m tnl 1 Coariauing L EHR.E UND WEHRE MAGAZIN FUER Ev.-LUTH. HOMILETlK THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY-THEOLOGICAL MONTHLY Vol. xn September, 1941 No.9 CONTENTS P B "All Israel Shall be Saved." Rom. 11:26. V. Bar tlino ..... _ ......... ..... .... 641 T1 e Alleged Contradiction betwrrn Gen. 1:24-27 and 2:19. Alexander Heidel ................. _ .. __ ............................ _ .... 652 The Opinions of l\ludllrn Scholars on the Origin of the Various Apoeryphal Books. K. G. Manz .......... __ ........ _ .... _ ..... _ ........ _ .. _._ ..... 658 Outlines on the Wuerttemberg Gospel Selections ............... _............... 687 Miscellanea . ____ ._ ... _ .... _._ ... _ .. _ ... _ .. ___ ........ __ ...... . ........ __ ._ ...... 697 Theological Observer. - Kirchlic -Zeitgcschichtlichcs .................. _ .. 702 nook < ,'I·W. - L UcrB!U. ._. .. ..... _ ....................................... _ ................. 713 l.. mws n1cht alletn 1Dei- cUl\. .:.lao d ;r die Schafe unter- wei. " . wle sie rechte Christen BoIlen aeIn. IOndem auch daneben den Woel- fen 1Deh .. en. daR sie die Schafe nlc:ht angreifen und mit falscher Lehre ver- tuehren und Irrtum einfuehren. L f .,. Es 1st keln Ding. das die Leute mehr bel der Klrche behaelt Mm die gute Predigt. - ApolQp-I • Art. %4 r" the trump" .;1 uncertain ~,()un' 1. who shall e lImlelf to the 'L e? -1 Ccw.l ·! :8 F t Ii.!' Ad for the Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio, !" O' r- S ::It" C 'S G USE, St. Louis, Mo. Concordia Theological Monthly Vol. XII SEPTEMBER, 1941 No.9 "All Israel Shall be Saved," Rom. 11: 261 ) "All Israel shall be saved." What do these words mean? The sentence must not be isolated from its context and given a meaning which collides with what precedes and follows. P?ul's letters have had to submit to torture since Peter's days (2 Pet. 3: 16). The his- tory of the interpretation of our particular passage along with its setting illustrates such exegetical torture. Again and again Paul\; words have been manhandled and wrested from their context.!!) Our passage is closely connected with a lengthy argument cov- ering three chapters (9-11). Paul here continues the great theme of his letter, "God's Righteousness by Faith Alone," showing that in just this fact, that it is by faith alone, we have the explanation of what occurs with Israel and with the Gentiles.. God's righteousness comes as promise (9: 1-13) and as mercy (9: 14-30) and is con- veyed by the Gospel (chap. 10) . Faith alone receives this right- eousness. But, now, Israel as a nation, as a whole, in stubborn unbelief has rejected the promise, the mercy, the Gospel, and so has failed to obtain God's righteousness. The Gentiles, however, through faith have obtained it. This, in brief, is the substance of chapters 9 and 10. In chapter 11 Paul underscores what he has already indicated,S) that what has been said applies to the Jewish people as a whole, but not as an absolute whole - there are exceptions, for a "rem- 1) This paper was read to the Pastoral Conference of the South Wisconsin District and is submitted to the CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL MONTHLY at the request of the brethren. The writer acknowledges especial obligations to the excellent treatment of the passage in Lenski's Interpretation of Romans. 2) For the history of the interpretation of Rom.n: 25, 26 consult Calov, Biblia Illustrata, ad 1.; Stoeckhardt, Roemerb1·ief, p. 533 II.; Wal- ther, Lutheraner, Vol. 13, 85 II. 3) See chap. 9: 8, 27, 29; 10: 16. 41 642 "All Israel Shall be Saved," Rom. 11: 26 nant" is left which is won to faith. Chapter 11 revolves about this remnant. Chapter 9 began with the broken-hearted cry: "I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ in place of (UltEQ) my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh," 9: 3. He uses the preposition of substitution, which implies that his kinsmen accord- ing to the flesh, the Jewish nation, are anathema from Christ, that is, "cast out as accursed" from fellowship with Christ, delivered up to the judicial wrath of God.4) It is their own fault, because of their unbelief (9: 25-33; 10: 16-21). Chapter 10 closes with a quotation from Isaiah: 5) "But as to Israel He saith, All the day long did I spread out My hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people," v.21. Then Paul continues (11:1): "Did God cast off His people?". and answers: "God forbid," pointing to himself as an Israelite who was not cast off. And so there are others. "God did not