2008
Winter-Spring Edition of a peer-reviewed article from an Issue of the Academic Journal "Fidelitas" of The Fellowship of Catholic Scholars
The Soteriological Horizon of Obedience in Paul
Fr Denis Lemieux
Father Denis Lemieux is a priest of Madonna House, Combermere, Ontario,
Introduction
In any effort to give a synthetic account of a subject, the question of ‘point of departure’ is of particular importance. The scope of one’s treatment of a subject, the extent to which one can account for the data contained within it, the coherence of the synthesis achieved and its satisfactoriness – all depend to a large degree on starting well, on beginning the study with an aspect, an element, an organizing image or concept therein, that is big enough to bear the weight of the whole topic.
In the synthesizing of a theology of redemption, the vast study of the central event of the Christian mystery, that which itself is arguably the point of departure for all other Christian theology, the problem becomes especially acute. This is both because of the importance of the topic (that on which the very fate of the universe hangs!) and because even a cursory study reveals a multiplicity of possible points of departure, all of which possess weight and merit. p. 75
For example, Peterman, in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, lists seven scriptural “theological points of departure”19 in this regard: redemption from the Incarnation, through ransom, through Christ’s death on account of sin, as a sacrifice, asvictory over the devil, through Christ’s resurrection and glorification, and through his obedience.
Many other Scriptural or dogmatic possibilities suggest themselves besides those ones: creation, the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, atonement; other starting points are more humanistic: questions of human fulfillment, historical progress, quests for liberation or justice, existential realities such as death or alienation.
It is the last theme listed of Peterman’s, however, the soteriological function and significance of Christ’s obedience to the Father, which is the subject of this paper. In an exegetical and theological analysis of this theme, focusing on Romans 5:19, Christ’s obedience emerges as a bridge between the Trinitarian perichoresis and its reflection by creation in the mode of participation on the one hand, and the moral and ecclesial ordering of Christian life on the other. Christ’sobedience both effects the unity of God and creation in the order which God intended for it, and renders this unity comprehensible to us in our moral and ecclesial life. Soteriology done ‘in the key of obedience’ thus provides a radical theological ground for Christian discipleship in the community of believers.
19 Peterman, E.L., “Redemption (Theology of)”, in New Catholic Encyclopedia 2nd Ed., Catholic University of America Press, Washington, 2003, p. 973-4.
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Methodologically, the paper will first set out in brief the key Scriptures that establish obedience as a soteriological reality, followed by a broad analysis of the word υπακούω, its derivates and antonyms in St. Paul. Having established a Pauline theology of obedience, the text of Romans 5:19 will be analyzed for its particular theological import. After this necessary exegetical work, the paper will propose a systematic theology of salvation through the obedience of Christ, drawing on Aquinas’ treatises on the Trinity and creation in the Summa Theologiae, as well as his treatment of Christ’s will in III.18. From this work of theological synthesis, the paper will return to the Scriptural theology of obedience to suggest an integrated soteriological-moral-ecclesial view of the place of obedience in the Christian mystery.
The Scriptures
The theme of Christ’s obedience emerges in both the Johannine and Pauline literature. In John 10: 18, Christ lays down his life in response to a ‘command’ from his Father, in 12:49 his words and teaching are ‘just as the Father told me’, and in 14:31 he does what ‘the Father commands’ to manifest his love for the Father to the world. Significantly in John, the obedience of the disciples to Jesus’ commandment of love is directly paralleled to his own obedience to the Father (15:10-12), and the obedience of the community of disciples is their entry into the communion of love of the Father and the Son (14:21-23) in the Spirit (14:16). These same themes will be expressed in part and in a different mode in the Pauline tradition.
In Paul, obedience as a soteriological theme only emerges in two passages: Phil 2: 8 and Rom 5:19. In the great Christological hymn of Philippians, the obedience of Christ is
77 Journal of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars (Canada) Winter-Spring 2008
seen in his self-emptying and self-humbling to the point of crucifixion and death, for which sake God exalted him. In Romans 5, the obedience of Christ stands in contrast to the disobedience of Adam, Adam’s disobedience bringing sin,death, and condemnation to the many, Christ bringing grace and righteousness through his obedience.
Υπακούω in Paul
Before entering a more detailed analysis of Romans 5, however, it is necessary to examine the larger Biblical context of υπακουώ and its related noun and adjective (υπακοη and υπήκοος) as well as the two words used to signify disobedience in the epistles (απείθεια and παρακοη) and their derivatives.
