Paul against the Nations: Soundings in Romans

By Neil Elliott

In these essays, some of them never published before, Neil Elliott presents an understanding of Romans at odds with the traditional Protestant understanding (a treatise on justification by faith) or the "New Perspective" (Paul's argument with Jewish "ethnocentrism"). The letter that emerges here is an urgent response to a historical situation: Paul engages what would quickly become the supersessionist norm in gentile Christianity, shaped by the Roman construal of subject peoples. Gathered here for the first time, these studies rely on rhetorical criticism, broad attention to Roman imperial ideology, and postcolonial criticism to argue for a strikingly new perspective on Romans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666783575

Neil Elliott

Neil Elliott is an Episcopal priest and a New Testament scholar (PhD Princeton Theological Seminary) ) who has taught biblical studies, early Christian history, world religions, and American civil religion at the College of St. Catherine and Metropolitan State University. He is the author of The Rhetoric of Romans (1990), Liberating Paul (1994), The Arrogance of Nations (2008), and, with Mark Reasoner, Documents and Images for the Study of Paul (2010).

Book preview

Paul against the Nations

Soundings in Romans

Neil Elliott

PAUL AGAINST THE NATIONS

Soundings in Romans

Copyright © Neil Elliott

2023

. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Cascade Books

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paperback isbn: 978–1-6667–8355–1

hardcover isbn: 978–1-6667–8356–8

ebook isbn: 978–1-6667–8357–5

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Names: Elliott, Neil,

1956

–, author.

Title: Paul against the nations : soundings in Romans / Neil Elliott.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books,

2023

. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: ISBN:

978-1-6667-8355-1 (

paperback

). | ISBN: 978-1-6667-8356-8 (

hardcover

). | ISBN: 978-1-6667-8357-5 (

epub

).

Subjects: LCSH: Bible.—Romans—Criticism, interpretation, etc. | Paul, the Apostle, Saint—Attitude towards Judaism.

Classification: BS

2665

.

52

E

451

2023

(print). | BS

2665

.

52

(epub).

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: An Introduction to the Letter

Chapter 2: The Rhetoric of Romans

Chapter 3: Crises and Opportunities in the Interpretation of Romans

Chapter 4: Reading Romans with Postcolonial Eyes

Chapter 5: Political Shifts in the Interpretation of Romans

Chapter 6: From Background to Foreground

Chapter 7: Homophobia and the Question of Homosexuality in Romans 1

Chapter 8: Blasphemed among the Nations

Chapter 9: Text and Topos

Chapter 10: Paul’s Political Christology

Chapter 11: Creation, Cosmos, and Conflict in Romans 8–9

Chapter 12: Figure and Ground in the Interpretation of Romans 9–11

Chapter 13: Romans 13:1–7 in the Context of Imperial Propaganda

Chapter 14: Asceticism among the Weak and Strong in Romans 14–15

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

I am very aware how much I have depended upon the work of others, in the field of New Testament studies and beyond, and am particularly grateful for the confidence colleagues have placed in me by inviting me to contribute to their projects over the years. I owe special gratitude to friend and colleague K. C. Hanson who has shepherded this and other books to publication at Cascade Books. I wish also to thank Ian Creeger for his ability and generosity in preparing the final pages.

Chapter 1 is adapted from the article Romans in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Books of the Bible, edited by Michael Coogan (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Published with permission of Oxford University Press.

Chapter 2 was first written for publication in the Oxford Encyclopedia of New Testament Rhetoric, edited by Mark Given (not yet published), and appears here with permission of Oxford University Press.

Chapter 3 derives from a presentation to the New Testament Seminar at the University of Lund in May 2010. I thank Magnus Zetterholm for his invitation to give this lecture, and Magnus and Karin Hedner Zetterholm (and their delightful children) for their generous hospitality on that occasion.

Chapter 4 was published as Romans in Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament, edited by Fernando F. Segovia and R. S. Sugirtharajah (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2007). Republished with permission of Bloomsbury Publishing.

Chapter 5 was first written for inclusion in The Oxford Handbook on the Letter to the Romans, edited by Davina Lopez (New York and London: Oxford University Press, not yet published), and appears here with permission of Oxford University Press.

An abridged version of chapter 6 was published as Disciplining the Hope of the Poor in Ancient Rome, in Christian Origins, edited by Richard A. Horsley (A People’s History of Christianity, vol. 1; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005). The complete essay is published here for the first time.

I have written Chapter 7 as a new essay for this volume; it depends on earlier arguments in my earlier books, Liberating Paul and The Arrogance of Nations, and other occasional pieces, as noted.

Chapter 8 was first published in As It Is Written: Studying Paul’s Use of Scripture, edited by Stanley E. Porter and Christopher D. Stanley (Symposium Series 50; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), and is published with permission of Society of Biblical Literature.

