Isaiah’s Servant of the Lord and Justification by Faith in Paul’s Letter to the Romans

• Applicant: Dr. John Cowan
• Subject Area: Protestant Theology
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 535039640

This project’s aim is to study the ways in which Paul’s theology of justification in the letter to the Romans draws on and is influenced by passages that speak of the servant of the Lord in the book of Isaiah. Romans contains important links to Isaiah’s servant texts in at least five passages that discuss justification in the near context: explicitly marked quotations in Rom 10:15–16 (Isa 52:7; 53:1), and notable allusions in Rom 2:19 (Isa 42:6–7/49:6); 4:25 (Isa 53:12); 5:15–19 (Isa 53:11); and 8:32–34 (Isa 50:8; 53:6). The volume of this material, the placement of some of it at key summary points, and its correspondence with key themes from the letter’s opening paragraphs (Rom 1:1–4, 16–17) suggest that this is an important topic for study. In order to foster a historically grounded understanding of this material, the project aims to locate Paul’s reuse of Isaiah’s servant passages within the broader Jewish reception of this theme. I intend to draw on my prior research into the reception of Isaiah’s servant passages in the Jewish tradition in order to illustrate where Paul’s reading strategies and interpretations fit into wider trends, where they are distinctive, and where Paul appears to be in dialogue with existing interpretations. Although the works of some recent scholars have pointed to the connection between justification and the Isaianic servant as a fruitful avenue for research (e.g., Hofius, Bird, Watson, Beale, Jipp), none of them have provided a comprehensive account. The most extensive consideration has come from Stuhlmacher, but his work is burdened by the identification of the passages that he studies as pre-Pauline confessional material. This approach appears to underestimate the extent of Paul’s personal engagement with Isaiah’s servant passages, which is evident from the connections that one finds between the broader contexts in Romans and the original contexts of the passages in Isaiah. The study also contributes to three wider discussions in Pauline studies. First, some influential 20th century scholars claimed that Paul makes very little of the Isaianic servant (e.g., Bultmann, Hooker), but recent works have contested this, and my study will further this recovery of Paul’s engagement with the servant by demonstrating extensive consideration in Romans. Second, Paul’s interpretation of Isaiah in Romans and more widely have been important themes in recent scholarship (e.g., Hays, Wagner, Wilk), and my study will contribute to this literature by approaching the material from the angle of Wirkungsgeschichte and addressing the unique question of the relationship between justification and the Isaianic servant. Third, the topic of justification is a perineal point of dispute in New Testament scholarship, and my study will help to clarify the meaning of this concept by highlighting a frequently neglected aspect of its background.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants