Romans 8:26-39
In Romans 8:26-39, Paul continues to encourage his readers to patiently endure the labor pains of liberation that Hannah Bowman reflected on in last week’s Abolition Lectionary post. Here Paul encourages them by emphasizing God’s providence and foreknowledge. In Romans 8:28 he writes, “We know that God works all things together for good for the ones who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Paul states that God “knows them in advance” (NRSVue, this is translated as “predestined” in other translations) and has called them according to God’s purpose. The passage culminates with Paul’s exhortation to trust in God’s love for “nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created,” (Romans 8:38-30).
God’s power and foreknowledge has been appropriated to uphold systems of control when used against the marginalized by the powerful, but the thrust of Paul’s argument in Romans is to criticize systems that rely on rules and punishments as ultimately death-dealing powers opposed to God’s work in Christ. He criticizes gentile Christ-followers who appropriate and misapply Jewish law to malign and marginalize other Christians in their community (see Eisebaum’s Paul was Not a Christian). He exhorts believers to uproot Roman class systems that divide Christian communities into the strong and weak (see Mcknight’s Reading Romans Backwards). Ultimately Paul is proposing a different understanding of justice that stands with the executed and oppressed in pursuit of liberation for all (see Keesmaat and Walsh’s Romans Disarmed as well as Mark Lewis Taylor’s Executed God). Consequently it is a misunderstanding of Paul’s argument to conclude that those God “foreknew” and call are working for anything less than “justification and life for all” (lest we forget Romans 5:18).
God’s foreknowledge and power can be understood as a kind of control, but it is better understood as the kind of utopic vision that Mariame Kaba writes about when she states that “every vision is a map,” (We Do This ‘Till We Free Us). Likewise, many early Christian theologians interpreted our condition and constructed ethics based on eschatological beliefs about what God is calling us towards. Utopic visions and ethics based on telos become oppressive as control-methods, but they are tools of liberation when they inspire us to question the inevitability of the punitive systems we are embedded in and give us the courage and patience to endure the suffering that comes with demanding change. It is only then that our faith in God’s providence can become the basis of our hope in the abolition of prisons and policing and the triumph of a justice system that separates no person from the love of God or neighbor.
Sarah Lynne Gershon (she/her) is an MDiv/MTS student, DOC pastor, and lives at the Bloomington Catholic Worker.