The meaning of 'gospel' in Romans

Posted 30 March, 2007 - 19:22 by Andrew

The question of the nature of Paul’s gospel has been raised in a lengthy comment by samlcar. This seems important enough to deal with in a separate post. The suggestion is made that the word is used in two distinct ways: i) as referring to the ‘actual traditions of Jesus’; and ii) as a summary of what is ‘believed’ in order to become part of the Jesus community. Neither of these appears to be ‘apocalyptic’ or temporally delimited. Rather than attempt a full survey at this point we’ll begin by looking at the use of the word in Romans, which by any reckoning must have central relevance for Paul’s thought as a whole. I think we will find that the term ‘gospel’ has a distinctly eschatological (rather than apocalyptic) meaning.

Rom. 1:1-6: the ‘gospel of God’ concerns his Son, who was declared to be the Son of God in power by his resurrection, an state of affairs which invites the ‘obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations’. Both ‘resurrection’ and the theme of the obedience of the nations are eschatological (rather than apocalyptic) motifs from the Old Testament linked with the restoration of Israel. The ‘gospel’ here is the announcement not simply that God has introduced universal salvation but that through Jesus he has inaugurated the end-of-the-age (that is, eschatological) renewal of the people of God foreseen by the prophets.

Rom. 1:16-18: the gospel is the power of salvation specifically from the ‘wrath’ of God, both for Jews and for Greeks. Again I think we should resist the universalizing perspective. It is clear from Paul’s later argument that wrath against Israel consists of national destruction, an event which would jeopardize the promise to Abraham (Rom. 9:22). It would then be quite reasonable from his point of view and in the light of Old Testament eschatological patterns to expect a similar ‘judgment’ on the idolatrous and immoral culture of the Greek-Roman world. In Paul’s scriptures the ‘day of wrath’ (cf. Rom. 2:5) is always a historical event, God’s judgment either on Israel or on its enemies. So again, the gospel is an announcement of salvation from eschatological judgment.

Rom. 2:15-16: according to Paul’s gospel, on this day of ‘wrath’ God ‘judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus’. This is part of the same eschatological scenario.

Rom. 10:15-16: Paul quotes Isaiah twice: first, the image of the herald in Isaiah 52:7 who proclaims ‘good news’ that YHWH reigns and is returning to Zion following the devastation of Jerusalem; secondly, the question in 53:1: ‘Who has believed what we have heard?’ Paul’s complaint is that Israel has not listened to the ‘good news’ that the ‘servant’ through his suffering has brought about an atonement for Israel. It is important to note that the servant was ‘stricken for the transgression of my people’, not for the whole world (see ‘Why the emerging church should believe in penal substitutionary atonement’). Israel, therefore, in Paul’s argument, has rejected the ‘gospel’ of eschatological forgiveness and renewal.

Rom. 11:28: the ‘gospel’ is again intimately bound up with deliverance of sinful Israel from judgment. The Jews are enemies of the gospel which, on the one hand, declares that God will forgive them if they repent and believe and, on the other, has opened a way for Gentiles to to be grafted into the olive tree. This is an eschatological narrative: it has to do specifically with what happens to Israel during the present crisis of judgment and renewal.

Rom. 15:16, 19: the point is repeated from 1:1-6 that Paul’s eschatological role as a minister of the gospel is to facilitate an appropriate response from the nations to the judgment-restoration action of YHWH. This response is defined by the prophets. It is an intrinsic element in the climax to Israel’s story.

Rom. 16:25: the ‘gospel’ stands in interpretive parallel with the ‘revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith’. The emphasis here is on the gospel as the announcement that access has been given to Gentiles to participate in the renewed people of God. It has to do with an eschatological sequence of events as one age gives way to the next.

So to my mind, Paul’s gospel in Romans is consistently eschatological in its orientation. The gospel is the announcement, first, that a remnant will be saved from destruction because of the faithfulness of Jesus; and secondly, that Gentiles can find salvation from the God’s judgment on the pagan world by becoming part of the renewed, Spirit-filled covenant people. This is rather different to the interpretation which regards the gospel as a general assurance of salvation for all mankind. We can get to that conclusion in effect - participation in God’s new creation remains open to all people. But my concern is that as long as we try to live anachronistically within the story of eschatological transition, as long as we insist on short-circuiting the logic in the interests of a simplistic spiritual message, we risk severely restricting the creational scope of the church’s ‘mission’.