Chapter 9 was published in Traces and Echoes of Scripture in Romans, edited by A. Andrew Das (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020), and is published with permission of Lexington/Fortress Academic.

Chapter 10 first appeared in Reading Paul in Context: Explorations in Identity Formation. Essays in Honour of William S. Campbell, edited by Kathy Ehrensperger and J. Brian Tucker (London: T. & T. Clark, 2010); it appears here by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing.

Chapter 11 first appeared in Apocalyptic Paul: Cosmos and Anthropos in Romans 5–8, edited by Beverly Roberts Gaventa (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012); published with permission of Baylor University Press.

Chapter 12 was first published in The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by Stephen E. Fowl (Blackwell Readings in Modern Theology; Cambridge, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), and is published here with permission of Blackwell.

Chapter 13 was first published in Paul and Empire, edited by Richard A. Horsley (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 1997), and appears here with permission of Bloomsbury Publishing.

Chapter 14 was first published in Asceticism and the New Testament, edited by Leif E. Vaage and Vincent L. Wimbush (London and New York: Routledge, 1996). Published with permission of Routledge.

Figures

Fig. 3.1 Cover image of The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire (Fortress Press, 2008) | 35

Fig. 3.2 A schematization of select schools of Pauline interpretation | 38–39

Fig. 6.1 Marble bust of the aristocrat Cicero | 93

Fig. 6.2 Jewish tombstone from Rome, second century CE | 103

Fig. 6.3 Jewish funerary inscription from Rome, third century CE | 106

Fig. 6.4 Two versions of Claudius’s edict to the Alexandrians, 41 CE | 109

Fig. 6.5 The emperor Claudius as god, first century CE | 112

Fig. 6.6 Marble bust of the emperor Nero, first century CE | 114

Fig. 6.7 First-century CE fresco from a Pompeiian villa | 118

Fig. 6.8 Marble bust of the emperor Vespasian, first century CE | 120

Fig. 7.1 Blurring homosexual practice and homosexuality | 131

Fig. 7.2 A bride and groom on their wedding night; Roman fresco | 140

Fig. 7.3 Funereal relief depicting a husband and wife and their children | 158

Fig. 7.4 The closed loop imprisoning LGBTQ+ persons in condemnation | 161

Fig. 7.5 The end of notorious evildoers according to Suetonius, Philo, and Paul | 166–67

Fig. 8.1 Hidden and public transcripts as described by James C. Scott | 173

Fig. 8.2 Paul’s conversation with a Judean interlocutor in Romans | 187–88

Fig. 10.1 Paul and Nero compared concerning divine sonship | 213

Fig. 11.1 The staircase of the Great Altar of Zeus in Pergamon | 226

Figs. 11.2–4 Details from the friezes of the Great Altar depicting Giants in torment | 226

Fig. 11.5 Athena in combat, from the Great Altar | 227

Fig. 11.6 Wolfram Hoepfner’s model of the Great Altar as victory monument | 228

Fig. 11.7 Aeneas’s sacrifice; frieze on the Altar of Augustan Peace | 230

Fig. 11.8 Augustus and Agrippa march in a sacred procession; frieze on the Altar of Augustan Peace | 230

Fig. 11.9 Earth flourishes; frieze on the Altar of Augustan Peace | 231

Fig. 11.10 The Altar of Augustan Peace in dappled sunlight | 232

Fig. 11.11 The Emperor Vespasian in profile on a Roman sestertius, ca. 71 CE | 241

Fig. 11.12 Relief representing a nation conquered by Rome as a disconsolate woman | 242

Fig. 13.1 Thematic Correspondences between Romans 8 and Romans 13 | 272–73

Fig. 14.1 Common understanding of the Christian groups in Rome; from James C. Walters | 293

Introduction

It is fairly conventional, especially in Protestant biblical scholarship, to declare Romans to be one of, if not the most important of the biblical writings. I agree; but I do not mean in doing so to exalt its theological content (as a compendium doctrinae Christianae, as did Melanchthon) or, in a more modern register, to admire the sublime sensibility of its author. Rather, I think the letter deserves our close attention precisely because it is so dramatic an artifact of failure: to use a more Pauline metaphor, of shipwreck. It marks the apostle Paul’s effort to confront and turn back an incipient attitude among the non-Jewish Christ worshippers in Rome, one Paul considered an arrogance offensive to God: the presumption that they had won a place in God’s favor that Paul’s fellow Jews had somehow forfeited.

