CHAPTER 1
Welcome to the Conversation
God does not love us if we change. God loves us so that we can change. —RICHARD ROHR, BREATHING UNDER WATER: SPIRITUALITY AND THE TWELVE STEPS
I do not understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us. —ANNIE LAMOTT, TRAVELING MERCIES: SOME THOUGHTS ON FAITH
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. —ROMANS 12:1–2
Give us such an awareness of your mercies that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives. —GENERAL THANKSGIVING IN THE DAILY OFFICE, BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER
How is it that we change? How is it that we grow? Or to use the language of St. Paul, who wrote a letter to "all God's beloved in Rome," how can we be transformed? Think about your own spiritual journey, about moments when you experienced change, growth, transformation, or renewal. What contributed to those experiences? What got in the way?
Think about the faith community to which you belong. Perhaps review in your mind those communities that have shaped you over the years. They may be communities in which you were profoundly formed. They may be communities you left, perhaps even fled. You may be in recovery from such places. Then ask the same kinds of questions. How do congregations change and grow? What brings about transformation? What brings about renewal and new life in communities of faith?
In the letter that Paul wrote to the Christians assembled in Rome, we get a case study in change, as he holds out the possibility of transformation for members of a congregation he had never met, an assembly meeting in the city at the center of the empire. He wrote with an invitation, perhaps even a challenge, to experience transformation. His Letter to the Romans, widely considered to be authentic in authorship, sets the stage for a long-anticipated visit he hopes to make as he moves westward in his mission.
In this letter, he builds a case that change and transformation are real possibilities, effected not so much by human intention or endeavor, but as a result of God's gracious activity in their lives. There is no doubt that this letter, across the generations, merits attention as an exploration of the transforming power of God's love. We enter into conversation with this letter in the hope, indeed the confidence, that transformation can still take place in our individual lives and in the lives of the communities to which we belong.
In the organization of the New Testament, the twenty-seven books that comprise the Christian Scriptures, we begin with the work of the evangelists: four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. We then come to a series of letters attributed to Paul, written either to congregations or to individuals. The Letter to the Romans comes first in that collection.
Perhaps it was placed first in the canon simply because of its length. But perhaps there's more to it than that. It offers the longest presentation of Paul's theology, a defense of the faithfulness of God, fidelity to the promises God has made, an argument extended over eleven chapters (with a few Pauline detours), leading into a discussion of the ethical implications of this theology in five final chapters. In some respects, this letter becomes a lens through which the other letters can be read. From start to finish, the letter argues for the transforming power of the proclamation of God's grace. Paul knew that dynamic at work in his own life. While in this letter he cannot be accused of oversharing as far as his own spiritual autobiography is concerned, he nevertheless expresses confidence that this same power can unfold in the lives of the members of this community addressed in this letter. This power can change not only individuals, not only this congregation, but can change the world.
This Letter in the History of the Church
Any introduction to this letter must note its impact on the history of the church over the centuries, as this letter has had extraordinary influence at critical moments. Century after century, it has been a catalyst, active in the renewal and reformation of the church.
As described in his Confessions, Augustine's conversion came in the fourth century, a convergence of influences (as most conversion experiences are) when he recognized a need for personal transformation. Perhaps today we would say he hit bottom. A key catalyst for change had to do with his conversation with Scripture. Specifically, he was led to Paul's Letter to the Romans, the effect of his conversation with Scripture noted in The Confessions, written in 397:
But when a profound reflection had, from the secret depths of my soul, drawn together and heaped all my misery from the secret depths of my heart, there arose a mighty storm, accompanied by as mighty a shower of tears.... I flung myself down, how, I know not, under a certain fig tree, giving free course to my tears and the streams of my eyes gushed out, an acceptable sacrifice unto Thee. And, not indeed in these words, but to this effect, spake I much unto Thee: But Thou, O Lord, how long? How long, Lord, wilt Thou be angry forever? ... Why is there not this hour an end to my uncleanness? I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo, I heard the voice as of a boy or a girl, I know not which, coming from a neighboring house, chanting and often repeating, "Tolle lege! Tolle lege!" (Latin—"Take up and read!").... So quickly I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting, for there I had put down the volume of the apostles, when I rose thence. I grasped, opened, and in silence read that paragraph on which my eyes first fell—"Not in rioting and drunkeness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof" (Rom. 13:13–14). No further would I read, nor did I need; for instantly, as the sentence ended, by a light, as it were, of security into my heart, all the gloom of doubt vanished away.
Conversation with Scripture changed the course of Augustine's life. It led him to a theology that asserted that the grace and love of God redirects human affection. Augustine's theology in turn redirected the course of the church. His interpretation of Paul's letters continues to shape the church, for better or for worse. In some respects, we work hard to correct Augustinian interpretation, perhaps insightful for his time but difficult to translate to our own. Key themes expressed in the Letter to the Romans, themes like the need all people have for power beyond themselves to redirect misguided love, are at the heart of Augustine's theology. At a critical moment when the empire was crumbling and it was not clear how the church would move forward, Paul's letters, and especially the Letter to the Romans, served as transformative guide. It had to do with the embrace of grace. That is not the only time in the history of the church that this letter has had that effect.
In the early sixteenth century, the Letter to the Romans was key to the development of the theology of Martin Luther, a theology that emphasized the belief that right relationship with God comes through the unmerited grace of God, revealed in Jesus's death and resurrection. This theology galvanized political, social, and ecclesiastical forces to contribute to the energy of the Reformation. As often happens in moments of spiritual change or development, Scripture served as a catalyst, providing a way for social and cultural transformation to take place.
