Understanding Romans 9

Part 1: In Light of the Cultural context

Introduction
Romans 9 is probably the most important chapter in the Bible from the perspective of Reformation theology, especially the doctrine of predestination. None other than R.C. Sproul has called Romans 9, “the most significant passage in the New Testament that concerns double predestination.” Calvinists teach that God predestined all those who would be saved apart from faith or foreknowledge of any other human factor, and some Calvinists, such as Sproul, teach that God also actively predestines all who will be condemned, which why it is called double predestination. Calvinists who do no affirm double predestination say that God merely passes over the lost without actively predestining them to damnation. This is the first in a series of articles dealing with the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination. I will not focus on the damnation of the wicked, but on the predestination of the righteous. since Romans 9 is so important to this discussion, the following articles will be a detailed exegesis of that chapter.

Despite, or perhaps because of, its importance to Reformation theology, Romans 9 is one of the most debated, and therefore, most misinterpreted passages in the Bible. Therefore, in a discussion of the meaning of a passage such as this, one must take great care to understand its teachings in their proper cultural, historical, and especially, their literary context. I have already covered some of this ground in previous articles on Romans, which may be accessed on my blog page. But the most important information will be repeated in these articles when relevant.

The first three articles will cover culturally, the ancient Near Eastern mind set, which includes what some have called corporate solidarity, historically, the recent exile and return of Jews from Rome, and literarily, Paul’s overall purpose in writing Romans, and how chapter 9 contributes to this purpose. From a hermeneutical point of view, this latter consideration is the most important of the three, and will receive the greatest attention, but before we consider the literary context, we must cover the cultural and historical factors. below is a discussion of the significance of one important, but little understood cultural matter: the ancient Near Eastern concept of corporate personality.

Corporate solidarity
One of the great repeated mistakes interpreters have made over time has been to impose their modern theological constructs upon the ancient text of Scripture. Romans 9 trails few other passages in falling victim to this error. In his discussion of Romans 9, Calvinist commentator Doug Moo affirms the tendency of interpreters to “import the issues of later Christian theology into Paul’s first century text,” asserting: “too easily we read Paul against our own individualistic heritage and miss the corporate concerns of the first century.” It is important we understand these corporate concerns before we endeavor to grasp what was in Paul’s first century mind when he wrote Romans.

The concept of corporate solidarity, or corporate personality, is that the group is more important than the individual. People with this mind-set respond to events and ideas first by thinking about its implications for the group they were a part of, and only later consider how it will affect them as individuals. Thus the importance of a thing is primarily tied up in its relevance to the larger community. Witherington calls this the dyadic personality. He explains that people with the dyadic mind-set derive their identity form the group they are a part of, not from their individualistic traits. This is the mind-set that all ancient Near Eastern peoples, including the biblical authors, shared.

This is quite the opposite of how modern Westerners think. Today in the West, we derive our identity from the things that cause us to stand out from the crowd. In the biblical world, one’s identity was found in the things that made them part of the crowd. Today, we consider it quaint if a person follows in his father’s footsteps by choosing the same profession. In the New Testament world it was considered scandalous if they did not. Today, when a young couple gets married, they go off and begin to live on their own, to start their new lives together. In ancient Israel, the newly married couple continued to live with the husband’s parents, extending the family, not dividing it.

Reading Romans 9 in its cultural context
How does this relate to Romans 9? Rome was part of the West, not the Near East, wasn’t it? Yes, but Paul was not. He was born in Tarsus, in present day Turkey, and was formally trained in Jerusalem (Acts 22:3). Also, until a few years before Paul wrote Romans, most of the Christians in the Roman church were Jews, who would have been brought up in the concepts of Judaism, the Torah, and the oral tradition of the Pharisees, which means they too would have held to a corporate solidarity worldview.

In fact, the concept of corporate solidarity shows up at the beginning of Romans 9. In his introductory words, he mentions something that is problematic for most Western readers. Paul states that he would rather wish to be accursed by God in order that his people Israel might receive God’s blessing in his place (v. 3). I am sure that I am not the only person who has read that verse and thought, “Wow, I don’t think I could say that. I love the lost, but I am not willing to give up my salvation for them.” But Paul had no hesitation about saying this because he had a thoroughly developed understanding that the group, Israel, is more important than the individual, Paul. He understood that everything he received from God was his because he is part of the larger group of God’s people, Israel. He was not the autonomous possessor of God’s promises or the individual recipient of sonship or any other benefit that came from his faith in Jesus. No. Referring to Israel, he says: “Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs is the divine glory…and the promises (vv. 4-5). It belonged to him because it belonged to them and he belonged to them. That is why Gentiles can only receive salvation by becoming spiritual children of Abraham (Rom 4:16; Gal 3:29), and why Gentiles can only be included in the promises of God by being grafted into the olive tree that is Israel (Rom 11:17-19).

If we are going to understand Romans 9, we have to come to grips with Paul’s corporate mind-set. The post-Reformation interpretation of Romans has been fraught with anachronistic impositions of modern, Western theological and cultural constructs that have governed their interpretation – constructs that could not have been in Paul’s mind as he wrote. Corporate solidarity is Paul’s default mind-set. Any interpretation that is based on modern cultural constructs and is not in agreement with Paul’s presuppositions and paradigm is immediately suspect. We need to free Paul from our traditions and let him speak for himself. That is the goal of our exegesis of Romans 9 that will appear on this blog in future weeks.

Conclusion
In the interpretation of Romans 9 it is important to understand that Paul thought primarily about the group before the individual, and if we do not properly account for that in our interpretation, we are likely to produce an interpretation that is based on mental constructs that were foreign to the writer of the ancient biblical text. If Romans 9 affords more than one interpretation, then the one that best coincides with this paradigm is probably the correct interpretation. Let us keep this in mind as we continue our study. My next article will concentrate on the historical factors that help us understand why Paul wrote Romans, and how chapter 9 contributes to that purpose.

Three Myths about Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Myth #3

Myth #3 – Justification by Faith Is the Central Theme of Romans.

Justification by faith is part of the genetic code of Reformed theology. It was the doctrinal rally cry of the Reformers, and it has been passed down from generation to generation, having established itself as one of the unquestioned doctrines of the modern day church, and rightly so. But to give too much pride of place, even to a great doctrine of the church, can lead to misinterpretation. Since justification by faith was the central doctrine of Luther’s theology, the Reformers assumed the position of declaring it the central doctrine of Paul’s theology, too. And if that is so, then it certainly must be the central teaching of Romans. Romans, after all, is where Luther got this doctrine from, and it is the letter where Paul gives his most detailed theology of justification.

Taking their cue from the Reformers, many later interpreters have also concluded that justification by faith is the central teaching of Romans. As a result, misinterpretations of Romans have dotted the theological landscape. If one misunderstands the central teaching of Romans, misunderstanding the entire book is sure to follow.

One of the first misunderstandings that results from making justification by faith the central teaching of Romans is to regard chapters 9-11 as a theological aside, a three-chapter “rabbit trail” that Paul pursues before commencing the practical section of the letter. This conclusion is necessary because these chapters are about the place of Israel in the plan of God and do not make sense in the flow of an argument that is supposed to be about justification by faith. Lacking any way to fit this discussion into the flow of Paul’s argument, many scholars have concluded that it simply does not flow – that Paul has upset the flow to talk about a different subject. If anyone has upset the flow of Paul’s argument, it is we, the interpreters, not the inspired author. And the flow is upset at precisely the place where we mistakenly think that the whole argument of Romans revolves around the doctrine of justification by faith.

The theme of Romans
Justification by faith is not the central theme of Paul’s theology, and it is not even the central theme of Romans. Paul states the theme of Romans in 1:16-17, and a quick look at these verses reveals that they say nothing about how a person is justified:

I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of salvation for all who believe: first for the Jew and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: ‘the righteous will live by faith.’

Notice that verse 17 states how the righteous, or justified, person lives, but does not mention how the person is justified. It is true that “by faith” is how a person is justified, but that does not seem to be the leading thought in Paul’s argument in Romans. He makes this point in 3:21-31 and he proves it in chapter 4, but after that the discussion moves in another direction. In other words, in Romans, justification by faith is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end. If we want to correctly interpret Romans, we must understand Paul’s central theological purpose. A closer look at the theme, comparing it to the structure of Romans, will make Paul’s central purpose clear.

The theme of Romans directs us to the gospel as the revelation of the righteousness of God. But the gospel also is not an end in itself in Romans. Paul articulates his gospel in Romans, but why does he do it? It is because the gospel reveals God’s righteousness. When Paul teaches that God justifies people by faith, he demonstrates that “God is just” in doing so (3:26). When he refers to the death and resurrection, he calls it the “righteous act” of Jesus (5:18). When he explains why Israel has rejected the messiah, he does so by saying they have not submitted to God’s righteousness (10:3). The entire Book of Romans is a revelation of the righteousness of God, and Paul gives his gospel to the Roman church because the gospel reveals God’s righteousness.

The central theme of Paul’s gospel, and of Romans
The question of the righteousness of God was raised in a particular historical setting. The nation of Israel had rejected Jesus as their messiah and the followers of Messiah Jesus in Rome were mostly Gentiles. God’s promises, which were given to Abraham and his seed, were being fulfilled by people who were not the children of Abraham. Worse, the children of Abraham seemed to be left out of the promises due to their rejection of Jesus. So the question was raised: is God going to be faithful to his promises, or has Israel’s unbelief canceled the promises? Paul’s answer is that God is righteous, and a righteous God will certainly make good on all of his promises.

What most discussions of the central theme in Paul’s theology lack is a discussion of what Paul himself called the central theme of his ministry, if not of his theology. In Ephesians Paul refers to the mystery that God gave him to proclaim to the Gentiles. It is the inclusion of the Gentiles in the plan of God to form “one body” (Eph 3:6). This union of Jews and Gentiles is what Paul calls “this gospel” (v. 7). If Romans is a presentation of Paul’s gospel, then the uniting of Jews and Gentiles as “one body” in Christ should be central to the teaching of Romans. In fact, it is. That is why the theme of the letter contains the phrase, “to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” When Paul discusses the relationship between Jews and Gentiles with respect to the gospel, he spends three chapters explaining it. These three chapters are the climax of Paul’s argument, the very point he was leading up to all along. In chapters 9-11 Paul shows how God has brought Jews and Gentiles together as one people of God. While in Ephesians he calls it “one body” and “one new man” (2:15), in Romans he refers to it as one “olive tree” (11:17-21). Thus Paul’s gospel centers in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and through faith, all men can be justified and included into the one people of God, which includes both Jews and Gentiles.

Paul teaches the Roman church that the Jewish rejection of Messiah Jesus does not permanently disqualify them from the promises, despite the gentile reception of those promises through their faith in Jesus. To make his point, Paul first shows that Jews and gentiles are on level ground. Both are guilty of sin and worthy of death (1:18-3:20). Thus both are in equal need of salvation through Messiah Jesus. This salvation comes through faith in Jesus (3:21-4:25). Because it is received through faith, Gentiles can receive the blessings promised to Israel without having to become Jews. This gives hope and assurance to the believer, who has been set free from the bondage of sin and the law (chs. 5-8). If the believer is assured of future salvation, and nothing in creation can separate them from the love of God, then what does that say about the Jews? The assurance of future salvation pertains to them, too (9-11). Not only will Israel be saved, but it is through the salvation of the Gentiles that it will happen.

That is the teaching of Romans, and that is Paul’s gospel. The righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel that saves Jews and Gentiles, showing God to be righteous, fulfilling all his promises. Justification by faith explains how it is possible, but it is just one piece of the puzzle. Justification by faith is a crucial doctrine of the church. It is one of the central teachings of the New Testament and of Paul. But it is not the theme of Romans, and the more we recognize that Romans is more about God and his righteousness than it is about us and how we are saved, the better equipped we will be to interpret it correctly.