Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So the thesis again of Romans comes down to. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith. For faith, as it is written, he who through faith is righteous shall live. So then everybody is condemned in their diverse modes. Now everybody's going to be saved through faith. Jew first, then greek, as Paul teaches us.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: You welcome to the catholic theology show presented by Ave Maria University. This podcast is sponsored in part by Annunciation Circle, a community that supports the mission of Ave Maria University through their monthly donations of $10 or more. If you'd like to support this podcast and the mission of Ave Maria University, I encourage you to visit avemaria.edu join for more information.
I'm your host, Michael Doffiney, and today I am joined by my colleague, Dr. Daniel Lenman, assistant professor of theology at Avehamer University. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: Thanks for having me. I'm a joy to be here.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Excellent. And Daniel's a beloved faculty member among our students, and one of the courses that he has been teaching is a course on Paul and Romans. And I thought it'd be a wonderful opportunity today to dive into Romans. I think probably Romans is, I think, one of the most beautiful books of the New Testament, one of the most powerfully rich theologically, in terms of helping us to understand the nature of our salvation, and yet at the same time also one of the most consoling, help us to understand that even that salvation will not be overcome, even in suffering. Now, it's also the case that Romans is one of the most controversial books of the New Testament and has really been in many ways right at the heart at times of the divisions between Protestants and Catholics.
I myself remember when I was in college, and I was an evangelical Protestant, and at that time, and had not yet returned to the Catholic Church, that Romans was often seen to be that kind of presented the gospel in a very clear way, that all have sinned, all have fallen short, that the wages of sin is death, the gift of God is in Jesus Christ. If you confess with your lips and believe in your hearts that Jesus is Lord, you will find salvation. Right? So everyone who calls in the name of Lord will be saved. And kind of that was it. And they would sometimes call it the Romans road.
And unfortunately, many Roman Catholics have been led out of the church by the Romans road. So maybe just to kind of, in a short way, what would you say to my college age self? What am I seeing about the beauty of Romans in that view? But also, what am I missing about Romans?
[00:02:59] Speaker A: That's a great question to think about, because it isn't as if that view is wholly wrong.
I would just say you're seeing something very true, but kind of missing out on a fuller kind of awareness of how much is actually being said in Romans.
One of the books we go through is actually Michael Gorman's commentary on Romans. And what's interesting is he's coming at it from a protestant context, but he points out the deficiencies in the roman road. And one of the things he points out, which is just right on, is that it's this kind of sort of hyper individualistic view of salvation, but that's not the way salvation works out. And that notion of a collective and being part of a community is actually central to understanding Romans.
Why? Well, again, there's a lot there, but part of it is seeing how there's a real transformation that's required of us, that's given to us, I should say, and we're required to live according to this real transformation in Romans as part of a new community, that's part of the body of Christ.
Paul mentions that explicitly in Corinthians, but it's implicit here in Romans as we're living the new life from the spirit. So when you start looking at Romans as a whole, you realize the roman road.
It's like focusing on a narrow part of Romans that gets distorted for lack of the broader context.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: That's a great way of putting it. I love that sense of being called into a community, into the family of God and becoming members of the body of Christ. We can see that as well. I think there's a lot of actually protestant contemporary scholarship that has kind of come full circle. Sunday is called like the new Paul or the new perspective on Paul over the last, like probably 30 years now that has been doing this. But in going back and understanding the notion of covenant as it was used around the time of Christ in second Temple Judaism by Paul, but also by others, that what you see is unique about Paul's understanding of the covenant is that we enter into the covenant through the free gift of grace.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: We enter into it and we receive that through faith. But then we stay in the covenant through living according to the covenant. That's right. And I think within that, given the fact that Romans is so much about justification, but I think Scott Hahn, who has given a lot of talks on Romans, I think his study of Romans was really pivotal in his own return to the Catholic Church or his own conversion to the Catholic Church, that he talks a lot about how the justification he as a Protestant or understood it mostly in terms of a legal justification. Where you were in a courtroom, you were guilty, and you were declared innocent. But eventually he learned that, actually, no, it was part of more of a family hearth. That justification is really adoption.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: And that if we're adopted into a family, in a way that's a free gift, there's nothing we could ever do to earn adoption. There's nothing we could ever do to earn adoption as children of God.
