Transcript
It’s nice to see some old familiar faces here, and time has dealt kindly with some of you whom I have noticed. I hope you will be able to say the same for me, if it’s been a number of years since you’ve looked at me.
It is never good to begin a presentation with an apology, they say. But I feel it incumbent upon me to apologize for the title of this seminar which was given in some of the literature, “Ask Professor Hodges about problem passages in the New Testament.” That sounds like within the next 60 minutes that I will be able to solve all the problems that you have anywhere in the New Testament, and I’m afraid that that is not the case.
A close exegesis of that title would indicate it does not say ask the apostle Paul about problem passages or ask the angel Gabriel, both of whom we might need to do that much. And consequently, since it’s me that’s involved, I would like to set a much more limited objective. What I would really like to do this afternoon is to introduce you to a principle that some of us have been discussing in classes, that I think is very useful in approaching a problem passage. And then I would like to try to illustrate it as it may be applied to a very significant problem passage and to a very significant book.
I will need to crave the indulgence of some of those who have recently been with me, as a little of the terrain will be familiar to you. Please bear with me. We will ultimately get, hopefully for most of you, into something that we have not really discussed before.
I want to begin by calling your attention to a book that I think is significant and has been making some waves on the campus in recent days, a book by E. D. Hirsch called Validity in Interpretation. I’m indebted to Dr. Edwin Bloom for calling my attention to this book. I have used it myself in class last semester. I understand that Dr. Elliott Johnson is currently using it in an elective on the subject of hermeneutics. This, in my opinion, is a book that every one of our graduates really ought to read.
The students who are here who have read it will be the first to tell you, however, that it is not particularly easy going, and you may have to read and reread some of the sections in order to grasp the content. But I believe that you will find that the effort will be rewarding.
Dr. Hirsch is actually a professor of English at the University of Virginia, and the book that he has written may be said to deal with the area of hermeneutics. But as a matter of fact it is not a detailed presentation of a system of interpretation. I would rather describe it as a description of the way in which we understand either spoken or written materials, and as a theory of understanding I think you will find it very, very useful.
It would not be possible obviously to go into all the details of this book, and our purpose is not to review the book. But I would like to introduce you to one of the leading concepts of the book and then attempt to apply this concept to a problem passage in the New Testament.
This is Dr. Hirsch’s concept of the intrinsic genre which he defines as that sense of the whole by means of which an interpreter can correctly understand any part in its determinacy. I think I would like to leave out of consideration the last words here in its determinacy and try to explain to you what Hirsch has in mind.
Hirsch points out that in all communication, when there is a communication taking place, the hearer has already made at least a preliminary estimate of what the subject matter will contain. And his preliminary estimate of the subject matter under discussion will determine the way in which he understands the parts of the discussion.
A simple illustration, I think, will suffice for this. We’ve all had an experience similar to this. Someone has begun to discuss with us a subject, and we think we are understanding the topic under discussion and the details of the discussion until we meet a detail in the discussion that does not conform really with our expectations. And then we say to the person, “Oh, uh, you’re not talking about a restaurant. You’re talking about a book,” or something like that. And immediately we have shifted our conception of the entire subject under discussion. And very rapidly, if it is possible to do so, we go back and reorient ourselves to the parts of the discussion in such a way as to make them conform to this new intrinsic genre, this new generic conception that we have of the subject matter.
Now very much could be said about this, but that’s about all that I want to say about it except to contrast it really with what Hirsch also calls an extrinsic genre. If you are talking to me about a book and I have the impression you were talking about a restaurant, my idea of a restaurant conversation is a wrong generic guess and is an extrinsic genre. An extrinsic genre is a wrong conception of what the subject matter is about.
Hirsch also refers to what may be described as heuristic genres. And these are preliminary guesses that we make about what the speaker or writer intends to tell us. These are not necessarily wrong guesses. They may be initially very broad conceptions that we have of the person’s subject matter. And as we listen to it we may refine the subject matter increasingly.
