Reading Notes: Romans

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Paul
I read Paul's Letter to the Romans today, exploring what sort of message he was trying to convey to the city's people. This is one of those times when understanding the context was crucial to get the most out of reading. Paul was in the midst of experiencing a faction in the early days of the church. This all surrounded the "Gentile question," which asked how closely a gentile Christian needed to follow Jewish law. Letter to the Romans is set up in a brilliant argument where Paul makes the case that you can be a Christian without being Jewish. What impressed me most was his appeal to Abraham. The ancestor of the Jewish people, Abraham is definitely considered a righteous man. However, everything that he did was outside of the law. That is, his righteousness was granted to him by God for reasons other than whether or not he kept Kosher or was circumcised. The way he writes this direct letter and approaches just astounded me because I think it would be pretty difficult to not be convinced by it. There is a lot of metaphysical stuff in there that did go over my head, namely the parallels between Abraham's trust in God leading to his righteousness and son Isaac and Jesus' crucifixion providing salvation to all of the earth's people. So I definitely don't follow every detail of the arguement, but I still appreciate the premise. It was a great insight into creating a theological argument based on a recognizable and logical given.

Source: Letter to the Romans, Harper Collins Study Bible (NRSV)

Image Source: The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans (Link)

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