Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.

Sylvia 0:00

This says something about how we use the Bible, right? We tend to use the Bible as a rule book. And, you know, can we find something? Can we find a law about that we find a rule about that. So we look in Paul for a couple of places where he says something about women, you know, when women prophesied, they have to have their head covered. Or in Timothy, I do not permit a woman to teach. Oh, okay, there we've got the rules. But we ignore the fact that, that this whole book is actually a narrative, even the laws are rooted in story. So even you know, the beginning of the 10 commandments, if you grew up like I did, hearing it every week, you know that you know, I am the Lord your God who led you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, you shall have no other gods, even the 10 commandments are rooted in the story, the narrative of who God is.

So when we read, Paul, you can't just look at what he said. But we have to look at the narrative in which his words occur.

Seth Intro 1:07

What is happening everyone happy whatever day it is that you downloaded this. I'm glad that you're here. I'm Seth This is the Can I Say This At Church podcast and it's 2020 I feel like I skipped that in January. It's insane. I don't know exactly when this episode will come out but this is either like the last week of January or the first couple weeks of February and it is flying by I don't even know what's happening right now.

So if you, for some reason, have gotten anything out of this free podcast, I want to make an appeal to supporting the show you can do that one of three ways. The most helpful would be to just just head over to the website for the show or click down in the show notes consider supporting the show. There are well as a recording this 50 people there 51 somewhere in that range. And I would love to grow that number. I have massive dreams for the show. One of the things that wanted to try to do this year, which just isn't going to work is a live version of the show. But I realized it's just not feasible at the moment. But I really, really want it to be, but that's going to require travel and a few other things. And that's only going to be made possible by some of you listening, you know, pitching in literally $1 a month or whatever it is that you can do. And I will say thank you up front for that.

If you for some reason, can't do that rate review, tell your friends share the show, it is a blast to get random emails from people that say, you know, hey, I found your show or, or they say, Hey, you know, found the show, and this helped or that help drive was able to talk about this with some friends because of the conversations that are happening here. And so rating and reviewing, definitely and sharing is a great way to also help out the show.

Last year, early fall, I was given a book from Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh, on disarming Romans, by Romans, I don't mean the people. I don't mean the country, I mean the book of Romans, so much of what churches, at least in the West preach on, especially in the like the Protestant version of church that many call home, and that many used to call him. So much of what we argue about and bicker about and throw stones at people with are the words of Paul, especially the Romans words, the words that he wrote to the church there. And it was an honor to talk with Sylvia and with Brian, about that; as I edited this back down, I waited a few a couple months, I think actually, before I start editing and I busted out laughing I probably woke up my kids. There's there's a part of here where Brian interrupts her. And I don't want to bury it. I don't want to spoil it but I got a kick out of it. I got a kick out of it then I got a kick out of it as well editing it.

And so this is a very deep conversation and their book is extremely deep and extremely worthwhile. And so I hope that you enjoyed this conversation about disarming the book of Romans, taking away its ammunition and maybe-maybe reframing the way that we should think about him for the church tomorrow, as well.

Seth 4:40

Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh, welcome to the Can I Say This At Church podcast; based on some feedback from my wife, I recently did not say who I was. So I'm Seth. And so there was a confusion of who was who as the conversation went on a little bit into the conversation, so I'm going to try to remedy that on the fly. Because I was told that I think on Monday, so welcome to the show. I'm glad you're here. And I'm thankful for your patience getting here.

Brian and Sylvia 5:04

Okay. Good to be here.

Seth 5:07

I always like to start with the same question, because it's extremely open ended and you can take it wherever you want. But briefly, very briefly, where do each of you come from as you approach faith? What's kind of a little bit of what makes you you?

Brian 5:22

Hmmm…Well, I come to Christian faith as a convert. I was converted when I was 16 years old through an inner city mission in downtown Toronto. So for me, the Jesus that I came to, to follow through that ministry and also through reading the gospel of John; in fact I read the gospel of John one night in one sitting. And at the end of that sitting, I prayed the first prayer ever in my life, which was God if you're there, I want to know.

And in the morning, something had happened and I knew. So, so the, the following of Jesus is both deeply connected to life on the street and and urban realities and, and life in a world of turmoil. This was 1969. And my first spiritual crisis relates really well to your podcast, Can I Say This At Church? Because I went, I went to church, about a two, three weeks after my conversion, because people told me that's what Christians do. And I couldn't figure out what, what they were talking about because the Jesus that they were talking about didn't seem to relate to the Jesus of both my experience and my reading of Scripture. So I kind of think that I've been trying to resolve that for the last 50 years.

Seth 6:49

What's one of the questions they wouldn't let you say? Or you felt you felt tepid, intrepid? I don't know what the word is.

