Thanks for having me on Randal! I wanted to explain a bit more in response to the question of novelty that you posed, since I struggled to figure out a good way in for the purposes of brevity. I jumped too quickly to detecting voices, which is important but not the central issue. What I will say is that the rhetorical signals underlying our proposed Socratic rereading of Rom 1-4 actually aren't as idiosyncratic or novel as they may first appear. Scholars run the gamut in terms of their proposed solutions, which makes sense, but *many* of them detect certain tensions (or contradictions) within that stretch of text when it is read as Paul endorsing everything that is said there. (Some have even gone so far as to propose instances of interpolation in those chapters [!].) To the point about detecting speech, then: It isn't all that surprising that early church interpreters of Paul in particular would not have sensed the rhetorical dimension in the same way. So much of detection is tied up in the *performance* of the epistle via inflection. I sloppily mentioned some ways for an ancient person to have detected different voices in a written text, so the rhetorical handbooks (Theon's Progymnasmata, Pseudo-Hermogenes' Progymnasmata, the Rhetorica ad Herennium, as well as Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria). These use a criterion of appropriateness, as Andrew Rillera puts it, to decipher voices where there no verbs of saying. So the way these primary sources instruct the student to detect another voice is if 1. an interlocutor is clearly identified; 2. they are characterized (as a teacher, a philosopher, a judger, a fool, etc.); and 3. any attributed speech is then appropriate to the character of the interlocutor. All of this would then be made even clearer through the letter's performance. And we see precisely this going on in Rom 1-3/4--see esp the characterization of the one speaking in 1:18-32 in the light of the sudden "turn" that occurs in 2:1ff on the one who was just speaking "You, O Man..." and the characterization, "*You* who pass judgment [as you just did in 1:18-32], you condemn yourself; for you, the judge, are doing the very same things. You say..." Hope this is useful!
Hey John, I loved the discussion. I read your book a bit ago and it has really transformed the way I approach Paul and his texts, thank you for that. I am currently working through Staples’ “Paul and the Resurrection of Israel” and he seems to be making a convincing case for his position. Have you engaged with his work? What would be your response to his whole “Eschatological Restoration” approach.
@@shayneptorresThanks, Shayne. I have to read Staples’s recent work carefully, but I do have my worries given that I know he thinks Romans 2 is basically the heart of Paul…
Interesting take.A couple thoughts: first, I don't think the 'traditional' interpretation of Romans 1-3 require penal substitution or a protestant justification theory. For example, I think the Eastern Orthodox church would probably take a traditional understanding. Second, I don't really find the critique of 'othering' to be relevant. Was Jesus 'othering' the pharisees when he spoke harshly against them? Was Paul 'othering' the gentiles when he says Christians should no longer walk as them (eph 4:17)? In Romans 11 Paul warns against gentile Christians having an arrogant attitude towards Jews, but he still expresses the need for Jews to be 'grafted in' again through Messiah faith. Is he 'othering' them by saying they need to ne grafted back in? The concept of a faithful remnant runs through the OT and second temple theology. If that is 'othering' then I think we either ought to just accept it or else throw out the bible as a whole.
Ah, a crossover of my favorite progressive Christians. I’ve grown more sympathetic to DePue’s view of justification and participation. I’m still not fully there, particularly with his reading of Rom 1-4, but I appreciate that it forces me back to the text.
Thank you for your kind words! I honestly cannot wait for Andrew Rillera to publish his dissertation on Rom 1-3/4. He goes through *all* of the primary source material that buttresses the Socratic rereading. I think that will get you all the way there, eventually. :)
@@ApocalypseHere maybe! I’ll be on the look out for that diss. The number of things I’ve changed my mind on is a pretty long list. Although I seriously respect the church I come from, I had to “unlearn” many things, and I didn’t become a follower of Christ until I was 19! I do have a question-not a hostile one, so please don’t read it that way-do you think that some one could believe in apokatastasis in the way you do and still hold to some form of inerrancy?