cast off His people whom He foreknew," v. 2. For even as God in the days of national apostasy in Elijah's time had left for Himself 7,000 men who bowed not the knee to Baal, "even so, then, at the present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace O.ELltl·W. xo:t;' EX/..OyTl'V xaQL'o~)," v.5. "What Israel seeks for, that he obtained not; but the election (it EX/..OYIl) obtained it, and the rest were hard- ened," v.7. So, then, God's people in Israel have never been the whole mass, but the elected, the remnant.6) This agrees with what Paul said right at the beginning of his whole discussion, where he defined God's people (9: 6-8): "They are not all Israel that are of Israel, neither, because they are Abraham's seed, are they all chil- dren; but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, it is not the children of the flesh that are children of God; but the children of promise are reckoned for a seed." What about "the rest"? They are anathema from Christ (9:3); they are a disobedient and gain- saying people (10: 21), despisers of grace (11,6-10). And so "the rest were hardened," 11: 7.7> This hardening of Israel began of old, but reached its terrible completion in the time of Jesus Christ and His apostles. There was a fatal crash-up against the Stone set up by God in Zion.S) As a result 9) Israel fell, but so "salvation is come unto the Gentiles," 4) Cf. G. Kittel, Theol. Woerterbuch, 1,356, sub dvaitElta. 5) American Revised Version. As a rule, this version is adopted in the present paper. 6) Cf. 9: 27 (Ulto/"El,j.Llta) and 9: 29 (OltEQlta). 7) Cf. v.25. See also 2 Cor. 3: 14 and 1 Thess. 2: 16. 8) "Elt.lXLoav (11: 11). The Stone (9: 33). 9) V.11 tva ltEOroOL'V. "Iva of result (vide Robertson's Grammar, 998) as 3:19; 5:20,21. The meaning: "You don't suppose that the only result of their crash-up is that they fell? On the contrary," etc. "All Israel Shall be Saved," Rom. 11: 26 643 V. 11.10) The result of this, in turn, is that the yet unconverted elect of Israel are provoked to jealousy; that is, they desire to get a share in the blessings which the Gentiles enjoy in the kingdom of Christ (vv.11,12). Therefore Paul in his ministry as the apostle of the Gentiles did not lose sight of Israel: "I glorify my ministry if by any means I may provoke to jealousy them that are my flesh and may save some of them," v.13 f. Note well the1ie "some." Paul has no hope for the salvation of all. Well might Paul glorify his ministry, for (v. 15, translated literally) "if the casting away of them recon- ciliation of the world, what the receiving but life from the dead?" That "receiving" went on in part through Paul's ministry; it goes on today; it goes on wherever and whenever "some" Jews are saved. The casting away of the hardened Jewish nation brought the recon- ciliation of God to the Gentile world through the coming of the Gospel to the Gentiles. That's the one side; the other is that when- ever now a Jew, one of the elect remnant, is received into the King- dom it is like "life from the dead." Conversion of Gentiles is that also (Eph. 2: 5,6), but it is eminently so in the case of conversions in a nation so conspicuously hardened and dead as the Jewish nation.ll) Throughout the chapter thus far has run an implied warning to Gentile readers against mistaken notions and false pride. To use Dr. F . Pieper's expression, "Paul, the official apostle of the Gentiles, becomes the advocate of Israel."12) Just as the Jews had falsely believed that the physical descent from Abraham guaranteed for them membership in God's people and superiority to the Gentiles in God's favor, - a notion that Paul has blasted throughout the letter, - so u"ow after Israel's rejection and the Gentiles' acceptance the latter might reverse the error. The whole drift of the argument in this chapter assails the false assumption of Gentiles, fraught with so much danger to themselves, that now to be a Jew meant to be 10) Cf. Acts 13: 46: "And Paul and Barnabas spake out boldly, and said, It was necessary that the Word of God should first be spoken to you. Seeing ye thrust it from you and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, 10, we turn to the Gentiles." 