Loading...I am currently in the middle of a thread discussing the significance of Paul to the history of early Christianity. So far I have been trying to argue that Paul is of utmost importance to the New Testament itself, but that it is very difficult to know how much of what we think of as Pauline theology (the doctrine of the atonement, for example) was *distinctive* of Paul (I doubt if he came up with the idea himself) and that there are some prominent features of Paul’s thought – e.g., the importance of Jesus’ resurrection – that he must have inherited from Christians before him.
One of my ultimate points is going to be that whatever one thinks about Paul’s originality, it is clear that the gospel that he proclaimed looked very different from what Jesus himself taught. To get to that point, I have to deal a bit more with what it is that Paul proclaimed.
Nowhere does Paul lay out his gospel message more clearly than in the book of Romans. The reason is that this letter – unlike all the others that we have from Paul’ hand – was not written to a church that he himself had founded and was not written to deal with problems that had arisen in the the community (unlike the other six). Paul explicitly indicates that he had not founded this church and in fact had never even been to Rome. He does want to come there, though, because he wants to use it as a base of operation for his mission further to the West, to Spain.
But he knows that (some of? all?) the Roman Christians have heard rumors about him and his mission and his message, and he needs to set the record straight so they will support him. To do so, he lays out his gospel message to them, explaining what it is he stands for.
And so Romans is his attempt to explain his gospel message. In my textbook on the New Testament I try to explain what this message is. It will take two or three posts here to lay it all out. Here’s the first bit, taken from the book:
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Pauline Models for Salvation
Rather than launching into a passage-by-passage exposition of Romans, it may be more useful at this point to reflect in broader terms on what Paul has to say in this letter about his central theme, the gospel. (Remember: Paul is not speaking about a Gospel book that contains a record of Jesus’ words and deeds, but about his own gospel message.) In fact, Paul has a variety of things to say about it, and it is easy at places to become confused, wondering if Paul is being consistent with himself. In most instances (I’m not sure I can vouch for all of them), Paul is not inconsistent and is not himself confused. The difficulty is that he discusses God’s act of salvation in a number of different ways and sometimes does not clearly indicate which way he is thinking about. Or to put the matter somewhat differently, Paul has various modes of understanding — various conceptual models — of what it means to say that God brought about salvation through Jesus’ death and resurrection.
There are at least two major models that Paul uses for understanding the importance of Christ’s death in the letter to the Romans. I will call these
Paul’s understanding of salvation is key to the formation of Christianity. If you want to read more, join the blog! It’s inexpensive and you get tons for your money — and your entire fee goes to help the needy.Click here for membership options
But people continued to sin after Christ’s death, so if they were justified once because Christ paid their penalty, they were no longer justified later, when they resumed transgressing against God’s laws, right? Does Paul deal with this problem? Or even see it as a problem?
He saw it as a HUGE problem. That’s why he threatens his readers that they better obey — they might return to sin and then all will be lost (e.g., in Romans 5-8 and GAlatians 1)
Trigger Warning: we’ve discussed this before!
I know you no longer endorse a Lutheran sola fide model of justification as a way of understanding Paul’s theology. I believe you when you say you haven’t held this position for many years. But this all sounds so Lutheran to me. How is it different? Is it just that you’ve added on the participationist model in addition to the Lutheran model? Is it that you no longer interpret ‘works’ in the same general ‘moral law’ way, but more in terms of specific Jewish identity marker laws? Something else? Maybe I never understood Luther very well, but, Bart, please tell us why we should no longer consider you to be a Lutheran atheist?
Yup. What’s different is that Paul is not at all talking about doing good deeds. He is talking about becoming Jewish. Gentiles do not have to convert to Judaism to believe in the Jewish messiah for salvation. That’s a huge difference from the Lutheran reading and is basically the so-called “new perspective” — which ain’t been new for decades. And I’m not a Lutheran atheist precisely because I think good works *are* all that matter — just the opposite of his view.
But your Trigger Warning almost certainly got a lot of people excited to read what you had to say…
Bart: “And I’m not a Lutheran atheist precisely because I think good works *are* all that matter — just the opposite of his view.”
Of course not. I just meant your interpretation of Paul, not in how you live your life now.
So getting back to Paul, do you still have a sola fide interpretation of Paul?
“Only faith in the death of God’s messiah is what matters. … salvation, which comes only through faith in the death and resurrection of God’s messiah. … Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith.”
