The 20th Century produced several great commentaries on Romans. Barth, Cranfield, Wilckens, Jewett. Then there were some very good ones, Sanday and Headlam, J D G Dunn, Douglas Moo, Jospeh Fitzmyer, N T Wright. The one that's missing is the one I found hardest to read, which says as much about me as it does for the book.
Ernst Kasemann's commentary on Romans was published in English by SCM in 1980, and bought with a gift from my first church who knew well my love of books. Because it was a gift, (and I chose it for goodness sake), I felt obliged to read it, not to waste a generous gift. For weeks, in my wee sloping roofed study, I slowly made my way up the steep brae that is Kasemann's dense style, theological wrestling and absolutely uncompromising approach to theological exegesis – something Kasemann was doing long before it has become a fashionable innovation to the hermeneutical industry. But I got to the top of the brae – I finished it, and it is one of those few books you begin as a chore, continue as a discipline, persevere as a matter of sheer determination not to be beaten, and then like climbing in low cloud, you move above the cloud base and see the view that makes it all worth it.
And the view Kasemann opened up changed our way of looking at things Pauline. Justification isn't to be limited to the specific individualistic benefit of the justified Christian; justification is cosmic in scale, is gift and power to accomplish, and is the dynamic reality that displays the reality and promise of the Lordship of Christ, now and in God's future for the creation. Not so much a breath of fresh air as a gale that blows you off your feet. For that reason Kasemann goes in the list of great commentaries.
And the man who wrote this dense masterpiece of exegetical toil? It takes a special kind of faith in God and faithfulness in discipleship to Christ, to take Isaiah 26.13 as the text to preach in 1937 Gestapo ridden Germany. Read the text and you'll see why he was arrested. In 1941-2 Kasemann argued passionately for the validity of womens' ministries. No surprise either, that he was a vociferous anti-nuclear campaigner. His daughter was killed in and Argentinian jail in 1977, an event that deeply affected him, pushing his theology in directions of radical critique of power, injustice and economic greed, and fuelling active inviolvement in the theology of world mission. He latterly became a Methodist – John Wesley and Ernst Kasemann!
There is a point to all this. In the Spring Eerdmans will publish collected sermons and lectures of Kasemann, who died in 1996 aged 90. The book cover is pictured above. In my view this is a publishing event. An absolute necessity in early summer will be allocating blocks of reading time to gather the fruit of what Kasemann was saying and writing to the so complex world in the last quarter of the 20th Century.
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