Theopedia

Douglas Moo

Overview

Douglas J. Moo is Kenneth T. Wessner Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.1 His commentary on Romans in the New International Commentary on the New Testament series (1996) is quoted directly on several specific points of Pauline exegesis in later evangelical and Reformed scholarship.2

Theological Contribution

Romans 1:24 and God’s “handing over”

Commenting on Romans 1:24, where Paul writes that “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity,” Moo reads the verse as God’s active judicial response to humanity’s suppression of the knowledge of him:

The “therefore” at the beginning of this verse shows that God’s “handing over” of human beings is his response to their culpable rejection of the knowledge of himself that he has made generally available (vv. 21-23). Paul’s use of the verb “hand over” to describe this retribution has its roots in the OT, where it is regularly used in the stereotyped formula according to which God “hands over” Israel’s enemies so that they may be defeated in battle. And, in an ironic role reversal, the same formula is used when God hands his own people over to another nation as punishment for their sins. Somewhat similarly, Paul here alleges that God has “handed over” people to “uncleanness.”2

Moo argues that the phrase requires more than mere permission on God’s part:

The meaning of “hand over” demands that we give God a more active role as the initiator of the process. God does not simply let the boat go. He gives it a push downstream. Like a judge who hands over a prisoner to the punishment his crime has earned, God hands over the sinner to the terrible cycle of ever-increasing sin.3

On this reading, the impurity to which God hands sinners over is itself both their own sin and God’s judgment on it.1

Romans 1:28 and the mind’s need for renewal

Moo also connects Paul’s description of the “debased mind” of Romans 1:28 to Romans 12:2’s call for the renewing of the mind, arguing that only the Spirit’s work can reverse the noetic effects of humanity’s rejection of God:

As in 1:21, Paul stresses [in 1:28] that people who have turned from God are fundamentally unable to think and decide correctly about God and his will. This tragic incapacity is the explanation for the apparently inexplicable failure of people to comprehend, let alone practice, biblical ethical principles. Only the work of the Spirit in “renewing the mind [nous]” (Rom. 12:2) can overcome this deep-seated blindness and perversity.4

The dik- word group in Romans

Moo treats the cluster of Greek words built on the root dik- (righteousness, justification, righteous) as central to Paul’s argument: “No set of words is more important for a correct understanding of Paul’s message to the Romans than those that share the root dik-.”5 Micah McCormick’s study of Christ’s active obedience draws on this same point when tracing the dik- vocabulary through Romans 5, the passage at the center of the justification debate over what righteousness Christ imputes to believers.6

Creation Care

With his son Jonathan A. Moo, Moo co-authored Creation Care: A Biblical Theology of the Natural World (2018), tracing the biblical theology of the earth from creation to new creation. Ken Magnuson’s chapter on creation care in Invitation to Christian Ethics cites the book repeatedly, including as a survey source for the field’s environmental concerns.7

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Jared Heath Moore, A Biblical and Historical Appraisal of Concupiscence with Special Attention to Same-Sex Attraction (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), chap. 5, “The Bible Teaches That Concupiscence Is Morally Culpable Sin, Even in Christians,” 175. ↩ ↩2

  2. Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 110. ↩ ↩2

  3. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 111. ↩

  4. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 118. ↩

  5. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 79. ↩

  6. Micah John McCormick, “Messiah’s Obedience for Eternal Life Fulfilled,” in “The Active Obedience of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 250. ↩

  7. Ken Magnuson, “Creation Care,” in Invitation to Christian Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2020), citing Douglas J. Moo and Jonathan A. Moo, Creation Care: A Biblical Theology of the Natural World, Biblical Theology for Life (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018), 195-220. ↩