I had a very enjoyable and encouraging couple of hours this evening teaching a class on Romans at Chelmsford Cathedral. Much of it was a discussion of the differences between Reformation readings that make justification by faith the organizing centre of the Letter and New Perspective readings that see Romans as Paul’s retelling of the story of Israel. I wasn’t there to present my own view of the text; but to help clarify my thoughts I prepared the following rough summary of how I see the argument in the Letter unfolding. We start with Paul’s only explicit statement of why he has written to the churches in Rome.

Steven Opp is an evangelist. Remarkably, he has read my book The Future of the People of God—I imagine he is the only “evangelist” to have done so—and he wants to know whether the narrative-historical reading of Romans can be reconciled with traditional approaches to evangelism:

I work in evangelism and so Romans, which is a key text in giving the Gospel, is important for me to understand.… I’m still trying to figure out how the narrative view can coincide with the traditional “Romans Road” for presenting the Gospel to a modern individual.

I really like this comment from Steven Opp—first, because it gives me an opportunity to address in a bit more detail the relation between the justification of Gentiles on the basis of what they have done and the justification of the people of God by faith; and secondly, because Steven is an evangelist and naturally wants to know whether the narrative reading is going to help him present the gospel to “a modern individual”.

So today more on those righteous Gentiles. The question of what an evangelist might do with this approach, if anything, we’ll look at in a day or two.

What about in Ch. 3 when speaking of both Jews and Gentiles Paul says no one is righteous, not one? Then he goes on to talk about Jesus. Is the difference that while no one is righteous (Ch. 3) the Gentiles do righteous things (Ch. 2), so you can be unrighteous but still do righteous deeds which effects how you are judged?

The popular view is that when Christians die, they go to heaven to be with God for ever and ever. This is a sub-biblical notion that has to some extent been corrected in recent years, thanks not least to Tom Wright. We are now much more likely to recognize that the biblical narrative terminates not in the migration of saved souls to heaven but in the renewal of heaven and earth and the descent of God to dwell in the midst of his new creation.

This question was put to me via the contact form. It’s brief and I’m not entirely sure where it’s coming from. My guess is that the questioner is from a Calvinist background and wants to know whether my writings are safe to read, but I could be wrong, and it doesn’t much affect my response. 

I found an article on your website and noticed it mentioned the word “Reformed” but I couldn’t tell from the context if you hold to Reformed theology or not. Can you please explain where you stand on Reformed theology, Calvinism and the doctrines of grace?

A four hour ferry journey across Lake Van gives me the opportunity to write up some reflections on chapter seven of Tom Wright’s [amazon:978-0281061464:inline], in which he describes how the clash between God and Caesar plays out in the story of Jesus. These rusting boats have for a long time carried trains and their passengers travelling between Istanbul and Tehran. Today’s cargo consists of several freight wagons, a couple of Kurds, ourselves, and an emaciated German cyclist heading for Tashkent, whom we fed with the leftovers from our bread and cheese lunch.