Romans 5–6

Welcome to the Two Testaments, a guided journey through Scripture with leading experts on the Bible, hosted by Ronnie Cosmon and Will Kinds. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts or at the TwoTestaments.com. Follow us on Twitter at V, Number 2 Testaments or X questions in our Facebook journey. Welcome to the Two Testaments podcast, a guided journey through Scripture. I'm Will Kinds. And I'm Ronnie Cosmon. And in this episode we're looking at Romans 5 to 6. Today we're talking to Dr. Beverly Gaventa. Dr. Beverly Gaventa is distinguished professor of New Testaments at Baylor University. She's the author of a number of important works on Paul, including a commentary on 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. She's also the author of our mother, Saint Paul. And most recently, when in Romans, an invitation to linger with the gospel according to Paul. Let me just say that is one of my favorite titles in Biblical Stations. I remember when I first heard it and I thought that is genius. But when in Romans, did you come up with that Beverly or is that the publisher? It was actually a title I used for a series of lectures I gave. And the truth is that somebody suggested it to me. I was with a group of people that I actually didn't know and I was sort of brainstorming and someone spoke up and said, "Win in Romans." And I didn't pay much attention. And then later on, the more I thought about it, the better I liked it. The problem with that is that I have not been able to go back and properly thank that individual. Okay, so maybe if that person is listening, they can contact that Beverly and let her know so that she can express her thanks for that genius title for the book. Now, Beverly, when I was on the quest to find a PhD program, I asked Steven Westerholm, who is my thesis advisor at McMaster. I asked him, "Who would you study with?" And he gave two names. I won't reveal the second one. But one of the names he said was Beverly Gaventa. That if he was going to do a PhD, he would study with Beverly Gaventa. And I have great admiration for Steven Westerholm. And so when he said that, I thought, "Wow, Beverly Gaventa, we're going to have her on the podcast." You just couldn't imagine leaving Canada, at that point in your life alone. That's right. Well, I am actually quite moved to buy that anecdote, Ronnie, because I have great admiration for Steve too. So thank you for them. Yeah, that's fantastic. Now, Beverly, you went first, a drove you inspired you to start studying Romans. That actually goes back all the way. I won't say quite how many years to my first year in seminary. I was not actually interested in New Testament at all. I had had some pretty bad classes as an undergraduate. And I was trying to deal with a requirement that I take some New Testament classes. And so I stumbled into an exegesis class on Romans taught by J. Lewis Martin. And that was the beginning, you know, that was the end. Part of it for me was the sheer puzzle of it, the following Paul's logic and trying to understand how one thing was connected to another. The other, I think, was this glimpse of what Paul was saying to us about God's relationship to us and how generous, how capacious that is. And I've been drawn to that ever since. Beverly, what for you is the most difficult thing to understand about these two chapters, Romans 5 to 6? The most difficult thing about these chapters, especially the second half of chapter 5, I think, is the repetition. If you, I'm working on a commentary on Romans. And if you are working through the second half of chapter 5, where he does that prolonged contrast between Adam and Christ, then what strikes you is the repetition of it. It's as if you're reading Hebrews and he keeps saying the same thing over and over. And you have to struggle with why? What is it that makes this so important? It's also a little bit difficult to get a handle on why he feels it's necessary to say any of the things that are in these chapters. Back in chapter 3, which many people think is the highlight of the letter, the core of the letter. In chapter 3, we talk about the death of Jesus and God putting Jesus forward as the mercy seat and as the way of making things right between God and humans. You think he has dealt with this problem of sin. But then chapter 5, he's talking about it again and even in a more prolonged way. So wrestling with those two texts in relationship to one another is for me the most difficult question. And you mentioned your initial interest in Romans came out of seeing it as a kind of puzzle. So how does this piece here in Romans 5 and 6 fit into the larger puzzle of Romans in your view? In my view and everything I will say is, you know, represents my own work enlightened by a myriad of predecessors in the study of Romans. But I think in Romans 5, Paul is actually flushing out what he's already said in chapter 3. Many commentaries and studies of the Bible will say that in chapters 5 through 8, Paul is talking about the Christian life. You know, he's talked about sin in 1 to 4. Now he's talking about the Christian life. And I'm not sure it works that well. It does for about the first three or four verses of chapter 5. But in chapter 5, he takes us back into the problem of sin. And I think in chapters 5 and 6, what he does is to extend what he's already said. And he radicalizes it, if you will. The problem is not just that I have sinned or that you have sinned. The problem is not one of just Abraham chapter 4. The problem is about the whole of humanity. And how the whole of humanity is captive, the language he uses, to forces of sin and death