Loading...In my initial post on Romans that gave a “nutshell” view of its overarching message, I indicated that Paul explained his Gospel by means of a “bad news/good news” schema, that in the shortest hand possible explained that all humans, whether Jew or Gentile, were doomed because of “sin” (bad news) but could have “salvation” through the death and resurrection of Jesus (good news). I also indicated that in Romans Paul expressed this bad news/good news scenario in two major ways. In this post I want to explicate the matter further.
Elsewhere on the blog I’ve called these two ways of understanding sin and salvation as “models” of Paul’s understanding of how Christ can bring reconciliation with God. Both models involve “sin” but mean something different by it; both show that Christ can bring deliverance from salvation but express how it works in a different way. I normally call these two ways of understanding it all as the “judicial” and the “participationist” models.
In very rough terms, the “judicial” model is principally laid out in Romans 1-4. Sin in this model is an act of transgression, when someone does something opposed to God. It is understood “judicially” in that it considers sin as a violation of the law (of God). There is a legal penalty for this illegal activity. It’s the death sentence. But
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I wish you would do a series on original sin.
I probably should. I’ve never done so since it is a later development after my period of expertise (it gets fully developed only by Augustine). But it does seem relevant.
Paul wasn’t talking about all humanity. Romans 1 goes back to Mt. Sinai, not Adam. In Acts 7, Stephen tells the same story, a rehash of Israel’s decline because of sin beginning at Mt. Sinai.
When Paul said “all have sinned”, that wasn’t all universally. ’ ’All’ in Rom 3:23 pertains to those Rom 3:19 refers to.
“Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.”
Only covenant people and according to Ps 147:19-20 and Deut 4:8, only Israelites had and were under the law. The world under the law that was guilty was the covenant world of Israel, specifically 1st century Jews. The proper understanding of Romans 3:23 is that all Israel had sinned, not all humanity.
This is consistent with the fact that Paul’s audience in Rome (and in all of his letters) were descendants of the tribes of Israel who had been dispersed among the nations. This is part of the NT metanarrative involving the gathering and restoration of the tribes of Israel, a metanarrative that has been sitting under the noses of scholars for centuries.
Except that in Romans 1:18-28 he has a long discourse on how non-Jews (i.e. pagans) have sinned as well, worshipping false gods rather than the Creator and thus succumbing to sexual immorality and other vices. And they should have known better, too, he suggests. So it seems to me he is saying rather explicitly that gentiles have their own problem with sin, above and beyond that of Israel.
Romans 1 isn’t about all humanity. In Romans 1, Paul was writing to Israelites about their history of unfaithfulness.
Romans 1:21 (NKJV) 21 because, although they knew God…
Israel was the only nation that had a relationship with the god of Abraham.
Amos 3:2 (NKJV) “You only have I known of all the families of the earth…
Israel turned their back from God and became idol worshippers like their pagan neighbors.
Romans 1:23-25 (NKJV) 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man–and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves,
Romans 1:28 (NKJV) And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge….
It was only Israel that God gave his laws and statutes to, not Egyptians and Canaanites. Gentiles in the ordinary sense never had that knowledge.
Romans 1:32 (NKJV) who, knowing the righteous judgment of God…
Only Israel had and were under the law of Moses, so only Israel knew the righteous judgement of God, not gentiles. In Acts 7, Stephen basically recounts the same story as Paul, only with more explicit detail pertaining to Israelites.
The bible makes sense once you understand that it’s all about Israel.
I find your posts incredibly refreshing because you approach scripture with an unbiased perspective. Unlike many others, you don’t filter your interpretations through a specific theological lens (ie Reformed theology). You focus on understanding the text on its own terms. Your neutrality is especially evident in your handling of complex topics like penal substitution/ransom theory. Your book on Armageddon is another great example – you provided a straightforward, text-driven analysis without imposing external theological agendas.