But if I'm adopted as a child into a family, I still have to live according to the family, or I will be at some point, I will no longer be in communion with that family. So that certain sense of the free gift of entering the covenant and then the works of that faith, we enter the covenant by faith, and then we live in it by living according to faith and love and putting off, so to speak, the old practices and turning to the new.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that's exactly right. That touches on one of the.
Well, it is the thesis of Romans right there. You get it at Romans 116, where through 17, where he says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the jew first, and also to the Greek for in it, the righteousness of God is revealed through faith. For faith, as it is written, he who through faith is righteous shall live. And everybody kind of recognizes that. That's the thesis of Romans.
But even there, of course, it's controverted, because everything in Romans is controverted. But how to take the righteousness of God? But what you were just saying and what is coming, the new perspective on Paul, part of that is the realization is that how to understand this righteousness of God or the justice of God, as it could also be translated, and some people have read it, where they want to say it's sort of this justice which God imposes or puts on us. It's about God making us just. Others will see it as God's own manifestation of God's own justice or righteousness. And the new perspective really sees that that latter, that it's a manifestation of God's own righteousness is really more in keeping with what Paul is saying. And that our justification becomes in this participation in this new life, in the spirit, this new family, this new covenant relationship with God. And so it's really the righteousness of God is a manifestation of God's covenant faithfulness to his people.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: So you just used a lot of words there that I love, but I also think can be a little bit kind of quick. So one, you talked about the notion of participation in this certain senses, participation in righteousness and covenant. Could you just kind of walk through that a little bit?
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Obviously, you teach, I'm sure you probably.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Spend a day or two on that many days.
So probably the first notion to unpack a little bit is the idea of covenant. And that is something we were familiar with often, and there's been a lot of good work done. Scott Hahn really kind of pioneered covenant theology, but others have taken up, including John Bergsma and many Others.
So you see covenants throughout scripture where God makes a covenant with his people or someone will make a covenant with another person. And it's important that we understand this is not merely a contractual relationship. It usually implies a lot more. There's usually a notion of establishing kind of kinship, a family. It's often associated with a religious priestly sacrifice. And the most solemn covenants are certainly lifelong bonds. They stand throughout until death. And then if you violate the covenant, these covenants, the penalty is often death. Then there's a whole covenant code that surrounds each covenant. So this is characteristic. You see this in sort of the mosaic covenants that are established by God with Moses and the people of Israel. And that's certainly rich. Part of that's in the background of what Paul's talking about. And this, of course, then brings us into the New Testament. We have to understand what Christ is doing as making a new covenant. Right.
Why is there a new covenant? What's the old covenant? Well, we don't have to get into all of that. But this new covenant is Christ is in Christ, and it is for the salvation of the world. And in some ways that takes us kind of straight to the heart of what Romans then is about, namely sin introduces this problem in the world, namely that man is moving steadily away from God, left to his own will, destroy himself. And so God establishes a covenant with man in order to return man back to this right relationship, a relationship like unto what he had in the beginning when he established all things in due order with Adam and Eve. But of course it's going to supersede that. It's going to be even a greater union as we look forward to it, because much greater as Christ is, than Adam.
And so that's going to manifest sort of the righteousness of God as a faithful lover of his people and lover of Adam and the sons and daughters of Adam through of. I think that gets us covenant and righteousness. I don't know if you want to.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: No, I think that's a great way of looking at it. And it's kind of fascinating too, because you can see in that big picture God's covenant with all of creation, which, of course, human beings break. And then they break themselves. They break their relationships. They break their internal harmony, domestic harmony, civic harmony, religious harmony. All that becomes disordered and no longer capable of really sustaining life and peace and happiness.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: It's just no longer there. So you look at the history of the world, and what you see now is the history of bloodshed, violence, suffering, and within that. But then, of course, God, as a faithful covenant partner, isn't going to let his people fall away. So he begins with the Jews. He begins with Abraham and Moses and David and creates these covenants. But those covenants, if you go back to Abraham, were for the sake of all the nations. And so when he speaks about Jews and Greeks, he's really under the Greeks. There is everyone who's not a jew. So all of the nations, all human beings are part of God's plan. That plan, right then, is fulfilled perfectly in Jesus Christ.
