Roman Roads

Roaming through ancient Pauline soteriology, seeing the present day. Part 1: Seeing what is there.

Encyclopedia Britannica says this about the ancient Roman roads:¹

Roman road system, outstanding transportation network of the ancient Mediterranean world, extending from Britain to the Tigris-Euphrates river system and from the Danube River to Spain and northern Africa. In all, the Romans built 50,000 miles (80,000 km) of hard-surfaced highway, primarily for military reasons.

… The Roman roads were notable for their straightness, solid foundations, cambered surfaces facilitating drainage, and use of concrete made from pozzolana (volcanic ash) and lime. … Their numerous feeder roads extending far into the Roman provinces led to the proverb “All roads lead to Rome.”

… The Roman road system made possible Roman conquest and administration and later provided highways for the great migrations into the empire and a means for the diffusion of Christianity. Despite deterioration from neglect, it continued to serve Europe throughout the Middle Ages, and many fragments of the system survive today.

… The public transport of the Roman Empire was divided into two classes: (1) cursus rapidi, the express service, and (2) agnarie, the freight service. In addition, there was an enormous amount of travel by private individuals. …

The achievements of the ancient Romans were significant even by modern standards, and many aspects of modern life have been influenced by what began back then. And yes, “the diffusion of Christianity” has been one of those influences. Just how influential it was can be difficult for younger generations to see. I grew up in the years when that influence was disappearing, and where I live in Northern California it went very quickly, much more quickly than the fall of Rome.

Romans Road

So what’s the connection? I’m going to simplify this greatly, but in the days after Jesus, there were people traveling those Roman roads carrying varieties of a message known as ὁ εὐαγγέλιον (ho euaggelion, with “ho” being pronounced as in “hot” and “gg” being pronounced “ng”, “i” as “ee”, accent on “gel”)², and to us known as “the gospel” or “good news”. Sometimes the authors themselves traveled, but often others were responsible for delivering and elucidating written letters from the authors. One of these authors was the Apostle Paul, and one of his letters, the Epistle to the Romans, was delivered and presented to the Christians in Rome, facilitated by the Roman road system.

As I have written about elsewhere, Christianity and I have had a rather contentious past. During one of the better times, however, I became involved with an evangelical church, attending services, serving as a technical volunteer, and participating in other activities, one of which was a class that taught how to present what is commonly known in that world as “The Romans Road to Salvation”, “Romans Road” for short. OK, there is the connection. Just move the “s”. And as important they were in the ancient world, we are now finished with Roman roads, but just getting started with the Romans Road.

I want to be clear that I am not trying to use the Romans Road approach to persuade readers here, and I hope that you will relax and continue reading if you are concerned about that. I have employed it in other settings, but my purpose here is to clarify things about the ancient biblical texts, using contemporary language to demonstrate their relevance to the present day, and to the situation in which we presently find ourselves. (It’s easier said than done, and I am still learning.) If you have a better way and you are certain that it is going to work, be my guest, but you might still want to tuck away some of this material away in the back of your mind, just in case. We’re in quite a pickle, and backup approaches are recommended.

Paul’s Epistle to the Romans

The NIGTC Romans Commentary (“Longenecker”)³, which I will be working with here, opens with this preface regarding this letter:

Paul’s letter to believers in Jesus at Rome has always been highly regarded within the Christian church. It has been, in fact, the most highly acclaimed writing of the NT throughout the entire course of Christian history. It is so because it has been, in very large measure, the heartland of Christian thought, life, and proclamation.

This particular letter, however, can be especially difficult to understand, for a variety of reasons, and it is quite prone to misunderstanding. The efforts of translators to keep things brief and readable do not help, and their efforts on top of that to clarify meaning sometimes fall flat. I have only a basic understanding of the Greek, and yet I can spot some of the issues of translation without difficulty.

I’m not actually going to dig into the Romans Road itself just yet⁴. I will say that it involves certain proof texts⁵ of a verse or two each, spread through the book of Romans, particularly chapters 3, 6, and 10, and often including other verses as well, from Romans and elsewhere. I am not a fan of proof texting in general, but it can serve as an introduction to passages that will later be examined in depth and in context.