I recently explored the ancient custom of using curse tablets to condemn wrongdoers. Victims would inscribe the offender’s transgression on a tablet, invoke a curse, and then, in a symbolic display of anger, vandalize the tablet by scratching it out, bending it, and piercing it with a nail. The tablet would then be buried. While the prevalence of this practice in ancient Judaism is unclear, cursing wrongdoers was certainly common (Deuteronomy 28). I wonder if Paul drew inspiration from this custom in Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” The parallel between the gospel accounts of Jesus’ flogging, the striking and piercing of curse tablets, and the subsequent burial of both is intriguing.
Could Paul have seen his models not as eternal truths but as tools—rhetorical strategies shaped for diverse audiences in a fractured, post-Temple Jewish world?
It’s hard to know what he thought about them, but they appear not to be rhetorical strategies to convince others so much as ways of understanding to make sense of something. In any event, he was writing before the temple was destroyed and was writing to gentiles rather than Jews.
Thanks for that clarification—it’s helpful. Seeing Paul’s models as part of his own effort to make sense of things, rather than polished arguments meant to persuade, makes him feel more relatable—as someone working through big questions, not laying down absolute truths. As a humanist, I find that kind of searching more meaningful than certainty.
So I wonder whether Paul got this convoluted stuff by thinking about it, as a theologian would, or on a platter from his visionary Jesus, or maybe he came to his formulation by thinking about whatever it was he saw or heard while he was hallucinating, like trying to make sense of a dream?
I’d say it certainly came from reflecting on the vision he had, yes.
Hi, Dr. Ehrman. What year is your best guess for what year will be the 2000-year anniversary of Jesus’ death? Thanks!
Best guess: 2033.
Jesus lived to be 40. During those times, Isn’t that quite an achievement?
Elsewhere or here, I read if babies didn’t die then, usually they lived above 50!
BeagoAi says the great star observed by China astronomers was 5BC. Average life expentancy 35.
ChatGPT: Great star 7BC- Likely visible in March/April of 7 BCE.
In the 6th century, Dionysius Exiguus, a monk, tried to calculate the year of Jesus’ birth to re-center the calendar.
He placed it at 1 AD (Anno Domini = “Year of the Lord”) — but miscalculated by a few years.
He also didn’t account for a “year 0”, which doesn’t exist in the traditional Gregorian or Julian calendars. It jumps from 1 BCE → 1 CE.
So modern scholars believe:
Jesus was born at least 4 years “before Christ”, ironically.
Possibly as early as 7 BCE, based on celestial data and Herod’s death.
when i was a kid the church I grew up spewed jesus died at 33, we didn’t think of 2thousand years ago AKA propaganda
thanks for being the scholar, referenced also
How do you compare Romans 7:14-24 and Philippians 3:6 (specifically “as for righteousness based on the law, faultless”)? It seems to me that the sinful nature noted in Romans would make the faultless law based righteousness noted in Philippians impossible. Am I misunderstanding Paul’s thinking?
Romans 7 is extraordinarily difficult to understand, especially by modern readers, because of our understanding of human psychology we think it *has* to be Paul struggling over his guilt from not being able to do what he knows is right. The point appears instead to be that a person who is still living “under sin” (that is, a person before being baptized in Christ and having died to sin) is forced by his/her master, “sin” to violate what they know is right. It’s an apocalyptic not Freudian image. But still, how then cold Paul be “blameless” before the righteousness in the law? Because “blameless” does not mean “never sinned” (Paul agrees that everyone sins); the law itself makes *provision* for sin, for example in the sacrificial system. Following what the law prescribes for sin means doing what the law demands, and if you do that (almost no one does) you are blameless.
You obviously understand the distinction you are making but it’s not clear to me.
If Paul is correct to say that human sin is necessarily linked to a cosmic force, one that presumably acts both psychologically and physically is this a better explanation for evil than the ones
That You have previously said you find unsatisfactory?
