Abstract
Marcus Mininger’s new book on Romans 1-3 is dense and detailed, but it repays the effort spent in reading. Presenting very much like the first 400 pages of a 2,000-page commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (perhaps Mininger has designs for such a project?), it comprises a close exegesis of all of Rom 1:16 to 3:26, arguing that the red thread running through this sometimes seemingly convoluted discourse is the theme of revelation, signified by Greek apokalupsis, phanerosis, endeixis, and related terms. Following a substantial introduction consisting mostly of Forschungsbericht, there is a chapter on revelation in Rom 1:16-17, one on the same theme in Rom 1:18-32, then in Rom 2:1-16, then in Rom 2:17-29, then in Rom 3:1-8, then in Rom 3:9-20, and finally in Rom 3:21-26. A seventeen-page conclusion provides the Q.E.D.
One should always be wary of an interpreter claiming to have found the hitherto undiscovered key to a famous problem text, but I’ll be damned if Mininger isn’t on to something here: ‘In the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed’ (1:17); ‘the wrath of God is revealed from heaven’ (1:18); ‘that which can be known of God is manifest’ (1:19); ‘the invisible aspects of God are perceptible’ (1:20); ‘the day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God’ (2:5); ‘the day when God judges the secrets of human beings’ (2:16); ‘not the manifest Jew but the Jew in secret’ (2:28-29); ‘our unrighteousness proves God’s righteousness’ (3:5); ‘God’s righteousness has been manifested apart from the law’ (3:21); ‘Christ the proof of God’s righteousness’ (3:25); and again ‘Christ the proof of God’s righteousness’ (3:26); and more such. Mininger plausibly argues that interpreters have long been so fixated on the heavyweight theological terms in Romans 1-3 (salvation, justification, faith, works, atonement, etc.) that they have overlooked the connective tissue of the discourse, the dense cluster of revelation terminology that ties the whole thing together. The present reviewer, at least, had indeed mostly overlooked it, and I find Mininger’s rebuke and counter-reading very welcome.
Mininger further argues that his new reading breaks the impasse between what he calls the soteriological approach to the epistle (i.e., more or less all interpretations up to the 1960s) and the social approach (i.e., Stendahl, Sanders, Dunn, Wright, Stowers, and other so-called ‘revisionists’). I am not so sure that it does—nor, for that matter, that previous research can be accurately categorized in that twofold way—but Mininger’s reading is nevertheless refreshing for its idiosyncrasy, its willingness to stand on its own rather than toe any party line. Unsurprisingly in light of his key theme (revelation, apokalupsis), Mininger does have certain affinities with the so-called apocalyptic school (Käsemann, Martyn, De Boer, Gaventa, Campbell, et al.). But his account of apokalupsis hews much closer than theirs do to the plain sense of that term: revelation, the disclosure of what was hitherto unknown (as opposed to cosmic invasion, etc.). Mininger’s closest allies, it emerges at the end of the book, are several theologians from the conservative Dutch Reformed tradition who have emphasized the theme of ‘history of revelation’: Geerhardus Vos, Hermann Ridderbos, and Richard Gaffin. I suspect, then, that Mininger’s study may provide grist for certain theological mills beyond the ken of myself or other historical critics of Paul’s letters. But whatever such mills there may be, Mininger has forced all of us to reckon with the apostle’s conspicuous interest in knowledge of things unknown.