VENTA DE SERVICIOS

The particular individual is a category that covers real flesh-and-blood individuals in Paul‖s letters. It highlights the importance of each person‖s distinct identity, as well as the ways in which every particular individual must be understood in connection with the various groups and communities of which he or she is a part, especially the connection these individuals necessarily have with individual church gatherings.

Paul‖s continual exhortations to communal love and mutual honoring throughout Romans 12-15 (see e.g., Rom 12:10; 13:8; 14:1, 7) come to a head in Rom 15:5-7 where Paul prays for God‖s enabling to strengthen the Roman believers collectively to align their thoughts among each other according to the principles Paul has laid out beginning in 12:1 (see 15:5). The purpose (ἵνα) of this sought for harmony of thought is that the whole corporate body of believers “with one accord, in one voice” (ὁμοθτμαδὸν ἐν ἑνὶ ςσόμασι) would glorify God (15:6). With this divine enabling, those in Rome are to receive one another, just as they have been received by Christ (15:7). The sum total of the Roman believers acts as one, because it is one body (12:5), one living sacrifice, pleasing to God (12:1). All of this is signalled in Rom 16:16 with the command that all (whether slave or free, male or female) are to greet one another with a “holy kiss,” which in a Roman cultural context was a shocking and unprecedented display of communal solidarity and the erasure of prominent cultural boundary markers within the primitive Christian churches.92 _{And yet, as we}

have just seen, this single body is made up of individual members (12:4). The

significance of this principle of individuality-within-diversity is evident throughout Romans, but is worked out in concrete form in chapter 16.

Reciprocity within the context of “familial” love is the dominant feature of this chapter. Phoebe has been a servant (διάκονορ) and benefactor (πποςσάσιρ) of

91 _{Although it is true that Romans 12-16 should not be radically isolated from the rest of the} letter as if it is pure exhortation, while the rest of the letter is pure theology (rightly Victor Paul Furnish, Theology and Ethics in Paul [3d ed.; NTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009], 98-101), it is also true that the vast majority of exhortations occur in these chapters (31 of 42 imperatival forms according to Furnish [ibid., 99]).

184 Paul and many others (16:1-2), just as Gauis currently serves as host (ξένορ) to Paul and the other believers in Corinth.93

Prisca, Aquila (16:3-5) and Urbanus (16:9) are fellow-workers (ςτνεπγοί) in Paul‖s ministry, while a certain Mary has been hard at work in support of the Roman church (16:6), as have been Tryphaena, Tryphosa and Persis (16:12). Rufus‖ mother has supported Paul to such as a degree that he says that she has been a mother to him (16:13). From the other end, Timothy, who directly co-labors with Paul, sends greetings to the Roman believers (16:21). Every individual addressed is called to greet (ἀςπάζομαι, which occurs 21 times in Romans 16) every other individual (or group of individuals) with honor as a concrete

manifestation of the unity they all have in Christ.94

Paul‖s greetings have a host of distinctive features that provide a window into the importance he attached both to particular individuals in the concrete circumstances of life and to the communities in which these individuals were necessarily found. To begin with, Paul has two main ways of grouping people together. Often, he mentions entire churches, sometimes regional (“the church in Cenchrea” [16:1]; “the whole church” in Corinth [16:23]), sometimes contained within a single household (16:5), and once he speaks of the totality of the churches “among the nations” (16:4). Paul even speaks of “all of the churches in Christ” (16:16). Paul also lists important groups who have helped him in his work (“those of Aristobulus” [16:10]; “those of Narcissus” [16:11]; “Hermes and the brothers with him” [16:14]; “all the saints” [16:15]), as well as smaller groups that have given him specific, and indispensable, aid (Prisca and Aquila, who even saved Paul‖s life [16:3- 4]; Andronicus and Junia, who are kinsmen of Paul and have been fellow prisoners with him [16:7]). Most of these groupings are related in some important way to individual believers, yet at the same time, the fact that Paul speaks so often of groups themselves makes clear the importance he attached to individuals being integrated into community. It is an unquestioned assumption that every individual who has believed in Christ will express that belief within the context of fellowship with an ekklesia.

93 _{On Phoebe as benefactor, and the reciprocity inherent in her relationship with Paul, see Erlend} D. MacGillivray, “Romans 16:2, πποςσάςιρ/πποςσάσηρ, and the Application of Reciprocal Relationships to New Testament Texts,” NovT 53 (2011): 183-99.