[00:13:36] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Jesus Christ, as we're going to see, is able to fulfill, in a certain sense, both sides of the covenant, both God's side and man's side. So in that sense, we have now a new and everlasting covenant of communion. In a certain sense, now we have Jesus Christ, who has gone through death and still remains in perfect charity with his father from the Holy Spirit. And in that, then he's able, as it puts it in romans one four, he's kind of designated the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection. So now in Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is completely one with the Father. All of creation has begun in the human nature of Jesus Christ. Creation has begun to be restored. And right now sits part of our earthly creation. Our human nature sits at the right hand of the Father. So in that communion and then that sense of we are called to participate in that gift.
I think that's a great way of putting it. And it's interesting, too, if you go to romans five one, another famous line. Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So justification by faith gives us peace with God. So could you say more a little bit about both that sense of justification by faith and then the peace of God that it gives us?
[00:15:15] Speaker A: So a lot there? I want to start by saying that I think part of the confusions that come about, particularly in sort of protestant and catholic disputes over this is there's kind of a robust catholic principle in reading the New Testament as a whole and as we live the faith of an already but not yet. And so I think that's important to keep in mind with this reading, even here at five, right. That we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God. So there's this idea. This has already been accomplished. There's something perfect already in the life and the sacrifice and the resurrection of Christ. It's already done, but there's also a not yet in the sense that we have to get ourselves more fully conformed to that life in Christ. And how do you do that? Well, I think that that's what St. Paul means when he's talking about the obedience of faith and the way he'll talk about it elsewhere in a theme you already mentioned in Romans. It's like I must make up in my body what's lacking in the sufferings of Christ. Right. So there's this idea. This has already been accomplished in Christ perfectly in himself. Our job is to sort of be more fully conformed. That's another important phrase here in Romans, to Christ. Right. That's the goal for us in the spiritual life. And that's how we get back to the three terms. The first of them, participate in the life of Christ.
Romans has kind of set this up for us.
It's a fascinating letter and it's so well organized, though it's a difficult letter in the beginning, right after he set it up, he's sort of showing this problem with the Gentiles. It's like, look, gentiles, you're all in a bad way, right? Until yesterday, you were worshipping idols and you were doing all sorts of debauched things. There's no hope there for you in that way of life. You know that. But God's an impartial judge. So we all stand condemned as Gentiles, as the people of the nations, but also the jewish people, as he points out, you also stand condemned under the law that you have, because no one is righteous, all have sinned, all have gone astray. And so Paul is going to set up this problem that whatever you say about salvation history and as important a role as the people of Israel have in salvation history, the problem is the same for everyone, namely that we're condemned under sin, either without the law if you're a gentile, or with the law if you're not. And that is our problem. The only solution is the righteousness of God that's vindicated in us through faith working in us. And that's what so chapter four then, really is him saying, manifesting through Abraham, especially how it's by faith that Abraham is righteous, right. It was reckoned him as righteousness that Abraham took what God said by faith. And that that becomes key.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: And I think if we go into that understanding, I think we've kind of focused especially a little bit on how Paul will say in romans 328, right, we hold a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Those works of the law, the ergonomai in the greek right, especially, is associated with the works of the old law. Circumcision, the ceremonial works of the old law. Those were good, but they were inadequate and incomplete to root out sin. And even the prophets would speak about, there needs to be a new covenant, right, according to Jeremiah, to be written on our hearts in Ezekiel, we have to have our heart of sown taken away and given a heart of flesh. So we have this understanding that we're justified by faith apart from the works of the law. But that does not exclude, say, the works of love, because the works of loving God is still a part of our justification. So we've spoken a little bit, I think, about how the notion of justification is more than maybe I thought when I was in college as an evangelical Protestant. But what would you say to. I think there are many kind of relatively somewhat poorly catechized Catholics who do kind of have a sense that if they're good, they'll go to heaven, right. That if they kind of try to do nice things and think nice thoughts and not be racist and not, I don't know, not kill people or do something if they're basically good, that they'll go to heaven. So what would you say to kind of maybe like the average Catholic, so to speak, what are they missing about this language of that we hold that a man is justified by faith?
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess I would say they should take my creation and grace class, because in some way, my creation grace class is all about that. And it could be reduced down to, really, a thorough understanding of Romans one through eight.
So it is certainly true that the deficiency of just saying, oh, it's faith alone.
That's all you need.
And then you kind of make justification in that sort of a hyper protestant reading is you make justification really a legal fiction.
God is just going to call you just without any reality. He just makes it that way kind of volunteerism.
So on the right side you're supposed to say, yeah, no, you really become just. It's not just pretending none of that happened, or it's not a legal fiction, but it's naming something that's real in you. You are actually made to be righteous.
