Theology in the Raw - Bonus Q&A: New Perspective on Paul, How was Eve Deceived?, Voting, LGBTQ+ Child Dedication and more!

Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Spring is a great time to start a new workout routine, with the weather warming up, that feels easier to get into the rhythm of things. Whether you have 20 minutes or an hour for a Pilates class or a guided outdoor walk, Peloton has everything you need to help you get going. Get a head start on summer with Peloton, and choose a flexible payment plan that works for you at onepeloton.ca slash financing. That's the sound of unaged whiskey, transforming into Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey in Lynchburg,

Starting point is 00:00:35 Tennessee. Around 1860, nearest green taught Jack Daniel how to filter whiskey through charcoal for a smoother taste, one drop at a time. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell to hear them in person. Plan your trip at TN vacation.com Tennessee sounds perfect. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of theology and raw. This is a bonus Q and a episode where I address many of the questions that were sent in from my Patreon supporters. Some of which you'll get to listen to live. If we're listening to the public feed and the rest of the episode will be available only to my patron supporters.

Starting point is 00:01:14 So if you want to join the patron community, get access to the full episode, along with many other goodies, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology, Neuron support show for as little as five bucks a month and get lots of, yeah, lots of the Algenar goodies. Is that the best for it? Anyway, yeah. Lots of stuff that's behind the paywall in the patron only community. So let's dive into some of these questions. Josiah wants to know if I could give a short introductory explanation of the discussions surrounding the new perspective on Paul. Actually, I'm not sure. I think I've mixed these names. I'm not sure if this is from Josiah. Anyway, one of my supporters wants to know if I can give a short explanation and the discussions surrounding the new perspective on Paul, that is understandable to the lay person. I will do my best. And I'm reaching

Starting point is 00:02:10 back quite a few years now. As some of you might know, this was the, well, it was, it was sort of a surrounding the subject of my PhD dissertation. Technically my PhD dissertation was on the interpretation of, of Leviticus 18, five B in early Judaism and in Paul, that I, you guys still awake. Um, but that, that, that verse and how it's interpreted in, in early Judaism and in Paul sort of participated in, in, in, in, I would say maybe broader conversations about Paul and the law, Paul's understanding of the law. And a lot of those conversations sort of also participate in conversations that are often referred to as the new perspective on Paul.

Starting point is 00:02:54 So it's, it would be hard to give a really short, clear lay level explanation because it's, there are various strands of new perspective type thinking. There's various players. Some are more new, new perspective year than others. But the term was coined by James Dunn of a famous British new Testament scholar, brilliant scholar. And I think it was a early 1980s essay where he, I think it was even titled the new perspective on Paul. And even before him, NT Wright, back when he was like a still PhD student, wrote an article that came out, I believe in Tyndale bulletin in 1978, they didn't use the phrase new perspective, but articulated some of the themes that would later be familiar to new perspective type thinkers.

Starting point is 00:03:45 So those are some, I don't know if I'd consider NT Wright, a new person, I don't know. I think it's kind of doing something different, honestly. He gets lumped into the kind of new perspective. And I guess he is maybe one of the voices, but there's several others that are much more at the heart of kind of a new perspective approach to Paul. So in short, and I may be as concise as I can. The new perspective would argue that justificate

Starting point is 00:04:10 Paul's understanding of justification by faith was not combating works or works, righteousness or legalism. Rather it was addressing ethnocentrism. When Paul talks about works, he's referring to works of the law. These were specific Jewish practices that were designed to separate Jews from Gentiles, keeping the Sabbath, a circumcision dietary laws. So when Paul says we're justified by faith, not by works of the law, he's not really, he's not really saying we're not justified by working our way to heaven. We're justified by faith, which is opposed to, you know, doing things. That's not, that's not quite what Paul was talking about. He was basically saying, we're not justified by becoming a Jew. We're

Starting point is 00:05:00 not justified by taking on these Jewish distinctives. We're not justified by, you know, not eating pork and shellfish and circumcising our kids and, you know, being separate from Gentiles. That's not how we're made right with God. We are made right with God through faith and faith is equal, equally available to both Jew and Gentile. So Paul's doctrine of justification, my faith was his way of saying that Gentiles too might become Christians, followers of Jesus, without taking on a Jewish identity. Let me give you a passage. And again, that is, there's so much more to it, but I would say that was at least the main catalyst. Paul's not addressing legalism. He's addressing ethnocentrism. Let me give you the passage where this really kind of like became convincing to me. And I'll talk more about kind of where I'm at

