A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles

by Stanley K. Stowers

Paul's Letter to the Romans is one of the most influential writings of Christian theology. From the time of Augustine it has been central in discussions about sin and salvation, about guilt, fear of God, and gratitude for God's mercy. In this groundbreaking reinterpretation, Stanley Stowers argues that Christian tradition has interpreted Romans in an anachronistic fashion fundamentally different from how readers in Paul's time would have read it. He provides a new reading that places Romans within the sociocultural, historical, and rhetorical contexts of Paul's world.

Stowers challenges the idea that salvation is the central issue of Paul's letter and that the letter's addressees include Jews. In Stowers's reading, Paul, a Jew immersed in Hellenistic culture, is addressing his letter to an audience of gentiles. Paul says that in faithfulness to his mission and God's promises, Jesus restrained his messianic powers, allowing an opportunity for gentiles to be redeemed. Thus God demonstrated his justice and, by raising Jesus, created a new line of kinship by the Spirit that will lead gentiles to moral and psychological self-mastery. The acceptance and self-mastery that gentiles seek is not to be found in observing teachings from Jewish law. According to Stowers, Romans neither offers an answer to human sinfulness nor presents Christianity as a religion of salvation. Stowers thus reinterprets the relation of Paul's Christianity to Judaism, the meaning of faith, and the significance of Jesus Christ.

Genres: Religion, New Testament, Theology

395 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 1994

Reviews

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Book of Romans is probably the most important theological book ever written. It’s my second least favorite book in the Bible and only coheres when post-hoc rationalizations are employed. This author tries to strip out the after-the-fact understanding and looks at what the original intent of the writing was meant to convey by placing the writing into its context, relations and intentions.

There is a sociological understanding that often gets ignored today. To be part of Rome one had to be a master of one’s own world and the passions were meant to be the slave of the reason and one's will needed to be curbed such that the individual was motivated by dignatas that came from participating in the Roman-way-of-life. Paul understood that and later interpretations of Romans often forget the original objective of Romans.

Augustine in 400 AD reconciles Paul’s theology, Plotinus’s transcendentalism, and Cicero’s sensibilities and defines Christianity for the next 800 years. By doing that, Augustine harmonizes Paul such that his original intent is obscured by later dogmatic assertions that reformatted what Paul was originally getting at.

The author doesn’t mention that in Romans Paul speaks about the imminent second coming within the life time of his audience he is writing to, and speaks about how the people should submit to earthly governing authorities, namely the Romans, the same ones who subjugated the Jews and who would shortly destroy their Temple and decimate the people of Jerusalem.

I admit at times the book was hard for me to follow since I dislike Paul and Romans and find the canonical meaning of Romans the dumbest part of the Christian Theology and because I think it’s mostly written by a crazy person who claims he saw a dead Jesus say to him ‘it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks,’ Acts 9:5, KJV.

Even for someone like me who dismisses the theology within Romans as nonsense however anyone looks at it, this book works when it is putting Paul into his context, relations and original intentions.

[Ron at Rockhaven · Rating 5 out of 5]

a revolutionary study. Built on four decades of new understandings of Paul's letters done by other scholars, still Stowers' work was a turning point and propelled forward the I suppose still controversial in some quarters New Perspective of Paul. So much more great stuff has come since this book was published.

[Henry Imler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone who has grown up in a traditional dominated by an augustinian psychological reading of Romans should read this book. (He kinda got it wrong).

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most important books on St. Paul's epistle to the Romans in recent years. Though Stowers presses his points a bit too far at times, his interpretation of Romans as a whole, as a single argument rather than a series of different-but-somehow-related topical selections, is compelling.

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Could be better organized, but it was fascinating, convincing, and illuminating. I will certainly buy Stowers's next book.