But the problem is thinking if that righteousness comes through something you've done, and if you think that there's a name for that, that's called pelagianism. It's an ancient heresy that Augustine fought with. Great zeal there in the idea here is that the gift of faith comes from God, but it doesn't just come to with an indifferent effect, that the only change is now I was believing and now I'm not believing. No, it comes to us through grace. And this is where one of the great insights we get from Thomas Aquinas. So his commentary on Romans is just a masterpiece. Just a masterpiece. And he will say what Romans is about more than anything else. What it's about is about grace. And it's all about, in particularly the gospel of grace. And he says the whole body of Romans up to twelve is about the gospel of grace.
This actually agrees again with the sort of the new Pauline perspective which they will talk about. It's about the gospel of salvation. But these two things go together, right, in the righteousness and grace. These things go together.
Why is this? Well, because you have to have this. Thomas gives us a robust account of grace that permeates throughout all the scriptures. And he takes it first from Peter, right, where it talks about grace as a participation in the divine life, in the very life of God. And so then if you see then that faith comes to us as a grace, then it isn't just a matter. It's like, well, I believed or I didn't believe, now I believe. But there's a whole new life that comes with that, because you can't believe without God being within you in some way, and that's wholly a gift from God. You don't earn that. It's to make it very like there's nothing we can do to kind of earn or merit God's love. That's the big difference for human love. When we love, we love things because they're good or they're beautiful, but God's love isn't that way because God isn't moved by us.
Rather, God's loving us is what makes us good, what makes us beautiful. And I think if you start to see that, suddenly romans starts to unlock and you see, oh, this is what it's all about.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's right in romans five eight, which we were leading up to. But this idea that God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Therefore, we are now justified by his blood. Much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. But the sense that God shows his love for us, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
For me, I cannot earn my salvation. Salvation is a free gift given by God in Jesus Christ. I can't earn my creation. Even creation itself is a free gift when we recognize it. And then the fact that that creation has been spoiled, I'm simply powerless to overcome. And the most obvious thing is overcome death. Well, I can't.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Maybe it's like we may not totally recognize that we can't overcome sin, although I think once we begin to see it, we might begin to recognize it. But it is a gift, in a way, to see ourselves in that mode. But if we just look at sin and death together, I can't overcome, as one of the founding members of our department, Father Matthew Lamb would say, is that often, despite all the promises of modern technology and modern politics, crime and sickness remain rather prevalent, and which is why hospitals and prisons are crowded. We actually just don't do a very good job of overcoming sin and death. But God loved us anyway. And not only loves us, but he sent his son right here. Jesus Christ died for us. So I think this is something that's just a mindset that's wholly other.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: It's counterintuitive to all the rest of the world, which is if we work a little harder, we get a little more. If we're better in a relationship, the relationship will grow. Everything else is somewhat reciprocal.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: But we don't have reciprocity with God. We are wholly dependent, and only when we admit we're utterly incapable of justifying ourselves. I think it sometimes, too. Justification can sound. I don't know, it can sound overly technical, but just tell somebody they're wrong and they'll immediately justify themselves.
[00:27:07] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: We have a strong tendency to want to justify ourselves and explain why what we did was okay and to recognize, oh, just to kind of say no. Ultimately, I am unable to justify myself, and I am utterly in need of God's free gift of justifying love and healing and grace in Jesus Christ. So we're going to take a break, and when we come back, I want to just talk a little bit more to make sure we really appreciate this Paul line teaching in Romans on justification by faith and how we live in accordance with that according to the obedience of faith that he describes. And then secondly, I want to really focus in maybe on Romans eight, the new life in the spirit, and also right the role of suffering and divine providence. So we'll be back in a minute.
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[00:28:35] Speaker B: Welcome back to the Catholic Theology show. I'm your host, Michael Doffiney, and today we are joined by Daniel Lenman, professor of theology at Ave Maria University, who teaches a course on Paul and Romans. And today we've been discussing Romans and trying to understand this great theme of justification by faith and how God's righteousness is communicated to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ. So thank you, Daniel, for being on the show.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Such a joy.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: Excellent. So I just wanted to make a kind of background comment. We were talking a little bit about the more contemporary readings of St. Paul that have recovered a notion that we enter the covenant through faith, but we stay in the covenant through works of love. But it's also interesting if you go back to the doctrine or the council of Trent back in the 16th century, after the Reformation, really the catholic kind of response to certain questions about justification and other things. So the Trent has a whole session on justification.
