A Shorter Commentary on Romans by Karl Barth

With an Introductory Essay by Maico Michielin

Maico M. Michielin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317186816
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Theologie

First published in 1959, Karl Barth's A Shorter Commentary on Romans originated as the manuscript for a course of extra-mural lectures held in Basle during the winter of 1940-41. During this time, Barth continued to resist the Nazi regime and its influence on the Reformed Church as he did when he was in Bonn. This reissue of Barth's A Shorter Commentary on Romans links to the renewed interest today in a 'theological' interpretation of Scripture. In response to the modern preoccupation with what lies behind the text (the author's context), and to a postmodern preoccupation with what lies in front of the text (the reader's context), both theologians and biblical scholars are asking the following questions: 'What is the relationship between the biblical text, interpreter and God?' 'Can the Bible be read both as an historical document and as a text that speaks to us today, and if so, how can it do so?' Barth's commentarial practice as exemplified in A Shorter Commentary on Romans answers these questions. This book is presented in two parts: first, an introduction by Maico Michielin helping readers understand Barth's theological exegetical approach to interpreting Scripture and showing readers how to let Scripture address theological and ethical concerns for today; the main body of the book then follows - the republication of the original English translation by D.H. van Daalen of Barth's A Shorter Commentary on Romans.

A Shorter Commentary on Romans

Karl Barth

Translated by

D.H. van Daalen

1.1–17

The Apostolic Office and the Gospel

The arrangement of these verses, which form the Introduction to the whole Epistle, is clear: 1.17, the Apostles’ greetings to his readers in Rome; 1.8–15, a note on his wish to come to Rome soon himself; 1.16–18 programmatic definition of the Gospel as the disclosure of God’s judgment, which to the man who accepts it in faith becomes salvation and life.

1.1–7 contain the author’s greetings in the form which was then usual. He mentions his own name and the name of those he is addressing, and then in direct speech wishes them the best he can wish them. But in this traditional form Paul has at once spoken very substantially of the cause that moves him. This cause is a person (1.1), not his own person, nor the person of the individual reader or hearer of the Epistle, but over and above his person and the persons united in the church in Rome the person of Jesus Christ. Paul is his servant, literally his slave, that is to say to him he belongs and he wishes to speak only as one who belongs to him, and not privately and in his own right. When he was called by him, called away from his previous surroundings, and also from his previous inner and outer position in life, and by this was set apart to be an apostle, he became this same Lord’s personal property. This Lord has given him the grace of the apostolate (1.5), i.e. the office of an accredited ambassador, and this office commissions him to proclaim the Gospel, the good news.

Paul is now separated from everything in the world, tied entirely to the Gospel, set apart for the Gospel – and that by Jesus Christ, the One of whom he would say in 1.3f that he is the content of the Gospel. But he first of all wants to emphasize (1.2) that this good news is identical with that which the prophets have already asserted in the Holy Scriptures (he means those of Israel: the Old Testament). They have declared the good news beforehand. They announced it before it was there to take its course through the world by means of the Apostle’s words. Therefore these Scriptures should be read as announcements exactly corresponding to the Gospel. The content of the Gospel is only One – and whatever may appear to be otherwise is yet this One: the Son of God. According to the flesh, i.e. as a man he belongs to the house of David, he is the son and heir promised to David. According to the Holy Spirit, through his resurrection from the dead, i.e. through his power as the Son of God, he has been appointed, i.e. proved, revealed, lit. set apart and distinguished from other men as just this: the Son of God, Jesus Christ is Paul’s Lord. And from him Paul has received (1.5) the grace of his commission to call all the Gentiles to obedience to the King of Israel because he is as such the Son of God who is above all men – to call them to that obedience which consists in faith, so that through their obedience his Name (the name of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the son of David) may receive due honor. His readers originally belonged to those Gentiles – but, like Paul himself they were ‘called in Jesus Christ,’ in their particular situation called away (1.6): they are ‘all the beloved of God, those who were called, the saints in Rome’ (1.7).

