Does Romans Need Addressees?

In the Pauline section of the British New Testament Society Annual Meeting next week, there will be a discussion about the question, “Does Romans Need Addressees?”

I’m planning to read the papers that relate to this question on the train on the way to the conference, but I imagine there’ll be two main answers:

1. Of course it needs addressees – part of the historical critical method is being attentive to the letter’s setting – and this includes its occasion.
2. But on the other hand, it is Christian Scripture, and its interpretation depends not so much on its original setting or intention as its reception by the church as Scripture – a reception that goes back to the late first century when it was first included in a corpus for believers.

I’m guessing there will then be some sort of agreement on a middle way of sorts – valuing both original setting and reception history.

On the other hand, I might be completely wrong, and if so, I reserve the right to delete this post and pretend I was never this dumb.

1 Cor 15 as Forerunner to Romans 7?

A while ago Thiselton mentioned to me that he thinks 1 Corinthians effectively acted as something of a “first draft” for the themes of Romans, which was written about 5 years later.  The other day I was reading Romans 7, and was struck by a number of similarities to 1 Corinthians 15:50-8… This is no astonishing claim, but it’s interesting to see Paul making a roughly similar point in quite different contexts:

Problem: Flesh, law, sin, death

Question: How can this be overcome?

Victory: Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ

Fat Jesus

Imagine if we encountered the risen Jesus, and found him to be fat. He was picked on, after all, by being labeled a glutton and a drunkard. I’m not claiming he was fat – just wondering what issues it would raise for us.

I just read a review of a book called “The Fat Jesus” by Lisa Isherwood. It explores body issues from a feminist theological perspective. I found this so intriguing that I have ordered a book by Isherwood – but not the “fat Jesus” one… I’ve ordered her book “Introducing body theology” – because I think that “the body” is a topic surprisingly under-explored in Christian theology, and especially in my own area of Pauline studies. This is becoming more and more surprising to me, given that the body has such a prominent place in Romans, 1 Corinthians, Philippians, etc – the body of Jesus, the bodies of believers, the ecclesial body of Christ.

Have a look through the book of Romans, and you’ll notice that sin, judgement, atonement, sanctification and future glory are all described using bodily terms…

- God gave them up… to the degrading of their bodies (ch 1)
- Their throats… tongues… lips… mouths… feet… eyes (ch3)
- Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies (ch6)
- You have died to the law through the body of Christ (ch7)
- If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. (ch8)
- We groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies (ch8)
- I appeal to you… to present your bodies as a living sacrifice (ch12)
- We who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another (ch12)
etc…

…and don’t get me started on 1 Corinthians!!