Do Christians Have Peace with God?

Here's a good discussion (albeit fairly technical for us non-Greek readers) of a problem most of us didn't know existed. Pardon me for providing yet another reason for consternation at a possible textual problem. I believe that our view of scripture needs to be challenged frequently.

Do Christians Have Peace with God?A Brief Examination of the Textual Problem in Romans 5:1
By: Daniel B. Wallace , Th.M., Ph.D.

“Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…” —NET Bible

Like virtually all verses, Romans 5:1 can be variously translated. But apart from some minor tweaking—for example, “Since we have been justified” vs. “Having been justified” and the like—there is one substantive variation in how this verse has been translation. The main verb “we have” involves a textual variant, “let us have.” At issue is not two different translations of the same word, but two different words—or, rather, two different forms of the same Greek word. The difference in spelling is one letter (either an omicron or an omega—that is, either a short ‘o’ [o] or a long ‘o’ [ w]), but the difference in pronunciation, as far as we can tell, was nil in the first century AD.1 This is not to say the difference in meaning was nil! Spelled with an omicron, the verb is in the indicative mood—“we have peace”; spelled with the omega, the verb is in the subjunctive mood—“let us have peace.”

One can easily see how such a textual problem could come into existence. A scribe is listening while someone else is reading the manuscript to him; since the two words would be pronounced virtually identically, he has to make a choice. The question is: Which one is the original reading? And how can we know?

Go to http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=1159 for his answer. Then see his answer to a reader's question at http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=1156