And it's very interesting because what happens there is, there are four quick stages. In a way, justification is both an event, it's a process, and it's a maturation.
In a way, it's kind of like our own lives. We're born, we grow, we bear fruit. And what it says is actually right at the beginning in justification, we are translated the way it puts it, but it's kind of like, we'd say, transferred from being a child of Adam with a wounded nature to becoming a child of God in Jesus Christ.
Then it describes faith as the root and foundation of our justification.
Then it talks about how we can cooperate with faith and grow in our works. And then ultimately it talks about how we can even bear fruit in merit, so we can even do things by faith with Christ in us, because we're truly participating in Christ, and we could even do things that are meritorious, but only because we are doing them in Christ. Nothing on our own. But that idea of justification, I think, is a little bit sometimes, I think, richer than I think many Catholics understand.
I think sometimes even Protestants understand. Adolf von Harnack, a great protestant historian of dogma who wrote a three volume work around 1900 on the history of dogma. But he wrote there that if the Council of Trent's decree on justification had been written 40 years earlier, there would have been no reformation.
He thought it was that beautifully stated.
And I've also known evangelical Protestants who have read the catechism on grace and justification, and they're just like, wait a second. That's what I believe. Whoa. I thought Catholics thought you could earn your salvation and clearly says that we don't. But I think what happens sometimes is that if the protestant understanding, or at least the typical view, is that by faith alone, then the catholic response is, well, we have faith in works, and I think that's not really adequate. That's right, if it's not sola fide. But Trent really does talk about kind of a prima fide. Faith has a primacy.
Faith has to be the root and foundation of all our works. So anyway, I just think that's in Trent, and I think it's in the catechism. And I think a lot of Catholics really don't fully understand that primacy of faith, of Hearing. And Romans one and 16 will talk about the obedience of faith. In Hebrew, obedience simply means hear, listen. It's like when you tell your children listen, but in certain sense, hear O Israel in the New Testament, both in Greek and in Latin, ab odiere, to listen with. In the Greek, hypoacuo, with a certain sense of listen under. So obedience is kind of listening, and it is at first, then just receiving the good news of Jesus Christ that Jesus Christ died and rose again for us.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: And it's hearing that and listening, and the faith is entrusting, and then it's continuing to listen to that word, right. And therefore to live in accordance with it. So just if you'd say a little bit maybe, about your reading of Romans and how it takes up that kind of official church teaching in Trent.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's great.
I guess I'll just kind of give us a run through kind of what Romans is doing.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: Sure. Maybe like chapter by chapter, even just a quick summary, especially the first, maybe.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Eight, but a little bit beyond great.
The thesis again of Romans comes down to, for in it, the righteousness of God is in it, the gospel, the gospel of salvation, the Gospel of grace.
The righteousness of God is revealed through faith, for faith, as it is written, he who through faith is righteous shall live. So then he sets up sort of the problem, the predicament, as it were, of the Gentiles, that they're condemned through the life of idolatry that belonged to those outside the covenant.
And then comes in, in chapter two, talking about God's impartiality, that God's the just judge. So if you stand condemned, you stand condemned. If you're righteous, you're righteous. And this is true, the Gentiles. And then in three, it's also true of the jewish people, who have the unique privilege of being condemned not just from idolatry, but being condemned under the law. And as he says, none is righteous. No, not one. The great reference back to the Old Testament there in Isaiah.
