Today is the first ‘real’ post of my new series, Our Common Cause: An Integral study of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Romans is a letter that is important not only for what it says, but also for how much weight Christians have placed on it over the centuries. Since there’s no better place to begin than the beginning, let’s dive in with Paul’s initial greetings.
Text
[1.1] Paul, a slave of Jesus the Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for God’s gospel, [2] which He proclaimed in advance through his prophets in the holy scriptures [3] concerning his Son, descended from the seed of David according to the flesh, [4] declared to be God’s Son with power according to the Spirit of Holiness by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord, [5] through whom we have received grace and the mission to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, [6] among whom you yourselves are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
[7] To all of God’s beloved in Rome who have been called to be saints:
Grace to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Experience
A few things jumped out at me as I was reading and translating these verses. The first is that the sections feels awkward and formal. I’m reminded that (as will be made explicit in the next section) Paul has never been to Rome and doesn’t know most of his recipients. Since introducing myself to a group of strangers — especially when I want something from them — is something I still hate to do even being well into middle age now, I feel a bit of vicarious discomfort for Paul reading this!
Related to this, these are clearly the introductory lines of a letter. This triggers questions about the conventions of Roman-era letter-writing and how they might inform how we understand the book as a whole. Third, already in these lines I can’t help but notice the ways our traditional Christian vocabulary run up against what the words meant in their original context. I’ve decided here to err on the side of making the translation recognizably Christian at the expense of the immediacy of the letter, but we’ll definitely need to unpack this language as we move on.
Encounter
We meet several people and characters in these verses. First and foremost are the letter’s author and recipients: Paul and the followers of Jesus (’saints’) in Rome. What exactly we can say about them will need to be another main point in this study. But we also encounter here the letter’s main character and topic: Jesus, ‘the Christ’ and ‘Son of God’. Even here already Paul has a lot to say about him, which is worth exploring more.
Explore
The first two steps have produced a number of questions to explore: the rhetorical question of the form of Roman letter-writing, the linguistic question of the important vocabulary Paul deploys, the identity of letter’s author and recipients, and what Paul is saying here about Jesus. Because these are foundational matters, we’ll cover these questions in four posts. (Yes, four. These studies always move slowly at the start and then pick up speed!) Today we’ll tackle Roman letter-writing and Paul. Next time, we’ll look at the surprisingly complex question of whether Paul is drawing his terminology primarily using Jewish precedents or challenging Roman political claims. Then, we’ll look at the community and situation into which Paul was writing. Finally, we’ll explore what Paul’s gospel looks like from this section alone.
Roman Letter-Writing
One major problem with the history of the study and interpretation of Romans, especially since the Reformation, has been the tendency to treat it like a theological treatise rather than as a letter written for a purpose (Tonstad 54). But, helpfully, the Romans told us a lot about their literary conventions, so we know a lot about how Roman letters worked. Letters in the Roman world were more than information-dumping; they ‘made present’ the writer to the recipients, and used this sense of presence as the authority behind a call to action (Eberhart). This will be something to watch out for as we continue.
Letters in the Roman Empire followed a typical form (Eberhart*):
- Exordium (Opening)
- Salutatio (Greetings)
- Thanksgiving or Check in
- Statement of Purpose
- Narratio (Body)
- Peroratio (Conclusion)
- Exhortation
- Summary
- Final Greetings
Today’s section is the salutatio within the exordium. But, if Paul were merely following the conventions of his day, the salutatio would have looked something like this: “Paul, To the saints in Rome: Greetings (khairete)!” (We see a similar short greeting in Ephesians 1.1.) After this, he’d continue with brief words of greeting or thanksgiving before getting into his message. Instead, what we get is seven verses of dense prose in which Paul introduces himself and his message, followed by eight verses of thanksgiving.
