by Michael CranfordThis article was originally published in New Testament Studies 41 (1995): 71-88.

In Romans 4 Paul turns to the scriptural figure of Abraham, a vivid personification of faith and obedience in Jewish thought. While the most obvious reason for Paul’s depiction of Abraham is to undermine any use of Abraham as a counterexample to his foregoing argument,¹ Paul turns the common Jewish conception of Abraham on its head and offers him instead as positive support for his own position.² The nature of Paul’s argument in the previous two chapters of Romans has been identified by James Dunn and others as rejecting the Jewish assumption that covenant privileges are strictly associated with ethnic Israel and therefore unavailable to Gentiles.³ Over against the Torah, Paul has instead offered faith as the identifier or boundary marker of those who are members in God’s people—a difference which allows Gentiles full participation in the covenant.

Silva remarks that Dunn does not appreciate how damaging Romans 4 is to his position, however, with its sharp antithesis between working and believing. Further, Silva asks why such a critical passage as 4.4-5 has played no significant role in the development of Dunn’s thesis, with the implication that Dunn has intentionally underplayed its importance.⁴ The relative significance of 4.4-5 has yet to be weighed, but Silva’s criticism is valid. As a latter development in Paul’s argument, the figure of Abraham, with its sharp ‘faith-works’ terminology appropriated by the Reformers, must either follow logically from Dunn’s perspective on Romans 1-3 or else stand at complete odds with it.

A primary issue to be resolved is how the figure of Abraham functions with regard to Paul’s argument in Romans 4. The traditional view is that Abraham is an example of Christian faith, demonstrating how we, as individuals, can be justified. If this is true, then the emphasis of Romans 4 is not primarily on the consequences of Abraham’s belief but on the mechanism of belief itself. Strong support for this comes later in the chapter, Boers argues:

The decisive factor for the relation between Abraham’s faith and the faith of the believer, according to this chapter, is the fact that it is the same God who is the object of the faith of Abraham (4:17, cf. 5) and of that of the Christian believer (verse 24). The connection between them is established in verse 23 with the statement that the justification that was announced to Abraham, was not announced on his behalf only, ‘but also on our behalf’, i.e., on the behalf of Christian believers.⁵

Similarly, Hanson concludes, ‘Thus Abraham’s justification fulfils exactly the same function which is required at the point in Romans where it comes: he is the prototype of believing Christians, a sinner (whether from Judaism or from the Gentile world) justified by faith’.⁶

Proponents of this view naturally set Abraham’s faith over against his good deeds, emphasizing that it was by his faith alone that God pronounced him righteous. Similarly, it is by faith and not good deeds that God now pronounces the Christian righteous. While there are many problems with this view, not the least being that it forces a Western individualistic perspective on a scriptural figure who is consistently viewed as symbolic of his progeny (cf. 4.13), the most critical flaw is that it dichotomizes faith and obedience in a way which would be completely unintelligible to a Jewish reader. As Doughty notes of 4.1-5,

It is important to recognize . . . that for the pious Jew this argument would hardly have been convincing or even understandable. . . Paul’s interpretation of the Genesis text [15.6] is a tour de force. For the radical distinction he makes here between pistis and erga cannot simply be derived from the text itself. This distinction breaks in such a decisive way with the traditional understanding of Judaism that his interpretation would be impossible for a Jewish reader to comprehend.⁷

Not only would this dichotomy be unconvincing to the Jewish or Jewish- Christian reader (cf. James 2.17-24), but it stands at odds with Paul’s earlier expressions of the connection between faith and obedience (1.5; 3.3; and implied in 2.7, 10, 13).

The interpretation of Romans 4 offered here is one in which Abraham is not viewed as an example of Christian faith, but is instead used by Paul to show why Gentiles can be considered members of God’s people. Gentiles share in the covenant because they, too, are children of Abraham. As Howard states, ‘The idea is that the Gentiles are blessed not simply like Abraham but because of Abraham’.⁸ Abraham provides the reason why Gentiles experience salvation, not the example of how an individual becomes saved. In Jewish thought, Abraham was viewed as the paradigm of obedience, but this obedience was directly connected to his having passed on covenant privileges to Israel.⁹ Paul breaks from this Jewish understanding in Romans 4 by showing that Abraham has passed on covenant privileges to all who believe, and not just to those who are members of ethnic Israel. This break is therefore not over belief and obedience as competing soteriological paradigms, but over Jewish ethnicity and faith as competing boundary markers of God’s people. (more…)

Just a reminder that one of the course requirements of the Romans module is a reading and analysis of Philip Esler’s important book Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter

You can find the book at http://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Identity-Romans-Social-Setting/dp/0800634357 though have a look at http://abebooks.co.uk (where I got my cheaper copy)

Here’s a [quite academic] customer review to show you what I’ve got in mind:

Philip Esler used social-identity theory to explain Galatians (1998), and he now uses recategorization theory to account for Romans, Paul’s most famous letter in which he addresses a church torn over ethnic conflict and pride. In the earlier letter, Paul was opposing Judean outsiders; in this letter he attempts to reconcile both Judean and Gentile insiders. Social theorists tell us that such recategorization can be successful only when the different ethnic groups have equal status in different ways — since if they were equal in the same way, they would continue to compete in a fashion destructive of unity.