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Comments

one salvation or two?

by samlcarr - 02/04/2007 - 22:20

In Rom 1:5 Paul specifically sets the scope of the his commission as ”to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations”. The salvation so offered is universal in scope and is based purely on what Christ Jesus accomplished and is as promised by the prophets, tying together the salvation of both the Jews and the rest of the world in the eschaton.

My own (non-standard) understanding of the rhetorical flow of Paul’s argument makes me sense a change at Rom1:18, and this is signalled by Paul’s abrupt shift from the first person to the third. He then consistently maintains the 3rd person till the end of the chapter. It is possible, I think, that Paul may be summarising here an argument made by the followers in Rome. The concentration on condemning “them” is what is suspect and Paul repudiates this wholesale condemnation in chapter 2. For this reason, I think that “the wrath of God” towards nonbelievers is in fact primarily what Paul is objecting to, God is indeed wrathful but not just towards “them”, those who have the law face just as much, if not more condemnation and real judgement wll be quite impartial and that is precisely what Rom 2:15-16 says.

Paul then develops this theme that all, Jew and gentile are “under sin” and therefore worthy of condemnation. He states that the salvation that is offered is universal because in Christ “the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law”(Rom 3:21). the very heart of the gospel is that through faith in “Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (4:24) we can all have the same salvation. Paul immediately ties our salvation through God’s abundant gracre to us in Christ with the recurring theme that obedience to the gospel will result in suffering, but we can even rejoice in our suffering for we are looking forward to glory (Rom 5:1-5 and again in Rom 8!).

I don’t see this as a temporary state at all, it is not here limited to something that Paul and his generation alone were to experience but this is in fact the very nature of the gospel, that the obedience of faith will result in suffering to the true follower.

There is absolutely no doubt that the prophecies have been fulfilled, the mystery of the ages is now revealed and the eschaton has been in some way inaugurated. Paul could have quoted Dylan “the times they are a changin”. But finding a two phase nature to God’s saving work and the salvation that all receive by grace through faith in Christ Jesus as “a remnant will be saved from destruction” and then the rest as “Gentiles can find salvation from the God’s judgment on the pagan world by becoming part of the renewed, Spirit-filled covenant people” seems an unjustifiable splitting apart of two realities that Paul himself mightily contends to bring together.

The creational scope of this same gospel message is made very clear by Paul in Rom 8. So, the gospel properly understood, is not just a spiritual message, nor is it limited in any way. Any limitation placed on the Lordship of Jesus is the result of our blindness and disobedience to Jesus the Messiah’s all encompassing sacrifice and universal victory over sin in all of its forms and that is the gospel!

Live to serve : Serve to live

Two narrative streams leading into one river

by Andrew - 02/04/2007 - 23:45

I can follow your argument that in Romans 2:1-16 Paul insists on God’s impartiality in judgment, but I don’t really see why 1:18-32 needs to be read as Paul’s summary of the opinions of believers in Rome. It looks to me rather more likely that he is countering judgmentalism on the part of Gentiles in Rome (because wrath has already come upon the Jewish community in the form of expulsion and harrassment) by presenting a very Jewish critique of pagan idolatry and immorality. The shift to the third person simply reflects the change from talking about his apostolic ministry to setting at an analysis of the pagan condition.

But finding a two phase nature to God’s saving work and the salvation that all receive by grace through faith in Christ Jesus as “a remnant will be saved from destruction” and then the rest as “Gentiles can find salvation from the God’s judgment on the pagan world by becoming part of the renewed, Spirit-filled covenant people” seems an unjustifiable splitting apart of two realities that Paul himself mightily contends to bring together.

It’s interesting, though, that Paul more than once emphasizes two phases to the process of judgment and salvation: the Jew first and then the Greek (Rom. 1:16; 2:9-10). I don’t really see why the ‘two phase’ idea is problematic - it is simply a feature of the historical narrative. There is a clear line of thought in the New Testament which says that God will save Israel from its sins (cf. Matt. 1:21). There is also a clear line of thought which says that as a consequence of this salvation apart from the law Gentiles will have the opportunity to be incorporated into the people of God. Popular theology tends unhelpfully to muddle them.

