Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God

By J. R. Daniel Kirk

If the God of Israel has acted to save his people through Christ, but Israel is not participating in that salvation, how then can this God be considered righteous? Unlocking Romans is directed in large extent toward answering this question in order to illuminate the righteousness of God as revealed in the book of Romans.

The answer here, J. R. Daniel Kirk claims, comes mainly in terms of resurrection. Even if only the most obvious references in Romans are considered -- and Kirk certainly delves more deeply than that -- the theme of resurrection appears not only in every section of the letter but also at climactic moments of Paul's argument. The network of connections among Jesus' resurrection, Israel's Scriptures, and redefining the people of God serves to affirm God's fidelity to Israel. This, in turn, demonstrates Paul's gospel message to be a witness to the revelation of the righteousness of God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Nov 3, 2008
• ISBN: 9781467433488

J. R. Daniel Kirk

J. R. Daniel Kirk is the Pastoral Director for San Francisco at the Newbigin House of Studies. He is the author of multiple books including A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus in the Synoptic Gospel. He blogs at Storied Theology blog.

Book preview

1. Romans under Lock and Key?

Paul the Jew and the God of Israel

It’s about God, stupid.¹ Such a reminder is always pertinent as we embark on a study of Scripture, especially a text as much mooted as the apostle Paul’s letter to Rome. For all the sundry rabbit trails and byways that New Testament scholars travel, the subject matter itself continually points the journey back to God. But even to agree to this much is to beg a host of questions about the topic of Scripture. Influenced as it has been by the Greek philosophical tradition, the church throughout the centuries has often articulated an understanding of God under heavy influence from Plato’s god of ideal form and perfect moral goodness and from Aristotle’s unmoved mover. We thus find Augustine asking, What, then, are you, O my God? and giving a list of attributes that includes Most high, most excellent, most potent, most omnipotent … unchangeable, yet changing all things; never new, never old.² In the medieval period, Anselm’s Proslogion seeks to prove the existence of a God whose definition is of the same ilk: that being greater than which cannot be conceived. Centuries later, we find the British Reformed tradition giving this definition of God: What is God? God is a spirit; infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q/A 4). Not only do these Christian definitions, like their Greek philosophical counterparts, all focus on a g/God who is wholly other, they also define God in universal terms without reference to the story of Israel.

In the Scriptures of Israel, however, God’s identity is inseparable from a particular people and from certain actions performed on behalf of that people. God is not known in universal abstract qualities but in limiting and particular actions.³ The question in the Scriptures seems to be less What is God? but rather Who is God? or perhaps Which God? The God of Israel is known through that God’s commitment to and actions among a particular people. This is the God of the covenants with the fathers: the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob whose name is YHWH (e.g., Gen 32:9; Exod 3:6, 15, 16; 4:5; Deut 1:11, 21; 4:1; 6:3). The God of Israel is the one who has acted to redeem a people for himself; their God is YHWH who brought a people out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage (Exod 20:2). Because of these identifications with Israel in covenant and redemption, God is named as the God of a particular people—the God of the Hebrews (e.g., Exod 5:3; 7:16; 9:1; 1 Sam 4:6–7), the God of Israel (e.g., Exod 5:1; Num 16:9; Josh 7:19–20).⁴ Unlike the Greek counterparts, Jewish definitions of God look to the sphere of the particular and enmesh the identity of God within the scandalously singular notion of election. The God of Israel’s Scriptures is the God who, though Lord over all things, has chosen to disclose himself and make his name known to the world through one particular people. In this choosing he bound himself in covenant and promised that this people would be the epicenter both of YHWH’s self-disclosure and of this God’s blessings to humanity.

No question is more central for the study of Paul than to determine at the outset which God we expect to find as the topic of his letters. As our representatives above demonstrate from ancient, medieval, and post-Reformation church history, it is not only the seed of Marcion which has struggled with the earthy, this-worldly identity of God as depicted in the OT. The dehistoricizing of the identity of God in the Christian tradition makes it a smaller step than might otherwise seem to be the case from the God of catholic Christianity to the God of nineteenth-century liberalism—the latter being the universal Father presiding over a universal fraternity of humanity.

