Status Updates From Romans: Text, Readers, and ...

Those in whom the Spirit does not reign do not belong to Christ; therefore those who serve the flesh are not Christians, for those who separate Christ from His Spirit make Him like a dead image or a corpse...Free remission of sins cannot be separated from the Spirit of regeneration. (Calvin, Commentary on Romans 8:9)

God's justice is said to exist through faith in Christ Jesus, not as though by faith we merit being justified...but because in the very justification, by which we are made just by God, the first motion of the mind toward God is through faith. Hence faith, as the first part of justice, is given to us by God. (Aquinas, Commentary on Romans, 302).

That is our work in this life, with the spirit to put to death the doings of the flesh; every day to afflict them, diminish them, rein them in, do away with them. — Augustine, Sermons 156.9 (Westerholm, 125-26)

If we believe [Christ] was handed over on account of our sins, why do we not regard every sin as hostile and injurious to us, seeing that it is recorded to be on account of these sins that our redeemer was handed over to death? For if any fellowship or friendship should again occur between us and sin, we are showing that we have no regard for the death of Christ Jesus. (Origen, Commentary on Romans, 4.7.7)

Paul the apostle believed "Christ died for our sins." That life-altering conviction is absent from the Second Temple writings that set the boundaries within which "Paul within Judaism" scholars allow him to have moved. Only with irony can such a domestication of his thought be labeled a "radical" perspective on the apostle. (75)

Paul thus appears to have shared the belief of other early Christian writers that the old covenant's rites of atonement served only to foreshadow the once-for-all, effective self-sacrifice of Christ (note 1 Cor 5:7; Col 2:17; Heb 10:1, 4). (55n35)

Few readers of Romans concern themselves with the letter's textual history. For nearly 1,500 years, readers of the Greek text encountered it exclusively in handwritten copies that differed from each other. Almost nobody cared. The majority of readers throughout history have read Romans in translations, or translations of translations, of varying quality. Few have given it a thought. (39)

Reading for NT colloquium Fall 2023 with Dr Jarvis Williams.

Just finished the section on the audience of Romans where Westerholm weighs the “Paul within Judaism” school and finds it wanting.

Completed the section on the text of Romans. Superb so far.

I had not even heard of this, but my brother-in-law gave it to me for Christmas and I’m so glad he did. I’m in the section on the text of Romans, but I’m especially eager to get to his lengthy treatment of the history of interpretation of Romans.