Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Engaging the Text: Paul's Theology in Romans

Ok, I've discovered that if I don't try to do this simply, I'm going to just continue to sit here and gape at the difficult questions that will be dredged up by a discussion of the Romans passage. So here we go. Let's start with a snippet of the text in question, beginning in Romans 1:18:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.



Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment?

I call this a snippet because it's just a part of Paul's larger discussion of the Jews and Gentiles in Romans.

Now it's fairly obvious which part of this text lights up the sin-o-meter (and, not incidentally, the sex-o-meter):

God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

As we read this text within our discussion, I think that we need to separate the questions that need answering.

The first question is, how does this comment fit into Paul's argument in Romans? Given the surrounding context and what we know about Paul (accepting at face value that this letter, and other letters, were actually written by Paul), what did he mean to communicate when he wrote the previous paragraph? What did he not mean to communicate?

The second question is, what are the theological implications of this statement? In other words, does it teach us anything about God? And if so, what?

The third question is, what are the moral implications of this statement? Once we understand what Paul meant, and what it tells us about God, how do we apply it to ourselves? Should this passage affect our behavior? And if so, how?

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

And He Looks Good On TV

Well, we know who Larry James will be rooting for in the 2008 democratic primary.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Romans, Shmomans

I'm having trouble finding time to write about the Romans passage. In the interim, if you're hankering for some interesting biblical stuff, you should visit Scoots's blog. Scoots is very smart and entirely too educated, and those two things combine to produce interesting and fun things like his latest post:

The difficultly for the reader in accepting the parable is accepting that both of these facts are true: the money we handle is not our own, and our access to managing it will soon come to an abrupt end.

The post has some jucier bits, but I don't want to give away too much of the punchline, so I'll just leave it at that.

I'm looking forward to more from Scoots: I expect his blog will have a fairly high signal-to-noise ratio. And that's pretty important to me, because I don't really like that other kind of blog ... you know, the kind that has a post a day telling me all about what the author had for lunch, punctuated with little emoticons that tell me how he is feeling?

Anyhow, click your way over to "Sccoots" and check it out.

Right now I'm feeling: all verklempt.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

I Was Just Joking About the Scientific Study

After our brief discussion about intercessory prayer, it was kind of creepy to hear this on Day to Day yesterday:

Study of Heart Patients Sees No Power in Prayer

JEFFERY DUSEK: So in fact the knowledge of receiving prayer seemed to result in a modest level of increase in complications in that group.

ALEX CHADWICK: If you knew you were having this intercessory prayer - strangers you didn't know praying for you - somehow that complicated your recovery in some way.

JEFFERY DUSEK: It did, and essentially within one small complication, which was rapid heartbeat essentially.

Not that this odd little study offers much proof of anything at all. It was just kind of creepy to turn on the radio and hear Alex Chadwick using the words "congregation" and "intercessory prayer".