So the problem is that everybody stands condemned, both Gentile and Jew, in their own particular ways. So then, now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. So now everybody is condemned in their diverse modes. Now everybody's going to be saved through faith. Jew first, then greek, as Paul teaches us. And he explains this by going back to the example of Abraham. We talked about that a little bit earlier and showing how Abraham was reckoned to him as righteousness, not after circumcision, which Abraham receiving circumcision would have been a sign of him sort of being under the law here. But this was given to Abraham. And the first abrahamic covenant, the first promises, was just a gift on the part of God to Abraham and Abraham's belief. And it was reckoned to him as righteous.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: Yeah, there's even that kind of just simple observation that Paul makes right, is that the call of Abraham is in Genesis twelve. He's justified by faith. He's counted to him as righteousness in Genesis 15, and then he's circumcised it in Genesis 17. So the circumcision, the ceremonial works of the law, cannot be the basis of Abraham's justification.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: But importantly, his act of faith is. And granted, that comes from God first. It's also Abraham's act of faith, which is.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: And he also lives out the act of faith by obedience to the law that was given to him by God. So for him then, the circumcision was a seal. And just as for us, then obedience to the law is not contrary. It's the seal, in a way, of our justification. It's living within that covenant.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: Exactly. And so that's where we come to chapter five, where Paul teaches us that the reconciliation with God, where all alike are sinned, now all, like, can be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ, that that gift of faith comes to us through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. And so that now we can rejoice in our sufferings and bring hope because we don't suffer and die in vain, we now can suffer and die with Christ Jesus. And so there's a kind of going back, a recapitulation of creation, which is a great theme in the Old Testament that Paul kind of brings back here and doing this comparison between Adam and Christ. And I think it's important to go back that he goes all the way back to Adam. He doesn't stop at Moses. He wants to say, no, this gets everybody. Christ is a new Adam. So it's gentile and jew alike are from Adam. And so the sin of Adam brought death to the world and sin, now the sacrifice of Christ can bring salvation to the world. But there's kind of a question there. Well, I know how I'm of Adam, right? I was just born and I'm a descendant. Okay, great. How do we be of Christ? Right.
So then logically, what you talk about then in chapter six, of course, is baptism. Right? Baptism is how we are now in Christ. But how we get in Christ is first by dying. We die with Christ. And what does that do? That frees us from the wages of sin because we've already died. The wages of sin is death. But now you've died in baptism with Christ, and so you rise with him. So you've already begun the resurrected life in some way, although not yet that. Already. Not yet.
And I think that's why in chapter seven, Paul makes it very clear with the analogy of marriage. Very complicated chapter.
But just in kind of the quick overview, it makes this analogy to marriage where it says, look, marriage, a covenant, lasts until death, but once the spouse dies, you are free to marry because that covenant bond is over. So also the sort of covenant going back even to the adamic covenant, where all men are condemned to sin, or to the mosaic covenants, where they condemned under the law, that lasts until you die. Well, we just talked about, you died in chapter six with baptism, hopefully. Right? And so now you're free from that old covenant, the old covenant of death, the old covenant under the mosaic law. And instead, you rise in the new covenant, a new life in Christ Jesus.
You have now live according to the law of Grace. And that's what chapter eight is about, the life in the spirit and what that looks like, how we live that out. Just fast forwarding really quickly, nine through eleven seems to me is really kind of answering a latent objection that's kind of there, namely while talking about God's righteousness, his covenant faithfulness. What about the people of Israel? And I think Paul is particularly concerned about the people of Israel who have not believed in Christ. Is God still faithful to them? And so you have, nine through eleven is kind of dealing with that issue, and then twelve through the end really is kind of how that more or less practically works out in the life of the Christian.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that's really so well put. And it's great to see that sense that there's really a narrative unity. Right. Paul is, of course, a know. He studied with gamaliel.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:40:34] Speaker B: One of the great rabbis of his day. As a pharisee. He was a leading pharisee. Studying with the leading rabbi. He was clearly, as a roman citizen. He was fluent in Hebrew, but also Greek. He had studied roman oratory, roman rhetoric. And so his letter is not right. This is a sophisticated letter.
And I think the way we see him just developing this idea. And so I do think it's really beautiful to see then, right. Faith and baptism become the way that I receive God's free gift of salvation, in a way, if I'm born naturally.
But that birth is also wounded. Anytime you have a bunch of children. We've had children and grandchildren now, right? And the moment you hold that child, one of the things you recognize is how vulnerable that child is.
Every parent just. That child is vulnerable. What do you want to protect that child from? Well, sin and death, their own sin, the sins of others death. And you also know you can't. And so that birth, no matter how, it's not that it's not beautiful, it's not that it's not loving, but it just is radically incomplete. So there needs to be a new birth. And that's what baptism is. Going back underwater, dying that natural death and then being reborn. I love in romans five. Five, the way it just says hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
[00:42:11] Speaker A: That's such a beautiful verse.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: And so it's this gift of the spirit. So when we get to Romans eight, then we think about what does then. What is this spirit that's been poured into our hearts? And so we have this beautiful right at the beginning of Romans eight, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. So the Holy Spirit in me, given by Christ in his resurrection and ascension, now is in me. And this is what actually frees me.