In arguing that case, I take my place in a longer genealogy of interpretation, one that will be familiar enough to specialists in Romans and one that is amply rehearsed in the essays that follow. The broad lines of my reading include finding the climax of the letter’s argumentation in the latter chapters 9 through 11, and especially in the solemn warning against the presumptuous nations in 11:13–32. I am also concerned throughout these essays to interpret the whole of the letter as a single work of persuasive rhetoric aimed at a single target, since the letter does not mark transitions from one sub-audience to another. (I am aware of the variety of arguments that Paul does switch subtly from Jewish to non-Jewish hearers, etc., but find these unpersuasive.) It follows, accordingly, that all that comes before chapter 9 is an extensive preparation, clearing the theological ground, so to speak; what the ancient rhetoricians called an insinuatio, a technique required when a speaker anticipated an unreceptive or even hostile audience.¹

That Romans is an artifact of failure is, of course, conjecture. We have no record of how the letter itself was immediately received by its intended readers. But that conjecture finds support in the long history of Christian thought in which just the presumption that we have come to call gentile-Christian supersession became normative, even reflexive. The fact that a pseudepigraphic letter like Ephesians could be concocted relatively soon after Paul’s death, then put forward and accepted as his own, included for example in the early collection of his letters (as evident in 𝔓⁴⁶) and then in the biblical archive, shows the triumph of the very presumption Paul opposed. More: the juxtaposition of both Romans and Ephesians in that collection—Paul’s carefully strategic letter, and its reverse, a presentation of the theology he opposed, dressed up as his own gospel—shows how ineffective his careful argumentation proved to be, at least for circles of non-Jewish Christian literati determined to carry his legacy in a different direction. Their work, by contrast, was far more effective, in no small part, we may presume, because after 70 CE, it could sail with strong historical tailwinds. It proved so effective that not until the twentieth century would scholars begin to undermine the theological edifice built on the foundation of the Pauline corpus.

That edifice still stands, and so a number of the positions I take here will appear controversial, I know, especially to interpreters accustomed to reading Romans either as a manifesto for grace-in-Christ (as opposed to Jewish works-righteousness) or as a defense of the law-free Pauline church (against Jewish legalism or ethnocentrism). In addition to the arguments presented here, I have laid out my own viewpoint on the letter (which is shared by others!) in successive monographs: my dissertation at Prin­ceton Theological Seminary, published as The Rhetoric of Romans (1990); in threads running throughout Liberating Paul (1994); and in my second monograph on Romans, The Arrogance of Nations (2008). This volume offers essays written alongside these monographs, including, first, more succinct statements of my overall viewpoint, then more closely focused studies that elaborate one or another aspect of the letter’s historical context or its argumentation.

Chapter 1 serves to introduce historical and interpretive issues regarding Romans in a non-controversial way. Chapter 2 does something similar but focuses more clearly on questions of argumentation, informed not just by the ancient rhetorical handbooks but by contemporary scholarship on argumentation.

With chapter 3, I move to a more argumentative stance. I hold that contested questions—crises in the interpretation of the letter—are also opportunities for us to rethink the apostle, especially if we attend to political and ideological realities in the letter’s context. Chapter 4 relies on the insights of postcolonial biblical critics as it seeks, with them, to take empire seriously in interpretation. Chapter 5 takes in a broader landscape of what may rightly be called political interpretations of the letter and of the apostle, taking advantage of important advances in methodology, not least the appreciation of the visual environment through which Paul and his readers moved.

Chapter 6 had its beginnings in a larger project to ground an account of Christian origins in the methodology of people’s history or history from below. I seek there to contextualize the letter to the Romans by attending first to the material conditions of the Jewish community in Rome, especially as these conditions were shaped by the policies of different emperors in the late first century CE and the early first century CE, rather than being satisfied with simpler generalities about the Jewish background of the letter.

Beginning with chapter 7, the essays are organized in the order of the sections of the letter most predominantly addressed. Chapter 7 is a new essay, though it draws on earlier work—not least in The Rhetoric of Romans and The Arrogance of Nations, and other occasional essays on the subject of Paul’s alleged view of homosexuality in Romans 1. Spoiler: I think pursuing that question is a fool’s errand; Paul was doing something else argumentatively.

Chapters 8 and 9 belong together and explore Romans in terms of what has come to be called intertextuality. But while that term is usually employed to refer to a writer’s (in this case, Paul’s) appeal or allusion to biblical texts, I argue that the question of intertextuality can be adequately addressed only if we broaden the scope of the texts we have in mind to include the textual and visual environment of first-century Roman culture, and especially the representations of imperial power surrounding Paul and the earliest Jewish and Christ-devoted communities in Rome. Chapter 8 focuses on the ideological theme of mercy as represented in Roman imperial rhetoric and in the letter, especially Romans 2–3. Chapter 9 offers a methodological refinement, clarifying that the language of an ideological or argumentative environment points less to texts and "intertextuality" than to what we should more appropriately call topoi and topos-criticism—though again, insisting that this methodology must not be restricted to biblical antecedents alone.

The question haunting all these chapters is the extent to which Paul’s letter—which has undeniably been passed down to us as a theological resource, part of the heritage of the church—is appropriately read politically. Chapter 10 addresses that question head-on by asking whether and how we should judge one of the central topoi in Paul’s letter, that of the christos or messiah, as clearly political in meaning. This chapter focuses on what I call the polemical Christology in Romans 5, where I argue Paul seeks to supplant a redemptive Christology (held, perhaps, by some of his readers in Rome) with a clear understanding of the Christ as sovereign. Chapter 11 takes up the topos of creation as it appears in Romans 8 and 9. I put Paul’s understanding of the theme in sharp relief with that of imperial panegyric and monumental art, where creation and Roman sovereignty are intertwined. The implication is that a theology of creation is implicitly political, an implication that bears as much on our own age as on Paul’s.

The next essays were written earlier, but are presented here to continue a movement through the later chapters of the letter. They are of a piece with the larger project of reinterpreting Romans as the apostle’s contestation with a theological presumption among the non-Jewish Christ believers in Rome. Chapter 12 seeks to reverse figure and ground in our reading of Romans 9–11, understanding Paul’s letter less as damage control on behalf of Israel than as a grave warning to those non-Jews, grounded in the firm conviction that all Israel shall be saved.

No political approach to Paul or Romans can ignore the decisive role played in the interpretive history by Rom 13:1–7, to which I turn in chapter 13. My approach here is simply to set the letter in its contemporary argumentative context—meaning the context of Roman imperial claims regarding justice, power, and the idle sword.

Chapter 14 extends the approach taken throughout these essays to Romans 14 and 15, where interpreters have raised various proposals regarding the ethnicity and religious practices of the Roman churches, and/or different parties within those churches. This involves asking in what ways Roman Christ-believers can be described as engaged in asceticism, and what their practices mean in their religio-political context.

Although the latter essays especially move seriatim through selected passages in Romans, this volume does not constitute a commentary in any way, and readers will note what is given shorter shrift here. I have argued in The Arrogance of Nations that Paul invokes the figure of Abraham in Romans 4 in ways that play off the Roman figure of Aeneas as a mythical ancestor of the race destined to rule the world—a destiny Paul clearly contests. I have argued in both The Rhetoric of Romans and The Arrogance of Nations that in Romans 7 Paul is not speaking autobiographically, or of the Jewish experience of the Torah—assumptions that have rendered his viewpoint unintelligible to Jews—but is presenting a fairly schematic view of the non-Jew’s encounter with Torah, a matter of considerable relevance to his readers in Rome. Neither of these topics receives sustained attention in these essays, and I direct interested readers to those other works.

What I offer here suffices, I trust, to present a coherent viewpoint on the letter to the Romans, distinct from both the traditional Protestant reliance on the letter and from newer revisions that are still shaped by Christian dogmatic needs. If the views that I and other sympathetic allies present are sustained, they suggest that Paul writes in Romans contra gentiles, against the nations—more specifically, against a supersessionist theological stance that early became Christian orthodoxy in the increasingly non-Jewish church. That supersessionism was false, and proved lethally injurious to Jews and Jewish experience throughout Christian history, most disastrously in our own time. It is also grounded in an arrogant presumption that sees history as completed, the powerful as its winners, the vanquished as inconsequential to its satisfactory fulfillment. That presumption holds sway in our own time no less than in Paul’s, and for that reason I find it important for us to seek, as we approach Romans, to think with the apostle as we discern our own responsibilities.

In an edited collection such as this, there are inevitable overlaps. I have tried to ensure a consistency of style across these essays, but have left intact some differences that show how my own thinking has changed over the years: regarding terminology, for example, such as Jewish-Christian, Gentile, and Gentile-Christian, and regarding whether Paul perceived a failure on the part of Israel to accept Christ as a theological fact, a premise I no longer share, for reasons to be developed below.

1

. I made this argument first in Rhetoric of Romans.

1

An Introduction to the Letter

Paul’s letter to all God’s beloved in Rome (1:7) is the longest of the apostle’s letters and therefore has appeared first among those letters in New Testament manuscripts since the fourth century. Because it also contains the most complex sustained argumentation in any of Paul’s letters, it has exerted great influence in Christian theology. Divergent readings in recent scholarship show that the meaning and purpose of that argumentation are hardly settled, however. Clearly Romans was written to be read aloud to the gathered communities in Rome (16:3–16), not preserved for later generations as sacred literature. But whether Paul meant by this letter to address specific concerns in the Roman congregations, or rather to use the occasion to provide a theological testament summing up his considered views, remains a matter of lively controversy.²

Authorship and Integrity of the Letter

That Paul wrote the letter has only rarely been questioned. Occasional proposals to explain tensions within Romans as the result of the combination of two or more previously composed sermons or letters by Paul, addressed to Jewish and non-Jewish congregations of believers in Jesus, have been unsuccessful. (Non-Jewish is used here in preference to gentile, which falsely suggests a coherent ethnic identity; Paul uses the plural term ethnē, literally nations, for example at 1:5, 13.)

