Indebted Love: Paul’s Subjection Language in Romans

By Monya A. Stubbs

For Paul, the gospel message is simple, yet profound: Be subject to God. But, subjection for Paul means recognizing that the gift of God to one is the capacity to acknowledge and appreciate the gift of God in another. Paul argues that God's reconciling work in the world is manifest through the process of all people (Jews and Gentiles) understanding themselves in a mutually indebted relationship with each other. The power of the gospel, according to Paul, empowers these groups to function out of a mutually indebted mindset and enables them to discern and demonstrate the good, perfect, and acceptable will of God.

In establishing his argument Paul gives considerable attention to hypotassō (subjection), dokimazō (discern), phronēma/phroneō (mindset/way of thinking), and metamorphomai (transform) as key theological concepts. In this light, Monya Stubbs analyzes the ways in which Paul speaks about subjection, engages in reflection, and exhorts his readers to transformation--a type of transformation necessary for those to whom he exhorts to walk in the nearness of God's salvation power. Focusing on these categories, Stubbs helps us recognize the ways in which the text explores ideological systems of convictions and their implications for human relationships.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Oct 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781621899860

Monya A. Stubbs

Monya A. Stubbs is Associate Professor of New Testament at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (Austin, Texas). She is the author of "1 Thessalonians" in Revised Women's Bible Commentary (2012); "Philippians" in True to Our Native Land (2007); and coauthor of A Contextual Reading of Matthew's Gospel (2001).

Book preview

Chapter One

Subjection, Reflection, Transformation (and Oh, Indebted Love)

Exploring the Interpretive Claims

Introduction: Harriet Tubman and the Interpretive Process

I had reasoned it out in my mind, there were one or two things I had a right to—freedom or death. If I could not have the one, I would have the other, but no man would take me alive. I would fight for my freedom as long as my breath lasted, and when the time come for me to go, the Lord would let them take me Harriet Tubman.¹

Life is replete with revelatory moments. We experience events, meet people, or encounter ideas that transform or clarify our purpose in the world. Lerone Bennet’s discussion of Harriet Tubman’s life (1820–1913) gave me such an occasion. When asked why she returned to the South some nineteen times, helping more than three hundred enslaved people escape to freedom, Tubman responded with the statement quoted above. Her words have long intrigued me.

I discern in Tubman’s quote three important points that now serve as a paradigm, helping to frame how I comprehend and engage the world, as well as how I understand the biblical interpretive process. Tubman understood herself and those she rescued as subject to a governing authority—namely, the institution of chattel slavery. To fight for freedom, first she had to recognize she was subject. Second, Tubman valued the process of careful examination that leads to a conviction. She reasoned it out in her mind that the institution of slavery denied the dignity warranted by her humanness. After carefully reflecting on the condition she shared with her enslaved cohorts, Tubman became convinced that slavery stood outside the will of God. Third, and finally, as a response to her recognizing her subjection and reflecting upon it, Tubman experienced transformation. She seized her own freedom from the slave South and then returned repeatedly, leading other enslaved women, men, and children to the metaphoric promised land.

Tubman’s statement therefore reflects a three-dimensional process of empowerment that I define as subjection-reflection-transformation. Although the institution of chattel slavery did not end by Tubman’s transformation alone, her subjection-reflection-transformation did prove that slavery was not absolute for either the enslaved or the slave owners. Ultimately, through this process, Tubman envisioned and created a way of living in the world that moved both within and beyond the chattel slave system of the South (subjection). She understood the world as it was and imagined the world as she was convinced it should be (reflection) and then proceeded—through words, gestures, and deeds—to bridge the gap between the two (transformation).

Tubman did not explicitly describe this subjection-reflection-transformation interpretive model. Rather, these are interpretive categories I discern in her statement as she reflected on a question with which I struggle: How does one live a life in faithfulness to God? I bring this question and the hermeneutical categories subjection-reflection-transformation to the Bible in general and to Paul’s letter to the Christian communities at Rome in particular. However, subjection, reflection, and transformation are not categories I superimpose onto Romans. I recognize a pattern in Tubman’s quote that is also present in Paul’s writing in Romans. The interpretive process Tubman employs to make sense of her life-context (subjection) helps me better analyze the ideological and rhetorical sequences Paul develops in his letter.