Brian 6:56

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't so much that there was that I didn't think I could say things…it was that they weren't talking about things that seemed to relate to me. I mean, the very first sermon I heard was on stewardship. And I don't know why, as a 16 year old kid, before the environmental movement had really taken off and the word stewardship came to have certain kinds of meaning. I don't know why but for some reason, when the topic was announced stewardship, I thought that that would have something to do with economic justice. And of course, it didn't. It was about giving money to the church…

Seth 7:19

It was about church budget.

Brian 7:22

Yeah, that's right. And so that was just really, I don't know. I mean, I know I follow Jesus. And I know these are followers of Jesus. So that means they're my family. But I'm not feeling part of the family.

Sylvia 7:51

And I grew up completely differently. So I grew up in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) with a heavy emphasis on the Bible, but not very evangelical at that time, it is more now. And at the age of 12, felt that God had called me to, to the ministry actually to preaching, which you couldn't do if you were a female in the Christian Reformed Church at that point. So I found myself eventually in the Anglican Church, I didn't go to seminary because I couldn't see a future in that and became a Biblical scholar instead. And ironically, what that call was when I was 12, was I really wanted to share the story of Jesus, I wanted to tell people about the Bible, and explain it to people. And that's what I do. That's, that is the calling I fulfill.

And of course, now I also preach, so that's a nice side benefit. But you know, over the years, thinking about how that story, how the Biblical story and the story of Jesus relates to, you know, all parts of our lives what it means for every decision we make that's that's sort of what I've been spending my time struggling with and trying to help other people struggle with.

Seth 9:07

I don't know much about the denomination would they let you preach now? If you reset the clock?

Sylvia 9:13

Yes, they would. They would let me preach now. So I have preached quite a bit in the Christian Reformed Church as well. In fact, I kind of straddle both worlds a little bit we do a lot of speaking in the CRC but then also in the Anglican Church, which is our church home.

Seth 9:28

Brian, you preach as well currently right? Or I feel like you did or do one of the other.

Brian 9:32

Yes Seth. I preach in our own Parish, but I also pastor a community at the University of Toronto, called Wine Before Breakfast. I'm a Christian reformed. This is funny thing. I'm a Christian Reformed campus minister, though I am an Anglican, and I've been a Christian Reformed campus Minister for almost 25 years now. And so we began a worship community actually one week after 911, September 18, 2001. And that community called Wine Before Breakfast and I pastor that community and I preach though I dont preach the majority of the time, I think it's really, that we raise up people to open the Word within the community.

Seth 10:21

That name Wine Before Breakfast reminds me of a picture that I literally saw this morning that I saw, I believe from a friend of mine from Canada, although I'm not certain where he lives because it's a it's a Native American word. And I'm going to say it wrong, or a native indigenous word or what I've already said it wrong. It's too many letters. But it said something to the effect of my church has a practice of allowing people to make their own bread as they bring like the members make the bread as they do. Come on. Yep, he's like, but I just want to be clear. I'm tired of whole wheat. I'm really tired of it. And then someone else committed Yeah, but remember when the pastor got mad when someone put raisins in the bread, and they said it as a sarcastic joke, because raisins are what you No, the derivative of wine and so really, I'm just trying to do a twofer, but apparently nobody was having and I laughed so hard. It didn't hit me at first I was like, clever, clever. Somebody got me.

So you have written a book and rather large one it at that I will say I struggled reading through Romans because the way that I have read it historically, even up until recently was with a different lens than the way that y'all approach it. And so the name of your book is Romans disarmed. What does that mean? How is how his Romans even been armed to begin with?

Brian 11:40

Well there's a there's a double entendre that's French for “double meaning”. We're from a bilingual country and I thought that I’d share that with you. It's a double entendre in the title. And the first is that the epistle to the Romans has been armed. It's been used as a weapon has been used as a weapon, at least since the reformation, and probably before, so that it becomes a text that is used as a judge of Orthodoxy. It's used as a weapon against other Christians. And so there's a sense of weariness amongst so many with this letter. You come to it and you think, Oh my goodness, who's going to get hit over the head with this one this time?

There's the course the Romans road way of reading it, which is a couple of proof texts that become the path to salvation, and that itself can be used in what seems to us to be rather abusive ways towards non-Christians. So there's that arming that we think “no we have to find a reading which disarms that reading”. Why? Not because we're liberals and we don't like to beat up on people. But but because it's a fundamental misreading of the text. The text is all about bringing a community that is already at enmity with each other, bring that community together. So how on earth can it be appropriately used to continue to split up communities? So that's the first sense of disarming.

The second sense is we think that Paul's letter to the Romans disarms the Empire. It subverts the Empire. So there's that second meaning to to to what we mean by Romans disarmed. So reading the letter in the context of its first century, Imperial world. And then overhearing that, speaking in the context of the 21st century Imperial reality, so double meaning in disarmed.

