When in Romans: An Invitation to Linger with the Gospel According to Paul, Paperback

Invites Readers of Romans to Expand Their View of God and the Gospel

When reading the book of Romans, we often focus on the quotable passages, making brief stopovers and not staying long enough to grasp some of the big ideas it contains. Instead of raiding Paul's most famous letter for a passage here or a theme there, leading New Testament scholar Beverly Roberts Gaventa invites us to linger in Romans. She asks that we stay with the letter long enough to see how Romans reframes our tidy categories and dramatically enlarges our sense of the gospel.

Containing profound insights written in accessible prose and illuminating references to contemporary culture, this engaging book explores the cosmic dimensions of the gospel that we read about in Paul's letter. Gaventa focuses on four key issues in Romans--salvation, identity, ethics, and community--that are crucial both for the first century and for our own. As she helps us navigate the book of Romans, she shows that the gospel is far larger, wilder, and more unsettling than we generally imagine it to be.

Beverly Roberts Gaventa (PhD, Duke University) is Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She is also Emerita Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. Gaventa served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2016 and is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Our Mother Saint Paul, Mary: Glimpses of the Mother of Jesus, and commentaries on 1 and 2 Thessalonians and Acts.