Textual fluctuations among ancient manuscripts of Romans are some of the most complicated in the New Testament. This is due in no small part to the second-century antinomian Marcion, who produced a version of the text ending at 14:23, which thus omitted the scriptural vision of Israel and the nations worshipping together (15:1–13) and greetings to Romans including Paul’s fellow Jews (16:3–16, 21–23). The doxology at 16:25–27 may have been added in a later attempt to restore the letter; the admonition in 16:17–20, which interrupts the sequence of greetings rather jarringly, may also be an interpolation. The textual history—which also includes the omission in a few manuscripts of the greeting to Rome (1:7, 15)—demonstrates a lively interest in early Christianity in reading the letter as of general applicability, particularly in the emerging non-Jewish church.³

There are few clues to the letter’s date, but Paul’s reference to having gathered a collection for Jerusalem in Achaia and Macedonia (15:25–27) puts Romans later than his letters to communities in those regions. Scholars generally date the letter between 55 and 57 CE, that is, in the first years of the Emperor Nero’s rule. The book of Acts reports (21:27—28:31) that the visit to Jerusalem anticipated in this letter (Rom 15:25–32) ended in disaster. Paul was taken into Roman custody and arraigned before Antonius Felix (Acts 23:23—24:27), procurator of Judea from 52 to 56 CE. On this evidence, Romans would have been written no later than 55.

Historical Context

It is easier to catalogue events and aspects of the letter’s historical context than to describe any consensus among interpreters regarding their importance for explaining why Paul wrote this letter.

In 49 CE (or perhaps earlier), the Emperor Claudius expelled at least some Jews from Rome; the historian Suetonius attributes the action to Jewish behavior that disturbed civic peace (Claudius 25.4). Interpretation of this terse reference (and of its relationship to Acts 18:1–2, which seems to refer to the same event) is controversial. How many Jews were expelled? What were the nature and motives of the disturbances of which Suetonius accuses them? How did Claudius’s action relate to broader Roman imperial policy toward Jews, including his own suppression of the civil strife that so injured the Jewish community in Alexandria in 41? All of these remain matters of substantial debate. Unfortunately, some explanations of Jewish conduct in 49 rely more on assumption and prejudice regarding Jewish restiveness than on what can be known historically.⁴

The weakened status of the Jewish community in Rome, which had included a relatively large proportion of immigrants and lacked the stable civic presence documented in other cities in the Empire, was inevitably worsened by Claudius’s expulsion, whatever its scope. The situation of that community after the presumed reversal of Claudius’s edict by his successor, Nero, which would have allowed Jews back into the city but under straitened circumstances, is a matter of intense scholarly speculation, given the sparseness of our data. Some of this speculation focuses on what we can know of elite Roman attitudes toward Jews in the middle of the first century.⁵ More often, Christian theological commentary has assumed that Paul shared with non-Jewish believers in Rome the perception that a failure on Israel’s part to believe the gospel constituted a theological fact to which Paul felt obliged to respond (see 3:3; 9:31—10:4; 11:1–11). This assumption stands in some tension with Paul’s insistence that it is not as though the word of God had failed (9:6); that God has by no means rejected his people (11:1), who have by no means stumbled so as to fall (11:11); and that the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable (11:29). The discrepancy has led some scholars to speak of Paul’s inconsistency or of his unreflective ethnic loyalty. More plausibly, in light of the warning to non-Jews in 11:13–25, other scholars hold that Paul writes to prevent or oppose just such prejudicial characterizations of the beleaguered Jewish community held by non-Jews in the Roman congregations of believers in Jesus.

Nero’s accession in 54 would have been a very recent event when Paul wrote. Beyond possible implications for the Jewish community in Rome, the consequences of that accession may bear consideration for the letter’s interpretation as well. Claudius, Nero’s stepfather, died under mysterious circumstances: rumors accused his wife Agrippina of murdering him to elevate her son Nero as Emperor. Claudius was nevertheless deified by a decree of the Senate, at Nero’s request. These events may have provided background for Paul’s discussion of justice (NRSV righteousness, Gk dikaiosynē), the power of God revealed in the raising of Jesus from the dead (1:1–4), and faithfulness (NRSV faith, Gk pistis) in the letter. Furthermore, Nero’s tax policies, and the riots they provoked in Italy, have been proposed as background for Paul’s comments on the governing authorities in 13:1–7, which end with a reference to paying taxes (Friedrich et al. 1976). (Modern attitudes toward these comments are discussed below.)