Seth 13:56

You focused on two things there I want to zero in on when you say community. So for Paul, that would be the Jew, the Jew and Gentile community there and the church in Rome and how they're having some issues, correct?

Sylvia 14:10

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And, and, and it's, I mean, that community has been been shaped by recent political events in in Rome. So, you know, when the year in the year 49, under the Emperor Claudius, a lot of the Jews were expelled from Rome, including Prisca (Priscilla) and Aquila, who we meet in the book of Acts, who are now back in Rome because Paul mentions them at the end of Romans 16.

So you had a church where all of the Jewish leadership had to leave. And all of those who were able to ground the story of Jesus in Israel’s scriptures weren't there. They were gone. And you have a community that's made up largely now of Gentile Christians who probably want to keep their head down about following a Jewish Messiah, right? They don't want to emphasize the connection with Judaism, because then they themselves can become the kind of scapegoat that the Jews were.

So after a while Claudius dies and the Jews are allowed to return to Rome and that's probably when Prisca and Aquila came back. And, and probably a bunch of the others that Paul mentions in Romans 16, who he calls his kin, or his relatives that as its sometimes translated but that's, you know, fellow Jews, and they would have come back to Rome. But now Jews have for all these years been a scapegoat, right? They are the people who everybody is suspicious of and doesn't want to return. Kind of like another ethnic group that you might know from your own country. Right? We do that right…we scapegoat.

Seth 15:55

Well yes with multiple ethnic groups but yes,

Sylvia 15:56

That's true. There's there's a few I was In San Diego at the border last week, so I have a particular picture in my mind. So when those Jews came back, there were some tensions there—probably someone in the Christian community wanting to welcome open arms. But there were probably a significant group of people who didn't want it to say, you know what, like we can involve with these folks, we're going to get in trouble. And we don't we don't want to be we don't want to be on the wrong side of Nero. That's not a good place to be. So that created tensions in the community.

But then there's also just the tensions that come about when people have different socio economic groups get together. So you have people who are very, very poor people who are slaves, and the tensions that come about from people with people from different ethnic backgrounds. So you know, is it okay to eat meat? Well, Gentiles think it's fine to eat meat that's been offered to idols, all meat in the ancient world was probably slaughtered in the temple in some form. So most meat had been offered to idols at some point, whether you knew it or not. And so, you know, Gentiles think “well that's fine”. That's how you get meat that's the butcher shop and Jews are stepping back and saying no, no, we don't want to eat that. That's not kosher. Literally. That's not that's not food. We're not comfortable eating Imperial food and so, so those kinds of tensions were in the community and we know that from from Romans 14 and 15.

So Paul, we can also discern if you look at Romans 16 there is a long list of people Paul's writing the letter to and also, there's a sense that there's some groups there's a house that meets in a church that meets in the home of Priscilla and Aquila probably met in a workshop. There's probably a Jewish group, which Paul calls the saints. There's other groups, there's groups of slaves that meeting various households, they would have been scattered throughout the city. Those those groups Christians, and only came together occasionally. So they themselves would have had different ways of being Christian together. And Paul's trying to negotiate that as as well. So it's a community that for various reasons, has some fragmentation.

Brian 18:19

So here's an interesting thing that I just thought of and I don't know if this is right or not, because it's not in the book. It's clear that this is a community with serious divisions. There's an ethnic division, there's religious division, the socio economic division, curiously enough, there doesn't appear to be a gender division. Curiously enough, when we read Romans 16, there are more women referred to than men. And, and there, there's no hint that there's a problem within the community on that issue. That's very curious to me.

Seth 18:58

I don't remember directly reading this, but it might have been in there how do we hold that when we use mostly Paul's text when we keep women out of any part of that community today? Not my church specifically, but so so many as well as so many other ministers. So if there's not that division there and so I guess we're both riffing now. Yeah, How do we hold that?

Brian 19:16

We don't we don't serve us good. Oh Sylvia is going to…Nevermind a man just tried to answer a question about women. I’ll shut up.

(laughter all)

Sylvia 19:30

I mean, that's really…this says something about how we use the Bible, right? We we tend to use the right Bible as a rule book. And you know, can we find something-can we find a law about that? What can we find a rule about that? So we look in Paul for a couple of places where he says something about women you know, when women prophesied they have to have that covered? Or in Timothy, I do not permit a woman to teach Oh, okay, there we've got there. We've got the rules.

