St Paul’s Rhetorical Strategy in Romans 1 (From the March Newsletter)
This reflection is a little different than my usual ones, but it has been on my mind for some time. It is perhaps a fool’s errand that I could treat this topic with any kind of justice in a newsletter, but I have always been a bit of a fool.
During Lent we spend a good deal of time in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. It contains some of the New Testament’s “greatest hits,” beautiful and high theology about grace, faith, and resurrection. But it is also a complicated letter, especially in its opening chapters. And how we read those chapters have theological, interpretive, and, not least, pastoral ramifications.
Romans 1 begins beautifully:
“I am not ashamed of the Gospel… it is the power of God for salvation…
declared to be Son of God… by resurrection from the dead…
through whom we have received grace…”
Good news about resurrection and grace, about God’s salvation And then, suddenly, in verse 18:
“For the wrath of God is revealed…
their hearts were darkened…
God gave them over to dishonorable passions…”
What a transition!
We move from Gospel to wrath, from resurrection to condemnation.
How do these sections belong together?
One compelling interpretation, articulated most fully by theologian Douglas Campbell, suggests that Paul is doing something rhetorically clever. In Romans 1:18–32, Campbell suggests that Paul is voicing the argument of a rival teacher: someone proclaiming a retributive, works-based understanding of how God judges the world. It is a familiar moral critique of pagan society, humanity suppresses the truth, falls into idolatry, and receives judgment.
When we get to chapter 2, something striking happens. Paul writes:
“Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself.”
That “therefore” is doing a lot of work.
It reads less like a continuation and more like an interruption.
Campbell suggests that Paul has allowed a rival teacher’s argument to run its course in 1:18–32. And then Paul springs his trap on the judger and the one who believes the words of verses 18-32 is a judger, if I’ve ever heard one.
On this reading, Romans 1 is not Paul’s final word. It is a setup. Paul lets the condemning voice speak, perhaps knowing that many in his audience would nod along in agreement. And then he turns that very posture of moral superiority into the problem.
The issue is the act of judging itself.
Suddenly the letter makes sense again in light of verses 1–17. The Gospel Paul announced there was about grace, resurrection, and God’s saving power, not about a system of wrath-based moral sorting. If Romans 1:18–32 is taken as Paul’s own final word on humanity, the tone shift is jarring. But if it is part of a rhetorical strategy, then chapters 1 and 2 belong together as a dramatic exposure of religious judgment.[1]
This is important pastorally.
Because Romans 1:26–27 in particular has been lifted out of its rhetorical context and used as a weapon against LGBTQ+ persons, as though Paul’s intent were to single out one group as uniquely depraved. But on this reading, the entire point of the passage is to lure the reader into agreement with condemnation, only to reveal that the condemning stance itself stands under judgment.
If you have ever heard this passage used to suggest that your very existence is evidence of God’s wrath, I want to say plainly: that is not the Gospel Paul proclaims. Nothing in this passage gives the Church permission to treat LGBTQ+ people as anything less than beloved bearers of God’s image.
The target is not gay people. It is self-righteousness, the impulse to sit in God’s seat and decide whose life counts as worthy. The letter does not begin with wrath as its center. It begins with the Gospel, with resurrection.
And perhaps that is our clue for Lent as well. The point of self-examination is not to locate other people’s sins more clearly. It is to allow the Gospel to dismantle our own illusions of superiority so that we might stand, with everyone else, in need of mercy.
The good news, the good news for everyone is that Jesus is faithful on his way to the cross. And that good news includes those who have been pushed to the margins in its name.
[1] *One of the crucial bits of evidence for or against this type of reading is the Greek word Gar in verse 18, which has been translated as “for” (“For the wrath of God is revealed…). That word is typically understood as a logical connective (something like “so” or “therefore”). However, Biblical Scholar Daniel Rodriguez puts forward examples of the use of Gar to indicate a speaker switch. So, it could be the case that, likewise, Paul is using Gar to indicate that the assertions he is making in 18-32 comes from the mouth of another speaker.
