Apologetics
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 60, No. 2 – Spring 2018
Managing Editor: W. Madison Grace II
By Richard N. Longenecker. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016. lxvii + 1,140 pages. Hardcover, $80.00.
In addition to his early Pauline works such as Paul, Apostle of Liberty (1964) and Introducing Romans: Critical Issues in Paul’s Most Famous Letter (2011), Longenecker has now produced this commentary as a capstone to his Pauline and particularly Romans scholarship. Each pericope in this commentary has six components: translation, textual notes, form/structure/setting, exegetical comments, biblical theology, and contextualization for today.
To get a sense of the commentary, this review will focus on Longenecker’s discussion of key passages. The righteousness of God in 1:17 speaks of a right legal status before God and also a righteous “ethical quality” (174). Longenecker acknowledges that the New Perspective Movement on Paul led by Sanders, Dunn, and Wright is right about the existence of a theology of grace in Second Temple Judaism. However, Longenecker rejects their argument that covenantal nomism (the observance of the law as a faithful response to God’s grace), not legalism (the observance of the law as a means to acquire right standing before God), “dominated the totality of mainline Jewish thought and practice in Paul’s day” (365). For Longenecker, Paul actually argued against the legalistic Judaizers, and Luther did not misunderstand Paul. Rather, the New Perspective scholars failed to interpret properly Paul’s pejorative phrase “works of the law” in Romans 2:17–3:20a. Regarding the phrase πίστις Χριστοῦ (Rom 3:22, 26), Longenecker adopts “faithfulness of Christ” (subjective genitive) as the right rendering rather than the more traditional “faith in Christ” (objective genitive), despite the relatively short history of such rendering in the history of interpretation. It is disappointing that Longenecker does not discuss exegetically or theologically the imputed righteousness of justification, a crucial doctrinal point for the Reformers.
For Longenecker, Romans 5:1–8:39 is not a passage about sanctification following justification discussed in 1:18–4:25 in a theological sequence. Longenecker does not embrace the traditional Protestant understanding of the twofold structure of Romans 1–8: justification and sanctification. Rather, Romans 1:18–4:25 and 5:1– 8:39 are “somewhat parallel lines of thought with differing emphases and different modes of expression: the first in 1:16–4:25 using judicial and forensic language; the second in 5:1–8:39 using relational, personal, and participatory language—though with both sections speaking of much the same things” (539). Romans 5:1–8:39 is Paul’s contextualization of the Christian gospel for Gentile Christians who were not familiar with the Jewish “forensic expressions as ‘justification,’ ‘redemption,’ and ‘propitiation’ presented by the Old Testament” (574).
According to Longenecker, the best translation of ἐφʼ ᾧ in Romans 5:12 is “with the result that” or “so that” as Joseph Fitzmyer suggested (589). Paul speaks of “two causes, not unrelated” of the fall of every descendant of Adam: Adam’s fall providing a “sinful and mortal condition” for his descendants and their own sins (589).
Longenecker argues that it is not right to classify Paul’s cry of despair in 7:24 “only in terms of Paul’s preconversion or postconversion experiences,” since it is “the universal human cry and human call” for rescue from human “hopeless sinfulness” (667–68). This religious despair can be found in any religion but is intensified in Christianity.
Longenecker’s inclusivistic soteriology is clearly seen from his exegesis of 9:30–33. God’s grace and mercy redeems not only believers in Christ but also “other ‘believing’ religionists,” “identified as ‘those of insider movements’” (839). Furthermore, in Romans 9–11, Longenecker does not see a Calvinistic understanding of double predestination by which God predestined those who reject his grace in Christ to eternal damnation. According to Longenecker, God sovereignly arranges salvation for certain people on the basis of his divine foreknowledge of their voluntary response to the gospel. Salvation of “all Israel” in 11:26 refers to the conversion of many, not literally every individual Jew who will be alive at the time of the consummation of God’s salvation.
Regarding Phoebe, Longenecker proposes that she is not merely the carrier of Paul’s letter to Christians in Rome but actually “the first commentator to others on Paul’s letter to Rome,” since her being Paul’s patron must have led her to hear directly from Paul about his intentions in Romans and to have “some part in discussing with Paul…at least a few portions of the letter” (1064).
Longenecker’s commentary on Romans is a book that every student of Romans must read. Readers will definitely benefit from Longenecker’s encyclopedic knowledge of the exegetical and theological history of Romans. One may not agree with him in some exegetical and theological conclusions that he suggests, but one could appreciate his efforts to be fair in evaluating different views and to make the Christian gospel contextualized for its audience today.
