The Letter of the Law
For when Gentiles who do not have the Law instinctively perform the requirements of the Law, these, though not having the Law, are a law to themselves, Romans 2:14 NASB
A law to themselves – We’ve spent a lot of time looking at Paul’s idea of nómos, or perhaps more accurately, his ideas about all the variations encompassed in the Greek term nómos. Perhaps we should have paid more attention when Paul first introduced the word in this letter. We would have realized that nómos isn’t just Jewish Torah. It covers custom, societal expectation, tradition, statutory law, common law, obligation, norm, and other concepts. This means we can read this verse, “For when the Gentiles who do not have the Jewish Torah perform actions from a sense of duty or custom that meet the requirements of the Jewish Torah, they appear to be behaving according to the Torah even though they don’t have it, even if they are guided by some ethical system they constructed.” As we know, violation of such a system is not sin, because sin requires rebellion against a divine law-giver. It’s violation against a moral system. Still punishable by the society. Still enforced. But on a completely different basis than the biblical idea.
This has significant implications. It explains the creation of a religion. Jacques Ellul describes the consequences best:
“But what has been the result [of the creation of autonomous moral systems]? A Christianity that is itself a religion. The best, it might be said, the peak of religious history. . . . A religion marked by all the traits of religion: myths, legends, rites, holy things, beliefs, clergy, etc. A Christianity that has fashioned a morality – and what a morality! – the most severe, the most moralistic, the most debilitating, the one that most reduces adherents to infants and renders them irresponsible, or, if I were to be malicious, I should say the one that makes of them happy imbeciles, a morality that consists of chastity, absolute obedience (which in unheard-of fashions ends up as the supreme value of Christianity), sacrifice, etc. A Christianity that has become totally conservative in every domain – political, economic, social, etc. – which nothing can budge or change. Political power, that is good. Whatever challenges or criticizes, that is evil.”[1]
“. . . once the transition was made from history to philosophy, all that they [theologians] said was completely correct and true. They expressed a profound and authentic faith marked by a concern for truth. Yet it was all completely falsified by the initial transition. This is why the deviations were stronger than the truth that they retained. Very soon they forgot the essential point, that God does not reveal by means of a philosophical system or moral code or metaphysical constructions. He enters human history and accompanies his people. The Hebrew Bible (even the wisdom books) is not a philosophical construction or a system of knowledge. It is a series of stories that are not myths intended to veil or unveil objective abstract truths. These stories are one history, the history of the people of God, the history of God’s agreements and disagreements with this people, the history of loyalty and disobedience. There is nothing else but history, temporal (not eternal) history, lay (not sacred) history, a history that tells us that God is with and for us, but that does not speak about God in himself, or provide any theory about God. Like all human history, the Bible is a book that is full of questions but never gives any answers.”[2]
“Hebrew thought had its own tools of knowledge that are fully set forth in the language. We should bow and submit and convert to these instead of forcing God’s revelation into the strait-jacket of Greco-Roman thinking.”[3]
Paul’s statement is true, but perhaps not in the way it was meant in the first century. Two thousand years later the worldwide institution that is a law unto itself is the religion birthed at the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt by Greek Hellenists in Judaic garb. It left the God of Israel behind and invented a mythology and a morality that has shaped the thinking of the West ever since. And when it collapses, which it must because it is a humanly created institution, it will take the society down with it, as all religions that have collapsed have done in the past. “A law unto themselves” is not an endorsement of moral accomplishment. It is a statement about accidental accommodation. It won’t last.
Topical Index: religion, law, history, philosophy, Romans 2:14
[1] Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, p. 17.
[2] Ibid., pp. 23-24.
[3] Ibid., p. 26.