What is true of what Paul says about himself also applies here: none of these epithets indicates a religious moral quality of those thus described. They point to Christ’s work for them and to them. Through him they are God’s beloved, called by him, holy through him, in exactly the same way and in the same sense as Paul is an apostle through him. Thus Jesus Christ is their unity, the One in whom the Apostle and the Church, right from the start, without ever having seen each other, simply are together. In this unity the Apostle greets the Church with a blessing. While the Greeks and Romans of those days wished each other ‘joy’ and ‘prosperity’ the Apostle wishes his readers ‘grace’ and ‘peace.’ We shall meet those words again, so that it may be sufficient here to state that they indicate, so to speak from above and from below, that which makes the Church the Church, which makes a Christian a Christian: God’s favorable inclination towards man, and the order of human life which is the result of that inclination. In Jesus Christ grace and peace have become an event and are yet ever to be expected and therefore to be solicited from him who is the fountain of grace and peace: from God our Father, whom we have recognized as our Father through Jesus Christ – from our Lord Jesus Christ who as such is the way to God our Father. The more we keep the two words of this phrase together, the more clearly we can see that the one can only be explained by the other, and the better we understand them.

In 1.8–15 Paul comments on his wish personally to meet with the church in Rome. He begins as he usually does by thanking God for the existence of the Church (1.8). There is perhaps no more telling expression of the peculiar character of the apostolic office as distinguished from that of the priests and prophets in the OT than this thanksgiving which is regularly the Apostle’s first word as regards his Churches. When he addresses himself to God through and in Jesus Christ he may, he must extol the mere existence of a Christian church as a miracle of God’s goodness. For the faith of the Christians in Rome to which he is referring in particular and which he says is known throughout the world, is certainly not their sincere, their deep, their lived faith, but just their faith as such: just the fact that Jesus Christ has saints, his disciples – and this is significant for the whole world – in Rome too. While Paul, remembering them in this sense, turns to God, it stands to reason – and he can call upon God to bear him out (1.9) – that he prays for them, that in this strictest sense of the word they are near to his heart. And his intercession for them quite naturally becomes a prayer that it may be God’s will for him to come to them one day. He would (1.11) like to see them in order to strengthen them by passing on to them the gift of the Spirit bestowed on him.

This particular gift of the Spirit is simply the Gospel, which according to 1.5 has been entrusted to him. Other men have other gifts. In 1 Cor. 12 Paul spoke of the diversity of spiritual gifts, and in this Epistle too he discussed them (12.6ff). This particular gift, the proclamation of the Gospel, is the gift of the apostolic office bestowed on him. In all his epistles Paul emphasized its importance not only for the foundation of the Church (i.e. for missions in the narrower sense of the world), but also for strengthening, building and maintaining her.

But the apostolic office does not make the man who holds it self-satisfied. Therefore, as he continues, Paul adds that to him strengthening them is synonymous with hoping that he will be comforted and exhorted with them by the mutual exchange of their faith and his. He takes it seriously that Jesus Christ is over him and the rest of the Church, and that he, Paul himself is not over and above the Church but lives in the Church, receiving as well as giving.

Therefore, when he prays for the church in Rome and pleads that he may be allowed to see her, he is praying for himself as well. He has so far been prevented from carrying out his desire (1.13). According to 1.10 Paul is convinced that, if it could not be carried out so far, it was evidently not the will of God – this is in keeping with his usual interpretation of such situations. But they are to know that from his side the desire and the intention had always been there – now his third motive appears – to ‘have some fruit,’ harvest some produce in Rome, as well as among the other Gentiles, i.e. to preach the Gospel as a missionary there as well, to win some people for the good news, to guide some people to that obedience of faith mentioned in 1.5. Whenever Paul speaks of Gentile nations and their being won for the Gospel, he always means some few people from those nations, as is very plain in this sentence, In those few the nations as a whole are the objects of his commission, the hearers of his message. Paul’s idea of mission is not concerned with large or small numbers. What really matters is this: that the spark, and in the spark the future conflagration of the whole, is scattered throughout the world.