Υπακούω is a neologism in the New Testament: “The word rendered obedience is not found in pre-Christian writings.”20Literally to ‘listen under,’ while one of the opposing words, παρακοη, means ‘to listen alongside’, it implies, as does theHebrew equivalent שמע, an attitude of receptivity, an openness to, submission to, bowing before the word of the other, of the one to whom one is obedient. Along with παρακοη stands απείθεια, literally a refusal to be persuaded, an obstinatekeeping of one’s own counsel in opposition to the word being given.
A statistical analysis reveals these words to be of particular importance in the Pauline corpus, and to be especially prevalent in the letter to the Romans. Of the 39 N.T. occurrences of υπακούω and its variants, 24 occur in the
20 Morris, Leon, The Epistle to the Romans, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1988, p. 49. 78 Journal of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars (Canada) Winter-Spring 2008
Pauline and deutero-Pauline letters (61%), 18 of those in the undisputed Pauline material (46%), 11 of those in Romans alone (28%). Of the 32 occurrences of the disobedience vocabulary, 15 occur in the Pauline and deutero-Pauline letters (47%), of which eight occur in Romans alone (25%). In the whole New Testament, 27% of the explicit mentions of obedience and disobedience occur in Romans alone, 38% in the undisputed Pauline letters, and 55% in the Pauline corpus.
Obedience emerges in the Pauline tradition overwhelmingly as a moral principle; Romans 5:19 and Phil 2:8, significant as they are, are virtually the only soteriological texts that utilize the word. Rather, obedience is paralleled with faith in Paul, as its principle of action: the ‘obedience of faith’ (Rom 1:6, 16:26), to the Gospel (Rom 10:16, 2 Th 1:8), to the doctrine or word given (Rom 6:17, 2 Th 3:14) or simply to Christ (2 Co 10:5) all with Paul are synonymous with the act of faith and the living out of it. To effect it in his hearers is the goal of Paul’s preaching (Rom 15:18, 16:26), and the characteristic of those who have accepted it.
Obedience is often rendered, as above, to the doctrine/Gospel/word delivered by Paul; it is an obedience that consists in receiving this word and living it ‘by word and deed’ (Rom 15:18), but in several passages Paul clearly praises his readers for their personal obedience to him, or admonishes them likewise (Ph 2:12, 2 Co 2:9, 7:15, Phm 21), an obedience which at least once is linked to the salvation of his readers (Ph 2:12). p. 79 By contrast to obedience, disobedience is the characteristic of the unsaved, those who reject the Gospel, the ‘children ofdisobedience (Eph 2:2, 5:6, Col 3:6). Disobedience is virtually synonymous with disbelief in Paul (Rom 2:8, 10:16, 10:21, 11:30, 2 Th 1:8), and is cause for excommunication from the ranks of believers (2 Th 3:14). Disobedience is paralleled with unrighteousness (1 Tim 1:9) and in fact is spoken of as being, in fact obedience to unrighteousness (Rom 2:8) or sin (Rom 6:12, 16-17).
The larger Pauline theology of obedience, then, is that it is the identifying behavioral marker of the believing Christian, that it consists in receiving the word or doctrine or Gospel of Christ and living it out in word and deed, that this obedience is, in some way yet undefined, mediated through obedience to Paul himself, that it is a required element for those who wish to be part of the community of believers, and that a refusal to obey God and the Gospel of Christ necessarily leaves one enslaved to unrighteousness and sin, and outside the saving action of God. This Pauline theology of obedience as the sine qua non of the life of faith places the specifically soteriological text of Romans 5 in a broad field of moral and ecclesial meaning.
Romans 5:19
In this letter, concerned as it is with themes of law and grace, sin and justification, Jew and Gentile, Romans 5:12-21 is ofcentral importance. It is “the point where all the lines of Paul’s thinking converge,”21 perhaps even “the very heart of center of
21 Morris, p. 228. p. 80 the epistle,”22 providing “the ‘programmatic text’ for the whole letter.”23
This programmatic text is a retelling, from the perspective of Christ, of the story of the creation and fall of man. DrivingPaul’s interpretation of the Adam tradition is his faith and knowledge in Christ’s work: “Always for Paul Christ is the decisive one. Paul starts from Christ’s saving work and sees a similar pattern in Adam.”24
This pattern is one of setting humanity on a course, a direction, a path: disobedience, sin, and condemnation in the first Adam, righteousness, grace, and mercy in the second. And it is the choice of obedience/disobedience that determines this course.