And at the birth of Protestantism itself, an ethically abstract conception of God, insufficiently grounded in the identity of God as the God of Israel, sparked a reading of Romans which kindled the flame of the Protestant Reformation. It also blazed a trail for reading Romans which was followed for hundreds of years. Martin Luther’s tower experience grew, in part, from the decontextualization of two related themes in Romans. The first is the notion of law as ethical standard. While Luther does well, in his preface to Romans, to comment on the need for heart disposition and external action to be combined, he never questions the identification of law as a reference to transhistorical norms required by God and law as a reference to the historically instantiated code that Paul says comes only at a particular point in the story of Israel. Related to this is the connotation of God as righteous.⁵ The revelation of the righteousness of God, declared in Rom 1:17 to be the result of the gospel, was loathsome to Luther because it depicted God as the judge who condemned or pardoned on the basis of adherence to that transhistorical law.⁶ Loathing turned to love when, in that tower, Luther found in Rom 1:17 a new exposition of the phrase righteousness of God, one in which righteousness comes not from a principle of doing (with the heart), but from the altogether passive act of faith.⁷ Righteousness is an ethical quality of God (the echoes of Plato are important here), transferred (imputed) to the believer. Calvin would follow suit and read Rom 1:17 as indicating the bestowal of God’s own righteousness on the believer.⁸ Without a doubt, Luther’s conception of God was deeply formed by his extensive knowledge of Scripture. But it was insufficiently informed by the particularity of the God who works in the story of Israel, who has committed himself to the salvation of that people, and whose law and righteousness find their definition within that story. Luther was therefore burdened with a righteousness of God that was less likely to come from the pen of Paul than from the meditations of Paul’s philosophical contemporaries. Although Luther’s reading of Romans was a powerful and helpful application of the epistle to himself and to the church community of which he was a part, it hinged on an understanding of the righteous God that we must, in the end, leave behind. In giving up on this set of readings that has played so powerful a role in the western exegetical tradition, we are left searching for a different key for unlocking Romans.

The beginning of our quest comes when we take the contextualized identity of YHWH as the God of Israel and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with utmost seriousness. Do this, and two points immediately stand out: (1) the righteousness of God’s action is inseparable from his actions and dispositions toward this particular group of people, and (2) in Romans Paul is wrestling mightily with this people’s non-embrace of the gospel.⁹ If the God of Israel has acted to save his people, but Israel is not participating in that salvation, then in what respect can this God be said to be righteous? Richard Hays has led the way in recent years in reading Romans within a framework in which Paul’s God is recognized as the God whose faithfulness to Israel is inseparable from his righteousness.¹⁰ Hays made his initial argument based on Paul’s use of the phrase God’s righteousness (θεοῦ δικαιοσύνην) in Rom 3:5. There, it stands in grammatical and substantive parallel with God’s faithfulness (τὴν πίστιν τοῦ θεοῦ, 3:3) and God’s truthfulness (ἡ ἀλήθεια τοῦ θεοῦ, 3:7). Hays concludes that all three serve to affirm that God makes his integrity known through his active faithkeeping.¹¹ God’s righteousness is not a static attribute, but one "manifested in God’s saving activity, actions performed in fidelity to God’s covenants with Israel.¹² After arguing that not only 3:1–8 but also 3:9–20 are devoted to silencing of protests against God’s justice, Hays turns to Paul’s citation of Ps 143:2 (No flesh will be justified before him").¹³ That Psalm itself depicts God’s righteousness (δικαιοσύνη) and faithfulness (ἀλήθεια) manifesting themselves through God’s saving power.¹⁴ Thus, when Paul goes on to say that the righteousness of God (δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ) has now appeared, witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, we are right to understand this righteousness as God’s saving power.¹⁵ Such salvation is brought about in keeping with God’s fidelity to his covenant promises.¹⁶

Hays is surely correct—not only is God’s righteousness to be understood in terms of the saving activity of God, but that saving activity is also bound to a particular people (Israel) and a particular action in history (the death and resurrection of Jesus). This is, indeed, the watershed of the Sanders revolution in New Testament studies, from which there is no going back.¹⁷ The definitions not only of God and righteousness but also of faith, grace, works, and law can never again be read as statements about generalities and principles or abstract human proclivities, but must be understood as particulars that are tied to YHWH’s dealings with Israel.¹⁸