Finally 1.14–15 may be understood as the intimation of a fourth motive for his desire to come to Rome. For Paul explains that desire (once more mentioned explicitly in 1.15) by his specific calling to a world-wide apostolate, to a proclamation of the Gospel among Hellenes and Barbarians, among the educated and the uneducated. Originally the Greeks were the Hellenes and, in Greek idiom, all the other nations Barbarians. But by the time this Epistle was written the words had acquired a different nuance of meaning. ‘Hellenic’ was the embodiment of culture, ‘barbarian’ was the opposite. The two words used in conjunction by a Christian who was once a Jew denoted the non-Jewish, i.e. the Gentile world in its entirety and in its diversity. He was directed to serve the Gospel as the Apostle of the Gentile world, as distinguished from those Apostles who, now as before, continued in Jerusalem to perform the same office among the Jews. That is his task and it is the fourth reason why he wishes to go to Rome. Rome is the centre of the Hellenic-barbarian world of the Gentiles, with its mixture of the highest civilization and the lowest vulgarity. But when we look back at this whole exposition in 1.8–15 we should remember that the actual nerve, the decisive force of this desire is located at the place where Paul sees that he is together and at one with the Christians in Rome as well as with those of other churches – however wide apart in space and however unknown to each other they may be – in the unity of Jesus Christ, who is at once both his, the Lord of the Apostle and theirs, the Lord of the Church.

The last phrases of the introduction give a definition (1.16–17) of what Paul means by the Gospel which he has just said once more he intends to preach in Rome (1.15). In these verses he begins to present the cause for which the Epistle was written. But the transition from what precedes them is scarcely noticeable.

Paul starts by saying in 1.6 that he is not ashamed of the Gospel. This certainly refers to what he has said before: that for a long time now he had wanted to come to Rome, but had not yet managed to do so. No one should think that he could not or would not come because he shunned the challenge which Rome especially, as the impressive centre of the Gentile world, would mean to his message. He is not afraid that the Gospel might not be equal to its encounter with the accumulated culture and vulgarity of the metropolis, that the spiritual and unspiritual powers, the culture and banality prevailing there might confound the Gospel and stultify him as well. But this ‘shamelessness’ is not based on any reliance on his own spiritual resources, on his eloquence, on his knowledge of human nature or anything of that kind. The reason why he is ‘shameless,’ why he is not afraid of all Rome – and here he arrives at the cause which will be his sole concern till 15.13 – is because the Gospel itself is power; it is God’s power and therefore in every respect superior power.

Observe how he refrains from making any reference to his own conviction or experience of this power. And also note that he does not say that the Gospel has such power (as if it might perhaps not have it). On the contrary, he states – we shall have to get used to the fact that this is how an apostle speaks – that the Gospel is such power. The phrase means that it is God’s almighty power, God’s omnipotence. It is therefore not a power among other powers, it is not a power to which others could even be compared, it is not a power with which another power could compete, but the power which is over and above all other powers, which limits and governs them all. That is the Gospel. How could it then be confounded in that large and yet very small city of Rome? How then could its messenger be ashamed?

We have already learned in 1.4 that the person of Jesus Christ is the content of the Gospel. The ancient copyist who inserted this name in the text has therefore not made any real alteration. Paul was of course thinking of this content and therefore of this person of the Gospel, when he called it God’s almighty power. Wherever Jesus Christ is the content, every form assumes his nature. But the nature of Jesus Christ is God’s omnipotence. That is how the Gospel came to be God’s omnipotence.

