Paul’s interpreters are perpetually wrestling with whether the future judgment portrayed in Romans 2 is a part of Paul’s gospel of grace through faith, or a foil for it. Versions of each interpretation abound. Those who argue persuasively for a real judgment “according to works” of both believers and unbelievers must reason from elsewhere in Paul’s letters that the believer’s “works” in Rom 2 are the product of faith (cf. 1:5) and are not themselves the “basis” for final justification or eternal life. Still, Paul’s faith vs works contrast is conspicuously absent from Rom 2. Though, Kim (2010) suggested that part of the interpretive significance for Paul’s use of Ps 62 (61 LXXX) in Rom 2:6 is the Psalm’s own emphasis on trusting God’s promises. Aside from Kim’s case, and despite the broader emphasis that (especially evangelical) scholarship has placed on Paul’s contextual interpretations of the OT, the debate over Rom 2 has yet to take sufficient stock of the context of Ps 61:13 (LXX) and its relevance for Paul’s rhetorically powerful citation of it in Rom 2:6.
I will first re-establish that Paul is, in fact, quoting Ps 61:13 (LXX) and not recycling stock vocabulary. Second, I will highlight both stable and shifting aspects of the Second Temple reception of Ps 61:13 (LXX). Third, I will give a fresh description of the rhetorical context of Rom 2 and the purpose of 2:6. To do so, I will build on Marcus Mininger’s observation that “revelation” is a core theme in the argument. Also, extending the insights of John Barclay’s work on grace in Romans, I will locate Paul’s argument in Rom 2 not simply in an intra-Jewish debate over whether, how, or on what basis people will be judged (i.e., by “works of the law” or by “faith”) but, more basically, in an intra-Jewish debate over the nature and recipients of divine grace. Paul’s shocking point in the chapter is that the interlocutor, so long as he has a hard, impenitent heart, should expect God’s eschatological wrath rather than the full bestowal of eschatological grace. His reasoning is that the interlocutor has not understood the nature of God’s kindness (2:4–5) which, for Paul, is the very Christ-kindness that the rest of the letter proceeds to explicate (see, e.g., 6:23 and especially 11:22). The key premise that holds this proposed reading together is the important contextual feature on the surface of Ps 61:13, acknowledged by Second Temple interpreters (including Paul), but which has hitherto been overlooked in the modern debate—that God’s eschatological payback is nothing but the climactic, promised expression of his beneficence towards his covenant people (σοί, κύριε, τὸ ἔλεος, ὅτι σὺ ἀποδώσεις ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ).