Steven Carr

'But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.'

In his translation in Romans for everyone, NT Wright puts the testification of the Law and the Prophets in the past tense.

Is it in the past tense in the Greek?

andrewcriddle

The verb is marturoumenh

IIUC it is a present participle but it is sometimes appropriate to translate the Greek present participle as an English imperfect. IE 'to which the Law and the Prophets were testifying' is IMHO a possible translation.

Andrew Criddle

Chili

That is why for Paul liberty from the law is found in censorship by natural law . . . of which religious law is a foreshadow and physical circumcision is in evidence of.

For Paul his freedom from the law to which slavery of sin was attached is replaced by his intimate knowledge of Truth that is maintained by the beauty of that truth and so Paul will be censored by the absense of beauty in his life. . . who so is a slave to beauty in the name of truth.

This is a very easy concept if you equate Truth with Life an and Beauty with Love . . . which is true at all levels but here for Paul is the agape kind such as it is presented in John 21:17 (also in Greek I venture to say).

Steven Carr

Perhaps the Law and the Prophets had stopped testifying to this new righteouessness and Wright is correct to put it in the past tense.

Chili

. . .except that Paul's righteousness has no 'ousness' about it or there would not be a right, from which wrong is a reduction . . . and by extent darkness be real after all.

storytime

Only if the Hebrew God recognized right-ness in the Gentile world, of which He did not, according to OT precepts given to Israelites.

andrewcriddle

No, If the present participle is given a past meaning then I think it would have to mean that the Law and the Prophets began testifying in the past and continued to do so until the time of writing.

Andrew Criddle

Steven Carr

Or perhaps Wright puts it in the past tense, to leave a space for something or somebody else to testify now.

rhutchin

Philips has, "But now we are seeing the righteousness of God declared quite apart from the Law (though amply testified to by both Law and Prophets)--"

KJV has "being witnessed."

The sense seems to be that the OT testifies of Christ who is the righteousness of God and who is the means to gain righteousness which the law could not do. That testimony began in the past and continues into the present (i.e., nothing changes what the OT has always told us).

Toto

Chili storytime exchange split