"No one seeks God" (Rom 3:11): Is This an Absolute Statement?

10/14/2007 06:22 Filed in: Faith & Reason
No. It's not.

Let me briefly lay some cards out on the table for a moment. For many years, I was quite enamored with the so-called "seeker" movement when it came to how I thought churches ought to function in the contemporary world. Yet after experience, study, and reflection, let's just say I'm not quite so enamored these days. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that for a local church to gear nearly all its ministry around the idea of reaching seekers is ultimately a mistake. Nevertheless, I believe there is some value in the seeker movement in that it reminded the church universal that often Christians and non-Christians have very different thought processes. So I believe there must be some balance, and I'll come back to that idea in a separate post later on.

I'm writing this because many times I hear those who are opposed to seeker-targeted ministry quote Rom 3:11, "no one seeks God." Then the conclusion that almost always follows is that there is no such thing as a seeker and thus any ministry to reach seekers is invalid. Well, I believe this is a complete misunderstanding of this verse that lifts a handful of words that Paul somewhat paraphrases from Psalm 14 (or 53) and completely takes them out of context.

Speaking of context, here's the passage from Romans from the TNIV with textual notes referencing OT quotations.

9 What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. 10 As it is written:

“There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”c
13 “Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.”d
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”e
14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”f
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know.”g
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”h

cPsalms 14:1-3; 53:1-3; Eccles. 7:20.
dPsalm 5:9
ePsalm 140:3.
fPsalm 10:7 (see Septuagint)
gIsaiah 59:7, 8.
gPsalm 36:1.


In regard to Rom 3:11, Paul is paraphrasing a bit from what is Psalm 14 in English and Hebrew and Psalm 13 in the LXX. I may be wrong, but I believe he is favoring the LXX over the Hebrew Bible here as in most quotations that he makes. Below is my very literal translation of Psalm 13:2 from the LXX:

From heaven, the Lord bent down to look upon the sons of men to see if there were any who understand or seek after God.


Thus, you can see why I say Paul is paraphrasing a bit. Actually, he tells us the results of God's quest: "there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks after God."

But is this to be taken absolutely? I mean, isn't the Bible full of references to people seeking God? I ran an entirely non-academic search by simply using Accordance to search the NASB for the string, seek*. Here are the results as I have categorized them:


Commands to Seek the Lord
References to Those Who Seek the Lord
References to Those Who Will One Day Seek the Lord

Deut 4:29 “But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.

Deut 12:5 “But you shall seek the LORD at the place which the LORD your God will choose from all your tribes, to establish His name there for His dwelling, and there you shall come.

1 Chr 16:11 Seek the LORD and His strength;
Seek His face continually.

1 Chr 22:19 “Now set your heart and your soul to seek the LORD your God; arise, therefore, and build the sanctuary of the LORD God, so that you may bring the ark of the covenant of the LORD and the holy vessels of God into the house that is to be built for the name of the LORD.”

2 Chr 14:4 and commanded Judah to seek the LORD God of their fathers and to observe the law and the commandment.

2 Chr 15:12 They entered into the covenant to seek the LORD God of their fathers with all their heart and soul;

Ps 105:4 Seek the LORD and His strength;
Seek His face continually.

Isa 55:6 ¶ Seek the LORD while He may be found;
Call upon Him while He is near.

Amos 5:4 ¶ For thus says the LORD to the house of Israel,
“Seek Me that you may live.

Amos 5:6 “Seek the LORD that you may live,
Or He will break forth like a fire, O house of Joseph,

Zeph 2:3 Seek the LORD,
All you humble of the earth
Who have carried out His ordinances;
Seek righteousness, seek humility.
Perhaps you will be hidden
In the day of the LORD’S anger.

 

1 Chr 16:10 Glory in His holy name;
Let the heart of those who seek the LORD be glad.

2 Chr 11:16 Those from all the tribes of Israel who set their hearts on seeking the LORD God of Israel followed them to Jerusalem, to sacrifice to the LORD God of their fathers.

2 Chr 15:12 They entered into the covenant to seek the LORD God of their fathers with all their heart and soul;

2 Chr 26:5 He continued to seek God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding through the vision of God; and as long as he sought the LORD, God prospered him.

2 Chr 30:19 everyone who prepares his heart to seek God, the LORD God of his fathers, though not according to the purification rules of the sanctuary.”

2 Chr 34:3 For in the eighth year of his reign while he was still a youth, he began to seek the God of his father David; and in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, the Asherim, the carved images and the molten images.

Ezra 6:21 The sons of Israel who returned from exile and all those who had separated themselves from the impurity of the nations of the land to join them, to seek the LORD God of Israel, ate the Passover.

Ezra 8:22 For I was ashamed to request from the king troops and horsemen to protect us from the enemy on the way, because we had said to the king, “The hand of our God is favorably disposed to all those who seek Him, but His power and His anger are against all those who forsake Him.”

Job 5:8 ¶ “But as for me, I would seek God,
And I would place my cause before God;

Ps 9:10 And those who know Your name will put their trust in You,
For You, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek You.

Ps 22:26 The afflicted will eat and be satisfied;
Those who seek Him will praise the LORD.
Let your heart live forever!

Ps 27:8 When You said, “Seek My face,” my heart said to You,
“Your face, O LORD, I shall seek.”

Ps 34:10 The young lions do lack and suffer hunger;
But they who seek the LORD shall not be in want of any good thing.

