The Soul’s Daily Bread
Useful terms:
∑
Apostrophe: speech directed to an absent or imaginary person (often uses “you”)
∑ Scriptio continua: writing in all capital letters without punctuation
or chapter divisions.
∑ Justification: A biblio-ecclesiastical term; which denotes the transforming
of the sinner from the state of unrighteousness to the state of holiness
and sonship of God..
Outline:
I. Introduction: Paul and anti-Judaism
II. Reasons Paul might be misread: Audience, Central Concern, Layout of Text,
Rhetorical Devices
III. Reading of Romans: Two Paths to Righteousness
Quotes:
1. “This epistle is in truth the most important document in the New Testament,
the gospel in its purest expression. Not only is it well worth a Christian’s
while to know it word for word by heart, but also to meditate on it day by
day. It is the soul’s daily bread, and can never be read too often, or
studied too much. The more you probe into it the more precious it becomes,
and the better its flavor.” (Martin Luther, Preface to Romans, [1522])
2. “[Paul] declares that no one will be justified by fulfilling the requirements
of the law, because the law was given only to show the nature of sin. He then
elaborates his teaching of the right way to become godly and sanctified. He
says that all men are sinners, and that none are approved by God. Salvation
can come to them, unearned, by virtue of faith in Christ.” (Luther,
Preface to Romans)
“…
good works are purely and simply outward signs. They proceed from faith, and,
like good fruits, prove that the man himself is already righteous at heart
in God’s sight.” (Luther, Preface to Romans)
3. “This rejection-replacement view of Judaism quickly became the dominant
stance within Christian circles in the early centuries; it underlies the message
and structure of the New Testament as a whole. And it is within this structure
that Paul stands as the central figure. For the New Testament and certainly
for those who created it, Paul was the theologian of Christian anti-Judaism,
the rejection-replacement view of Judaism. Virtually all later readers – Christian,
Jewish, and other – have assumed that Paul stands behind the anti-Judaism
of the New Testament and mainstream Christianity.” (Gager, 14)
4. Romans 1:5-6: “...we have received grace and apostleship to bring
about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations,
including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.”
Note: all Bible quotes are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.
We read the New RSV (NRSV) in Hum 110. But since the NRSV changes some
translations to make the language more inclusive (and obscuring when the
Greek might say “men” or “brethren” by
saying “members of the church” or the like), I have retained
the RSV for this lecture in order for you to compare between translations
5. Romans 1:14-16: “I am under obligation both to Greeks and barbarians,
both to the wise and to the foolish: so I am eager to preach the gospel
to you also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is
the power
of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also
to the Greek.”
6. “Romans tries to clarify for gentile followers of Christ their relation
to the law, Jews, and Judaism and the current place of both Jews and gentiles
in God’s plan through Jesus Christ. The readers manifest in the letter
consist of gentiles who have a great concern for moral self-mastery and acceptance
by the one God and believe (or might be tempted to believe) that they have
found the way to that goal through observing certain teachings from the Jewish
law. These readers also might be tempted to consider themselves (or perhaps
themselves and fellow Jewish followers of Christ) God’s only true people,
the mainstream of the Jewish people having rejected Jesus Christ and having
been rejected by God. Against these assumptions of the readers encoded in the
letter, Paul develops a rhetorical strategy to persuade them that the acceptance
and self-mastery that they seek is to be found not in following Jewish teachers
who advocate works from the law but in what God has done and is even now doing
through Jesus Christ.” (Stowers, 36)
7. “The teacher giving the diatribe speaks to an imaginary person who
represents a certain vice. The apostrophe characterizes this type of person,
and the sharp censure of the teacher against this fictitious person is actually
a censure for students in the audience who fit the type.” (Stowers,
11-12)
8. Romans 2:17-21: “But if you call yourself a Jew and rely upon the
law and boast of your relation to God and know his will and approve what is
excellent, because you are instructed in the law, and if you are sure that
you are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector
of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of
knowledge and truth – you then who teach others, will you not teach
yourself?”
9. Romans 3:1-4: “Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the
value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews are entrusted
with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness
nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means!”
10. Romans 3:20-22: “For no human being will be justified in his
sight by works of the law, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
But now
the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the
law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through
faith
in Jesus Christ for all who believe.”
11. Romans 3:29-31: “Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the
God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will
justify
the circumcised on the ground of their faith and the uncircumcised through
their faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On
the contrary, we uphold the law.”
12. Romans 4:3-5: “For what does the scripture say? ‘Abraham believed
God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ Now to one who
works, his wages are not reckoned as a gift but as his due. And to one
who does
not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned
as righteousness.”
13. Romans 4:11-12: “He received circumcision as a sign or seal of
the righteousness which he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.
The purpose
was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised
and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them, and likewise the father
of
the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but also follow the example
of the
faith which our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.”
14. Romans 5:15-16: “For if many died through one man’s [Adam’s]
trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of
that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like
the effect of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one
trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses
brings
justification.”
15. Romans 7:4ff: “Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through
the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has raised
from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. ... What then shall
we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law,
I should not have known sin. I should not have known what it is to covet if
the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’”
16. Romans 9:30-33: “What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not
pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, righteousness through faith;
but that Israel who pursued the righteousness which is based on law did not
succeed in fulfilling that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it through
faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling
stone, as it is written, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone that will
make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall; and he who believes in him
will not be put to shame.’”
17. Romans 11:11-12: “So I ask, have they stumbled so as to fall?
By no means! But through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles,
so as to make Israel jealous. Now if their trespass means riches for the
world,
and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will
their
full inclusion mean!”
18. Romans 11:1-2: “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By
no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendent of Abraham, a member of
the
tribe of
Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.”
19. Romans 11:5-6: “So too at the present time there is a remnant,
chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of
works; otherwise
grace would no longer be grace.”
20. Romans 11:17ff: “But if some of the branches were broken off, and
you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the richness
of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember
it is not you that supports the root, but the root that supports you. You will
say, ‘Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.’ That
is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand
fast only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For
if God
did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. [...] For
if you
have been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted contrary
to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural
branches be grafted back into their own olive tree. Lest you be wise in
your own conceits,
I want you to understand this mystery, brethren: a hardening has come upon
part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all
Israel will be saved.”
21. “What is new in the story, the mystery as Paul calls it, is that
the redemption of the Gentiles and the salvation of Israel are intimately intertwined.
Their final destinies are interdependent. But not as Israel had expected, for
at the end it is the Gentiles first, then the Jews, thus reversing the formula
(“the Jews first, then the Greeks”) in the early part of the letter.” (Gager,
140)
Critical Bibliography:
Gager, John G. Reinventing Paul (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000).
Gaston, Lloyd. Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia
Press, 1987).
Stendahl, Krister. Paul Among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays. (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1976).
Stowers, Stanley. A Rereading of Romans (New Haven & London: Yale UP,
1994).