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Simple, powerful, and pertinent
The apparent simplicity of this book is misleading. Professor A. Katherine Grieb takes the stance of an expert teacher explaining a complex text and profound ideas to non-experts, and comes up with an exposition of Paul's Letter to the Romans that is as powerful as it is lucid. She dispels the common idea that Romans is only a summary of Christian doctrine; instead, she writes that the letter "is best read as a continuous story of what God has done in Jesus Christ and what God continues to do in the lives of those who are baptized into Christ Jesus." Her procedure is to retell biblical stories of faith (or faithfulness) and of apostasy, which lie beneath the surface of Paul's letter. Those stories, and the climaxing story of Jesus Christ, make up the one great gospel story of what God has done to save a lost world. The important point is that the gospel story as conveyed by Paul was also Paul's story - for it changed his life radically - and the story of his Roman audience, and is the story of today's readers of the letter if and as they interact with it. Grieb presents Romans as PERTINENT to the lives of contemporary individuals and communities, for it tells the story of God's righteousness (mainly as God's covenant faithfulness) "again and again from different angles until it becomes so clear that we are willing to entrust our lives to it."

The brevity of the book (Introduction and main text add up to 157 pages) is both its strength and its weakness: strength, because we are exposed to much of the brilliance of Paul's thinking without having to wade through many pages of technical exegesis; weakness, because at times Grieb has to resort to unsupported interpretive leaps. But where this occurs, we can accept her interpretation on trust - the list of scholars who have shaped her reading of Romans, as acknowledged in the Preface, is a roll call of the famous. Perhaps the first two on the list, Richard Hays and N. T. Wright, have had the most influence, judging from Grieb's exposition and the number of times she references their works. As expected in a brief commentary, she proceeds section by section, rather than verse by verse. She considers Romans 9-11 as central to the letter and her exposition of these chapters is possibly the most demanding part of the book on the reader's attention. Her study of Paul's most important letter is intriguing and deserves wide readership.

This will help you make sense of Paul
As a former student of Dr. Grieb, I was pleased to find her fine biblical scholarship and down-to-earth approach now available in book form. Paul was problematic for me for many years. Kathy Grieb helped me learn to appreciate the apostle. I intend to use this book for a Bible study I am leading next month. Thanks, Kathy and WJK Press!

Offering a meticulous, thorough, accessible analysis
The Story of Romans: A Narrative Defense of God's Righteousness by A. Katherine Grieb (Associate Professor of New Testament, Virginia Theological Seminary) is an extensive, scholarly, yet thoroughly "reader friendly" survey and analysis of Paul's letter to the Romans, scrutinizing Paul's own thoughts, apocalyptic overtones in the gospel, and the political impact of his theology from ancient times to the modern day. Offering a meticulous, thorough, accessible analysis, The Story Of Romans is a welcome and very highly recommended addition to New Testament Studies and Pauline Theology reading lists and reference collections.