THE MEANING OF EXISTENTIAL INTERPRETATION

    This book is for people in personal quest,
for intelligent, Christians and graduates of the Christian church.
If you are deeply involved in a search for some insight
concerning the most difficult problem of human existence,
let your eyes rest here a while
and permit your mind to move in channels never before tired.
Here you will meet a radical new understanding of Christian experience.

    The text before us is one of the most famous and ancient letters every written.
20 centuries ago Paul---a Christian teacher and preacher in Asia Minor---
wrote to a church he had never visited---the Christian community in Rome.
His letter was preserved, copied and re-copied by hand for centuries
because generations of readers have found it meaningful.
But just what it means for us almost 2,000 years later is not easy to say.

    When Rudolf Bultmann invented the process of "demythologizing",
he coupled it with a positive side, namely "existential interpretation".
To "demythologize" the New Testament does not mean
to throw out all the myths and substitute something else
such as moral instruction or political commentary.
Rather, it means to search the depths of what we must call "myth"
to discover what it originally meant to its users.
"Demythologizing" and "existential interpretation" mean
finding the living essence of these ancient writings.

    In the first century, Paul's deepest core of being was transformed.
He struggled to express this internal liberation in words and images
that were current in his time and available in his own head.
So, after a simple translation of his words from Greek into English,
we must look much deeper, attempting to touch his inward meaning
and to discover this transforming power for ourselves.
If we---20 centuries later---also stuggle with the basic problem of existence
(our "Existential Predicament"), then below the differences in
thought forms and figures of speech, Paul's experience is our experience.

    When Paul composed his letters,
he did not consider the process magical or mysterious.
He knew that the ideas and words were coming from his own mind.
He probably paced back and forth while he dictated to someone.
We have come to value Paul's letters because they ring true
and not because of some preconceived notion of divine inspiration.

    Paul lived on the planet Earth as another one of us, sharing our limitations
and (like us) accepting the presuppositions and prejudices of his age.
Our task will be to separate these presuppositions of his time
from the genuinely new inner condition-of-being he wants to describe.

AN EXISTENTIAL INTEPRETATION OF PAUL'S LETTER TO THE ROMANS    iii

    I believe that I have experienced the same liberating gift
Paul attempts to describe and explain in his letter to the Romans.
I have tired in this book to express this transforming experience
in words that can be understood by some people in my own culture.
What I as a 21st-century exponent of the liberating experience
have to say is limited by my time and my understanding.
Paul was doing his best.  And I am doing my best.  But we are both limited.
Others who come along later should also do their best
to reshape the message for their contemporaries.

                On the use of "You".

    This book takes the form of a prayerful meditation rather than a discourse.
Thus, even tho Paul uses the divine name in the abstract,
I think it would be better to return to the Hefrew reluctance to objectify You.
We should not make You an object in pictures, words, or by giving You a name.
We can only address You without knowing who You are.
This is also similar to Martin Buber's "eternal Thou"
---the Thou that can never become an It.
In years past, I used to talk abstractly about You, but no more.
Now I experience my closeness with You only when I use the form of address.
And for clarity, I always use a CAPITAL "Y" for You.

                The Existential Traditon.

    It might be claimed that Paul himself originated "existential Christianity".
This tradition emphasized the primacy of experience over dogma.
Soon after Paul, Christianity fell into a long, dark night of dogmatism.
Up to the Middle Ages, Christianity was understood as a system of beliefs
---just like any other religion.
Even today many members of the fallen church
say they would like to discover the meaning of "their faith"
---which means they don't understand the beliefs they were taught.
And perhaps the majority of those who call themselves "Christian"
will always be submerged in doctrine and belief
rather than having Your personal power in their depths.

    But in the Middle Ages, Martin Luther rediscovered Paul's insight
that faith is a personal, inward experience or orientation
as opposed to external, intellectual, dogmatic belief.
Begun in the 16th century by Luther, this tradition has come down to us thru
John Wesley (18th), Søren Kierkegaard (19th), and Rudolf Bultmann (20th).
Bultmann epitomizes the existential tradition thus:
"Only such statements about God are legitimate
as express the existential relation between God and man."
[Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Scribners, 1958) p. 69]
In other words, our only means of knowing You is Your effect on us.

iv   AN EXISTENTIAL INTERPRETATION OF PAUL'S LETTER TO THE ROMANS

                How this Book Differs from other Commentaries.

    Other commentaries on Romans explain Paul's difficult Greek concepts
in equally difficult English concepts---justification, expiation, redemption---
without in turn explaining these cliche religious terms
to bring them into contact with the lived experience of 21st century readers.
This book contains numerous ideas drawn from Paul's letter to the Romans
that have not appeared in any other commentary.
The reader will have to decide whether to accept or reject these.
We will attempt to probe the veil of words to the existential meanings.
How does Paul's thought relate to something I have experienced this week?

    Since this book is existential interpretation rather than detailed scholarship,
we will not deal with every sentence of Paul's letter.
The crucial passages will be quoted from the New English Bible.

    My purpose in writing this book is also existential rather than scholarly:
First, the process has helped me clarify and celebrate my Existential Freedom.
Second, I hope it may help others to find harmony, peace, joy, and fulfillment.
Paul's experience may guide us in our own spiritual quests.

                History of the Writing of this Book.

    I began to put these ideas down in 1968,
soon after I graduated from Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
From that time until the present, while I wrote a dozen other books,
this book went thru many evolutionary changes and revisions.
The manuscript was almost completely lost in a fire in 1979.
If I had not been able to salvage it, there would be no book.
The typewriter on which it was written, rewritten, and finally typeset
(for the first two editions) was also salvaged and rehabilitated after that fire.
Life is full of unexpected turnings and chances.
How easily each of us might not have been!

                Desktop Publishing.

    When Paul dictated his letter 1,950 years ago,
there were no printing presses and no copying machines.
For centuries after, his letters had to be copied by hand, one stroke at a time.
I don't know how many hours of human labor were spent on his letters
until the invention of the printing press in the Middle Ages.

    This book was not reproduced by such a slow method;
in fact, each page flashed into existence in less than a second
---about the time it took those ancient scribes to make one stroke of one letter.

AN EXISTENTIAL INTERPRETATION OF PAUL'S LETTER TO THE ROMANS      v