Corpus-Paul

["moon-ryul jung" <moon AT saint.soongsil.ac.kr>]

Dear Loren,

a good summary of Romans! I would agree with the summary and
my understanding of Romans does not seem to be essentially
different from yours, except for the interpretation of some passages.
That's good, because it makes it more likely to proceed 
through discussion. Let me try to explain our differences.

[Loren]
While I admire Mark’s work and continue to learn very
much from him, I believe he falls into the trap which
ensnares many Romans exegetes as he forces the entire
letter -- each chapter, each verse, it seems --
through a single interpretive sieve. In his case, the
“sieve” is a unified church/synagogue. I agree with
Mark's reconstructed scenario, just as I agree with
his particular interpretations of Rom. 4:18-25,
11:13-32, 14:1-15:13 as applied to this context. But
we should bear in mind that Paul was addressing not
only a particular situation in Rome, but also his own
basic beliefs, and these on top of rather thorny
dilemmas. I imagine Paul sitting in Corinth on that
fateful March of 57, anxious about his impending trip
to Jerusalem, pondering God’s consistency with the
purposes of election (Rom 9:6-29) justification (Rom.
9:30-10:21), and the salvation and redemption of all
Israel (Rom. 11:1-12).
.....
.....
 Then we have his basic
doctrine of justification laid out in Rom. 2-4 --
arguments which would perhaps have had more bearing on
the Galatian crisis than the Roman one, but important
enough to repeat just in case the Jewish body
miscontrued the admonishments against Gentiles in
11:13-32 and 14:1-15:13. 

---------------------------------------------------
And, on top of all that, we
have the problematic Rom. 5-8, which I think must be
framed against Paul’s basic eschatological beliefs
about the resurrection -- which he would naturally
have wanted to share with those church/synagogue
members he had neither seen nor preached to. He thus
tells them that with Christ’s death and resurrection,
the age of Adam is coming to a close (Rom. 5); that a
believer who has baptized into Christ’s death has
already begun to overcome the powers of the present
age -- and has thus (partly) died to sin, death, and
(indeed!) the law (6:1-7:6).
-------------------------------------------------------

[Moon]

Yes, Rom 5-8 contains Paul's eschatological beliefs
about the resurrection. Here he expands the theme of 
the righteousness revealed apart from the Law of Moses,
which the Gentiles can receive without being under the 
government of the Law, in particular, without getting
circumcised as the identity marker of being Jewish.
He explains the further blessings of faith in Christ
or its implications in Rom 5.  Having established
that both the people of the Law and the Gentiles can inherit
the promise of God, it is quite natural to further explain the
blessings and implications of that promise. As you noted, 
these things are quite general, not tied to the specific situation
of the Roman church/synagogue.  In particular, the Adam-Christ analogy
is quite cosmic. 

After describing the grand scheme of God's salvation through Christ, 
Paul suddenly talks about the Law's coming-in and its purpose in 5:20.
I think this talk about the Law is situation-specific. Those who were
under
the covenantal nomism would have said "What's the role of the Law, then?"
For the Jews, it had an important role, that of the identity marker of
being the people of God. They would have required Gentiles to assume that
identity marker to be God's people. To fight against this aspect of the
covenantal nomism, Paul argued that the righteousness has been revealed
apart from the Law. At the same time, he hinted its purpose, i.e. that of
revealing what sin is, in 3:20, 4:15, and 5:13.
But he does it in 5:20 again in more depth, and  will do it in great 
length in chapter 7. 

My point is that Paul talks about the coming-in of the Law in  5:20
in order to answer the potential argument "if all is through Christ, 
what is then the Law?" The question was partly answered in chapter 3 and
5 where it was argued that the Law reveals what sin is. Paul's statement
that the law came in to increase transgression shows basically the same
argument as the previous statements that through the Law the knowledge of
sin comes.

Perhaps my understanding of Rom 5:20 has been influenced by my
assumption that hUPO NOMON is such a unique situation or regime of
the  Jews, though it has a wider implication, i.e. of revealing sin
to be sin for the whole world. 
  Cf. 3:19: whatever the law says, it says to those who are
  under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole  
  world  may be held accountable to God. 

In the previous thread, I argued that hUPO NOMON in Rom 6:14 means
"under the government of the Law" and the implied audience which
Paul intended to teach are the Gentile believers, following Mark Nanos.

[In The Mystery of Romans, pp. 77-84, Mark presented a convincing
 argument that though the Roman church consists of both Jews and Gentiles,
the implied audience, i.e those whom Paul wanted to teach primarily,
was the Gentile believers. When Paul had in mind the Jews, he explicitly
gave the sign, e.g. in 2:17ff and 7:1-6. In the other places, I take
"you" to refer to the Gentile believers.  Paul often interchanges
"we" and "you" even if the primary reference is "you". It is not strange
for the speaker to identify with the audience, even if his actual
situation is not the same as theirs. ]

Now the conclusion that hUPO NOMON means "under the government of the
Law", which was unique to the Jews, is supported by Rom 6:15:

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace?

When Paul said to the Gentile believers, "you are not under the Law
but under grace", they might have thought that they were free to
behave because there were no laws guiding their behavior. It may be
readily explained if we assume that "not under the Law" 
means "not under the government of the Law".  In short, in chapter 6 and
8, Paul argues that the gentile believers should fulfill the requirements
of the Law, even if they are not under the Law. Paul would not need to 
emphasize that in the case of the Jews. For the Jews who were
under the Law, it was obvious. But for the Gentiles who were not under 
the Law, Paul needed to argue for it. As Mark Nanos indicates,
many commands of Rom 6, e.g. 6:19, have in mind those Gentile
believers, who were following the pagan lifestyle, but now not under the
Law.

Any comments?

Moon
Moon-Ryul Jung
Sogang Univ, Seoul, Korea