Now there’s another way of putting this. Some of you who have graduated have me in class will probably find this slightly familiar. Very frequently I’ve just discussed the process of interpretation as a process going from synthesis to analysis to synthesis to analysis to synthesis. And the idea that we have in this is that you begin with a general idea about what your section is about, whether we’re talking about a book, a paragraph, a verse, whatever it may be. Then utilizing this initial idea about the content of the section under consideration, we move to the details and see if the details harmonize with our synthesis. Usually this will lead to some narrowing or some redefining of the synthesis. And so we will return to the process of synthesis back to analysis to determine whether this new synthesis is more accurate, back to synthesis and so on.
Now from Hirsch’s standpoint each synthesis constitutes a generic guess about the content of the material. And each of the steps that we take in synthesis is ideally a refinement of this generic guess until hopefully we arrive at the true intrinsic genre, the real essence of the subject matter that is under consideration.
Now Hirsch points out that there is no systematic way of initiating generic guesses. We would like to be given a set of rules by which we may determine the intrinsic genre of a paragraph or a section or a book more or less infallibly. But from his standpoint of view this is a matter of insight, and there’s no way of regulating it. But there are ways of validating or checking the generic guesses that we have made.
And without going into all of the details, there are at least two things that we may expect a correct generic guess to do. First, we will expect it to create an array of sub meanings that is highly suitable. And this array of sub meanings can be seen to be usually superior to an array of sub meanings produced by another generic guess. You may not grasp this all at the moment, but I will try to show it to you a little bit in our problem passage. But the point is that your generic guess governs your conception of all of the details of the passage that you are studying. And two opposite generic guesses may produce two differing constructions of the details. And it is possible therefore to compare the generic guesses themselves by comparing the explanation that they give to details. And that generic guess which produces the most natural and approvable set of sub meanings is oftentimes the generic guess that is best.
Another way of checking it is to say that a correct generic guess will usually make functional all of the elements of the passage. If after you’ve interpreted the passage you have no conception under this interpretation how certain parts of the passage fit together, if there are certain details of the passage that are not meaningful under your particular conception of the passage, that is probably an indication that your generic guess may either be wrong or it needs further definition.
Now what I have gone through took us many, many weeks to go through in some detail in the Acts course, and I’m not expecting you to capture a great deal of this at this point. But keep these things in mind. I will refer to them in connection with the problem passage that I want to discuss.
Let me say this by way of preface. Hirsch suggests to us that the differences in interpretation which we often meet in expert interpreters are very often traceable to a difference in their generic guess about the passage under consideration. All of us have had the exasperating experience of going to the commentators for the final word, perhaps, and discovering the commentator one gave us one final word and commentator two gave us another final word. And we wondered how in the world two men as competent as these commentators could come up with diverse explanations as they did. And as a rule when men are equally competent and have studied the text thoroughly, differences of this type are traceable, Hirsch suggests, to a difference of generic conception. They are looking at the passage as a whole in a different way. This may almost seem to be a truism, but to articulate it I think is helpful.
Now the problem passage that I have chosen is from a book that I have never taught in class, and consequently most of you have not heard me discuss it. I do see a few faces in the audience who have heard me discuss it, but most of you have not. Romans 10:9.
Thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God has raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
I hope that most of you feel that this is a good legitimate problem passage. I certainly do. As I read the commentaries on this I get the impression that almost all of the commentators have made a substantially similar generic guess about this particular statement. And though we might articulate their precise generic guess somewhat differently in each case, it is safe to say that the usual generic guess that is made about Romans 10:9 is it is a statement about eternal destiny. I think that would at least be included in the generic conception of almost every commentator that at least that I am aware of.
This is precisely the point at which a problem arises in my judgment. First of all we obviously have to ask how does confession relate to Paul’s exposition of justification by faith. If Paul in fact thought that confession was essential for a man to find acceptance before God, it is a little surprising to say the least that he has not introduced the subject before Romans 10. And we were under the impression when we read Romans 2, 3, 4, and 5 that faith was the only condition for justification. And we want to know how does the subject of confession relate to Paul’s total presentation or particularly how does it harmonize with the rest of the New Testament from which it is natural to deduce that faith alone is the condition for salvation.