[00:42:43] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:42:43] Speaker B: So it's my faith and baptism, but it's ultimately right. It's the Holy Spirit that dwells in me. And there's one line I love, and I think it's so powerful. But I thought we'd just say a few things about Romans eight as a whole. But I want to just dive into this Romans 811, where he just says this. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you now, again, just think about this.
Of course, yes. Jesus as the eternal son of God is part of the Trinity. But Jesus'human nature is also just human nature, truly God, truly man. So his human nature is dead, and it's dead. Right. So his human nature needs, in a way, to be revivified by the Holy Spirit. Just as Adam, in a way, was breathed into his nostrils, the Holy Spirit, when Jesus rose from the dead, he breathed on his apostles, the Holy Spirit. So his human nature needs to be restored. But that Holy Spirit was powerful enough to raise Jesus'body from the dead and to restore his body to new life. And not only not just a resuscitated corpse, but a holy new life, the life of the resurrected Jesus, which ascends into heaven and is now at the right hand of God the Father. Again, that spirit that did all that, that created the universe, that recreated Jesus Christ, now dwells in us. And so just read it again. Romans 811. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his spirit who dwells in you.
So just say a little bit about this sense of the. Of Romans. I think this is something that's overlooked again, that it's a powerful teaching that God's spirit, who created the universe, who raised Jesus from the dead, now dwells in us as members of his new covenant as children of God.
[00:44:50] Speaker A: Yeah, so much that was so beautifully said.
So the life and the spirit that we possess it, just to emphasize first that point you're making, and we get from acts with Pentecost, we see the sending of the Holy Spirit on the apostles and our blessed mother and those gathered in the upper room. There you see it. It's represented as a new Sinai, right? You try to see, no, this is God in you and dwelling in you and that life in the spirit. Then it becomes a new principle, a new sort of source of how we live our life.
So I'm going to sound like a broken record, but again, there's an already, but not yet here, where the life of the resurrection has already begun in us. And in fact, this is language we've kind of lost nowadays, but it's part of our tradition. Thomas Aquinas makes it explicit there in the Terzia paras of the summa theologia where he talks about the baptism is the resurrection of the soul.
So the resurrected life has already begun in us in the spirit.
With that principle of resurrected life, there's life in the spirit.
The logic is, well, of course it's going to carry over to your body. So the idea is just living then in such a way that you're in conformity with that life in the spirit. And so that's what eight is about, opposing flesh and spirit. Now this is important too, because this has been a source of confusion throughout the history of the church.
We want to distinguish flesh and body, sarks and soma, because sometimes those get confused. And there's been lots of history or lots of heresies, excuse me, where people have sort of taken readings like this and sort of despising the body and things, and we don't want to do that too much at all. So Sark's here. Flesh, when Paul's talking about it, almost always doesn't mean body, but here it means the principle of in us by we're inclined to sin, what we might call concupisance in that kind of technical sense. Right? It's referring to our fallenness there, where the body is sort of where that's housed, as it were, but is not in itself flesh. And that's important because that's what's going to rise and it's going to be divinized, spiritualized in the resurrection. And so keeping this life in the spirit, we become debtors, not to the flesh, to living according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. So this goes back to this reading. So the spirit, faith, the life of grace is given freely, you don't merit that, you don't earn that, just like you don't merit being born, right? It happens to you. So the life of grace is given to you, and then it's your job to live in conformity with that, and that's the cooperation. So there you have that justification, which is a gift, but then also the obedience of faith, wherein we live out that life of the spirit.
[00:48:20] Speaker B: Well, that's excellent summary of, again, that great gift that the spirit of Jesus, who raised Jesus from the dead, dwells in us and therefore allows us to be reborn and to live according to this higher mode. In Romans eight, we also have this right. In Romans 814, all who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God. You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but the spirit of sonship. When we cry Abba Father, we call God Abba Father. Right. Father. Papa. Daddy. It is the spirit himself, bearing witness that we are children of God. If children, then heirs. Heirs of God, fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him. Right. That we may be glorified with him. And this is, of course, where Paul begins to introduce that our sufferings are not in vain, our sufferings begin to share in Christ's sufferings. Or goes on a little further. I consider the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us. I just want to highlight one or two other themes because we are beginning to run out of time. But therefore, again, in Romans eight, a little bit later, it's the spirit that helps us in our weakness. We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the spirit intercedes for us with size too deep for words. And any listeners who are experiencing deep suffering and don't know how sometimes even to articulate. Remember, it's the spirit that intercedes for us with size too deep for words. And then we move on this beautiful line. In Romans 828, we know that in everything, God works for good. God brings good with those who love him. And so we just have this deep sense, and then it goes on at the very end. Talks about, can anything separate us from God? Right? Nothing. I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. I want to highlight two quick themes, and then I want to ask you, just kind of ask you to think a little bit about what are a couple things, maybe two key points that you really want your students to remember down the road.
