St. Paul’s Notion on the Adoptive Sonship of Christians

ST. PAUL'S NOTION ON THE ADOPTIVE SONSHIP OF CHRISTIANS ST. PAUL'S unique view of the new status of redeemed man is that he is an adopted son of God. To express this hallmark he chose the Greek term hyiothesia. This word is used by and has its background in contemporary legal literature / but its occurrence in the Sacred Scriptures is limited to the New Testament, and there it is used only five times,always by St. Paul (Gal. 4, 5; Rom. 8, 15.~3; 9, 4; Eph. 1, 5) . Of these five occurrences, one (Rom. 9, 4) refers to the relationship of the Israelites to God in the Old Testament dispensation ; 2 the remaining four speak of Christian hyiothesia, of adoptive sonship as it is bestowed on the believer in Christ because of his faith in Jesus, the Son of God. Of these four, one (Rom. 8, ~3) depicts hyiothesia as something that will be ours after the resurrection of the body; 3 the remaining three (Gal. 4, 5; Rom. 8, 15; Eph. 1, 5) describe it as something already shared here on earth.4 1 The term occurs i~ profane writings from the times of Pindar and Herodotus. Cf. G. Wilkius and L. Grimm, Lexicon Graeco-Latinum in Libros Novi Testamenti, (Lipsiae: Zehl, 1903) sub voce; A. Deissmann, Bible Studies, (Edinburgh: Clark, 1901) page 239. • M. Schoenberg, "Hyiothesia: The Adoptive Sonship of the Israelites" in AER CXLIII (October, 1960) 261-273. 3 For this reason, as also because of new manuscript evidence (P 46), modern authors do not consider the word in this text authentic. See P. Benoit, "Ncus gemissons, attendant Ia delivrance de notre corps" (Rom VIII, 23)-Melanges Lebreton; Recherches de Scie:nce Religieuse 39 (1951) 267-281; S. Lyonnet, in his recent study and translation of the Epistle to the Romans, Les Epltres de Saint Paul aux Galates et aux Romains in La Sainte Bible traduite en francais sous Ia direction de !'Ecole Biblique de Jerusalem (Paris: Cerf, 1953) omits hyiothesia entirely and translates without further comment either in the text or in the footnotes : " Et non pas elle seule: nous-memes qui possedons les premices de !'Esprit, nous gemissons nous aussi interieurement dans l'attente que notre corps soit delivre." • The same three texts have an intriguing interchange of pronouns from the first to the second persons in their immediate context (See Gal 4, 5 f: . . . hina ten hyiothesian apolabomen ... hoti este hyioi .•. kardias hemon; cp. Gal 3, 1-1~ 51 52 MARTIN W. SCHOENBERG In tum, two of these (Gal. 4, 5 f; Rom. 8, 14 f) bear such close textual resemblance to each other that it is practically impossible to say which is the voice and which the echo; so much so that exegetes are of the opinion that "the two texts ought not be separated, for they mutually throw light upon each other." 5 Yet when considered separately and within their own context, even these will appear to have an emphasis and connotation all their own. It is the purpose of this study to examine in chronological order the three texts (Gal. 4,5; Rom. 8,15; Eph.1, 5) where St. Paul speaks about adoptive sonship in this life in an effort to obtain a better acquaintance with the Apostle's contribution and doctrine on the precise nature of our Christian status. GAL. 4, 4-6 The Epistles to the Galatians and the Romans have a remarkable similarity between them, both as to general subjectmatter and to development. Father Benoit compares them in this to two other epistles of St. Paul which are also strikingly similar, namely, Colossians and Ephesians. It is his opinion that in each group there is much the same atmosphere between the two with this difference that Galatians and Colossians are written in the heat of controversy, whereas Romans and Ephesians are written when the pitch of the crisis has passed and victory is secure.6 Prat even goes so far as to consider the shorter epistle in each group as a first-draft, a sketch of the longer/ second person; Gal 8, 18-15 -first person; Gal 8, !l6-29-second person. Likewise Rom...