Reminds me of John Wesley’s Christian Perfection Theory and Ellen G White’s Perfect Love Theory. These Christian teachers both moved beyond the Justification Theory and helped to better frame Paul’s writings.
Loved this book when I read it earlier this year. Makes a lot things clearer, and I wish Douglas Campbell and John DePue would break down each of Paul's writings with this approach. Regardless, this is great work, and I wish more people would hear about this.
You should check out Douglas's 2020 book Pauline Dogmatics if you haven't already. I think that will give you a way of seeing how this rereading works when we go to non-justification texts across the Pauline corpus. And as I mentioned in the interview, I'm working on a sequel to Beyond that will meet, at least to some degree, your desire here.
In Orthodoxy, salvation is not substitutionary, but rather mechanistic. Christ is the Passover lamb and he stands in our place (death) and creates a Passover for flesh from death to life. Death was the consequence of the fallen cosmos, the fall be being the result of sin. Justification in Greek is not as myopic as the legalistic meaning in Latin. In Latin, it means to be straight with the law, or to have one's debt covered. In Greek it means to be straightened out in nature, and to have our fallen human nature covered in Christ's blood by baptism, which enables the Passover from death to life. The Passover of old was a prefiguring of the true Passover of Christ. The west also takes human legal systems as the archetype and then applies characteristics of human courts to God's justice which is backwards typology. You can not generalize Gods' justice from human legal systems. When we say we were covered by Christ, covering a debt is "like" that, but not in reverse saying that that when Christ covers our sins it is like covering a debt.
I didn't even realize that Paul promoted the penal substitutionary theory of atonement. I know N.T. Wright promotes the Christus Victor theory as does the Orthodox Church. I think the moral theory of atonement promoted by Abelard.is even better to explain why Jesus died. What bothers me more about.Paul are his statements about women.
There's also an argument to be made that Paul is being misinterpreted there too. As an example, 1 Cor 14:34-35 may be another instance where Paul is speaking in the voice of a rhetorical opponent, which he immediately corrects with the retort, "What? Did the word of God originate from you?" In Greek, there's a small "particle" word at the beginning of verse 36 that's often left untranslated, but it can indicate this rhetorical meaning.
When people quote from Romans 1 at me as a "clobber passage", I tell them to read Romans 2. It's clear as day to me now that Paul proceeds to tear down the judgmental, Gentile-bashing scenario he'd just laid out.
Really interesting conversation. Is there evidence that ANY ancient Christian reader received and interpreted this text (especially Rom 1-4) the way these authors do? Not that they could have, or that a rhetorical setup as described was employed anciently and could have been picked up on it the text was performed orally w inflection indicating 2 voices as it were. But DID any ancient Christian receive it that way?
@ApocalypseHere thanks! I wrote my comment after reading the pinned comment, which seems to speak in part re the acknowledged tensions in the text, ancient rhetorical practices and how ancient audiences would, could, should or might receive the passage when it was performed. I'm wondering if we have ancient evidence (church fathers' writing or similar) that any ancient Christian hearer DID understand Romans 1-4 this way? Does anyone write of holding this view? Does anyone write against others holding this view?
@@karlu8553 Ah I see! No, no one proposed this particular solution to the tensions and contradictions in Paul that early on (although people like Origen certainly recognized issues within the Pauline data, and I'm happy to walk through what he does in response). But like I said, I'm not surprised or worried by this since we have good extant rhetorical sources (so hist-crit criterion), it is coherent *as* a proposal (so meets the theoretical criterion) and because the Socratic rereading is the only solution I've found that actually addresses all of the problems generated by reading Rom 1-3/4 as Paul offering his own gospel straight through. So at the end of the day, I see it making beautiful sense of the Pauline data not just in Rom 1-3/4 but it sets up the interpreter to read Paul consistently all the way through.