Battling over Romans

The God of the Particulars

Once we have allowed the particularity of Israel’s story to contextualize the identity of God and the quality of God’s righteousness, we are forced to reconsider Romans as a whole.¹⁹ We are pressed in this direction if for no other reason than that Rom 1:16–17 has widely been viewed as the thesis statement of the letter.²⁰ Although we will argue that this is not the most natural place to look for the key to unlocking the letter, the summative nature of these two verses is undeniable. Once we acknowledge their summary function and recognize the weight they have borne in commentators’ reading of the letter, the importance of how we conceptualize God and God’s righteousness immediately comes to the fore. These verses read, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also the Greek. For the righteousness of God (δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ) is revealed in it by faith unto faith, just as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous by faith will live.’ Is the righteousness revealed in Paul’s gospel a divine ethical quality? Or is it God’s saving activity in faithful adherence to his covenants with Israel?²¹

We can move through Rom 1:16–17, posing a series of questions which will be answered differently depending on whether we view God as the one whose identity is enshrined in abstract qualities or as the one whose identity is enacted in the Scriptures of Israel. Is the shame that Paul denies an indication that he has overcome a natural human inclination to be ashamed at an unimpressive message?²² Or does Paul claim to eschew shame in echo of Israel’s confident claims that YHWH will act for Israel’s salvation and thereby validate this people’s confidence in its God?²³ Is the power of God unto salvation conceptualized as God’s ability to overcome human hearts that are all dead in sin?²⁴ Or should we see it in the context of such claims as those made in Psalm 143 (see above) that God’s power for salvation is closely knit to God’s covenant commitments to deliver Israel?²⁵ Is Paul’s assertion that the gospel is to Jew first and also to the Greek simply a statement of chronological priority (or less)?²⁶ Or is the true priority of Israel a theological necessity for the God whom Paul proclaims?²⁷ Is the declaration of a gospel going out by faith for faith an indication that God transfers his own character trait of righteousness to a person who remains utterly passive?²⁸ Or does Paul here boldly affirm that the death and resurrection of Jesus are the surprising means by which God puts on display his covenant faithfulness in acting to deliver Israel?²⁹

This series of either/or questions invites a further, overarching question: What is the driving question in Romans? Is it How do I find a gracious God? or How can this message about Jesus be the message about the saving faithfulness of Israel’s God?³⁰ And, in asking such questions that call into question a centuries-old tradition of reading this letter, we are pressed with what is perhaps the most important question of all: How do we know, indeed, how can we know that we have adopted the better reading?

We will side with the particularists in our study, arguing that the specific identity of God as the God of Israel entails a recognition that the standards of judging God’s actions (i.e., for determining whether or not God is righteous) are themselves determined by the Scriptures of Israel. And we will argue that this view can be adopted with confidence based on the complementary grounds of epistolary and rhetorical analysis (see chapter 3 below). Both ancient rhetoric and ancient letter writing followed certain conventions. In both the keeping and the breaking of these conventions, persons wishing to persuade their audiences signal to them the subject matter at hand and the position to be argued. As we will show in more detail below, applying either approach to Romans leads to the same conclusion: Paul declares his intentions and themes in Rom 1:1–7. There we will see that Paul is concerned to tie his apostolate to a gospel that finds its validation as the outworking of God’s faithfulness to the promises made in Scripture (1:2). This becomes the context within which God’s righteousness is assessed. That gospel message, in turn, is given a highly contextualized, earthy content: It is about the seed of David and the resurrected Christ (1:3–4). The Christ event shows forth God’s fidelity to Scripture and to the people of Israel. In Romans, the resurrection of Jesus becomes Paul’s key for demonstrating that the promises contained in the Scriptures have been fulfilled in the Christ event. Once we recognize that the gospel is couched in terms of the scripturally-attested resurrection of Jesus, we have the map we need for finding our way through Romans. As this study will demonstrate, resurrection is the most pervasive theme of the letter and it functions throughout as a hermeneutical key for reinterpreting the Scriptures and stories of Israel.³¹ Because Paul’s God is the God of particulars, the God whose righteousness is tied to a particular story in which God has promised to act in a particular way and to bless a particular people, Paul must show that his gospel message makes sense as the fulfillment of that God’s actions fulfilling precisely those promises and blessing that particular people.

