10:14 PM
@bruisedreed Back to Romans 4, I presume you're aware that James also used the very same example of Abraham to demonstrate that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. In fact, that is the immediate lead-in to that statement in James 2:24.
Now, either James and Paul are contradicting one another, or Paul meant the same thing by "faith" that James did, which is a faith that is accompanied by good works. That is the OT concept of "faith," which is faithfulness, meaning a willingness and dedication to believing and acting upon what God says.
If you read Paul as saying that Abraham was justified by faith alone, you are causing Paul not only to flatly contradict James's words on the very same passage, but also to completely distort the entire OT concept of faith, or faithfulness, under which Abraham acted, and was saved by that faithfulness in action.
So in fact, Romans 4, in conjunction with James 2 and Genesis 15 and 22, demonstrate conclusively that Paul could not possibly have been talking about faith alone.
Paul's point in Romans 4, as it is in the other places where he talks about faith without the works of the Law, is that Abraham was made righteous
before the law of Moses existed. Abraham was before Egypt. Moses was after Egypt. Otherwise,
Romans 4:9-12 is meaningless.
> Is this blessedness, then, pronounced only on the circumcised, or also on the uncircumcised? We say, “Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness.” How then was it reckoned to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised.
> He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who believe without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them, and likewise the ancestor of the circumcised who are not only circumcised but who also follow the example of the faith that our ancestor Abraham had before he was circumcised.
This is all part of Paul's over-arching argument that it is no longer necessary for Christians to observe the ritual and sacrificial law of Moses.
Once again, without understanding Paul in his historical understanding, his letters become mere gibberish.
Make that, "in his historical context"
And, I would add, without an understanding of his heavy reliance on the Septuagint.
Paul writes in a Greek that is heavily influenced by Hebrew word meanings, idiom, and syntax, via the Septuagint.