Yes, I’d say Paul is quite explicit that it is trust in the atoning sacrifice alone that brings salvation; following the demands of the Jewish law cannot do it, and anyone who is a gentile who tries simply doesn’t understand what God has done in Christ. But he’s also quite explicit that anyone who lives in sin afterward is in danger of losing salvation. (it’s more complicated in Romans of course; baptism puts one into union with Christ and the person has therefore died to the power of sin; if someone continues to live in sin then sin, not righteousness, will control them and then they will be lost)
A little off topic, but in the realm of obscura apocrypha… what do you think about the alleged “Gospel of Gamaliel”? Was it a real gospel or just some bored scholars overthinking things? (Since it doesn’t appear in your Apocryphal Gospels/Other Gospels book, I’m guessing you’re not too enthusiastic…)
I haven’t studied it at any great length. Our collection dealt with Gospels of the first four centuries for the most part, and it is usually dated to the fifth or sixth century or later.
Do you think Paul really met proconsul Gallio in Corinth as described in Acts 18? Or do you believe that including, what I assume was a well known person, was literary invention? And, could you tell me your reasoning for something like that?
And, off topic, did Jews in Palestine in the first century have slaves? I don’t remember any mentions in the gospels.
Thanks!
I think it’s a literary convention. But one can never know. Acts is our only source. Yes, rich Jews would have had slaves.
How is it that Christ made Peter the cornerstone of his church but then allowed Paul the apostle to seize that leadership from Peter and be for all practical purposes the founder of Christianity?
Jesus didn’t allow that to happen — he had been dead for years when it did.
“Jesus is one who does not deserve the death sentence; he instead dies to pay the penalty for others.”
Was this kind of thing applied in Jewish or Greek or Roman law at the time?
Could an innocent person (for whatever reason) pay someone else’s death penalty?
Definitely not. I wasn’t making a statement about socio-political reality, but about Christian theological belief.
Yes, I understand you were discussing theological belief.
It is just that the belief is so weird, it makes me try to understand where it could have come from.
My sense is that most religious beliefs are really weird to people who don’t have them. (Romans, eg., thought Jewish monotheism was very odd indeed and completely counter-intuitive)
Isn’t it just coming from the ideas of the Jewish sacrificial system? Sin offerings and all that. Jesus being the perfect sacrifice who took away the sins of the world (of believers anyways).
Does Christ expect the practicing Christian to believe that Saul of tarsus astride his horse on the road to Damascus intent upon persecuting any Christian he comes upon turns into Paul the apostle dazed upon the ground his head infused with reams of Pauline theology that Christ wants him to preach? How else could Paul have come upon his elaborate theology in so short a time?
I don’t think Jesus would expect that because it happened years after he had died.
Fascinating. I have to say that I’ve struggled to see the logic of Paul’s judicial model. Wouldn’t it have been easier for God just to write off mankind’s debt – rather than subject his son to such an excruciating death? But
such a model does make sense in a Marcionite world view.
The person who owed the fine cannot relax until he realizes that his fine has been paid. But that doesn’t mean that the judge has not accepted the payment whether the person who owed it realizes it (accepts it) or not.
So I don’t see why acceptance is considered necessary for the payment to have an effect unless the effect is primarily psychological. It brings peace of mind. But God already, having been paid, should have cancelled your debt anyway.
And who made up this idea of the debt that can’t be paid by the person who owes it?
I am interested in how practical church works according to Paul. After years of studying this seems like the toughest question.
So if everyone is a sinner, then why bother creating laws? People say God will forgive and we should not judge – does that mean person with any kind of morality can take part in sacraments and actually be called a Christian?
Should priest punish the sinner for certain period and thus forbid him taking part in sacraments or he can forgive anyone he wants(or anyone who bribes him).
And does Christianity favor sinners? “Prodigal Son” means sinners get more respect from God in addition to having fun here. So why bother not committing a sin if priest forgives, God forgives and others don’t care. But Jerome maintained that some Christians(like monks) were higher than others against Jovinian. Now Jovinian did not advocate sin and I don’t think he was wrong, but this idea of ranks of Christians is interesting.
The problem is that ok, let’s sin and wait for God’s forgiveness but then why create laws in the first place? If there is law, either we all follow it or none of us follow it. I can’t understand any other way.
If you’re asking specifically aboout Paul, he thought that Christ’s death atoned for people’s sin and made it possible for them to avoid sinning from then on. Those who continued to live lives of sin were in danger of losing their salvation. This is not the teaching of Jesus who thought that salvation came not from his death but from repentance so God would forgive.
Thank you for the answer.