and has to be redeemed, has to be rescued from the forces of sin and death. So I think in chapters 5 and 6, we start to see just how large Paul's gospel is. How capacious it is. Now, you know, I always have a difficult time when I come to these chapters with verses 1 through 11, with how do those verses fit in to what comes after in verses 12 through 20? So let's begin with verse 1, Beverly Paul says, "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." And then he goes on in verses 9 to 12 to talk about how we have been reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. What does Paul mean when he says we have peace? Is Paul talking about an internal spiritual peace or is this peace in a different way? I think when Paul talks about peace here, it certainly doesn't preclude an internal sense of wellness. At least I hope it doesn't. But I think this peace here presupposes that God and humanity have actually been at odds. You know, one of the things we skip over is down in verse 10 where he says, "We were enemies of God." You know, this is language that suggests we were on the side of sin, on the side of death, on the side of forces of evil. And we have been delivered from that. And now we have been reconciled. We have peace with God. And that is what enables us finally to to live into a Christian life. So is it picking up on a kind of battle imagery? Is that with the enemies of being reconciled? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. There's a fair amount of conflict language throughout this section of Romans even extending into chapter 7 and 8. Sometimes you can't see it in the English translations. But when Paul says over in chapter 6, you know, present your body parts as weapons. You know, the English usually says instruments of righteousness, or you were instruments of wrong. Now you should be instruments of righteousness. That's language for for weaponry later on when he says, the wages of sin is death. That's a very particular term that is used in military texts for the pay that you get for being a soldier. So this is pretty agonistic language. - Hmm. Interesting. And I mean, I think that really helps us integrate versus, helps me integrate versus one to 11 and to what we see in verses 12 through 20. So let's move there. Paul tells us in verses 12 through 20 how sin and death entered the world. And he takes us all the way back to the first human to Adam. He says, therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin. And in this way, death came to all people because all sin. How does Paul present sin and death to us? And there are other characters at play here in chapters five and six. I think I've already anticipated the way I would answer that question. A number of scholars will say Paul is simply personifying sin and death here. - Hmm. - And it's very hard to tell, right? When somebody is simply personifying or when they really mean these are forces, these are powers in some sense. And I think for Paul, these are real. Whether you say whatever kind of language we ascribe to it. So what he means is sin and death, you know, Adam's act opened the door for sin and death to come in. And I think this is by way of explaining to the Romans, recalling for the Romans, what their situation was. - Could you elaborate on that a little bit in terms of what it means to say that sin and death are real. So they're not just constructs in our heads, but they have a reality. How's Paul thinking about that? - Well, another way of saying that would be sin and death are not for Paul simply events. They're not simply something that I do or you do or we do. But those actions, which he has detailed back in chapters one to three, are symptoms of a power itself. And that's the kind of language he uses when sin enters the world, death enters the world. Sin and death rule, sin and death multiplied, in verse 20 sin multiplies. You have this sense of sin as being almost cancerous in the way it has taken on a life of its own here. - Yeah, the picture in verse four, "Scenia death exercised dominion or ruled," that picture of sin and death as rulers is really not just, this is not just something you do, right? As you mentioned earlier, this is sin and death are rulers and powers that take hold of you. They overpower the world and was what Paul was getting at, I think. - Yeah, and I think this is why Paul almost never uses the language of repentance or forgiveness because although I can repent of an act, I can't repent my way out of this situation. I have to be, we collectively, humanity has to be taken out of the situation. Again, it goes back to this notion of conflict. - Right, yeah, that just draws that out in a powerful way. - Yeah. - You've already alluded to this extended contrast that Paul creates here between Adam and Christ. So, verse 15, for example, in chapter five, "But the free gift is not like the trespass "for the many died through the one man's trespass." That's Adam, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, "bounded for the many, for then in verse 19, "for just as by the one man's disobedience, "the many were made sinners, "so by the one man's obedience, "the many will be made righteous." So, what is Paul's purpose here in this repeated and as you pointed out, extended contrast between Adam and Christ? I think his purpose here is to show that just as what Adam did affected all of humanity, right? Nobody escaped. What Christ has done also affects the whole of humanity. Otherwise, this contrast doesn't work. It falls apart for him. Now, he says the many, right? And some other places in here, he also says, "All, although I'm not, oh yes, verse 18, "he