“Christ’s obedience has made it possible for humanity to have a new goal: life because of grace instead of death because of sin.”25
The sin of Adam, then, being depicted as having a universal effect on his descendants, seems to imply “a social theory of sin.”26 Without committing Paul proleptically to the full Augustinian theology of original sin and its transmission, clearly the text indicates that Adam’s “original disobedience to the command of God gave sin entrance into the human
22 Ibid.23 Adams, Edward, “Paul’s Story of God and Creation,” in Narrative Dynamics in Paul: a Critical Assessment, Ed. Longenecker, Bruce W., Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2002, p. 27.24 Morris, p. 234.25 Achtmeier, Paul, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Romans, John Knox, Atlanta, 1985, p. 99.26 Jewett, Robert, Hermeneia: Romans, Fortress, Minneapolis, 2007, p. 375 p. 81 domain,”27 unleashing “in the human milieu a force of selfishness that was waiting to burst out and take control.”28
Adam’s sin of disobedience has shaped the world in a certain way; Adam has in a sense created “a world radically conditioned by... disobedience,”29 in a travesty of what man was meant to do as God’s co-creator.
Christ, then, is to “undo the terrible consequences of Adam’s failure,”30 to define “the future destiny of believers just asAdam’s life defined the future of his descendants,”31 to bring into being “a new humanity...for whom sin and death have been conquered,”32 and to effect it that “just as Adam was the head of a race of sinners, so Christ is head of a new race, theredeemed people of God.”33
All this is accomplished, then, as v. 19 states, by the obedience of Christ to God. Paul had been discussing in the first four chapters of the letter questions of circumcision, the covenant, Abraham and the law. Now, he reveals “Jesus as the true Adam and the true Israel. Both themes are focused on Jesus’ obedient death, seen as the act of grace by which the true God is revealed... the obedience of Jesus is thus the means by which God’s faithfulness to the covenant has been effected.”34
27 Byrne SJ, Brendan, Sacra Pagina Vol 6: Romans, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1996, p. 175.28 Ibid., p. 176.29 Wright, N.T., “Romans”, in The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, vol. 10, Abingdon, Nashville, 2000, p. 526.
30 Adams, p. 27. 31 Jewett, p. 370. 32 Wright, p. 524. 33 Morris, p. 228. 34 Wright, p. 55. p. 82 Further, Paul’s contrasting of Christ’s obedience of with Adam’s one act of disobedience “suggests that Christ’s obedience unto death is implied,”35 as opposed to the opinion of some commentators that the text refers to Christ’s entire life of righteousness before the Father. As Byrne puts it:
Christ ...willingly accepted death as the cost of total human fidelity to God in an alienated and sinful world. His obedience consisted not so much in obeying a specific command as in embodying ‘unto death’ the grace of the Father... His obedience in the face of death is the fine point of focus both of his union with the Father and his self- giving love for the human race. 36
Paul’s concern in Romans 5:12-21 is primarily kerygmatic. He proclaims that in Christ the course of humanity has taken a dramatically new turn, that where sin, death, and judgment ruled, now there is grace, mercy, and righteousness, and that this has come through the saving actions of Jesus Christ, who has undone what Adam did and reversed the disastrous effects of Adam’s disobedience.
Because of Paul’s rhetorical intent, that of encouraging the young Roman church to persevere in its faith in Jesus and in the righteousness given by the obedience of faith, it lies outside the scope of his letter to discuss exactly how Christ’sobedience works this reversal of human history. What is the soteriological dynamic of obedience? How did Christ obey the
35 Jewett, p. 386. 36 Byrne, p. 181. p. 83 Father, and what did this effect in our humanity? What difference does this obedience make? Why is obedience a soteriological reality, and what are the implications of this in the Christian practice of obedience?
Paul does not say. To examine these theological questions is the next task of this paper, a task aided by Aquinas’ theology of the Trinity, creation, and redemption37. Here, the strict exegetical work is left behind in favor of a systematicdevelopment of a theology of obedience. In this work, Paul’s theology of obedience, both in Romans 5 and in his whole corpus, will be grounded in the foundational realities of theology and faith.