I want to emphasize, however, that this is not a book about Harriet Tubman. Instead, it is in part inspired by the life of Harriet Tubman. Tubman’s explanation about her move from slavery to freedom functions as a part of my personal context as an interpreter of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Her words and experience help bring to light the presuppositions I bring to my reading of Romans. Tubman functions as an illuminating agent. The particular constellation of themes (subjection-reflection-transformation) that form the vantage point from which I analyze Romans was formulated as a result of my taking the lived experience of Harriet Tubman as normative. In other words, my analysis of Romans grants epistemological privilege to the lived everyday realities of Harriet Tubman and the difficult and often ignored issues they confront.

Paul gives me permission to bring my presuppositions into dialogue with Romans. For instance, throughout Romans Paul gives considerable attention to hypotassō (subjection), dokimazō (discernment) and phronēma/phroneō (mindset / way of thinking), and metamorphomai (transform) as key theological concepts. And in his construction of these concepts, Paul answers my perennial question succinctly: to live a life in faithfulness to God is to live a life under the obedience of faith (Rom 1:5). It is to live a life that is subject to God. However, subjection to God, according to Paul, is not merely nor primarily experienced as a personal relationship between an individual and God. Instead, subjection for Paul means recognizing that the gift of God to one is the capacity to envision and appreciate the gift of God in another. But as we analyze Romans, looking to unearth a pattern in Paul’s thematic distribution and rhetorical purpose, we encounter an additional theme, opheilō (indebted)—a concept absent from Tubman’s quote. Ultimately, Paul’s construction of subjection reminds us that God’s reconciling work in the world is manifest through the process in which all people (Jew and Gentiles) understand themselves in an indebted love (or mutually edifying) relationship with each other. The power of the gospel empowers people to function out of an indebted love (or mutually edifying) mindset and enables us to discern and demonstrate the good, complete, and acceptable will of God (Rom 12:2).

The interpretive categories that Tubman’s life helps me recognize and appreciate as my own are rounded out and deepened through my conversation with Romans. I start each chapter of this book with what some might consider a rather rudimentary snippet from Tubman’s journey from slavery to freedom. The introductions are not offered as critical analyses of Tubman’s life. Neither are the snippets attempts to establish Tubman as a reader of Paul and/or Romans. Rather, the introductions serve as a part of my making explicit my contextual frame; they help me relate life to text. As in any other interpretation (whether or not it acknowledges it), my study looks to the past and to the present, with a view of Scripture as relevant to the contemporary world. My distinctive interpretive choice reflects my starting point: following Harriet Tubman, I read this text from the perspective of the subjected.

However, it is not my claim that the interpretation I offer of Paul and Romans is the only plausible reading. Rather, I want to affirm that the interpretive options of others that I engage throughout the book are legitimate and plausible readings, in the sense that they are based on particular analytical and hermeneutical choices (and acknowledged or unacknowledged contextual choices). In each case the interpretation is a possible way of reading Romans resulting from selecting certain textual features as most significant and bracketing out other textual features as less significant. As such, they still are both interesting and relevant. My analysis does not seek to confront or deny the legitimacy and plausibility of these interpretive choices, but seeks to show that there is another legitimate and plausible way of reading this text.

Explaining the Interpretive Logic

To demonstrate my thesis, I follow a certain interpretive logic that has two interrelated strands. The first strand has to do with the methodological logic of the analysis. In their work, Reading Israel in Romans, Daniel Patte and Christina Grenholm argue that every biblical interpretation moves on three levels. An analytical level emphasizes the methodological approaches used to ground a reading in textual evidence. A hermeneutical/theological level constitutes the themes used to circumscribe one’s dialogue with the text. Finally, a contextual level is the one through which the interpreter relates life and text. Patte and Grenholm maintain that biblical interpreters commonly make explicit their choices on the analytical level. However, biblical interpreters are less inclined to make explicit the hermeneutical/theological and contextual choices they employ to make sense of a biblical text. Patte and Grenholm’s reading paradigm, Scriptural Criticism, claims that responsible biblical interpretations must make each of these levels explicit (even though a reading might emphasize one over the others) and can do so by comparing their interpretive choices and ultimate interpretive claim(s) with those of other interpreters.