As a matter of fact I do not think we could produce another verse that could fall into the category of soteriology which would specify confession as condition for salvation. It would seem to me that the suggestion made by John Murray in the New International Commentary would probably be typical of the way in which most of us would attempt to grapple with this problem. He says the confession with the mouth is the evidence of the genuineness of faith and sustains to the same, that is to faith, the relation which good works sustain.
This probably in our circles would be the most common explanation of this. A little consideration this explanation I think however will show that it really doesn’t do the trick. First of all the text says nothing at all about confession being an evidence of genuine faith. That is almost totally imported into the passage. What the text actually does is to set out confession as a corollary condition to salvation.
If we were to carry Murray’s suggestion one step further and say that this does in fact hold the same relationship to faith as good works hold to faith, we could then in theory produce a theological statement something like if you shall live a good life and do good works and believe in your heart that God has raised Christ from the dead you shall be saved. I am presuming most of us would not be satisfied with a soteriological statement of that type. Some commentaries would be, and there are theologies that would find no difficulty in accommodating an idea like that. But the problem remains. On the face of it the verse produces a conditional clause, and it has a dual protasis. Confession is not only part of the process, it is the first part of the protasis. One therefore is suspicious of the generic guesses that have been made about this passage in the light of the problems that I produced here. And one wonders whether we are not on the wrong track totally by virtue of an erroneous generic guess.
Is there any other possibility for interpreting this passage under a new generic conception of the passage? It is fairly evident that under the generic conception that we have just suggested the key sub meaning is the sub meaning of salvation which would be interpreted as eternal happiness and as approximately equal to justification. I say approximately because you might find some variation in the commentators, some thinking that salvation here is that which happens at the moment of justification and others perhaps thinking of it as that which is related to our final destiny when we meet the Lord. But in any case the substantial idea behind it is that it is virtually the same thing as what we mean by justification.
If this sub meaning were challenged it would be evident that we were also challenging the total generic conception of the verse. And this is what I would like to do. I would like to raise a question about our total generic conception of the verse. We want to ask the question how in fact does the apostle Paul use the term salvation in the book of Romans.
A concordance would be helpful in directing us to the places where the word occurs. And one of the places we would certainly light on it seems to me is Romans 5:9.
Much more then being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved through Him from wrath.
Now I must say that this particular verse has created no problems for the generic conception that controls Romans 10 because of the generic conception that is also applied to this verse in which it is usually understood to be saying that a man who is justified by faith will ultimately be saved, that is to say when the Lord comes or when he dies. However the verse does at least open up to us the possibility that we might think of justification and salvation as in some senses distinct. They are at least in some sense distinguished here. “Much more then being now justified by His blood we shall be saved through Him from wrath.”
It is evident that whatever interpretation we give to salvation we shall have to think of it as something subsequent to justification in this verse. However the sub meaning that controls the generic conception happens to be the orgē. If we understand the statement “we shall be saved through Him from wrath” as meaning our ultimate and final salvation, the interpretation that will be necessitated for the orgē is the idea of eternal judgment. And it is within that framework that this verse therefore is understood by most of the commentators here.
I would like to raise a question about the correctness of the sub-meaning of the orgē and therefore challenge the generic conception of Romans 5:9 that is common in the commentary tradition. If we wish to inquire where Paul first begins to discuss the subject of wrath the answer to that will be in Romans 1:18. And in Romans 1:18 we discover that the wrath he is talking about is not future but present.
For the wrath of God is revealed, not shall be revealed, from heaven against all impiety and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.
Now it is very interesting here that insofar as I have sampled the commentaries on this the generic conception that the commentators have in Romans 1:18 I think is true to the passage. And their interpretation of the orgē here is distinct from their interpretation of the orgē here. They understand the orgē of Romans 1:18 to be referring to the condition into which God has delivered man as described in the remainder of the chapter. And they call attention in particular to the threefold repetition the statement “God gave them up, God gave them up, God gave them up.” And the wrath that is being described therefore is God’s anger with unrighteous man. And the result of this wrath is that man is turned over to the degradation, the control, and the dominion of sin.
