Читать книгу Paul Among the Gentiles: A "Radical" Reading of Romans - Jacob P. B. Mortensen - Страница 37

The final introductory questions we must address are, what were the occasion and purpose of Romans? We must ask whether Romans stands out from the other Pauline letters, meaning that the occasion behind this letter is less clear than it is in 1 Cor, 1 Thess, and Gal, for example. The many articles in Karl P. Donfried’s The Romans Debate has helped survey the options for decades now.1 Even though many options point in different directions, they may not be mutually exclusive. And even though Romans does appear to be more voluminous in the scope of its teachings, that may not make the occasion and purpose of the letter more elusive. However, here I consider the primary purpose of Paul’s letter.

For centuries, Romans was considered to be a summary of Paul’s theology. Philipp Melanchthon described Romans as a compendium of Christian doctrine,2 and more recently, Günther Bornkamm argued that Romans was Paul’s last will and testament.3 However, if Romans is a doctrinal letter or a testament for a congregation that Paul had not founded, then the specific interest – on the Roman side – evaporates. Why would the Romans be interested in this specific letter? Why would they be interested in a last will and testament more concerned with issues that would arise in Jerusalem than in Rome? And if we agree that Romans is to be perceived more as doctrine than as a specific letter, is it not peculiar that Paul’s understanding of the church, his treatment of the Lord’s Supper, the resurrection, or Christology is rather meagre? If Romans is presented as a theological treatise, it is hardly a comprehensive one. Also, any specific knowledge of the Roman congregation Paul betrays in the letter would undermine such a stance, since the focus would then shift from doctrine to a specific purpose and occasion. That is why those who think of Romans in such a way minimize the value of Rom 14–15 for reconstructing the situation at Rome.

Some scholars have proposed that the occasion and purpose behind the letter is Paul’s plan to go to Jerusalem. This has been proposed by Jacob Jervell.4 Jervell argues that in Romans, Paul imagines or prepares what he will say at the Jerusalem church when he arrives with the collection. As apostle to the Gentiles, Paul anticipates a conflict with the Jews in Jerusalem. Thus, Romans is Paul’s way of preparing his arguments for a discussion in Jerusalem. However, Paul never indicates that there was even a question concerning the circumcision of Gentiles. Why would Paul send such a ‘secret letter’ to Rome, if he actually has Jerusalem in mind? If Paul wanted the Roman congregation to stand behind him because it occupied a prominent position in the heart of the Gentile world,5 and his gospel would ring hollow if he had not yet visited Rome, such reasoning amounts to ‘letting the tail wag the dog’.6 The collection to be taken to Jerusalem cannot explain the major thrust of the letter, nor be the major clue to its interpretation, because Jerusalem appears only as a tangential element.7 If ‘the Jerusalem trip’ is favoured as a solution, it is at the cost of the rhetorical integration of the letter’s framework with its body, and the entire rhetorical integrity and continuity of 1:18 to 15:13. Too much of the letter appears to be targeting concerns in Rome, not Jerusalem, especially 12–15. Paul mentions Jerusalem only to buttress his authority as an apostle, also in Rome.

Some scholars have proposed that the purpose of Romans was to provide an apostolic foundation for the congregation in Rome,8 or that Paul exercised authority as apostle to the Gentiles.9 In Rom 15:20, Paul claims that he would not build on another’s foundation. However, that seems to be exactly what he was doing. Günter Klein has observed that Paul must have thought that the Roman congregation lacked a proper apostolic foundation, and, hence, was not a proper church of God.10 But if the Roman congregation lacked a proper foundation, why would Paul speak so highly of it (1:8; 15:14)? Besides, Paul never explicitly identifies the need for an apostolic foundation for Rome as a justification for his visit in 15:24, 32. Instead, he writes about Jerusalem and Spain. And finally, very little of the content of the letter can be marshalled in support of Klein’s proposed purpose for Romans.

L. Ann Jervis agreed with Günter Klein that Paul was, indeed, exercising authority over the Romans as apostle to the Gentiles, even though her point of departure was the letter’s framework.11 However, the problem with Jervis’s position12 is that it is unclear how the framework of the letter explains the body, or explains Paul’s primary purpose in writing. For instance, why does Paul argue so strongly about Judaism in a letter to Roman Gentiles, or about the relationship between the ‘strong’ and the ‘weak’? What is lacking in Jervis’s exposition is that Paul does not ground his apostolic authority as an end in itself; he does it so his advice to the Roman congregation will be followed.

