| Summary: | This thesis asserts that Paul’s primary scriptural source in Romans 1-4 (and the epistle as a whole) is the prophecy of Isaiah, specifically, the prophecy’s redemptive narrative centering in the “proclamation of good news.” Paul understands the content of this good news to be the revelation of God's righteousness in the sacrificial death of the messiah as the source of redemptive recreation from the power of sin and death, the basis of the everlasting (new) covenant. Isaiah’s good news, then, is the fulfillment of all previous covenant expressions. Paul, therefore, employs Isaiah, particularly its typology of Israel as both reiterating the fall and portraying the guilt and plight of humanity, to convey a covenantal and revelational continuity that climaxes in the gospel. This continuity, then, embraces the law, so that the law, like the gospel, proclaims both plight and promise and is brought to fulfillment in the justification granted through the sacrifice of the Servant of the Lord/Jesus Christ. The expansive sweep of this redemptive narrative in Isaiah stretches from its allusions to the fall, to the creation of the new heavens and new earth, as Israel and the nations are at last ushered back into the presence of the glory of God. This Isaianic redemptive narrative, therefore, through Paul’s extensive allusive and citational reference to the prophecy, forms the foundational and principle theological framework for the epistle. Other portions of scripture, to be sure, play a prominent role, yet their significance stands in supporting the more comprehensive theological narrative of Isaiah.
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