¹ This was originally a paper presented to the Pauline Soteriology Group at the Society of Biblical Literature (23 Nov. 2009, New Orleans), so I was thinking here especially of those engaging with me in the panel discussion – Ann Jervis, Michael Gorman and Douglas Moo. But this list could be greatly lengthened to include figures ranging from G. A. Deissmann to Morna Hooker and E. P. Sanders.

² See Gorman, M. J., Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul's Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009)Google Scholar.

³ See Moo, D., The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), esp. his analysis of Rom 5–8 on pp. 290–547Google Scholar, summarised on pp. 290–5.

⁴ Cf. Ridderbos, Herman, Paul: An Outline of his Theology, trans. De Witt, J. R. (London: SPCK, 1977; 1966), pp. 91–326Google Scholar; Dunn, J. D. G., The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Edinburgh and Grand Rapids, MI: T. & T. Clark and Eerdmans, 1998), §§14 and 15, pp. 334–412Google Scholar – who does recognise some of the problems here (see esp. his comments on pp. 390–6); Schreiner, T. R., Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998), pp. 245–468Google Scholar, summarised on pp. 245–9; and Paul Apostle of God's Glory in Christ: A Pauline Theology (Downers Grove, IL, and Leicester: InterVarsity Press Academic and Apollos, 2001), pp. 189–249 (see also pp. 251–329); and Marshall, I. H., New Testament Theology: Many Witnesses, One Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), pp. 432–52Google Scholar.

⁵ Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009 (hereafter DG.)

⁶ In fact important questions are usually begged at this point in relation to the specific content of justice and related forensic metaphors and procedures, hence my use of the word ‘particular’. The issues are treated masterfully by MacIntyre, Alasdair, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988)Google Scholar; a little more briefly by Hauerwas, Stanley in After Christendom? How the Church is to Behave if Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation are Bad Ideas (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1991)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 2: ‘The Politics of Justice: Why Justice is a Bad Idea for Christians’, pp. 45–68. I do not have the space to consider them here as they deserve.

⁷ Cf. Stendahl, K., Paul among Jews and Gentiles, and Other Essays (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976); DG, pp. 172–6, 247–83Google Scholar.

⁸ See the companion piece to this article by Alan J. Torrance in this issue.

⁹ I point the finger primarily at Melanchthon; see DG, pp. 258–61. For nuanced accounts of the key representatives of the Reformation see Steinmetz, David, Luther in Context (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1995)Google Scholar; idem, Calvin in Context (New York: OUP, 1995); idem, Reformers in the Wings: From Geiler von Kayserberg to Theodore Beza (New York: OUP, 2001); and McGrath, A. E., Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 3rd edn (Cambridge: CUP, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ I am not suggesting that Paul's ‘justification’ language or argumentation is problematic – only its construal in this particular post-Protestant form, which I take to be an inaccurate account of Paul's language and argumentation (and of the best in the Reformation).

¹¹ It is hard to put these issues more clearly than Heron, A. I. C. in ‘Homoousios with the Father’, in Torrance, T. F. (ed.), The Incarnation: Ecumenical Studies in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed A.D. 381 (Edinburgh: Handsel Press, 1981), pp. 58–87Google Scholar.

¹² DG, ch. 6, pp. 167–218.

¹³ A famous phrase usually associated with Dunn: see ‘The New Perspective on Paul’, in Dunn, James D. G., Jesus, Paul and the Law (London: SPCK, 1990; 1983), pp. 183–206Google Scholar. N. T. Wright is frequently associated with this view as well – and in fact used the expression first, although he attributes it in turn to Krister Stendahl: see Wright, , Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), p. 28Google Scholar. The various main alternatives within the new perspective are canvassed in DG, ch. 12, pp. 412–66.

¹⁴ See DG, chs 2, 3, 5 and 6, pp. 36–95, 125–218.

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ Domestication actually subordinates sanctification to justification, by placing it second in an overarching sequence and thereby overriding it. The result is the portrayal of all of Paul – at times rather uneasily – in terms of the foundationalist ordo.

¹⁷ My SBL interlocutors exemplify this nicely. Moo's, Douglas J. response is available as ‘Review Article: The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul by Douglas A. Campbell’, JETS 53/1 (2010), pp. 143–50Google Scholar; Michael Gorman's is available, in seven posts, at www.michaeljgorman.net.

¹⁸ This is an important methodological point and not merely wishful thinking; we must presuppose an author's coherence until proven otherwise or we can introduce no coherence into our interpretations at any point. The result of the latter must inevitably be incoherence at every level – and, strictly speaking, in our own texts and their interpretation!

¹⁹ See DG ch. 9, pp. 284–309. Cartesian, Empiricist and Liberal political concerns may all play inappropriate roles here.

²⁰ See n. 13 above.

