Romans

Leander Keck's Romans (Abingdon New Testament Commentaries, 2005) is a stimulating contribution from a distinguished Pauline scholar, but several serious weaknesses place it outside the mainstream of responsible scholarship. The most pervasive is his replacement of "justify/justification" with his own invented word "rectify/rectification," introduced without exegetical argument and deployed throughout. The problem is not merely aesthetic: to "rectify" means to make something right in a transformative sense, whereas Paul's Greek word (dikaioō) consistently carries a forensic meaning — a judge's verdict declaring someone not guilty — as every major commentary confirms, from Cranfield and Dunn through to Thielman and Peterson. The structural damage becomes visible in Romans 6, where Paul's question "Shall we go on sinning?" only makes sense if chapters 3–5 described a legal acquittal, since nobody needs to be warned against exploiting a transformative process but everyone might be tempted to exploit a free pardon. A related evasion appears at Romans 3:25, where Paul calls Christ a hilastērion — a term the major commentaries identify as a propitiatory sacrifice or mercy-seat allusion through which God's wrath is averted; Keck declares propitiation and expiation "cannot be neatly separated" and moves on without argument, a position already refuted by Cranfield, Moo, and Schreiner. His reluctance rests on the assumption that propitiation imports a pagan picture of an angry God appeased by sacrifice, but those commentators had already established that Paul's propitiation is structurally different: it is God himself, out of prior grace and love, who satisfies his own righteous wrath — the cross flows from God's grace and does not make him gracious. Peterson has since deepened this case by showing that paredōken ("handed over," 1:24) was "a technical expression for the police or courts in turning someone over to official custody for the purpose of punishment," confirming that God's wrath in Romans is active and judicial, not the impersonal process of consequences Keck implies. Keck also refuses to decide whether "faith of Jesus Christ" (3:22) means Christ's own faithfulness or human faith in Christ, despite Cranfield, Moo, and Schreiner arguing at length for the latter, and despite Dunn's point that if Christ's faithfulness were key Paul would have made Christ, not Abraham, the model of faith in chapter 4; Thielman has since shown that Paul plants pistis as a thematic term at 1:17 — quoting Habakkuk 2:4 to mean that the believer lives by their own trust in God — and uses it consistently in that human sense through chapters 1–5, so that Keck's reading at 3:22 would require Paul to switch the word's referent without any signal to the reader. At Romans 9:5, where Paul appears to call Jesus "God over all, blessed forever," Keck again declines to decide — already challenged by Cranfield and Moo, and since refuted by Schreiner's seven-point case and by Peterson's observation that a free-floating doxology to God the Father, unattached to any proximate subject, would be without precedent in Paul's syntactical practice. Keck's reading of the "I" of Romans 7:14–25 as the pre-Christian Adamic self was contested by Cranfield and Moo, and is subsequently undermined by Peterson's argument that the conflict is eschatological — the tension of belonging to two epochs simultaneously — impossible for the pre-Christian who inhabits only the old epoch; Schreiner adds that Keck mines the passage for pastoral application to Christian experience while officially excluding the regenerate from its referent, an inconsistency he never resolves. Taken together, these tendencies reveal a commentary that operates by evasion rather than argument: each refusal to decide — on propitiation, on pistis Christou, on Romans 9:5 — produces a consistent theological outcome, leaving the reader with a less forensic atonement, a less faith-centred justification, and a lower Christology than the text supports, without Keck ever having to defend these positions directly. Readers seeking reliable exegetical guidance should first ground themselves in Moo (NICNT), Schreiner (BECNT), Peterson (EBTC), or Cranfield (ICC), and then return to Keck — whose erudition, fresh theological questions, and provocative framing of Paul's argument make him worth reading, provided one is equipped to recognise where his evasions are doing quiet theological work.

For such a modestly sized commentary, this is a surprisingly thorough and theologically profound commentary. It pays close attention to the Greek text, differences between common English translations and deftly summarises the exegetical debates.

 

A commentary on such a central New Testament epistle from a Pauline scholar of Leander Keck’s stature is certainly a welcome development. Keck does not disappoint. For readers not familiar with the Abingdon New Testament Commentaries, the series aims to make the results of critical biblical scholarship available to a wide audience of educated readers, including pastors, university students, and leaders in local churches. The primary translation used is the NRSV, though Keck often cites other translations as well as providing his own. Organized around units of text rather than individual verses, each section (e.g., 2:1–16 or 15:7–13) consists of three parts: an introductory piece covering matters of genre, structure, and individual themes; an exegetical section treating leading ideas and development of thought; and a final section analyzing the theological and ethical significance of the passage. The book includes a bibliography of cited works and an index of theological topics. An index of modern authors would have enhanced the book’s usefulness. Keck’s twenty-page introduction deals with traditional matters of style and structure, theology, and setting and purpose. He helpfully describes Romans as a “discourse within a letter” (23). [Full Review]

With this book Leander Keck has given us a masterful brief commentary on Romans, constantly challenging and thought-provoking, forcing its reader to reexamine and rethink the words of the apostle Paul. After a succinct introduction, situating Romans in its literary, historical, and theological context, Keck offers his interpretation of the letter. The commentary is not verse by verse but passage by passage, making it easier to follow conceptually but of course difficult to find what Keck has to say about a particular verse. There is no translation of Romans provided. Instead, Keck frequently comments on a very wide range of contemporary translations and sometimes offers his own. On Keck’s reading, the Epistle to the Romans provides a Jewish answer to a Greek problem. The problem is the human condition. Human beings are not autonomous but controlled by their own passions and desires, and they cannot escape the tyranny of death. Paul rejects the Greek view that right knowledge leads to right deed. Instead, the solution is Christ, interpreted within the categories of Jewish apocalyptic. Jewish apocalyptic is perfectly fitted for this purpose, because of its emphasis on the universality of God’s rule and his judgment. [Full Review]

Years ago when I was still writing my own commentary on Romans and enquiring what other work was being planned in the field, I remember being excited by grapevine reports that Lee Keck had agreed to write the Romans volume for one of the major commentary series. I remember also the disappointment when, in due course and a good few years later, the Romans commentary appeared in that series from a different author. The disappointment was slight, since the other contributor was weighty in his own right. But disappointment there still was since I knew that a Romans commentary by Keck would demonstrate a theological acumen, a penetrating insight, an ability to keep in view the wood without getting lost in the trees, and a neatness and terseness of expression that few others in the field today can rival. The disappointment was much diminished when I learned that Keck had been recruited to the Abingdon series and completely assuaged when I read the volume itself. In some ways, indeed, the Abingdon format plays to Keck’s strengths. We do not really need another major commentary that loses us in the minutiae of word studies, literary parallels, sociological and rhetorical hypotheses; we have such in plenty. [Full Review]