I find Patte and Grenholm’s call for biblical scholars to make explicit all three levels of their interpretive choices a necessary and compelling move in our critical analysis of texts. It prevents us from making positivistic claims about our respective readings while simultaneously allowing us to bring our respective readings to a critical consciousness. By critical consciousness I mean a reading that offers a balanced and informed treatment of the text through an analysis of the analytical, hermeneutical/theological, and contextual/pragmatic choices made by the interpreter. A critically conscious reading also includes a discussion of these choices in relation to other readings. The goal is not to demean and diminish another reading; rather, it is to show how different interpretive foci yield dynamic meanings and implications for a given text. Throughout this book, I present my interaction with sources by offering an overview and analysis of their analytical and hermeneutical/theological choices and, where available, their contextual/pragmatic choices. I then set out my own views, explaining where and why I agree and/or disagree with others.²

The second strand in my interpretive schema has to do with the project’s organizational logic. This work is a thematic reading of Romans. Therefore, it seeks to explore and explain what Richard N. Longenecker describes as often-ignored patterns of distribution in Romans with respect to the themes and features that underlie various methodological approaches, as well as how and for what purpose Paul uses a given theme.³ However, as outlined above, my conversation with Romans is not framed around traditional categories. For instance, traditional scholarly interpretive categories used to frame one’s conversation with Romans emphasize individual sin or atonement as propitiation and therefore privilege the traditional question, does faith or works justify a person?⁴ Covenantal nomism⁵ represents another prominent motif that helps scholars make sense of the text. The questions Who is the true Israel? and Has the role of the chosen people been transferred from the Jews to the Christians? serve as interpretive markers for those who seek to posit Paul’s distinct Christian convictions while discounting misguided readings that present him as anti-Jewish and anti-Judaism.

God’s righteousness is perhaps the most popular motif or theme examined by scholars in their analysis of Romans. With this theme interpreters are attempting to discern if righteousness of God should be translated as a subjective genitive (God’s own righteousness) or an objective genitive (a righteousness from God). How one chooses to translate dikaiosune theou carries theological consequences. Understood as a subjective genitive, the emphasis is on righteousness as an attribute of God’s self. God is righteous and acts to reconcile humanity to Godself through God’s mercy and grace. On the other hand, understood as an objective genitive, the emphasis is on God’s righteousness as a divine gift that puts the person who receives it in right relationship with God and society.

More recent interpretations explore honor and shame as major themes for understanding Paul’s message. What is considered honorable or shameful in the story world or the world of the author? Is honor based on social precedence (ascribed honor, status)? Or on merit (acquired honor), like good deeds? Is the relationship between men and women described in honor and shame categories or vocabulary? Who are the significant others in whose eyes characters seek recognition?⁶ These are some of the questions that ground a reading of Romans focused on honor and shame motifs. Closely related to honor and shame motifs is the theme of self-mastery. With this theme, scholars examine Romans in light of Greco-Roman and Judaic values on desire and its ethic of moderation and restraint. The most significant questions that this reading seeks to answer about Romans are these two: Why are gentiles attracted to Judaism (and thus Christianity), and what are the goals of Jews who sought to teach them? The goal is to explain how the theme of self-mastery unites Jewish and Gentile motivations in their attraction to the Christ-event.⁷ Finally, interpreters of Romans highlight power and politics as themes that help bring clarity to Paul’s message in light of the imperial reality of the Pax Romana. These readings raise ideological questions and are interested in issues of justice and gender and class equality. Does Paul challenge Greco-Roman hierarchical gender and class norms or does he simply reinforce these norms in an effort to protect a bourgeoning Christian community situated in the seat of the Roman Empire?⁸

