Nicholas Wolterstorff, The Mighty and the Almighty

This book engages the important question of how God's authority is related to the authority of the state (2). It is a extended reflection in political theology, that is, thinking in a Christian way about the nature and authority of the state. The book comes out of lectures given by Wolterstorff in 1998, but, interestingly, he says he wasn't happy with the lectures in the form he delivered them (vi), so he set the material aside and returned to it occasionally over the intervening fourteen years, in the course of his other work, arriving at the product produced in this book. The book still retains much of the lecture "feel," in its direct tone and light annotation, but this isn't a deficit, and in fact makes what may otherwise have been overly technical accessible to the interested reader.

Wolterstorff's reflections are built on the character of Polycarp, one of Christianity's early martyrs, who exhibited an almost paradoxical allegiance to Jesus Christ and a recognition of the state. Out of Polycarp's situation, Wolterstorff recognizes two key dualities: "the duality of the authority of the state mediating the authority of God, and the duality of Christians being under the authority of both church and state." It is the exploration of these dualities that occupies the remainder of the book.


After looking at two possible objections to his framing of the situation (one from Yoder and one based on the "two-cities" understanding), he goes on to explore the nature of authority, of government, and of the specific authority to govern. These provide the reader with helpful summaries of what are obviously complex issues, laying important groundwork for the exposition to come. And after investigating Calvin's understanding of the relationship of God's authority and that of the state, he moves on to look at Romans 13, one of the key texts for Christian reflection on the stage.


The chapter on Paul really forms the heart of the book, both because of the historical prominence of this chapter in past Christian thought and because of the fruitfulness of his rereading of the passage. Without going into the details, two key points go together. This first is that most interpreters have looked at the passage and seen the first verse, emphasizing government's God-given authority, as the key to interpretation, whereas Wolterstorff asserts (not without warrant, I think) that verses four and five, which detail more specifically what government is and why it has been so authorized by God (emphasizing government's role as God's agent to curb wrongdoing). He asserts, "With verse 4 in mind, our immediate thought is that they [governing authorities] are not just instituted, period, full stop. . . . we know that they are instituted to do something, appointed to do something" (94, emphasis original). This interpretation is certainly not new, but what is more novel is that, in his argument, this dovetails with an earlier point regarding the nature of authority, where he differentiated between positional authority (that is, actions one possesses the power to enact by virtue of a position of authority) and performance authority (that is, actions that one has been given permission to undertake; 48). While many Christian interpreters have assumed something resembling the first understanding of authority when looking at Romans 13, Wolterstorff asserts that Paul has in mind the latter. This key interpretive move is at the heart of his argument. And he takes his conclusion one important step further. He asserts that the outline of government in Romans 13 would thus imply that government is to be a rights-honoring institution, since transgressing rights is in fact injustice and governments are tasked with punishing, not perpetrating, injustice. This leads him down a path he didn't fully expect at the outset of his own work: "I found a case for the liberal democratic state gradually emerging—albeit for a less individualistic understanding of the liberal democratic state than is common" (5).

 Wolterstorff's clearly written book does an outstanding job of formulating (or at least pointing toward) a theology of government, one that has potential to bear much fruit. Readers interested in questions of politics and theology will do well to take this work into account. Likewise, those interested in Pauline theology or Romans will likewise benefit from engaging with his reading of Romans 13. The book is scholarly, but also concise and direct, making it manageable for the interested general reader, and I hope many pick it up. I look forward to engaging more with his thoughtful writing, for I think it can illuminate why conflicts between religious and political spheres do in fact occur, and help us navigate a path through them that is true to the nature of each, all the while being ultimately faithful to the sovereign Lord who holds our full and ultimate allegiance.

Thanks to Cambridge University Press and the Amazon Vine program for the review copy of this book.