Apostle to the Gentiles

All this emphasis on the Jewishness of Paul’s God and Paul’s message brings us immediately to the counterpoint. Paul’s apostolate is inseparably tied to a non-Jewish target group. Paul means to bring about the obedience of faith among the Gentiles (τοῖς ἔθνεσιν, 1:5). And now we are on the cusp of what is perhaps the driving claim of the letter.³² This inclusion of the Gentiles is an inseparable part of what God must do for his name’s sake (ὑπὲρ τοῦ ὀνόματος αὐτοῦ, 1:5). Within that particular story of God’s fidelity to his covenant promises to Israel, Paul intends to highlight a subplot which demands that God’s great and consummate act of salvation include Gentiles.³³ Both what it means for God to be faithful to God’s people and what it means to be faithful to God will find expression in Paul’s reading of the Scriptures of Israel as finding their fulfillment in the resurrection of Jesus.

The question of how much weight to place on this facet of the letter is a major dividing line in current readings of Romans. Is the inclusion of the Gentiles, which is an issue in the letter opening of 1:1–7, in the so-called thesis statement of 1:16–17, in the discussion of the final judgment in ch. 2, in the exposition of the Abraham narrative in ch. 4, in the discussion of Israel’s plight in chs. 9–11, and in the instructions to the church in chs. 14–15, an ancillary concern, or does it strike at the heart of the letter?³⁴ To even ask whether something is of utmost importance that appears in the letter opening, the verses that have been called the thesis statement, and the verses often pointed to as the summary statement (15:7–13) is to answer the question. Any comprehensive account of Romans must give due attention to Paul’s apostolic mission to the Gentiles and how this fits into the story of Israel’s God. As we allow the resurrection of Jesus to guide our steps through the letter, we will find that the Gentile mission is a frequent traveling companion.

Theodicy

The scriptural narratives of Israel provide the context within which to read Paul’s statements about God and God’s righteousness. In those Scriptures we discover the problems caused for God when God’s people do not see God acting for their blessing and salvation (e.g., Habakkuk). Moreover, we read Paul’s claims that God’s faithfulness to those Scriptures has been shown in the Christ event. The problems confronting Paul emerge once we place these readings together within a historical context in which Israel is not, by and large, seeing the Christ event as the saving work of God on their behalf, whereas Gentiles are coming into the church in droves. This is a surprising development within that narrative world, one that makes it looks as though God has, in fact, rejected God’s people, despite Paul’s protestations to the contrary (Rom 11:1–2). The particulars of Paul’s apostolate and unbelieving Israel, not timeless maxims about humanity’s standing before God, form the lifeblood of Romans.³⁵ A major facet of our study will be devoted to showing that Paul’s rereading of Israel’s Scriptures through the lens of Jesus’ resurrection serves the purpose of vindicating God as faithful to Israel despite all appearances. In other words, we will be arguing that Romans is a theodicy.³⁶

Here again, the way in which we define God makes all the difference. When God is that being greater than which cannot be conceived, the one who is and thus requires a moral perfection, people have the problem of how they can attain to that righteousness which is God’s and God’s alone. The manifestation of God’s righteousness is, on that reading of God, the way in which God makes it possible for a sinner to find a gracious God. But when God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then a movement going forward in that God’s name which leaves behind those who are descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob creates a problem for God himself. The manifestation of God’s righteousness must show how it is that God is the one who has been faithful to the covenants of promise. The driving question in Romans is not, ‘How can I find a gracious God?’ but ‘How can we trust in this allegedly gracious God if he abandons his promises to Israel?’ ³⁷ Paul’s depiction of the means by which a sinner can find a gracious God is a subsidiary theme in support of his theodicy project.³⁸ He defines the action of God on behalf of humanity so as to show that the God of Israel is the one God who has made salvation available to the Jew and the Gentile on the same terms—and that in fulfillment of Israel’s Scriptures (see below on Romans 3–4 and 10). This is why justification is important in Romans, though it is not the principal theme. Justification is God’s vindication of his faithful people which shows God himself to be faithful.

In Jewish literature theodicy and resurrection come hand in hand. The next chapter of our study is devoted to an analysis of the functions of resurrection in this corpus. Resurrection simultaneously provides the means for vindicating humanity and for vindicating God.³⁹ Humans who had been faithful to God in their lifetimes but failed to receive a reward for their work can look forward to resurrection life as the context for receiving God’s promised blessings. Such a sphere for future blessing is essential for God as well. Since God has tied his character to the blessing of his faithful people, the dying of the unrewarded righteous creates a problem for God. Resurrection provides a sphere in which God can make good on his promises to his people and thus justify himself. With Romans wrapped up in questions of theodicy, we therefore expect resurrection to play a key role in the argument. Conversely, in a letter suffused with resurrection we expect theodicy to be a major concern. We will find that both are true, but at the same time we will see resurrection performing a unique function in Paul’s work due to his conviction that the final resurrection has already begun in the resurrection of Jesus.

