"A related and final question is, where is the ethical imperative in this universal horizon? Where is the incentive to behave? What good is the Gospel if people don't behave better?...In the gospel, God does not simply instruct and exhort. God releases humanity from its inability and, indeed, recreates humanity (2 Cor. 5.17; Gal. 6.15). This new creation is able to hear an admonition as people who have received an empowering gift (Rom. 12.1-2).Paul is fully aware that even this new creation is only the very beginning of what God will accomplish (Rom. 8.18-25). The numerous problems he addresses in his letters reveal that Christians are very much capable of sinning, but the admonitions carry with them the promise that God will not leave humanity to itself (as in Rom.15.6,13; 8.31-39)
These comments will likely provoke sharp dissent. Again I want to insist that I raise this question of the universal horizon of Romans not because I have an answer for it in just a few paragraphs. It is not at all clear that Paul was consciously addressing that question in Romans or elsewhere. Nor would I claim, even if I were certain I understood Paul's answer, that his answer is shared by other biblical witnesses. My reason for pressing this question is once again to put before us the vastness of the gospel. What we need to hear is that the gospel encompasses the cosmos, the whole of creation -- all the way out and all the way down in each of us.
I hope this volume will prove useful to those who have had similar experiences. [Of finding the letter hard to follow, at times impenetrable]. I hope a real letter will come into view now, one over which we will linger. Beyond that, I hope that we catch a glimpse of God's vast love and longing and determination for all of us. I hope that, with Springsteen, we imagine a train capacious enough to hold us all."
(When in Romans. An invitation to Linger with the Gospel according to Paul. Beverley Roberts Gaventa. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016) Pages 127-8.
This short book was a precursor to Professor Gaventa's major commentary on Romans, published earlier this year. That commentary had been eagerly awaited by fellow scholars, students and pastors as a highly significant treatment of Romans. Gaventa was seeking to provide a reading of Paul that takes seriously the apocalyptic element in Paul's gospel, a revelation of God and God's purpose in the person and mission of Jesus Christ that called all else into question, and reset the relation of God to creation and to humanity.
It is immediately evident in reading the commentary that Gaventa has wrestled long and hard with this text and its context. Out of such study comes a message of immense contemporary import for the Church which, especially in the West, is facing major crises of confidence in its gospel, its ways of expressing faith, and its capacity to bear witness to the transformational message revealed in and through Jesus Christ.
The final words of When in Romans, noted above, conclude her shorter 'invitation' to read Romans as a real letter, from one struggling Christian (Paul) to Christian communities (in Rome) facing their own struggles and issues. Romans is much more than, and indeed very different from, a hard to follow theological treatise with a hefty moral and ethical appendix. Gaventa argues that Romans is much bigger, its ideas far more expansive, and the gospel it seeks to explore much further reaching than any mere treatise on the theological mechanics of salvation or the norms and rules of ethics.
Why I chose this book ending for Advent is because it demonstrates Professor Gaventa's sense of the scale, and reach and scope of the gospel as the eternal purpose of God revealed by the historic inbreaking of divine love determined to redeem, renew and restore. The gospel is inherently transformative of God's creation: "What we need to hear is that the gospel encompasses the cosmos, the whole of creation -- all the way out and all the way down in each of us."
Not only so, but her aim in exploring and explaining Romans as she does, is so that readers of Romans, that historic hinge-point in Paul's correspondence, will "catch a glimpse of God's vast love and longing and determination for all of us." Gaventa's Romans commentary is a full-on exposition of God's initiative of love in Christ, confronting the powers that have threatened and broken the relations of Creator, creation and human creatures, and overcoming them by reconciling power and self-expending love. Christ is the revelation of a love from which nothing can separate, nothing in all of creation. The pivotal verses of Romans 8.38-39 are more than the climax of an argument; they are the stated realities of God's ultimate purpose in Christ, revealed as "the power of God unto salvation."
To borrow from another of Paul's letters, Romans is a spelling out of the full consequences of saying, "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself", and "If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation, the old has gone and the new has come." (2 Cor 5.17-19) Advent is the anticipation of all this, a reminder that in the very human birth of the Son of God, a new creation was underway, a healing of creation's brokenness, a reconciliation to God of all that frustrates, opposes, resists and seeks to spoil God's purposes of light, and life and that fullness of fellowship between God's creation and the eternal exchange of love that is Father, Son and Spirit, one God, world without end.
It may well be that Charles Wesley's much edited hymn which we now know as "Hark the Herald angels sing", is the best Advent tilted commentary on Paul's very personal and passionate letter to the small Christian communities in Rome, describing to them the apocalyptic inbreaking of God for the rescue of creation:
"Peace on earth, and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled."
"Late in time, behold him come, offspring of a virgin's womb."
"Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail the incarnate deity."
"Mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die."
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