Discovering Romans

Content, Interpretation, Reception

Anthony C. Thiselton

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781467445481
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Concise, student-friendly introduction to Romans This third volume in the Discovering Biblical Texts series offers readers a compact, up-to-date, and student-friendly introduction to Paul's letter to the Romans, focusing on its structure, content, theological concerns, key interpretive debates, and historical reception. Anthony C. Thiselton alerts readers to key issues and questions raised by the text, encouraging in-depth study and a sincere grappling with the theological and historical questions raised by this often-controversial epistle. He pays special attention to the book's reception and its influence on Christian history and culture, exploring and explaining the approaches and conclusions of a wide range of ancient and modern interpreters.

1

Why read Romans? Eight brief reasons

Why is it important to read and even to reread Romans today? We suggest eight reasons. To understand these reasons also helps us to appreciate the sequence of Paul’s argument in Romans, which we shall later trace chapter by chapter.

(1) In Romans 1.15 Paul writes of his ‘eagerness to proclaim the gospel to you’. After his demanding travels, and his earlier letters to the churches of Thessalonica, Galatia and Corinth, he has for the first time the opportunity for mature reflection, and longs to present a rounded, more balanced picture of the gospel. It is common knowledge that in this epistle Paul elaborates some of his central themes with more balance and careful reflection than in Galatians. Two distinctive marks of this commentary are also to show (i) how closely Paul articulates in Romans the problems which he expounded in 1 Corinthians, and (ii) how he relates them to wider theological issues, many of which feature in theology today. In Romans he does this more widely and universally, even relating the gospel to the whole of humankind, as is clear from the fifth chapter.

(2) Paul’s ultimate aim is also a missionary one. In Romans 15.19–24 Paul explains that this proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ serves a special purpose. He wants to proclaim the gospel‘not where Christ has already been named’(v. 20). He states that he has in effect completed his mission to the eastern regions of the Roman Empire, and now looks in eagerness and expectancy to the lands of the west, especially ‘when I go to Spain’(v. 24), and ‘set out by way of you to Spain’(v. 28). Robert Jewett argues convincingly that since most people in Spain were Latin-speakers, who did not speak Greek, Paul wants the church at Rome to constitute a missionary group themselves, under the leadership of Phoebe, the deacon from Cenchreae. He hopes for confidence that the Imperial City will provide a network of Latin-speaking friends and sympathizers, who will constitute a base of not only prayer and friendship, but also administrative capacities, knowledge of provincial government, and financial resources, to make possible this mission to the western Mediterranean.¹ We discuss this reconstruction in due course.

It is an added bonus that virtually no serious scholar doubts that Paul the apostle wrote Romans. The authorship of Romans is authentic. Robinson declared, ‘The author, occasion, and date of the Epistle are fortunately all beyond serious dispute. There is general agreement that it was written by the apostle Paul to Rome, almost certainly from Corinth.’² The date would have probably been between the winter of AD 56 and very early in AD 57, at most some three years after the writing of 1 Corinthians. Gaius (1 Cor. 1.14) was his host (Rom. 16.23). Any possible doubts apply only to the authorship of chapters 15 and 16, which we discuss later.

(3) The particular focus of Paul’s gospel lies on the grace, or free generosity, of God, and thereby mirrors precisely the teaching of Jesus. What usually stays in the mind from the Gospels is the teaching of Jesus, often through parables, concerning the love and forgiveness of God, especially, for example, in the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15.11–32). This son ‘was lost and has been found’(15.32), just as earlier in the chapter the Lost Coin and the Lost Sheep were restored ‘home’, or to where they belonged, from their condition of being lost. Jesus no less taught God’s‘free of charge’grace, or freely given grace, in the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard (where grace in the end trumps supposed justice, Matt. 20.1–16), and the Parable of the Tax-collector and the Pharisee, in which the tax-collector finds God’s welcome, and elsewhere (Luke 18.9–14).Paul’s gospel in Romans exactly fits this focus of Jesus: God’s love in Christ is free of charge. This theme, too, looks back to Paul’s question in 1 Corinthians 4.7:‘Who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive?’ This gospel of reassurance for any who may doubt their salvation has brought assurance throughout Christian history. That is why from Romans 1.18 to the end of chapter 3 he carefully shows that all of humanity alike stands in need of this generous grace.

(4) The Epistle to the Romans has a unique and privileged place in constituting a transforming agent in many Christian lives over the centuries. Probably Augustine, Martin Luther and John Wesley stand among the most famous of all of these. We shall trace what is called the‘reception’of this epistle in Chapter 4. But here we cite only one example, which is probably the most famous. In 1514 Martin Luther was already a doctor of theology and professor of biblical studies. Yet he recalled life until then:‘I hated Paul with all my heart.’ Nevertheless he wrestled with Romans day and night, examining the context of its words. He writes,‘I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God.’Focusing on Romans 1.17, The one who is righteous will live by faith’(New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)), Luther wrote: ‘I felt that I was altogether born again, and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me.’³ In his Preface to the Epistle to the Romans (1522) Luther called this epistle ‘the chief part of the New Testament … the purest gospel’, and proposed that every Christian should know it ‘word for word by heart … as daily bread for the soul’, adding, ‘We can never read it or ponder it too much.’⁴ We give a fuller account of Luther’s experience in Chapter 4.

