IV.
Detailed Analysis
2. The anticipation of creation (v. 19)
In this verse, the meaning of the word “creation” and the
identity of “the children of God” whose apocalypse the creation awaits have
been of the greatest interest to scholars and biblical commentators, and
indeed, the interpretation of the entire passage must necessarily follow a
thorough investigation into the possible meanings of these two elusive beings.
For this reason, I argue that this verse is perhaps the most important one of
the passage—it is certainly the most contentious—and it is the verse which
requires the most careful deliberation. I will discuss the possible meanings of
“the creation” and the implications of “the revelation of the children of God”
each in turn.
Though Dunn has stated, to my mind authoritatively, “It is
unlikely that Paul intended a precise definition” of the word “creation,”[i]
the majority of modern commentators take it for granted that the word
“creation” signifies only “subhuman” creation.[ii]
Premodern exegetes, on the other hand, tended to offer more open readings:
Origen, for example, believed “creation” refers to human, nonhuman, angelic,
and inanimate beings, while Augustine believed “creation” simply refers to all
of humankind, believers and nonbelievers alike.[iii]
Their rationale was simple: in addition to the doubt of these scholars that
Paul would attribute such faculties as “knowing” and “anticipation” to the
nonhuman created order, vv. 38-39 in the same chapter include “angels” and
“rulers” as part of “creation.”[iv]
According to Olle Christoffersson, the understanding that “creation” refers
exclusively to the nonhuman order came into prominence following the rise of
the Catholic Church and the concomitant crystallization of Christian theology.[v]
However, modern exegetes have pointed out that it is not inconceivable that
Paul should take poetic license and anthropomorphize nonhuman creation by
endowing it with the ability to feel and to know, since Paul likely saw himself
as operating within a prophetic tradition that often personified “the Land” and
symbolically attributed it a sort of consciousness (see, for example, Isaiah
55:12 and Hosea 4:3).
The work of such modern exegetes is exciting in that it
strengthens the connection between this passage and Paul’s own Judaism.
However, there is no reason to accept uncritically the dominant interpretation
simply because it is dominant. Other interpretations are possible, and even
helpful, for understanding the sedimentary meanings of the word “creation.” To
my knowledge, J. Ramsey Michaels is the only scholar who has offered a serious
challenge to the modern understanding of “creation.” He has argued that the
“creation” (or “creature,” as he prefers to translate the Greek) to which Paul
refers is, in fact, the human body, which ties this passage to the hope of
bodily resurrection in 1 Cor 15 and anticipates the hope for the redemption of
the body in v. 23 of this passage.[vi]
Though this deemphasizes the Jewish roots of Paul’s argument, Michaels does
open a more consistent reading of this entire section specifically and a more
nuanced understanding of Paul’s beliefs about the bodily resurrection more
generally.
For the purposes of this essay, however, I see no reason to
ignore the prophetic tradition that Paul either consciously or unconsciously
evokes in his personification of nature. Similarly, I see no reason to exclude
humanity, especially unbelieving humans or, as Michaels has perhaps more
convincingly offered, the depersonalized human body, from Paul’s consideration
in his use of the word “creation.” In the final analysis, the interdependency
of human sin and ecological fallout, which has been highlighted in recent
articles by Braaten[vii] and
Moo,[viii]
necessitates a cognitive if not causative relationship between human action and
ecological condition in Paul’s mind, meaning that humans are, at the very
least, implicated by the word
“creation.” Paul himself makes this clear by having the believers groan along
with creation in v. 23. What is most important is that Paul’s understanding of
creation is intricately tied to his Jewish context, and that his Judaic
understanding of creation is necessarily framed in opposition to the imperial
ideology that sought to link the natural world to worldly authority.
The identity of the “children of God” is generally glossed
as the contemporaneous Christian community, and thus their revelation or
apocalypse constitutes the final elevation or salvation of the believers—the
continuation or conclusion of an already-in-progress process. Others consider
the “revelation of the children of God” as the liberation of the concealed
spirit from its corporeal anchor. Moo, for example, thinks that the revelation
is the manifestation of a pre-existing Christian “true nature.”[ix]
However, this reading is problematic, and I would counter Moo’s argument by
pointing out that for Paul Christians do not seem to have a “true nature” apart
from the eschaton. In divergence from the opinion of many commentators that
this revelation is for Paul the coming-into-public of a now-private glory, I
want to suggest that this apocalypse is nothing less than a coming-into-being
in its own right.
I therefore agree with Susan Eastman, who, in opposition to
the majority understanding that the revelation of the children of God will
constitute the “public revelation of [the Christian believers’] now-hidden
glory,”[x]
suggests that the “children of God” may mean, or at least include, the
nonbelieving Jews.[xi]
Thus, this apocalypse of glory is much more than a public revelation of a
currently concealed reality: “Whereas once the Gentiles were not God’s people,
but now they have ‘attained righteousness’ and status as ‘sons’ (9:30), now the
Jews are ‘outside’—they are standing in the place of those who are ‘not my
people’ and thus are in the same need and assurance of divine mercy.”[xii]
In the final analysis, “The ‘apocalypse of the sons of God’ begins to look like
the full redemption of Jew and Gentile together, in fulfillment of God’s
promises.”[xiii] If
Eastman is correct, her reading would strengthen the connection of this passage
(as well as the discourse on the Law that precedes it) to the discourse on
Israel’s salvation that immediately follows it in chs. 9-11. While one must be
cautious not to overstate or exploit the lexical similarities here, the
proximity of this passage to the passage on the salvation of all Israel in ch.
11, which is there discussed as the culmination of God’s plan, allows each
passage to inform one’s reading of the other.
[i] Romans 1-8,
469.
[ii] See, for instance, Jewett, Romans, 511; Moo, The Epistle
to the Romans, 514; Witherington, Paul’s
Letter to the Romans, 222. In “An Environmental Mantra,” Hunt, Horrell, and
Southgate have pointed out the “infelicity” (to put it lightly) of referring to
the natural world as “subhuman creation,” which reflects at the very least a
damning theological or anthropocentric bias (549). I would add to this point
that Paul’s own language, which simultaneously “humanizes” nature by ascribing
to it human aspects and faculties and “dehumanizes” human beings by stripping
them of their bodily signifiers and temporality, seems to resist such a
reading.
[iii] Cited in Christoffersson, The Earnest Expectation of the Creature, 19, 21.
[iv] “For I am convinced that
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” Similarly,
in Rom 1:20-25, “creation” includea humans as well as nonhuman beings.
[v] The Earnest
Expectation of the Creature, 19-20.
[vi] “The Redemption of Our Body: The Riddle of Romans
8:19-22,” in Romans and the People of God,
111.
[vii] Laurie J. Braaten, “All Creation Groans: Romans 8:22
in Light of the Biblical Sources,” Horizons
in Biblical Theology 28 (2006), 147.
[viii] Douglas J. Moo, “Romans 8.19-22 and Isaiah’s Cosmic
Covenant,” New Testament Studies 54.1
(2008), 88.
[ix] The Epistle to
the Romans, 512, 515.
[x] “Whose Apocalypse? The Identity of the Sons of God in
Romans 8:19,” Journal of Biblical Literature
121.2 (2002), 263.
[xi] Ibid., 266.
[xii] Ibid., 270-271.
[xiii] Ibid., 272.