Occasion and Purpose

The letter’s occasion and purpose remain subjects of considerable debate. Clearly Paul has not founded the Roman congregations (though he knows a number of their members by name: 16:3–16), but has heard of their faith and is eager to come to them for the first time (1:8–10). He has long desired to see them and wishes now to share some spiritual gift to strengthen them, or rather that they may be mutually encouraged (1:9–12). At the end of the letter body he expresses confidence that they are capable of instructing one another (15:14). This courteous language may show Paul’s respect for a community that he has not founded, but wishes nevertheless to exhort—to reap some harvest among them (1:13), to remind them by writing to them rather boldly though he is confident they are able to instruct (or admonish: nouthetein) one another (15:14–16). The sterner tone of the warning in 11:13–32, regarded by many contemporary scholars as the climax of the letter (though this view has come to prevail only in the last half of the twentieth century), suggests that boastful attitudes shown by non-Jewish believers toward Jews are the letter’s primary target. The arrogance of these non-Jews is variously ascribed today to the general failure of Paul’s gospel among Jews (but was this already an established fact?); to in-group ethnic tendencies among non-Jewish and Jewish believers alike in the congregations;⁶ or to perceptions, current among the Roman upper class and exacerbated by imperial propaganda, of the Jews as an inferior people destined to be ruled by others.

Other interpreters have taken Paul’s courteous language at face value, however, as evidence that the letter bears no agenda toward the Romans other than eliciting their support. Paul’s desire to gain their goodwill is evident at discrete points in the letter. He writes to commend the deacon Phoebe to their support (16:1–2); he hopes to rely on the Romans later to send him on his way to Spain (15:22–29); and he asks directly for their prayers as he prepares, with some anxiety, to face the unbelievers in Judea, whither he goes with the collection (15:30–32). These explicit concerns suggest to some readers that Paul is less concerned with admonition than with soliciting the Romans’ approval of his theological views. On this assumption, the letter should be read as a theological position paper or as a sample of Paul’s preaching or teaching, submitted to the Roman congregations as prospective funders of his future mission work. Because in this view of Romans Paul’s theological ideas are more important than the circumstances occasioning the letter, this view often finds support, or is criticized, in line with broader estimations of the importance of those ideas for contemporary theology.

One key to resolving the debate over the letter’s purpose may be what Paul does not say. Although he holds up the example of the generosity of assemblies in Macedonia and Achaia (15:22–29) and hints strongly that he will expect the Romans later to send him on his way to Spain, he does not ask the Romans now for money. The letter is nevertheless framed by references to his obligation to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles (1:5; compare 15:18, NRSV), including the Romans (1:6; 13–15), and he states explicitly that he has written them in an instructive or admonitory tone so that the offering of the nations may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit (15:14–16, my translation). Apparently Paul seeks a particular response from the Romans now that will, in his view, constitute their participation in the offering of the nations and thus guarantee its holiness.

Audience

The question of the letter’s audience is no less controversial than the matters described above. The letter opening and closing and the warning in chapter 11 explicitly address members of the nations (ta ethnē, translated by the NRSV as Gentiles except at Rom 4:17–18 and 10:19, where the more appropriate nations is used). Yet other parts of the letter are addressed to a Jew (2:17–29) and to those who know the law (7:1–25); the present and future status of Israel is the topic of chaps. 9–11. These observations, sometimes described as features of the letter’s double character, have often been taken to indicate that Paul’s purpose was, at least in part, to challenge Jewish believers’ attitudes of superiority over non-Jewish believers as well as arrogance on the part of non-Jewish believers. The letter is seen then as addressed to a mixed audience; its purpose, as ameliorating ethnic tensions within the Roman congregations. But some more recent studies have argued, to the contrary, that Paul’s discussions of Jewish topics are rhetorical devices intended for the benefit of non-Jewish listeners, who are the letter’s primary implied audience.⁷

Structure of the Letter

Given the debates described above, it is not surprising that different interpreters provide varying outlines of the letter. The epistolary frame is clear enough and resembles that of other letters: the opening includes a greeting (1:1–7) and a thanksgiving (beginning at 1:8); the closing includes a peroration (beginning at 15:14), future plans (15:22–32), a doxology (15:33), the commendation of Phoebe (unique to this letter, 16:1–2), and greetings (16:3–23, interrupted by a peculiar warning in vv. 17–20), followed by another concluding doxology (at 16:25–27).