²¹ Hence the importance of Michael Polanyi's epistemology in DG; see esp. ch. 7, pp. 960, n. 63, and pp. 989–90, n. 3; see also Torrance, T. F., ‘The Church in the New Era of Scientific and Cosmological Change’, in Theology in Reconciliation: Essays towards Evangelical and Catholic Unity in East and West (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1975), pp. 267–93Google Scholar.

²² By ‘apocalyptic’ I mean bearing a genetic relationship to the work of J. L. (Lou) Martyn, and emphasising in particular Paul's endorsement of an unconditional epistemology; see esp. Martyn's classic essay ‘Epistemology at the Turn of the Ages: 2 Corinthians 5.16’, in Farmer, W. R., Moule, C. F. D., and Niebuhr, R. R. (eds), Christian History and Interpretation: Studies Presented to John Knox (Cambridge: CUP, 1967), pp. 269–87Google Scholar.

²³ Martyn's use of the title ‘Teacher’ is more respectful of his position than the more traditional term ‘Judaizer’; see his Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (London and New York: Doubleday, 1997). The discussion in Rom 1–4 is grammatically singular so when discussing this text I tend to employ the singular. The grammar elsewhere in Paul is plural, however, indicating that there was probably a group involved (see esp. Rom 3:8b; 16:17–20). Having said this, it seems likely that it had a ringleader, rather like any Pauline group, so in my view not much is to be gained by specifying invariably whether Paul's target is singular or plural.

²⁴ The principle of desert, usually formulated in relation to a specific notion of justice, must override all historical particularities and divine acts of privilege or mercy. The result is an astonishing redefinition of specific faith-communities out of existence.

²⁵ The probable subject of Paul's surprisingly aggressive charges in 2:17–24; see Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 18.81–4; noted in DG, p. 561.

²⁶ For discussion and references see DG, pp. 566–8.

²⁷ And it is worth noting carefully how my reading understands Paul's argument to conclude. The conventional reading holds that Paul is trying to establish universal sinfulness as a suitable prelude to the proclamation of a gospel of salvation by faith alone. Paul's use of the law and its works serves this grander purpose – an admission of sin. So the key concluding verse is 3:20. I suggest that this gets things the wrong way around. When Paul discusses works of law, both in Rom 1–3 and elsewhere, their direct falsification seems to be his principal argumentative goal – the undermining of a rival, conditional gospel – a conclusion stated clearly in 3:19. Any emphases in context on universal human depravity serve this primary goal – by suggesting that this rival gospel cannot actually cope effectively with human depravity. So when Paul says that ‘no one will be pronounced righteous through doing works of law’ (3:19) he means that this construal is simply wrong, and this is the goal of his argument.

²⁸ I use the term ‘Fundamentalist(s)’ advisedly of course. Although anachronistic in certain respects, in other respects it is entirely appropriate. Fundamentalists tend to be theologically foundationalist, beginning with judgement, sin and the wrath of God, and building from these to a conception of salvation in highly conditional terms. They find abandoning certain received readings of scripture hard, and there is usually a pronounced insider–outsider mentality. All these things seem to have characterised the Teacher(s) as well. Cf. the classic account by Marsden, George, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd edn (Oxford: OUP, 2006)Google Scholar.

²⁹ See the manuals by Theon, Hermogenes, Aphthonius, Nicolaus the Sophist and Sopatris (commenting on Aphthonius); references in DG, p. 533.

³⁰ See Malherbe, Abraham, Ancient Epistolary Theorists (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1988), letter 68, pp. 17–19Google Scholar.

³¹ The entire Roman satirical tradition is relevant at this point – Lucilius, Horace, Persius and Juvenal. Also useful are Epictetus’ Discourses, Justin's Dialogue with Trypho and Origen's Contra Celsus.

³² Braund, Susanna M., The Roman Satirists and their Masks (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, Duckworth, 1996), p. 56Google Scholar; see also Braund, Susan, Beyond Anger: A Study of Juvenal's Third Book of Satires (Cambridge: CUP, 1988)Google Scholar.

³³ Notably ‘To Novatus: On Anger’, and ‘To Serenus: On Tranquility of Mind’.

³⁴ In the US context, where this article was originally delivered in an earlier form (see n. 1), I contrasted the (in)famous right-wing radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh with comedian Stephen Colbert, the latter famed for his satire of right-wing media in the long-running TV spoof The Colbert Report. Paul's readers have for too long blithely assumed the relevance of the former role without considering the appropriateness of the latter.