The Letter to the Romans was key. Luther writes:
I greatly longed to understand Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, "the righteousness of God," in chapter 1:17 because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and deals righteously in punishing the unrighteous.... At last, by the mercy of God, meditating night and day, I gave heed to the context of the words ... and there I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning ... and whereas before the "righteousness of God" had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gateway to paradise.
As in the case of Augustine, Luther's interpretation of Paul's letter, transformative in his own day but now centuries old, needs to be interpreted for our own time. Along with other leaders in these times of reformation and revival in the church (William Tyndale, John Calvin, John Wesley), Luther entered into conversation with this New Testament letter, opening the door to change and transformation in their own contexts. The Letter to the Romans shifted their individual spiritual journeys, and by virtue of their positions of leadership, shifted the culture around them. It began with conversation with Scripture, which led to the embrace of grace.
Karl Barth published his commentary on Romans in the early twentieth century as the horrors of the First World War were shattering optimism about humanity in Europe. Technology applied to warfare brought unprecedented horrific results. What would theologians and interpreters of Scripture say in the face of such carnage? Where was God in this collective experience? How could the human condition be explained when the best that humanity had to offer led to this kind of conflagration? Barth spent ten years as a pastor (1911–1921), a tenure that had profound impact on his theology as "Barth's liberal assurances were initially undermined by his exposure to the Swiss social democratic movement.... The outbreak of the Great War further disillusioned him. ... Most of his former teachers signed a declaration of support for the Kaiser." Barth described his experience as follows: "An entire world of theological exegesis, ethics, dogmatics, and preaching, which up to that point I had accepted as basically credible, was thereby shaken to the foundations, and with it everything which flowed at that time from the pens of the German theologians."
Barth returned to a conversation with Scripture, especially studying the Letter to the Romans in 1916, which resulted in his commentary, first published in 1919. That commentary offered a critique of the liberal theology of the previous generations, at a time when hard questions about the power of evil emerged from the trenches where so many young men died. Barth's commentary was described in graphic terms, as if a bomb had been detonated on the playground of the theologians of his day. As we will see in reflection on the first chapter of this letter, Paul speaks of the "power" of the gospel. In Greek, the word for power is dunamis, which provides the root for the word "dynamite." This letter has conveyed transformative, perhaps even explosive, power over the course of the history of the church.
Barth's reference to the shaking of the foundations (a lift from the book of Jeremiah) brings to mind a series of sermons by Paul Tillich, collected under the title of The Shaking of the Foundations. One of those sermons, prompted by the Letter to the Romans, speaks of the transforming power of grace. It provides a powerful introduction to our reflection on this letter. Prompted by a verse in Romans 5, Tillich speaks about the interface of sin and grace:
Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when we feel that our separation is deeper than usual, because we have violated another life, a life which we loved, or from which we were estranged. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!" If that happens to us, we experience grace.
As we enter into conversation with this letter, here's the question this book will seek to address: Does Paul's letter still have a transforming word for our day? What does it have to say to a church in need of renewal? Pollsters indicate disheartening shifts in religious affiliation in our culture. Traditions and institutions face new challenges, including the sense that they are obsolete or irrelevant. Division and partisanship between human communities (including and perhaps especially religious communities) seem to be on the rise, as the moral failures of religious leaders and institutions are on display for all the world to see, as people increasingly self-identify as spiritual not religious. Against that background Paul's letter bears a message that matters. It holds the promise of renewed spiritual vitality that can emerge when the grace of God is embraced and proclaimed, when confidence is placed in the reality of God's love that comes as free gift, and when that gift is viewed expansively, not as the possession or province of one particular group.
The expression of trust in God's grace, a theme of the Letter to the Romans, has the power to change individual lives. It also has the power to change communities, which is why it matters that we enter into this conversation. Such a conversation does not mean that we will like or understand everything in the letter. Paul wrote out of his own context, with its own limits. Augustine, Luther, and Barth each interpreted this letter for their time. Our time has its own character, context, and challenges. In the spirit of conversation, a word that suggests companionship on the journey, we hope that faithful attention to this ancient letter may open the door for new insights into the expansiveness of the grace of God. As we enter into this conversation, a few introductory comments are offered, setting this letter in the context of other letters attributed to Paul.
Paul's Letters: What They Have in Common, How They Differ
J. Christiaan Beker, in his study of Paul, spoke of both coherence and contingency in Paul's work. Coherence reflects a continuity of structure and theme. Contingency suggests particular or occasional dimensions, reminders that these letters were written to specific congregations or people.
When we speak of coherence, in terms of structure, we note that the Letter to the Romans follows the pattern of a number of other letters attributed to Paul. It reflects the ways letters were structured in Paul's day. Paul's letters often begin with a greeting and an expression of thanksgiving for the community or individual being addressed (though the terse beginning of the Letter to the Galatians gives the reader a clue that Paul is not entirely happy with this crowd, and that the letter that follows will be sharp in tone).
Paul introduces himself, in the custom of letters of his day, and seeks to establish authority from the outset, eager to get readers to see why they should pay attention to what he has to say. Often in these introductions, Paul will weave prayers for these communities into his discussion, perhaps incorporating portions of liturgy, hymns, and early creedal formulations that may have been in use when members of the early church assembled. After these introductions, Paul often will turn to the theological question, describing who God is, and what God has done, especially as revealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