@@ApocalypseHereBut doesn't it hurt your case a bit if the rhetorical devices were lost on most of Paul's early readers? It would seem to make Paul a poor communicator if it took 2,000 years for us to discover what he really meant.
@danielcartwright8868 Why would this make Paul a poor communicator? that simply does not follow from what I’ve said. It makes him a communicator that fits within his own particular context that utilizes rhetorical devices. Paul could have never thought about anyone other than his contingent audience needing to understand what he was saying. Unless you think Paul himself was expecting to communicate beyond his intended audience.
Because a warm, fuzzy narrative isn’t true because it’s emotionally satisfactory. It’s important to understand what Paul actually meant rather than being satisfied with the most popular retelling. These men are scholars who want to avoid the possibility of deception (and self-deception). It’s actually quite refreshing compared to the constant Christian jargon employed by most apologists.
@seanpierce9386 Christ is found in revelation,not interlectual pursuit. His kingdom is internal. The smallest child can understand the gospel.. It's a message for the most uneducated peasant. It's about a new life within,rivers of living water overflowing in love. Truth is important,but so are goodness and Beauty. You search the scriptures hoping to find eternal life.
@@matthewashman1406 What about the following statement: “Jesus’s sacrifice ensures that everyone goes to Heaven. It’s for the everyone’s good as a beautiful reflection of God’s forgiving love.” This is what some progressive Christians believe. Would you say that it’s a useful analysis because it promotes goodness and beauty?
JESUS SECOND COME IS NEAR✝️ RAPTURE❗️will coincide with significant prophetic events, such as the breaking of the covenant and the rise of the Antichrist. Jesus follower will be with the Lord forever who anticipate being united with Christ without experiencing death. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)✝️
Thanks for having me on Randal! I wanted to explain a bit more in response to the question of novelty that you posed, since I struggled to figure out a good way in for the purposes of brevity. I jumped too quickly to detecting voices, which is important but not the central issue. What I will say is that the rhetorical signals underlying our proposed Socratic rereading of Rom 1-4 actually aren't as idiosyncratic or novel as they may first appear. Scholars run the gamut in terms of their proposed solutions, which makes sense, but *many* of them detect certain tensions (or contradictions) within that stretch of text when it is read as Paul endorsing everything that is said there. (Some have even gone so far as to propose instances of interpolation in those chapters [!].) To the point about detecting speech, then: It isn't all that surprising that early church interpreters of Paul in particular would not have sensed the rhetorical dimension in the same way. So much of detection is tied up in the *performance* of the epistle via inflection. I sloppily mentioned some ways for an ancient person to have detected different voices in a written text, so the rhetorical handbooks (Theon's Progymnasmata, Pseudo-Hermogenes' Progymnasmata, the Rhetorica ad Herennium, as well as Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria). These use a criterion of appropriateness, as Andrew Rillera puts it, to decipher voices where there no verbs of saying. So the way these primary sources instruct the student to detect another voice is if 1. an interlocutor is clearly identified; 2. they are characterized (as a teacher, a philosopher, a judger, a fool, etc.); and 3. any attributed speech is then appropriate to the character of the interlocutor. All of this would then be made even clearer through the letter's performance. And we see precisely this going on in Rom 1-3/4--see esp the characterization of the one speaking in 1:18-32 in the light of the sudden "turn" that occurs in 2:1ff on the one who was just speaking "You, O Man..." and the characterization, "*You* who pass judgment [as you just did in 1:18-32], you condemn yourself; for you, the judge, are doing the very same things. You say..." Hope this is useful!
Hey John,
I loved the discussion. I read your book a bit ago and it has really transformed the way I approach Paul and his texts, thank you for that. I am currently working through Staples’ “Paul and the Resurrection of Israel” and he seems to be making a convincing case for his position. Have you engaged with his work? What would be your response to his whole “Eschatological Restoration” approach.
@@shayneptorresThanks, Shayne. I have to read Staples’s recent work carefully, but I do have my worries given that I know he thinks Romans 2 is basically the heart of Paul…
Interesting take.A couple thoughts: first, I don't think the 'traditional' interpretation of Romans 1-3 require penal substitution or a protestant justification theory. For example, I think the Eastern Orthodox church would probably take a traditional understanding.
Second, I don't really find the critique of 'othering' to be relevant. Was Jesus 'othering' the pharisees when he spoke harshly against them? Was Paul 'othering' the gentiles when he says Christians should no longer walk as them (eph 4:17)?
In Romans 11 Paul warns against gentile Christians having an arrogant attitude towards Jews, but he still expresses the need for Jews to be 'grafted in' again through Messiah faith. Is he 'othering' them by saying they need to ne grafted back in?
The concept of a faithful remnant runs through the OT and second temple theology. If that is 'othering' then I think we either ought to just accept it or else throw out the bible as a whole.
Ah, a crossover of my favorite progressive Christians. I’ve grown more sympathetic to DePue’s view of justification and participation. I’m still not fully there, particularly with his reading of Rom 1-4, but I appreciate that it forces me back to the text.
Thank you for your kind words! I honestly cannot wait for Andrew Rillera to publish his dissertation on Rom 1-3/4. He goes through *all* of the primary source material that buttresses the Socratic rereading. I think that will get you all the way there, eventually. :)
@@ApocalypseHere maybe! I’ll be on the look out for that diss. The number of things I’ve changed my mind on is a pretty long list. Although I seriously respect the church I come from, I had to “unlearn” many things, and I didn’t become a follower of Christ until I was 19!
I do have a question-not a hostile one, so please don’t read it that way-do you think that some one could believe in apokatastasis in the way you do and still hold to some form of inerrancy?
@ Yes, I do. I think Randal’s conception of inerrancy works quite well with apokatastasis.
Reminds me of John Wesley’s Christian Perfection Theory and Ellen G White’s Perfect Love Theory. These Christian teachers both moved beyond the Justification Theory and helped to better frame Paul’s writings.
Loved this book when I read it earlier this year. Makes a lot things clearer, and I wish Douglas Campbell and John DePue would break down each of Paul's writings with this approach. Regardless, this is great work, and I wish more people would hear about this.
You should check out Douglas's 2020 book Pauline Dogmatics if you haven't already. I think that will give you a way of seeing how this rereading works when we go to non-justification texts across the Pauline corpus. And as I mentioned in the interview, I'm working on a sequel to Beyond that will meet, at least to some degree, your desire here.
Great interview, more of this
I wish Randal would do longer form interviews. Seems like they always end an hour short.
In Orthodoxy, salvation is not substitutionary, but rather mechanistic. Christ is the Passover lamb and he stands in our place (death) and creates a Passover for flesh from death to life. Death was the consequence of the fallen cosmos, the fall be being the result of sin. Justification in Greek is not as myopic as the legalistic meaning in Latin. In Latin, it means to be straight with the law, or to have one's debt covered. In Greek it means to be straightened out in nature, and to have our fallen human nature covered in Christ's blood by baptism, which enables the Passover from death to life. The Passover of old was a prefiguring of the true Passover of Christ. The west also takes human legal systems as the archetype and then applies characteristics of human courts to God's justice which is backwards typology. You can not generalize Gods' justice from human legal systems.
When we say we were covered by Christ, covering a debt is "like" that, but not in reverse saying that that when Christ covers our sins it is like covering a debt.
I didn't even realize that Paul promoted the penal substitutionary theory of atonement. I know N.T. Wright promotes the Christus Victor theory as does the Orthodox Church. I think the moral theory of atonement promoted by Abelard.is even better to explain why Jesus died. What bothers me more about.Paul are his statements about women.