The structure of the letter body is not as obvious, however, in part because identifying the beginning of the letter body depends in part on what the letter is understood to accomplish. When, especially in the Protestant tradition following Luther, the letter’s theme or thesis has been identified in the announcement of justification by faith in 1:16–17, the relation of these lines to their context at the beginning of the letter body has been obscured. Subsequent chapters have been read as proofs of that theme. One proof demonstrates that because of universal human wickedness (1:18—3:20) only the justification offered in Christ to those who have faith can avail (3:21–31); another shows that Abraham was an example of this faith (4:1–25). Chapters 5–8 describe the life in Christ that is the consequence of justification as freedom from death (5), sin (6), and law (7) to stand as children of God in the power of the Spirit (8). Chapters 9–11 are understood on this view as constituting a defense of God’s honor against the implication of Paul’s own gospel, namely, that the failure of Israel to secure their own righteousness through the law constituted a challenge to God’s faithfulness to the covenant. On this reading, the warning to non-Jews in 11:13–32 appears as something of an afterthought, a rearguard defense against possible misunderstanding of the preceding argument but of relatively marginal importance to the whole. The exhortation in 12:1—15:13 is, on this approach, read as a proof as well, aimed not at reproving the Roman congregations but at showing that Paul’s gospel as presented in the previous chapters has commendable ethical consequences. The letter, then, is read as a showpiece of Paul’s rhetoric, displaying his skill at recommending the Christian way of life. Its nearest analogues might then be found in Hellenistic protreptic (exhortative) writings that expounded the benefits of a particular way of life.⁸

A very different outline results from taking seriously the disclosure clauses in 1:13–15 as a statement of Paul’s hortatory purpose regarding the Romans. Further, observing that the call to new life in chap. 12 is exactly opposite to the injustice described in 1:18–32 and is possible only because of baptism (chap. 6) allows us to recognize the structure of the entire letter as exhortation to non-Jews, who are thereby reminded, in a pattern common in early Christian preaching, of the morally catastrophic life they have left behind and encouraged to persevere in their new identity.⁹ Rhetorical questions and flights of diatribe (rhetorically stylized conversation) serve specific roles within the letter’s larger hortatory purpose: showing, first, that all are accountable to God, Jews and non-Jews alike (1:18—3:20), and that faithfulness (pistis, meaning less belief than obedience) has always been the basis of justification. Those who are in Christ now participate in Christ’s obedience (3:21—6:23). The rather vague questions about God’s faithfulness in the face of human faithlessness in 3:5–8 thus appear of a piece with the questions directed to the baptized in 6:1, 15.

Paul uses rhetorical questions and speech-in-character (prosōpopoeia) in 7:1–8:4 to argue that freedom from law means not lawlessness but consent to the law’s right requirements. Rhetorical questions throughout chaps. 9–11 press home the theme of God’s faithfulness to the covenant with Israel, despite the appearance of present circumstances. On this reading, then, a key to understanding Paul’s argument in the letter is recognizing that his rhetorical questions are not posed as objections raised by fictitious interlocutors but represent Paul’s own use of a common rhetorical technique to drive and direct his argument.

Judging chaps. 9–11 to be the letter’s climax depends in part on recognizing the concentration in 9:1–4 of epistolary features usually associated with the beginning of a letter body, including a heightened personal tone and oath and disclosure formulas.¹⁰ One consequence is that on this reading, Romans 1–8 are not a self-contained theological description of life in Christ, but an elaborate preparation for chaps. 9–11, termed by some an insinuatio, the indirect approach recommended by ancient rhetoricians for presenting a difficult or unpopular argument.¹¹ The assurances that those in Christ cannot be separated from the love of God but are revealed as God’s children (8:1–39) are not meant to stand independently, but function to heighten the emotional impact of Paul’s outpouring of concern for his fellow Jews in 9:1–4—a concern his rhetoric moves his audience to share. Separation from God is precisely the danger about which Paul warns his non-Jewish audience in 11:17–21, without holding out for them the prospect of restoration that he is sure is available to Israel (11:23, 26).

The exhortations that follow in 12–15 draw the consequences of the preceding argument, first by encouraging mutual regard and concern (12:1–21). Those more general admonitions are subsequently focused in a call to the strong to defer to the weak regarding foods (14:1—15:6). Apparently the observance of a kosher diet is at issue (14:14), but recent studies propose that Paul’s talk of strong and weak refers at the same time to the socioeconomic status of powerful and weak persons in a socially stratified city and to corresponding ascription of honor and shame, rather than to the adequacy or inadequacy of an individual’s faith.¹² The mutualism Paul encourages is at odds with the sensibility of upper-class Roman culture.¹³