Question and Approach

This study takes its cue from the letter opening, in which Paul describes his gospel in terms of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead (1:4). A quick survey of the letter indicates that resurrection is, in fact, an extensive theme, appearing in 1:4, 16–17; 4:16–23; 5:9–10, 15–21; 6:1–23; 7:1–6; 8:1–39; 10:1–13; 11:13–15; 13:8–14; 14:1–12; and 15:12.⁴⁰ Some of these references are clearer than others; some we will have to argue for. But even if only the most obvious references are included we still have resurrection appearing not only in every section of the letter, but also at climactic moments of Paul’s argument (e.g., 4:16–23; ch. 8; 15:12). Thus, resurrection casts a shadow over the letter that is often longer than the particular verses that mention it explicitly.

In order to get a handle on why this particular theme might be important for Romans (note by way of contrast the relative paucity of references to resurrection in the otherwise quite similar Galatians), we begin our study with a canvassing of resurrection in early Judaism. The question we put to the material is not the very important question What is resurrection? but rather What function does resurrection perform in this text? The answers to these questions will often overlap. For example, in 2 Maccabees 7 the physical, tangible, embodied nature of resurrection is essential for resurrection to be able to perform its function of vindicating the righteous martyrs. Since their bodies were destroyed for God’s law, God’s power will give them their bodies back. Nonetheless, the questions are distinct, and it is the question of function that gets us most quickly to the heart of the matter: Why is resurrection important for this text?

Paul was not only a Jew but a Pharisaic Jew. This makes it almost certain that he believed in resurrection prior to Jesus’ appearing to him. The material from early non-Christian Judaism creates a web of both denotations and connotations concerning resurrection. Paul shares much of this as common ground with his peers, but even what is shared has most often been transformed to some degree by his conviction that the resurrection of the dead has begun already with the resurrection of Jesus.

In order to sharpen our understanding of Paul’s purposes in Romans and the role resurrection plays, we will be putting the question of function to resurrection in Romans: What function does resurrection perform in this passage? As with our survey of early Judaism, the answer to this question will sometimes be connected with the answer to the question of what resurrection is. As often as not, however, resurrection will play a somewhat surprising role, transforming other crucial moments in the Scriptures and stories of Israel and sometimes displacing other important actors. Because of this, Jewish reflections on resurrection itself are sometimes not the most appropriate points at which to compare Paul’s use of resurrection with other early Jewish literature. For example, we will often find ourselves comparing Paul’s invocation of resurrection with other early Jewish perspectives on the law. The question of function is an open-ended question, one that cannot be contained by parallel or background material. Our task is to follow Paul as he works out the implications of the resurrection as the central element of his gospel in Romans.

Following Paul along this trail of resurrection appearances we will invariably find Jesus’ resurrection exerting hermeneutical leverage over the Scriptures and stories of Israel, showing that this particular event is the one promised in the Scriptures (1:2, 4).⁴¹ We will often find that Jesus’ resurrection undergirds Paul’s mission to see Gentiles included in the people of God as Gentiles (not taking to themselves a Jewish identity marked in part by circumcision, Sabbath keeping, and food laws as indications of a more pervasive Torah observance). We will discover that the network of connections among Jesus’ resurrection, Israel’s Scriptures, and redefining the people of God serves to affirm God’s fidelity to Israel and its Scriptures. This faithfulness, in turn, demonstrates Paul’s gospel message to be a witness to the revelation of the righteousness of God.

1. Richard B. Hays issues just this reminder, every year, as he begins introducing the New Testament to first year divinity school students.

2. Augustine, Confessions 1.4.4 (NPNF¹ 1:46).

3. To say that God is made known in the particulars of the story of Israel opens up the possibility of this God being knowable as he comes into contact with other cultures and stories. Thus, the ancients found the God of Israel to be intelligible within neo-Platonic philosophical categories. Our argument is that these categories did not sufficiently bend under the pressure of the witness of the story of Christ.

4. The references to Exodus are particularly important inasmuch as the identity of YHWH is central to the confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh (e.g., Exod 5:2), and the plagues are likely construed to demonstrate YHWH’s power over the gods of Egypt.

