Abstract
By Rom 7, the learning and teaching has been brought to the level of “pure knowledge” that investigates the necessity of humans’ need for external and unconditional help from the Divine. What else must Paul teach and must his learners learn when The Epistle unfolds in Rom 8 and beyond? This and the next chapters will seek to answer this curricular and pedagogic question. To investigate this question of curriculum design, one’s mental clockwork and ideational landscape should stay tuned to the mid-first century. Rome was then a city of Greco-Roman gods, such as Zeus, whom the Romans renamed Jupiter, of imperial powers, of Roman law, of slavery, of migrants of mixed ethnicities, of imported and dislocated populations, and of masculinity, trade, and prosperity. On the surface, it was referred to as peace upon strength (i.e. Pax Romana). In every corner of the Empire, there were undercurrents of suspicion, hatred, and rivalry.
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Notes
- 1.
Fives (2011, p. 118) studied a preservice teacher, nicknamed Hope. Regarding “changes in depth of understanding”, Fives’ remarks could lend us the lens in appreciating how Paul teacher-learners’ developmental needs. Fives wrote: “The nature of belief change needs to be considered beyond the development of alternative perspectives … to include more fine-grained analysis of belief evolution that includes the deepening of existing beliefs. This is particularly relevant to the study of personal epistemology development in teachers. Current developmental models of personal epistemology focus on stage-like shifts from more naïve to sophisticated beliefs … which provide a big-picture perspective on change. What these models typically miss is an explication of how small additive shifts in personal epistemologies are shaped and built upon existing beliefs structures. Findings provided here emphasize Hope’s tendency to develop greater depth in her understanding of the material rather than to actually change her beliefs from one perspective to another”. It seems the developmental epistemic situation of Paul’s original teacher-learners could be comparable to Hope’s. The curriculum of The Epistle does not aim at “completely restructuring” the original learners’ beliefs, but deepening their faith in the reasonableness and the practices of unearned grace.
- 2.
This life rescripting and repositioning is not mystical. With reference to the Greco-Roman learners’ lived experience about manus and capitis deminutio maxima (see Chap. 6), the teaching about the “death” of the “husband-I” is real and instant. That leads to the recovery of the autonomous subject. Current psychological research confirms the function of “self (re-)programming” (Elston 2009; Lan 2002; Peale 1996; Rhodes 2013; Tauber 1997), too. The starting point however must be a recovered awareness about the “inner human”. This means, while Rom 8 is a faith document, it is neither mystical nor irrational.
- 3.
Rom 1:19 speaks of innate and intuitive knowledge that is within humans. This latent knowledge reflects the nature of and comes from the Divine. Paul does not seek to add from outside anything on his listeners. His narrative teaching seeks to “lead out” these inward potentials. This act and intent to “lead out” is then the root meaning of “education” that originates from Latin.
- 4.
The self-referring “Jew” in Rom 2:17 (NRSVA), i.e. “But if you call yourself a Jew”, covers all Christ-followers in Rome. This is because with reference to Paul’s faith perspective and the historical conditions of his times, he views all “Christ-followers” as “Jews”. “Christian” as an identity label separable and detached from “the Jew” was not yet born. See Nano (1996).
- 5.
- 6.
Seneca, Dialogue 9: The Tranquility of the Mind, 10.3; as in Wiedermann (1997, p. 232).
- 7.
SBLGNT has a comma after ὑποτάξαντα. That comma is unnecessary. SBLGNT: “τῇ γὰρ ματαιότητι ἡ κτίσις ὑπετάγη, οὐχ ἑκοῦσα ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸν ὑποτάξαντα, ἐφ’ ἑλπίδι”.
- 8.
A quote from Harman (1997, p. 149) may help reader to appreciate the pedagogic path of the curriculum in The Epistle and its teaching about volitional-interpretative autonomy. “Reasoning is here taken to be distinguished from proof or argument in the logician’s sense. Reasoning is a process of modifying antecedent beliefs and intentions, perhaps by adding some new ones, perhaps by deleting some of the original ones – normally by adding some and deleting others. An argument or proof [as already conducted in Rom 1 to 7; and this insertion as a case of deliberative practical application is mine] is sometimes relevant to reasoning in this sense but is never an instance of it. An argument or proof is more like an explanation than an instance of reasoning…. The theory of reasoning is therefore not that same as logic, which is a theory of argument or proof… But logic is not directly a theory of reasoning…. Let us distinguish practical reasoning from theoretical reasoning in the traditional way: practical reasoning is concerned with what to intend, whereas theoretical reasoning is concerned with what to believe” and that “theoretical or inductive reasoning is an attempt to improve one’s overall view of the world by increasing its explanatory coherence”. Moreover, an important aspect of practical reasoning is that intentions are “psychological states on a par with beliefs” (Harman 1997, p. 150).
- 9.
Readers may refer to Chap. 13 regarding the rich shades of meaning of the “genitive case”. It means more than physical possession. This applies also to “the glory of the children of God”.
- 10.
Zeus was the god who sent blitzes and thunders from heaven to show his wraths upon the earth. To the Greco-Roman folks, this was one of his signature images (Guirand 1963, p. 23; Hard 2004, p. 73). Rom 1:18 has this signature wrath “as revealed from heaven”. The God, as in the portraits of the Old Testament, however would more often send prophets to announce his displeasure.
- 11.
One should bear in mind Romans as a strong and conquering tribe have their own ancestral claims as the “chosen people”. As Vaiopoulos (2011, pp. 158–159) remarks, “The Roman Empire is part of a divine project, according to Virgil (and Horace, and especially in the Odes), who claims that Jupiter was the founder of Roman religious system.” Yet, The Epistle is teaching every tribes and nations amongst the follower clusters in Rome that “the chosen people” – as a universal concept – does not warrant or demand a people to be strong. This anti-strong lesson will be contradictory to the Roman assumptions and anticipations.
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Ho, O.N.K. (2018). Teaching Thinking Across Boundaries: Making Sense of Fates, Identities, and Heritages. In: Rethinking the Curriculum. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8902-2_7
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