God Has Bound All to Disobedience?
If God has bound all human beings to disobedience (or, as the RSV translates, "consigned all men to disobedience"), where does human responsibility lie? How can God hold us responsible for disobedience when he caused it? The text seems clearly to indicate that the disobedience of both Jews and Gentiles (Rom 11:30-31) is in some sense the activity of God so that his mercy can be demonstrated. An analogy will highlight the "hardness" of this text. In order to demonstrate my heroic nature, I push a nonswimmer into a swift current. As he is about to drown, I jump in and save him. Is such a view of God's ways a valid understanding of Paul's words?
An answer to this problem depends largely on the meaning of the Greek word rendered "bound over to disobedience" and our understanding of Paul's general view of God's relation to human sinfulness or disobedience.
That the Greek word used by Paul is open to a range of meanings and nuances is clear from the following list of a representative sample of English versions:
NIV: has bound over to disobedience
ASV: has shut up unto disobedience
KJV: hath concluded them in unbelief
NEB: making all prisoners to disobedience
Berkeley: confined under the power of disobedience
JB: imprisoned in their own disobedience
TEV: has made prisoners to disobedience
The Greek word reflected in these translations is synkleio. In the Greek-English Lexicon by Bauer/Arndt/Gingrich, both literal and figurative meanings are given. The literal meaning of the verb is "close up together," "hem in," "enclose." That meaning is clearly present in Luke 5:6, where a catch of fish is "enclosed" in a net. The figurative meaning is given as "confine, imprison," and illustrated from Romans 11:32. The word's possible meanings in this text are then given as "he has imprisoned them all in disobedience," that is, put them under compulsion to be disobedient or given them over to disobedience." The sense of "compulsion" by God is reflected strongly in the renderings of TEV, ASV and NEB. The alternative meaning, "given them over," is reflected in the translation of the JB.
In the New Testament, apart from its literal use in Luke 5:6 and here in 11:32, synkleio is used in only one other Pauline text, Galatians 3:22-23. Here Paul affirms that "Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin." That statement of bondage to sin is paralleled by the statement that "we were held prisoners by the law." The meaning of synkleio in this text is certainly that of confinement (or restraint, as in RSV). Yet God is not seen as determining that bondage in any direct way. The meaning seems to be that Scripture shows--by virtue of the history of human disobedience since the Fall--that all are in the grip of sin. The reference to confinement under the law in Galatians 3:23 must be interpreted in light of Galatians 3:24-25, where the function of the law is put in very positive terms: it is the custodial caretaker, leading us to Christ. What is confirmed in this passage's use of synkleio is the reality of bondage to sin or disobedience, as expressed in Romans 11:32. But the possibility of God as determiner of human disobedience does not seem to be in view.
Help for grasping Paul's meaning may be found in the Old Testament as well as in Romans 1. The Hebrew Scriptures had been translated into Greek in the centuries before Jesus' coming, and Paul made frequent use of this translation when he cited, or referred to, those Scriptures.
The Hebrew word sagar, which means "to deliver up," "to surrender," "to give over," is translated in the Greek Old Testament by two different words. In Psalm 31:8 and 78:50 the translators used synkleio. In Psalm 78:48 and Deuteronomy 32:30, the same Hebrew word was represented by the Greek paradidomi.
It is clear from this and many other examples which could be given that for the Greek translators these Greek words were both valid equivalents for the Hebrew sagar, if not synonymous. Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament states that synkleio, as a translation of sagar, means "to deliver up" or "to surrender," and that it is parallel to paradidomi.
It is this latter word which Paul uses in Romans 1:24, 26, 28. In Romans 1:18-32, as in Romans 11:32, Paul stresses the pervasiveness and depth of human sin. Its origin is the human refusal to acknowledge God as God (Rom 1:18-23). Paul then goes on to show that in the context of this rejection of God, human life deteriorates and degenerates (Rom 1:24-32). This depiction of human sinfulness is accompanied by the threefold refrain "therefore, God gave them over to" (RSV "gave them up"). The meaning is clearly that God allowed his creation to sink into the quicksand of its own disobedience. He neither forced its obedience nor determined its disobedience.
Thus Paul's use of the word synkleio in Romans 11:32 can best be understood in keeping with its usage in the Greek Old Testament where, in translation of the Hebrew sagar, it means "to deliver up," "to surrender." This sense of the term is confirmed, as we have seen, by the use of the parallel word in Romans 1:24-28. The meaning of Romans 12:32 would then be "God has given up all people to their disobedience." What we have here then is an expression of God's permissive will. By permitting the creation to become absorbed in and by its sinfulness, God has acted in such a way that the result is their bondage in disobedience. It is from that bondage that God in his grace brings liberation.
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