uses all." Right, I'll just read that. Verse 18, "Therefore just as one man's trespass "led to condemnation for all, "so one man's active righteousness "leads to justification in life for all." So, there we've got all contrasts instead of many. Right, and I think the reason we get hung up or some people do on the many is that in, is that again, we can't see the Greek. In the Greek, as you know, it's Hoy Palloy. So you get, there's a lot of alliteration in this passage. And Palloy is an alternate for him to the Pontus, at least here. I don't think he really distinguishes between them. I think Palloy is simply, it just sounds good, 'cause he's got paratomat, paratomat, Hoy Palloy, a peasanton, you know, you can hear all of those P sounds, even if you don't know any Greek. Right, that's true. But does the contrast work? Is there some fudging going on here between the all in the many? Because many would see Paul arguing that all are condemned in Adam, but then does that mean, based on the logic of the comparison, that all are therefore saved in Christ? Does that point us towards a kind of universalistic view? I want to borrow from what I understand to be Carl Barth's position on this, which is that he would never say he himself was a universalist, because that is to claim to know the mind of God. And I am not going to claim that Paul was a universalist, because I think that implies that Paul himself had access to the mind of God. And there are numerous places where he makes sure we know that that's not the case. But I do think the logic of his gospel is a gospel that does not exclude anybody. And I think Christians get quite hung up sometimes on trying to make sure somebody gets excluded for fear that somebody will get something for free. Well, the point is that all of us who understand ourselves to be Christian are claimed for free. The gospel is free. That's exactly what grace means. So I don't myself find any problem with saying that for Paul, all actually means all, eventually, aschatologically, right? In the future that God brings about. I mean, I think also like the text itself, that in Romans 5 versus 12 through 20, Paul's, let's say, vantage point or his canvas is cosmic. It's like he has the whole world in view, right? So I think trying to maybe perhaps even trying to press him on the details of that particular theological question is going to run us into problems because his concern is what is the, let's say, the global picture, right? First, it was Sin and death who came and they tyrannized the whole world. And now it's Jesus Christ and those who have received the gift, right? And eternal life we're now raining over the world. So that's his perspective, right here. So my take is that I don't want to press him too much on the details on this passage. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it might be helpful to step back at just a little bit. And a lot of what we've been talking about so far in terms of this kind of battle, imagery, and that cosmic idea, the minion of sin. This is all pointing us to where to kind of apocalyptic understanding of Paul's theology. Would you like to briefly give our listeners an insight into what that means? To say that Paul has an apocalyptic theology here. Right. Well, the first thing I should say about that is it doesn't mean it's a horror movie, right? Apocalyptic is not disaster. Apocalypse in Greek is an uncovering. It is a revelation, if you will. And when those of us who use this language to talk about Paul's theology as apocalyptic, when we use that term, what we're trying to get at, and it's a shorthand for a much larger notion, is that the gospel, that the event of the death and resurrection of Jesus comes as God. intrusive act in a world that is ruled by sin and death, a world that's gone its own way, if you will, and that God reclaims that world in the person and the work of Jesus. So it is an apocalypse in that sense. If there's not a kind of nice, tidy line across history in which Jesus is kind of the best new teacher on the block. Jesus is not a new improved David. Jesus is an intervention in a world that is a disaster. - Beverly in 520, Paul says something also puzzling. The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. Now this feels like Marcy and I territory. - Yeah, the early Christian who thought that the law, the Old Testament, the God of the Old Testament was bad, right? This kind of sounds a little bit like that. I mean, what's Paul saying here? Can we call Paul a Marcy night or can we absolve him of the charge? - Well, this is one of many, many great places in which to reiterate that you can never take a single sentence out of context, right? That is more true about Paul's comments about the law than it is about most other things. You just can't take a single comment about the law and say, aha, especially in Romans because Romans develops across at least seven chapters into what Paul actually has to say about the law and he drops in these statements that are incredibly negative, right? And at the same time he will say that the law is there to instruct, right? He will say positive. He says he upholds the law. Then he turns around and says the law increases sin. I think what he's doing is driving the auditor and remember all of the first generations were listening to this text. They were not reading it. It drives the auditor to ask the question that's ask of chapter seven is the law sin. And logically he has kind of argued that. The law is and sin can really not be distinguished. But then in chapter seven he says, no, the real problem is not the law. The problem is that sin has taken hold, even of