Part of this is characteristic of Paul’s style — but even by Paul’s verbose standards, Romans stands out as taking a particularly long time to get to the point (Jewett (2013) 9; Childs 66; Schreiner 31). It is widely agreed that this comes from the fact that Paul doesn’t know the recipients personally and therefore takes pain both to establish his authority (not as a power-play, but to explain why they should give him a hearing), and to establish good will with them (Kirk 35; Eberhart; Jewett (2013) 9; Childs 66; Schreiner 32; Tonstad 83). The benefit of this wool-gathering is that right here at the start of the book we have a great opportunity to learn about how Paul conceived of his ministry, his mission, and his message, and how he wanted to frame all that for his audience of mostly strangers in Rome.
Paul’s Authorship & Identity
1.1 identifies the author as the Apostle Paul. This authorship has never come into serious question, though it has become common for commentators to point out that the end of the book calls out several individuals who likely aided in the letter’s composition: Tertius, who transcribed the letter; Paul’s “co-worker” Timothy; his “relatives” Lucius, Jason, and Sosipater; and the deacon^ Phoebe, his benefactress in Corinth, and the woman who delivered the letter to Rome and likely orated it to the churches there (16.1, 21-22; see Eberhart; Gaventa). The extent to which these individuals contributed to the contents of the letter can never be known, but it’s clear that we should do away with any image of Paul locked away in his room and think of the writing of Romans. In all likelihood its composition as as social as its reading.
But who is this Paul? Or better, how does he present himself to his Roman audience? We know a lot about Paul from the New Testament: He’s a proud Jewish man, trained as a Pharisee under the best scholars of his day. After a dramatic encounter with the risen (and ascended) Jesus of Nazareth, he dedicated his life to traveling around the Mediterranean world sharing the message of and about Jesus. But here in 1.1., he introduces himself with three phrases, each of which offers a clue to his self-understanding, especially as it relates to the letter that follows.
First he is “a slave of Jesus Christ.” While we’re used to the language of service in describing religious commitment, we shouldn’t lose sight of the shock of the metaphor, especially in a culture like Paul’s in which slavery was a daily reality (Eberhart; Barrett 17; Spurgeon 19; Stott 46f). It wasn’t just an image of service, but also of degradation and a complete lack of rights or legal recourse (Eberhart; Keesmaat & Walsh 15). For Paul this would have added significance, since we know from Acts 16 that he was a Roman citizen (putting him in a privileged ten percent of the Empire). Yet here, writing to the imperial capital, he sets aside all political rights and privilege and refers to himself as a slave. And not just a slave, but the slave of a man who had been executed as a threat to imperial security. While there is honest debate about the extent to which Romans carries with it an anti-imperial political message (much more on that next time), there can be no doubt that Paul is making a point here. He defines himself as not just working for, but belonging to an enemy of the state, whose name had already, if some ancient sources can be trusted, caused riots within Rome’s Jewish community that got them expelled from the city (Suetonius Claudius 25; cf. Acts 18.2).
Put another way, Roman society worked on patronage, with everyone, from the lowest slave to the Emperor himself being part of a complicated ladder (or really web of ladders) of relationships bound by rights and responsibilities (Witherington 31). By introducing himself in this way, Paul is saying that he is “off the board,” and any authority he has has nothing to do with where he is on the ladder: the only relationship he claims is his servitude to Jesus. This is a radical idea in Roman society.
This “slave” has been “called to be an apostle.” The idea of calling is deeply rooted in the Scriptures: we speak of God calling the universe into existence, calling Abraham to move from Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan, calling the prophets, and so on. It’s connected to the idea of being set apart by God for a specific task. The word ‘apostle’ generally referred to someone sent on a formal mission, such as an ambassador or military envoy, who would represent and act on behalf of the one who sent them (Gorman; Witherington 34f). As an interesting aside, according to Robert Jewett, the main parallel in Roman letter-writing to Romans’ expansive introduction comes from this world of diplomacy (Jewett (2013) 9). Whether or not Paul was echoing this custom intentionally, it is helpful to see the introduction to Romans in this context of embassies and diplomacy, since he sees himself as an ambassador for the most foreign of foreign powers: the Kingdom of God. But, the term apostle quickly took on a fixed meaning within the Christian community, referring to those who had formally received the mission to spread the word about Jesus (Eberhart; Gorman; Tonstad 83). In this technical sense, Paul was an exception, since he had not been a follower of Jesus during his earthly life, but received his mission after his encounter with the risen Jesus on the Road to Damascus. By introducing himself as an apostle, Paul is claiming a certain right and authority for himself that he felt he had to establish and defend (Witherington 35; Eberhart; Tonstad 83). It’s an interesting contrast. In the span of just a few words, Paul has rejected earthly authority and privilege, but claimed a divine authority to lead and teach.
Finally, Paul has been “set apart for God’s gospel.” Like its related concept of calling, being ‘set apart’ for a task by God has a rich history in the Scriptures, especially in the Prophets (see for example, Isaiah 6.8, 49.1, 52.8-10; Jeremiah 1.5). Yet, just as in the previous phrase, this very Jewish verb is connected to a very Gentile noun. Much like ‘apostle,’ the term ‘gospel’ was a military word that took on a new life as a technical term in early Christianity. A gospel in the common sense was an official report of good news from the battlefield, extending even to the triumphal entry of a returning army (Keesmaat & Walsh 16; Eberhart; Gorman). We’ll look at Paul’s gospel more in later posts, but for today, what’s important is that the Triumph Paul is set apart for does not belong to Caesar or any of the Empire’s generals, but rather to God.
And so, even here in the first verse, Paul has already told us a lot about how he wants to be seen and understood: He is a slave — not his own man, but belongs entirely Jesus, who called him to be an apostle and set him apart for the good news of God’s Triumph.
Challenge & Expand
Paul is a complex figure with a complex legacy. During the Protestant Reformation and in those theological traditions most heavily dependent on it, he, and particularly Romans, has been lionized as the canonical interpreter of the Christian message. But others have struggled with how to mesh this classically ‘Pauline’ Christianity with the message and spirit of the Gospels. And because his letters (or those attributed to him) contain the primary New Testament texts used to support the subjugation of women and rejection of queer identities — to say nothing of the whole book he wrote with the purpose of having an escaped enslaved man return to his legal owner — Paul has not fared well over the recent decades of postmodern interpretation.
Moreover, since the 1970s, the so-called ‘New Perspective on Paul’ seriously challenged the traditional Protestant readings on Paul, casting him not as a Jewish convert to Christianity, but as a proud Jewish man who understood his faith in Jesus to complete, not reject Jewish religious practice, and whose real opponent was not Judaism but Roman imperialism. I won’t go too deeply into this debate in this series, since the “New Perspective” has largely carried the day among anyone not a priori committed to Reformation theology. But it remains that the main question posed in this post is surprisingly complex: Who is Paul and what exactly does he believe? These are questions we’ll have to think about carefully as we continue the series. But here at the start, we at least get a good sense of how Paul wants to present himself: As a slave to Jesus, called to be his special envoy (apostle), for the sake of the good news of God’s triumph.
Summary & Conclusions
Introductions are never easy, especially by correspondence. But one thing that helps is knowing who you are: your story, your values, your goals, and your mission. And say what we may about Paul, he knows who he is, what he’s doing, and why he’s doing it. He may be uncertain about how he will be received; but he has no uncertainty about — and, has he’ll say in a few verses, is not ashamed of — his calling and mission: He is entirely committed to serving the message of the good news of God’s victory in and through Jesus of Nazareth. And that is, as they say, a good beginning.
* For full references, please see the series bibliography.
^ It’s hard to know if this role should best be understood in a general way, as someone who saw to the community’s practical needs (e.g., ensuring widows were looked after), or specifically as the formal role of deacon in the church. If it’s the latter, there is the added question of whether she functioned as a deacon, undifferentiated from male deacons, or as a ‘deaconess’, a role that developed by at latest the second century to address pastoral and liturgical circumstances thought inappropriate for men (e.g., baptizing women). Hanks (602) and Eberhart reject this second option as anachronistic.
Matthew Root 