But what is this almighty power of God? Paul has a very definite view on the matter: God’s omnipotence, ultimately the only power in the world, is the power which is active ‘unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.’ These words are best read without disrupting their context. Paul knows of a work that has been set in motion and will irresistibly remain in motion. This work consists in salvation. This work reaches its aim in everyone who believes by the fact that they are saved by it. And this work takes its course first to the Jews and from there to the Greeks, i.e. to the Gentile nations in the region of the Mediterranean, which were then under the sway of Greek language and civilization. It takes this course so that in the faith of the Jews first and then of the Greeks it reaches its aim and they are saved. Consequently, God’s omnipotence is the power which is active in this work of salvation. And conversely, what is active in this work is in the strictest sense of the word God’s almighty power. Much of what follows becomes more intelligible, if we remember that this identification is part of Paul’s ABC. He was never to write even a sentence on the assumption that there was any doubt about this identification. So let us make a mental note that the Gospel is this almighty work of salvation.

And now, in 1.17 we learn very briefly what Paul means when he calls the Gospel this work of salvation. A revelation takes place in the Gospel. That simply means the uncovering, the disclosure of something which otherwise is and must remain hidden. Here as well as later in 1.18 Paul speaks in the present tense. We cannot look back on the revelation in the Gospel as on other historical events. The revelation does not stop taking place in the Gospel. We cannot hear the Gospel without becoming a contemporary, a witness of that which happens in it. The revelation which takes place in the Gospel is the revelation of God’s righteousness, i.e. the just verdict of God the judge. That which otherwise is and remains hidden but becomes visible in the Gospel is the ‘judgment-seat’ (2 Cor. 5.10), occupied by the Man, whom God, after his overlooking of the times of ignorance, has appointed to judge the whole world, the quick and the dead in righteousness (Acts 10.42; 17.30f). For this Man, Jesus Christ, is the content of the Gospel. He is revealed in the Gospel and God’s verdict is revealed in him. The hearer of the Gospel becomes his contemporary, a witness to the revelation. And he who pronounces God’s verdict also completes that almighty work of salvation. That is the second amazing identification in these verses: God’s verdict is God’s work of salvation. The Judge is the Savior. When Paul acknowledges the Gospel as God’s power of salvation, he has the Man in view, through whom God reveals his verdict, and abides by this verdict.

The words ‘by faith unto faith’ (RV) added here are not exactly easy to understand. The most likely interpretation seems to be that they are a play on words. The Greek word for ‘faith’ (pistis) means faithfulness as well as trust.1 In 3.3 it is actually used to indicate God’s faithfulness, and we shall have to allow for the possibility that in other places as well it may express not man’s faith but God’s faithfulness. If this were to be assumed here then everything becomes clear: the verdict pronounced by Jesus Christ has its origin in God’s faithfulness, it is the word of God’s faithfulness, and it aims at the trust, the faith of the Jewish and Greek people who hear it. In view of that origin and that aim of its revelation this verdict really is what Paul calls it: God’s almighty work of salvation. ‘The righteous by faith,’ who according to the concluding quotation from Hab. 2.4 shall live, is the Jew or Greek who has heard the Gospel in such a way that God’s verdict contained in it, and therefore God’s almighty work of salvation, has achieved its end with him – the Jew or the Greek who believes by accepting the verdict and confessing that he is the man whom the divine verdict means and concerns. The man who does that, who with heart and tongue submits to God’s verdict, really believes and stands with his faith before God as one who is right in his sight. He precisely is the one who shall live, he shall receive salvation, and through his salvation that life which God’s verdict has awarded him.

It should be mentioned however that there has been a Greek translation of that saying of Habakkuk’s, which was perhaps not unknown to Paul, according to which it should read: ‘The righteous shall live by my [God’s] faithfulness.’ Neither is it impossible that Paul, in speaking of the man of whom that was said, originally and primarily did not think of the hearer and receiver of the Gospel, but of the One who is its content, i.e. the man Jesus Christ, the righteous Judge appointed by the faithful God, whose life, i.e. whose resurrection from the dead (1.4), is that revelation, already prophesied in the OT, which Paul is now going to explain. Without Jesus Christ in the background it is certainly not possible to understand what is said in the foreground, here and in everything that follows, about the man who believes. His righteousness is that of the faithful God and therefore that of the man who trusts in him. And his life, saved from death, is the life promised to the man who has become righteous through him. The proclamation of this righteousness and this life, the proclamation of the faith which causes man to participate in this righteousness and this life, that is the apostolic office to which Paul has been appointed, and in pursuit of which he wrote the Epistle to the Romans.