the law. God's holy right and good law has been taken over by sin so that there is a kind of split in the law itself. And that again has to be redeemed in the in Jesus, in the action of God and Jesus. - So you could actually see this verse here pointing again to that dominion of sin. Sin is so powerful that even God's righteous law has been brought under its sway. - Right, I mean that is the terrifying thing that is happening. I think when you get to chapter seven is you have this picture of sin that is so out of control that it can invade even the territory God has made in the law. - Okay, let's move on to chapter six. In chapter six begins with Paul anticipating a potential objection from an interlocutor. So he says, what then are we to say, should we continue in sin and order that grace may abound? Now why has Paul come to the conclusion that his imaginary interlocutor would ask this question and then how does he respond to this potential objection? - Well, there are a lot of scholarly theories about why Paul says this. One option is that people actually do know his letter to the Galatians with its pretty negative language about the law and some people have associated him with failure to observe the law. And we see in the book of Acts that that is historically as Luke understands it at least, that is a charge that may have been brought against him. I'm not so sure I want to use that kind of historical reconstruction here. This is one of many places in the letter where he takes a kind of possible extrapolation of what he's just said and turns it into a way of making his positive argument. It's possible for someone to say, "Oh, grace is ruling now. I can do whatever I want to." And instead he says, "No, what this means is that we either live, hearing becomes very geographical. We either live in the place of sin or we have been moved into a place governed by the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. We live out of our baptism and our union with him as it were." - Can you talk a little bit more about that baptism piece here because I don't know if most readers would expect that to be Paul's initial response to the subjection. So verse three, "Do you not know that all of us have been baptized into Christ Jesus?" Or sorry, "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death so that just as Christ was registered from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. How is baptism working here to respond to the subjection?" - One of the things we have to remember when we're reading this passage is that it is among the earliest texts we have that reflect on baptism, right? So it's a little hard to know where Paul is getting this interpretation, but it does seem clear that he already is taking baptism not simply as a way of joining this community, but of actually sharing in the death and resurrection of Jesus, although he's pretty careful not to say we have been resurrected, we have new life. He anticipates resurrection. I kind of think the overreaction in Corinth may have made him just a little cautious here, but he analogizes baptism with death. We died with Christ and therefore we live a different life. And there is this strong disjuncture that's being made there that goes back to the question of in whose life, in whose territory you reside. - Right. - I do think I'm overstating it a little bit, but I think the analogy of territory here becomes very useful that you're either living in the territory of sin or you're living in the territory ruled by Christ and you can't be in both places at once. - Right. And that carries out of the battle language of chapter five because what are battles often about? Territories. - Right. - It's going to be in control of this territory. So he moves from that battle in chapter five to these two different territories. And you would you say you have to choose which territory you're going to live or you have been brought into a new territory. You're like a, well, I don't know how far we want to push this analogy, but like you've been captured in the battle and brought over to another side. - Well, you know, over in Philippians three when he writes that sort of autobiographical passage, he says I was overtaken. I think the language is pretty passive. You were taken over into baptism. I don't think there's a sort of choice being made here. What about Beverly, the slavery language that we have here in chapter six? So he says verse 15, what then should we sin because we are not under law but under grace by no means? That's the same chart. - For some questions or readings. - What then should we sin because we are not under law but under grace by no means? Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey. Either of sin which leads to death or of obedience which leads to righteousness. But thanks be to God that you having once been slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted and that you having been set free from sin have become slaves of righteousness. Well, how does this slavery metaphor work? Because now he's going to almost put it to his audience and say now you present yourself as slaves to righteousness instead of to sin. Which I mean, in terms of this apocalyptic way of thinking is it now that you've been liberated, you now have the agency to do that or what can you help us think through that? a little bit. I do think that there is a kind of, uh, uh, uh, that two things are being said here. You were freed from sin. You have noticed the passive. You have in the Greek. You have become enslaved to righteousness. So it's passive in both senses. Now, uh, Paul does not regard those as, uh, uh, as equivalent in