But we ignore the fact that that this whole book is actually a narrative, even the laws are rooted in story. So even you know the beginning of the 10 commandments, if you grew up like I did hearing it every week, you know that you know, I am the Lord your God who led you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage, you shall have no other gods, even the 10 commandments are rooted in a story, a narrative of who God is. So when we read Paul, we can't just look at what he said, but we have to look at the narrative in which his words occur. And the clues that we have in the narrative and, well, if you read Romans 16, it's clear that Phoebe has brought the letter and that meant she probably read it because the person who carried the letter is the person who read it to the community because they would have been there when Paul wrote it and would have known and probably had talked about it with Paul knowing what he was writing. It's also clear that Paul sends greetings to the church that meets in the house of Prisca and Aquila, very unusual for a woman's name to come before a man's name in the ancient world when you said who they were. That's it just that Priscilla (Prisca) was more important in that relationship. And we and we have that same order in Acts 2, and was probably the leader in that the one with authority in that household.

So well, that's kind of interesting. And then he refers to jJunia, who's an apostle. For a long time that that verse was translated Her name was translated as Junius because it was thought a woman couldn't be an apostle.

Seth 21:35

I’m sure that was an accident… air quotes there on accident.

Sylvia 21:37

(Laughter) Well, especially since the word Junius doesn't occur in the ancient world and the word Junia is very common. That's kind of interesting.

So we have an apostle and then he talks about other women who've worked hard with him, Mary and others in other epistles, who refers to women like in Phillipians. With there's I think four women listed who have worked with him, and then in Corinthians. So it's very interesting that we ignore all those texts that actually talk about the women doing things with Paul, in favor of these other two texts that probably then had a contextual, you know, a context that gave rise to what Paul said there and then we need to discern what that context is.

So, you know, the way we hold that is actually not reading the Bible as if it’s a manual. Right, you know, if is it as if it's a car manual telling you how to, here's how you put it in reverse. You know, here's how you act in the church. That's not that's not what it's what's written for.

Seth 22:48

I couldn't get him to give me a direct answer. But when I talked with Tom Wright, gosh, it's been like a year and a half ago. He said something very similar when we were talking about this section of Paul's writings. And then and then he just wanted to move on and so I let him because I just did. I want to come back to gender…

Brian 23:06

Never allow Tom Wright to move on. Once you’ve got him on something you push him and push him and push him…

Seth 23:14

Well, to be fair, when he'd said yes, I've done like 20 of these and I had no back catalogue, so really no legs to stand on. And I was like, I get to talk to Tom Wright. And so if I have him back, I'm sure I would just probably have to ask him. I probably will. But there was a bit of trepidation on my part I think of this man that wrote so many books on that shelf right over there is literally talking to me. This is exciting. It was for me, it would be like meeting like LeBron James, you know, kind of thing.

Brian 23:42

Yeah, little for me. It'd be like meeting Wendell Berry.

Sylvia 23:47

Meeting, Tom?

Brian 23:49

No, that's higher than meeting Tom. (laughter)

Sylvia 23:52

I did my doctoral work with Tom right. And Brian's known him for many, many years.

Seth 23:56

I have a question that is a derivative of Something that you say in the book. And because I like sarcasm, I would like to know, what is your issue with cell phones because you talk about having a problem with cell phones, which I find odd because we're talking on at least I'm on a MacBook. I don't know what you're on. But so so what's the problem with with cell phones in relation to Romans?

Sylvia 24:20

Okay, so I'm also on a MacBook. Well, I mean, we try to articulate this in the in the book, there's a whole bunch of problems with cell phones that that where we talk about cell phones is the chapter where we're talking about Paul's vision for the restoration of creation and the healing of creation. There's, there's been a lot of work done on the environmental costs of cell phones. So just the the materials that you know, the metals that are in the phones are mined in very unsustainable ways. There's child labor used in mining those metals.

So there's an issue of justice, and an issue of an environmental justice in relation to cell phones. I realized that those things also apply to the mac book that I'm currently speaking on. But the other thing about cell phones is the incredible social cost of them, right? I mean, more and more. When we started the book, there weren't that many studies about this. And as we wrote, more and more studies came out, linking cell phone use to increased depression amongst teenagers, studies talking about how it's not actually just teenagers. There's an addiction that happens with adults and teenagers, with you know, the dopamine that the dopamine hit that you get when you're on a cell phone, and you get a notification. There's studies about how, how they distract us from so many things.

And then there's just the things that we use cell phones for that we can look around and see socially. In terms of I mean, people are looking down on the streets. So for I mean, I think that actually that this this one is huge. You know, it used to be if you were walking even in a city even in Toronto, from the subway to your house, you were passing gardens, you're passing parks, you're looking at people, you're looking at things. Now you're still looking at a screen often or talking on the on the phone. And that creates this disconnection to the world around you. So there's the way that cell phones feed into that.

