Romans

You may or may not have noticed that I have been working my way rather laboriously - and no doubt presumptuously - through an online commentary on Romans. What got me going on this was the growing conviction while writing Re: Mission that we may make better sense of this classic exposition of Paul’s core theology if we read it within the framework of an eschatological narrative that has to do with the realistic, biblically shaped expectations of Jesus and the early communities of disciples regarding their foreseeable future. What if Paul is not setting out timeless, universal principles or an abstract argument about ‘justification by faith’ but directly and with urgency addressing the historical situation of Israel and the emerging communities of Christ-followers in anticipation of the coming wrath of God on the ancient world?

Yoder’s celebrated book, The Politics of Jesus, provoked both controversey and excitement w/in evangelical theology - and we’re still discussing his ideas 30 + years later. Though his focus is on Jesus and the Gospels, Yoder considers the relationship of his interpretation of Jesus’ teachings to Paul, and particularly to the doctrine of justification. In so doing, he anticipates many of the arguments of the so-called New Perspective (which though rooted in scholarship that predates Yoder, really didn’t percolate for another decade, when scholars such as James Dunn first began to articulate their ‘new’ perspective). But a lot of the same questions still remain for me…

It seems fair to say that Paul’s letter to the Romans has so far failed to capture the imagination of the emerging church. There are a number of likely reasons for this: the emerging church prefers Jesus and the Gospels; the emerging church does not feel comfortable with Paul’s strong stance against homosexuality; the emerging church does not at all like the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement; the emerging church does not want to get into futile and politically fraught debates about the place of modern Israel in the purposes of God; and the emerging church probably finds squeezing the tough and indigestible fruit of Romans far too much like hard work for the little practical spiritual benefit that can be obtained from it.