Now however a glance back at Romans 5:9 will show that we have an article here in front of the orgē. In the immediate context of Romans 5 there is no reference to orgē. And if the article here indicates previous reference then the reference is to some orgē previously discussed. Most commentators would find this orgē in chapter 2 where they do interpret it of eternal judgment. But I think that is questionable as well. But it would be more natural it seems to me to think of the orgē which in effect begins the argument of Romans. Consequently I want to suggest to you that in Romans 5:9 we can understand the phrase “the orgē” as the orgē of Romans 1:18. And therefore it is possible to understand the “we shall be saved” as deliverance from this orgē. That is to say we are talking here about deliverance from the dreadful condition under the dominion of sin which is described in Romans 1.
Let me try to illustrate this. Please forgive the unprofessional nature of the artwork on this. Hopefully this will get our point a little bit more clearly across. The statement of Romans 1 seems to be that heaven has revealed God’s anger specifically upon unrighteous men. As a result of God’s anger on unrighteous men these men sink down into the degradation of sin. And this experience of the degradation of sin is God’s orgē. It is the experience of God’s orgē.
Now the problem therefore that Romans confronts I think is the problem of how may we be saved from this dreadful condition in which the orgē of God has cast sinful man. The problem must be approached from two aspects. First of all you will notice according to Romans 1:18 which we had on the overhead a moment ago that God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all impiety and unrighteousness of men. Obviously therefore God’s orgē is against men who are unrighteous. This is the type of man who is cast into the slough of sin. The first step therefore must be to reconstitute man’s standing before God and to constitute him righteous. And the first movement it seems to me of the book of Romans is precisely here. How may unrighteous men attain a righteous standing before God? The answer to that of course is by justification.
Now if man is no longer unrighteous in God’s sight but rather righteous by faith, will he, must he, should he remain in the degradation of sin? The answer that the book of Romans gives to this is no. A righteous man ought to be delivered and can be delivered and will be delivered by the power of God from this degradation. And as a matter of fact if we will return momentarily to Romans 5:9 which is a hinged verse I think you will see that Romans 5:9 can be understood perfectly in this life. “Much more then being now justified by His blood we are now constituted righteous we shall be saved from this wrath, this degradation, through Him.”
Now you remember that Romans 5:10 proceeds and really repeats this contrast. “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more being reconciled we shall be saved by His life.” You notice here he develops the contrast between reconciled by the death of His Son, saved by His life. This becomes a hinge by which we move into the Christian life section of Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8 where the key to the victorious Christian life is our link, our association with the life of Christ. So that we talk about being buried with Him by baptism into death. And like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life. We are dead to sin but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
You will notice that by changing our conception of the whole passage we also change our whole thrust backward and forward through the book. This leads me to this additional suggestion. The entirety of the book of Romans can be viewed in a somewhat different light as a result of the suggestions that we have made. I am leaving out of consideration the first 15 verses which are somewhat introductory. The theme verses will then be the theme verses that have long been recognized to be such, Romans 1:16 and 17.
I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
All of the foundational elements of the argument are there. Because God in the gospel can constitute men righteous by faith. He can release His power in their life and save them from wrath. To put it another way, God sees men in this state that I’ve described a moment ago, unrighteous therefore in bondage to sin. God comes to them with His righteousness, and they are invested with that righteousness on the principle of faith. And then God’s power working through the life of Christ and through their link with that life is the means by which they are delivered from His wrath, from the degradation of sin, and able to live victoriously in Him.
Now coming back to that the theme verse gives in essence the argument of the book. The problem that is confronted is immediately confronted in chapter 1 verses 18 to 32. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven, and this is the condition of man to which the gospel addresses itself. The solution is I think in 2:1 to 8:39 and has two easily identifiable parts. The first step in the solution is obviously that unrighteous man must be made righteous. This is justification, and the section is covered in 2:1 to 4:25. Chapter 5 as I understand it has reached the end of the justification section and is the seed plot for the next major section. The hinge verses of chapter 5 verse 9 and 10 that we referred to a moment ago are in this section. And here we have laid down for us from 5:1 to 8:39 the basic principles of victorious Christian living.