Obedience in Trinity and Creation
The first point that must be made, of course, is that properly speaking, there is no ‘obedience’ in the Trinity. Obediencenecessarily implies subordination; in the unity of the three Persons in the one Divine Nature, there can be no subordination or subjection. In what follows, this must be clearly maintained – an Arian understanding of the Trinity is to be excluded from the outset. As Aquinas makes clear, “Christ is subject to the Father not simply but in His humannature.”38 Obedience properly speaking only enters the interior Divine economy through the medium of the created human nature of Christ. There, however, as Aquinas develops, it is present in full, Jesus being subject to the Father in the
37 It is, however, no part of my intention in this paper to provide a detailed exposition of Thomistic thought in these matters, but rather to use key concepts of his to develop an independent soteriology of obedience.38 STh III.20.1 ad 1 p. 84 orders of goodness and power, and in the free disposition of his will,39 that is, in obedience unto death.
While excluding obedience in this strict sense from the inner life of the Trinity, it is arguable, however, that an analogy of obedience, an analogia obedientiae, can be predicated of the Son in his eternal uncreated relation to the Father.
Using the literal Greek meaning of υπακοη, combined with the primary datum of revelation of the Second Person of the Trinity as Word, the relation of the Son to the Father can be understood as being like obedience in a certain sense.
The Son is ‘spoken’ by the Father. The Son receives his being from and as the Word of the Father. The Son ‘listens under’the Father in this sense, that Who He is as Son is a received being (albeit eternal, uncreated) determined by the Father’s generative disposition towards Him. “The Son has his very being, as Son, of the Father,”40 as one author puts it. In a manner co-eternal with the Father, and co-equal with the Father in dignity and being, the Son ‘obeys’ the Father in being the substantial generation of the Father’s knowledge, wisdom, and Word. Aquinas himself establishes this in the Prima Pars: “Word... signifies an emanation of the intellect: and the person Who proceeds in God, by way of emanation of the intellect, is called the Son.”41
From the Son, the Word of God, the One who in an utterly transcendent and unique way ‘listens under’ the Father and
39 STh.III.20.140 Jewett, Paul, God, Creation, and Revelation: A Neo-Evangelical Theology, Eerdmans, Grand Rapid, 1991, p. 288.41 STh.I.34.2. p. 85 receives Being in this eternal act of listening, the role of obedience in the dynamic of creation becomes clear.
“God is the first exemplary cause of things,”42 Aquinas tells us, as the determination of forms is “reduced to the divinewisdom as its first principle, for divine wisdom devised the order of the universe.”43 This exemplary causality of creation in God has a particular reference to the person of the Word:
The Person of the Son, Who is the Word of God, has a certain common agreement with all creatures, because the word of the craftsman, i.e. his concept, is an exemplar likeness of whatever is made by him. Hence the Word of God, Who is His eternal concept, is the exemplar likeness of all creatures.44
Creation, and in a particular way the rational creation, is made to resemble, reflect, imitate, the Word of God. Obedience emerges here, then, as more than the formal observance of a law, more, even, than giving to God what is His due, more even than giving God glory and honor and thanksgiving. Obedience emerges in this analysis as the very being and substance of the created order.
If the Son can, in a wholly analogical sense, be spoken of as obedient to the Father, as being ‘determined’ by the Father ina transcendent fashion, and if creation reflects this in an exemplary fashion, then creation’s being consists in it being
42 STh I.44.3.43 Ibid.44 STh.III.3.8. See also I.33.3 ad 1, I.34.3 p. 86 ordered to the will of the Father. Creation ‘is’ insofar as it, too ‘listens under’ the Father.
This is what it means for participated, dependent being to come into existence and remain in existence. “He spoke and it came to be” (Ps 33:9). The issue of obedience, while retaining its full moral character and import, becomes grounded here in basic ontological questions. To be is to be obedient.
Conversely, to disobey is to collapse into non-being. The wages of sin are death (Rom 6:23) not because a punitive God strikes down the sinner in anger, but because to sin is to step outside of the only mode of existence in which existence can be sustained. Since existence for creatures is a participatory sharing in the likeness of the Word, and the Word’s being consists in being ‘known’, being ‘spoken’, listening under the Father, then when rational creatures step out from under the word to be alongside the word (to live in παρακοη) then they separate themselves from the only ground of being that they can possibly have. To be disobedient is, in strict necessity from the nature of the Word and creation, to choose not to be.
