Pauline Theology, Volume III: Romans

366 Pages·1995·8.24 MB·English

by  David M. Hay

Pauline Theology, Volume III
Romans
PAULINE
THEOLOGY
Volume Ill:
Romans
Edited by
DavidM. Hay
and
E. Elizabeth Johnson
Fortress Press Minneapolis
PAULINE THEOLOGY, VOLUME III
ROMANS
Copyright© 1995 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations
in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner
without prior written permission from the publisher. Write to: Permissions, Augs
burg Fortress, 426 S. Fifth St., Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440.
Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard
Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the
National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States ofA merica and are used
by permission.
Interior design and typesetting: The HK Scriptorium, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
(Revised for vol. III)
Pauline theology.
Vol. III edited by David M. Hay and E. Elizabeth Johnson.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 0-8006-2929-9 (v. 1 : alk. paper)
1. Bible. NT.-Theology. I. Hay, David M., and Johnson, E. Elizabeth.
BS2651.P284 1991
227' .06-dc20 91-17665
CIP
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z329.48-1984.
Manufactured in the U.S.A. AF 1-2929
99 98 97 96 95 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Contents
Preface Vll
Contributors X1
Part I: Comprehensive Overviews 1
1 What Makes Romans Tick? 3
Leander E. Keck
2 Romans and the Theology ofPaul 30
NT Wright
3 Adam, Israel, Christ-The Question of Covenant 68
in the Theology ofRomans: A Response to
Leander E. Keck and N. T. Wright
Richard B. Hays
Part II: Section-by-Section Explorations 87
4 Ecumenical Theology for the Sake of M~ssion: 89
Romans 1:1-17+15:14-16:24
Robert Jewett
5 Romans in a Different Light: 109
A Response to Robert Jewett
J Paul Sampley
6 From Wrath to Justification: 130
Tradition, Gospel, and Audience
in the Theology ofRomans 1:18-4:25
Andrew T Lincoln
v
vi Contents
7 Centering the Argument: 160
A Response to Andrew T. Lincoln
Jouette M. Bassler
8 The Story oflsrael and the Theology of Romans 5-8 169
Frank Thielman
9 Continuity and Discontinuity: 196
Reflections on Romans 5-8
(In Conversation with Frank Thielman)
Charles B. Cousar
10 Romans 9-11: 211
The Faithfulness and Impartiality of God
E. Elizabeth Johnson
11 The Theology ofRomans 9-11 240
A Response to E. Elizabeth Johnson
Douglas Moo
12 The Rule ofFaith in Romans 12:1-15:13: 259
The Obligation ofHumble Obedience to Christ
as the Only Adequate Response to the Mercies of God
William S. Campbell
13 The Theology ofRomans 12:1-15:13 287
Mark Reasoner
Bibliography 301
Compiled by Robert Jewett
Index of Ancient Sources 331
Index of Modern Authors 349
Preface
FOR CENTURIES many expert readers of the New Testament have tended to
assert that Romans is not only Paul's most important letter but that it is also a
comprehensive statement of his mature theology.1 General studies of the
apostle's theology have often followed the outline of Romans, referring to
passages in the other letters to clarifY or expand on the ideas in Romans. This
anthology of essays on the letter was produced by a team of scholars seeking
to explore the thought of Romans by itself, as though the other letters were
unknown, and without making initial assumptions that Romans is a first
century equivalent of one of the Sum mas of Aquinas or the Christian Institutes
of Calvin.
This is the third in a series ofv olumes that has grown out of the work of the
Pauline Theology Group of the Society of Biblical Literature. Most of the
essays published here were presented in their initial form at the 1992 and 1993
annual meetings of the society. The authors, however, were given a chance to
reconsider theses and reshape sentences on the basis of conversations at those
meetings. The ambience of lively debate is retained by the format of this vol
ume, involving as it does an alternation of essays and responses written to
them. The respondents, however, were asked not only to react to the essays of
others but also to define alternative interpretations of their own. The result is
that for each major section of Romans the readers will find two contrasting
exegetical essays, and they will easily detect that the writers were listening to
each other as well as to other voices.
Whereas the first volume in this series dealt with five letters (1-2 Thessalo
nians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon) and the second with two (1-2
Corinthians), this volume deals with only one. The essays in the earlier vol
umes dealt with specific letters and treated them as wholes. In this volume, by
1See, e.g., RudolfBultmann, Theology of the New Testament (New York: Scribners,
1951) 1.190.
Vll
viii Preface
contrast, most of the essays treat sections of Romans rather than the whole
letter.
The writers of the essays in this volume take different approaches and arrive
at differing interpretations of Paul's thought. Yet some general tendencies in
this work may be usefully noted at the outset, tendencies reflecting broad
developments in New Testament studies since the 1970s. Great emphasis is
placed on Romans as a letter written in a very particular historical situation,
reflecting the concerns of Paul at a special time in his apostolic career as well
as the situation of Christians in Rome. Romans 16 is now widely recognized
as authentic, with the implication that Paul is well acquainted with a consid
erable number of influential Christians in Rome. The references to his travel
plans in chap. 15 are taken as hints of the practical missionary orientation of
Paul's thought. Chapters 9-11 are now widely read as integrally linked with
the argument of1: 18-8:39, not as a mere "appendix." The methods of rhetor
ical criticism and social-history investigation are freely employed. Classic the