In the broad sweep of this exhortation, Paul’s appeal to be subject to the governing authorities (13:1–7) strikes a jarring note at least in modern ears. Attempts to disqualify these lines as an interpolation have not been successful. Neither, however, are proposals to read Paul’s unqualified endorsement of governing powers here as his theology of the state or even as consistent with his overall theological position elsewhere. Indeed, a very different note is struck already in the very next lines, where Paul declares, owe no one anything, except to love one another (13:8) and makes cryptic but unmistakably eschatological references to the time and the day (13:11–14)—qualifications quite absent from 13:1–7. If the background of Nero’s unpopular tax policies are indeed relevant here, so may be the claims of his propagandists that unlike his ancestor Augustus, who had come to power through warfare, Nero had no need to resort to the sword;¹⁴ but the perception of an implicit critique or of irony on Paul’s part remains for now a matter of scholarly conjecture.

Interpretation

In light of the previous discussion, the question naturally arises: How have such different, at some points incompatible, interpretations arisen regarding the same text?

A partial answer may rest with the placement of the letter to the Ephesians in the body of Pauline letters. Although it is regarded by a majority of critical scholars as a later writing falsely purporting to come from Paul’s own hand, Ephesians has enjoyed high regard, even among some of these same scholars, as embodying the quintessence of Paulinism. The author of Ephesians represents the church as the happy union of Jews and non-Jews, the troublesome impediment of the law with its commandments and ordinances having been abolished (katargoumenon) by Christ on the cross (2:11–16). This, and nothing more, is proclaimed as the mystery at the heart of Paul’s gospel (3:1–6). (One is left to wonder how many Jews, freed from the encumbrance of the Torah, were actually numbered in the church that produced this letter.) In Romans, however, Paul himself speaks quite differently. He is not aware that the law has been abolished (by no means! does he overthrow the law, as the NRSV translates the same verb, katargeō, in 3:31). The mystery revealed in Romans is not simply the inclusion of the nations but the counterintuitive disclosure that Israel’s apparent stumbling is only temporary, the result of a divine hardening that inexplicably benefits the nations but will be reversed when the full number of the nations has come in (11:11–12, 25–26).

Even before Marcion’s fateful intervention, then, the theological template of a post-Pauline, non-Jewish church was put forward as describing the heart of Paul’s own message. Read from within this template, Romans became a treatise on the availability in Christ of salvation apart from and in opposition to the Jewish law, and such it remained for most of the Christian theological tradition until the last half of the twentieth century.

As discussed above, however, the elements of a very different reading of Romans are available today. They include the rhetorical-critical discovery that the Jew as such is not the target of Paul’s diatribe in Romans 2, as an earlier interpretation required,¹⁵ and the grammatical recognition that pistis Christou in 3:22, 26, meant the faithfulness of Christ, that is, his obedience, rather than faith in Christ.¹⁶ Consequently, the central contrast in Romans is not between a futile striving for justification by works (attributed by the Christian theological tradition to Judaism—wrongly, as E. P. Sanders has demonstrated)¹⁷ and justification by faith in Christ. Rather the central contrast is between an arrogant presumption on God’s mercy—on Paul’s view, as real a danger for those in Christ as for anyone else—and true obedience, which is naturally expressed as the doing of good works (2:6–13). To judge from his rhetoric, Paul appears less concerned to argue for the forgiveness of sins in Christ than to warn against a facile presumption on such grace (chaps. 5–6); less concerned to announce freedom from law than to avow his agreement with its holy requirement (chap. 7); less concerned to reassure the baptized that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God (8:38–39) than to proclaim that Israel enjoys the same assurance, grounded in the covenantal faithfulness of God (9:1–5; 11:25–36). The complex argument from scripture in chaps. 9–10 is meant not to establish a typological distinction between the doomed and the elect—a reading that requires artifices such as the NRSV’s gratuitous insertion of only at 9:27, "Though the number of the children of Israel were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved"—but to show that present circumstances do not exhaust the purposes of God.

The cumulative effect of these insights is the recognition that the obedience of the nations (1:5; 15:18) is Paul’s concern throughout the letter. The chief obstacle he faces is the boasting on the part of non-Jewish believers in Christ that he rebukes in chap. 11. That message quickly became obscured, however. The historical failure of Paul’s vision—in its broad sweep, describing the imminent union of Israel and the nations in the worship of Israel’s God, but also in Paul’s own fateful miscalculation regarding the prospects of his ministry to the saints in Jerusalem—no doubt accelerated the realignment of his appeal in Romans to the emergent theology of the non-Jewish church. This theology was implicitly supersessionistic, that is, one that viewed God as having established a new covenant with Christians that replaced the old Torah covenant with Israel.

Reception

Romans has always enjoyed pride of place in the collection of Paul’s letters and has exercised enormous influence in Christian theology.¹⁸ Here Augustine found important bases of his theological view of sin and the human