Just need a few clarification:
1) “possible for them to avoid sinning from then on” – that’s just vague from Paul right? Ok so if we still sin, then what? Do we get pardoned endlessly in the Church? Does that mean it’s up to our conscience to cleverly use this “flaw in the system” to continue sinning while some naïve Christians try their best not to sin?
Early Orthodox Church made laws – you had to repent for 3 years, were prohibited from entering church, taking part in sacraments. So you actually faced consequences.
2) “from repentance so God would forgive” – same question here. Can I repent the same sin every week and still be called a Christian?
I remember the phrase “if we still sin after entering the communion with Christ, then there is no ransom left”, somewhere in Hebrews. Later Calvin through his liberal mind said that it was about “leaving the church and not about sinning”, as sinning was fine.
I always thought Prodigal Son was unfair, but Christians have taken it to next level – they have neglected the phrase “your brother was dead”, and consider sinners alive and real Christians.
1. Romans 6 insists that followers of Jesus who have been baptized are “dead to sin.” That means it can have no effectd on them. 2. As far as I’m concerned, yes. What would Paul think? I’m not sure what he would say, other than, Stop It!
Can you clarify what was meant by the word “sin” at the time Romans was written? I’ve heard that it means “to miss the mark,” which doesn’t sound that awful given all the attention that’s paid in the gospels to sin.
It meant different things, as you will see in the next post. But yes, a originally it meansd something like throwing a spear and missing what you were aiming at. When it came to mean something religious, it meant not doing what God demanded. So it was a transgression, and only those who hit the mark won the prize. But I’ll go more deely into it in the next post.
Hi Dr. Ehrman,
I’ve seen it argued (I’ll have to look for names, but I think I read it first in the Jewish New Testament commentary) that the word translated as “faith” is much better translated as “faithfulness”- which, if we go back through Paul and re-read him thusly, causes massive plate shifts in Pauline theological interpretations.
What’s your opinion of this alternate translation?
I think it means something more like “trust.” It’s not talking about God’s faithfulness but human trust in God, in my opinipon. It’s a debated point among scholars.
Being an educated Jew, was Paul not aware that in Judaism, perfect observation of the law was never expected. On the contrary, one was expected to err in their observance of the laws. The solution was atonement. For particular transgressions, there were in place particular methods of atonement, the observance of which , to paraphrase E.P.Sanders, restored ones original state of grace. So, you stay in the covenant by observing the laws, but if you transgress, atonement will bring you back within the covenant. A common mode of atonement was simply making sincere repentance. So, why the need to drag in this notion of Jesus’ death as an atonement to make one righteous in God’s sight? Isn’t this an artificial problem constructed either by Paul or those before him?
I’ve often wondered this myself. Why is Christ’s atonement necessary if atonement is already possible? I don’t know what Paul would say to that.
Thanks Prof Ehrman,
Just wondering what you think regarding this hypothesis: salvation through belief in Jesus as God’s messiah was the belief of Christians prior to Paul’s acceptance of Jesus. This did not mean “salvation is not through works of the law.” Both went side by side: there’s no salvation if you do not observe the law and there’s no salvation if you deny Jesus as God’s messiah and prophet. Both were needed to gain salvation. That Jesus was a necessary element to gain salvation was what Paul inherited from believers in Jesus and Paul’s unique contribution to this may be the apparently idiosyncratic “problem” which we find in his writings: salvation is gained through belief that Jesus was crucified and then resurrected and not by observing the laws. It seems that James and his group didn’t have qualms with the necessity of belief in Jesus, but the relegation of law observance to gain salvation and the pitting of “observance of the law vs belief in Jesus’ resurrection” would have come across as, well, odd, to them. Odd because there was no “sin problem” requiring a resolution to begin with.
Yes, I think that probably was the original view of Jesus’ followers.
Yes, I think that probably was the original view of Jesus’ follower.
Doesn’t the judicial model make Jesus a human sacrifice to appease God? Do we have any Jewish or pagan sources condemning the Christian gospel on this basis? (I’m surprised a good Jew like Paul accepted it, but I suppose he was left with no choice?)
It actually depends on how you interpret “atonement.” Is it a propitiation of God’s anger or is is an expiation that “covers over” sin? I should know the answer to your question: are Christians condemned for endorsing a human sacrifice. But nothing is entering my brain right now about it!
Paul certainly had a motive of ingratiating himself to a group of existing Christians while writing Romans. Do you think he makes an effort in the letter to downplay ideas that may have been his own innovation and overstate the views he shared with other Christians (specifically the ones in Rome)? In other words do you think we can use the letter to the Romans to reflect a picture of what may have been going on intellectually in the Roman church at the time?