Why do you think Paul and the early Christians were so determined to make meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion?
Because they believed he had been raised from the dead and so had to explain why God would allow his favored one to be tortured to death.
I marvel at how much disagreement there is over the meaning of the Cross, and very little disagreement over the meaning of Resurrection – albeit different thoughts about the nature/logistics of it.
And are we not ALL God’s favored ones? Many of whom suffer injustices that have no cosmic meaning beyond human cruelty or seemingly random misfortune… All of which is ‘allowed’ by God.
This clarification of Paul’s different models or analogies for salvation is helpful and succinct.
“And so it goes.” is kind of a literary tic of Kurt Vonnegut’s writing, so I’m curious if you were aware of that when you wrote it.
Thanks,
Chris
OH yes. I’m a big fan.
I know you touched on the blood of a sacrifice as an offering to God in one of your podcast episodes. I have a hard time with that concept. Don’t all animals come from God? Where does this idea of killing things to atone to a loving God come from?
Throughout antiquity even in religions that believed animals were created by the gods they were almost always seen as being provided to humans for food and as victims of sacrifice. We don’t know where the idea of animal sacrifice bringing atonement comes from, because it was happening long before recorded history. There are lots of theories about it, thoguh, as you might imagine (is the animal a substitute for humans? Do the gods get nourishment from the smoke as humans do from the meat? soemthing else?)
Describing Rom. 3:21-26 as “theologically packed” is an understatement of Biblical proportions! 😉
“In just six verses” Paul manages to throw a flying, spaghetti monster of “judicial, participationist, redemptive, and sacrificial models” at the wall, without *any* of it sticking!
In this smorgasbord of sophistry about “the righteousness of God” he couldn’t make space for some small hint of *justice*? Not divine or human, transcendent or rudimentary?
Whether “Adam committed an act of disobedience” or there is “a cosmic power that enslaves every human (since Adam),” it perforce follows is that *no one* “has sinned.” Who could have “committed acts of transgression”?
We are all either the hapless descendants of a long dead apple-filcher who provoked Yahweh into “punishing children for the iniquity of parents to the third and the fourth generation,” or the helpless pawns of a Jewish version of Angra Mainyu. Either way, aren’t we necessarily utterly, innocent?
It’s unsurprising that Paul (who, it cannot be too often repeated, never even *met* Jesus) would come up with the bizarre hypothesis that “the solution is Christ agreeing to pay the penalty.”
How did this perverse theology go unchecked when, as Bible Inerrancy apologists incessantly observe, the followers of Jesus were still around to be fact-checkers?
I don’t think Paul invneted the idea. Christians were saying it before him.
As to Jesus’ followers who were fact-checkers: uh, ask one of these apologists to give one historical record of this ever happening. And explain how the small group of Jesus’ followers still alive in, say, 50 CE who were Aramaic speaking Jews in Galilee or Jerusalem were supposed to fact check the hundreds of Christians saying things in Antioch, Galatia, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Rome, etc etc???
Maybe Paul didn’t invent Substitutionary Atonement. 1st-century Christians certainly had no qualms about appropriating their fellows’ ideas (or even plagiarizing their very words! 😠)
[As someone who earned a living (in part) by writing political analyses, I’m a bit touchy about Intellectual property theft — a sensitivity I suspect is shared by someone who earns a living (in part) by writing scholarly analyses.]
This church doctrine is, indeed, implicit (arguably, explicit) in some Bible passages — notably Jesus’ recasting of the Jewish Passover meal as the Christian “Lord’s Supper.” However, these not only sound suspiciously post hoc, but are only found in works that postdate Paul by decades!
It’s reasonable to deduce that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Why else would any of us be trudging through this vale of tears in the first place? 😕
But who previously used Paul’s dots for connecting our sinful shortfall to the idea that “Christ pays the sentence himself, dying in the place of others”?