ological issues like law versus gospel and justification by faith are not
neglected, but they are linked with fresh thinking about the apostle's ideas
about Jewish-Christian relations, his emphasis on theocentric language, and
the cross-cultural conflicts that existed already in the churches of his time.
Leander Keck argues that the current-very proper-respect for Romans
as a contingent letter rather than a systematic treatise may result in unwise and
unfounded dependence on one historical reconstruction of its occasion or
another. He urges instead that interpreters ofRomans focus on the text and
the apparent function of its argumentation, since it is "the inner logic" of
Paul's gospel rather than the immediate situation which governs the letter's
content. N. T. Wright, on the other hand, sees a dual occasion of the letter in
Paul's plans for a Spanish mission and the Roman church's experience of ten
sion between Jewish and Gentile members. This situation elicits from the
apostle a defense of God's covenant faithfulness in Romans that is based on his
reinterpretation of Jewish narrative theology: God's covenant with Israel is
fulfilled in God's Messiah, Jesus, who then transfers it to the church. Richard
Hays detects common elements in the approaches of Keck and Wright,
though he analyzes their essays separately. He proceeds to argue for a more
nuanced view ofPaul's covenantal thinking, a "post-Lutheran reading" of the
righteousness of God, and a heightened appreciation of the role of the Old
Testament in Romans.
Building on a proposal of Nils A. Dahl, Robert Jewett argues that the
theology of the letter should be interpreted in relation to Paul's missional
statements in 1:1-17 and 15:14-16:24. The apostle carefully employs lan
guage and rhetorical structures to define his vision of a tolerant and inclusive
Christianity-in contrast to the intolerant viewpoint expressed by an inter-
Preface ix
polator in 16:17-20. In reply, Paul Sampley argues that Jewett exaggerates the
centrality of the Spanish mission for interpreting Romans. He proposes that
more vital to Paul is the "mission" of promoting unity ofJ ews and Christians
in the Roman churches-the apostle invites the Romans to risk working for
unity, just as he himself takes calculated risks in planning his final journey to
Jerusalem.
Andrew Lincoln addresses the first four chapters of Romans as an indica
tion that Paul's theological reflection moves, in the language of E. P. Sanders,
from the solution the gospel provides to his diagnosis of the human plight.
This movement ofPaul's thought is in response to the situation of the Roman
congregation, whose divided membership needs to understand the universal
ity of that plight as it affects both Jew and Gentile. Jouette Bassler responds
that Lincoln's reading of chaps. 1-4 relies more heavily on a rhetorical than
on a theological analysis of the letter. Although she does not dispute all his
conclusions, she offers an interpretation that attends to the function of two
theological claims made in this earlier part of the letter which continue to
structure the argument of the remaining chapters: the unchanging character
of God's impartiality and the new revelation of God's righteousness in Paul's
gospel.
Frank Thielman approaches Romans 5-8 with the perennial question of
how those chapters relate to the preceding four and the following seven, since
their focus apparently turns away from Israel and its scripture to the experi
ence of the Christian life. He claims that Israel's history, the biblical picture of
Israel's disobedience to the law, its punishment in the exile, and its eschato
logical restoration informs Paul's discussion of the new life in Christ. Charles
Cousar raises questions about the influence oflsrael's history in these chapters
and proposes an alternative reading of Romans 5-8 that finds in its apocalyp
tic language and thought a critical key to its interpretation.
In her essay on Romans 9-11, Elizabeth Johnson argues that Paul's driving
concern is to show the trustworthiness and integrity of God as the final object
off aith, a concern fully in line with the earlier and subsequent chapters of the
letter. She finds the primary tension in these chapters to be that between
divine impartiality and God's special faithfulness to Israel. Douglas Moo
answers her essay by contending that Christology and Israel's failure to
respond to the gospel are more central to these chapters than she allows. Yet
he agrees with her on the need to find a line of interpretation avoiding the
extremes of a traditional "displacement" view oflsrael, on the one hand, and
a "hi-covenantal" model of salvation, on the other.
In his essay on "the rule offaith" in Romans 12:1-15:3, William Campbell
argues that that rule requires Christians to be tolerant of each other's differ
ences. In particular Paul is urging that Jewish Christians need not repudiate
Preface
X
Judaism and a Jewish life-style and, further, that Gentiles cannot reach the
consummation of their salvation apart from the salvation ofJ ews. In his reply
to Campbell's essay, Mark Reasoner argues that, after all, the "weak" and the
"strong" are actual groups ofJewish and Gentile Christians in Rome respec
tively. He also maintains that "faith" takes on different shades of meaning in
different parts of Romans, having, for example, a more cognitive sense in
chap. 14 than in chap. 12. He also argues that Paul is more concerned than
Campbell suggests to argue against Jewish presumption as well as Gentile
pride.
The final contribution is a selected bibliography of studies of theology in
Romans prepared by Robert Jewett.
The abbreviations used in this volume are taken from the American Academy
of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature Membership Directory and Handbook
1993, 391-400. Unless otherwise noted, biblical translations are from the
New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).