185 Particularly noteworthy are the small details attached to almost every

greeting in chapter 16. For example, Paul mentions not only that Epaenetus is his “beloved” (ἀγαπησόν μοτ), but also that he is the “firstfruits” (ἀπαπφή) among all the converts in Asia. Epaenetus‖ individual conversion, then, is distinctive enough to mention, even as Paul‖s use of the word firstfruits—as it does everywhere he uses it (see Rom 8:23; 11:16; 1 Cor 15:20, 23; 16:25)—stresses the organic connection

between Epaenetus and the entire body of believers in Asia. In other words, even as Epaenetus‖ conversion singles him out as unique and particular (the firstfruits), this can only be understood as it is part of a larger, collective whole (the harvest); the individual and the community are so vitally connected that one cannot exist in its fullness without the other. When telling the Roman believers to greet Andronicus and Junia, Paul mentions that they were converted before he was (οἳ καὶ ππὸ ἐμοῦ γέγοναν ἐν Χπιςσῶ [16:7]). Salvation, far from doing away with the importance of the individual, as Andronicus‖ and Junia‖s conversions show, is an individual action in time and space, even as it is one that brings individuals into community.

Numerous other particularities are emphasized in Paul‖s greetings, such as when he describes someone named Apelles as “approved in Christ” (16:10) and Rufus as “elect in the Lord” (16:13), both of which are distinctive among the appellations in Romans 16, and which were perhaps meant to encourage two individuals in particularly trying circumstances. Paul also groups people according to familial relationships, both genetic (Andronicus and Junia [16:7]; Herodion [16:11]; Luke, Jason and Sosipater [16:21]) and “fictive”(“Phoebe our sister” [16:1]; Rufus‖ mother = Paul‖s “mother” [16:13]).95 _{The natural family is not unimportant to Paul, but the}

bonds of fellowship in the new community are so strong as to create a new family among the Roman believers that transcends the culturally appropriate groupings of antiquity. Just as there is no such thing in Paul‖s theology as a member disconnected from the body, there can be no such thing as an individual believer outside of the new creational family of faith. Faith creates community and binds individuals to it. Individuals are not free to choose whether to accept or reject the bonds of this familial communion any more than they are free to choose their own natural parents.

95 _{See further Oakes, Pompeii, 107-10, and Wilckens, Römer, 3.131, on the significance of this} “fictive” familial language for inter-community life in the Roman churches.

186 Given the role of women in society in Paul‖s day it is also noteworthy how much he has to say about the role of women in the furtherance of the gospel. Phoebe is called both a “servant [διάκονορ] of the church in Cenchrea” and a “benefactor” (πποςσάσιρ) of Paul and many others (16:2). Prisca is listed as a fellow gospel associate of Paul‖s, who (along with her husband Aquila) is also mentioned several times elsewhere in the New Testament as being active in the mission of the earliest churches (Rom 16:3; cf. 1 Cor 16:19; 2 Tim 4:19; Acts 18:2, 18, 26). Paul‖s love for Prisca and Aquilla is obvious: not only have they labored with him in the gospel, they even placed their own lives in danger to save Paul from an unspecified threat.96

In addition, Mary did much work with Paul and his associates (16:6), while Junia was well known among the apostles for her Christian service (16:7).

Romans 16, then, is not simply an itemized list of acquaintances; it is Paul‖s preaching, in miniature, enacted in real communities, made up of particular individuals. Romans 16 shows the reader what it means in concrete practice that “no one of us [οὐδεὶρ ἡμ῵ν] lives to oneself [ἑατσῶ], and no one [οὐδεὶρ] of us dies to oneself [ἑατσῶ]” (Rom 14:7), and that “each one of us” (ἕκαςσορ ἡμ῵ν) must please our neighbors for their good, to build them up (Rom 15:2). This chapter makes it clear that in Paul‖s preaching there is no isolated individual, no “individual qua individual,”97 _{in Romans, or in Paul‖s thought in general. Earle Ellis captures the}

dynamic of Romans 16 well: “Given the numerous and varied contributions of Paul‖s fellow ministers to his mission, it is clear that they were an essential factor in its accomplishment and that even Paul‖s letters were not an individual enterprise.”98

Paul‖s very gospel itself could not have been proclaimed across the Roman empire without a community of believers to support him in his mission.