I will be examining select passages in the book of Romans in an effort to connect what they say with what’s going on in the world right now. Romans is not a book of prophecy, so again relax, but it is a book about us, and we are very much a part of what is going on, even if it seems like other people — evil ones — are running the show.

Verses 16-17

Chapter 1 is a great place to start. It says a lot about us. I will not be going through it verse by verse. There are many studies and commentaries that do that. The commentary I am working with does so in excruciating detail. But chapter 1 is rather infamous in some circles, because some people don’t particularly like what it says about us. I commented at length on my own post from last week regarding verses 20-21, and that served as inspiration for this series, but this time I want to start a little earlier at verse 16, and then continue on with verses 18-20. I will be using the translation provided in the Longenecker commentary⁶.

Rom. 1:16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God with respect to the salvation of everyone who believes: both for the Jew first and for the Gentile. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is being revealed — a righteousness that is based on divine faithfulness and leads to [or ‘results in’] a human response of faith, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

OK, is that clear? No? I am starting here because it offers context for what follows, and because it represents the calm before the storm that breaks out in verse 18. It also illustrates some of the problems of translation. I will give you, as a sample, just one sentence from the commentary, concerning the last part (d) of verse 16 (1:16d). Yes, this is one sentence.

1:16d The phrase Ἰουδαίῳ τε πρῶτον καὶ Ἕλληνι (“both for the Jew first and for the Gentile”) is extremely difficult to translate, simply because it contains both (1) an inclusive emphasis in the use of the enclitic⁷ particle τε (“both”) with the dative nouns Ἰουδαίῳ καὶ Ἕλληνι (“for the Jew and for the Gentile”), which speaks of God’s salvation as being universal in nature, and (2) a particularistic⁸ thrust in the use of the substantival adjective πρῶτον (“first”), which signals an ethnic priority and advantage for Jews within that universal outlook.⁹

This is the kind of thing we’re up against. I feel like I do when I am reading research papers in biochemistry, although the terminology here is more familiar to me because I’ve studied some Greek, which is simpler than biochemistry. By how much, I’m not sure.

I am not going to elaborate further on this passage. I might come back to it in relation to the verses that follow. We’ll see. But now for the “storm”. The entire passage runs from verse 18 through verse 32, but let’s start with just 18-20. That’s plenty for now, as you will see, and it is as far as I will venture in this first installment. Please keep in mind the original audience, which was 1st century Jewish and Gentile believers in Rome, not 21st century Westerners. Imagine yourself there, for a moment, and please reserve judgment until you read what follows this quote.

1:18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of those who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

19 Because what can be known about God is plain to them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For ever since the creation of the world God’s invisible attributes — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood by what has been made, so people are without excuse.

Remember, we are imagining being back in 1st century Rome. Don’t take this personally, at least not yet. There is, however, something familiar about these words. They carry meaning for today. Verse 18 could very well have something to do with our present national, state, and local leaders and other authorities, not to mention the un-elected, secretive global ones. “Godlessness” and “wickedness” particularly seem to apply there.

But is the wrath of God being revealed against them? Well, yes, depending on what you mean by “wrath”. Likewise, we may be feeling it too. For the meaning of “wrath of God”, I quote the commentary.

The “wrath of God,” as Vincent Taylor has aptly defined it, is “not angry passion, but the condemnation which falls upon sin and sinners¹⁰ in conscious rebellion against God.” It is, as William Barclay spoke of it, God’s “annihilating reaction” against sin and all those who have turned away from God and gone their own way. Or as Luke Timothy Johnson points out regarding God’s wrath, “It is a retribution that results, not at the whim of an angry despot but as the necessary consequence of a self-distorted existence…”¹¹

The passage is about cause and effect, and not about God beating his kids. The cause is failure to see something that, according to Paul, can clearly be seen. This also is a problem of epidemic proportions in this day and age with respect to other matters¹², and I understand those matters to arise from this effect. Have you felt any wrath from other people lately? I won’t digress into details , or expand upon this proposition just yet, but I am pointing out that it is humanly quite easy to fail to see what can clearly be seen, and that there nevertheless are consequences. Harsh ones, sometimes. You might not agree, but let me go on, and the comment section is open.

