Romans. Craig S. Keener

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СКАЧАТЬ another (12:1–13) and love one another (the heart of the law, 13:8–10). Those not attached to kosher laws must stop looking down on believers who keep them (14:1—15:7). Framing his concern with division over food and holy days in 14:1–23, he calls believers to welcome one another (14:1–2; 15:7), then biblically grounds his exhortation to Jews and Gentiles uniting for God (15:8–12). Paul offers both Jesus (15:7–12) and himself (15:16–29) as examples of Jews who ministered to Gentiles, and speaks of Gentile believers’ extraordinary debt to Jewish believers (15:26–27). His likely final closing exhortation warns against those who cause division (16:17).

The Roman situation invited Paul to articulate the sort of message he often preached that was relevant for Jew and Gentile alike (1:16; 10:12), and hence invited unity in Christ’s church.26 (Paul’s own setting suggests that such implications were on his mind for additional reasons; see 15:25–27, 31.) In practical terms (highlighted in ch. 14), such unity would require a common understanding of the law that provided obedience to its spirit without constraining Gentiles to adopt its Israelite-specific details (cf. 2:14, 29; 3:27, 31; 8:2–4; 13:8–10).

      Indeed, Paul clinches this point toward the conclusion of his argument in the letter body. After using Scripture to argue his case throughout the body of the letter, he concludes that Scripture was meant to sustain hope through “endurance” (nrsv “steadfastness”) and “encouragement” (15:4). Based on what he has sought to provide them from Scripture, Paul prays that God will give them the same mind toward one another (15:5). That is, Paul’s exhortations from Scripture throughout this letter have been to bring them to unity.

An inductive reading of the situation that Romans seems to address thus fits well with what we independently know of the situation. Modern scholars are not the first to notice this situation; Origen, for example, recalls that Priscilla and Aquila left due to the decree and presumably returned in its aftermath,27 and explicitly recognizes that in this letter Paul arbitrates between Jewish and Gentile believers.28 Later, when Paul visits Rome, believers do welcome him, probably without being divided in factions (we cannot be sure whether the two delegations in Acts 28:15 reflect different house churches or perhaps simply different work schedules). So far as one might gather from our limited reports of Nero’s persecution (from a decade after Jewish believers returned and perhaps six years after Paul composed this letter), Christians may have been at that time united as a movement.29 The church must have been massive by that point; Nero seems to have killed hundreds (or possibly thousands) of suspected Christians (Tacitus Ann. 15.44), yet the church continued to flourish after his death a few years later.

      Because Roman historians concentrated on Rome, their information provides us more of an external framework for understanding this church’s situation than we have for most of Paul’s letters. Depending on one’s chronology of later events in Paul’s life, Paul writes between 55 and 58 CE (I incline toward the latter end of that spectrum)—hence one to four years after some of the Jewish believers expelled from Rome have begun to return and six to nine years before Nero began slaughtering Christians.

      Other possible reasons for Paul writing Romans, not inherently incompatible with this one, include building a relationship with this Christian community that will provide the base for his planned mission to Roman Spain (15:24, 28; emphasized, e.g., by Jewett). Paul’s failure to visit them already is due to the very urgency of his mission to the unreached (15:20–22), which will compel him to move beyond them to the west (15:23–24; cf. 1:13–14). Nevertheless, his Spanish mission and his collection from Diaspora churches both relate to his ministry of building a church that brings together Jew and Gentile, examples relevant to the Roman church.

      Paul certainly also summarizes his gospel, as many scholars point out; nevertheless, as we have noted above, he is not simply giving a random audience a random overview of it. It has practical implications for their situation, and the fact that half of the explicit biblical citations found in all his writings appear in this one letter suggests that this presentation of the gospel is directed toward a situation concerned with the status of Gentile believers vis-à-vis the law (likely a major point of division in a conflict between Jewish and Gentile factions).

      Romans and Pauline Theology

      Whereas Paul’s rhetoric in addressing the law is combative and hyperbolic in Galatians, it seems more nuanced in Romans, where he writes to persuade rather than to rebuke. (Both kinds of letter and rhetoric are known in antiquity, and Paul shows skill in writing in both styles where necessary.) He addresses a setting less polemical than in Galatians (although he is still ready to address opponents on the issue polemically in Philippians [3:2, 18–19], which in my view was written after Romans). Paul may have critics in Rome (perhaps those mentioned in 3:8), but it seems less likely that he has actual opponents (unlike he did in Galatia), despite those he denounces in 16:17–18. Here he deploys some arguments familiar to us from the earlier letter, while he avoids leaving misimpressions on the many believers in Rome who (in contrast to those in Galatia) lack fuller acquaintance with his teaching. Still, even in Romans Paul can presuppose familiarity with common early Christian teaching, explanations if necessary by colleagues who know him (such as Priscilla and Aquila), and more detailed explanations from the letter bearer, Phoebe.

      While the situation calls for a particular articulation of Paul’s message that is characteristic of Romans, as opposed to, say, First or Second Corinthians, its theme does reflect a broadly characteristic Pauline emphasis. The letter’s central theme is the gospel that is the same for Jew and Gentile alike, a gospel emphasizing dependence on God’s initiative rather than weak human power (1:16–17). In Romans, Paul argues that Jews cannot boast that their law keeping or election makes them superior to Gentile believers; God produces true righteousness not by ethnic identity or human observance of regulations, but by the transformed life of a new humanity empowered directly by him.

      Scholars have sometimes been divided between those who think that Paul addresses a universal human problem and those who think he addresses a specific local one, but this dichotomy is unnecessary. Although Paul focuses much attention specifically on the law because of the Jewish-Gentile issue in Rome, the rest of his theology makes clear that the fundamental principle from which he reasons extends far beyond the law. He is clear that the problem is not with the content of the law, but with sin (2:14–16) and the flesh—weak humanity’s inability to reflect God’s righteousness (Rom 7:7–8, 13–14; 8:2–4; Gal 2:21; 3:3; 5:16–21). The new life of Christ and the Spirit should evidence a deeper and more complete righteousness, because God empowers it. Pauline theology involves dependence on God not only for forensic justification, but for new life (e.g., 8:2–17), gifting for ministry to one another (12:3–8), love (13:8–10), and everything else.

      Useful Commentaries

      A number of useful commentaries exist for English readers, each helpful in its own way. I offer here a mere sample of some of these commentaries below. (I have included here a few works that are not commentaries in the traditional sense, yet cover most of the text of Romans.) I have omitted some older works (though some, like Barrett 1956, Cranfield 1975, and Käsemann 1980, are particularly noteworthy) in order to emphasize more recent ones; I also omit useful and important reference works on Romans (e.g., Donfried 1991; Donfried and Richardson 1998; Haacker 2003; Das 2007). Among commentaries, the present commentary falls within the popular to midrange categories (more so the former, if one skips the notes).

      Popular commentaries (or works covering many passages) include Grieb 2002; Hunter 1955; Robinson 1979; and Wright 2004. Midrange works include Byrne 1996; Johnson 2001; Stowers 1994; Stuhlmacher 1994; Talbert 2002; and Tobin 2004. Heavily academic works (all impressive) include Dunn 1988; Fitzmyer 1993; Jewett 2007; Moo 1996; and Schreiner 1998. I also cite some others later in the commentary itself. For a survey СКАЧАТЬ