Field Notes: Reading Romans 16

 In Chapter 16, which many people read as insignificant “shout outs”, we see not only the problem that Paul is addressing in his letter, but also the core of his message throughout the letter. He begins by asking the Roman church to “welcome” (cf. Rom 15.7) Phoebe, likely the one who was in charge of delivering and explaining the letter to the churches. It is no doubt illuminating that Paul sends a gentile convert woman to read and perhaps interpret this letter to the Roman Christians. It is easy to miss the explosive and deeply theological claim that Paul makes when he addresses Phoebe as “sister” (16.1). This gets to the heart of Paul’s message to the Romans (and us). In Christ, we have a new status; we are family members, who belong to one another. (Romans 1-8 will develop and support this foundational claim, as we will see.) In the Roman world, families were marked by loyalty, honor, love, harmony, forgiveness, and goodwill towards one another. In the culture of the day, more than our own, one’s identity was collective, and derived from one’s family. Paul, with this short reference, unpacks all that he will say in Romans 1-11: Phoebe belongs to the family—your family. You belong to Phoebe.

 Phoebe was also a deacon, an official servant leader in the church at Cenchreae. It is likely that the title deaconess points to her role of collecting funds in Rome for Paul’s missionary journey to Spain (Rom 15.24). She is also identified as a “benefactor” (patron), which is an indication that she was wealthy. Rather than using her resources for building up her reputation in the city, she used it to serve the church—a sign of the transforming power of the gospel to reorient what we esteem to be honorable.

 The charge in the opening lines of Romans 16 is that the church in Rome would “welcome” (receive as a family member) Phoebe in a way that is worthy of her status. As we will see, this exhortation to “welcome” becomes central to what it looks like to live out the gospel. It is the chief implication of the gospel that Paul drives home in this letter.

 This is followed by a list of house churches that Paul addresses, perhaps five or six (Rom 16.3-16). Names tell us a lot about a person in the ancient world. They can tell us whether they were slaves or free, whether they were Roman, Greek, or Jewish; they give us indications of their likely first languages (Greek, Aramaic, Latin); and they tell us where a person is from, geographically and socially.  What is striking about these names is that they tell us that the church in Rome is made up of people from all kinds of backgrounds and ethnicities. Prisca and Aquila where Jewish tentmakers who met Paul in Corinth (see Acts 18.1-3; perhaps Jewish freedmen as the names are common for slaves and former slaves). That the woman’s name is first likely indicates that she had a higher social status. Epaenetus is a gentile man who was Paul’s first convert in Asia Minor. Mary was most likely a Jewish woman involved in gospel work. Andronicus is a Greek name given to slaves or former slaves; and Junia is a woman’s name in Latin, also usually reserved for slaves. For centuries, New Testament manuscripts and translations sought to ascribe masculinity to the name on the presumption that no woman could be an apostle.[1] The manuscript and historical evidence does not support this, however, and most modern texts indicate that it referred to a female. 

Ampliatus, Urbanus, and Stachys were likely gentile slaves, perhaps of Latin origin. Herodion was a Jewish man. Other names like Olympas, Nereus, Philologus, and Julia perhaps indicate people from the elite class in the Greco-Roman world, and that they probably spoke Greek as their first language. At one level, this list shows that the gospel reached to all kinds of people, Jew, Gentiles, slave, free, elite, and commoner, male and female alike. But some scholars have suggested that this list also shows that the church in Rome was segregated; that people tended to meet together according to their ethnic backgrounds, their first language, and their social identity markers. Given what we will see in Romans 15, and what we will see as we work backwards in the text, it is likely that these house churches gathered in isolation from one another, and perhaps even had animosity towards one another. Historically, we know that churches made up of Jews and churches made up of predominantly gentiles often struggled to get along. They saw the other as second class, as weak, as not fully belonging. They often did not see themselves as being joined together in one family. This makes Paul’s final word to these churches, “greet one another with all holy kiss” (Rom 16.16), all the more striking. In Roman culture, one only kissed family members (Jewett, 972-73). When Paul exhorts the church in Rome, with all its diversity and division, to greet one another with a kiss, he is expressing a deeply theological vision for them. He is summarizing all that he has said in Romans 1-11, namely that through Jesus, who embodies the promise of Abraham (Romans 4), God has made one universal family. They are to be defined primarily in terms of their baptism (Romans 6) and not in the terms and categories that have been given to them by the culture. They are brothers and sisters, and a such are to welcome one another accordingly—in contradiction to all that they have been conditioned to do by their cultural norms.[2] This is why in the following verse he addressed them as “brothers and sisters” (Rom 16.17), and addresses them as “in Christ” (16.2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12). This is one of the radical extensions of the gospel in the development of early Christianity. Followers of Jesus saw themselves as belonging to a new family; the gospel entails a new social understanding.  What is more, he urges them to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to that which they have been taught—not least in the letter he has written (Rom 16.17).

 For Paul, obedience to the gospel (1.5; 15.18; 16.18, 26) is expressed in the way we do life together; and it redefines who “we” is. The gospel commands us to no longer define “we” in terms of ethnicity or socio-economic status. The gospel reconfigures our social imagination. For Paul obedience to the gospel means that we welcome one another as brothers and sisters, just as Christ has welcomed us.

 Questions for reflection and discussion:

Where do we see evidence of churches divided up along ethnic and socio-economic lines today?

How do you imagine that those divisions have happened? Was there intentionality behind that historically?

How is Romans 16 relevant for us today?

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[1] The Greek text phrase can be read as “outstanding among the apostles” in the sense of belonging within that class of people, or as “remarkable in the judgment of the apostles”.  Most read it as the former, which is what led medieval scribes to change the name Junia (feminine) to Junias (masculine), even though there is no textual warrant for that, and no indication of the masculine name Junias.

[2] “The ‘holy kiss’ is a public declaration of the affirmation of faith: ‘In Christ, there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free (Gal 3.23).” (Klassen in Jewett, 973)