Father Abraham Had Many Sons: Rom 4:1-5, 13-17 (Second Essay)

When one says the word "Nixon" to an American audience, we not only have one particular person come to mind (President Richard M. Nixon), but we usually think of one thing associated with his downfall--Watergate. When someone mentions "Ike," we think of the so-called, but vastly misunderstood, "calm" 1950s. We have even brought words into English that pick up on a person's name and associate one thing with it. Let me give you three examples. We have the word "quisling" in English, and it means "collaborator" or "traitor." But this word only originated in WWII and referred to the acts of Major Vidkun Quisling (1887-1945), a Norwegian officer, diplomat and fascist leader who collaborated with the Nazis in their occupation of Norway from 1940-1945. So, if we call a person a "quisling" today, we are calling him a miserable traitor.

Or, we have the word "grimthorpe" in English. It means to restore a building with lavish expenditure rather than skill and taste. Why was it so named? Well, after Sir Edmund Beckett, the first Lord Grimthorpe (1816-1905) whose lavish restoration of St. Albans Cathedral early in the 20th century, aroused fierce criticism. From 1909 we have this quotation: "The parish church, which despite of vigorous 'grimthorping' still shows a trace of its old Norman architecture."

But sometimes a word is derived from an individual though the precise meaning of the term isn't clear. For example, the OED has a listing for "Clintonize": "to modify in accordance with or as a result of the policies of President Clinton." As the Chicago Tribune said just four months before the general election in 1992: "Brace yourselves: Our culture is about to be clintonized." But what, in fact, does that word mean? Though grimthorpe might have a very specialized meaning (even though the word has fallen out of fashion), clintonize might mean a number of things: the economic policy of reforming welfare or of reducing the size of government or of the theory of international cooperation or moderation of traditional democratic policies. That is, clintonize, unlike grimthorpe or quisling, seems to have no definite meaning. It is a "broad tent" word, under whose shelter all kinds of people and ideas can gather.

I have done this little thought exercise because it raises the question of what Paul, or anyone really, might have had in mind when Abraham is mentioned. Is "Abraham" more of a grimthorpe-type of word or a clintonize-type of word? When you mention Abraham, what comes to mind? I think that one of the joys of the study of history is to discover the plasticity of the figures you study. Though people may want to stand for one thing they, in fact, are multidimensional and complex. So it is with Abraham. We might see the term abrahamic as synonymous with "adventurer" if we looked at Gen. 12 as the root-metaphor-giving passage. Or, if we looked at Gen. 13, we might think abrahamic meant "courageous." Then, if we only selected Gen. 18 we might see abrahamic as synonymous with "hospitable." Unfortunately, Abraham also had a checkered past, and if we only looked at Gen. 16, we might associate the term abrahamic with adultery or with adulterous acquiescence with the suggestion of Sarah.

You get my point. Abraham is one of the "plastic" figures of the OT whom an interpreter can bend and shape at will, according to the interests of his argument. Paul decided that what was most significant about Abraham's life for purposes of his argument was Abraham's expression of faith in Gen. 15. In that passage Abraham was hard-pressed and disappointed because he had no heir. God told him that his lineage would not come through a slave born in his house (Eliezer of Damascus), but that his own son would be his heir. As divine "proof" of this promise, God took Abraham outside and showed him the stars of heaven. In a dramatic scene God said:

"Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them...So shall your descendents be," Gen. 15:5.

Then follows the dramatic line for Paul (in his Rom. 4 argument): "And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness," 15:6.

That is all Paul wanted to know. Abraham had demonstrated faith in the crucial moment, and it was this faith, rather than "works" of any kind, that was counted as righteousness by God. I find Abraham interesting because shortly after he had this great revelatory experience of faith, he and Sarah agreed on a scheme where Abraham would try to have children through Sarah's slave woman. Perhaps Abraham hadn't told Sarah of the most dramatic experience of faith in Gen. 15. Maybe it wasn't as important to Abraham as it was to Paul. Why not abrahamic meaning "the doubter"?

But Paul isn't interested in a nuanced portrait of Abraham. He just wants to see him as the quintessence of faith. He wants to use Abraham as an argument rather than try to understand Abraham as a person through a careful reading of the OT Scripture. And, it is this particular verse, Gen. 15:6, that will anchor Paul's presentation in Rom. 4. Well, he had to get himself off of intellectual argument, as I contended previously. And so he turned to Abraham. Abraham helps Paul make the point that one is justified by faith rather than works, even if a judicious consideration of Abraham's story might lead you to contrary or at least conflicting conclusions.

III. Abraham as Example

So, with all this as background, we see precisely what Paul is trying to do. He wasnt to show that the promise to Abraham and his descendants didn't come "through the law" but through the "righteousness of faith" (3:13). That is his basic point. Thus, to his hearers, Jew and Gentile alike, Paul is trying to put the Gospel on a new footing, a footing that is rooted in the OT and is captured in Christ. From here on out, Abraham will be considered by Paul as a pre-Christian hero and the law will be seen as something that either leads people to Christ or is only a shadow of the reality that comes in Christ.

That is what it means to be a Pauline Christian--to accept the kind of argument that Paul brings. I have shown, however, that he really was pressed into a tight place in his argument about faith and law, and that he needn't have picked this particular characteristic of Abraham to emphasize when he referred to the father of Israel.

Thus, I close my essay about Paul in the way I almost always conclude with Paul. He is brilliant, amazingly so. He takes on problems straight on that others fear to touch. But his answers are debatable, and are even not the "best" answers when you consider the text he has before him and what he is trying to accomplish in his argument. But today we recognize Abraham's faith. Let's embrace it. There will be time, I hope, to recognize other facets of this complex character.

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