Review
in: Pacifica
1998
11: 211
Review
door: Brendan Byme, S. J.Gevonden op: http://paa.sagepub.com/content/11/2/211.full.pdf+html
DOUGLAS
J. MOO, The Epistle to the Romans. The
New
International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan/
Cambridge, U. K.: Eerdmans, 1996. ISBN 080282317. Pp. xxvi + 1012.
Rrp. U.S.$50.00
This
one-volume commentary on Romans has the physical dimensions of a brick. Is
there still a place for one-thousand-page commentaries of this kind, even on
major biblical documents? Comparison with the dinosaurs and their fate is
well-worn but obvious. Nonetheless, as editor Gordon Fee explains in a preface,
it was time after thirty years to find a replacement for John Murray’s
commentary on Romans, in continuity with the decidedly Reformed theological
stance of the New International Commentary series
as a whole.
Within
the framework of this goal the editor has chosen well in Douglas Moo. Where the
sheer bulk of the work might presage a commentary of tiresome long-windedness,
actual reading soon dispels this impression. The text is engaging and unfailingly
clear. Topics arise for discussion according to an order and logic that is easy
to discern. More difficult to achieve, as anyone who has attempted a commentary
will know, is striking a right balance between what to put in the main commentary
and what to place in the notes. Moo’s choice in this respect has been
consistently judicious, greatly aided by the physical layout of the commentary
with the notes located as genuine footnotes at the bottom of each page. The
result is a highly readable text where necessary discussion of detail never
impedes the basic flow of the comment.
The
commentary is written unashamedly and avowedly from a strong theological
perspective. Granted the nature of Romans, this is surely something to be
applauded. At the same time, while the Evangelical tone is patent on every
page, there is a remarkable ”catholicity” about the immense ”cover” of the
secondary literature that Moo provides and a calm, unruffled courtesy in the
way opinions ultimately to be rejected are presented and discussed.
There
are also some surprises in the shape of departures from what might be
considered interpretations typical of the Evangelical approach. Moo considers
at length and ultimately rejects the ”New Perspective” on Paul and the law as
represented, in somewhat different forms, by E.P. Sanders and J. D. G. Dunn,
but does not go over completely to the ”hard Lutheran” interpretation of
Bultmann and his school where even the performance of the law is already sin.
With U. Wilckens, S. Westerholm and others, Moo holds that Paul’s pessimistic
view of life under the law stemmed from factual human incapacity to keep its
precepts rather than from any inherent wrongfulness in law‑keeping as such.
Perhaps
the most striking departure from the strong Reformed tradition would be the
view that the anguished plight of the ”I” in 7:14-25 reflects not the situation of the Christian but that of
Paul, looking back from his Christian perspective, to the situation of himself
and other Jews living under the law of Moses.
Such
departures remain, however, exceptional. Though alternatives are given extended
and courteous consideration, the commentary consistently returns by and large
to a very conservative evangelical perspective: a ”propitiatory” view of the
death of Christ in 3:25 (following,
it must be admitted, an excellent discussion); a
strongly ”substitutionary” interpretation of the same with respect to 8:4 and, horror of horrors for this
reviewer, the full blast of ”double predestination” in regard to The
”hardening” Paul portrays here, then, is a sovereign act of God that is not caused (italics original) by anything in those individuals who are
hardened. And 9:22-23 and 11:7 suggest that the outcome of the
hardening is damnation ..... just as God decides on the basis of nothing
but his own sovereign pleasure, to bestow his grace and so save some
individuals, so he also decides, on the basis of nothing but his own sovereign
pleasure, to pass over others and so to damn them (p. 598).
How so
reasonable a Christian believer as Moo otherwise appears to be can, in the late
twentieth century, believe in and see fit to commend to others so monstrous a
view of God is inconceivable to me. How would anyone want to believe in - let
alone love - such a deity, reflecting more the amoral capriciousness of
an ancient despot or a modern Pol Pot than the God emerging from the Gospel
proclamation of Jesus? Even were such a doctrine to be found in Paul - and I
would strongly argue that it is not, since, pace Moo, Paul is primarily concerned with the situation (and
not necessarily the final situation at that) of communities (Jews and Gentiles)
rather than individuals -then it surely belongs to aspects of his thought that
a genuine hermeneutic would leave firmly behind as belonging to unacceptable
and unessential elements in the apocalyptic worldview of his time, having
nothing to do with the timeless core of the gospel. If otherwise great
interpreters such as Augustine and Calvin read this in or out of Paul, then, in
this respect at least, they were simply wrong and deserve to be disregarded.
We
touch here on the fundamental flaw in the entire approach of this commentary.
It simply cannot escape from a literalist resumption holusbolus of the apocalyptic framework of Paul’s thought and
argument. Salvation, damnation, judgement, the second coming -they are all
there with no re-examination of what they might mean in a contemporary preaching
of the gospel ranging beyond the Evangelical frame of discourse. No doubt this
work will be become the standard commentary on Romans in Evangelical circles.
The pity is that, excellent though it is in many respects, it will not
stimulate ”true believers’’ within that tradition to move in any way beyond
where they began.
Brendan Byme, S. J.,
Jesuit Theological College,
United Faculty of Theology,
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