From this comes death, as a direct consequence, and the whole world begotten by sin and death emerges, a world“radically conditioned”45 by the disobedience of Adam. (It is, perhaps, worth noting parenthetically that this schema of obedience/disobedience in the Trinity and Creation does not require an accounting for how Adam’s sin affected the wholehuman race so drastically. The point is the necessary role of obedience in the order of being and creation, and the ontological equivalence of disobedience and non-being). Into
45 Wright, p. 526. p. 87 this world, then, the act of Christ’s obedience assumes it true salvific nature.
The Obedience of Christ
Christ, then, by offering obedience to the Father in his act of dying, brings to bear the very Trinitarian relationship fromwhich springs creation’s integrated being and wholeness upon the very place where rational creation has lapsed into non- being and annihilation.
Aquinas points out that Christ exercises his obedience through submitting his natural will, his will of sensuality, which by nature finds suffering, humiliation, and death repugnant, to the will of the Father, in the freedom of his rational will, united to the Divine Will and motivated by love of sinners.46
As von Balthasar states: “If God wished to ‘experience’ the human condition from within, so as to redirect it from inside it, and thus save it, he would have to place the decisive stress on that point where sinful, mortal man finds himself ‘at his wit’s end.’”47
At the precise place where nature recoils against its dissolution, where creation’s rebellion against its own being and its ground of being lapses into the chaos and anguish of oblivion, there Christ’s act of filial love penetrates, re- grounding the whole of creation in His unfathomable relation to the Father.
46 STh III.18.5, 44.2 ad 2.47 von Balthasar, Hans Urs, Mysterium Paschale, T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1993, p. 13. page88image13813824 page88image13814016
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The personal quality of this obedience has great theological import. For Christ, “It is not an anonymous destiny he obeys but the person of the Father.”48 Christ introduces the unfathomable and utterly transcendent analogical form of ‘obedience’ that is within the Trintarian perichoresis into the very heart of the human tragedy to transform it from within into a personal encounter with the Father.
Karl Rahner confirms this, reflecting on our own act of obediential faith:
This disposition [of obedience] reaches us in reality in the hard and inscrutable ‘facticity’ of a human life that is eloquent with death; and this acceptance takes the brute facticity of life as a disposition of the will of a loving Father. This work [of salvation] is a simple reality that our mind can grasp: it is obedience or the unconditional acceptance of life, in its obscure facticity, moving towards death, as of a divine disposition proceeding from fatherly love.49
In the Passion of Christ, the personal intimate union of the Father and the Son is expressed in and inviolably unites itself to the very place where ‘union’ itself is annihilated. And the vehicle, the means by which this transformation occurs, is the obedience of Christ, his free choice to enter the abyss for our sake, in obedience to his Father.
48 Ibid., p. 90.49 Rahner, Karl, “Christ as the exemplar of clerical obedience”, in Obedience and the Church, Corpus, Washington, 1968, p. 9.
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The Obedience of the Church
The movement of the theological question now reaches that of the transmission of Christ’s obedience to the life of thebeliever. Having established the soteriological meaning of obedience within the framework of a Trinity-creation correspondence, and having established the Christological work as that of re-grounding creation in obedience at the very place of its death and dissolution, now it must be asked: how is this re-grounding, this re-purposing, this re-signifying of reality communicated to the whole of humanity?
It seems necessary, to avoid a merely Pelagian position whereby Christ merely gives good example in place of Adam’sbad example, to posit a mystical theology of incorporation in Christ, to understand the εν Χριστω of Pauline thought in its fullest mode of mystical union. This appears necessary, both to avoid Pelagianism, and to do justice to full scope of Christ’s redeeming work, its personal and individual character and its ecclesial effect.
Christ’s work of re-grounding creation, in its most futile and death-dealing extremities, into an expression of the life of the Trinity, is only salvific for an individual if that individual actually appropriates this new meaning, this new Trinitarian act of creation, so to speak, into their own encounter with death and sin. But since it is only the free act of obedience of the Son that achieves this act of re-creation, then man can only receive its saving effect by a personal union with the Son. Christ must die with every person so that each may enter the victory of the transformative love of the Father and the Son from within their own encounter with death and defeat.
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It is a question ... of entry into a mystery which the new life received at baptism makes most intimately our own... he wishes to live over again in me the mystery of his poverty, his obedience and finally his death... seen in this light obedience appears as a fundamental condition of Christian life.50
In this, the ecclesial dimension begins to emerge. The entry of each Christian into the mystery of Christ’s obedience occurs through, with, and in their entry into the communion of the Church in baptism. The εν Χριστω becomes equally an εν εκκλησία,51 Christ bringing us in his personal presence and communion with our lives into the life of the body of believers, his own body, so that he truly does become “the head of a new race, the redeemed people of God.”52
Υπακούω in Paul II
Returning, then, from these systematic considerations back to the Scriptures and the Pauline treatment of obedience, the soteriological horizons of the theme, only explicitly stated in Romans 5 and
50Labourdette OP, Michel, “The common good as a foundation of obedience: obedience and charity”, in Obedience and the Church, Corpus, Washington, 1968, p. 19.51 The full ecclesial dimension of obedience, along with all the uncertainties, controversies, polemic and confusion that have attended the subject in recent decades can receive only a passing acknowledgment in this paper. Suffice to say that the discussion of obedience in the Church must be done with an awareness of the profound soteriological frontiers that this line of research has opened up.