slave months, you know, and, and we have to say that this language of slavery is highly problematic as it should be for us. I don't think Paul inhabited a world that was, uh, full of freedom of choice, you know, I don't think Paul understood this whole, episode, this whole story about God's action to be a matter of choosing, but of something people have been chosen out of. You have become obedient after having been, uh, released and having been enslaved again. It's interesting language in verse 16. Do you not know that if you present yourself to anyone as obedient slaves, it seems like there's a tension here between the agency of presenting yourself, but then as an obedient slave, so you don't have agency. Can you help us think through those how those fit together? Yeah. Uh, we might need Paul to help us with that. Uh, certainly there is a kind of agency there, isn't there? I think it's an agency that is possible because of what's already been said in chapter 5. In other words, it is now possible to address a demand to this group. Here I'm, uh, a number of people might recognize I am relying heavily on the work of J. Lewis Martin, one of my early teachers and a great mentor to many of us, but I don't think that this is a choice that is made say back in chapter 5 or even in the early part of chapter 6, I think the choice is only possible, right? And Paul knows that, um, that Christians are not sort of automatically, um, made into obedient believers who do just what is right all the time. If he did, he wouldn't have needed to write the sections of his letters in which he offers instructions. You know, he knows that we still live in the real, in, in this world, right? Uh, but I think he believes that we are addressable by virtue of the gospel as people who belong to the body of Christ, then that relationship calls us into a certain kind of, uh, choice, a certain kind of decision. You know, the other thing when I was reading this that struck me because of the whole way of talking about sin and death as powers, uh, which is a verse that you mentioned earlier, Beverly in 623, for the wages of sin as death. I mean, I don't think I typically miss the imagery going on here. I think Beverly, and let me know what you think of this, that the wages of sin, sin is still being, um, presented as that enslaving power, right? So sin and then what it pays you is death, right? So if you obligate yourself to obeying sin as your master, as your Lord, then the way you'll receive in return for that is death. And the contrast to that is, now I don't know how this works exactly, but maybe Jesus as the Lord, right? If you're submitted to him, then the result is the gift of eternal life. Right. Um, is that is that? Yeah, and interestingly, one of them is, is a way that is one of them is earned and the other is given, right? Those are very different images. It's not that you sort of pay your money and you take your choice, right? But your, uh, your allegiance produces certain things. And, uh, one of them is the reward that you've earned. And the other is, uh, never the reward that you've earned. It's always give, right? It never ceases to be gift. Yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much, Beverly, for taking us, uh, through some time in Romans. So we've been in Romans for a little while with you. We really appreciate your insight on these passages. We just have one more question for you. If you wouldn't mind, uh, what we like to do at the end of our episodes is to ask the scholars that we have on to participate in that genre that biblical scholars seem to have perfected, which is the blurb, right? Recommending something. And it doesn't have to be a book. It could be a movie or a TV show or some kind of life hack that you picked up during the lockdowns or something that you think our listeners might appreciate. So do you have a blurb for us? My, uh, blurb for the moment, and I get no money from this endorsement, I want to say, is, uh, an app that I put on my computer that is called freedom. And when you activate freedom, you are cut off from the internet. So you cannot do email. You cannot go to Facebook. You cannot, uh, you can't do searches, which is something of a problem. But it means that when I want to write for an hour or an hour and a half, I put freedom on and it cuts me off. At least now you can get out of it, but I have to think about it and it sends me back to my work and I have really appreciated it. And it's appropriate because we were talking about, you know, freedom from sin, freedom from the dominion of the internet. That's right. The evil influence of the internet. You do have to pay for it, but it's pretty reasonable for what you get. So that's great. Well, Beverly, thank you for taking the time out of your schedule and sharing your expert guidance on Romans 5 to 6. And, uh, to you listeners, thank you for joining us on this journey. If you'd like to know more, if you'd like to see more episodes, you can go to our website at the twotestaments.com. You can also find our Facebook group and you can submit your questions. And we will take a stab. I hate using that metaphor. And we'll take it in time to try to answer and work through some of those questions on a Q&A episode. So thanks again. The twotestaments is produced with the support of Sanford University, where Ronnie Cosmon and Wilkines are professors in the Department of Biblical and Religious Studies. Thanks to Jill Zelner, Jodie McVarlin, and the team in the Faculty Success Center and our student assistants Carson Knoth, Jake Maddox, Harrison Pike, and Gracie Plum for their help with production, editing and promotion.