In our chapter on reception history we give a fuller account of Augustine and Luther, but not John Wesley. Wesley’s account is well known. In May 1738, he recalls,

I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine … I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, in Christ alone, for my salvation; and an assurance was given to me that he had taken my sins away, even mine; and saved me from the law of sin and death.⁵

(5) We discuss the text and integrity of Romans in our Chapter 5. To understand arguments about its integrity, we are obliged first to offer a basic introduction to textual criticism. On the other hand, if, as we believe, the whole of Romans is authentic to Paul, chapter 16 reminds us that Paul was a gregarious person, and certainly not a misogynist. This chapter is not merely a list of names or greetings. It reveals Paul as an eminently social apostle, a man of warm and affectionate friendships with both men and women. It is worth quoting F. F. Bruce on this point in full. Paul, he writes,

was eminently‘clubbable’, sociable, and gregarious. He delighted in the company of his fellows, both men and women. The most incredible feature in the Paul of popular mythology is his alleged misogyny. He treated women as persons … The range of his friendship and the warmth of his affection are qualities which no attentive reader of his letters can miss … Priscilla and Aquila risked their lives for him in a dangerous situation.⁶

Would Priscilla, Bruce asks, have willingly risked her neck for Paul if he had been the misogynist that he is often made out to be? Romans 16 gives us a good idea of Paul’s network of friends in the churches.

(6) With the global explosion of Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Renewal Movement, much is often claimed about ‘prophecy’ and ‘immediate revelation’. Paul does not shrink from calling himself a prophet. Yet the Epistle to the Romans is one of the most carefully considered, reflective, logically ordered, and even argumentative of all Paul’s writings. Ever since the very earliest work of Rudolf Bultmann, many have debated whether it constituted a ‘diatribe’ after the fashion of many Graeco-Roman orators.

Stowers and Jewett have provided excellent treatments of this issue. We can acknowledge the contrary view of Judge that a diatribe style might seem sometimes to signify a lack of engagement with actual people, circumstances and issues.⁷ Nevertheless Stowers and Jewett convincingly trace many examples of argumentative dialogue in Paul, especially Romans 3.27—4.2. We examine these arguments further below. Pannenberg writes, ‘Argumentation and the operation of the Spirit are not in competition with each other. In trusting in the Spirit, Paul in no way spared himself thinking and arguing.’⁸ Bornkamm takes the same view. At very least the point has been seen as worthy of debate, and this shows that for Paul there is no exclusive alternative between being inspired to reveal God’s truth by the Holy Spirit and to use reflection, logical argument and reasoned persuasion.

(7) Reconciliation, mutual respect and tolerance characterize chapters 14 and 15. We examine further later the exact historical circumstances in which friction between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians arose in Rome. In outline terms, Jewish Christians had lived in Rome from earliest possible times. Jews from Rome had been present to hear Peter’s sermon (Acts 2.10). Further, Jewish Christians had a long-standing knowledge of the Scriptures from their earliest years, and thought of themselves as the chosen people of God. Then, on at least one occasion in AD 49, the emperor Claudius expelled a number of Jews from Rome. Until the death of the emperor, Gentile believers may well have constituted the majority of the Christians or even of the whole Church, and found themselves in positions of leadership.

When Claudius died, and Nero succeeded him in AD 54, only one or two years before Paul probably wrote Romans, many Jews would have returned to Rome in considerable numbers. Would they expect to become leaders again? How would they fare in a predominantly Gentile Christian Church? Some degree of friction or misunderstanding was almost inevitable. Doubtless some Jewish Christians might have pointed to their greater understanding of Scripture, and to their status as God’s chosen people. Gentile Christians might have responded by pointing out that God had rejected physical Israel. Paul addresses both aspects of this in Romans 9—15. Chapters 9—11 concern the ‘true’ Israel. Gentile Christians who had grown accustomed to leadership perhaps saw themselves alone as the true Israel. Many Jewish Christians, for their part, were accustomed to observing the customs of the Jewish law. The stage was thus set for mutual recrimination and misunderstanding. Paul urgently saw the need to appeal for mutual tolerance, mutual respect and unity.

At the beginning of chapter 14, Paul writes,

Welcome those who are weak in the faith … Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgement on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgement on servants of another? (Rom. 14.1–4)

This is the section that gives rise to an acknowledgement that all, whether Jewish or Gentile by birth, belong to Jesus as Lord: ‘We do not live to ourselves … If we live, we live to the Lord … We are the Lord’s’ (14.7–8). Paul continues in this vein into chapter 15: ‘Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you’ (Rom. 15.7). The basis of this mutual acceptance by the one of the other is, once again, that God’s grace alone has made everyone what they are (cf. 1 Cor. 4.7).

This is fully in line with 1 Corinthians 8.1—10.32. Similarities become unmistakable. Admittedly in 1 Corinthians the ‘weak’ and the ‘strong’ cannot simply be equated with Jew and Gentile, as they usually can in Romans. Some identify ‘the strong’ in Corinth with socially privileged believers. Theissen argues for this.⁹ Horsley, Gardner and Gooch rightly argue that ‘the strong’ can be identified with Christians who have an under-sensitive conscience, and ‘the weak’ as believers with an over-sensitive conscience.¹⁰ The passage in 1 Corinthians anticipates the thrust of Romans 14—15: food is not the determining element in the Christian’s relationship to God. Hence, Paul argues to the strong: ‘Take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling-block to the weak’ (1 Cor. 8.9). But to both the weak and the strong he argues: ‘Whether you eat or drink … Give no offence to Jews or Greeks or to the church of God’ (1 Cor. 10.31–32). As in the case of many other problems in Corinth, Paul has had time to reflect further on his earlier writing, and has become aware that the difficulty which he has already addressed to Corinth can be a serious source of divisions in any church.

This issue has become a decisive reason to appreciate Romans. Robert Jewett even calls this ‘The Epistle of Tolerance’, because, he argues, each new generation of Christians needs to learn this tolerance and mutual respect for the other. This tran...