Perhaps “Christians were saying it before him.” But where is the “historical record of this ever happening”?
To borrow a challenge from my favorite NT scholar (but giving credit where credit is due 😉): Where is your evidence?
Well, Paul himself says the others were saying it (1 Cor. 15:3), and he’s not one known for attributing his ideas to others.
You may be correct that “Substitutionary Atonement” was, as Paul claims in his first missive to his Corinthian recruits, among Christological tenets that had already been established by his predecessors when he came into the movement.
However, AFAIK this theory can only be inferred from the existence of “Pre-Pauline Creeds” (of which 1 Cor. 15:1-11 seems the most explicit and unambiguous.)
But Paul surely had an Elwood Blues level of belief in the surpassing importance of his mission. 😎
Mightn’t the self-appointed “Apostle to the Gentiles” have been willing to trade his getting credit for the Substitutionary-Atonement-for-Original-Sin rationalization for the bona fides gained by giving it to Peter, James, John & Co. (which would also entail the possibility of earning endorsement rather than opposition from those most highly acclaimed Friends of Jesus)?
Or are there any “Pre-Pauline Creeds” that *don’t* trace back to Paul, i.e., not derived either directly from one of his letters or the quotes attributed to him in Acts?
I agree with you BTW that the mere fact that original followers of Jesus were still around to serve as potential fact-checkers for any dubious claims made by Paul (who wasn’t) is far too thin a reed to prop up his credibility.
It’s in other places as well, e.g., Romans 3:23-26.
Is there the any evidence that the working-class hoi polloi that largely (if not entirely) constituted the first two decades of the Christian movement had the wherewithal to develop so sophisticated and abstruse a concept as “Substitutionary Atonement”?
Or is this hypothesis only inferred from the alleged existence of “Pre-Pauline Creeds” (of which 1 Cor. 15:1-11 is, perhaps, the most explicit, unambiguous example) — an astutely insightful concept that somehow predates the arrival of the first educated, literate, Greek-speaking proselytizer?
Can we take “scholarly notice” (to borrow a presupposition from the legal discipline) that Paul had an Elwood Blues level of belief in the surpassing importance of his mission? 😎
If so, mightn’t the Johnny-come-lately outsider, Paul, have been willing to trade credit for the clever Substitutionary-Atonement-for-Original-Sin rationalization to secure the bona fides that would surely attend giving the accolades to Peter, James, John & Co.?
Indeed, this political ploy might also earn the endorsement rather than opposition of the original and most revered Friends of Jesus. 🤗
Or are there any “Pre-Pauline Creeds” that *don’t* trace back to Paul, i.e., not derived either directly from one of his letters or the quotes attributed to him in Acts?
The idea of substitionary atonement is not particularly difficult conceptually, especially in a world where animal sacrifice was ubiquitous. One living creature must have its blood shed to placate the gods for the actions of others. Or to please the gods so they will not hold anything against others.
🤔 Romans is also Paul. His letters to Corinth, Rome, etc., as well as his speechifying in Acts (as recounted by Luke, his #1 fan) are inherently self-serving, making them IMHO of questionable evidentiary value.
Is there any supporting evidence *not* from the lips or quill of Paul (after he was unhorsed and blinded by the light on his famous road trip) that attests whatever tenets of the aborning Christian movement provoked his Jewish jihad?
Is there, for instance, any independent record of Simon Peter propounding “grace as a gift” that only became available “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”?
Is there anything to suggest that James claimed the grizzly death of his big brother “was to show God’s righteousness” in some bizarrely contradictory (frankly, incoherent) demonstration of “divine forbearance”?
Did *any* disciple — who actually knew and followed Jesus in life — proclaim his horrifyingly brutal execution to be proof of Yahweh’s “righteousness” that was both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus”?
Or are “Pre-Pauline creeds” entirely retrospective speculation simply because after Christianity transmogrified into Paulianity in the early, 4th century, all records that might undermine church authority went up in holy smoke in imperial bonfires?
