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Neither height nor depth: discerning the cosmology of Romans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2011

Beverly Roberts Gaventa
Beverly Roberts Gaventa*
Affiliation:
Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ 08540, [email protected]
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Abstract

Although the term cosmos in Romans is largely used in a neutral fashion to refer to humanity, as has been demonstrated by Edward Adams, the cosmos is nevertheless the location of a conflict between God and anti-God powers, most prominently the powers of Sin and Death. This conflict comes into view in Paul's repeated use of the language drawn from the arenas of slavery, statecraft and the military (especially in Romans 5–8). In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Sin and Death are themselves defeated (5:12–21; 6:8–11), but they are not yet destroyed. The conflict continues in the present as comes to expression in Romans 8, where Paul claims that the whole of creation (both human and non-human) waits for deliverance. And the conflict continues especially in 8:31–9, with its strong assertions that no power is powerful enough to separate humanity from its rightful Lord, assertions that would be unnecessary apart from the conviction that there are indeed anti-God powers whose goal is to reclaim human lives. Paul's cosmology, then, is less concerned with the order and wonder of the cosmos than with its need of redemption, a redemption begun but not yet complete. Cosmology and soteriology are inextricably connected to one another.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 64 , Issue 3 , August 2011 , pp. 265 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2011

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References

1 Constructing the World: A Study in Paul's Cosmological Language, Studies of the New Testament and its World (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000). See also his article, ‘Greco-Roman and Ancient Jewish Cosmology’, in Pennington, Jonathan T. and McDonough, Sean M. (eds), Cosmology and New Testament Theology (London: T. & T. Clark, 2008), pp. 5–27Google Scholar.

2 Theology of the New Testament, 2 vols (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1951–55), vol. 1, pp. 254–59.

3 ‘κóσμος’, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 9 vols, ed. Gerhard Kittel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–74), vol. 3, pp. 868–98.

4 ‘The Understanding of Man and the World in the New Testament and in the Greek World’, in Bultmann, Essays Philosophical and Theological (London: SCM Press, 1955), p. 78; quoted in Adams, Constructing, p. 17.

5 The phrase is Adams’ summary, Constructing, p. 18.

6 In Romans, this critique of the ‘world's’ value system does appear, but it is cast in the language of living ‘according to the flesh’ (8:6–14) and being ‘conformed to this age’ (12:1–2).

7 Adams, Constructing, p. 149.

8 Adams argues on the basis of usage in Paul's Jewish contemporaries that κóσμος here means the future eschatological world that is to be inherited by the faithful (adducing Sir 44:21; Jub 17:3; 22:14; 1 Enoch 5:7; Philo, Somn. 1.175; Philo, Mos. 1.155; Constructing, p. 168).

9 Constructing, p. 220.

10 On doxology in Romans, see Gaventa, , ‘From Toxic Speech to the Redemption of Doxology in Paul's Letter to the Romans’, in Wagner, J. Ross, Rowe, C. Kavin and Grieb, A. Katherine (eds), The World Leaps the Gap: Essays on Scripture and Theology in Honor of Richard B. Hays (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), pp. 392–408Google Scholar; ‘“For the Glory of God”: Theology and Experience in Paul's Letter to the Romans’, in Foskett, Mary F. and Allen, O. Wesley Jr., (eds), Between Experience and Interpretation: Engaging the Writings of the New Testament (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2008), pp. 53–65Google Scholar. This line of investigation was suggested to me by an earlier essay of Minear, Paul S., ‘Gratitude and Mission in the Epistle to the Romans’, in Hermelink, Jan and Margull, Hans Jochen (eds), Basileia: Tribute to Walter Freytag (Stuttgart: Evang. Missionsverlag GMBH, 1959), pp. 42–8Google Scholar.

11 For this translation, see Gaventa, ‘From Toxic Speech’, p. 402; and Elliott, Neil, The Rhetoric of Romans: Argumentative Constraint and Strategy and Paul's Dialogue with Judaism, JSNTSup. 45 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), pp. 144–5Google Scholar.