52 Morris, p. 228.
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Philippians 2, nonetheless can be seen as the organizing principle for the whole of Paul’s thought.
The life of man grounded in obedience, the life of man lost by disobedience, the life of man saved by Christ’s obedience, the life of man joined to Christ by the obedience of faith, by accepting, entering into, submitting to, ‘listening under’, the word spoken by Christ in his Gospel – the full ontological, Trinitarian, soteriological horizon of obedience establishes the logical basis for its central place in the Christian moral life, as seen in Paul’s letters.
While the Johannine theme of the Father and the Son in their unity of love is missing here in Paul, nevertheless, the connection is made whereby Christian obedience becomes the point of entry to the righteousness of Christ – a righteousness that in John will be implicitly identified with his communion with the Father.
This communion, while lacking in Paul the richness of the Johannine Trintarian development, is implied in Paul in the passages where obedience is a necessary pre-condition for communion with the Church. At any rate, that which is partial and implied in Paul attains its fullest expression in John. There is a development, not a disjunction, between these two very different strands of New Testament theological tradition.
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Conclusion
Obedience is faith in action, because obedience is virtually the formal cause of faith, the shape that faith in Christ, relationship with Christ, communion with God, takes in the temporal order. Obedience is that action performed by Christ to save us, “which is to be performed by us in faith.”53
Obedience, in fact, occupies an even more central place in this schema than faith itself. In the present order, faith and obedience are functionally one; in the eschaton, faith will pass away, but obedience will remain, as the outward sign of the love that guides the free will of the redeemed.
Obedience emerges, then, as a suitable organizing principle for a theology of redemption, uniting within itself theologies of God, creation, sin, Christ, the Passion, faith, morality, and eschatology.
Missing from this list is the interplay of obedience with the Resurrection and the gift of the Spirit, which is subject for another paper altogether. Suffice to say that the Resurrection emerges from this schema as the sign, the assurance, the saving event which guarantees that creation has been redeemed from disobedience and death, that Christ’s perfect act of obedience has truly re-purposed, re-signified, re-grounded death itself in the loving embrace of Father and Son, from which springs life, newness, joy, and the Spirit of love and freedom, from which
53 Rahner, p. 9.
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fountain the Church draws ever anew the strength, hope, and vision to persevere in its mission to embody and proclaim the saving reality of obedience in Christ, in the world, for the life of the world.
Bibliography.
Achtmeier, Paul. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Romans. John Knox. Atlanta. 1985.
Adams, Edward. “Paul’s Story of God and Creation.” In Narrative Dynamics in Paul: a Critical Assessment. Ed. Longenecker, Bruce W. Westminster John Knox Press. Louisville. 2002.
von Balthasar, Hans Urs. Mysterium Paschale. T&T Clark. Edinburgh. 1993.
Byrne SJ, Brendan. Sacra Pagina Vol 6: Romans. Liturgical Press. Collegeville. 1996.
Jewett, Paul. God, Creation, and Revelation: A Neo- Evangelical Theology. Eerdmans. Grand Rapid. 1991.
Jewett, Robert. Hermeneia: Romans. Fortress. Minneapolis. 2007.
Labourdette OP, Michel. “The common good as a foundation of obedience: obedience and charity.” In Obedience and the Church. Corpus. Washington. 1968.
Morris, Leon. The Epistle to the Romans. Eerdmans. Grand Rapids. 1988.
Peterman, E.L. “Redemption (Theology of).” In New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition. Catholic Univeristy of America Press. Washington. 2003. p. 95
Rahner, Karl. “Christ as the exemplar of clerical obedience.” In Obedience and the Church. Corpus. Washington. 1968.
Thomas Aquinas. The Summa Theologiae. Trans. by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Online Edition. Copyright © 2006 by Kevin Knight.
Wright, N.T. “Romans.” In The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, vol. 10. Abingdon. Nashville. 2000.
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