Richard Longenecker, Introducing Romans

Longenecker provides an informative and in-depth survey of the major background issues to the study of Romans. It is basically composed of the material you'd expect to find in the intro of a commentary, but at greater depth. There is some repetition between the chapters, and some of the book could have been tightened up through more smoothly relating the various chapters to one another. It also seemed that his discussion interacted most with sources that were at least a decade or more old (at one point he refers to an article from 1997 as "recent"), though he does selectively draw on some recent studies. But his conclusions are well-reasoned and balanced. There isn't much that is earth-shattering. But I found one of his foundational insights rather fruitful. In his discussion of the recipients, he surveys Roman Christianity, and one of the assertions he makes is that, much like the Judaism in that city, the Roman Christians would have had a close connection with Jerusalem. This is fruitful because it means that it would not have only been ethnic Jews who may have held the law in high regard and may have held a key place for it in the plan of salvation. This insight comes up in a number of chapters and helps reread some of the evidence for what Romans is about in a fresh light. There is definitely much of benefit here, and it certainly whets the appetite for the full commentary (to which he defers discussions repeatedly). In all, a nice volume by a wise scholar.

Good as the privation of evil?

I've been focusing my reading on Pauline studies for the last year or so, and it's been a blast. One of the key issues that comes up again and again, in Paul's letters no less than in the vast literature they have spawned, is the meaning of righteousness, especially God's righteousness. So this has got me reflecting on what I think it is. I think, for many Christians, the answer would involve something revolving around God's holiness, understood as God's perfection and total absence of sin. It is something (akin to a pristine state, innocence) that God imparts to us as a gift. Now, I can't think of anything at all wrong with any of that (though I know some people would certainly quibble with it), but I also think it's woefully incomplete.

In Pauline studies, there is a big discussion of God's righteousness as understood objectively (a righteousness that God possesses and gives to believers) or subjectively (a quality or activity of God that brings about or entails or results in God's saving work). And while I think something of both positions carries valid and important truth, I think there is immense value in looking at God's righteousness subjectively, as something like God's faithfulness and his saving action. I think this helps us go beyond a perspective of good (held implicitly or explicitly) as that which is without evil (though that is a perfectly fine affirmation) to fill that most excellent category of God's righteousness with some amazing content: God's loving faithfulness, his saving grace, his patient purpose.

These few reflections certainly don't even begin to scratch the surface of the exegetical issues entailed in the discussion, but I hope they can be some valuable reflection on Christmas, and God's loving gift in sending his Son. For in Jesus God's righteousness is surely revealed.

Mark Reasoner, Romans in Full Circle

Mark Reasoner's Romans in Full Circle (Westminster John Knox, 2005) is a brief but very helpful survey of historical approaches to Paul's most theological letter. He chooses twelve loci from the letter (heavily weighted to the first eleven chapters, since that is where most of the attention has historically been paid). For each locus, he sets up briefly the issues at hand, and then proceeds to lay out a selective but informative history of interpretation focusing on some of the major interpreters throughout history. He always starts with Origen, and then proceeds through major developments, usually hitting on Augustine, Abelard, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Barth, and Post-Barthian and Narrative approaches (and occasionally mentioning Pelagius and Erasmus, among others, as they are pertinent). This survey usually shows how major interpretations developed, where they changed, and what bearing they have on other loci.

Reasoner's premise is that Romans interpretation is moving in a "full circle" from Origen, who focused especially on the relation of Jew and Gentile in the letter, through Augustine and the focus on the individual, through Luther and a focus on Justification, through Barth and a focus on God and his righteousness, and back through the new perspective and narrative approaches to the relation of Romans to Israel's story and the role that the relation of Jew and Gentile plays in the structure of Paul's argument.

This attention to the original setting, he asserts, is leading readers back toward Origen. He concludes, "These approaches include reading both Christ's faithfulness and faithfulness in Christ as in view in Romans 3, a willingness to discus the universal scope of Christ's obedience at the end of Romans 5, reading the ego of Romans 7 as someone who is not fully in Christ, insisting on a human will whose free choices have real consequences in the order of salvation . . ., viewing ethnic Israel as God's chosen people (Romans 9-11), and reading 13:1-7 with deconstructive strategies that emphasize how believers must not always be subject to the government" (145).

