Romans 3:29

f. ἤ Ἰουδαίων ὁ θεὸς μόνον; The only way to evade the conclusion of Romans 3:28 would be to suppose as is here presented by way of alternative that God is a God of Jews only. But the supposition is impossible: there is only one God, and therefore He must be God of all, of Gentile and Jews alike. This is assumed as an axiom by the Apostle. εἴπερ is the best attested reading, but the argument seems to require that it should “approximate to the sense of ἐπείπερ ” (Simcox, Language of the N.T., p. 171), which is a variant: “if, as is the fact”. It is simplest to read Romans 3:30 as explaining and confirming what precedes: He is God of the Gentiles also, if as is the fact God is one; and (consequently) He will justify the circumcision on the ground of faith and the uncircumcision by means of faith. δικαιώσει is probably logical, rather than temporal, whether the reference be made to the last judgment, or to each case, as it arises, in which God justifies. Lightfoot insists on drawing a distinction between ἐκ πίστεως and διὰ τῆς πίστεως in this passage. “The difference,” he says, “will perhaps best be seen by substituting their opposites, οὐ δικαιώσει περιτομὴν ἐκ νόμου, οὐδὲ ἀκροβυστίαν διὰ τοῦ νόμου : when, in the case of the Jews, the falsity of their starting-point, in the case of the Gentiles, the needlessness of a new instrumentality, would be insisted on.” (Notes on Epistles of St. Paul, p. 274.) But a comparison of Romans 2:26; Romans 5:1; Romans 9:30; Galatians 3:8 (Weiss), shows that Paul does not construe the prepositions so rigorously: and in point of fact, what he does insist upon here is that justification is to be conceived in precisely the same way for Jew and Gentile. The ἐκ πίστεως and διὰ τῆς πίστεως serve no purpose but to vary the expression.