1 Keeping faith with someone as well as having faith in someone. Translator.

1.18–3.20

The Gospel as God’s Condemnation of Man

Does Paul mean a second or even a first revelation apart from the one mentioned in 1.17 when now he suddenly introduces a revelation of God’s wrath about all the ungodliness (irreverence) and iniquity (insubordination) of men, viz. of the Gentiles (1.18–32) and the Jews (2.1–3.20)? Has he abandoned his office as a messenger of the Gospel for a while in order to speak in the first place in an entirely different capacity as a religious interpreter of the human situation as such, as a Christian philosopher of religion and history? This section has often been interpreted as if this were the case. Then that whole rather long section 1.18–3.20 would mean that Paul – as bad preachers are admittedly in the habit of doing – is leading off with a lengthy discussion of something quite different from his text, i.e. from the matter which he has already indicated clearly and unmistakably.

Can we regard him as capable of that? There is certainly no external evidence of any such change of front right at the beginning of the Epistle. Moreover it is definitely impossible to understand what is said about the Jews in 2.1ff if one does not realize that Paul is not speaking from a general, human point of view, but from the viewpoint of the Gospel; that the divine judgment there pronounced is that which the Gospel preaches to the Jews, and that consequently Paul is unmistakably speaking as an apostle.

But if that is so, why should it be assumed that he would take up a different attitude when he speaks in Chapter 1 about the Gentiles? To which other ‘revelation of God from heaven’ could he possibly refer when in these verses he wants to develop the theme, summed up at the end of this section and the beginning of the next, in these words: ‘We have proved both Jews and Gentiles guilty, that they are all under the dominion of sin’ (3.9). ‘… so that every mouth may be stopped and all the world become guilty before God’ (3.19). ‘There is no distinction: they have all sinned and come short of glory before God’ (3.23; ‘come short of the glory of God’ EVV)? Ought the words ‘from heaven’ to suggest another source of this revelation? But which source could it possibly be, since we have learned that the Gospel itself is God’s almighty power and therefore presumably the sum total of all heavenly majesty? And what Paul puts forward as the content of this revelation no one has ever yet said, or has even been able to say or repeat, unless he was expounding that very revelation of which Paul has spoken before: that divine verdict pronounced by the man Jesus. Belief in the Gospel alone will accept those statements, this whole discourse on God’s wrath, and not contradict it. But that means that already in this chapter we are not in a kind of outer court, but right in the heart of the matter. The verdict of the faithful God on the whole world, which is revealed in Jesus Christ, has this side, this dark side as well: it is also the revelation of God’s wrath. And if this happens not to agree with our educational views, then it is all the more significant for the Apostle’s educational methods that Paul deals with this harder aspect before he comes to speak on the light side of the one revelation. He does not immediately make the whole comfort of the Gospel known as such. This comfort is certainly also present here. But he hides it in the testimony about God’s condemnation of man.

The curious ‘for’ with which 1.18 begins becomes intelligible if we observe that it forms a series with 1.16 and 1.17: ‘for it is God’s power’ and ‘for therein is God’s righteousness revealed.’ The word ‘for’ in 1.18 is also legitimate. I am not ashamed of the Gospel over against the powers of the metropolis of Rome; because at all events the Gospel as God’s almighty work of salvation pronounces God’s condemnation of man; because it is more than obvious that I need not be ashamed of the Gospel but that over against the Gospel the Gentile world as concentrated in Rome ought to be ashamed of itself.

That is how Paul first arrives at this subject – almost automatically, s...