My analysis of Romans privileges subjection, reflection, transformation, and indebtedness as thematic foci and seeks to understand Paul’s message on subjection to God in light of his supposed call for humanity’s subjection to governing authorities (Rom 13:1). My interest in Romans and Paul’s use of subjection as a major theme is primarily a result of my preoccupation with desiring to live a life in faithfulness to God in the midst of competing governing authorities⁹ that present different values about how to imagine oneself in relation to God, others, and one’s conditions of existence. For instance, think again about Harriet Tubman. Her position on freedom is possible because she has reflected on her subjection (the institution of chattel slavery) and concluded that it is not natural or absolute but the function of a social dynamic. She comes to this conviction because she also lives in the midst of the great American experiment at liberty—an ideological worldview or an alternative governing authority that advances the equality of human beings beneath the reign of God. In the midst of the great American experiment at liberty, the institution of slavery appeared unreasonable and inhumane. Conversely, in the midst of the institution of slavery, American claims of liberty appeared inherently hypocritical and morally empty.

As I explain in some detail in the following section, Paul and his readers also live in the midst of multiple governing authorities, and much of what he writes in Romans reflects his attempt to negotiate his and his readers’ subjection to and by these governing authorities. A systemic thematic analysis of Paul’s pattern of distribution of subjection in Romans that also asks how, why, and for what purpose he employs this theme places us beyond traditional scholarship’s understanding of Paul’s call for subjection in Rom 13:1 (with 13:2–7). That is, we then move beyond understanding the passage as a warning not to participate in Jewish anti-Roman zealotry, or as a non-Pauline interpolation into the letter, and beyond mere rhetorical commonplaces, meant only to focus the audience’s attention on the discernment of the good and thereby "to keep members of the ekklesia from making trouble in the streets"; instead, we see that Paul’s supposed call for subjection to governing authorities points to his concern about how people imagine themselves in relationship with one another.

As is the case with each of Paul’s uses of subjection in Romans, Rom 13:1 serves as one step in his broader rhetorical strategy that moves between subjection, reflection, and transformation. As will become clear, Paul uses this rhetorical movement to critique subjection to governing authorities (i.e., the Pax Romana and Sin’s encounter with the Law) and the mindset it creates in its subjects—a way of thinking and being in the world that advances a human pattern of relating defined by domination-subjection. He employs this same rhetorical movement to promote subjection to/by a governing authority [the Power of the Gospel] and the mindset it creates in its subjects—a way of thinking and being in the world that advances a human pattern of relating defined by indebted love and mutual edification.

The Language and the Logic: Describing Paul’s Rhetorical Strategy

Paul is trying to advise and exhort people on how to imagine themselves in relation with God, each other, nature, and their overall conditions of existence. I find extremely interesting the ways Paul purposes subjection, reflection, transformation, and ultimately indebted love/mutual indebtedness/mutual edification and how he uses the interaction between these themes as a rhetorical device to influence and persuade believers on how to live a life in faithfulness to God. So while I am certainly examining specific instances of the targeted themes in their textual context, I also suggest that, when reading Romans with a special eye toward these themes, even when the themes (specific words) are absent, we still can observe a rhetorical pattern in which Paul names the subjection, creates moments for reflection, and encourages his readers to a transformation in their way of thinking and living. We thus observe that Romans can be organized around this thematic pattern in both language and logic.

For instance, Paul argues that his readers improperly imagine themselves in relation to governing authorities (Pax Romana, Sin’s encounter with the Law, the Power of the Gospel, as I discuss in the following section) and that their lack of critical consciousness affects both their will and ability to discern and demonstrate a life lived in faithfulness to God. To address the communal tension and clarify his ideological position, Paul employs a rhetorical strategy similar to that used by Tubman. Paul’s initial rhetorical move describes the normative view of how he understands his readers to imagine themselves in relation to a given worldview/governing authority (subjection). The normative view Paul describes usually constitutes the source of the tension. That is, how people imagine themselves in relation to the dominant governing authority directly affects how they imagine themselves in relation to one another. He therefore provides contrasting perspectives to the values and principles espoused by the governing authority and invites his readers to engage in careful examination that leads to a new conviction (reflection): the power and presence of God can be manifest and expressed beyond the patterns of human relating established by the destructive (see below) governing authority.

Finally, Paul addresses the ethical implications of his readers’ reflection on their subjection, and as we observed in Tubman’s quote, he exhorts them to recognize the world as it is, to imagine it as they are convinced it should be, and through their words, gestures, and