What I have argued is that just as salvation for Israel means concretely salvation from national destruction, salvation for the Gentiles meant becoming part of a community - heirs of the promise to Abraham that his descendants would inherit the world - that would survive God’s wrath against Greek-Roman paganism. This, of course, is contentious, but not because it splits apart the ‘one body’ that resulted from the reconciliation of both Jew and Gentile to God (Eph. 2:16). My point is simply that the reconciliation of Israel to God and the reconciliation of Gentiles to God with the result that they are incorporated into the ‘commonwealth of Israel’ are within the historical narrative two distinct things.

Re: Two narrative streams leading into one river

by samlcarr - 03/04/2007 - 00:39

Thanks Andrew, that makes things a lot clearer for me.

My reading of Rom 1:18-32 is very tentative but I think it may have substance. It’s possible that Paul is just using a rhetorical device of setting up a ‘straw man’ and then knocking it down but the sense I get from his suddenly accusatory switch in 2:1 is that the preceding is either ”true but been misused” by some of the folks at Rome to distort the real truth- God is wrathful about sin but sin is just as prevalent amongst those who have the law as those that don’t, or it is a quote of something that they are known to have said. I sense real anger at 2:1 so it’s just possible that this is something Paul has said that has been pulled out of context by these certain persons and Paul is now emphatically setting the record straight. But nonetheless a bit of speculation on my part perhaps not really justifiable by anything in the text…

I agree that there is some difference between how salvation has come to the Jews vs everyone else. That is a historic reality but while the routes may be slightly different, through the law and apart from the law, it seems to me that Paul is saying that now the field has been leveled, now there is only one way and that is common for both - faith in Jesus the Messiah.

Live to serve : Serve to live

An olive tree in a level field?

by Andrew - 03/04/2007 - 08:52

We can talk about a level playing field, but we should be careful not to allow that to obscure the narrative location of Romans, for a couple of reasons at least.

i) It’s likely, as I suggested above, that many of the theological-cultural tensions that Paul deals with are tied to narrative historical elements that too easily get filtered out as we construct our more systematic, generalized summaries of the argument.

ii) Paul is writing prior to AD 70, and one crucial aspect of the narrative remains unresolved - whether Israel as a nation will repent and escape destruction. The olive tree of Israel is still standing and the Gentiles are being grafted into it. If the tree will eventually be cut down and burnt, we will clearly have a rather different arrangement.

Romans 1:18-32 - An interlude

by peter wilkinson - 03/04/2007 - 14:39

This comment is purely to do with the issues raised by samlcarr on Romans 1:18-32, and the change from third to second person in 2:1.

First - 1:18-32 echoes standard Jewish polemic against the gentiles, Wisdom 12:23 - 13:10 and 14:9-31 especially.

Second - 1:18-32 turns out, on closer inspection, to be just as much a criticism of Jewish sinful behaviour as it is of the gentiles. (I described it as ‘back-handed’ criticism of the Jews on ‘The gospel in Romans’ thread). The most striking examples of this are echoes in 1:18-32 of Jewish idolatry, beginning even at Sinai when they “exchanged the truth of God for a lie” - Romans 1:23,25/Psalm 106:20; Jeremiah 2:11; as a result of which God “gave them over” to idolatry and sinful behaviour - Romans 1:24,26,28/Psalm 81:12; and which became a feature of her national life - Romans 1:21/Jeremiah 2:5, 2:11; Romans 1:25/Isaiah 44:20, Jeremiah 10:14,. And so it goes on with many more echoes and allusions in the passage to Israel’s unfaithfulness.

Paul’s rhetoric is more skilful than it first appears. He baits a trap and then springs it from 2:1 onwards, so that “you who pass judgement do the same things” (Romans 2:1) has added significance, in the light of all the references to Jewish sins, not just those of the gentiles, in 1:18-32. The chapter division at 2:1 tends to interrupt the flow of the logic.

It has been suggested that there are two ‘personae’ adopted by Paul. There is Paul the ayatollah, heartily concurring with Jewish condemnation of gentile behaviour in 1:18-32. According to this view, this persona turns out to be false, and is exchanged for another persona from 2:1 onwards: Paul the rabbi, whose gentler, more reflective and thoughtful comments take the place of the more acerbic condemnations. This view has been taken up as a revisionist intepretation of Paul’s condemnation of homosexual behaviour in Romans 1:26-27. Maybe he wasn’t agreeing so whole-heartedly with the condemnation as it might appear.

Whatever you think of this, it could certainly be argued that Paul places Jew and Gentile together in the dock of God’s justice more emphatically than has often been realised.

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