As I understand 9:1 to 11:36 Paul introduces this particular section of the epistle by way of motivation. He is going to discuss the relationship between Jews and Gentiles, the Jews being vessels of God’s wrath, the Gentiles who have believed in Christ being vessels of His mercy. And if you’ll remember the climax in chapter 11 he is blessing God for this mercy and for the wisdom that is latent in it. Then we come to what I call the application section. In the solution section the basic general principles of Christian living are laid down but no specifics of how this is worked out in particular situations until we get to the application section in 12:1 where we talk about the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. We begin to spell it out in terms of the use of gifts, subjection to authorities, the question of doubtful things and so on. And I would myself carry this section to 15:13. And the remainder it seems to me of the letter is in essence a conclusion.
Now there’s one more thing that I want to present to you. But before I give you an opportunity to ask me questions about this you will notice that for the moment we started with Romans 10:9. We questioned the generic conception of Romans 10:9. This led us back to Romans 5:9 and we also wound up questioning the generic conception of this verse. Ultimately we question the generic conception of the entire book of Romans. And we want to suggest that by confronting problem passages where they were really details of the book but somehow or other they seem to clash with the structure of the book or the thought of the book as we felt we understood it elsewhere, we were allowed to re-examine the total generic conception of the book.
May I suggest this is a principle that is very, very useful in connection with approaching problem passages. One of the things that happens to us when working with the problem passages is that we restrict our area of thought within what I would call a certain generic conception. And all of our attempts to work with the passage are like juggling furniture in the same room. What we really perhaps needed to do was move all the furniture out of the room into another room, and there it would fit. At least that possibility has to be kept open.
Now we have said that invalidating a generic conception, one of the things that validates such a conception is that it makes the details of this segment under consideration meaningful. And for this purpose I’d like to come back to Romans 10 where we started. And forgive the massive amount of Greek but all of you men of course can handle this readily. Verse 10 is the starting place of testing the generic conception that we had about verse 9.
As we understood verse 9 therefore the salvation that was being offered in verse 9 was in fact a salvation from orgē. This is in a context relative to Israel of course. But Israel in chapter 9 has been presented as an exhibition of God’s orgē and unbelieving Israel as the vessels of God’s orgē. And Paul is therefore offering to Israel a deliverance from the orgē under which they stand.
Now our generic conception of Romans 10:9 therefore necessitates that we shall understand justification and salvation as somewhat distinct. Will you notice that verse 10 confirms this. “For with the heart he is believed for righteousness, and with the mouth he is confessed for salvation.”
The introduction here of the word dikaiosunē obviously refers to the concept of justification by faith. And this is linked directly to what goes on in the heart whereas the salvation is linked to the accomplishment of the mouth.
Now it is interesting that the commentators apparently usually take verse 10 as a mere rhetorical repetition of verse 9. And they suggest that not much is to be made of the distinction between heart and mouth. They are two sides of the same coin. But it’s obvious that if we have a distinction in our mind from verse 9 that verse 10 is luminous in the light of this distinction.
If in fact the book of Romans distinguishes between justification and salvation, justification being that which accords us our righteous standing before God, salvation that which delivers us from God’s wrath, now he continues apparently with the consideration of the subject of confession. Because the next verse says, “The scripture says, Everyone who believes on Him shall not be ashamed.”
A person who has exercised faith in Christ ought to have no embarrassment about acknowledging that faith. Why are he not to be ashamed? Verse 12, “For there is no difference between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich unto all those who call upon Him,” who invoke Him. And then he quotes from the Old Testament, “For everyone who invokes the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
You will notice the reappearance here of “saved” which we pick up from here. Only now the word is not “saved” but it would we would suggest here that he’s still on the theme of confession but elaborating this thing. The verb “epikaloumai” in some places in the New Testament seems to be a way of identifying Christians who invoke the aid of God and are therefore publicly associated with the name of Christ. We would think here of Acts 9:14 and 9:21, First Corinthians 1:2. It seems almost to be a way of designating Christians who are publicly identified as such. Acts 9 is particularly illuminating in this respect because here Paul goes to Damascus to bind all of those who call upon this name. It is obvious that if he is going to arrest Christians he or he is going to arrest Christians who are Christians in public, Christians who have openly acknowledged this name and who invoke the aid and assistance of the Lord. So what he seems to be saying through here and what I think he means by confession is not merely a one-time confession necessarily but that public stance in which we appeal to God and to Christ as Lord for the help that we need.