Francis Watson has argued that Paul wrote Romans primarily to unite divided communities.13 Watson argues that the Roman Jewish Christians met for worship separately from the Gentile Christians, and that Paul wanted the two groups to come together, even if the Jewish Christians were forced to leave the synagogue in the process.14 According to Watson, the Roman Gentile ‘strong’ are to ‘welcome’, the Jewish Christian ‘weak’ who attend their gatherings. However, Watson does not explore the possibility that both the ‘weak’ and the ‘strong’ could be Gentile believers, when Paul urges non-law-observing Gentiles to welcome the law-observing Gentiles ‘into’ their house. The word ‘welcome’ (προσλαμβάνω) in 14:1 and 15:7 does not indicate that the ‘weak’ and the ‘strong’ previously met as separate groups. Rather, προσλαμβάνω is used in these verses in the middle form, in the sense of ‘accept’ or ‘receive’. As in the letter to Philemon, Paul is no stranger to Philemon, yet he admonishes him to ‘welcome’ him. Consequently, the ‘strong’ and the ‘weak’ are not separate groups, but factions within the same congregation. To argue that 14:1 and 15:7 indicate two separate groups is to give these verses too much weight, and it goes directly against the olive tree metaphor in 11:17–24, where the Gentiles do not form their own separate tree, but are dependent on Israel. Thus, the problem in the Roman assembly was that the ‘strong’ and the ‘weak’ disapproved of each other’s practices when they were together. Therefore, in 14:1 Paul never asks the ‘weak’ to abandon their Jewish practices, but instead calls for mutual acceptance (15:7).

The most popular theory about the situation behind Romans argues from the record of the Edict of Claudius, expelling the Jews from Rome because of a squabble over ‘Chrestus’. If ‘Chrestus’ refers to Christ, then someone believed in Christ in the Roman synagogues in the late 40s. After Claudius’s edict of expulsion, usually placed in the year 49, the Jews were forced to leave Rome. The Gentiles, who had learned of Christ in and from the Jewish communities, were not forced to leave Rome, but now had to meet on their own. When Nero became emperor in 54, the expelled Jews were able to return to Rome, only to find ‘Christianity’15 thriving. The argument goes that during the years of the Jews’ absence from Rome, Gentile converts had joined the assemblies. These Gentiles would not have the same appreciation of Judaism as the ‘Christians’ of the synagogues would have had. Consequently, the Gentile ‘strong’ would have found themselves in conflict with the returning Jewish ‘weak’. The Jewish followers of Christ, who had comprised the majority of ‘Christians’ in Rome prior to their expulsion in 49, found themselves in the minority on their return. Now, the non-Law-observing majority questioned the ethnic practices of the returning Jews. Thus, according to scholars who favour this interpretation, Paul wrote Romans to resolve the tensions between the Gentile non-Law-observing ‘strong’ and the law-observing Jewish ‘weak’. Such tensions would require Paul to summarize his gospel insofar as it concerns the relationship between Gentiles and Jews in God’s historic plan for Israel. He would have to exposit his gospel more fully, to successfully persuade an audience that did not personally know him and his preaching.

Some scholars, such as Wayne A. Meeks and J. Paul Sampley, have questioned whether the letter to the Romans offers adequate evidence for a specific reconstruction of the Roman situation.16 They argue that Paul’s approach is rather oblique, and that he employs rather vague formulations.17 According to Meeks and Sampley, Paul identifies the situation more directly in his other letters than he does in Romans.18 Paul had never visited Rome, so his letter may more accurately reflect his own life and ministry, rather than any particular circumstances in Rome. Similarly, in his review of 14:1–15:13, Robert J. Karris argued that, in a more generalized manner, Paul was reiterating to the ‘weak’ and the ‘strong’ of Rome his exhortation to the ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ of Corinth, regarding meat sacrificed to idols.19 However, the peculiar details of Rom 14–15 and the differences between Romans and 1 Corinthians defy such a conclusion – and the same applies to the differences between Romans and Galatians.

The differences between Romans and 1 Corinthians more than suggest different situations underlying the two letters. For instance, in Romans, Paul never mentions food offered to idols, the possibility of eating in the temple of an idol, or the problem of ‘knowledge’. Instead, and moreover, Paul adds certain specifics to the Roman situation, for instance, that the ‘weak’ in Rome eat vegetables, observe days, and abstain from wine, features that do not characterize the Corinthian ‘weak’. These specifics limit the applicability of the paraenetic instructions to a specific situation in Rome, rather than widen the perspective in a generalized way. Another important feature is the space Paul devotes to the problem, and his careful descriptions of the opposing positions in the congregation. He even numbers himself among the ‘strong’ (15:1) in this conflict, which indicates that he is well aware of the issues involved. The rationale must be that, since he can predict his allegiance to one of the two groups in the conflict, he must somehow know where they stand. Otherwise, using ‘false’ designators would cripple his case. Thus, Paul’s use of the designations ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ adds to the specificity of the situation, since it would have been counterproductive to apply these labels to the congregation, had he not known them to identify specific groups.20 Finally, Rom 14–15 inhabits a prominent position as the climax of Paul’s exhortations at the end of the paraenesis. It suggests the immediate applicability of these matters to the Roman congregation. Thus, the placement of these exhortations in such a prominent position in the letter clearly reflects the community’s needs.21