There's also an argument to be made that Paul is being misinterpreted there too. As an example, 1 Cor 14:34-35 may be another instance where Paul is speaking in the voice of a rhetorical opponent, which he immediately corrects with the retort, "What? Did the word of God originate from you?" In Greek, there's a small "particle" word at the beginning of verse 36 that's often left untranslated, but it can indicate this rhetorical meaning.
Good conversation. A good summation of how badly modern Protestantism misunderstands the New Testament and the gospel.
When people quote from Romans 1 at me as a "clobber passage", I tell them to read Romans 2. It's clear as day to me now that Paul proceeds to tear down the judgmental, Gentile-bashing scenario he'd just laid out.
Really interesting conversation. Is there evidence that ANY ancient Christian reader received and interpreted this text (especially Rom 1-4) the way these authors do? Not that they could have, or that a rhetorical setup as described was employed anciently and could have been picked up on it the text was performed orally w inflection indicating 2 voices as it were. But DID any ancient Christian receive it that way?
Hi there! My pinned comment responds to much of this.
@ApocalypseHere thanks! I wrote my comment after reading the pinned comment, which seems to speak in part re the acknowledged tensions in the text, ancient rhetorical practices and how ancient audiences would, could, should or might receive the passage when it was performed. I'm wondering if we have ancient evidence (church fathers' writing or similar) that any ancient Christian hearer DID understand Romans 1-4 this way? Does anyone write of holding this view? Does anyone write against others holding this view?
@@karlu8553 Ah I see! No, no one proposed this particular solution to the tensions and contradictions in Paul that early on (although people like Origen certainly recognized issues within the Pauline data, and I'm happy to walk through what he does in response). But like I said, I'm not surprised or worried by this since we have good extant rhetorical sources (so hist-crit criterion), it is coherent *as* a proposal (so meets the theoretical criterion) and because the Socratic rereading is the only solution I've found that actually addresses all of the problems generated by reading Rom 1-3/4 as Paul offering his own gospel straight through. So at the end of the day, I see it making beautiful sense of the Pauline data not just in Rom 1-3/4 but it sets up the interpreter to read Paul consistently all the way through.
@@ApocalypseHereBut doesn't it hurt your case a bit if the rhetorical devices were lost on most of Paul's early readers? It would seem to make Paul a poor communicator if it took 2,000 years for us to discover what he really meant.
@danielcartwright8868 Why would this make Paul a poor communicator? that simply does not follow from what I’ve said. It makes him a communicator that fits within his own particular context that utilizes rhetorical devices. Paul could have never thought about anyone other than his contingent audience needing to understand what he was saying. Unless you think Paul himself was expecting to communicate beyond his intended audience.
Does any of this discussion lead to righteousness peace snd Joy ? Very cold interlectual
Because a warm, fuzzy narrative isn’t true because it’s emotionally satisfactory. It’s important to understand what Paul actually meant rather than being satisfied with the most popular retelling. These men are scholars who want to avoid the possibility of deception (and self-deception). It’s actually quite refreshing compared to the constant Christian jargon employed by most apologists.
@seanpierce9386 Christ is found in revelation,not interlectual pursuit. His kingdom is internal. The smallest child can understand the gospel.. It's a message for the most uneducated peasant. It's about a new life within,rivers of living water overflowing in love. Truth is important,but so are goodness and Beauty. You search the scriptures hoping to find eternal life.
@@matthewashman1406 What about the following statement:
“Jesus’s sacrifice ensures that everyone goes to Heaven. It’s for the everyone’s good as a beautiful reflection of God’s forgiving love.”
This is what some progressive Christians believe. Would you say that it’s a useful analysis because it promotes goodness and beauty?
@@matthewashman1406 Perhaps take a look at the book and see if you still feel the same afterward!
JESUS SECOND COME IS NEAR✝️
RAPTURE❗️will coincide with significant prophetic events, such as the breaking of the covenant and the rise of the Antichrist.
Jesus follower will be with the Lord forever who anticipate being united with Christ without experiencing death.
(1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)✝️
Reject futurism
"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." - Matt 24:36