A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (1994 Stowers), book

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A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (1994) is a book by Stanley Kent Stowers.

Abstract

"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 addresses include Jews. In Stower'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."--Publisher description.

"Stowers challenges nearly the entire Christian interpretative history on Romans, claiming that Christian interpretation’s emphasis on sin and salvation is anachronistic and would not have made sense to readers in Paul’s day. In contrast, Stowers strives to read the text historically, placing it within the sociocultural and rhetorical milieu of Paul’s Greco-Roman world. As a result of this approach and in contrast to previous interpreters, Stowers does not imagine a Christian Paul writing to a mixed audience of Jews and Gentiles, nor does he see Paul narrating the story of humanity’s universal depravity to sin and subsequent salvation through Christ. Rather, Stowers envisions a Jewish Paul, embedded in his Hellenistic context, writing to an audience of Gentiles alone. Paul’s purpose in writing is to explain to these Gentiles how they, though ruled by the passions, have been granted through Christ’s faithfulness (and not the law!) a way to become righteous before God, just as the Jews before them were granted a similar way through Abraham. When Jesus, in faithfulness to his mission and God’s promises, adapted himself to the ungodly position and restrained his powers, this delayed Gentile punishment. Consequently, after his resurrection, God created a new community established in the Spirit, opening a way for the Gentiles to gain self-mastery over their passions and stand righteous before God." – Deborah Forger, University of Michigan

Editions

Published in New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.

Table of Contents

• Preface and Acknowledgements

• List of Abbreviations

• Chapter 1: Toward a Rereading of Romans

• Chapter 2: Readers in Romans and the Meaning of Self-Mastery

• Chapter 3: Gentile Culture and God’s Impartial Justice

• Chapter 4: Warning a Greek and Debating a Fellow Jew

• Chapter 5: Paul’s Dialogue with a Fellow Jew

• Chapter 6: Paul on Sin and Works of the Law (3:9-20)

• Chapter 7: God’s Merciful Justice in Christ’s Faithfulness (3:21-33)

• Chapter 8: One God and One Father Abraham (3:27-5:11)

• Chapter 9: The Gentile Share in Christ’s Obedience and Life (Chapters 5-8)

• Chapter 10: A Warning and a Promise to Gentiles (Chapters 9-11)

• Chapter 11: Faithfulness as Adaptability. An Ethic of Community for Gentiles (Chapters 12-14)

• Conclusions

• Notes

• Index