No One Seeks for God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 1:18-3:20

Abstract

No One Seeks for God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans I:18-3:20, by Richard H. Bell. WUNT 106. Tubingen: Mohr-Siebeck,1998. Pp. xiv + 359. DM 158.00. This is a valiant, learned, detailed, and well-organized, but unconvincing attempt to read Romans in terms of Lutheran exegetical traditions and dogmatics. Bell describes the work as both scientific and confessional (p. ix), but he never appears to consider the possibility that the two might conflict. Bell recognizes that 1:18-3:20 is difficult for a traditional Lutheran reading and tries to overcome the problems. Because the work refers readers to the author's earlier book on chapters 9-11 (Provoked to Jealousy [1994]) for introductory issues, one often has the sense of entering a discussion in the middle. To this reviewer, readings often seemed to be at least partly worked out on the basis of abstract theological axioms or apologetic concerns. Bell makes frequent appeals to Paul's mind that lies behind the text and that he treats as the key to its meaning. The book will prove especially valuable for those interested in the exegetical underpinnings of German Lutheran theology. Bell shows his deep knowledge of German scholarship in this tradition and explicitly favors older work on the NT rather than more recent scholarship that is under the tyranny of novelty (p. viii). The book reads as if most of the English-speaking scholarship (except for evangelical) since the eclipse of the Bultmannian school had never appeared. Bell begins with a useful introduction that discusses major structural and theological problems that are of concern to him. The section also serves to dismiss readings such as those, for example, of Jouette Bassler and others on God's impartiality that might dethrone a sole emphasis on justification by faith alone and Bola gratis. The approach of predetermining the letter's theme is very highly circular. Chapter 2 discusses 1:182 and chapter 3 treats issues arising from the section-the relation to Greek philosophy, Hellenistic Judaism, apocalyptic and wisdom, natural revelation and theology, and the Jewish and Pauline views of the fall. Similarly, chapter 4 contains six excursuses (including one on rabbinic views of the law revealed to Gentiles and another on natural law in Greek philosophy and in Judaism). Chapters follow on 2:17-38 and 3:9-20, and there is a Concluding Discussion. The book's title, No One Seeks for God (3:11), signals Bell's overriding implicit principle for reading 1:18-3:20. Romans 3:9-20 unquestionably teaches an AugustinianLutheran doctrine of the fall, and any texts that seem to provide evidence for another view must be reinterpreted in light of this doctrine. He describes 1:18-3:20 as a history of Damnation, a Verdammnisgeschichte (p. 90). The-book pays no attention to the way that the letter explicitly constructs its audience as Gentile and assumes an audience of Jews and Gentiles. Statements about sin and salvation are treated as if they describe ontological essences. The letter defends Paul's doctrine of justification against charges brought by Jewish Christians. Bell places an enormous emphasis on Adam in 1:18-32 based on highly debatable, supposed allusions to Genesis and the supposition of a general Jewish doctrine of the Adamic fall. The latter is particularly strange seeing that Bell knows the work of John R. Levison, which has demonstrated the baselessness of that view. He also claims that believed in the fall of Israel. Here he appeals to a supposed allusion to the golden calf episode in 1:23. How the audience in Rome might have heard such an astoundingly subtle allusion, much less have derived a teaching about Israel's fall is never faced. According to Bell, Jews, like Gentiles, have lost the image and knowledge of God due to this fall: Paul believes that not only are the Gentiles like beasts; Jews also have become like animals (p. 131). One also finds extensive discussion of natural revelation and theology. …