I don't even need to talk about the whole sexting thing and the inappropriate things that we look at on cell phones that happens to and and then there's the the other end of the environmental piece, what happens when we're done with cell phones, right? What kind of contamination and toxicity is going back into the ground? When we're finished, so there's, there's a whole it's a whole package as to what it's doing to us personally as a culture, environmentally, all of that. And interestingly enough, you know, recent Biblical Studies have shown that the idols they talk about you know, when you talk about idolatry in the Old Testament, often they were very small little three to four inch statues made of metal that fit in your pocket. So you’d carry them around as kind of a comforting thing. The parallel on having something that you trust in your pockets, that you carry around.

Seth 27:40

get rid of your car keys

Sylvia 27:44

all my trust is in the car keys; but if you have seen our cars you would not believe that to be true.

Seth 27:52

I will say I find it comforting. I make the joke just to segue out of that, but um, yeah, I wanted to touch on that. But I often like…pat…if I can't find my phone, I'm usually fine with it. Although I only have notifications turned on for text messages and phone calls, I get no other notifications, which actually causes its own problem because then when I open up Facebook or email or something like that, it's overwhelming. There's like 800 unhandled things, that I don't know how to triage. But during the day, it's really nice not to be bothered, except for something that's going to result in an actual voice or something derivative of voice and it's almost always just my wife, my call log and text log is pretty much just my wife. So that works well.

Seth 28:50

I want to circle back to gender if we can. And so recently I had this conversation in an email with my father because I can't do it on the phone very well. As I started talking about my views on homosexuality. And then he started quoting some Romans to me. What do we do is so when we when we talk about Romans is proof texting as you did earlier? How have we gotten there? Like what would? What do we need to do with that as we talk about gender?

Brian 29:16

Well, as we talk about gender? I'm not sure exactly what…

Seth 29:25

When I say gender, I mean sexuality because people will, will they lump all that into the same thing? Yeah, so we're talking about basically the clobber passages, but Romans always a big one, as well as as well as a few others.

Brian 29:36

Yeah. Okay. I questioned what you meant by gender there because, of course, beyond the, the traditional kinds of questions that we've been struggling with around lesbian/gay relationships. We are now in a situation where there are bigger questions than sexual orientation and that is gender identity questions and Romans is of no help in that whatsoever and nor is our book. We don't really talk about those issues.

But we do talk about the question of homosexuality because Romans one has indeed been such a clever text. As you know since you have the book, we wait until the second last chapter before addressing questions and sexuality and knowing full well that some folks are going to read that first. But we want to contextualize what we had to say about homosexuality in Romans 1 within the context of a larger reading of the epistle.

So our approach to Romans 1 and we attempt to do that by means of a dialogue with an imagined interlocutor who shows up in this book; is we basically want to say, let me put this way. There are about four possible ways of reading Romans in terms of homosexuality.

One would be your dad's way. Here it says, homosexuality is wrong. Paul says, that's it. We're done. Yeah, that's option one.
Option two is, yep Paul says that and times of change, and we disagree. That that's option two.
Option three, would be to say, what Paul is talking about, isn't what we're talking about. So then you interpret what he has to say there in terms of what is the sexual, cultural context of the Roman Empire? What is the nature of the idolatry of the Roman Empire? And what is the nature of the sexuality that becomes dominant within that idolatrous context and that we think Paul is attacking? Is he attacking what we would understand to be faithful, same sex relationships like same sex marriage? And our answer is no, he's not talking about that because it didn't exist. Even the examples that kind of exist that our friend Tom Wright will refer to, such as murals to homosexual marriages. They don't count. They don't count a: because they happened after Paul wrote. So Paul didn't know about them, but which is an interesting problem. But secondly, they don't count because they're not anything like faithful monogamous homosexual relationships, they are parodies of a certain kind of abuse of and over the top sexuality. When we look at the sexuality of the Empire, we see a sexuality that is violent, that is unjust, that that is is a set in power relationships that are exploitive. is Paul against that? Yes, he's against that. Before I go, the next point. Did you want to add something to that Sylvia?

Sylvia 32:58

Sure. I mean, I think that When Paul talks in those those verses about first, you know, women exchanging unnatural acts, and, you know, engaging in unnatural acts, and men engaging in unnatural acts with other men. There would have been what two things:

1. It doesn't say actually that women were engaging in unnatural acts with women. And in fact, the early church fathers when they read those verses, interpreted it to mean women engaging in unnatural sexual acts with men. So, you know, in the ancient world, sex is about power, and men are to be dominant. Sex is still about about power in most of the world today, but men were to be dominant and women to work to be submissive. If those roles were flipped, that was considered unnatural. And so the Church Fathers interpreted this text to mean that women were taking some kind of a dominant role in sex with with men.

2: The other thing is, is that in talking about a sexuality where these men received due penalty for their error for the things that they were doing. These are people who had seen what had been happening in the Imperial house they had seen Caligula, engaging and abuse of sexuality, raping both men and women.

They had seen Nero who used to wander the streets, and rape whoever he came across with a security detail to get them out of trouble if it happened to him. They had seen this kind of over the top sexuality in the Imperial house. So Paul is already engaging in these verses in a critique of the Empire. He's critiquing idolatry, the worship of images, this follows in terms of that kind of abuse of sexuality. And people would have seen that in their own households, where masters use their social both male and female, for sex. So this has a referent in a certain kind of violence and abuse of sexuality lives that people would have seen all around them. And that had nothing to do with a committed, monogamous, same sex relationship we're talking about today. But I think Brian his fourth point, to deal with here.

Brian 35:20

Just to riff a little bit more on that. So, if we're going to read Romans 2, and we're going to read it in the context of Empire, and especially in the context of the sexuality that happens at the top of Empire, then, you know, maybe we should be reading Romans 2, in light of the sexuality and sexual practices of the President of the United States. Romans 1 as critique of Donald Trump, and that kind of sexuality at the highest level. That's where Romans needs to come to the #metoo movement and comes to the church. And #metoo, has now come not just to Hollywood, but to the Oval Office. Yes, I'm sorry. Just had to put that out there.

Seth 36:09

So that's the fourth point?

Brian 36:11

That's the Riff.

The fourth point is exegetical. We have to ask ourselves, what is Paul talking about here? Because the context and I'm just going to read begins in 1:18.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness

and the word wickedness there would actually be injustice…Oh, things are falling.

Seth 36:42

I was grabbing my Bible I knocked over another book, I was gonna read with you.

Brian 36:48

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those who by their injustice suppress the truth.

So there's a suppression of truth here.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God had shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen two things he has made. So they are without excuse.

Okay, so the problem here is that folks know good creation reveals something regulatory about creation. And what's it revealing? It's revealing something about God, his power and his nature, and this is being suppressed. Now notice that this isn't a reference to Genesis 1 or Genesis 2. This isn't a reference to the binary nature of human sexuality. It's not a suggestion about anything having to do with humans at all. This is creation reveals something about God We're going to ask what would that mean? A Jew writes that the creation reveals something about God, what would be our intertext? What would it be the illusions where, where is this coming from? And the answer is it comes from the Psalms.

So if you start looking at that the Psalms, a specifically look at Psalms that are addressing how creation reveals something about God, what you find is that creation, Psalm 33, others 98 I think, maybe 146 that creation reveals that the nature of God is that God is a God of loving kindness, faithfulness or covenantal Love, faithfulness, and justice.

So if you suppress that, then within a Biblical worldview, you then embrace idolatry because you're not image(ing) God. And if you're not image(ing) God and you embrace idolatry, you will not image the nature of God which is faithfulness, justice, and loving kindness; covenantal faithfulness and love. So what is Paul attacking?

Later on in the chapter he's attacking economic practices, that whole list of vices that nobody seems to want to talk about, because they're all concerned with homosexuality, they don't want to talk about their own sin they want to talk about somebody else's, this whole list of vices you take a look at them my goodness they're mostly economic in nature.

So if you're not imageing God you engage in economics that is not just not rooted in faith and covenant of faithfulness, and not compassionate, etc. So then what kind of sexuality is Paul attacking? He's attacking a sexuality that is not shaped by the image of God. A sexuality that is not rooted in a loving kindness, is not just, is not faithful.

Well that sounds like the sexuality of the Empire. The sounds like sexuality of our lives today. So, again, he's not talking about faithful, monogamous, same sex relationships. But rather, I think that Paul is offering us, as we interpret this now 2000 years later, a model for what human sexuality is supposed to be like, regardless of the gender of the couple.

Seth 40:25

Yeah. Sylvia you leaned in, did you have anything else?

Sylvia 40:29

Oh, when Brian just said that looks a lot like our sexuality today. I just wanted to clarify, I think he meant the sexuality of our culture.

Seth 40:36

I assumed that

Sylvia 40:38

Nor personally our sexuality today. Unless there is something he is keeping from me. (Laughter all)

Seth 40:43

I assume not. Oh man we are running out of time. So there are two other things I wanted to talk about. I'm going to focus on one first and then if we have time, I'll get to the other. You brought up the President and so soon now, yesterday. I mean, we're going through an impeachment but we're also about to go through primaries, the presidential election, so many changes. And so often and it's one of my favorite memes. There's a picture of I think George Washington and a bunch of other people that say, guys, I read Romans 13. I'm going to apologize to George. We can't do this. Like, I'm sorry. We're gonna…wars off. And now that's badly paraphrase. But that's effectively what it's saying. Which I love that meme. Because how funny is that? But how did we get from something like that meme to the way that we do Romans 13 now where you'll see you know, like, Who is it? The Dallas Baptist was named Jim Jeffries, who will use Romans 13. The past Department of Justice, what's his name? I can't think of his name now? A lot of people will use Romans 13 as a just do what I said this is the President United States obviously he's doing what needs to be done. He's got full authority to do it and you're a horrible Christian if you are not falling in line.