I don’t think so — mainly because Paul had never been there yet and so didn’t probably have a full sense of their views, other than what he had heard they had been told he had been teahing (so he gets rather defensive)
I have a question that has nothing to do with Paul. Luke 4:22 refers to Jesus as Joseph’s son. Mark and Matthew both mention Mary but not Joseph. They also mention Jesus’ brothers and sisters, which Luke does not. What is your take on these differences? Obviously related to the goals of the three writers, but how/why?
It’s often thought that Mark (and Matthew following him) mention only Mary because Joseph was known to have been dead by the time of Jesus’ ministry; but it’s strange to talk about one’s lineage (in that time) by speaking of the mother instead of the father, so Luke changed it to the more normal way of speaking.
if oneway or another, somebody had
to die, somebody sinless to save all
humanity and God carrying all omnies
in his bagpack surprisingly sees no other solution than his son ! ( why is he his son,
not kid brother?) must be sacrificed, he
could have at least got the timing right.
In my not so humble opinion the best
time for killing someone to satisfy God
was right after the original sin, the very
same day. Then the entire population
of the arth , two persons , could witness
the death with their own eyes. No need then for missionsries. This way God could have saved himself and also us so much trouble. God gets the blood he desperately craved to calm down, Jesus gets his promotion and becomes co-equal with his dad and
Dr. Ehrman wouldn’t have to learn Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Coptic, Latin, French,
Italian and German in order to figure out what is it that God wants from us !
Which gospel contains the most Oral Tradition?
The answer cannot be the Gospel of John because the great resurrection of Lazarus should have been part of the Oral Tradition for Mark, Matthew, and Luke, but that event was not part of people’s memory for Mark, Matthew, and Luke to include it in their gospels.
Maybe it was Marcion’s gospel because Marcion liked Paul so much and Paul was closer to Oral Tradition than Mark was. The problem here is that although the Authentic Letters of Paul would have more Oral Tradition than the gospels because he was closer in time to 27-33 CE, Marcion’s career as a gospel writer came after the careers of the author/s of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.
Can you correctly say, the gospel with the less miracles is closer to being the gospel with the most Oral Tradition?
Mark does not have virgin birth, so honest Oral Tradition as opposed to hero Oral Tradition
Mark has no appearances of Jesus following the visit of the women to the empty tomb! (James Tabor),
so Mark wins again?
When did theologians begin to distinguish between types of sin? The theology I followed as a member of Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church made a clear distinction between “original sin” that is inherited from the crime of the first humans and which can only be dealt with by Jesus (or Moon for his followers), and other sins which each person can atone for (indemnify) by doing good works, (i.e. self-sacrifice – helping others, charitable donations – the core of their fundraising theology). My understanding is that Orthodox churches (Roman / Eastern) make distinctions between mortal sins and others, and I presume the sins are resolved by “atoning” through reciting creeds, saying prayers, etc. I grew up in a Southern Baptist family and my parents believed in “once saved – always saved”, whether you sinned after baptism or not. As a searching youth, science seemed cold and mechanical, and Baptists scared me – the “Moonies” were accepting, and their definition of sin and its resolution made sense to my eighteen-year-old mind. Now I want to understand how religious people think and how their ideas originated.
As I’ll argue in my next post, even Paul meant different things by “sin” in different parts of his writings. And others, of course, have long assumed differences (say, Augusting with “oriial sin”)
Have you heard of Steven Hassan? He was recruited by the Moonies in the 1970s. He now works with ex members.
I am familiar with Hassan. He is more negative toward the group than I am. I contend that the group founded by Sun Myung Moon is a legitimate faith, and that people such as myself joined freely and as joyfully as people convert to Christianity or other faiths. That does not diminish my concern that all faith-based, evidence-denying belief systems are perilous to society. In theological terms, I still find Moon’s Divine Principle compelling and a lot more “believable” than, say, the Christology of the Trinity and notions of salvation that came out of traditional Christianity.
Does Paul ever deal with the question of why god would create humans who are capable of disobeying the law in the first place? I know that Christians today would argue that god gave us freedom of choice but burning in hell if you don’t choose the “right” path is not much of a choice. I wonder if Paul ever dealt with that question.
I’m afraid he doesn’t
I am interested to hear what Paul might have thought about Jesus’ resurrection before his conversion experience. He must have picked up ideas from those he persecuted, so what might they have told him?