Ps 40:16 Let all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You;
Let those who love Your salvation say continually,
“The LORD be magnified!”

Ps 63:1 ¶ O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly;
My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You,
In a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Ps 69:6 May those who wait for You not be ashamed through me, O Lord GOD of hosts;
May those who seek You not be dishonored through me, O God of Israel,

Ps 69:32 The humble have seen it and are glad;
You who seek God, let your heart revive.

Ps 70:4 ¶ Let all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You;
And let those who love Your salvation say continually,
“Let God be magnified.”

Ps 105:3 Glory in His holy name;
Let the heart of those who seek the LORD be glad.

Ps 122:9 For the sake of the house of the LORD our God,
I will seek your good.

Prov 28:5 Evil men do not understand justice,
But those who seek the LORD understand all things.

Isa 51:1 ¶ “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness,
Who seek the LORD:
Look to the rock from which you were hewn
And to the quarry from which you were dug.

Isa 58:2 “Yet they seek Me day by day and delight to know My ways,
As a nation that has done righteousness
And has not forsaken the ordinance of their God.
They ask Me for just decisions,
They delight in the nearness of God.

Lam 3:25 The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
To the person who seeks Him.

Dan 9:3 So I gave my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.

Zech 7:2 Now the town of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regemmelech and their men to seek the favor of the LORD,

 

Jer 50:4 ¶ “In those days and at that time,” declares the LORD, “the sons of Israel will come, both they and the sons of Judah as well; they will go along weeping as they go, and it will be the LORD their God they will seek.

Hos 3:5 Afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king; and they will come trembling to the LORD and to His goodness in the last days.

Zech 8:21 ‘The inhabitants of one will go to another, saying, “Let us go at once to entreat the favor of the LORD, and to seek the LORD of hosts; I will also go.”

Zech 8:22 ‘So many peoples and mighty nations will come to seek the LORD of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the LORD.’

Acts 15:17 SO THAT THE REST OF MANKIND MAY SEEK THE LORD,
AND ALL THE GENTILES WHO ARE CALLED BY MY NAME,’


Obviously, there's record in the Scriptures of those who seek God, regardless of how imperfectly they perform the task. One discovery that's immediately apparent by the above listing is that those who are referenced as seeking God are those who are believers, those who are part of the people of God, those who are part of the covenant already. These individuals are the seekers. That's somewhat different from the way seeker is used in church discussions today in which a seeker is thought of to be the person who has become dispositioned (is this a word?) toward the idea of God, but simply hasn't settled enough issues to claim any kind of spiritual allegiance to a religious philosophy. Based on the examples above, I find it difficult to find the contemporary idea of a seeker in the Scriptures. Perhaps it might be found in 2 Chron 34:3 listed above, in which Josiah has a certain point in life in which he begins to seek the Lord. Four years later he is shown to be an individual who takes obedience to the Lord quite seriously. Perhaps also, inherent in some of the commands to seek the Lord, are those who may not be seeking him to begin with.

So, if the Bible clearly demonstrates that there are individuals known as seekers, even if they are actually defined differently in the scriptures than how we often think of them, is Paul simply wrong? No. Rather, he must be read in context, and that context has to do not only with the argument he is making in Romans, but also with the context of the passages from which he is quoting.

Obviously, in Romans, Paul is making the case that all are guilty of sin, whether Jew or Gentile. And yes, on the whole, in terms of humanity as a collective, we simply haven't sought God. But that doesn't negate the verses in the middle column above. Psalm 14 (or Psalm 53) serves as a contrast between the fool who doesn't seek God, and the faithful person who does. It's been demonstrated many times in recent years, that when Paul quotes a short passage of scripture, especially a string of short passages as he does in Rom 3:9-18, those passages are intended to be representative of the greater context from where they are found.

I don't always agree with James Dunn when it comes to the book of Romans, but I believe he's absolutely correct when, in the Word Biblical Commentary (p. 150), he writes,

Next the catena draws on Pss 14:1-3 [LXX 13:2-3] and 53:2-3 [LXX 52:3-4]. Significantly, it is "the fool" who is indicted, and those described are set over against God's people, "the righteous generation" (Ps 14:4, 5, 7), those who do seek after God (cf Pss 9:10; 22:26; 24:6; 27:8, etc. ... But when used as an elaboration of Eccl 7:10 [Dunn surely means 7:20 here], according to the conventions of Jewish interpretation, the Psalm passages can be understood to fill out the universal condemnation of Qoheleth ("the principal method in which the rabbis clarify the sacred text and probe its depths is by recourse to parallel passages"--Bloch, "Midrash," 32). Those who recognized teh quotation (whose repetition in the Psalms would make it all the more familiar) would recognize too the shocking implication that Paul was in effect lumping Jewish presumptions with gentile idolatry and sexual perversion (cf. Ps 14:1) as equally an expression of the fool's denial of God. ἠχρεώθησαν is the LXX translation of ‏[ne’elachu], "become sour" (of milk)--hence NJB: "all alike turned sour."


Thus, to argue against so-called "seeker-sensitive" churches by quoting Rom 3:11 is to do an injustice to the text. We should remember, however, that our modern conception of a seeker may not square with the biblical definition of one.

Further, I believe it is incumbent upon the church to proclaim the εὐαγγέλιον (good news) every time we meet. And if that's not seeker-sensitive (that is, has the actual good of the seeker in mind, regardless of how we define seeker), I don't know what is.