Starting point is 00:05:52 with it all in a sec. Um, Romans three, I don't want to read the whole thing here, but 3 21 to 26, well, three 21, you know, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, blah, blah, blah, blah. We're justified by faith in Jesus Christ. I'm kind of summarizing verse 26. God presented him Jesus to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time so that he would be righteous and declare righteous, the one who has faith in Jesus. So this passage comes at the climax of Paul's argument here. And it's stressing that we are saved by faith in Jesus. And then Paul says, where then is boasting it is excluded

Starting point is 00:06:33 by what kind of law by one of works? No, on the contrary, by a law of faith. For we conclude verse 28, that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Okay. So that's a good summary statement of what we're talking about. We're justified by faith apart from works of the law. Now look at the rhetorical question that Paul raises in the very next verse for his God, the God of Jews only. Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes. of Gentiles too, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. So if you look at the, where Paul's mind goes, logically, the kind of, the kind of question he's anticipating, it doesn't really have to do with legalism here. It has to do with ethnic questions.

Starting point is 00:07:26 You know, is God the God of Jews? Only know is it's got a Gentiles also. And so that, for Paul's mind, that is kind of, you know, flows from what he just said about justification by faith. And then he goes into this long chapter. Sorry, if you're watching, I got allergies like starting to creep in right now. So I hope I don't get lots of snot over my microphone. Anyway, Romans chapter four is all about the faith of Abraham, right? But the whole point of that, Pat, one of the, well, the whole, the main point of that passage is to show that Jews and Gentiles are included into Abraham's family on the same footing. He even goes so far to argue that like Abraham was actually a Gentile when he was called by God is kind of Paul's argument. So that would be a, yeah,

Starting point is 00:08:13 one scriptural example of where people get this idea that justification by faith was combating ethnocentrism, a Jewish centered theology versus, you know, versus like combating legalism. There's been so much ink spilt on this. I would say was that towards the end of my seminary, when I was like, wow, this seems, I'm just looking at the text of scripture. I'm like, well, this makes sense. And I'm going to other passages. Galatians is all about justification, my faith. And it's all about like Jew, Gentile relations. Then you go to like acts of teen and other passages where it's like, this is a, this is a big deal. The new Testament Ephesians two Philippians three, like, like it is interesting

Starting point is 00:08:55 that in almost, I think in every main justification by faith passage and Paul it's surrounded in it's surrounded by a context where Paul is deeply concerned with these Jewish and Gentile relationships in the church. So I was really turned on. I mean, I was like, this is, this is seems really legit, you know? But then I'd read critiques, you know, I'd read Tom Schreiner and, and Doug Moo and others. I was like, wow, they raised some good points too. So I went into my PhD program kind of leaning towards like, I think I'm going to, I think I want to come out like, you know, defending the, this, this new perspective on Paul. I was actually, I would say persuaded away from it.

Starting point is 00:09:39 Not completely. Like I think, I mean, everything I said in, in, in, in Romans three, I mean, a lot of that just makes a lot of sense. I guess for me, I don't think it's a, I think it would be a false dichotomy to say that Paul was confronting ethnocentrism and not some kind of what we might call works righteousness or prioritizing human action as a prerequisite for divine action. And one of the scholars that persuaded me to have a more, maybe moved me away from the new perspective was one of the best New Testament scholars I've ever been around.

Starting point is 00:10:16 He's not widely known on a popular level, but Francis Watson, who was at University of Aberdeen when I was studying under Simon Gathricle, who was a critique. Simon Gathricle. This is all British scholars work. I just, I love the nature of British scholarship. Simon Gathricle did his PhD under James Dunn, the main architect of the new perspective in order to kind of critique his position. And for him, he's like, I don't want to just straw man anything. I want to sit under the best of the best. If I'm going to argue against his view. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy.

Starting point is 00:10:46 I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to be a great guy. I'm going to thinking the same thing. Like I want to sit under, since I was leaning towards a new perspective, I want to send it under somebody who's maybe a main critic of it. But it was actually Francis

Starting point is 00:11:11 Watson's book, the hermeneutics of faith, Paul and the hermeneutics of faith. That was one of the most persuasive books. Yeah. I just, my view of Paul is largely shaped by that book by Francis Watson and also France Francis's dissertation early on in, in, in the 1980s was, gosh, you asked for a lay level basic introduction. And here I go. Well, you, you, I mean, this is just bringing back so many memories. So I'm having a good time here. Francis was a starch defender, the new perspective in the early and the one of the, one of the more fiercest critics of it. He wrote an essay. It might be available for free online called not the new perspective, where he goes through several points and why this is actually a flawed way to interpret Paul.

