Stephen Young on the Faithfulness of Christ in Rom 5:1

Stephen Young has a recent journal article entitled, “Paul’s Ethnic Discourse on ‘Faith’: Christ’s Faith and Gentile Access to the Judean god in Rom 3:21-5:1” in a recent issue of HTR but readable at Academia.edu.  In a nutshell, Young claims that Rom 5:1 is about how Gentiles have access to the Judean god through the faithfulness of Christ. Young concludes that:

While I do not claim to have offered definitive arguments for understanding Rom 5:1’s dikaiothentes oun ek pisteos in terms of Christ’s righteousing faithfulness, I do propose that my article has established the plausibility of this reading. It makes sense in relation to both the flow of Paul’s arguments in 3:21–4:25 and his ethnic logic about Christ, Gentile Christ-initiates, and Abrahamic descent. Indeed, in my readingdikaiothentes oun ek pisteos effectively encapsulates Paulʼs major points in 3:21–4:25: righteousness for Gentiles comes through Christ’s pistis, the faithfulness of a representative figure who causes others to participate in the Judean god’s ethnically-coded eschatological blessings apart from the law. This coheres both with how the subjective-genitive approach opens up other exegetical possibilities for Paul’s pistis language and with how Paul’s sketch of Abraham in Romans 4 also primes the reader to be thinking of righteousness coming from the pistis of a representative figure. My reading draws further support from Paul’s Christological use of Hab 2:4 at the beginning of Romans to frame his ek pisteos (and dia piesteos) language, as well as from how Paul discusses righteousness coming from (ek) Christ’s faithfulness in Galatians. Far from marginalizing or eliminating Christ followers’ faith within Paul’s writings, this article recognizes that Paul sometimes sets their faith in relation to Christ’s decisive faithfulness, thus inviting further exploration of their relationship in his discourse. Finally, my discussion has emphasized the basic ethnic contours and signiicances of Paul’s claims about Christ’s pivsti~ in Rom 3:21–5:1.

I wonder what Barry Matlock and Francis Watson would say to that!