Taking the Epistle - Part 1: Romans

My NIV Study Bible (the version I've been reading in general) explains that St Paul had never visited the church in Rome at the time of writing the letter recorded in the Bible. The letter itself makes reference of Paul's ambition to visit Rome and the church there, but also records that he has been kept busy with other errands. Consequently, it is much more theoretical than the other letters, and my remark when I introduced this series of posts that Paul's letters represent the first working-out of what it means to be Christian is particularly relevant to Romans above the other Epistles. The NIV Study Bible points out that a lot of what later became standard doctrine in the Church is outlined in Romans.

So what did I make of it?

St Paul is very much keen on criticising "sexual immorality", and seems to reference it even where there is no need to do so to make his point. In Romans this is all very much theoretical but in 1 Corinthians more of the explanation is given (as noted in my intro post, Corinth was a city with a lot of prostitution and other randy goings-on, so it was more directly relevant to the pressures on the church there). The first part of Romans concerns the basic idea of sin, in that it discusses that sin happens when men turn away from God, becoming selfish and self-seeking Paul writes that God "gives them over" to "evil" deeds, and the inevitable consequences of those deeds.

One interesting element is that Paul frames his sexual morality in terms of "natural" and "unnatural" relations. He speaks directly to homosexuality in these terms as "unnatural".

Romans 1:26-27

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

However, the thought that comes to my mind is that there is some question about whether homosexuality is indeed "unnatural" (that is "against (our) nature"). A number of pre-natal conditions have been found to correlate strongly with homosexuality (the "hormonal wash" and the number of older male siblings relate to male homosexuality at least). Modern anti-gay Christians assume that because Paul says it's unnatural, it is. But it is not impossible that Paul uses "unnatural" not as a descriptor but as a qualifier: that is, only those homosexual acts that are unnatural are the product of sinful hearts; those homosexual acts that come from a person's true nature may not be covered. I will cover some more thoughts about Paul's anti-gay statements in Corinthians. Suffice to say for now, I am NOT with Paul on this one.

Another of the major themes that the study notes highlight about Romans is that the church in Rome was made up of both Jews and Gentiles, and there was a certain amount of friction between the Jews and the non-Jews within the church. Paul's letter was therefore written to ease those frictions and guide the two sides into accepting one another's customs. Paul therefore effectively writes that the Mosaic Law is not binding any more, although it is a guiding example. (Incidentally, people who cheer Josiah Bartlet's takedown of Dr. Jacobs as a takedown of Christianity should realise that he only won because she didn't know her New Testament as well as her Old Testament.) Paul does not dismiss the Mosaic law entirely (Romans 3:20 - "no-one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law, we become conscious of sin"). Instead, it is by faith in Christ that we find righteousness; not through blind adherence to the old Law. Just as the Old Testament prophets criticised people for following the appearances of the Law, but ignoring it in their hearts, so St Paul makes the same distinction, but this time shows that because "circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code" (Romans 2:29) then the outward appearances can be laid aside, because Christ brought the Spirit.

Paul spends a lot of time elaborating on these themes: the relationship of the OT law to the NT Spirit (in Romans ch. 7 he draws the analogy of a woman whose husband dies, and is then free to marry another man; through Christ, says Paul, we have "died to the law... that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead" [7:4] and writes, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code" [7:6]).

Another theme, developed again in 1 Corinthians in more detail (although it is reckoned that Romans was written later that 1 Corinthians) is the idea of the Church being made up of many members, who have different gifts to bring - like a human body being made of many different organs and limbs.

Romans 13 is one of the most famous passages in Romans, beloved of atheists for the fact that it seems to tell Christians to accept meekly whatever tyranny is perpetrated by those in charge. However, Paul is much more equivocal than the obvious reading. Because the authorities are instituted by God, then we should obey them, but equally, if they betray the position of power that God has given them, then they are not doing God's work, but their own. Paul here outlines what a ruler's job should be, and the reasons why God places people in positions of authority. In its way, it is a reworking of the social contract theory of government (in terms of the reasons why government is instituted) but attributes to God rather than the consent of the governed the creation of the authority. I get the sense, however, that St Paul actually struggled with this issue. His natural inclination seems to have been towards believing the very best of authority; he liked people being in charge. But at the same time, those same people were persecuting people, including Christians. How could Paul marry his natural respect for authority (and his belief that it is there by God's will) with this persecution? In all honesty, in Romans I don't think he does very well at it, and the result is the (mis)perception that Christians are just supposed to suck it up when governments do bad shit.

Before Paul closes with various salutations and his desire to visit Rome, he revisits the need for unity within the Church, and asks peope to be accomodating of others' expressions of faith. He does so, in part, by talking about vegetarianism versus meat-eating: "One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man , whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted both." (Romans 14:3). Paul's reason for calling the vegetarian in this as having "weak" faith ties in to his arguments earlier concerning the Jew/Gentile rift within the Roman church, where he accepts that some people do not feel comfortable breaking with the old law (see my comment on ch. 7); in Paul's reasoning this was due to a weakness in terms of relying on faith (the Spirit) alone to guide one's actions. Here he is asking people not to condemn or crticise others for having different approaches but to accept that different people deal with these issues differently, and that both ways are okay with God. It is an appeal for plurality and diversity to be welcomed within the Church. He also says that the man who eats everything should be willing to forgo eating meat in his brother's company if it troubles his brother in the church who's a veggie.

Several of the themes I've picked up here will continue in other posts. One reason I am writing these posts is so that I can come back and see how each book's ideas and themes relate to those in the other books (as I've already started in on 1 Corinthians, I've already spotted some continuity, as mentioned in this post).