11) The understanding of v.15 has been made difficult by the in- sertion of verbs where Paul has none. Paul employs, as he often does, the verbless "presentative sentence." (See on this Josephine M. Burnham, Univ. of Kansas Publications, Humanistic Studies, Vo. VI, No.4). The English versions insert the future tense : "What shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?" This future tense is then made by many to refer to a "reception" or conversion of Israel at a distant future time, and the "life from the dead" is then taken to mean either "a glorious boom era of the Church of Christ J esus" or the final resurrection of the dead, which is supposed to follow after that future conversion, even though theJinal resurrection is always called uVQ.O"W.O"Lt:; Ex. VEX.Qrov, never ~rol] Ex. VEX.groV. 12) Christliche Dogmatik, III, p . 598. 644 "All Israel Shall be Saved," Rom. 11: 26 excluded from salvation. The warning is made explicit in the famous illustration taken from the unnatural process of grafting the branches of a wild olive-tree in the stock of a good olive-tree (v. 16-24) and then in a second passage, which forms the immediate context of the particular statement which we are trying to under- stand. The passage reads: "For I would not, brethren, have you ignorant of this mystery, lest you be wise in your own conceits, that a hardening in part hath befallen Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved." This render- ing of the American Revised Version splendidly reproduces the Greek (Nestle's edition): Ou YUQ ilB/,W UiJ-ii,; ayvoELv, aUEAepol, TO I1UO"t~ QWV ';0111;0, iva 111] fj';E E'V Bau,;oL'; epQ6VliJ-OL, (hL nooQwC1L'; ano I1BQOU~ ,;iii 'IC1Qu1]A yiYO'VE'V U.XQL OV .0 nA~QWI1U .iiiv Htviii'V ELC1BAil'n, XUL oihw~ nii,; . 'IC1Qu1]A C1wihlC1E';(XL. The explanatory conjunction "for" (yuQ) links this section to the preceding argument concerning the remnant (vv. 5, 7, 14) and to the warning to Gentiles running through the whole argument. Formally it unfolds the previous verse with its statement about the broken branches that God will graft back into their own olive-tree, telling us the extent of time during which this will be done. The "brethren" addressed are Gentiles.13l Paul makes known to them a mystery which is to prevent unwarranted conclusions that they might form if they judged only on the basis of their own ob- servation of the Jew over against the Gospel. A "mystery" is not necessarily something abstruse and difficult to understand. In pagan religion "mystery" was a technical term to denote a "secret" or "secret doctrine" known only to the initiated, which they were not at liberty to disclose. In New Testament usage, however, a mystery is "not a thing which must be secret. On the contrary, it is a secret which God wills to make known, and has charged His apostles to declare, to those who have ears to hear it." 14) It will not be necessary to examine all the passages and study all the nuances of usage. But we do want to call attention to Eph. 3: 3-6, where the destined inclusion of the Gentiles among the people of God is called a "mystery": "By revelation was made known unto me the mystery, as I wrote before in a few words, whereby, when ye read, ye can perceive my understanding in the mystery of Christ; which in other generations was not made known unto the sons of men, as it hath now been revaled unto his holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; to wit, that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs and fellow- members of the body and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ 13) This is shown by the contrast with Jews and made absolutely clear in v.28 and v.30. 14) Moulton and Milligan, Vocabulary of the Greek New Tstament, s. v., I1UC1';~QLO'V. "All Israel Shall be Saved," Rom. 11: 26 645 Jesus through the GospeL" In our Romans passage we have the parallel mystery that also Israel is included among God's people. The Church Universal, called in GaL 6: 16 "the Israel of God" and symbolized in our chapter by the picture of the "good olive-tree," thus includes Jews and Gentiles, and that to the end of time. Here is the second mystery in its classical statement: "Hardening in part hath befaLLen Israel until the fulness of tire Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved." The phrase "hardening in part" or "partial hardening" (Jtd)QroOL~ UJto I-LEQOU~) looks back to, and condenses, v. 8: "The rest were hardened, the election obtained." "The rest were hardened" is equated in our verse by "hardening in part." The "election which obtained" is equated by the non-hardened part which is implied in the limiting prepositional phrase. Paul once more in our verse thinks of the remnant, the election, the "some" that can and will be won by the saving message (11: 1-5,7,14; d. 1: 16; 10: 11-16). "Hardening" (A. R. V.) is a better translation of JtWQroOL~ than "blindness," as in Luther and the A . V. The noun JtWQCDOL~ and the verb JtCDQ6ro (v.8) are derivatives of Jt(J)Qo~, by which tufa stone is meant. The verb, accordingly, means "to make hard like stone, to petrify." Petrifaction has befallen Israel. Hardening, Verstockung, petrifaction, is judicial and punitive _15) the result of self-harden- ing.16) Stoeckhardt in his classical excursus on this state, in his commentary on Isaiah (p. 71 f.) , says among other things: "This state is incurable. It excludes the possibility of conversion and salvation. . .. It is a just judgment of God. God will not allow men to mock Him and His grace. When man wilfully despises and stubbornly rejects grace, simply refusing to be saved by grace, God pronounces the judgment that he shall not be saved and delivers him into this irreparable state of hardening." Lest Stoeckhardt appear to be too severe listen to Paul's quotation from Scripture in this very chapter (vv. 7-10): "The rest were hardened: according as it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear, until this very day. And David saith, Let their table be made a snare and a trap and a stumbling-block and a recompense unto them; let their eyes 15) Cf. u'V,;aJt6/)OI-LU, v. 9. 16) Cremer-Koegel, 10th and 11th ed., p . 970: "Es bezeichnet die durch Widerstreben gegen die Eindruecke der goettlichen Bezeugung in gerichtlicher Folge eintretende Unfaehigkeit, weitere Eindru ecke zu empfangen und sich helfen und retten zu lassen, also die gerichtlich bewirkte Empfindungslosigkeit gegen die Gegenwart und den Heilswillen Gottes." Cf. Pieper, Christliche Dogmatik, II, p. 32 f.; Mueller, Ch1'istian Dogmatics, p.607; Hoenecke, Ev.-LtLth. Dogmatik, II, p. 442 fl.; Stoeck- hardt, Roemerbrief, p . 437 fl.; idem, Jesaias, p. 71 fl. ; Formula of Con- em'd, p. 722, 83-85. 646 "All Israel Shall be Saved," Rom. 11: 26 be darkened that they may not see, and bow down their back always." 17) How terribly history down to this day has fulfilled these ancient words! The Jews' back is bowed down under their own curse (Matt. 27: 25) . They crucified their own Messiah-King; they stiff- ened their hearts and blocked their ears against the Gospel of the risen Lord. But Israel has remained; and not merely the third and fourth generations have acquiesced in the fathers ' iniquity, put all the succeeding generations have inherited and increased the fathers' guilt, resisting the Holy Spirit even as the fathers did (Acts 7: 51). And so it shall continue: "Hardening in part hath befallen18 ) Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles (-to Jtt.:tlQw,.w. 'toov E{}vOOV) be come in." The exegetically difficult word JtAljQWI-t(l, "fulness," gives no. trouble in this connection, where numerical expressions precede and follow - "hardening in pa.rt" and "aLL Israel." 19) It means, as often,20) full number. "Hardening in part hath befallen Israel until the full number of the Gentiles 21 ) has come in." "Come in" (EtcrEQ- xw{}m) has no expressed terminus. But as the usage of the word in the gospels makes clear, the understood terminus is the kingdom of God.22) Does Paul mean to say that all Gentiles without excep- tion shall enter the kingdom of God? Only absolute restitutionists have dared to suggest this in the face of Paul's frequent statements to the contrary,23) to say nothing of the rest of the Bible. The full number of the Gentiles can be only those who come into considera- tion in this matter, viz., those who enter into the kingdom of God, the full number of elect Gentiles, the "other sheep" of which Jesus says (John 10:16): "And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and they 17) Compare Matt. 13:10-15; John 12:37-43; Acts 28:25-27; 2 Cor. 3: 14-16. 18) Note the yeyovEv, perfect tense of completed action with re- sultant continuous state. 19) II f.:tlQWI-t(l in v . 12, if we see rightly, is no parallel; for here it is a correlated antonym to ll't'tlll-t(l, which does not refer to numbers but means "loss," se., of salvation; hence, Jtfo'tlQWI-t(l "fulness," sc., of salvation. See Zahn, Roemerbrief, p . 505, Note 31. Compare also Lenski, Romans, p. 699. 20) Cf. Herodotus 8. 43,45; Euripides, Ion, 664; Aristotle, Po!., 2. 7,22; 3.13, 3 (cf. 4. 4, 12); Plato, Rep., 371 E. 21) "Gentiles" is the correct translation of IHhoov and not "nations," as though Paul were speaking of a conversion of the full number of nations. !({}vll here, as in about 100 other passages, is a technical term for Gentiles in contrast to Jews, e. g., Rom. 9: 24; 11: 13. See Kittel, II, 367, 4. 