Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire, Demanding Justice

In Romans Disarmed, Keesmaat and Walsh use an artistic mix of story, poetry, imaginative discourse, and solid biblical and social-cultural-historical background that allows the reader to understand the book of Romans from an alternative, and I believe more accurate, point of view. Paul’s letter to the Romans was not written from an enlightenment-bound worldview and this book dislodges any such notions. I am grateful for the authors’ skill in helping us all view the apostle Paul’s world and ours through an unconventional and more preferable lens; one that has tremendous practical application for us today.

—Randy S. Woodley, author of Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision

You (and I!) have never read Romans like this before. It has been weaponized by some and reduced to abstraction by others as has perhaps no other biblical book. Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh have disarmed such uses and returned it to the real, flesh-and-blood world. The sheer immensity of the gospel, announced as it is in the midst of the frightening, frustrating, groaning grind of actual life, is nothing short of exhilarating. The scholarship herein provides a deep foundation for an imagination that is even greater. Keesmaat and Walsh introduce to the hermeneutic process both a present-day interlocutor, who raises many of the questions and objections you may have yourself, and two residents of ancient Rome, who ‘hear’ the epistle as it is first read, granting us fresh access to the world we live in and how we are invested in it. The authors don’t attempt to wrestle from the text (yet again) Paul’s systematic theology of the gospel; instead, by rooting their exegesis firmly in history, the practical and revolutionary nature of the gospel is revealed. Here the empire of any era, including our own, is disarmed and its caesar cast down; its perverse values repudiated; and the liberating, home-making, salvific power of a greater Lord and King is revealed.

—Greg Paul, Sanctuary Toronto community member and author of God in the Alley and Resurrecting Religion

If you want to hear—and experience—Paul’s letter to the Jewish and gentile Christ-followers in Rome as you never have, read this book. And re-read it. Study it in your church circles. Talk about it with your friends. Assign it in your courses. As with their earlier Colossians Remixed, Keesmaat and Walsh have once again interwoven close textual reading of the New Testament (they clearly love the Scriptures!) with its unabashedly Jewish roots and its explosive relationship to the Roman imperial context. Most importantly, they bring the message of Romans into dialogue with our lives today, as we struggle to be faithful to the good news of Messiah Jesus in our own imperial context.

—J. Richard Middleton, professor of biblical worldview and exegesis, Northeastern Seminary at Roberts Wesleyan College