Romans Through History and Cultures Series Collection (4 Vols.)

Engaging Augustine on Romans: Self, Context, and Theology in Interpretation

• Daniel Patte and Eugene TeSelle, eds.
• 290 pages | Trinity Press International, 2002

Although Augustine’s ideas about biblical interpretation developed with age and with his deeper church involvement as Bishop of Hippo, he never abandoned the centrality of biblical interpretation as a pillar of the life of Christian faith. This collection examines in detail the methods of Augustine the biblical interpreter.

Paula Fredriksen explores the ways that Augustine uses a literal interpretation of the Bible to understand the role of Israel, Jews, and Judaism in his theology of history. Thomas F. Martin uses Augustine’s later works to demonstrate how Augustine reads Romans as he develops his “method of discovery,” or hermeneutics. Eugene TeSelle examines the inner conflict that Augustine expresses in his sermons on Romans 7 and 8. Simon Gathercole analyzes the ways that Augustine reads natural law and restored nature in Romans as a result of his conversion. John K. Riches looks at the impact Augustine’s readings have had on Pauline critical studies. Using Galatians and Romans, Peter J. Gorday explores the patristic debate about reading Romans. Daniel Patte offers Augustine as a model for the practice of “scriptural criticism” of the New Testament. Finally, Krister Stendhal provides a response to the essays.

This book contains pathbreaking essays that throw light both on Augustine’s biblical hermeneutic and on Paul’s letter to the Romans. While confirming Krister Stendahl’s hunch that Augustine was an instigator of the problematic theory that Paul had an ‘introspective conscience,’ this book elaborates the many ways contemporary scholars can learn from the great church father. In the words of one of the editors, Augustine proves to be ‘an excellent reading companion’ for current interpreters of Paul.
— Robert Jewett, author of Saint Paul at the Movies

Daniel Patte is Professor of New Testament at Vanderbilt University and author of The Challenge of Discipleship and Discipleship According to the Sermon on the Mount.

Eugene TeSelle is Oberlin Alumni/ae Professor of Church History and Theology, Emeritus, Vanderbilt Divinity School, and the author of Augustine the Theologian.

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Gender, Tradition and Romans: Shared Ground, Uncertain Borders

• Daniel Patte and Cristina Grenholm, eds.
• 297 pages | T & T Clark, 2005

From a gender perspective, Romans differs from many biblical texts. It contains few explicit mentions of gender, no household code, and it has been understood as promoting universalism. However, this volume joins several feminist commentators in showing how crucial Romans is for understanding Paul’s view of gender.

The approach of the “Romans through History and Cultures” project, scriptural criticism, constitutes a special challenge for gender studies of Romans. By affirming the legitimacy and plausibility of diverse interpretations of Romans from a gender perspective, this volume asks: How can the commitment to raising women’s issues be combined with openness towards divergent interpretations? Foregoing this called forth by the history of reception is not an option, because of our moral obligation to be accountable to contemporary female and male readers in cultures around the world. Struggling with this twofold commitment, the authors of this volumes show that in relation to Romans as shared ground one finds traditions either promoting or challenging gender injustice. While Romans remains shared ground, its borders and the borders of the community it envisions become uncertain. Who is included or excluded can be negotiated in different contexts, including those of our time.

The volume is thus divided into three parts: mapping traditions in Romans; challenging gendered traditions in Romans; and gender and the authority Romans. The concluding essays once again ask: Does scriptural criticism really do justice to feminist concerns? Both avenues and obstacles for feminist scholars interpreting Romans are pointed out.

Cristina Grenholm teaches at University of Karlstad, Sweden. She is author of The Old Testament, Christianity and Pluralism, and an editor of Reading Israel in Romans: Legitimacy and Plausibility of Divergent Interpretations.

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Early Patristic Readings of Romans

• Kathy L. Gaca and L. L. Welborn, eds.
• 237 pages | T & T Clark, 2005

This volume traces the earliest receptions of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, seeking to elucidate their hermeneutical strategies as they endorse, explain, construct, and rework Romans as a normative authority. These early patristic readings of Romans by Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Origen, and others are pivotal. Long before Augustine and Luther, they set formative interpretive principles upon which is built the imposing yet diverse edifice of subsequent interpretations and uses of Romans.

