Romans 2:27
And shall not that which by nature is uncircumcision, if it fulfill the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision art a transgressor of the law?
Open Romans 2:27 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- et judicabit id quod ex natura est præputium, legem consummans, te, qui per litteram et circumcisionem prævaricator legis es ?
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- καὶ κρινεῖ ἡ ἐκ φύσεως ἀκροβυστία τὸν νόμον τελοῦσα σὲ τὸν διὰ γράμματος καὶ περιτομῆς παραβάτην νόμου.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine A Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter, Keeping the Law; The Jews’ Glorying; The Fear of Punishment; The Circumcision of the Heart
Then comes what I mentioned above; then he shows what the Jew is, and says that he is called a Jew, but by no means fulfils what he promises to do. “But if,” says he, “thou callest thyself a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, and knowest His will, and triest the things that are different, being instructed out of the law; and art confident that thou art thyself a guide of the blind, a light of them that are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law. …
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Homily VI on Rom. ii. 17, 18
Ver. 27 . “And shall not the uncircumcision which is by nature judge?”
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Homily XII on Rom. vi. 19
You see then the gain to be got from the former husband! And he does not say when we were in the Law, so in every passage shrinking from giving a handle to heretics; but “when we were in the flesh,” that is, in evil deeds, in a carnal life. What he says then is, not that they were in the flesh before, but now they went about without any bodies; but by saying what he does, he neither says that the Law is the cause of sins, nor yet frees it from odium. For it held the rank of a bitter accuser, by making their sins bare: since that, which enjoins more to him who is not minded to obey at all, makes the offence greater. And this is why he does not say, the “motions of sins” which were produced by the Law, but which “were through the Law” ( Rom. ii. 27 ), without adding any “produced,” but simply “through the Law,” that is to say, which through the Law were made apparent, were made known. …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).