Preaching Romans: Four Perspectives

INTRODUCTION

The apostle Paul’s letters remain enigmatic for New Testament interpreters and for those who preach on them. This book fairly presents major interpretive perspectives on Paul and offers insights into how these perspectives influence the preaching of Paul’s letters and therefore how these perspectives might affect listeners in the pews.

The interpretation of the Letter to the Romans in particular is contested to such an extent that many pastors have become afraid to preach through Romans. If they are lectionary pastors, they may wander into a designated text, but they know they are wading quickly into deep waters. Many pastors wish they had more time to become familiar with Pauline scholarship and to patiently work through more texts in Romans.

This book provides an accessible sketch of the four major interpretive schools of thought on Paul today: the Reformational (old) perspective, the new perspective, the apocalyptic Paul, and the participationist perspective. Each approach to Paul is written by a leading proponent of that approach. The book then provides three sermons from well-known preachers that illustrate how a particular approach to interpreting Romans might play out in preaching Paul.

In addition to being for pastors, this book is for laypersons who want to know more the interpretive processes on the apostle Paul and Romans in particular, since Paul enjoys unique status in having many lay readers showing interest in academic work on his epistles.

Like the apostle Paul, we hope that your mind will be renewed (Rom. 12:2) by the scholarship and the pastoral sensibilities of this volume.

SCOT MCKNIGHT AND JOSEPH B. MODICA

INTERPRETIVE PERSPECTIVES ON THE APOSTLE PAUL

1

Romans and the Lutheran Paul

Stephen Westerholm

Known today simply as an empiricist philosopher, John Locke (1632–1704) was also seen in the past as a careful student of Paul. His Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St Paul was widely read throughout the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth. In the preface to his Paraphrase, Locke noted the dangers faced by readers of Paul who consult commentators on the apostle’s writings. On the one hand, some consult only those commentators whom they consider sound and Orthodox. Naturally, they find in those works only what confirms their own opinions: hardly, Locke insisted, the way to arrive at Paul’s true Meaning. On the other hand, there are those who consult a variety of commentators, excluding none who offers to enlighten them in any of the dark Passages. The problem for these readers is that they emerge from the exercise distracted with an hundred [interpretations], suggested by those they advised with; and so instead of that one Sense of the Scripture which they carried with them to their Commentators, return from them with none at all. If readers of the first type find their own rather than Paul’s intended sense, the latter find no settled Sense at all.¹

The quandary in which, according to Locke, readers of diverse commentators found themselves in his day is, if anything, a still greater dilemma for those today who attempt to keep abreast of Pauline scholarship—as the present volume itself amply demonstrates. And yet, if Scripture is to be the final authority for believers’ faith and practice, then what it requires them to believe and do must be accessible to them. Protestant talk of sola scriptura has always been accompanied by a conviction about Scripture’s perspicuity: the belief that, in all that is essential, the meaning of Scripture is clear to humble believers who approach God’s word with a prayer for the illumination of God’s Spirit and a willingness to obey the message they receive.² Consistent with this conviction, the argument of this essay is that, in spite of the diverse views propounded by scholars on any number of points of Pauline interpretation, certain fundamental truths are so clearly taught in Scripture (here our focus will be on the Letter to the Romans) that they may—and ought—to be affirmed confidently. More specifically, while recent scholarship has rightly drawn attention to the first-century context in which Paul wrote and to elements of his argument that have at times been overlooked, central features of the traditional or old perspective on Paul (now often referred to as the Lutheran perspective) are indisputably Pauline and remain foundational to any proper understanding of the apostle—and, indeed, of the Christian gospel itself. The central features here discussed—while due attention is given to Paul’s argument in context—are the following:

In God’s eyes, all human beings are sinful.

No human being is righteous in God’s eyes on the basis of the deeds they have done.

God has provided atonement for the sin of human beings through the death of his Son, Jesus Christ.

By God’s grace alone, apart from human works, God finds righteous those who have faith in Jesus Christ.

The Universality of Human Sinfulness

For many believers, Romans 3:23 has served (since childhood!) as the primary proof text for universal human sinfulness: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.³ When detached (as memory work!) from its context, much that is important to Paul—and most of his argument in the preceding chapters in Romans—is lost to view. Here I will attempt to fill out that picture while at the same time insisting that the common use to which Romans 3:23 has been put is no distortion of Paul.

In Romans 1:16–17, Paul sets forth in summary form the essence of the gospel, the power of God for salvation. He returns to the topic and develops it two chapters further on, at 3:21. (See the discussion of points 3 and 4 below.) Before doing so, however, he insists on the universal need for the message he proclaims (1:18–3:20). Romans 3:23 may well serve as a summary of his argument (indeed, it serves that purpose in its original context), but students of Paul will want to know the steps he takes before reaching that conclusion.