5. See James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8 (WBC 38a; Dallas: Word, 1988), 40–41, for a brief rehearsal of the scholarship that pushes us to move away from a notion of righteousness as abstractly conceived and toward the Hebrew conception of righteousness as defined within the bonds and requirements of social relationships.

6. Martin Luther, Works (55 vols.; ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, et al.; St. Louis: Concordia, 1960), 34:336–37.

7. Luther, Works, 34:337.

8. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul to the Romans (trans. and ed. John Owen; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 64.

9. On the first point, see Dunn, Romans 1–8, 41.

10. Richard B. Hays, Psalm 143 and the Logic of Romans 3, JBL 99 (1980): 107–15. A shorter argument from Krister Stendahl makes much the same point from Judg 5:11 (Paul among Jews and Gentiles [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976], 30–31).

11. Hays, Psalm 143, 111.

12. Hays, Psalm 143, 111.

13. Hays, Psalm 143, 113.

14. Hays, Psalm 143, 114.

15. Hays, Psalm 143, 114.

16. Cf. Dunn, Romans 1–8, 41.

17. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1976).

18. Cf. Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (New York: Clark, 2004), 14, 15; Stendahl, Paul among Jews, 37–38.

19. As we begin to wrestle with the message of the letter, we will have to leave aside questions of the type of community Paul might have been writing to. Although the questions are related, the latter is another scholarly problem with its own history and set of problems. See the essays in The Romans Debate (rev. and exp. ed.; ed. Karl P. Donfried; Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991).

20. E.g., Dunn, Romans 1–8, 37; Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale, 1989), 36; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 33; New York: Doubleday, 1993), 253–55; Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 63–79; N. T. Wright, The Letter to the Romans: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections, NIB 10 (ed. Leander Keck; Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), 393–770, here p. 423.

21. Showing that God’s righteousness is enshrined in his covenant faithfulness to Israel while also including the Gentiles is a major thrust of A. Katherine Grieb’s The Story of Romans: A Narrative Defense of God’s Righteousness (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002).

22. John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (2 vols.; NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), 1:26; C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (6th ed.; 2 vols.; ICC; Edinburgh: Clark, 1975–79), 1:86–87.

23. Hays, Echoes, 38–39; Wright, Romans, 423–24.

24. Fitzmyer, Romans, 256.

25. Wright, Romans, 424.

26. Hans Lietzmann, Einführung in die Textgeschichte der Paulusbriefe. An die Römer (HNT 8; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1933), 7.

27. Fitzmyer, Romans, 256–57.

28. Moo’s attempt to fuse righteousness of God as a standing bestowed on/transferred to humanity with God’s covenantally-faithful saving action seems out of step with his later discussion of the range of meanings for the term (The Epistle to the Romans [NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996], 74–75, 81–86).

29. This position will be argued in chapter 2 below on Romans 1.

30. Hays, Echoes, 53.

31. We are compelled to find a category broader than Scripture to assess Paul’s hermeneutical project due to his christological interpretation of Israel’s present plight in Rom 11:15. This is part of the story of Israel that is not part of Israel’s Scriptures. Use of the word story should not be taken as an indication that we see Paul retelling the story of Israel from start to finish, or as a thinly veiled appeal to an unbroken, salvation-historical unfolding of God’s work in history.

32. Stendahl, Paul among Jews, 4.

33. Cf. Dunn, Romans 1–8, 18.

34. Douglas Moo acknowledges that the Jew-Gentile issue is a major concern in Romans, but insists that it is ancillary and background to a more pervasive concern with individual standing before God (Romans, 27–29).

35. Stendahl, Paul among Jews, 5.

36. Hays, Echoes, 34–83.

37. Hays, Echoes, 53.

38. Cf. Stendahl, Paul among Jews, 3. This reading is opposite that of Moo, Romans, 27–29. Readers of Romans will have to determine which interpretation makes better sense of the whole.

39. Wright, Romans, 398–402, 425–26.

40. The pervasive nature of resurrection in Romans has gone largely unrecognized. An exception to this rule is Peter Head, Jesus’ Resurrection in Pauline Thought: A Study in the Epistle of Romans, in Proclaiming the Resurrection: Papers from the First Oak Hill College Annual School of Theology (ed. Peter Head; Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), 58–80.

41. This invariable finding is the source of our pervasive disagreement with Watson, Hermeneutics of Faith.

2. Functions of Resurrection in Early Judaism

What did Jewish people believe