On The Sixth Day #1

I want to spend a few [many?] Fridays with Paul and his letter to the believers in Rome. Just about every denomination, sect and/or heresy has to deal with what Paul says to these believers. And most take a very parochial view in their dealings - taking what they like and leaving what they don't like as though the letter itself were some sort of cafateria rather than a teaching of whole cloth.

A few basic questions to begin:
1. Who is the man writing the letter?
2. Who are the people to whom he is writing?
3. What is their world like?
4. How do the answers to these questions affect how the letter is, first, understood by the first recipients?
5. How do the answers to these questions affect how the letter is, then, to be understood by us?
6. What then does the letter say, teach and proclaim?

Over the next few [many?] Fridays, I will look at [briefly and NOT academically] some answers to these questions that I offer.

First a quick observation from N. T. Wright: "If Jesus is Messiah, he is of course also Lord, Kyrios. The proper contexts for this term, too, are its Jewish roots on the one hand and its pagan challenge on the other. Taking them the other way round for the moment: the main challenge of the term, I suggest, was not to the world of private cults or mystery-religions, where one might be initiated into membership of a group giving allegiance to some religious "lord". The main challenge was to the lordship of Caesar, which, though certainly "political" was also profoundly "religious". Caesar demanded worship as well as "secular" obedience; not just taxes, but sacrifices. He was well on the way to becoming the supreme divinity in the Greco-Roman world, maintaining his vast empire not simply by force, though there was of course plenty of that, but by the development of a flourishing religion that seemed to be trumping most others either by absorption or by greater attraction. Caesar, by being a servant of the state, had provided justice and peace to the whole world. He was therefore to be hailed as Lord, and trusted as Savior. This is the world in which Paul announced that Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, was Savior and Lord”