Brian 41:51

Okay, so we just lost you. Oh, no. Our internet connection is unstable. You just said Jim Jeffries

Seth 41:59

sure. So yeah, so basically, how do we get from the way that we look at Romans 13. Now with pastors like Jim Jeffries, or the past Department of Justice said, I can't think of his name now. I think he's from Mississippi or Alabama. Just can't think of his name at the moment…

Sylvia 42:11

Jeff Sessions?

Seth 42:15

Yes, that's it. Yeah. So the way that people will use Romans 13 as saying, and many pastors, as well as if you are not falling in line with the government, with the president, with your congressman, with your senator, with your governor, whatever it is, you are not a faithful Christian, because that's not what Paul was telling the church in Rome to do you really need to suck it up and just deal with! How do we break that apart? Like, how do we, how do we wrestle with that?

Sylvia 42:37

Well, two things. First of all, we need to read Romans 13 in the context of Romans 12, right. Paul has just outlined in Romans 12, an alternative polis and alternative community that is supposed to be welcoming to the stranger, to walk with the oppressed, to forgive the enemy, in fact, to feed give food and drink to the enemy, which is something not, we're not practicing today very frequently. And then he moves on to Romans 13. And it's, it's like he's setting up a context a contrast between the community seeing Romans 12 and the state. And he begins, he begins by damning them with faint praise to put it like that, you know, he says, be subject to the state for all authority is given by God. And right there. Normally if you were reading something that was in praise of the Roman Empire, it would have been an over the top, lavish, document or statement that talked about all the virtues of the Empire and how it had been given its right to rule by the gods. By the gods Roma and the god Zeus or Jupiter, I guess in Rome and Mars and all of this would have been rooted in this Pantheon that is looking of the gods that's looking in favor on Rome, which has all these wonderful attributes and brings justice and brings peace.

Paul, on the other hand, isn't actually doing that. He's sort of saying, look, you gotta keep your eye on the state because they carry a sword. And Nero prided himself on ruling with reason. So twice during his rule of the doors, the doors of the temple, is actually the temple of Janus had been, had been closed, demonstrating that there was hope throughout the Empire. So he didn't consider himself as a ruler who ruled with force and by means of the sword. So even saying that in this passage, Nero would have considered insulting. Wait a minute, that's not why you rule.. So it's the equivalent Paul saying to somebody, you know, see that see those guys on the playground, do what they say because if you don't, they're going to beat you up. So just stay out of their way and realize that they're the guys who control the playground.

Rather than see those people on the playground, see those guys over there? They're in charge of the games on the playground, and you want to go over there because you're gonna have a good time with them. Right? Right. That's, that's a very different, different thing. So, he's telling the people in Rome, keep your head down around the state. This is a state that rules with wrath and with violence. And then at the end of that passage, he says, you know, pay taxes to whom taxes are owed give fear to whom fear is owed, honor to honor whom honor is owed, kind of begging the question about whether any of these things are owed to the state except maybe fear; he has said that earlier.

But then he says, owe no one anything but to love one another. So at the end he kind of subverts that lessons and gives the suggestion and ties it back in with Romans 12. What do you actually owe the state in the end? You owe it your love. Because remember I just said you love your enemies. That's how we subvert the violence of the state by meeting it with love. And love becomes the way that this community, you know, the stance of this community against the violence and control of a violent Empire.

So that means are we to love Donald Trump? You know, Nancy Pelosi said she prays for Donald Trump every single day. There's a certain kind of love in that you're and and we are to extend that love to all the people that are being oppressed and that are suffering under this particular product presidency as well.

Brian 47:03

So here's the thing. How did Romans 13 ever get used to legitimate the Empire? Well, Christianity became part of the Empire. Right? Once once Christianity becomes part of the Empire, then the text needs to be re-read and becomes read in such a way that legitimates the Empire. So if we're talking about disarming Romans, one of the things about Romans 13 is it has been used and used and used to arm imperial forces. It has been used as as a way to arm the Empire. And I just find that here is the place of not only blasphemy, but apostasy.

Here is a place where a misreading of a text is used to legitimate Christians getting in bed and supporting what is clearly an unchristian regime.

So, when people ask me, usually in the States, what about Romans 13? I'm tempted to say, to hell with Romans 13, especially the Romans 13 used out of the context of Romans 12, out of context of the whole Bible, out of context of the prophetic tradition, out of context of following one who was in fact, crucified on an Imperial cross.