22) Cf. Matt. 5: 20 willi 23: 13 and 7: lil. 23) Cf. Rom. 10: 16 with 2 Thess. 3: 1 ff. ; also 1 Cor. 1: 18; 2 Cor. 2: 15; 2 Thess. 2. "All Israel Shall be Saved," Rom. 11: 26 647 shall become one flock, one Shepherd." So then, until these "other sheep" have come in, the "hardening in part" continues with respect to Israel. There are three coextensive parallel lines: (1) Gentiles coming into the Kingdom; (2) a part of Israel hardened; (3) a part of Israel which is not hardened and which, as the whole chapter shows, is the elect r£mnant whose "reception" is like "life from the dead." Paul makes his program of mission-:work look also to these in order to save them (v. 14). So the Church must never forget Jewish missions, for ever there is a non-hardened part in Israel, synchronous with the petrified part. This synchronous state en- dures until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. What then? Our passage does not tell us. But Jesus does. To the question of the disciples (Matt. 24: 3): "What shall be the sign of Thy coming and of the end of the world?" Jesus replies (v. 14) : "This Gospel of the KUlgdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all nations; and then (xed "tOTE) shall the end come." And in another passage, in some points similar to our Romans passage, Jesus says (Luke 21:24): "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled," whereupon He at once speaks of the signs of the parousia and end of the world. The temporal conjunction "until" 24) requires a remark. Let me quote Goodwin, a past master of syntax: 25) "The idea of a clause with 'until' is that the action (or negation) of the leading clause continues to a time at which that of the dependent clause takes place. That the former action then ceases is an in- ference generally made, but not positively implied in the language, and not necessary." In other words, "until" merely marks the terminus. What follows the terminus depends upon the nature of the situation. Jesus has told us what follows upon the times of the Gentiles, upon the period during which the Gospel is witnessed to the nations: xed "ton: "to "tE/,o<;, "and then the end." 'Hhat, then, about the Jewish petrifaction? Is it to be replaced by the opposite, the living heart of faith? No. Is it to continue? No, again. The end has come; "no more Gospel against which to set hearts of stone, no more salvation to reject 'with adamant opposition." 26) Walther says: "After the entering in of the fulness of the Gentiles, that is, after Judgment Day, we can as little speak of a continued partial hardening of Israel as of a showing forth of the Lord's death after He has come, 1 Cor. 11:26."27) , 24) R~m.ll: 25 and Luke 21: 24 both have UXQL au, synonyms of /1EXQL and Effie;. 25) Goodwin, Greek Moods and Tenses, Section 611. 26) Lenski, Romans, p. 726. 27) Leiwe und WehTe, 1859, p.325. 648 "All Israel Shall be Saved," Rom. 11: 26 Thus v. 25 teaches that the situation which confronted Paul in his days confronts the Church until the end of the world - partial hardening, partial non-hardening of Israel, making possible the salvation of the remnant; and therefore Paul goes on to say: "And so all Israel shall be saved." Mark well, so, not then. Just so as has been said: by the ingrafting of the broken branches that did not remain in unbelief, by the reception of the "some" that can be saved, by the conversion of the non-petrified remnant among the hardened Jewish people throughout the period in which the elect Gentiles enter in, chronologically concurrent with them, so all Israel shall be saved. To be saved (<1W~E6frm) means to be endowed with the salvation won by Christ: to be rescued from eternal death, from damnation and all that leads to damnation, to be made mem-. bers of the Kingdom of Grace, which issues into the Kingdom of Glory.28) "AU Israel shall be saved." Also the spiritually petrified Is- raelites? Impossible, for petrifaction and salvation are mutually exclusive, as has been shown; and this petrifaction endures to the end or the world. Or is it the "Israel of God" (Gal. 6: 16), the whole assembly of both elect Jews and Gentiles? 29) Of course this "Israel of God" shall be saved. But here, as in the whole section from chapter 9 on, "Israel" is used in contrast to Gentiles, and in our pas- sage itself "all Israel" balances the "fulness of the Gentiles." 