Yet it is equally true that no individual is insignificant according to Paul‖s thinking, since the single body of Christ has many individual members (12:5: μέλη), each with a different function (12:4: ππᾶξιρ). The communities Paul writes to in Romans 16 are unintelligible abstractions apart from the particular (and indispensible) individuals that make up each of these groups of believers. The individuals in this chapter are engaged in essential acts of service for one another,

96 _{“They risked their necks” (σὸν ἑατσ῵ν σπάφηλον ὑπέθηκαν) for him (16:4).} 97 _{Burnett, Salvation, 10.}

98 _{E. Earle Ellis, “Paul and His Co-workers Revisted,” in History and Interpretation in New Testament}

187 and the work of the gospel is only successful as each individual works together according to the common mission of the entire ecclesial body.

5.1 Summary

Someone uninterested in the place of the individual within God‖s salvific scheme does not write Romans 16. The detail and warmth with which Paul speaks about so many fellow believers (including many he has never met) in their concrete

individuality puts such a notion to flight. The particular individual in Romans 16, as much as any other type in the letter, reveals the centrality of the individual in Paul‖s teaching. And yet, while Paul is at pains throughout Romans 16 to emphasize the particularity of the numerous individuals whom he urges the Romans to greet with affection, he also insists that each individual must be comprehended only as they are found “in the Lord” (ἐν κτπίῳ = Jesus Christ; see Rom 15:30; 16:18; etc.), which is a communal and collective designation that highlights the unity that exists between every believer despite their particularity and individuality (see 16:2, 8, 11, 12 [twice], 13, 22). In other words, Romans 16 is a real-life manifestation of the “one body in Christ” (ἓν ς῵μα . . . ἐν Χπιςσῶ [12:5])—comprised of a multitude of

individuals (cf. ἕκαςσορ [12:3])—functioning as the singular organism it has been fashioned by God to be.

6. Summary and Conclusion 6.1 Summary

As with the last chapter it will again be beneficial to summarize the contents of this chapter in a point-by-point format:

(1) The Representative Individual. Unlike Abraham and David in Romans 4, Paul sets up a contrast between Adam and Jesus Christ in Romans 5 that is truly representational: the actions of each define the destinies of the groups (and individuals) they represent to an extraordinary degree. This is a corporately and communally determined individuality.

(2) The Negative Exemplary Individual. In Romans 7 Paul tells of his own experience (as a typical Israelite) of sin‖s use of God‖s holy law to kill him spiritually, despite the law‖s promised goal of life. While there are

188 of Israel‖s post-Sinai experience with Torah, the focus remains on Paul

throughout the chapter. The reason for this is simple: Paul is recounting his own experience in order to heighten the vividness and emotional power of his appeal to his audience to turn away from the law as a means of finding freedom from spiritual slavery.

(3) The Somatic Individual. The individual in community, or the member within the body, is fundamental to Paul‖s theology and ethics. For him, the only individual that exists within the sphere of God‖s grace is a somatic individual, an individual necessarily embedded within the believing community. The logic of Pauline ethics crumbles when the relationship between the individual and the community is not properly understood. This is a critical point to make both against those who elevate the isolated

individual to prominence in Paul‖s letters and against those who relegate the individual to the periphery of Pauline thought, if they discuss it at all.99

(4) The Particular Individual. Finally, Paul writes at length of many particular individuals in the church at Rome, as well as among his fellow ministry companions. While they are indeed one single body in Christ, each individual retains his or her distinctive identity, significance and function within that larger body, not as isolated individuals, but as individuals fully integrated into the single body of Christ.

6.2 Conclusion: The Individual-within-Community

The typology of the individual in Romans is now complete. Unlike the hints of community-mindedness in the previous portion of the typology, Paul‖s

comprehensively communal theology has become evident in the material analyzed in this chapter. We have seen that there is no such thing as an isolated individual in Paul‖s thought. Every individual must be a part of the believing community, must be a somatic individual. Paul is no individualist, modern or otherwise. Yet, Paul‖s theology, even in its most communally-determined expression, never ceases to

99 _{In order to explicate the precise way in which individuals become incorporated into} community—the way in which they become somatic individuals—in Paul‖s thought, further work would need to be carried out with regard to the christological foundation of Pauline individuals-in- community. Romans 6, in particular, is one place in Paul‖s letters where such a study could profitably begin, given the prominence of the language of incorporation into Christ in that chapter.