Paul's Uncommon Declaration in Romans 1:18–32 and Its Problematic Legacy for Pagan and Christian Relations

Abstract

By the late fourth century, prominent Christian leaders no longer remained content to advocate religious separatism from their polytheistic social environment. Instead they started making more strenuous efforts in law and in the streets to prohibit Greek and other pagan religious practices in the Roman Empire. This change in policy and practice was the outcome of historical factors that need better explanation than that of the unavoidable destiny of Christianity. One important aspect of this change, I argue here, is a problematic innovation in the tradition of Hellenistic Jewish and early Christian polemic against polytheism. The innovation derives from Paul's letter to the Ro-mans and develops through patristic endorsements of Paul's argument. In Rom 1:18–32 Paul fully reworks the Hellenistic Jewish polemical tradition, even though his argument is not yet recognized today as the distinctive proclamation that it is. Nonetheless, the polemic he wages in Rom 1:18–32 is anomalous in the tradition before, during, and for a century after he lived.