Starting point is 00:11:54 So I, one of the areas, the sub areas that I think the new perspective gets wrong. And again, I think that's a very, very, areas that I think the new perspective gets wrong. And again, there, I just, I always hesitate trying to make it sound like it's a monolith, but I think most people would be considered new perspective type thinkers would agree with this that, you know, they would say that the, the soteriological structure of Paul and early Judaism is basically the same. You've got grace, you have forgiveness, you have God's agency, you have human free will or whatever. Like the soteriological structures are basically the same. It's just that Paul has Jesus at the center of his, his, his, the main difference is, you know, it's not

Starting point is 00:12:44 that one has grace and another doesn't have grace. It's that for Paul, grace is centered on the finished work of Jesus Christ. Okay. That's true. But then in my dissertation and in my followup book that nobody has read called, uh, Paul and Judaism revisited divine and human agency in Paul, a study of divided human agent. I forget the subtitle. So funny. This, this, I don't, I was looking around my bookshelf. I don't even own a copy of my own book. It's on a scholarly level. It's probably one I'm the most proud of and never there when you were anyway, I came to see as I studied early Judaism, the sotel logical structures, and then study Paul sotelogical structures, and then studied Paul's sotelogicality, that Paul

Starting point is 00:13:25 emphasizes divine agency in salvation in a much stronger way than we see in early Judaism. Paul has an extremely pessimistic anthropology, and the only way a person can believe is if God invades their life and quickens their spirit and so on and so forth. Or even in Romans 4, like when Paul says, God justifies the ungodly, you don't see any kind of statement like that in early Judaism. In fact, for God to be just, he must condemn the ungodly. Like there's even statements like that in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And so Paul comes along and he does seem to be on the spectrum of emphasizing human agency and then emphasizing divine agency. Paul's on the very far end of emphasizing divine agency. And so that was my, so yeah, so that was my kind of critique of the new perspectives.

Starting point is 00:14:20 I think it downplayed that, that aspect that Paul is a first century Jewish thinker stood out among his contemporaries as emphasizing divine agency, like crazy, much more than his Jewish contemporaries. All right, let's move on. That was a lot, much longer answer than I was thinking about giving when I was reading the question. Next question. What would you say to someone saying that the Holy spirit can guide us to violence? For instance, you have Samson and judges 15, 14 as an example, I think isn't that where

Starting point is 00:14:52 the spirit comes upon Samson and he does something violent. I'm pretty sure this doesn't seem like the fruit of the spirit. There's two things that work here. First of all, I think there's a, I think, but there just simply is a record of the most scholars, a different function of the Holy spirit in the old Testament compared to the new and the old Testament. We have something that scholars have called a theocratic anointing where the Holy spirit might empower certain people, Kings and judges to perform certain tasks. Sometimes these tasks aren't even like hyper spiritual. Sometimes they

Starting point is 00:15:25 are, but sometimes it's just like, go kill a lion. The spirit comes upon Samson and it goes and kills a lion, you know, or he'll empower certain judges to take leadership in certain situations. Sometimes he judges are not very good people and you know, and yet the spirit will come upon them and kind of empower them to do something that's different than the permit. And so the spirit can kind of come and go empower somebody and then go, go away and go empower somebody else. Whereas the uniqueness of the spirit's presence in the new Testament is that the spirit permanently and dwells believers more for, well, the spiritual

Starting point is 00:15:59 gifts obviously, but also for moral empowerment. You see this in Ezekiel 36 and 37, where you have this prophecy of, you know, God's going to place His Spirit inside of people and cause them, literally cause them to walk in His ways. I'm going to cause obedience to happen. Sound like a raging Calvinist right now, I guess, but whatever. I guess the shoe fits. And Paul, when he talks about the Spirit, especially Romans 2, Romans 8, but whatever, I guess the shoe fits. And Paul, when he talks about the spirit, especially Romans two, Romans eight, other passages, Galatians, he seems to tap into that kind of Ezekiel 36, 37 vision where the spirit is bringing like in Ezekiel 37, bringing life to dead people, dead bones, the dry bones prophecy in Ezekiel 37. So that's a different

Starting point is 00:16:43 same spirit I'm going to argue, but it's a different function that the spirit has. All that to say, I think it would be a categorical distinction or covenantal distinction if we take how the spirit worked in the old, under the old covenant and sort of assumed that that's true of the new covenant. Also, I would say that the work of the Holy Spirit for a new covenant believer, it must square with New Testament ethics. Yeah. And the Old Testament violence was allowed.

