Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 178:711 (Jul 2021)
Article: Periodical Reviews
Author: John A. Adair

BSac 178:711 (July-September 2021) p. 360

Periodical Reviews

By The Faculty And Staff Of Dallas Theological Seminary

John A. Adair

Editor

“Creation’s Slavery to (Human) Corruption: A Moral Interpretation of Romans 8:20–22,” William Horst, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 73.2 (June 2021): 79–90.

Horst is a New Testament scholar and adjunct professor at Fuller Seminary and Azusa Pacific University. In this article he observes that in Romans 8:20–22, Paul argues, “In the midst of present suffering, Paul, his audience, and personified creation groan together in anticipation of deliverance and divine revelation. In some sense, these parties can be said to share a common eschatological hope in the midst of hardships of the present age” (79). Most scholars, he notes, “typically understand the subjection of creation to futility and corruption as an allusion to the narrative of Eden—found in the book of Genesis—in which Adam and Eve disobey God, and as a result, the ground is cursed” (ibid.).

Horst proposes an alternative reading: “Creation’s bondage to corruption involves human moral corruption, rather than the sort of physical corruption that occurs when an organism dies on Earth” (80). In short, “Creation presently suffers from the detrimental effects of pervasive moral depravity, and this moral decadence is the fundamental plight from which Paul awaits liberation in the discourse of Romans” (ibid.). In support of this interpretation the author cites a number of Old Testament texts “in which the earth is said to mourn as a result of human sin” (ibid.). He notes that “none of the passages in which the earth is said to mourn evoke the notion of an Edenic fall, nor are any of these passages concerned with the presence of death or decomposition in the created order. The land’s mourning is about the destructive outworking of widespread injustice and moral corruption among the people who inhabit the territory of Israel, or some subset thereof” (81). He concludes, “If Paul does indeed evoke the prophetic motif of the mourning of the earth when he describes creation’s groaning in Romans, then his description of creation’s bondage to futility and corruption in verses 20–21 is most naturally understood to refer to the suffering of nonhuman creation alongside the suffering of humans due to human sin with its destructive effects, including the judgment of God toward sin” (82). Further, Horst argues, within Romans Paul’s use of the metaphor of slavery fits a moral corruption view better than physical.

BSac 178:711 (July-September 2021...