Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes: Honor and Shame in Paul’s Message and Mission
Overview
What does it mean to “read Romans with Eastern eyes”?
Combining research from Asian scholars with his many years of experience living and working in East Asia, Brad Vaughn (formerly published under the pseudonym Jackson W.) directs our attention to Paul’s letter to the Romans. He argues that some traditional East Asian cultural values are closer to those of the first-century biblical world than common Western cultural values. In addition, he adds his voice to the scholarship engaging the values of honor and shame in particular and their influence on biblical interpretation.
As readers, we bring our own cultural fluencies and values to the text. Our biases and backgrounds influence what we observe—and what we overlook. This book helps us consider ways we sometimes miss valuable insights because of widespread cultural blind spots.
In Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes, Vaughn demonstrates how paying attention to East Asian culture provides a helpful lens for interpreting Paul’s most complex letter. When read this way, we see how honor and shame shape so much of Paul’s message and mission.
Key Features
- Considers how East Asian culture can help us interpret Romans
- Examines how how Paul’s gospel exposed cultural blind spots and challenged problems confronting the Roman church
- Focuses on ways that Romans both reflects and remains significant for cultures that emphasize honor, shame, collective identity, and hierarchy
Contents
- How to Read with Eastern Eyes
- Paul’s Mission Frames His Message (Romans 1, 15)
- Dishonoring God and Ourselves (Romans 1–3)
- Distinguishing “Us” and “Them” (Romans 2–3)
- Christ Saves God’s Face (Romans 3)
- Who Is Worthy of Honor? (Romans 4)
- Faith in the Filial Christ (Romans 5–6)
- The Hope of Glory Through Shame (Romans 5–8)
- Shamed from Birth? (Romans 7)
- They Will Not Be Put to Shame (Romans 9–11)
- Honor One Another (Romans 12–13)
- The Church as “Harmonious Society” (Romans 14–16)
Top Highlights
“God is Israel’s true claim to honor. By forsaking God’s glory, they in fact forfeit their own glory.” (Page 43)
“An honor-shame perspective has at least three distinguishing emphases. These cultures particularly stress tradition, relationship, and hierarchy. These three factors shape a person’s social status or ‘face.’” (Page 13)
“Westerners can quickly change teams or leave groups when dissatisfied. Individualism tempers group loyalty.” (Page 20)
“Genuine faith in God magnifies his worth. By faith, we honor him.” (Page 48)
“What does one seek? ‘glory and honor and immortality.’ How does one seek these things? ‘by patience in well-doing.’ Notice the relationship between honor and good works. One’s actions are a means of seeking honor. They express a person’s honor-shame perspective. The unrighteous in 2:8 manifest ‘self-seeking’ through their disobedience. Contrary to modern expectations, Paul urges readers to pursue honor. Rather than denounce achieved honor, he redefines its basis. Furthermore, Paul magnifies the importance of works when he relates them to a righteous desire for honor.” (Page 46)
Praise for the Print Edition
In this culturally sensitive and theologically insightful reading of Romans, Brad Vaughn invites us to consider the East Asian notion of ‘face’ as a key for unlocking the significance of the themes of honor and shame in Paul’s epistle to the Romans. Through this contemporary conceptual analog, the author is able to guide the reader through the relational world that Paul took for granted and to illuminate how social capital affects various dimensions of this most important letter. Well researched and yet accessibly written, Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes is a useful and reliable resource for anyone interested in journeying into Romans by way of a culture closer to the apostle's own than that shared by many of us in the West today.
—John K. Goodrich, associate professor of Bible, Moody Bible Institute
Brad Vaughn provides Western readers, indeed global readers, with a thoughtful, carefully documented Eastern perspective on Paul’s epistle to the Romans. Arguing that Asian and Middle Eastern cultures share similarities in worldview, he brings us new vistas and nuances to this wonderful epistle. While he does not challenge Western thinking, he does challenge us to see more than that. In doing so, his thoughts will certainly provide for vigorous but necessary and long-overdue discourse. I found it a refreshing and insightful read.
—Duane H. Elmer, G. W. Aldeen Professor of International Studies, retired, distinguished professor of educational studies, emeritus
Honor and shame were at the heart of first-century Roman sociopolitical categories and remain the bedrock of social categories in many parts of East Asian countries today. Yet honor and shame are elusive to most Christians and biblical scholars in the West. As such, they are typically overlooked or, at most, undervalued as important substrata of Paul’s letters, especially his letter to the Romans. In this book, Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes, Brad Vaughn has gifted those of us in the West with firsthand insight into this important Pauline motif, in a way that makes the entire letter take on new characteristics. Perhaps most importantly, Vaughn challenges scholars to read beyond discussions of apocalyptic, covenantal, participationist, or forensic categories and to see the ways in which filial and divine honor are at the heart of every section of the letter. It is an excellent study and a must-read for every interpreter of Romans in the West today.
—Haley Jacob, assistant professor of theology at Whitworth University, author of Conformed to the Image of His Son
