Book Review – Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary

On the front of this book , in large, friendly letters, should be the words, ‘Don’t Panic.’ Anytime someone sees scholarly words like ‘socio’ and ‘rhetorical’ - especially when they are combined with a hyphen - I’ve found that they will normally go into a catatonic state that can only be broken by a beer or two.

All kidding and titles aside, this is a great book about Romans. I appreciate Ben Witherington’s writing style and so, for me, this was an easy book to slide into. Unlike many commentaries, Witherington presents his material in the same blocks of thought as the original writer rather than dissecting every single verse into individual components. That’s not to say that he doesn’t give information critical to individual verses. But, refreshingly, he does this in a manner which maintains the overall thought structure of the material.

Witherington’s main proposition is that Romans was written to Gentile Christians who were having a hard time recognizing the value of their Jewish Christian brothers and sisters and thus causing disunity within the church in Rome. Witherington maintains that the book is written in a rhetorical format that was designed to prove a point – namely that the wonder of the new covenant is that it equally includes both Jew and Gentile.

Using rhetorical guidelines from Greek writers, he shows how Paul was not only well-schooled in Greek thought (which may explain why we in Western Christianity have such an affinity to him), but communicated with the Gentile believers in formats that they would have easily understood. I think Witherington does a brilliant job of showing that Romans was never intended to be ‘The Systematic Theology of Paul’ but instead was both a letter of preparation for his visit and an exhortation as the apostle of the Gentiles to Gentiles. Paul isn’t introducing his theology to a church that doesn’t know him as much as he is trying to begin dealing with a problem in a church that Paul sees as critical to the future of his own ministry.

I especially appreciated two aspects of Witherington’s commentary. First, because of the manner in which Witherington interprets the material, Romans 9-11 becomes not an addendum or footnote to Chapters 1-8, but instead becomes the centerpiece of the book. This, to me, makes far more sense than the traditional explanation of these chapters. I also deeply valued his insight into the use of personification and how it relates to the material in Romans 7. Through this, Witherington shows that Paul isn’t saying that it’s OK or normal to struggle with sin. Instead, Paul is pointing to both Adam and those in Adam prior to describing the wonder of those in Christ in chapter 8. Romans 7, then, is not the norm for believers but for non-believers.

Like most of Witherington’s other material, I still have not been convinced by him that a person is able to lose their salvation, which is a topic that comes up periodically in this commentary. However, it is not so imbued into the material that one cannot still attain great insights and gems of truth.

I would highly recommend this commentary to any student of Romans.

Categories: Reading