Ad Bona Gratiae et Gloriae: Filial Adoption in Romans 8

The Thomist 74 (2010): 593-626 AD BONA GRATIAE ET GLORIAE: FILIAL ADOPTION IN ROMANS 8 GREGORY VALL Ave Maria University Ave Maria, Florida ACCORDING TO ITS MUNDANE USAGE in the GrecoRoman world, the word u1o0rn(a denotes the adoption of a son, especially in order to secure an heir and to provide for one's old age.1 The Apostle Paul seems to have coined the theological usage whereby u1o0rn(a denotes the grace by which God brings human beings into a filial relationship with himself.2 1 In this sense the word occurs with some frequency in inscriptions, literature, and nonliterary papyri, beginning in the second century B.C. See Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon, revised and augmented by Henry Stuart Jones and Roderick McKenzie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 794b-795a, 1846b; and James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, Illustraied from the Papyri and other Non-Literary Sources (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1930; repr. 1972), 648b-649a. 2 W. Bauer, F. W. Danker, W. F. Arndt, F. W. Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1024 (hereafter BDAG); W. von Martitz and E. Schweizer, "uio0rn(a" in G. Friedrich and G. W. Bromiley, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids. Mich.: Eerdmans, 1972), 397-99. On the Old Testament background, see especially James M. Scott, Adoption as Sons of God: An Exegetical Investigation into the Background of Huiothesia in the Pauline Corpus, WUNT 2/48 (Tiibingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1992). The twentieth-century debate over whether we should look to the Greco-Roman world or to the Old Testament for the background to Paul's use of this word is resolved in the recognition that both backgrounds are operative but on two different levels of discourse. Paul is using the term uio0Ea(a metaphorically, applying the Greco-Roman concept of one human being's adoption of another to the biblical reality of God's establishment of a covenant relationship with human beings, his "adoption" of sons and daughters. The Greco-Roman background is thus relevant to the term's literal semantics, while the Old Testament background is relevant to its metaphorical usage. Whether or not the Old Testament contains references to the practice of literal adoption comparable to what we find in the Greco-Roman 593 594 GREGORY VALL In Romans 9:4 Paul uses this term to refer to God's election of Israel to a covenant relationship, placing it at the head of a list of Israel's divinely bestowed prerogatives. The remaining four New Testament occurrences of ulo8Eafa, which are likewise in the Pauline corpus, refer to the new covenant grace by which God makes us his sons and daughters in Christ (Rom 8:15, 23; Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5}.3 In Romans 8, Paul uses the word ulo8rnfa ("filial adoption") in two different contexts. In verse 15 he speaks of "the Spirit of filial adoption" (lTVEOµa ulo8rnfac;;) as something Christians have already received and by which we cry out "Abba, Father." In verse 23 he refers to ulo8rnfa as something that we still await and identifies it with "the redemption of our bodies."4 Douglas Moo, world is therefore irrelevant. Nor is it really telling that the Old Testament itself never actually uses a word meaning "adoption" to refer to God's election of Israel or of the house of David. That Paul can metaphorically apply the Greco-Roman term uio0rn(a to Yahweh's election of Israel in an intelligible manner is clear from his use of the term in Rom 9:4, which recalls a whole trajectory of Old Testament passages, beginning with Exod 4:22. A similar conclusion is reached, after a helpful sketch of the history of interpretation, in James I. Cook, "The Concept ofAdoption in the Theology of Paul," in idem, ed., Saved by Hope: Essays in Honor ofRichard C. Oudersluys (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1978), 133-44. 3 Etymologically uio0rn(a is a compound noun formed of two elements: uio-, which is the root of...