By the end of the second century CE, the letters of Paul had established themselves as authoritative bears of divine revelation. Yet, the task of tracing the earliest receptions of Paul’s Letter to the Romans is challenging, because the thought world of the early Christians is remote, molten, largely oral, and as such hard to trace. The essays in this volume rise to the challenge by explicating significant aspects of Paul’s reception among early Christian readers. They ask: How did these readers construct Paul’s view of pagan and Christian relations? Of the Gentiles? Of Jewish salvation? Of faith? Of resurrection? Of Christian Platonist principles? Contributors to this volume demonstrate specific ways in which Romans was appropriated to define the philosophy of Christian Platonism, a development that has had an enduring impact upon the creation of a Christian paideia.

Early Patristic Readings of Romans builds upon and contributes to a growing recognition that the Pauline corpus proved important to the early church before Augustine.
— Rowan A. Greer, Professor of Anglican Studies Emeritus, Yale Divinity School

Kathy L. Gaca is Associate Professor of Classics at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, and the author of The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity.

L. L. Welborne is Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio. He is the author of Politics and Rhetoric in the Corinthian Epistles and editor (with Cilliers Breytenbach) of Encounters with Hellenism: Studies in First Clement.

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Navigating Romans Through Cultures: Challenging Readings by Charting a New Course

• Yeo Khiok-khng (K. K.), ed.
• 326 pages | T & T Clark, 2004

Navigating Romans Through Cultures contains eight chapters of critical and contextualized readings of Paul’s letter to the Romans by scholars from Europe, Africa, Latin America, North America, and Asia. It provides an interpretive voyage into how the gospel of Paul, as contained in his letter to the Romans, fulfills its original vision of “making known the gospel of Christ in all nations” (Rom 16:26). The challenge of the contributors is to express Paul’s gospel in terms of their own cultures.

This journey around the world took no less than four years. Each contributor is familiar with the culture they worked with, since many lived in that culture. Each “travel-log” is not just a report of how we steer the ship (letter to the Romans) through the water of a particular culture (or a sea of cultures for many of us); it is also a life changing critical reflection on our reading and interpretative process. Thus charting a new course involves more than offering new ways of reading Romans; it also involves clarifying the rationales for this new reading, in the light of the contextual, analytical, and hermeneutical frames of Scripture Criticism.

In their challenging readings of Romans, the contributors have wrestled with: an understanding of culture; the cultural background and mission of Paul; cultural and theological conflicts in the letter of Paul to the Romans; cultural interpretations of Paul; and navigating equipments in steering Romans through cultures.

The value of this collection is twofold: its consistent attention to specific texts from Romans and the lively responses from (mainly Western-based) colleagues. This book should be sought out by all those following the progress of Daniel Patte's and Christina Greenholm's SBL seminar and those keen to impress upon their students the variety of perspectives from which Paul can fruitfully be read, not least in non-Western contexts.
— Angus Paddison

This volume, as part of a new interpretive series, is an exciting and challenging experiment in biblical scholarship. I like especially the symphonic quality of the work, its representation of the interplay between different critical methods and approaches and different social-cultural perspectives from much of the world. With the symphonic discursive play of many creative and accomplished critics, this volume represents a fascinating contribution to ongoing efforts to add new and challenging ‘sounds’ to critical interpretation.
— Vincent L. Wimbush, Professor of Religion, Director, Institute for Signifying Scriptures, Claremont Graduate University

This collection of essays on Romans is like none other that I know. Cultural readings from the ‘two-third’s world’ – Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia – are presented in dialogue with ‘first-world’ scholars. The hermeneutical process comes alive in this extraordinary dialogue and the ‘meaning’ of the letter deepens and broadens with each exchange. The results are often radiant and will surely inspire and empower new engagements with the text.
— Jouette M. Bassler, Professor of New Testament, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

Yeo Khiok-khng is Harry R. Kendall Professor of New Testament at Garrett-Evangelical, Graduate Faculty at Northwestern University, and Academic Director (International Leadership Group) of graduate programs in Christian Studies at Peking University. He is the author of several books on cross-cultural biblical interpretation, including Chairman Paul Meets the Apostle Paul: Christianity, Communism and the Hope of China.

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