You will notice therefore that this makes sense out of his emphasis upon believing that God has raised Him from the dead because here we’re talking about the salvation that we get by linking ourselves with the risen life of the risen Lord. Now this approach to it I think is further confirmed by a series of statements he makes in verses 14 and 15. “How shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? How shall they hear without one who preaches? And how shall they preach except they be sent?”
Working from the bottom up it is evident that we have a series of steps. First of all you have to send a man before he preaches and a man has to preach before anybody can hear and an individual has to hear before he can believe. But the next step is the one we haven’t taken. A person has to believe before he can call on the name of the Lord. And I suggest that these verses show us just exactly what verse 10 shows us. These are not two sides of the same coin. They are successive steps. Faith is the first step. The second step is confession or invocation of the name of the Lord, dependence upon the name of the Lord publicly acknowledged and called upon. And so what he is saying is if you’re going to avail yourself publicly openly of the power of the risen Lord you must first obviously believe in it. And it seems to me at least that in the light of this particular approach to it the passage ceases to be a soteriological problem to us. Paul is in fact in this passage still maintaining what he maintained in the opening verses and chapters of the book that righteousness comes by faith. He does not link confession with the obtaining of righteousness. Verse 10 makes that very clear. He does link confession with the obtaining of salvation. But if salvation is not synonymous with the obtaining of righteousness no soteriological problem is raised by this.
So I use this as an illustration of something that might be practical by way of a general principle for you. Try to get yourself out of what I would call the generic rut. If you’re really stuck with a passage try a totally fresh idea. And my own experience of studying the book of Romans it happened very much like I have described to you. I really began to get my first insights into the structure of Romans from studying verses 9 and 10 of chapter 10. And the moment I noticed that Paul was in fact drawing an apparent distinction here that I was able to make the connection with other places in the epistle where he draws this distinction notably 5:9 and 10 where the distinction also emerges and carry that back to the opening chapter of the book. And it does appear to me as if this will give an acceptable analysis to the structure of the book as well as solve some of the details within it. But notice that the conception of the book as a whole, the intrinsic genre of the whole book if you will, is very influential in our conception of the individual parts. What is wrong I think with the standard intrinsic genres of the book of Romans is simply this. They cannot grapple with this type of detail within the book at least not adequately. They do grapple with it and I would suggest that whenever a conception of a book cannot adequately come to terms with details that we ought to reexamine our total conception and see if we can get a conception that is able to come to terms with details.
Now I welcome your questions for the minutes that remain.
One of my problems was in your outline. I thought one of that section on motivation 9-11 was was not dealing with the details of that particular passage. Now that’s not crucial to what you just said about 10:9. I think that was right.
Well what I have not attempted you know in this presentation to deal with the details of this section. I feel like we could deal with it but here I have to be satisfied to give you my intrinsic genre of this section. What I really want to say is that he is discussing in considerable detail what is true in Israel’s relationship right now with God and how this relates to the Gentiles. Now he goes into great detail with this. In other words we must understand what God is doing with Israel if we are to understand what God is doing with us right now. But you will recall that when we get to the end of chapter 11 we really come to a warning section for Gentiles in connection with the figure of the olive tree. And Gentiles are warned not to be high-minded but in fact to be appreciative of this. And he draws the whole thing to more or less to a conclusion by saying that they are enemies for your sakes on account of the gospel you say and that mercy has come to you. And then he you remember the doxology, “O the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!” and so on. And then we come to Romans 12:1. “I beseech you therefore by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice.” He has he is now appealing to what he has discussed in the previous section. In the light of the fall of Israel God’s mercy in a very special way has gone out to Gentiles. Gentiles are to appreciate their present relationship to God as objects of mercy. And in the light of these mercies they are to live the life that Paul has been explaining. I personally regard Romans 12:1 and 2 as in some senses a recapitulation of the truth of Romans 6, 7, and 8. And that the yielding of the body is what he’s talking about in Romans 6 where he says we are to take the members of our body and to yield them as instruments of righteousness to God. The physical body therefore being made the vehicle for the will of God for the expression of the will of God. And this is done only as there is a transforming work of the Spirit going on within us. And that transforming work of the Spirit allows us to discern, Dr. Mazza, the good and acceptable and perfect will of God which is then explained. But the reason I refer to this section is because the appeal is to the mercies of God which he has been discussing in the previous section.