If you were somehow able to create something like this world of ours, incorporating your rules into the design, those rules would apply to and manifest as cause and effect within your created domain. Paul’s statement, then, can be seen as a warning about how things work.¹³

I’m not telling you what you should believe, but if you seem to be having problems for no apparent reason, try taking a hard look at what you are doing, and especially at your assumptions/beliefs. And if you have friends and family that recently seem to have lost touch with reality (I’m not saying which reality), be aware that the same thing can happen to you in a different context. Just ask them.

Verses 18 and 19 express the idea that we can know something about God — assumed to be our origin — by carefully examining our world. To me, the truth of this becomes even clearer when taking into account what we now know about our world from scientific discoveries. We are coming to appreciate how extremely complex are its underpinnings. What might that say about how it came to be?

How often do you encounter things that improve upon themselves, developing on their own into higher and higher orders of organization? And how often do you encounter things that corrupt and decay over time? How are we humans doing at making our world better? Is our big breakthrough finally just around the corner, or does it look more like we are approaching complete meltdown?

So look, and carefully consider what you see. Set aside, for the moment, any assumptions telling you that you don’t see what you see. There’s enough of that craziness running around already in this “new normal” world of ours, without doing the same thing here.

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Facilitated by those ancient Roman roads, a message began to spread. Known as the “Good News”, it is a message about salvation.

I’m returning to the end of this post seven months later, having written and re-written part two until I finally gave up, keeping only the preceding paragraph. In its place I offer this newer post.

It incorporates a version of the ABCs (read it to learn more), which derive from the Romans Road, which is where I originally thought I was headed with this series. This will remain a series, I expect, but an unplanned one since I never seem to know quite where I’m going until I sit down to write.

Perhaps there were those who wandered the Roman roads that way as well.

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Related discussion thread: Seeing what's right in front of our noses

1. Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (no date). Roman road system. Encyclopedia Britannica.

2. Greek transliteration follows rules that help ensure that only those that can also read the Greek directly are able to understand the pronunciation. I broke it down this one time, this particular transliteration being both common and obscure, but I may not do it again. This is “Erasmian” pronunciation, sometimes called “academic Greek”. There are others. If anyone cares, see also How Should Κοινή Greek Be Pronounced?

3. Longenecker, Richard N., New International Greek Testament Commentary: Romans, 2016, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

4. And I won’t be apologizing for puns.

5. See for example Proof Texting in Theopedia for an explanation of this term.

6. Longenecker, pp. 154 & 189.

7. Enclictic: Loses its accent to the preceding word. A dative noun is a noun used as an indirect object. Particle? I’ll leave that to you to figure out. My primary Greek grammar appears to use it without defining it. It’s that kind of word.

8. “Particularistic” was new to me. I wondered at first if it was a grammatical term related to “particle” (referenced just above), but I believe definition 3 here in the Collins English Dictionary is the correct idea, relating to “ethnic priority”.

3.  theology

the doctrine that divine grace is restricted to the elect

“Substantival adjective", which follows, is easier. “A substantival adjective functions as if it were a noun.” (Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek)

9. Longenecker, p. 166.

10. I will be saying more about sin and sinners, but that is for another day. There is much to clarify.

11. Longenecker, p. 201.

12. I.e., the seemingly paradoxical world events that emerged beginning in 2020. Is it paradox, or is it overlooked cause and effect?

13. Is it entirely Paul’s original idea? Consider this:

…Wisdom of Solomon and Romans 1:18–32. Also of importance when considering the form and structure of Rom 1:18–32 is to observe that what Paul writes in 1:19–32 about humanity’s basic knowledge of God, their subsequent idolatries, and their resultant immoralities and injustices — with that material used to support and elaborate on the theme statement of 1:18, which declares that “the wrath of God” is directed “against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness” — parallels, in large measure, what appears in Wis 13:1–14:31, as well as certain statements contained in chs. 11 and 12 of that Jewish apocryphal writing…

Longenecker, p. 193.