Though he doesn't explicitly set out to evaluate or contextualize the "new perspective," I think Reasoner's survey shows how many parts of the "new" perspective are in fact quite old, giving pause to the oft-leveled criticism that the new perspective is taken with "novelty." Like I mentioned, this book doesn't set out to advocate or criticize the new perspective, but it does provide some important material for the debate.

Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul

Pauline studies have been an interesting and contested field for the past thirty years or so. Even the most fundamental tenets of Paul's theology have been brought into question. Central to the debate has been the question of whether the "Lutheran" reading of Paul and his gospel, which has held sway in the West since the 16th century (or the 4th if you go back to Augustine), is faithful to the essence of Paul's preaching or whether it distorts Paul's intent.

Westerholm, in this spectacular book, provides a great entry point into the debates, careful analysis of the various positions, and a clear, mature assessment of Paul and the modern debates about him. I think this book provides an ideal starting point for people who want to get the lay of the land in current study about Paul, while also interacting (mostly in the notes) with these positions. He then, with surprising humor and wit, puts forth one of the clearest statements I've ever read concerning how Paul understood "law," "righteousness," and "justification by faith." Westerholm brings in the best of the "new perspective on Paul," taking into account a fuller understanding of the Jewish backdrop of Paul's writings and a fuller account of Paul's own thinking on these matters, while also showing that the essential core of the "Lutheran" Paul, especially when augmented and corrected at points, helps present a full and accurate view of Paul's thinking.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is very well written, surveys the most important historical figures in the debate, the most important current contributions, both for and against the "Lutheran" Paul (with frequent use of their own words, so that each author's own flavor and emphasis comes out), and then brings this all together with a great presentation of Paul's thought. His work on the role of the law, summed up in nine theses in chapter 19, is especially good. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did. It has given me a grasp of all of these issues and debates, and a grasp of Paul's own thinking, that seemed almost too elusive to grasp before.

Ben Witherington, Paul's Letter to the Romans (with Darlene Hyatt)

Ben Witherington is one of the most prolific New Testament scholars writing today, and he brings a great volume of learning to the texts. In this book, a "socio-rhetorical" commentary, he takes a careful look at Paul's letter to the Romans, paying special attention to the social setting of Paul and his readers, and also analyzing carefully Paul's rhetorical structure and flow. These two emphases make this book a bit different than many commentaries, in that they bring out these two facets of the text, but I think this makes his book the stronger for it. This well-written commentary does justice to this very important and theological letter, discussing the many important issues of interpretation, all the while keeping Paul's "rhetorical strategy" in view. This helps, in my estimation, to help keep sight of the forest among the trees, by placing particular verses and passages within the larger narrative flow, to help see the relations between the passages and their role in supporting his main argument or countering possible objections. This, in turn, helps keep Paul's main idea always in view.

Witherington, with the help of doctoral student Darlene Hyatt, also adds "Bridging the Horizons" sections that illumine applications of texts and themes to our modern day, a very helpful addition. It is certainly not a comprehensive "application" section, but it demonstrates one possible direction one could go when looking at a particular text, and some of them prove quite insightful.

Overall, I think this is a great book on Romans. Witherington's Methodist leanings certainly show through, as do any commentators, but I think this provides a refreshing, non-Reformed and non-Lutheran take on this letter that is still very balanced and seems to take into account Paul's major points with ease. While not the only book one could or should read on Romans (I'm sure there is no such thing), this book is a worthy addition to a library and makes for very good reading.

