I believe that Romans is commonly misread and misapplied due to prior allegiances to the idea of law as “works that save” and grace as “imputed righteousness”, or unmerited favor/grace. This understanding of the law versus faith/grace paradigm also lends itself to particular understandings of other terminology and ideas inherent in the text, such as defining righteousness as “moral righteousness” or seeing in Paul’s letter an in interest in the progression of salvation within an individual. Romans has long been fertile ground for Protestants to see in its pages arguments for divine election and predestination.
All of these things, in my opinion, are readings that fail attend for both Paul’s audience and the context for which he is writing, often ignoring these things outright in favor of upholding particular doctrines, which of course get imposed back on to our readings of Romans effectively pulling the text out of its context and failing to ask the appropriate questions of the text in its world.
So how might I make this case? I think one way would be to appeal to the arc of Pauls story as it develops and forms within actual history. If we begin at the start, meaning if we look at the earliest writings that we have from him chronologically speaking, this is a good way to see the seeds of his ideas taking shape against the larger backdrop of the Jerusalem council, recorded in Acts 15. This is where we see an agreement being reached with the “pillar apostles in Jerusalem (Wright, The New Testament in its World) regarding the primary issues facing the early church amidst Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles.
So where do we begin chronologically? With Paul’s letter to the Galatains. It doesn’t take long to note that the same issues regarding Law and Gospel are present here, if in an earlier state of formation. Wright even suggests that “this letter is sometimes percieved as the angry younger sibling of the more composed and reflective letter to Rome.”
Right from the start, its important to see in Galatians an assumption within certain segments of protestant writings that Paul is “saying Farewell to his Jewish heritage”. This is where we find the seeds of the age old Christainity versus Judaism storyline. That is worth noting because that’s a massive obstacle one would need to overcome in order to even begin to reconsider common readings of Romans. It is that ingrained into our thinking. To change course would feel like losing a grip on the Gospel (I know this because this is what I went through). And yet this is actually intended to get us closer to the Gospel.
To dig a little deeper, one of the things that seems to bolster such views of us versus them is the presence of certain opponents in Galatains. It would be the seeds of these opponents that Paul references in Romans 15 and 16, meaning that the division that we find in the Roman Church is the fruit of these seeds taking root. But as Wright suggests, “if we are to avoid making Paul a proto-Marcionite, if we are going to refuse temptations to project our own theological disputes into the letter, then we need to read Galatains very carefully, attentive to both its context and content.”
So who are these opponents? “Paul writes this letter to the Galatians after learning that certain agitators or intruders have gained a foothold in these churches, urging the male gentile believers to be circumsized.”
For reference, the issue dividing the Roman Church following the gradual return of Jews to Rome after being purged, was a “majority gentile church arguing over whether gentile converts need to be circumsized in order to follow Jesus.”
Wright notes the complicated political and theological backdrop behind this concern. Often what gets assumed by specific protestant readings focused on those conceptions of law and Gospel in conflict is that the Jews assumed that works of the law are the things that saved a person whereas Jesus demonstrated that it is only by grace through faith that one is saved, grace anchored in the death of Jesus as the free gift imputed to us by way of His moral righteousness. But, in my opinion and according to my studies, this is not an accurate reflection of what is going on within the text in its world. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls opened up a window into the ancient Jewish world that turns this idea of Law and Gospel on its head, sparking a movement of reform in relationship to that whole Jews versus christianity narrative that had crept into the western, protestant church.
In Galatains, Paul is opposing two things:
- The agreement reached by the Jerusalem council being undermined
2..A departure from the Gospel
What is the Gospel in Galatains. In line with Paul calling it “the Gospel of Jesus” in Romans, here in Galatians it is simply “the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ”. As Wright suggests, “the choice that Paul puts to the Galatian believers is whether or not Jesus is Israel’s Messiah.” This has to do with “whether he brings people into the promised new exodus by his own faithfulness to the (covenant promise), or whether he simply adds to and enhances the old dispensation of Moses.”
In simple terms: did Jesus fulfill the promise by ushering in the promised new age, or did he not. And if he did not, what are we left with but the reality of a still persisting exile. That is what concerns Paul. For the objectors, the failed promise is rooted in Israel’s failure to be faithful to the covenant by way of participating in pagan worship and idolatry. This is why circumsicion mattered to them, because it meant that one was being called out of their old life and set apart for particpation in the new. It was the counter to exile. For Paul though, “if righteousness, that is, the status of being forgiven and possessing a right standing within the covenant, could be gained or validated by means of observing Torah, the Jewish Law”, then not only did “the Messish die for nothing”, but the story of Torah has no way of making sense of itself. The story of Torah, which is the proper understanding of the law (not moral works) ended with exile. Therefore this is what circumcision binds them to. Paul’s argument in Galatains, which sets the stage for his dramatic rendering in Romans, is that Jesus invites this community into the remainder of this story, proclaiming the arrival of a new exodus as the true answer to the exile. Something that arrives in line with the story of Torah and the ensuing reality of messianic expctation. Therefore, Law is not understood here as works that save. It is understood as the story of exile, through which the story of enslavement and liberation looms large in the background. It is reflective of a story that says something about their present reality. The Gospel breaks into this not as an altrernative portrait of salvation, but as a way of finding in this story the very thing that allows salvation to come about and be proclaimed- the good news that, according to the scriptures (the covenant promise and messianic expectation), God has at long last did what He said He would do, demonstrating His faithfulness and ushering in the new age. As Wright puts it, he has rescued creation from the grips of “the Evil age”, which Romans describes as the “reign of (Sin) and Death”. Gods “new world has dawned”, and for both the Galatains and the Roman communities, Paul is speaking to those who have already heard this Gospel and who have been met with and responded to the subsequent invitation this brings (the exodus comes first, Sinai follows) towards living as a people of the newly established kingdom, and who are dealing with seeds that threaten to undermine this story and erode their hope in the truth that Jesus is who He says He is and did what He said He did as the fulfillment of Gods covenental promise. It’s on this basis that Paul looks to faith, or faithfulness (allegiance to the kingdom of God) as the thing that cuts through both stories and demonstrates the true point of the Gospel as invitation to particpation, the story of Israel and that of the Gentiles, binding them together under this singular act of Gods faithfulness to acting in and for the world.
The Stories of my Life 