Book Notice: Romans: the Church’s Bible

J. Patout Burns (ed.)

Romans: Interpreted by Early Christian Commentators
The Church’s Bible, ed. Robert Louis Wilken
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012.

Reception history is the new pink. It is cool, funky, and every body is doing it! There is the ACC with IVP and the Blackwell Bible Commentaries from the Centre for the Reception History of the Bible at Oxford Uni.

The series preface says that the volumes in The Church’s Bible are “designed to present the Holy Scriptures as understood and interpreted during the first millennium of Christian history.” The series is meant to be distinctive in the sense that “it draws extensively on the ancient commentaries, not only on random comments drawn from major theological treatises, sermons, or devotional works. its volumes will, in the main, offer fairly lengthy excerpts from the ancient commentaries and from series of sermons on specific books.”

This volume also includes an opening essay by Wilken on “Interpreting the New Testament” before Burns gets into his “Introduction to Romans.”

The volume then includes excerpts of comments from major biblical interpreters like Origen, Ambrosiaster, John Chrysostom, Theodoret, Pelagius, and Augustine. Here’s a few gems:

John Chrysostom on the preface to Romans.

When I regularly hear the epistles of the blessed Paul read (twice each week and often three and four times when we celebrate memorials for the holy martyrs), I rejoice and enjoy the spiritual trumpet, and I am aroused and warmed by desire. I recognize the voice I love; I almost feel his presence and see him speaking. Yet, I also suffer and am troubled: not everyone knows this man as one should; some are so ignorant of him that they do not know how many letters he wrote. This results not from some learning disability but because they lack interest in spending time with him regularly, Our knowledge, as such it is, arises not only from natural ability and mental keenness but through regular study and a love of the subject matter. People who love a particular person are always the first to know his deeds, simply because they are interested.

John Chrysostom on Rom 1:17.

Paul has added, righteousness. He is speaking not about your own righteousness, but about the righteousness of God. He also implies that this life is abundant and easy. For you receive this life not through toil and suffering but as a gift from above. From your side, you bring only one thing, which is faith. Paul’s argument seemed to be incredible: that someone such as the adulterer, the effeminate, the grave robber, and the sorcerer is not only spared punishment, but actually becomes righteous with a righteousness given from above.

Augustine on Rom 3:20-24.

Thus Paul continues and adds, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, that is, through the faith by which we believe in Christ. Just as what is called the faith of Christ refers not to some faith by which Christ himself believed, so the righteousness of God means not that justice by which God is righteous. Both of these are hours; they are attributeed to God and to Christ because they graciously give them to us.

Origen on Rom7:14-25.

To assign this statement to the Apostle himself, however would seem to bring down despair upon every soul: no one would be able to escape sinning in the flesh, which is what serving the law of sin with the flesh means. I think more likely, therefore, that Paul is still speaking for that person whom he described as having turned toward the better by will and intention, already serving the law of God with mind and soul, but not yet having arrived at bringing the flesh into obedience to the mind’s purpose.

John Chrysostom on Rom 10:4.

For what did the law seek to accomplish? To make a person righteous. It could not do so, however, because no one actually fulfilled its provisions. The goal of the law was to justify people; all its prescriptions looked to this end and were established for this purpose: the feasts, the commandments, the sacrifices, and everything else. Christ actually accomplished this objective through faith. So do not fear, Paul says, that you may have violated the law when you came over to the faith. Actually, you transgress the law when you do not believe in Christ because of the law. So, if you believe in Christ, you have fulfilled that law and more much than it commanded; you have received a much greater righteousness.

A very interesting book and a welcome addition to any collection of Romans commentaries.