Romans

God elects individuals to salvation according to His own purpose, and mercy is unconditional

held by Augustine in his anti-Pelagian works; John Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1559, book 3); Jonathan Edwards (Freedom of the Will, 1754); John Piper (The Justification of God, 1983); and the Reformed confessions

The strength of this reading is the flow of 9:11-18, where every ground for the choice outside God Himself is removed one by one, and the objection Paul answers at 9:19 is the objection this reading provokes.

The chapter is about God's freedom in choosing the line and role through which He works, and salvation is received by faith

held by the early Greek fathers; Jacobus Arminius (Declaration of Sentiments, 1608); John Wesley (Predestination Calmly Considered, 1752); and among moderns Jack Cottrell and Ben Witherington III

The strength of this reading is the context. The subject Paul announces at 9:6 is whether God's word to Israel has failed, the Malachi quotation concerns two nations rather than two infants' eternal destinies, and the argument lands at 11:32 on mercy toward all.

The election in view is corporate, of a people in Christ, and individuals share it by being in Him

held by Karl Barth in his doctrine of election; William W. Klein (The New Chosen People, 1990); and readings that take 8:29-30 and 9:1-11:36 as one argument about a people rather than a sequence about individuals

The Jewish people as a whole, turning to Christ at the end of the age

held by the reading of most premillennial and dispensational commentary and of many others besides, including C. E. B. Cranfield and Douglas J. Moo; it takes 'Israel' in 11:26 in the same sense it carries in 11:25, where it plainly means the nation

On this reading 'all Israel' is a national turning rather than a claim about every individual Jew who ever lived, in the same way the Old Testament speaks of all Israel gathering or all Israel mourning.

The full number of elect Jews gathered across history

held by John Calvin held a version of this, and it is argued by a number of Reformed commentators since; on this reading the salvation is real and Jewish but spread through the whole age rather than concentrated at its end

The whole company of the redeemed, Jew and Gentile together

held by a minority reading, taken by some in the Reformed tradition and by Karl Barth

This reading has the weakest footing of the three in the passage itself, because it has to give 'Israel' a different meaning in 11:26 from the one it carries one verse earlier, and because the whole argument from 11:1 forward turns on the distinction between Israel and the Gentiles. Where it is pressed into the claim that the church has replaced Israel outright, it contradicts 11:28-29 directly.

Romans was written as we have it, and the shorter forms are later abridgements for church use

held by the majority position, and the reason modern editions print sixteen chapters with the doxology at the end; Marcion's shortening is a known and motivated cut, since he had no use for the Old Testament argument in chapter 15

Paul issued a shorter, general form of the letter for wider circulation

held by T. W. Manson ('St Paul's Letter to the Romans, and Others,' 1948), who proposed that chapters 1 to 15 went to Rome and a copy with chapter 16 went to Ephesus, which would explain the long list of people Paul knows in a city he has never visited

The ninth-century Codex Boernerianus omits the words 'in Rome' at 1:7 and 1:15, which is the main evidence that a general form once existed.

The doxology is a later addition by another hand

held by a number of critical scholars, on the grounds of its vocabulary and its unstable position

Against this, no manuscript of Romans lacks the doxology entirely without also being defective elsewhere, and its themes are the letter's own.

Subjection is the Christian's normal posture, and it yields where the state commands what God forbids

held by the reading held across the traditions, from Augustine and Aquinas through the Reformers to modern commentary; the limit is drawn from the apostolic example in Acts 5:29 rather than from Romans 13 itself

The passage describes government in its proper function, and a ruler who abandons that function forfeits the claim

held by the Reformed resistance tradition, including the Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579) and Samuel Rutherford (Lex, Rex, 1644), and much later Christian argument about unjust regimes

The traditional reading, that justification answers personal guilt before God

held by the Reformation reading held by Luther and Calvin and defended in detail by John Piper (The Future of Justification, 2007), Simon Gathercole (Where Is Boasting?, 2002), and D. A. Carson and others in Justification and Variegated Nomism (2001 and 2004)

The case rests on the letter's own sentences. The line 'for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God' (3:23) is a moral verdict on individuals, and 4:5 speaks of God justifying 'the ungodly', which is not a boundary-marker category.

The new perspective reading, that Paul's target is the law as a badge of Jewish identity

held by E. P. Sanders, James D. G. Dunn, and N. T. Wright

Its best evidence is the immediate context of Paul's arguments, which repeatedly turn to whether Gentiles must become Jews, as at 3:29-30.

Both concerns are in the letter and neither should be traded for the other

held by a growing middle position in current work, holding that Paul argues against a real problem of self-righteousness and against Jewish-Gentile division in the same paragraphs, because in Rome they were the same problem

The name at 16:7 is Junia, a woman, and she is well known among the apostles

held by the reading of the church fathers, including John Chrysostom, who wrote that she was worthy of the title of apostle; the name Junia is common in Greek and Latin inscriptions and the masculine Junias is not otherwise attested; argued in full by Eldon Jay Epp (Junia: The First Woman Apostle, 2005)

The ASV prints 'Junias' following the nineteenth-century editions. Modern critical editions and most recent translations print Junia.

The phrase means well known to the apostles rather than counted among them

held by Michael Burer and Daniel Wallace ('Was Junia Really an Apostle?', 2001), arguing from Greek usage

The grammatical argument has been contested in detail since, and the older reading remains the more common one.