But before, I just wanted to highlight kind of two fun facts about Romans Augustine famously converts when he picks up Romans and he picks up the Bible in the garden. But it's actually Romans. Romans 13.
Let us conduct ourselves becomingly, as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. So this is the power of Romans. It just. Augustine reads, right, romans 1313 to 14, and his life has changed. The history of the church has changed beautifully. And it's also interesting, a lot of people don't know this as well, but C. S. Lewis, when he actually, in 1931, has his conversion to back to Christianity, he talks about talking with Tolkien and Dyson, but he also says during this time he goes, I have just finished. This is a quote from a letter of his from September 19 or October 1, 1931. I have just finished reading the epistle to the Romans. Right. The first pauline epistle I've ever seriously read through. It contains many difficult things, but the essential idea of death, death as a transformative principle that allows us to live beyond this life is there. So it's kind of just, again, Romans has this powerful effect. Again, Lewis and Augustine, what gifts to the church. So I just wanted to highlight that. And so maybe what are two key themes that you'd love students to remember?
[00:52:14] Speaker A: Well, you really touched on the biggest is at the end of the first exam, really the heart of the first exam I give to migration grace students is explaining how the meaning of nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. I mean, it's, it's essentially the whole exam is to give an exegesis on that passage. So eight is really the central chapter in Romans. You can't just read it in exclusion because you'll misunderstand it. You have to read in context. But really, what we see there in eight is the great glory of the New Testament, where how far Christ surpasses the old order, how far Christ surpasses the old covenants, even the original glory in which Adam and Eve were created. Why? Because innate, you see that we are now the life that we share with Christ, with God, is no longer sort of extrinsic to God in any way, but we now enter into a kind of inter trinitarian kind of life. There's a new mode of living where we are sons and the son of the Father alive.
In the Holy Spirit.
And that's the theme. And so if you've already begun this resurrected life, if you're already in the sort of trinitarian family and that covenant bond, then what can anything do? Who can condemn us? It's Christ who vindicates. I mean, there's nothing, but we still suffer. Well, what do we do? Well, now in Christ, through this life of grace, all of that becomes occasions for our sanctification. All of that becomes occasions for purifying, ridding whatever is left of the flesh in us, ridding ourselves of that, and growing this progress in our lives, please God. So that in the end, we can sort of appreciate the fullness and perfection of that. And this is why Romans twelve through 15, six. It's not just, here's some practical notes, but it flows out of the letter, how you live your life. And that's what converted Augustine, finally, was very practical, straightforward, right?
You cast off the works of darkness, put on the armor of light. We conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not reveling in drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, make no provision for the flesh to gratify his desires. So you have really a set for the whole life of grace, the whole spiritual life. It's all kind of, Paul's given us this teaching in Romans to really lead us.
[00:55:08] Speaker B: Well, thank you so much, Daniel, for being on the show and for really just kind of reawakening my love of Romans and of course of Jesus Christ and the gospel of God that he communicates to us and that Paul as an apostle shares with us. By the way, listeners who have enjoyed and maybe gotten a taste for why our students love Dr. Lenman so much. If you go back to April 4, we have a podcast episode from last year called made for worship preparing for holy week. So that's something you might find interesting.
There's an episode with Scott Hahn on God's holiness in scripture, which is very relevant. And then there's also one with John Bergsma on the Bible and the Eucharist and looking through the covenants on April 25. So there's a lot there. And again, thank you so much for being with us. If you like the show, consider sharing it with some family and friends. So thank you so much, and thanks again.
[00:56:15] Speaker A: Daniel, thank you. My pleasure.
[00:56:18] Speaker C: Thank you so much for joining us for this podcast. If you like this episode, please rate and review it on your favorite podcast app to help others find the show. And if you want to take the next step, please consider joining our Annunciation circle so we can continue to bring you more free content.
We'll see you next time on the catholic theology show.