30) So Paul must be speaking of bom Jews. But since the petrified Jews are excluded, he must be speaking about the Jews who are such "inwardly" and not only "outwardly" (2: 28,29), about the Israel which is "God's people" (11: 2), defined as "the children of promise" (9: 8), and identical with the elect remnant (11: 5,7). Just as the full number of the Gentiles means all elect and saved Gentiles, so all Israel is the full number of elect and saved Israelites from Abra- ham to the last Jew before the end of the world who confesses: "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord." If it is objected that the Israel of v. 26 must be identical with the Israel of v. 25, which is the physical nation, the objection is overruled by the whole course of Paul's argument, which compels us to take "all Israel" in v. 26 as all spiritual Israel. The objection forgets that in 28) See Cremer-Koegel, s. v., (}(i)~UJ. The full Biblical force of the word must be insisted upon in opposition to a number of interpreters who greatly weaken its force. See below. 29) This is the view, e, g., of Besser in his Bibelstunden. Some of the Lutheran fathers, such as Bugenhagen, Brenz, and Osiander, thus interpreted the words. 30) Also the EX,frQOL and ayaJtrrtoL of v. 28 and the OU'tOL of v.31 would lose their reference if the total congregation of believers were meant. Then, too, we should expect, as in the Galatians passage, the addition of 'tOU {lEou to 'I<1QC(1)" "All Israel Shall be Saved," Rom. 11: 26 649 the pivotal definition of chapter 9: 6 we have the same repetition of "Israel" in a twofold sense in close juxtaposition: "They are not all Israel that are of Israel." This use of the same word in different meanings focuses attention upon the expression and stimulates reflection. "So all Israel shall be saved." Who, left to himself, would ever have expected the refractory nation of Israel to endure to the end of the world? Who, left to himself, could ill the apostle's time ever have seen that there would be a remnant saved to the end of the world? God revealed this "mystery" as a message of hope for Israel and as a direction for the Church in its mission program.3l ) Over against our interpretation (essentially it is that of the early Church down to St. Augustine and of most Protestant theo- logians in the age of the Reformation) stands another interpretation, which makes the apostle teach a general conversion of the Jews before the end of the world and succeeding the "times of the Gen- tiles." Often this is hooked up with millennialistic views.32), We now add to our positive presentation a number of points which show the exegetical untenableness of the opposing view.' 31) See the powerful words of Dr. F. Pieper, op., cit., p. 599 ff. 32) Gifford, quoted by James Denney in Expositor's Greek Testa- ment, says of the passage that "it foretells a 'conversion' of the Jews so universal that the separation into an 'elect remnant' and 'the rest who were hardened' shall disappear." Sanday and Headlam, Romans, p,332, paraphrase thus: "That hardening of heart which has come upon Israel is only partial and temporary, It is to last only until the full complement of the Gentiles has entered into Christ's kingdom. When this has come about, then the whole people of Israel shall be saved." Iver Olsen has given a brief summary of the view of the Dispensational School in a good essay entitled "The Chosen People," Journal of Theol. of the Amer. Luth. Conf., April, 1941, p. 368. We shall copy this summary. "This is the age of the Gentiles (Church-age); during this period blind- ness, or hardness of heart, is upon Israel- the greater part. God is now dealing with Gentiles largely, so that the present time is called the time of the Gentiles. True it is that an occasional Jew is saved, but it is Gentiles on the whole who constitute the Church. When the fulness of the Gentiles is come, i. e., such a time has arrived when not another Gentile will permit himself to be saved, then God will turn again to His covenant people of the Old Testament. He will deal with them nationally and will fulfil all the unfulfilled promises given to the Jews in the Old Testament. He will gather them from the East and the West - Lost Tribes and all- and make them to live in peace and security in the land promised to their fathers. . .. If it is objected that Palestine cannot accommodate even all the known Jews in the world today, it is answered that the promises to the fathers included much more territory than was ever occupied. The Jews will become the nucleus of the greatest kingdom of all times - the millennium which will follow the Church-age." This view is effectively refuted in the article re- ferred to. For a fuller study of our passage we should refer the reader to Calov, Biblia Illustrata; Philippi, Roemerbrief, 3. Au£!. (in this edition Philippi retracts his earlier presentation in a lengthy excursus); Walther in Lehre und Wehre, November, 1859; Stoeckhardt, Roemerbrief; Lenski, Interp1'etation of Romans; Pieper, Christliche Dogmatik, III, p.592-600. 