So, for instance, Paul claims that just as Gentiles are under the domain of sin without the Torah (1:18-2:5), Judeans are under its power with the Torah (2:17-3:20) — and the transition passage stresses the impartiality of God in punishing members of each ethnic group at the judgment, “the Judean and the Greek”, those under the law and those not under the law (2:6-16). Likewise, just as Gentile believers have been liberated from the power of sin which ruled them as immoral pagans (6:15-23), Judean believers have been liberated from the power of sin which ruled them through the law (7:1-25). Judeans need to recognize that Gentiles are God’s elect and heirs to the promises of Abraham (9:1-11:12), but Gentiles need (even more) to understand that their benefits are a means to an end — to provoke Judeans to reacquire what is really theirs (11:13-32). The point here is that Paul’s success depends on careful attention to both ethnic groups, taking them down in different ways, but without erasing their ethnic identities in the process. That’s why the last thing he wants to say is, “In Christ there is neither Judean nor Greek”, as he did in Galatians.

This also accounts for Paul’s treatment of Abraham in Rom 4 and the Torah’s purpose in Rom 7. Abraham is a prototype for Judeans and Gentiles who have faith, against the polarizing implication of Gal 3:6-9 that Judeans have been disinherited. He became circumcised in order to seal his faith-righteousness, precisely in order to become the ancestor of two different ethnic groups (4:11-12). And the Torah is holy and passive in its relationship to sin, against the perverse claim in Gal 3:19-26 that it actively confined people under sin. Sin used the law to its advantage, and the Torah, though given for the promise of life, was unable to do the job God gave it (7:10-11). This may raise questions about God’s competency, but it exonerates him of perversity.

This is the book on Romans I’ve been waiting for, even if I still like Mark Nanos’ particular treatment of Rom 14:1-15:13 better than anyone else’s. Thanks to Esler, we can now appreciate Paul’s most famous letter through the eyes of those who inhabited the strange and distant world of the ancient Mediterranean. We see Paul’s eschatology as forthcoming-present more than future (Rom 8:18-39). We catch a glimpse of Paul as the victim of slander and gossip (Rom 3:8), the malicious “weapon of the weak” which crippled people’s honor on a daily basis. We appreciate the dual occasion of the letter — Paul’s impending missions to Jerusalem and Spain, intersecting the ethnic crisis in Rome — and how the two are truly inseparable. And we see Paul the Middle-Eastern all too familiar with the hostile nature of gift-giving, whose collection for the poor (Rom 15:2 was a slap in the face to his colleagues in Jerusalem, who really did “feed the hungry in order to heap burning coals upon the heads of others” (Rom 12:20).

Paul was on a battleground when he wrote his letters, reinterpreting scripture in legitimately offensive ways, in line with the canons of honor-shame. Esler has explained these battles (for both Galatians and Romans) with especially insightful uses of anthropological and social theory, which serve us better than thought-pattern theology or literary intertextual approaches. There’s a wide chasm separating us from the biblical world, and only when we acknowledge it can we begin to build bridges. Esler’s epilogue reminds us that there is a strong need for such bridges in today’s world: “Romans reveals its connection with the taproot of human experience in relation to violent ethnic conflict in the world.” This is a far cry from the way Augustine or Luther read the letter. Time to put theology of grace vs merit behind us once and for all.

Do you need some bible software but don’t have money? Here is a link to a great version of Bible Explorer, best of all its free.

By popular demand I am posting the essay on heresies-in-the-early-churh.doc with due acknowledgement to Robert Jones who has written a number of first class Church History courses for adult Sunday School classes. Check out his work by following the links in the document.

A Rick Wade post (PROBE)

There are several important and interrelated reasons for the persecution of the early church.

First was the problem of identity. Christianity was identified at first with Judaism, but people quickly came to see it as a different religion. Jews were left alone for the most part; it seemed best to Rome to just confine them and leave them alone. Christianity, however, was a strange, new cult, and it began to spread across people groups and geographical boundaries.{1} People felt threatened by this oddball new religion.

The next problem was with the religious activities of the Christians, with what they did do and didn’t do.

In the days of the Roman empire, the worship of pagan gods and the emperor was a part of everyone’s life. Two problems arose because of this. First, because they didn’t participate in pagan rituals but tended to keep to themselves, Christians were considered anti-social. When the imperial police took an interest in them, they became more secretive which added fuel to the fire. They became associated with the collegia–clubs or secret societies–and leaders were suspicious of these groups because of the threat of sedition.{2} Second, since Christians wouldn’t join in with the religious activities which were believed to placate the gods, they became a threat to the very well-being of the community. Writing in about A.D. 196, Tertullian said, “The Christians are to blame for every public disaster and every misfortune that befalls the people. If the Tiber rises to the walls, if the Nile fails to rise and flood the fields, if the sky withholds its rain, if there is earthquake or famine or plague, straightway the cry arises: ‘The Christians to the lions!’”{3} (more…)

Excellent responses today. Please make sure that you purchase the two set books. ESLER (Conflict and Identity) and MORGAN (NT Guide Romans Sheffield) ASAP. These are required reading and knowedge of them must be reflected in your assignments.

The draft of the Romans 3 assignment should be posted on your website next week. This will be marked and assessed, but the work can be edited right through the course of the module. The final mark will only be given when the assignments are collated and collected towards the end of the module (December). Check with me if something isn’t clear.

Here are the powerpoint outlines/ lectures so far romans-lecture-5.ppt  romans-lecture-4.ppt   romans-lecture-3.ppt

    romans-lecture-2.ppt   romans-lecture-1.ppt