Israe's salvation in Romans 9-11

My blog far to infrequently takes up texts of the Bible directly, so a great post by Michael Bird over at Euangelion gives a good occasion. In this post, Bird looks at the "mystery" with regard to Israel's salvation in Romans 11, contending that Paul's vision that all Israel will be saved is placed within a robust remnant theology that he has developed in chs 9-11, and that is a prominent feature of the OT/Hebrew Bible. His reflections are worthy of some consideration, as this is certainly an interesting text, coming as it does at the climax of one of Paul's great theological expositions. Especially as it is sometimes taken to mean something like "all Isarelites will be saved," and is even taken so far as to occasionally be interpreted to imply that this will be outside of salvation in Christ, something that seems to fly in the face of Paul's whole argument in Romans.

Studying Paul with J. D. G. Dunn, 2

I've been continuing my study of James Dunn's Theology of Paul the Apostle. And I have been really ejoying his comprehensive and systematic treatment of Paul's thought. His work is so encyclopedic that I won't even try to "summarize" it in the traditional sense. But instead, I want to continue working through the various pieces of the book, and glean some insights for understanding Paul better. Chapter Two of the book concerns God and Humankind.
Dunn's discussion of God focuses on the "taken-for-granted" nature of Paul's talk about God. God is clearly at the center of Paul's thinking, but at the same time Paul doesn't really expound in any systematic way who God is. But it is emminently clear that Paul's God is the God of the Jews, and further, that God is one. (And Dunn points out that this is actually a source of some tension in Paul's thinking that the one God is in fact the God of the Jews, as he understood himself as the one called to preach this God to the Gentiles.) Really, there isn't too much that is surprising in Dunn's treatment of God, but it still provides an indispensable starting point for a systematic exposition of Paul's theology. And it is worth keeping in mind that Paul considers God's existence and basic character as essentially axiomatic.
The second focus in this chapter (§3) is humankind. Dunn advances his discussion by looking carefully at the important terms that Paul utilizes to discuss humanity: soma, sarx, nous, kardia, psyche, and pneuma. And each discussion proves to be fruitful. But I think the central insights have to do with "body" and "flesh" (soma and sarx, respectively). The core point that Dunn advocates with regard to soma is that Paul understood persons to be fundamentally embodied. That is, when Paul speaks of "body," he dosen't simply mean the physical material that is occupied by a separate "spirit," but more it denotes "the person embodied in a particular environment." The point, then, is that there doesn't exist for Paul a simple spirit-body dualism, but that body denotes an embodied "I" that is more robust, for Dunn more relational, that simply a fleshly shell. The other key point that Dunn makes (and this one is less controversial) is in regard to "flesh." Dunn carefully notes the variety of ways that Paul uses sarx, and lays them out on a spectrum, from simply denoting the physical body to denoting the source of corruption and hostility to God. In this spectrum, he finds the link in the notion that sarx, flesh, is "what we might describe as human mortality." It is closely related to that whithin humans that is fallen, but is not itself the source of that fall, and neither is it in itself evil. It is instead the weak and corruptible material of human existence. Thus, Dunn concludes that flesh was "neither unspiritual nor sinful."
The variety of insights go much further and deeper than these few highlights, but they go to demonstrate the quality of Dunn's work, and also help to illumine some important foci of Paul's thought. And they will lead us into a further discussion, shortly, about the nature of humankind as fallen.

Paul and theories of atonement: Romans 5

Over the past hundred years, it has become common to speak of various theories or models of atonement. And on the whole I think this has been a worthwile enterprise, as we come to appreciate the variety and depth of different ways to speak about what God accomplished in Jesus Christ. We can understand Christ's death as a liberation from forces of sin, death, and evil, or we can understand his death as a sacrifice on our behalf. And there are quite a number of other ways to understand Jesus' death.

I think a truth that is absolutely essential to keep in mind during all of these discussions is that while it may be possible to classify some theories in this way to see how typical images and forms of thought are used to try put into words what Jesus accomplished in his life, death, and resurrection, it is equally as vital to see that no one of these theories is complete in itself, or is or should be isolated from others. It is detrimental to speak of the atonement in terms of say a theory of sacrifice if the image of atonement as the love of God is left completely out of the picture, for instance. And I think a good example of what it means to hold multiple theories or images together is already to be seen in Paul's writing about Christ's death in Romans 5.