Readers of Romans 1:18–3:20 can hardly fail to notice that, though the conclusions Paul reaches are universal, he arrives at them after spending a good deal of time discussing the relative standing before God of Jews, on the one hand, and non-Jews (or gentiles), on the other. Indeed, the bulk of his discussion seems less concerned with demonstrating that all are sinners than it is with showing that, differences between them notwithstanding, Jews and gentiles are on the same footing before God. The fundamental principle of God’s righteous judgment is that God will judge all human beings according to their deeds (2:5–6). Paul spells out the principle in the simplest of terms: God requires, of all human beings, that they do what is good and avoid doing what is evil. He will grant eternal life to those who do what is good, while those who do evil will face his wrath (2:7–10). But even in stating this fundamental principle, Paul is clearly bent on emphasizing its applicability to Jews and Greeks (gentiles) alike:

[God] will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality. (2:6–11)

The Jew first, because in important respects the Jews have long been a privileged people. But Paul’s point here is that the same basic principle of judgment applies to Jews and non-Jews alike—and necessarily so, since God shows no partiality. His argument then proceeds by taking into account the very real differences between Jews and gentiles and yet showing that there is no essential difference when God judges human beings according to their deeds. The principle stands: both will be judged by whether what they have done is good or evil.

The principle of course assumes that Jews and gentiles both know the good they are to do and the evil they are to avoid. Against any such simple assumption, the argument might be raised that Jews, but not gentiles, have been given God’s law, which spells out what is to be done and what avoided. Paul has no quibble with the premise of that argument (note 2:12, 14, 18, 20); but he insists that, when God judges the deeds of human beings, mere possession of (the written code of) the law makes no difference. It makes no difference because (a) God’s demands as found in the law given to Jews are identical with the good that he requires of all human beings; (b) gentiles, though lacking the law given to Jews, are nonetheless aware of the good they must do; and (c) since what God requires is the doing of what is good, Jews who possess the written code, no less than gentiles who lack it, must actually do the good if God is to find them righteous.

a. In Romans 2:10, Paul insists that Jews and gentiles alike must do good if God is to grant them glory and honor and peace (the equivalent of the eternal life mentioned in 2:7). In 2:13, however, the language has changed: in this verse, what God requires of those he will find righteous is that they be doers of the law. Yet Paul is still thinking of what God requires of Jews and gentiles alike, for he proceeds to show how gentiles, though not in possession of the written law, can nonetheless be held responsible for doing what the law requires (2:14; see [b] below). His argument thus rests on the assumption that what the law commands people to do (2:13) is the same as the good that, according to 2:10, God requires of all human beings.⁴ Two points about this assumption are worth noting.

First, in speaking of what the law requires, Paul is not, for the moment at least, thinking of what are commonly called the ceremonial demands of the law; after all, he makes abundantly clear elsewhere that he does not think gentiles are required to observe Jewish feasts or food laws, or that gentile males should be circumcised (e.g., Gal. 4:10–11; 5:2–6). Rather, the prohibitions of stealing and adultery, mentioned later in the chapter, represent the kind of commandment he has in mind (Rom. 2:21–22).

Second, the notion that the demands of the Mosaic law code spell out the good that God requires of all human beings was widely held by Jews of Paul’s day. If Proverbs speaks of wisdom as that which human beings (all human beings) are to pursue and practice (Prov. 3:13–18; 4:5–9, etc.), later Jewish literature identified this wisdom with the law given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai (e.g., Sir. 24:1–27). In Jewish apologetic literature, this conviction took on a particular shape: given that, in the Greco-Roman world, philosophers often stated ethical ideals in terms of conformity with nature or the [unwritten] law of nature, Jewish apologists were wont to speak of the Mosaic law as the perfect embodiment of the law of nature. After all, they reasoned, the divine Source of the law of nature can be none other than the God who gave Israel his law; inevitably, then, the order of nature is reflected in the prescriptions of the Mosaic law (see 4 Macc. 5:25–26).

In short, Paul need anticipate no disagreement when he identifies the good that God requires of all human beings with the (moral) demands of the Mosaic law.

b. He does, however, anticipate the objection that gentiles can hardly be held responsible for keeping a law they have not been given. Granting that gentiles are those who do not have the law, he uses the self-evident fact that gentiles at times do what the law requires (e.g., refrain from murder, adultery, and theft) to show that God has given them an inner awareness of the law’s basic demands (2:14–15).⁵ Coming immediately after the declaration that the doers of the law will be justified (2:13), this insistence that gentiles are aware of the good required in the law (2:14–15) serves to place gentiles effectively on the same footing as Jews in the face of divine judgment (2:16): both must do the good—and that is what the law requires.

c. The form in which Jews encounter God’s basic requirements—a written law code—permits no doubt or discussion regarding their content. Instructed from the law, the very embodiment of knowledge and truth, Jews know [God’s] will; indeed, they consider themselves able to instruct gentiles about the good that God requires of them both (you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children) (2:17–20). Without denying that Jews, in possession of the law, are a privileged people, Paul proceeds to press his point: Jews and gentiles stand on the same footing before God’s righteous judgment. He has shown that gentiles cannot be excused from the requirement of doing what is good, since they too have a God-given awareness of what God demands. Starting at 2:21, he emphasizes that possession of (the written code of) the law does not excuse Jews from the requirement (shared with gentiles!) of actually doing the good commanded by the law.