Now as far back as Romans 9 he has laid out I think his basic premises. God what if God in His sovereignty chooses to manifest His wrath upon those who are the vessels of wrath that’s Israel in particular in this context and to have mercy upon the vessels of mercy. So his conception is still this idea of orgē you say. Israel now the prime example of orgē. While I’m on this one little point that I forgot to indicate to you you remember way back in the 1:18 verse God’s orgē is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. They are unrighteous and they suppress the truth. In this context of nature you say but they are holding it down. They refuse to acknowledge it or conform to it. Thus it becomes logical for us to associate acknowledgement of the truth, confession of the truth, with deliverance from orgē. Now Israel is the supreme example of a nation seeking to suppress the truth you say. Therefore they fall under the orgē of God. Therefore they cannot escape that orgē until they are not only prepared to believe in their hearts but to confess with their mouth. And thus this is the message to Israel. If God’s wrath against Israel is to be lifted it must be by this means. But all of these thoughts are developed in this section.
Is this interpretation in commentators? I have not been able to find them and I have lost and all I can say is that not very many people in this room are surprised to hear me come up with an absolutely unique interpretation. And really what I was trying to point out here I guess was this that the commentary tradition as I see it has a certain intrinsic general conception not only of the particular problem passage that I discussed but with the Romans as a whole. What I am doing is suggesting a new genre conception which I have not located as yet in a commentary. So I have to say that yes as far as I know this is not supported in literature.
Don’t you come out with basically the same the same thing in that particular passage that is salvation confession is basically post salvation and is an evidence somewhere of justification but all you’ve done is changed the conception of salvation.
Yes I have changed the conception of salvation but it seems to me that that is a substantial change of conception. You still have the same thing. The basic problem is with the concept of salvation in the verse is not the problem with the relationship of justification and confession.
No that’s true although as you can see from Murray’s attempt to harmonize this the harmonization that he makes on the basis of his generic conception raises problems. No I have not you know I have still stayed in the valley with sound doctrine as far as relationship of confession to salvation is concerned but I have explained salvation differently. I do think though Don that my total generic conception of the book is not that different in the final analysis from the general generic conceptions of the book as a whole because most commentators understand the book is discussing Christian living and they don’t put the pieces together like I do and their definition of salvation within the book of Romans is not the same as my definition. But our generic conceptions are close enough to each other so that large segments of the book of Romans are unaffected it seems to me an interpretation by this change that I’ve made. That was my point. You really hadn’t changed all that much and you got away from his basic problems.
Yes yeah I think that’s true and you know I read the justification sections the same way that everybody reads them but when I come to 5:9 and 10 I read those verses differently. I structure the book just a little bit differently because I see these verses as hinges. Apparently a number of your commentators see the division at 12. But I want to make the division earlier. But you can see that’s only a relatively minor adjustment. I want to begin at 5:1 because I think that’s a seed plot for the rest of the chapters 6 through 8. I think there’s validity in what you’re saying.
All right John and your understanding of the book this way you would see Paul as being in a regenerative state in chapter seven.
Yes how would you support that?
Well the considerations that would dictate that understanding of Romans 7 it would seem to me would be more closely developed by a study of 6 and 8 which I haven’t really touched on here. One of the leading motifs in 6 and 8 is the life death motif. And as I understand chapter 8 he is talking about he says if Christ be in you the body is dead because of sin and the spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you He shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you. Now here it seems to me he’s talking about Christian experience right here and now not in the future. He is saying really look to the at in the abstract the Christian is in a dead body but the Spirit that raised up Christ is able to make that body alive by making it the vehicle for the will of God. So if you live after the flesh you shall die but if you through the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body you shall live. Experientially you will have the experience of the life of God.