If the disciples fled back to Galilee and had visions there, is that what they told their converts when they returned to Jerusalem? Did these people tell Paul that Jesus’ appearances had occurred in Galilee, before he set off for Damascus?
We can only surmise based on what he says. He appears to have found it outrageous that anyone was saying that a crucified man was the messiah and that he had been raised from the dead. It’s not clear if they told him directly or if he heard it when they spoke out in a public setting. But yes, the disciples themselves would have insisted that they, or some of them, had seen Jesus. We don’t know where they said they saw him. We really wish we had their accounts in their own words!
As you say, we don’t know where the disciples said they had seen Jesus but if it was somewhere in Galilee then some possibilities for Paul’s thoughts about resurrection appearances are:
1. No-One, including Paul, was interested in knowing appearance locations. Later on, Paul assumed that locations must have been in Jerusalem, resulting in the gospel stories.
2. The disciples told converts that appearances had occurred in Galilee but Paul missed this information and later on assumed that they must have occurred in Jerusalem.
3. The disciples falsely told their converts that the appearances had happened in Jerusalem, which Paul believed was true.
4. The appearances did actually occur in Jerusalem as recounted in the gospels.
It seems incredible to suppose that anyone in Jerusalem could have been converted without wanting to know where the appearances had occurred and it is also difficult to imagine how anyone could have started a story about appearances in Jerusalem if many people understood that they had happened in Galilee.
What other possibilities do you suggest? Which one do you think is most probable?
I thnk the disciples must have gone to Galilee right after Jesus was arrested (probably in haste…), so any visions would have been there. I don’t think Paul was interested in locations and I suppose we have no idea if anyone else was either before the Gospel writers. When Paul writes about his own vision he doesn’t mention where he had it; that suggests location doesn’t matter: the vision does.
Unfortunately history is riddled with animal and human sacrifices to appease the gods. No surprise that the Jewish culture participated. Christianity saw the death of Jesus as the final sacrifice that was made. “Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin” from Hebrews 9:22. Sad to me the way the world is.
Whether we use scholarly words like, ‘propitiation’ or ‘expiation’, the fact of the matter is, God said that human sacrifice is an abomination. I agree with Him whole-heartedly.
Do you think Jesus taught ‘salvation’ like we see in the book of John? (Believe in Jesus, or be born again, in order to gain eternal life.)
I don’t think it is even close to what Jesus actually taught. It’s very different from, say, Mark’s account.
God said that human sacrifice is an abomination? Mmmmm. Let’s look to the Old Testament for answers.
What about Noah’s flood? How many people died in that to appease God? (And God repented that He made Man. Genesis 6:6). How about when Joshua when he wipes out men, women (some pregnant, no doubt) and children because they were inhabiting the Promised Land that the Hebrews were entitled to). Other examples abound that I will not go into. I repeat, sad world.
I guess the destructions of multitudes int he OT are not “sacrifices” in the sense that they do not bring atonement for others. They’re typically God simply wiping out sinners.
Yes. I understand the difference and was hesitant to say anything at all until I thought that the examples I mentioned may fall under the broad umbrella of human sacrifice.
“The penalty for breaking God’s laws is death, and everyone is found to be guilty as charged. This is the human problem.”
This whole idea has never made much sense to me because it’s not just humans that die. Everything dies. Animals, planets, stars, etc.. I’m sure this is discussed by later and modern theologians, but do any ancient writers discuss this problem? Like why do animals die? Are they also sinning?
I think the idea (I’m not agreeing with it, but just saying what it was) was that human sin brought death into the world and so everything in the world has to die.
No analogy is sufficiently rough to compare “the act of salvation and the human judicial process.”
At the risk of being tautological, the purpose of a judicial process is to obtain justice. The foundation — the sine qua non — of ANY judicial system is objective consideration of evidence to arrive at an equitable judgment.
Our own jurisprudence, derived from English Common Law, presupposes (in criminal cases) the innocence of the accused by placing the burden of proof on the accuser. But even a judicial system that reverses this burden by requiring the accused to prove his innocence, at least assumes that the evidence will be objectively considered by the trier of fact.
It should, I suppose, come as no surprise that so bizarre a notion of divine justice — whereby those who have been held accountable for a transgression they did not commit are absolved by a penalty they did not pay — should arrive at an equally bizarre “divine solution.”
If “everyone is found to be guilty as charged,” how is either the problem or the solution “conceived in judicial terms”?
Paul has created a through-the-looking-glass God — a deified Queen of Hearts: “Sentence first — verdict afterwards!” 😨