New Series: Paul’s Letter to the Romans

Starting this weekend, I am starting a new series on the book of Romans. For the first time, I am teaching an undergraduate class on Romans. In the past, Romans was always part of a Pauline Lit survey, but I never was satisfied with only two weeks of lectures on Romans. It felt rushed, since I needed to cover all thirteen letters along with the background necessary for that sort of a survey class. This class is a chance for me to dig into the details of Romans. It is only natural for some of these things to develop into short blog posts for further discussion. I plan to finish in December, so this is not the longest series on Romans ever, but it should be long enough to cover the major issues found in the book.

There are a number of textbooks which could be used for a class on Romans, but I chose Encountering Romans by Douglas Moo. This is a very student friendly textbook which covers most of the issues without going into too much detail (and distracting from the main points of Paul’s letter). Douglas Moo is well-known for his NICNT Commentary on Romans, and I have used it extensively preparing for the class. I supplemented this with Colin Kruse’s Pillar commentary and Joseph Fitzmyer’s Anchor Bible commentary. I have also used Jewett, Dunn, Schreiner, and a few others. Longenecker’s New International Greek Text Commentary was published this summer, and I picked up Michael Bird’s Story of the Bible commentary from Zondervan in the spring.

My plan is do some background work over the next few posts before moving through the book and commenting on some exegetical and theological details of the text. Hopefully this will be a benefit to most readers. Please feel free to comment, ask questions or offer correction as we move through this important book of the New Testament.

I will also offer one or two Romans-related book giveaways to celebrate the Fall semester and this long series on Romans. I hope you get some benefit from this long, slow read through the book of Romans!