With all the above-mentioned possibilities surveyed, what do I imagine to be the primary purpose and occasion behind Romans, from a historical and philological perspective, rather than a radical one? Paul’s primary purpose in writing Romans was to clarify questions and problems among Gentile followers of Christ in the Roman congregation. Some of these Gentile Christ-followers may have been proselytized Gentiles who, on the one hand, were considered Jews, because they had undertaken the most important Jewish identity marker (circumcision), but who, on the other hand, were not considered ‘real’ (historical-ethnic) Jews by other Jews, because they had converted to Judaism as adults, and had no genealogical connection to Judaism. That is, they were jewishish Gentiles, or ex-pagan Gentiles. However, there may have been no proselytes at all in the Roman congregation to which Paul writes. But if there were, these proselytized Gentiles should be considered among the ‘weak’, and the most jewishish of the Gentiles in the Roman congregation. But the conflict between the ‘strong’ and the ‘weak’, being a conflict between Gentiles only, still work if there were no proselytized Gentiles. All we need for a conflict between the ‘strong’ and the ‘weak’ is a group of (fanatic) God-fearers who observe the prescriptions of the (Mosaic) law concerning eating, drinking, and certain days. These Gentiles, in contrast to the other Gentiles in the assembly, still believed it to be mandatory to follow the (Mosaic) law concerning these matters. Paul wrote Romans to ensure that they coorporate as a group, and ‘welcome one another’ (14:1; 15:7), just as God (and Christ) has welcomed them into the family of Israel as Abraham’s heirs.22

Romans 14:1–15:6 deals with problems pertaining to the socio-religious distinctions within the Roman assembly, and also with the impression the assembly conveyed to the surrounding society. That is why Paul so early in his letter carefully depicts the person he is writing to: a proselytized, judaizing, jewishish, ex-pagan pagan, Gentile-Jew who judges others (2:1), who relies on the law and boasts of his relationship with God (2:17), who knows the will of God, and can determine what is best because he is instructed in the law (2:18), who considers himself a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness (2:19), a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth (2:20), who teaches others, but does not teach himself, who preaches against stealing, but steals (2:21), who forbids adultery, but commits adultery, who abhor idols, but robs temples (2:22), who boasts in the law, but dishonours God by breaking the law (2:23), who does not do what he desires, but does the very thing he hates (7:15). The diatribe Paul addresses to this fictive Gentile interlocutor throughout the majority of Rom 1–11 serves as the foundation – and personification – of the problems Paul addresses in his specific admonitions to the Roman congregation in 14:1–15:6. That is how the unity, continuity, coherence, and sequence of the letter is maintained, while the specificity of the letter as a real letter with a real and specific situation, occasion, and purpose is preserved.

As a final speculation we may ask: What might be the reason(s) that Paul (primarily or exclusively) addresses this letter to the Roman Gentiles in this literary way? I offer three short answers or perspectives. First, he is an apostle to the Gentiles (1:5; 11:13; 15:16–17), and he addresses his letter to Gentiles in order to authorize and legitimize his apostleship to the Gentiles exclusively as the apostle to the Gentiles. Second, he fashions his address to Gentiles in order to arouse jealousy among the Jews (cf. Rom 9–11). This may be a tricky and ambivalent reason, but it may be a part of his missionary strategy, and he may have conceived of it as part of God’s handling of history. Paul may have conceived of this as God’s way of including both Jews and Gentiles, and in the end, it is a mystery (cf. Rom 11:26). Finally, Paul may fashion his address to Gentiles to accelerate the ‘Day of Wrath’, the Second Coming of Christ, and the end (ἔσχατος). This may be some kind of messianic logic in which Paul believed. Obviously, Paul perceives his missionary strategy to precipitate God’s judgement of the world. And when it happens, the dead will rise, and a new heaven and a new earth will replace the old. Hence, Paul wrote Romans exclusively with Gentiles in mind, in order for God’s reign to be complete. From this point of departure, the radical perspective may help studies of Romans to prove how far we can reach with such assumptions of audience and addressees in mind.