Romans 1:1-18

Paul, apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ (1:1-7)

Paul introduces himself to those in Rome who are “called to be saints” as a slave of Christ and an apostle, “set apart for the gospel of God.”

The “gospel” is the proclamation of good news, anticipated in the Jewish scriptures, concerning a pre-eminent royal figure: a Son who was of the seed of David, now “appointed (horisthentos) Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness from resurrection of the dead” (1:4*).

I take several chapters in my book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul to argue that in the first part of the Christ encomium in Philippians 2:6-11 the direction of travel is ontologically flat: not from heaven to earth but from celebrity to ignominy. I’m not saying that the church fathers were mistaken in their christological conclusions, only that this is not what the encomium is about.

Christians who think that it is right and good to maintain a form a patriarchy, at least in church and home, will often argue that by naming the woman Adam exercises or asserts an innate, creational authority over her that is not abrogated by salvation.

In search of a suitable helper for the ʾadam, God brings every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens to see what he would call them, and the ʾadam gives them names: giraffe, buffalo, magpie, and so on.

John says that Isaiah saw the glory of Jesus (Jn. 12:41). Is this a reference back to the “glory” of God that Isaiah saw in the temple? Or is it something else? Well, I’m going to say that it was something else, not because I’m anti-trinitarian but because I don’t think that’s what John means at this moment in the narrative.

So we need to try and get a sense of what is happening.

I have been working through Craig Keener’s Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost (2016) to prepare some teaching materials on Pentecostal hermeneutics. It’s a fairly casual read, so far at least. I could really do with something a bit more technical. But it’s a good introduction, and the theme rather invites a bit of personal fervour. It’s a model of Theological Interpretation of Scripture with a strong emphasis on the experiential dimension that the reader brings to the work of interpretation.

In an article on the Gospel Coalition website, adapted from a book about evangelism, Matt Smethurst attempts to explain the gospel.

Stephen Fowl thinks that it’s impossible to get from history to theology—to start with historical-criticism and arrive at an account of the being and intentions of the Triune God and of the various beliefs and practices that derive from that core Christian doctrine.

So we have to start at the other end: we believe in the Triune God who reveals himself through the historical text of scripture for the purpose of bringing us into ever deeper fellowship with God. This is how he expresses it in his little book Theological Interpretation of Scripture.