Starting point is 00:17:09 I mean, I've, and I've discussed that at length in my book fight or not, nonviolence, but the New Testament, I would argue that New Testament ethics does not say that believers can or should use violence to address evil in the world or in their own life. I just don't see that anywhere. So I would say the work of the Holy Spirit in, in as much as, okay. So of course what I just said is debated, assuming it's true. Um, then the Holy Spirit's work would correlate with what the new Testament said, how the new Testament says people should be living. So yeah, those two elements, I think the way that the Holy Spirit works. And so that's the way that the Holy Spirit works. And so that's the way that the Holy Spirit works. And so that's the way that the Holy Spirit works.

Starting point is 00:17:48 And so that's the way that the Holy Spirit works. And so that's the way that the Holy Spirit works. And so that's the way that the Holy Spirit works. And so that's the way that the Holy Spirit works. And so that's the way that the Holy Spirit works. And so that's the way that the Holy Spirit works. And so that's the way that the Holy Spirit works. And so that's the way that the Holy Spirit works.

Starting point is 00:18:04 And so that's the way that the Holy Spirit works. And so that's the way that the Holy Spirit works. wants to know, you've leaned into a nonviolent view. Nonviolent resistance is a better option for believers. But does Matthew 5 41 teach we shouldn't even do that, that we shouldn't resist evildoers? I think you said Matthew 5 41. I think you're thinking of Matthew 5 39 where Jesus says, do not resist an evildoer. So, the key here is the word resist. It's the Greek word, antiste ni. It has to do with more of an aggressive, one might even say violent resistance. It's used to describe violent revolts in the first century. Revolutionary type resistance. So I think NT Wright even translates this verse, like, do not violently resist an evildoer, do not overcome an evildoer with violence. So it's not saying don't resist at all. At least that's not the point of this passage. It's just simply saying,

Starting point is 00:19:02 do not do so. It's addressing the manner in which we resist an evil doer. I do talk about that passage again at length in my book, Nonviolence. Jeff wants to know, 1 Timothy 2, 3, or 1 Timothy 2, 13 to 14 refers to creation. And there's a couple differences here you point point out Eve is deceived either because of the creation order or she was not instructed by God. The second one makes sense, but most think the first. So why is this? Let's, let's, uh, why don't we go there?

Starting point is 00:19:37 I'm going to wet my palette and we'll go to this passage. First Timothy two, this is okay. So two 12, I do not allow a woman to teach or have authority over a man. Instead she has to remain quiet for Adam has formed first and then Eve. So that's that creation order you're talking about. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and transgressed, but she will be saved through child. Buried if they continue in faith, love, holiness with good sense. And then Paul moves on. Now, Paul could be saying, he could be linking to get, so you have, you know, created order, verse 13, being deceived, verse 14. Paul could

Starting point is 00:20:15 be saying that because Eve was created second, therefore she's more prone to deception or something. But I, you know, both sentences haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't done a, I haven't that was deceived without saying she was deceived because she was created second. And that's where I would, I would say at least the commentaries I've read and I haven't done a, I would have to go back and look at my notes. I typically kind of organize like, you know, which scholars are taking which view, which, how many different interpretations are there of this verse and that verse and try to add it all up. So I don't know how that those notes in front of me.

Starting point is 00:21:01 But I'm, I do remember coming across this and at least the scholars I was reading, they said that they think Paul is not linking, there's no logical connection here between being created second and being deceived. He's simply saying Eve was created second and also she was the one that was deceived, just giving kind of two side-by-side arguments about why women shouldn't teach

Starting point is 00:21:24 or exercise authority over men. I mean, since, since we're here and since some of you are like, what do you wait? I do want to say, uh, I need to come back. I did a lot, a deep study on this passage. Oh gosh. How long ago? A year and a half ago, 2022. So I need to go, go back and, and really kind of tidy up what I think's going on this passage. I, I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I and really kind of tidy up what I think's going on this passage. I do. It does seem like Paul is not simply reading creation in a vacuum, interpreting creation in a vacuum here, but that he is correcting what he sees as an aberrant understanding of creation that is at work. Hey friends, I hope you enjoyed this portion of the Patreon Only Q&A podcast. If you'd like to

Starting point is 00:22:13 listen to the full-length episode and receive other bonus content like monthly podcasts, opportunities to ask questions, access to first drafts of my research and monthly Zoom chats and more, then please head over to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw to join theology in the raw's Patreon community. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.

Theology in the Raw - Bonus Q&A: New Perspective on Paul, How was Eve Deceived?, Voting, LGBTQ+ Child Dedication and more!

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.