Jews and Gentiles Stand on the Same Footing

The apostle begins by rhetorically asking an imaginary Jew whether he in fact keeps the commandments he teaches to others: You then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? (2:21–22). Note that Paul is not charging Jews with stealing, committing adultery, or robbing temples;⁶ his question whether they do so merely stresses that the crucial issue is not what one knows and can teach others but whether one, in practice, measures up to what one knows and teaches.

That Paul is not here charging Jews with transgressing the law but merely reminding them that obedience, not possession, of the law is what matters is apparent from the words that follow immediately: Circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law. The (theoretical) possibility that Jews observe the law is evidently still on the table. So too is the alternative: but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision (2:25). Here what distinguishes Jews from gentiles is no longer possession of (the written code of) the law but circumcision, the external mark of the people of God. But Paul’s point remains the same: before God’s judgment, what matters—for Jews and non-Jews alike—is the actual doing of what the law requires: So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law (2:26–27).

Again, Paul is not saying that there are circumcised Jews who obey the law, on the one hand (2:25a), or Jews who break the law, on the other (2:25b); nor is he saying that there are uncircumcised gentiles who keep the precepts of the law (2:26). Whether or not such people exist is of no relevance to his argument, the thrust of which—as throughout chapter 2—is to establish the principle that the actual doing of what God requires is what matters for Jews and gentiles alike. That gentiles lack the written code of the law and circumcision does not excuse them from their responsibility to do what is good. Jews, who possess the written code of the law and circumcision, share the same responsibility. At the divine judgment, the same standard—the requirement of righteous deeds—is demanded of both. That is the point of Romans 2.

Still, the universal sinfulness of humankind—and hence the universal need for the gospel of Jesus Christ—is the ultimate conclusion Paul reaches based on the argument of 1:18–3:20. That point was made already in 1:18–32, which denounced all ungodliness and unrighteousness of human beings; it is confirmed by the quotations from Scripture in 3:10–18. All have sinned, and all need the righteousness of God revealed in Jesus Christ: that, in the end, is Paul’s point in 1:18–3:20. But our understanding of Romans is enhanced when his whole argument is taken into account: For there is no distinction [between Jews and gentiles, in this respect]: for all have sinned (3:22–23). This context, stressed in modern scholarship, is important for Paul. But Paul’s insistence on the universal sinfulness of humankind is clear, as it has always been clear, to every reader of Romans.

One other, related emphasis of modern scholarship should here be noted. Scholars today frequently stress that, whereas Romans 1–3 portrays the human dilemma in terms of the sins (plural) that people commit, Romans 5–7 depicts the dilemma in terms of slavery to sin (singular). Whereas students of Paul of an earlier day may have focused on sins and the need for justification (treating the doctrine of justification as the center of Paul’s thought), the tendency of many scholars today is to see the true Paul as more (if not exclusively) concerned with humanity’s enslavement to the power of sin and need for liberation. Such distinctions between Romans 1–3 and 5–7 are, I believe, too sharply drawn in any case. On the one hand, Paul speaks already in Romans 3:9 of Jews and gentiles alike as being under [the power of] sin [singular]. In Romans 1, he clearly sees the individual sins (plural; examples are listed later in the chapter) that people commit as further expressions of the fundamental sin of refusing to give God due honor and thanks (1:21). And that fundamental sin has so rendered their thinking vain and their hearts darkened (1:21–22) that we can, in effect, speak of a slavery to sin already in chapter 1. On the other hand, it is clear in Romans 6 that slavery to sin and the giving of oneself to practice particular sins follow from each other (see 6:12–19). We may allow the Johannine Jesus to make Paul’s point: Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin (John 8:34). Universal sinfulness, reflecting a slavery to sin and expressed in the committing of particular sins, remains a fundamental Pauline conviction.

But to return to our point: in Paul’s first-century context, the claim that all human beings are sinners (indeed, slaves of sin) in need of the gospel had to be accompanied by an insistence that the divine requirement to do what is good applies to Jews and non-Jews alike. That context, important to Paul and to the argument of the opening chapters of Romans, is lost to view when Romans 3:23 is detached from its context. Still, it is no distortion of Paul to point to the universal sinfulness of humankind as the dilemma to which the gospel brings the divine solution.

The Inadequacy of Good Works

We naturally associate negative talk about good works with Martin Luther—not entirely fairly, since Luther wrote a fine Treatise on Good Works and always insisted on their importance in the life of a believer: where true faith is present, good works cannot fail to be found; where good works are lacking, true faith is not to be found.⁷ But Luther also insisted that where true faith is not found, neither can there be any