to the State … So I have limited my share to one-third of their property, making no exact calculation, but leaving much more than two-thirds to the Treasury” (Lysias 17.6).

“Women are not allowed by law to accept agreements involving too large a sum, but a limit has been set defining the amount to which they may do so” (Dio Chrysostom 74.10).

Third, to decide someone’s fate or destiny

“Then the Delphian lords … decided that my mistress should die, by being cast from the rock” (Euripides, Ion 1222).

“Yes, for my father’s fate has marked out this destiny for you” (Aeschylus, Choephoroe 927).

Fourth, to lay down or ordain (legal/judicial contexts)

“And yet, gentlemen, in cases of this sort your laws lay down the most severe penalties if an Athenian transports corn to any place other than your city” (Lycurgus, Oratio in Leocratem §27).

“Against those who call God as a witness in favour of assertions which are not true, the punishment of death is ordained in the law” (Philo, Spec. 2.252).

Fifth, to fix upon, in the sense of selecting one option within a range of options

“‘Well then,’ said Socrates, ‘that there may be no question raised about my obedience, please fix the age limit below which a man is to be accounted young’” (Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2.35).

“In this case he shall depart into another country and place, and dwell there as an exile for a year; and should he return within the time fixed by the law or set foot at all within his own country, he shall be put in the public jail by the Law-wardens for the space of two years” (Plato, Leges 864e6).

“For all breaches of the law alike, however small, they fixed upon the death penalty, making no special allowances, in their assessment of the magnitude of crimes, for the individual circumstances of each” (Lycurgus, Oratio in Leocratem §65).

Sixth, to appoint

“You, O Lord, according to the sweetness of your grace, promised forgiveness to those who repent of their sins, and in the multitude of your mercies appointed repentance as salvation for sinners” (Prayer of Manasseh 7b).

The six usages of horizo to this point all have one thing in common:  they have to do with an action of marking, limiting, ordaining, fixing, or appointing something that could have been marked, limited, ordained, fixed or appointed differently. The sacred enclosure to Zeus could have been made three feet larger in circumference. The share of property retained by Lysias could have been half rather than a third. The law could have fixed the time of exile at two years rather than one. And so on. There is a sense in which the act of setting limits involves an arbitrary decision, or is at least not dictated by the nature of things.

If we use these first six usages of horizo as the measure for the meaning of the word in Rom 1:4, we might very well incline toward the rendering “appointed Son-of-God-in-power.”

However, the next three usages of horizo push us in a different direction. In these usages, the word has more to do with defining, determining, and marking out that which is the case. The act of determining is not an arbitrary decision, a picking of one option among many, but is one that is dictated by the nature of the case.

Seventh, to define

“Shall we therefore rightly define the pious man as one who knows what is lawful concerning the gods?” (Xenophon, Memorabilia 4.6.4; cp. 4.6.6).

“… those who define the good as pleasure” (Plato, Respublica 505c; cp. Sophista 246b; Gorgias 475a; Theaetetus 190e).

“And life is defined, in the case of animals, by the capacity for sensation; in the case of man, by the capacity for sensation and thought” (Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea 1170a16; cp. 1104b24).

“For from whence could [geometry] define and pronounce that a point is that which has no parts, that a line is length without breadth,” etc. (Philo, Congr. 147; cp. Deus 44).

“A man who lives in an irrational manner is separated from the life of God; for to live according to God is defined by Moses to consist in loving him; for Moses says to the children of Israel, ‘Your life is to love the living God’” (Deut 30:20) (Philo, Post. 69).

Eighth, to determine by measuring, ascertaining, or dating

“Or is it rather because, since they measured time by the phases of the moon, they observed that in each month the moon undergoes three very important changes?” (Plutarch, Aetia Romana et Graeca 269C).

“Manetho says that the Jews departed out of Egypt, in the reign of Tethmosis, three hundred ninety-three years before Danaus fled to Argos; Lysimaehus says it was under king Bocchoris, that is, one thousand seven hundred years ago; Molo and some others determined it as every one pleased: but this Apion of ours, as deserving to be believed before them, hath determined the exodus exactly to have been in the seventh Olympiad, and the first year of that Olympiad” (Josephus, Contra Apionem 2.17).

“I date his hostility from the very day when he wiped out the Phocians” (Demosthenes 9.19).

Ninth, to mark out what is already there

“Medicine is, of course, a science … Then the temperate man will know, indeed, that the doctor has a certain science; but when he has to put its nature to the proof, must he not consider what its subjects are? Is not each science marked out, not merely as a science, but as a particular one, by the particular subjects it has?” (Plato, Charmides 171a).

“He who fixes his eyes considers perverse things, and he marks out with his lips all evil” (Prov 16:30 LXX).

So there are broadly two types of determination indicated by horizo – determinations that involve fixing upon one option among many, and determinations that involve marking out what is already the case. The only way we know the difference in any case is from the context.

“It depends entirely upon the connection whether a declarative or a determinative decision is meant, whether it means … to determine that one is something, or that one is to be something” (Hermann Cremer, Biblico-Theological Lexicon of New Testament Greek [4th ed.], pp. 461-2).

I would argue that the context, specifically the formula frame, of Rom 1:3-4 supports the declarative meaning. The introductory portion of the frame, “concerning his Son,” with the two genitive participles modifying “Son,” makes clear that it is God’s Son who was born of the seed of David and that it is God’s Son who was then declared with power to be what he was all along.

“The position of the words τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ – being placed, so to speak, outside the bracket, they are naturally taken to control both participial clauses alike – would seem to imply that the One who was born of the seed of David was already Son of God before, and independently of, the action denoted by the second participle” (Cranfield, 1.58).  

It is not that, by his resurrection, Jesus was appointed Son of God in power, but that he was powerfully marked out to be what he had been all along, namely, Son of God.