12 Gaventa, ‘For the Glory of God’, p. 64; J. Martyn, Louis, Galatians, Anchor Bible Commentaries (New York: Doubleday, 1997), pp. 91–2, 569–70Google Scholar.

13 On which see Wagner, J. Ross, Heralds of the Good News: Isaiah and Paul ‘In Concert’ in the Letter to the Romans, NovTSup 101 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 184–6Google Scholar.

14 Most of the texts to be discussed in this section do not use the word κóσμος, but it would be short-sighted to restrict discussion of Paul's cosmology narrowly to his use of the term κóσμος. Just as Paul refers to the death of Jesus in Romans without ever using the term and has things to say about the Christian community without using the term 'ϵκκλησία prior to ch.16, there may also be cosmology without the word κóσμος.

15 For argumentation in support of this claim about 1:24, 26 and 28, see Gaventa, , Our Mother Saint Paul (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2007), pp. 113–23, 194–7Google Scholar.

16 Martyn, Galatians, pp. 370–3.

17 In addition to the commentaries, recent contributions by Joseph R. Dodson and David J. Southall are instructive. In The ‘Powers’ of Personification: Rhetorical Purpose in the Book of Wisdom and the Letter to the Romans, BZNT 161 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), Dodson instructively notes that ‘personification’ is little in evidence in Paul's letters outside of Romans, where it is concentrated in chs 5–8 (pp. 120–1). His own conclusion is that Paul uses ‘personification’ in order to distance God from evil and to identify the Law as Sin's victim rather than as a villain in itself (p. 139). Dodson provides a helpful discussion of personification as a rhetorical device, but he does not ask whether Sin and Death are something more than or other than personifications, a question addressed by Southall, David J. in Rediscovering Righteousness in Romans: Personified dikaiosynē within Metaphoric and Narratorial Settings, WUNT 240 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), esp. regarding Sin, pp. 96–112Google Scholar. Southall in turn draws on Colin Gunton's instructive discussion in The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), esp. pp. 53–82.

18 The word occurs also at 12:20 in the biblical citation from Proverbs 25:21, ‘If your enemy is hungry, give him something to eat’.

19 Versöhnung: Eine Studie zur paulinische Soteriologie, WMANT 60 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1989), pp. 40–83.

20 Bradley, K. R., Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), esp. pp. 14–15, 113–43Google Scholar.

21 Hence the title of his book, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982). Patterson defines slavery as ‘the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons’ (p. 13).

22 Polybius, 3.69; Philo, Flaccus 47; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 5.5.3; 6.25.3; and elsewhere.

23 Some commentators have argued that 16:17–20 is an interpolation; see, for example, Keck, Leander, Romans, ANTC (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2005), pp. 377–9Google Scholar, and Jewett, Robert, who provides an extensive review of the literature in Romans, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), pp. 986–8Google Scholar. There is no manuscript evidence which supports this theory, however, and I concur with those who hold 16:17–20 belongs with the letter; see Fitzmyer, Joseph A., Romans, AB33 (New York: Doubleday, 1993), p. 745Google Scholar; Moo, Douglas, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 928Google Scholar.

24 For example, Herodotus, Histories 1.45.1; 3.13.3; Xenophon, Cyropaedia 5.1.28; 5.4.51; Deut 2:24, 31; 20:13; Josh 2:14, 24; Jer 21:20; Ezek 7:21.

25 Iliad 15.215; 21.101; Odyssey 9.277; 22.54; Josephus, War 1.352; 4.82; Deut 7:16; 1 Sam 15:3. For argumentation in support of this paragraph, see Gaventa, Our Mother Saint Paul, pp. 113–23, 194–7; ‘Interpreting the Death of Jesus Apocalyptically: Reconsidering Romans 8:32’, in Still, Todd D. (ed.), Jesus and Paul Reconnected: Fresh Pathways into an Old Debate (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), pp. 125–45Google Scholar.