650 "All Israel Shall be Saved," Rom. 11: 26 First, we repeat that Paul does not say, "And then all Israel shall be saved"; he says, "And so all Israel shall be saved." No amount of exegetical legerdemain can turn an adverb of manner into an adverb of time. If in some passages a "then" may be added in thought to the "so," the right to do so does not lie in the word "so," which is purely modal; but the right must be vindicated by other considerations. There is a difference between saying: "They hit him and so killed him" and saying: "They hit him and then killed him." The Savi<:>r has told us the chronological sequel to the times of the Gentiles, viz.: "Then cometh the end." According to Paul the saving of all Israel is the chronological concurrent of the times of the Gentiles. Secondly, Paul does not say that the partial hardening is tem- poral in the sense of its passing over into non-hardening and con- version. The sequel of hardening is final doom. If the view of the opposition is right, there is no point to Scripture's warning (Heb. 3: 8): "Today if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts." At least as far as Israel is concerned, these words should be turned into the promise: "If today you hear not His voice and harden your hearts, tomorrow you shall nevertheless all be saved." Furthermore, the opposing view virtually makes Paul say in this verse: "Brethren, I have written three chapters to show that 'they are not all Israel that are of Israel' (9: 6). I take that all back: all that are ot Israel are Israel, and all Israel shall be saved. It is only too bad that you Gentiles haven't Jewish blood in your veins." This is sufficient in itself to show that the second inter- pretation is clearly wrong. It involves Paul in self-contradiction and makes him give a priority to the Jews which his whole letter opposes. Consider only a few passages. "The righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe; for there is no difference," 3: 22. "Is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also," 3: 29. "For God hath concluded them all [referring to both Jews and Gentiles] in unbelief that He might have mercy upon all," 11: 32. Israel's only real priority is one of opportunity. "They were entrusted with the oracles of God," 3: 2. To them first the Gospel came, 1: 16. Wasted opportunity sums up Israel's history. Unto whom much is given, from him much shall be required. "Unto them which are factious and obey not the truth but obey unright- eousness shall be wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that worketh evil, ot the Jew first, and also of the Greek," Rom. 2: 8, 9. There you have a second priority of the Jew - terrible priority! - a priority of judgment. The advocates of a general conversio.l of Israel before the end of the world also come to grief in connection with the word "all" in "All Israel Shall be Saved," Rom. 11: 26 651 "all Israel shall be saved." If Israel here is the physical Israel, then only the absolute restitutionists are right, who see all the dead hardened Jews raised from the dead to join the generation that Is saved after the Gentiles have entered in. That indeed does justice to the "all," but at the price of casting the rest of the Bible over- board. These restitutionists, we must grant, at least see the point that the Israel which Paul speaks of includes all generations. In- deed, the progTessive saving of Israel is the theme of our chapter. This, however, is generally disregarded, and all attention is centered on the :f.,"'Jysical Israel of the assumed millennial age. The majority of these Interpreters, feeling uneasy about the "all," whittle it down to mean "Israel as a whole, Israel as a nation, and not necessarily including every individual Israelite." 33) But if the petrifaction in part is to fall away, as they insist, then the "all Israel" must be 100 per cent., and the balancing "fulness of the Gentiles" must be 100 per cent. of the Gentiles - absolute universalism in both direc- tions! What becomes then, pray, of the Pauline doctrine of the E%AOYll, the election of grace? (Cf. Rom. 9: 6-18,23,24,27; 10: 20,21; 11: 4,5,28.) To escape this dilemma some have tried to weaken the O'wihlO'£l;m, "shall be saved," to a conversion understood in the sense, for instance, of the phrase "the Christianizing of Germany." 