‘Like an Ever-rolling Stream’: Some Recent Commentaries on Romans

¹ Nineham, D. (himself the editor of a series of commentaries) in SJT 29 (1976) p. 291: the plea has more recently been renewed in more general terms: ‘The present flood of commentaries is only comprehensible in a church context, as a survival from the good old days when exegesis could still be seen as normative.… there is in fact far too much exposition of the Bible in present-day scholarship.’ (Räisänen, H., Beyond New Testament Theology: a Story and a Programme [London: SCM, 1990] p. 98.)

² Black, M., Romans (New Century Bible; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans/London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1989 ²). Pp. xv + 224. No price.

Dunn, J. D. G., Romans 1–8 and Romans 9–16 (Word Biblical Commentary 38A and 38B; Dallas: Word, 1988). Pp. lxxiii + 976. No price.

Schmithals, W., Der Römerbrief: ein Kommentar (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1988). Pp. 583. DM 128.

Stuhlmacher, P., Der Brief an die Römer (Neues Testament Deutsch 6; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989). Pp. 237. DM 32.

Ziesler, J., Paul's Letter to the Romans (TPI New Testament Commentaries; London: SCM/Philadelphia: Trinity, 1989). Pp. xv + 224. No price.

³ The fact that there is both a ‘General Bibliography’ (almost identical at the start of both volumes) and separate bibliographies to each section of the letter, as well as further bibliographic references scattered in the text, at times makes it difficult to trace the abbreviated references to works found in the text It can also be frustrating not to be told the views or insights of other scholars but only Dunn's response to them.

⁴ Cf., e.g., on 1.12; 3.3–8; 5.1,5; 6.9, etc. The same is also true at times of the translation offered for a passage and the comment on it e.g. 1.25; 6.22, etc. (I find Dunn's translation puzzling—sometimes so literal as to be hardly intelligible (e.g. 5.15–18; 7.21), sometimes daringly free (e.g. 6.13, 19).

⁵ The Epistle to the Romans (ICC; Edinburgh: clark, 1975, 1979).

⁶ Pace Dunn also, although he is at least prepared to see ch. 5 as a ‘bridging’ chapter.

⁷ Gütersloh: Mohn, 1975.

⁸ 2.16; 6.17b; 7.25b 8.1.

⁹ Paul and Palestinian Judaism: a Comparison of Patterns of Religion (London: SCM, 1977); see also his Paul, the Law and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983).

¹⁰ See esp. (ed.) Donfried, K. P., The Romans Debate (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1977), of which a new, expanded, version is in preparation, and also my The Reasons for Romans (Studies of the New Testament and Its World; Edinburgh: Clark, 1988), and Haacker, K., ‘Der Römerbrief als Friedensmemorandum’, in NTS 56 (1990) pp. 25–41.

¹¹ Dunn p. Ivi; Stuhlmacher pp. 10,19; Ziesler p. 11.

¹² I.e. adherents of a Jewish form of Christianity that observed the Jewish Law.

¹³ The tide of his article in BJRL 65 (1983) pp. 95–122.

¹⁴ Nor does Black mention Sanders' work in his revised commentary.

¹⁵ Cf. Dunn p. 353; but Stuhlmacher does not find this implied contrast in 6.171

¹⁶ So Ziesler p. 48 rightly refers to Paul's ‘almost total ignoring of the Law when he deals with practical, ethical matters’, for ‘there are remarkably few signs that the Law functioned for him as a criterion of behaviour, with the exception of the command to love.’

¹⁷ Cf. Dunn p. 441:‘The law to be fulfilled is the law as it applies to all humanity, Gentile as well as jew …’.

¹⁸ E.g. p. 186; similarly Stuhlmacher p. 63.

¹⁹ That this question arises on this understanding of 3.27–8 is, according to Räisäncn, H., Paul and the Law (WUNT 29, Tübingen: Mohr, 1983) p. 69, ‘quite understandable’; a corollary of that is that it is harder to understand its arising on Dunn's reading of .

²⁰ Schmiihals too(p. 249) finds here a splitting of the Law, yet he also speaks of it being used ‘figuratively’ (uneigentlich) and follows Käsemann in seeing ν⋯μος as God's will in a more general sense rather than as the Law of Moses. Is it really possible to hold all these positions together? Stuhlmacher speaks of a ‘dialectical’ view of the Law (pp. 112.114).

²¹ Stuhlmacher p. 109 puts ‘the law’ in ‘the law of sin and death’ in inverted commas, but understands ‘the law of the spirit of life’ to be the ‘spiritual’ law of 7.14, the will of God.

²² Cf. Stuhlmacher p. 103: ‘a rhetorical variation on the concept of “law”’.

²³ Cf. Wilckens, U., Der Brief an die Römer 2 (EKKNT 6.2; Zürich, etc: Benziger/Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1980) p. 89 and nn. 371–2.

²⁴ Christ the End of the Law: Romans 10:4 in Pauline Perspective (JSNTSup 10; Sheffield: JSOT, 1985). As far as Pauline usage is concerned Paul seems to use the term in comparable contexts in the sense of ‘destiny, outcome’, but cf. Luke 1.33.

²⁵ Ziesler, however, although still thinking that the context favours the sense of ‘termination’, yet feels Badenas' case is too strong linguistically (p. 258). Black's revision takes no account of Badenas' work.

²⁶ That the passage goes on to speak thus of the preaching of the gospel presents difficulties for Stuhlmacher's eschatological interpretation of 10.4, in which the Law plays no rôle in the final judgment (p. 141).

²⁷ Dunn p. 141 finds in 3.3–8 ‘the suggestion that there is something unreasonable or objectionable about God's remaining loyal to a disloyal covenant partner’; however 3.5 surely suggests that the problem is rather God's displaying towards such a covenant partner. (If God's is displayed in a ‘giving up’ as in 1.24,26, 28 then this seems to be what has overtaken the mass of the covenant people: God has abandoned them to their unbelief and has granted their privileges and destiny to believing Gentiles.) Rightly, on ch. 9 (p. 537), Dunn sees that God's ‘credibility’ is at stake—or, better, God's reliability.