Now this life death motif is in Romans 7. So for example when he comes to the end of the chapter he says “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” But that is understood in the light of the fact that if Christ is in us the body is dead because of sin the spirit is life because of righteousness. It seems to me it’s very difficult to understand his phrase also in Romans 7 “I was alive without the law once but the commandment came sin revived and I died.” What does that mean if he’s talking about his unsaved state how could he have been alive without the law? Well it’s a little difficult to conceive of that but if we talk if we are talking about this experience of the life of God in the individual then he is saying I was doing fine as a Christian until I was confronted by a commandment that focused me upon my sin and the sin took advantage of that focusing and robbed me of this experience. Very much like the I I usually illustrate this the newly saved Christian who is living in the full flush of his Christian experience and enjoying the Lord really alive you might say in the Lord and all of a sudden somebody comes to him and says you know you ought not to smoke. That is not a good parallel with Romans 7 because the command in Romans 7 was thou shalt not covet. I’m using this as an illustration and all of a sudden his whole orientation is to thou shalt not smoke and he begins to think you know I never thought of that as a sin but smoking is nice and I hate to give it up and pretty soon he has lost the vitality of his experience. He is focused on a negative. He is defeated by sin in connection with that negative. And this is the experience in miniature of the person who tries to live under the law. And what Paul really does in Romans 8 is get the person refocused on the things of the Spirit. Be carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. A man must reorient himself to the things of the Spirit which give him this vitality and produce this resurrection response.
I want my answer your question is rather elaborated but the reason I’m answering it this way is it seems to me once again that it is the understanding of the whole that interprets the parts. So if we get a conception of the life death motif that is running through 6, 7, and 8 we will I think be able to grapple with the problem of 7 in the light of this life death motif and I think that helps to solve the problem. What is the experience described in Romans 7? Well it is really tangent to directly the Christian experience that is described in 6 and 8.
Have you um
Once again what you mean by salvation.
Yes by the concept of wrath here I have in mind the condition described in Romans 1 where men are turned over to a reprobate mind to dishonoring passions and all these things so that we have a skid row description of mankind we want to put it that way. All right that’s the basic problem is I say how can a man get out from under this kind of a condition. The gospel meets him enslaves his sin under the orgē of God. How can he get out from under that is the basic problem posed it seems to me by Romans. First of all he must be justified. As long as he is unrighteous in God’s sight there’s no escape from that. But once he is justified it is possible to escape. And then the question is how can I escape the control of sin in my Christian life assuming I am a justified person who has believed in his heart on Christ. How can I get victory over sin? This is of course the problem that every Christian faces. Could hardly be a more practical problem. And his answer to that is through the life of the living Lord. We are saved by His life. And what he then goes on to explain is that we have been brought into union with the life of Christ and by the power of the Spirit that life can be lived out through these otherwise dead parts of us so that a body that is in and of itself the seed of sin can become an instrument for the vital living of the life of God. And this is of course Romans 12:1-2 that we present our bodies a living sacrifice. You see the body that is intrinsically dead now becomes in the process of obedience to God a living thing given to Him. But in essence we would say that it is the life of Christ made vital in our experience by the work of the Spirit.
Now I relate this to the subject of confession in this. What the man who confesses Christ is a man who openly depends upon the one Lord over Jew and Gentile. That if he draws his dependence openly and publicly upon this Lord. Another way of saying this is nobody will live a victorious Christian life in secret. It has always lived out. And therefore confession in the sense that I’ve described it is essential because it is an open acknowledgement of our link to the Lord of heaven whom God has raised from the dead and our dependence upon His life for my life.
That context would mean the control of sin to which God turns men over. I might say this too that as far as I know nowhere in the New Testament is there a clear-cut passage where orgē refers to eternal judgment. I personally believe that all of the passages that deal with orgē refer to some expression of temporal judgment. A number of these relate to the tribulation period which is a temporal expression of God’s displeasure with sin. But there’s also a contemporary displeasure in the degradation into which men are brought.
We are under instructions to cut this off immediately at 4:30. And so I think I would like to dismiss you. I will hang around and talk with any of you that would like to talk about.