34) Others refer it to the return of Israel to Palestine. But all this founders on the Scriptural use of m:iJl;EL'V and aWTllQtU, which refer to the actual personal appropriation of Christ's redemption.35) What the aw'tllQLCI., "salvation," of all Israel means is at once described by Paul: "And so all Israel shall be saved, even as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer; He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. And this is My covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins," vv. 26, 27. Forgiveness of sins, justification by faith, is the salvation of all Israel, not a return to Palestine, not an external Christian veneer. These words also clinch the interpretation which we have given of Paul's word "And so all Israel shall be saved." The prophetic passages which Paul quotes in substance 36) happen to be passages that treat not of the last ti.mes before the end of the world, but of the entire period of the New Testament, beginning wHh Christ's first adven.. :~"::'""':~~~"::':J ~:.~y treat of the justi::_~_~: ____ ~ ~~ __ :: 27JS who turn from unbelief, and do not treat of a future COD>TPj:sion of all physical IS:fael, as one should expect if Paul really taught that in his words "all Israel shall be saved." Rueckert boldly says: "It 33) Sanday and Headlam, p. 335. 34) Rohnert, Dogmatik, p. 582. 35) See above, note 28. 36) Is. 59:20, 21; 27:9; Jer. 31:33 f. 652 The Alleged Contradiction between Gen. 1:24- 27 and 2:19 is only too evident that these Scripture-passages do not offer fo)" us the proof that they are meant to offer. Even in the form of the quotations as given by Paul they fail to do so. But Paul's method of quoting . Scripture is too well known to trouble us." 37) This rationalist gives the case away. He starts out with the premise that Paul teaches a future conversion of all physical Israel, and be- cause Paul's Scripture proof fails to prove that, he rejects the proof and still sticks to his assumption with regard to Paul's teaching. The actual case is that Paul's Scripture proof gives the knock-out blow to what he is falsely assumed by some to teach and empha- sizes what attention to his whole argument 38) shows to be his true teaching. We can confidently subscribe to the unequivocal position taken in our Synod's Brief Statement of 1932: "There will be no general conversion, a conversion en masse, of the Jewish nation." 39) Milwaukee, Wis. V. BARTLING ~ . ~ The Alleged Contradiction between Gen. 1:24-27 and 2:19 The first chapter of Genesis, as every Bible student knows, has the animals made first and then man. But the second chapter is commonly held to reverse the order and to place the creation of man before that of the animals. This view is based upon the assumption that Gen. 2: 18-25 constitutes a continuous piece of narrative and that the tense of the Hebrew verb with which v. 19 37) Quoted in German by Walther, LeIwe und Wehre, 1859, p. 328. 38) Also the concluding verses of the chapter enforce the interpreta- tion presented by us. Let us hear Philippi on this (Roemerbrief, 3. Auf!., p . 559): "Was nun endlich noch den Schluss des 11. Kapitels betrifft, so fuehrt der Apostel V. 28-32 durch, dass Israel zwar wegen seiner Ver- werfung des Evangeliurns Gatt verhasst, aber urn des mit den Vaetern geschlossenen Bundes willen von Gott geliebt sei, denn Gottes Gnaden- gaben, vg!. 9: 4, 5, und seine Berufung moegen ihn nicht gereuen. Er hat also seinen Bund mit dem Yolk Israel nicht schlechthin aufgehoben, sondern ist stets bereit, diejenigen wiederurn gnaedig in denselben auf- zunehmen, welche ihrerseits glaeubig zu illm zuruecktreten. Wie der unglaeubigen Heidenwelt durch den Abfall Israels Heil widerfahren ist, so soIl ja auch Israel dadurch zur Rueckkehr zum Glauben gereizt werden, damit es das ihm stets bereite Erbarmen Gottes auch wirklich ueberkomme. Denn Gott hat aIle beschlossen unter den Unglauben, nicht urn sich der einen zu erbal'men, der andel'n abel' nicht, sondern urn, so viel an ihm liegt, sie aIle in sein Erbarmen einzuschliessen , wenn sie nul' diesen Einschluss nicht ihl'erseits zul'ueckweisen. Zuletzt bricht dann del' Apostel V. 33-36 in den bewundernden Lobpl'eis del' goettlichen Weisheit aus, die ihl'en geheimnisl'eichen Erwaehlungsratschluss in del' K. IX-XI entwickelten Weise zu seinem Zie1e fuehrt." 39) Doctrinal Declamtions, St. Louis, 1937, p . 57, section 42.