³⁵ Welborn, L. L., Paul, the Fool of Christ: A Study of 1 Corinthians 1–4 in the Comic-Philosophic Tradition (London and New York: T. & T. Clark and Continuum, 2005)Google Scholar. There is also an important overlap here with the phenomenon of hidden transcripts, brilliantly articulated by James Scott in Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). Another way of putting this would be to say – again especially poignantly, although by no means exclusively, in the south of the US – that the conventional reading of Romans is ‘too white’. Paul's original recipients would have been the ancient equivalent of ‘black’; they would have thought and talked about literate authority figures in ways more analogous to the subversions often utilised by dominated classes as outlined by Scott – as figures to be subtly ridiculed, when that was possible, not automatically admired and respected.

³⁶ I am alluding here to Stephen Saenger's research which suggests that non-spaced texts which consequently function in the first instance syllabically require a fundamentally different reading process from modern spaced texts, including preparatory, oral and repeated readings: see his Space between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997). Stanley Stowers first pointed out to me the importance of this work, although its significance is contested. My thanks also to Duke Classicist William Johnson for help in this regard; his Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities (Oxford: OUP, 2010), is now definitive on this and related matters. (Johnson does not accept Saenger's specific thesis but argues nevertheless for a fundamentally different ancient reading culture.)

³⁷ Cf. Head, Peter M., ‘Named Letter-Carriers among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri’, JSNT 31/3 (2009), pp. 279–99Google Scholar; and ‘Letter Carriers in the Ancient Jewish Epistolary Material’, in Zacharias, H. D. and Evans, Craig A. (eds), Jewish and Christian Scripture as Artifact and Canon (London: T. & T. Clark and Continuum, 2009), pp. 203–19Google Scholar.

³⁸ DG describes 56 (summarised on pp. 397–410). Justification–sanctification tensions are also especially important in my view; they manifest as exegesis moves from Rom 1–4 to 5–8, but space forbids discussing them here. See DG, chs 3 and 11, pp. 62–95 and 406–9.

³⁹ Beker, J.-C., Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), esp. pp. 11–19Google Scholar; cf. also pp. 23–36 and xiii–xx (1984 paperback edn).

⁴⁰ Melanchthon's observation concerning Romans – that it is a doctrinae christianae compendium – is much derided but almost universally followed in actual fact.

⁴¹ Baur, F. C., Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, his Life and Works, his Epistles and Teachings: A Contribution to a Critical History of Primitive Christianity (London: Williams & Norgate, 1873–5)Google Scholar. Romans’ contingency is addressed in DG, ch. 13, pp. 469–518.

⁴² That is, since the publication of Sanders, E. P., Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977)Google Scholar.

⁴³ Paul mentions repentance in 2:4; this intriguing verse is discussed in DG, pp. 366–7.

⁴⁴ My critics tend to overlook this critical caveat. That is, I am often informed that the Old Testament and Judaism contain emphases on judgement, and even in terms of strict desert. Hence my argument at this point is ostensibly falsified. But the mere presence of these motifs in the sources is not in dispute. I agree that they are there. It is the reduction of the Old Testament and/or Judaism to this emphasis alone that is scandalous, and this is what the usual reading of Rom 1–3 effects. To argue otherwise is to miss the point – and to risk colluding in an erasure of historical Judaism. (Moo provides a nice instance of this mistake: ‘Review Article’, p. 150.)

⁴⁵ The specific debates here are complex but in my view do ultimately resolve into a fundamental embarrassment for the conventional reading. Much turns on the interpretation of Rom 7:7–25; Gal 1:11–17; and Phil 3:6; and also of the relevant passages in Acts (primarily 9:1–19; 22:4–16; 26:9–18). For more details see DG, ch. 5, pp. 125–66.

⁴⁶ My interlocutors at SBL are again helpfully indicative at this point. Moo rather bravely endorses the position that the conventional reader must assume here under the impress of justification theory (so he denies that this is a problem). But such denials, once they are grasped with all their implications, seem fundamentally sinister. And Gorman slides past this issue rather quietly (i.e. leaving it not merely unresolved but unrecognised – a variation on the basic strategy of denial).

⁴⁷ That is, insofar as it is generated by the usual reading of Rom 1–3 and related texts which criticise ‘works of law’. There are other difficult texts in Paul which still need to be dealt with.

⁴⁸ Terence Kealey wrote a piece satirising lust on campus by writing in the voice of an appallingly inappropriate don for the Times Higher Education Supplement, 17 Sept. 2009 (see http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=408135&c=2, accessed June 2010). But many outraged readers failed to detect his stratagem. Mary Beard responded to the subsequent media storm, displaying all the advantages of careful training in the ancient classics, by pointing out the satirical genre and the lamentable consequences of overlooking it (http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2009/09/sex-with-students-is-terence-kealey-as-misunderstood-as-juvenal.html, posted 24 Sept. 2009, accessed June 2010). She also noted in passing, ‘[w]hen Roman Juvenal huffs and puffs about the immorality of his own late first/early second century Rome, is he conservative misogynist that he superficially seems to be, or is he holding up those views for ridicule. [Sic] In Juvenal's case almost certainly the latter.’