A careful reading of Romans 5 shows us quite a number of images or approaches to Christ's death are being held to gether to create a picture of what his death means. Paul speaks of Jesus' death accomlishing justification by grace (which Schmiechen in Saving Power classifies as a theory of atonement), a central image to Paul's thought. But Paul ties this image closely together with God's wondrous love, speaking in 5:5 and 8 about God demonstrating his love in Jesus and his death and pouring that love into our hearts. Paul also speaks of Jesus death as effecting reconciliation, the bringing of humans back into right relationship with God. As part of this reconciliation theme, Paul also speaks of Jesus as the second Adam, fulfilling the role of true humanity and effecting a renewal of Creation, a completing of God's purposes. In addition to these images, Paul also speaks of the efficacy of Jesus' blood (5:9), which points to a sacrificial understanding of Jesus death as covering over sins and removing God's wrath and judgment. And just to complete the picture, there are also overtones of a liberation theory of atonement, as Paul writes in verse 6 that Christ died for the ungodly "while we were still powerless."

It is very instructive to look at the logic and imagery of each of these theories or models independently, to come to a deeper understanding of what it means, but this type of study becomes harmful if any one theory is used in isolation to others. This is not to say that all ways of talking about the atonement are equally correct, but instead to say that it seems clear that no set of images can contain the deep meanings of what God accomplished in Jesus.

The gospel and inclusivity: Romans 2

In today's pluralistic and postmodern world, looking at what it means to be inclusive and accepting is an important task. Because today few thigns are more valued in our culture than these values. And Christian communities have reacted to and incorporated these values differently. Some churches strive to be known by inclusivity and acceptance, while others strive to be on the front lines of the culture war and draw careful boundaries around who is in and who is out. As an evangelical, I feel myself pulled in both directions. And rightfully so, I think. So that is just why I think it is a topic worthy of reflection.

In Romans 2, Paul is working on laying out the logic behind his presentation of the gospel message of justification by grace and inclusion of both Jews and Gentiles in the Christian community. He has begun by making the assertions that God's righteousness is revealed in the gospel and God's wrath is revealed in his reaction to people's rejection of his will. In the first section of chapter 2, Paul takes up what it means for Christians to judge others. He asserts in crystal clear language that everyone deserves to be judged based on truth, but he equates this with "God's judgment" (2:2). But for those of us who aren't God, he says, "So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment?" And I don't think he is just saying that I look like a hypocrite when I castigate someone for stealing but am caught with the same transgression in my background (or when a pastor who has berated homosexual behavior is caught with the same proclivities). I think his logic points more toward a broader assertion: we are all sinners (as he will say over and over in chapter 3), and judgment isn't in our hands.

So what does that mean for me? If you read further in Romans 2, or anywhere else in Paul for that matter, you know without a doubt that he's not talking about an anything-goes, syncretistic Christianity. And Paul is also a staunch defender in the need for Christians to proclaim Christ, and to seek to discern his will (see, for example Romans 12:2 and Philippians 1:9-11). I'm not sure I can lay out exactly what it means to practice these two seemingly contradictory ideas: do not judge, proclaim Christ and discern his will. But I do think that the core of what Paul is getting at is the attitude of the heart. Inclusivity should be our hearts desire, to accept all people as sinners, just as we are, unworthy of God's grace but offered God's unfailing love as a free gift. And no less than that, our heart is bound with Christ and no other, and this means striving always to live as he lived, and to flee from things that are odious and repulsive to God. So my post doesn't end with an easy answer. More it ends with a question, or maybe more, a reflection. That these two things probably should be a conflict within us as a community (if they are not, there is cause for serious worry). Paul probably sums it up best when he says, "Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?" God shows us an amazing love, a love we didn't deserve and can never boast about as being of our own doing. But that love leads us toward repentance. Somehow we need to strive to be that love that is exemplified in kindness, patience, and even tolerance, the kind that leads toward repentance and a new life and existence in Christ.