Retrieving Romans # 5: Retrieving the Voices

How is it that the friendly reassurance of Rom. 1: 16-17 suddenly gives way to the angry-sounding indictment in Rom. 1: 18-32? This is puzzling because the tenor of the latter passage is accusatory and harsh. The reader’s predicament worsens when we transition into chapter 2. There, in the first three verses (2: 1-3), there is a major pivot. The language is still harsh, almost crude, but the target of the harshness is now the voice that held the floor in the long accusatory passage in Romans 1: 18-32. The back-and-forth of these passages has been solved in one of two ways. First, some call it "a homiletical sting operation." We are to perceive a trap in the harsh indictment of 1: 18-32. Paul solicits agreement with the indictment only to turn on the reader once agreement is secured! This reading envisions a clever Paul who may have concerns about Gentile vice but who is even more eager to target Jewish (false) virtue. The second option is quite different. Here, the speaking voice in 1: 18-32 is someone other than Paul. In fact, the voice is best heard as the voice of the counter-missionaries, the very reason why Paul wrote the letter. By this criterion, the passage does not give us a clever Paul who puts his homiletical skills on display. Instead, we have the earnest Paul who forcefully puts opponents in their place. He wants to retain control of the Gentile mission and of the message. It will not be a message that begins with the wrath of God but one grounded in God’s compassion and faithfulness.