26 Romans, p. 497.

27 Romans, p. 8.

28 The Epistle to the Romans, vol. 1, Introduction and Commentary on Romans I–VIII, ICC (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975), p. 435. Similarly, N. T. Wright comments that ‘the statement that “God is for us” is about as basic a way as can be conceived of summing up the revelation of God's saving justice in the gospel’, Romans, NIB 10, ed. Leander E. Keck et al. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2002), p. 612.

29 On the extensive debate about the list in vv. 38–9, see Carr, Wesley, Angels and Principalities: The Background, Meaning and Development of the Pauline Phrase hai archai kai hai exousiai, SNTSMS 42 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 112–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wink, Walter, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), pp. 47–50Google Scholar; Jewett, Romans, pp. 350–5.

30 We might recall Psalm 104:25 which shrinks Leviathan down to the size of God's plaything or, as my colleague Dennis Olson puts it, God's ‘Rubber Ducky’.

31 Romans, pp. 529, 534.

32 Barrett, C. K., Romans (London: A. & C. Black, 1957), pp. 173–4Google Scholar.

33 Note, however, that Robert Jewett has recently called into question the forensic interpretation of v. 33 (Romans, pp. 539–40).

34 For further discussion and bibliography, see Wright, Archie T., The Origin of Evil Spirits: The Reception of Genesis 6.1–4 in Recent Literature, WUNT 2.198 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005)Google Scholar, and Bell, Richard, Deliver us from Evil: Interpreting the Redemption from the Power of Satan in New Testament Theology, WUNT 1.216 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007)Google Scholar.

35 To be sure, the passage is highly rhetorical, but the rhetoric simply underscores Paul's desire to persuade and does not signal that the content is to be overlooked or ignored.

36 There is almost no overlap, for example, with the issues addressed in Dennis Richard Danielson's illuminating anthology, The Book of the Cosmos: Imagining the Universe from Heraclitus to Hawking (New York: Basic Books, 2000).

37 For a sketch of the consensus argument, see Adams, Constructing, pp. 174–84, and more recently Hahne, Harry Alan, The Corruption and Redemption of Creation: Nature in Romans 8.19–22 and Jewish Apocalyptic Literature (London: T. & T. Clark, 2006), esp. pp. 177–81Google Scholar. This paragraph and the two which follow draw heavily on Our Mother Saint Paul, pp. 53–5.

38 See BDAG 313; LSJ 527. On the range of connotations of ἑκων, especially in early literature, see Rickert, Gailann, ΕΚΩΝ and ΑΚΩΝ in Early Greek Thought, American Classical Studies 20 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

39 A related question concerns the relationship between the believing ‘we’ and the rest of humanity, on which see Susan Eastman, who argues convincingly that the apocalypse of God's sons and daughters in Rom 8 anticipates the future rectification of all of humanity, Jew and Gentile alike (‘Whose Apocalypse? The Identity of the Sons of God in Romans 8:19’, JBL 121 (2002), pp. 263–77.

40 In conversation, my colleague Shane Berg suggests the clarifying example, ‘The Senate awaits the revelation of the new majority leader’. In this sentence, the ‘majority leader’ is singled out, but the leader is nonetheless a member of the Senate.

41 Less ambiguous and more to the point are the hymnic lines of 1 Cor 8:6.

42 Galatians, p. 42.

43 An earlier version of this article was read in the Pauline Soteriology group at the 2010 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, at the kind invitation of Professors Susan Eastman and J. Ross Wagner. I am grateful to them for their invitation, as well as to Edward Adams for his response, and also to Shane Berg, J. Louis Martyn, Paul W. Meyer, Carey Newman and Patrick J. Willson for commenting on earlier drafts, and to Brittany E. Wilson for research assistance.