No, these statements are only Paul’s. But we don’t know if any disciple said such things, since we don’t have anything they wrote or any reliable source for what they said.
Wow, I could write questions all day on this! Thanks for the great overview. I have a question about “sin” in Romans 5-8. When I was a fundamentalist, I was taught that “sin” here refers to the sinful nature that we all possess. Christ not only died for “sins” but also for our sin nature (“sin”). Is this a view that you have heard from reputable scholars?
That’s the view found within the Roman Catholic tradition from the time of Augustine, but as brilliant and intriguing as it is, that undersanding of “sin nature” is not Paul’s. “Sin” for Paul was something that everyone was enslaved to, but not because it was a part of their DNA (so to say) but because it was an external demonic force that had enslaved them.
And another question! The baptism in Romans 6, as I was taught, was not water baptism, but spiritual baptism. Baptism was said to mean “identification,” which is what happens when a person is saved (baptism of the Spirit – not in the Pentecostal sense). Is this a view held by reputable scholars?
And finally (for today), you mentioned that Paul assumed a baptized person also believed. Would he have also assumed the reverse (a believing person is baptized)? This raises the great debate as to whether or not baptism is required for salvation.
For Paul it was definitely a water baptism, involving full immersion, but it had a clear spiritual component: that is when the Spirit entered into a person and provided them with their spiritual gift. And yes, it was simply assumed in Paul’s communities that anyone who came to believe was hten baptised. It wasn’t really even a debated point.
I really struggle (as an ex-Christian) with the idea that original sin was a later development. Especially in light of Paul’s view (partially) of sin as a cosmic power that separates people from God. What did early Christian’s believe they were being saved from exactly? Their sinful acts alone that have compiled in their lifetimes or some other-worldly entity or force that holds them captive? Without the doctrine of original sin the subject looks muddy.
Paul thought people were being saved from teh penalty incurred by their sins, but he also thought that sin was a demonic force that enslaved everyone and forced them to commit sins. It was not an internal entity residing in each person by virtue of being conceived and born (the “sin nature”) but an external force that compelled everyone into obedience away from God. Christ’s death destroyed the power of sin over people who were baptized.
“Christ can bring deliverance from salvation,” seems like the opposite of what you want. Maybe you mean,”deliverance from damnation,” or, “deliverance into salvation,” or something of the sort.
Are you a proof-reader by profession, by chance??
No. I just have a passion for written communication.
This is very interesting. I was taught Original Sin by R C Sproul. My understanding was that Augustine, Luther, and Calvin viewed original sin as the enslavement of the will to be unable to choose for Christ (loss of “liberty” not “free will”). There are some nuances between Reformed theologians. I never heard this idea that “sin” was an external demonic force, (or that “death” was a demonic force). But now it makes sense that this was Paul’s view because of Jewish apocalypticism. It appears Paul says humans have 2 problems – 1) demonic forces leading to 2) legal guilt before God. Paul concluded that the death of Jesus defeated the demonic forces (N T Wright) and atoned for the guilt (classic substitutionary atonement). It helps explain why there are so many different views of the atonement in theology. Paul’s theology is very confusing to moderns, mostly because we don’t understand Paul from the perspective of Jewish apocalypticism.
Righteousness frequently appears in Rom 3:21-26, and more frequently in Romans than all other letters of Paul combined. Appears that Paul has defined righteousness to mean the believe that Jesus is God, which is different than how it is used by the prophets and in the psalms. Is the purpose of religion to teach people how to be righteous, or is the purpose for the church to provide salvation from sin? This must have been one of the foundational debates of the church and wondering the best book to have it explained. Has anybody ever called Paul onto the carpet for redefining righteousness?
I don’t think Paul ever says that one has to believe Jesus is God. (He himself never explicitly says it). One has to believe that Jesus died for sins and was then raised from the dead.