What follows are excerpts from the epistle to the Romans, chapters 9-11, with emphasis for those passages generally forgotten and overlooked in our days. Commentary in italics is from the blogger.
I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost: that I have great sadness, and continual sorrow in my heart. For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom the adoption, and the glory, and the testament, and the giving of the law, and the service, and the promises, of whom the fathers, and of whom Christ, according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed for ever.Not as though the word of God has miscarried. FOR ALL ARE NOT ISRAELITES THAT ARE OF ISRAEL: NEITHER ARE ALL THEY THAT ARE THE SEED OF ABRAHAM, CHILDREN; BUT IN ISAAC SHALL THY SEED BE CALLED: THAT IS TO SAY, NOT THEY THAT ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE FLESH, ARE THE CHILDREN OF GOD; BUT THEY, THAT ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE PROMISE, ARE ACCOUNTED FOR THE SEED . . . . .[A]s Isaias foretold: Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been made as Sodom, and we had been like unto Gomorrha. What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who followed not after justice, have attained to justice, even the justice that is of faith. BUT ISRAEL, BY FOLLOWING AFTER THE LAW OF JUSTICE, IS NOT COME UNTO THE LAW OF JUSTICE. WHY SO? BECAUSE THEY SOUGHT IT NOT BY FAITH, BUT AS IT WERE OF WORKS. FOR THEY STUMBLED AT THE STUMBLINGSTONE. AS IT IS WRITTEN: BEHOLD I LAY IN SION A STUMBLINGSTONE AND A ROCK OF SCANDAL; AND WHOSOEVER BELIEVETH IN HIM SHALL NOT BE CONFOUNDED. . . . . FOR THE END OF THE LAW IS CHRIST, UNTO JUSTICE TO EVERY ONE THAT BELIEVETH. . . . . FAITH THEN COMETH BY HEARING; AND HEARING BY THE WORD OF CHRIST. . . . . BUT I SAY: HATH ISRAEL NOT KNOWN? FIRST, MOSES SAITH: I WILL PROVOKE YOU TO JEALOUSY BY THAT WHICH IS NOT A NATION; BY A FOOLISH NATION I WILL ANGER YOU. BUT ISAIAS IS BOLD, AND SAITH: I WAS FOUND BY THEM THAT DID NOT SEEK ME: I APPEARED OPENLY TO THEM THAT ASKED NOT AFTER ME. BUT TO ISRAEL HE SAITH: ALL THE DAY LONG I HAVE SPREAD MY HANDS TO A PEOPLE THAT BELIEVETH NOT, AND CONTRADICTETH ME.I say then: Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
Commentary: Paul presents himself as living proof that God has not cast away his people. And why is that a proof? Because he was converted to Jesus the Messiah! God keeps his people Israel close to himself by continuing to will their conversion to his Son. That can only be love, and in line with the universal teaching of theology for hundreds of years, we can add that this love justifies Jews who are invincibly ignorant and whose faith in God is an implicit faith in the consubstantial Son of one God who is Father.
God hath not cast away his people, which he foreknew. Know you not what the scripture saith of Elias; how he called on God against Israel? Lord, they have slain thy prophets, they have dug down thy altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the divine answer to him? I have left me seven thousand men, that have not bowed their knees to Baal. Even so then at this present time also, there is a remnant saved according to the election of grace. . . . That which Israel sought, he hath not obtained: but the election hath obtained it; AND THE REST HAVE BEEN BLINDED. . . . .I say then, have they so stumbled, that they should fall? God forbid. But by their offence, salvation is come to the Gentiles, that they may be emulous of them . . . [A]s long indeed as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I will honour my ministry, if, by any means, I MAY PROVOKE TO EMULATION THEM WHO ARE MY FLESH, AND SAVE SOME OF THEM. For if the LOSS of them be the reconciliation of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? For if the firstfruit be holy, so is the lump also: and if the root be holy, so are the branches.
Commentary: St Paul is constantly balancing different perspectives and switching metaphors, but the thought is consistent. The large unbelieving portion of Israel is dear to God as Israelites according to the flesh, and therefore called “holy”. St. Thomas teaches that God gave this people a holy law out of honor for Christ who would come from among them to fulfill it. Until the end of time Israel according to the flesh is holy because God’s desire for them to believe in Christ now manifest will always be the fulfillment of the promise made to their holy father Abraham. However, as long as they disbelieve Christ, they are branches cut off from their own lifegiving root and olive tree, that is to say, cut off from their own fathers and brethren according to the flesh who believed in Christ in figure before he came and in manifestation since. The life of the root and the olive tree has always been faith in Christ (see Galatians 3: 6-9, 16.) Presently, the branches actually in the tree are those Jews and Gentiles who do believe in Christ the seed of Abraham; the unbelieving Jews are cut off:
And if some of the branches be broken, and thou, being a wild olive, art ingrafted in them, and art made partaker of the root, and of the fatness of the olive tree, boast not against the branches. . . . . Thou wilt say then: The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. Well: BECAUSE OF UNBELIEF THEY WERE BROKEN OFF.