Seth 48:30

I don't know if you're familiar with this book or not. Mark Charles and soon john ra wrote a book called unsettling truth. Like it goes all the way back to Pope Gregory, George Gregory, the papal bulls. They're about the Doctrine of Discovery. And then, yeah, that was an infuriating book to read. But yeah, that's, you know, hey, we did this thing. I need permission to kill people. How can we do this? Because I'm yeah, I would like what they have. I really like what they have. Yeah, and I talked about that, I think with a handful of people, but I'm of the mindset and I told this to many families that and friends that I'm pretty sure you know, as an American, so many churches, they're like, we're Israel in the story, or where this in the story over that in this story or we are Daniel in the lion's den. I'm like, No, you're not. You're Babylon. You're Persia. You're Rome. Because the Bible seems to be written to the poor, the oppressed and the meek against the militaristic superpower of whatever the time period is, or whatever book you happen to be reading in the Bible. And for those that are keeping score, we are the military superpower. So stop it. But people don't like to hear that.

Brian 49:36

We have seen the enemy and it just us.

Seth 49:41

So I want to end on this question. If Paul was here, right now, like in literally in between the two of you and he was to reframe anything in Romans, do you think that he would say anything different with what you've learned and studied and kind of taken from the text? Like if he was to rewrite it, and instead of calling it Romans will call it DCians or call it whatever the capital of Canada is, or Africa or London, or whatever the capital is like if it was to be rewritten. Do you think any of it would change? Or does it all pretty much hold the same power and authority based on the context and culture that we have today worldwide? Not necessarily America, Canada wide?

Brian 50:17

Yeah. Well, I mean, our book is, is an attempt to hear Paul speak into our context. And so the answer to your question is yes, we think that what Paul has to say in the first century of the Roman Empire will be in needs to be spoken into our own Imperial context. Whether we have been totally faithful in our interpretation of Paul. Well, that's up for discussion, perhaps not. Perhaps if Paul was sitting here he would say are you guys serious? That's not what I meant at all and we need to be open into that.

But what is imperative is that a faithful reading of Paul must be a reading that addresses Paul's revelatory power and prophetic power into our own context. So if you engage in an historical reading and you leave it at the historical reading, you leave it at exegesis, or even you leave it at systematic theology and theological formulations, then you are engaging in an unfaithful reading of Paul. To be faithful to Paul, is to hear him speak into our context, whether we have done that as faithfully as we should that's for the reader to discern.

Sylvia 51:41

And I think that Paul would, you know, it's a very interesting question, by the way Seth, a very interesting question. I think a lot of what what Paul is saying there about, you know, the power of death and and you know, the dominion of death and the dominion of life. A lot of that translates right into our own context economically and politically and environmentally. (But) What doesn't translate so well is the thing you've just made, the point you've just made, that the Christian community, in Paul's time was a small oppressed community. And now, Christianity, you know, is the Empire. Right? So I think actually, the decline of the church is a good thing. We need to become that marginalized people again, before we can follow Jesus faithfully.

But the other thing that I think has changed a lot is that when Paul was writing, you know, his own people, you know, the Jews were also the scapegoat of the Empire and they have been throughout much of history. But what's happening now in Israel and Palestine is actually a situation where some of Paul’s people and I know there are lot of Jews who are against the occupation of Palestine. And that's important to say otherwise we fall into that other trap of scapegoating a whole people. But, but the those who are powerful in that context are now oppressing the Palestinian people. So I think Paul would have something different to say to his own people, if he were rewriting this letter about them missing their own calling to be faithful image bearers on behalf of those who are being treated unjustly. So that would be a big change that I think that Paul might make, but who knows, because I think it was a stubborn old coot too.

Seth 53:40

Probably, I think we all are, and most of the time with with whatever our and this is what I'm this is what I'm passionate about. We're all but stubborn. Yeah, thank you again, for coming on. I'm going to end it. I think that's a good spot to end actually that. That is the question that I wanted to ask last, that's going to have to be the end because I don't want to make them up after that. But thank you so much for coming on. Was I also it has been extremely easy to interview two people. I've done it often. But usually it's two different Skype connections with multiple. It's just a hot mess. It's really nice. We're in the same room. It's really, really nice. But thank you for the book. It genuinely is challenging. There is, I recently found out I think yesterday, I was googling a few things. And you got like some study guides that go along with parts of the book. It doesn't seem like it's finished yet. Those are very, those are very helpful. But thank you again, so much for coming on. Where would you point people to that as they want to grab the book and I recommend grab the book. It's, it's worth the price of entry. Where would you send people?

Sylvia 54:37

If you want to buy this book and you have a local bookstore, go there and ask them to order it, they can order it from the publisher. If you are going to buy online, you want to go to hearts and minds books, which is a shop run Burg, but run by Byron Borger in Philadelphia No. Harrisburg Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, hearts and minds book That would be great to support him by buying the book there if you're buying online.

Brian 55:04

Do not buy from Amazon, don’t do it.

Seth 55:09

Yes, I that hearts and minds book I feel like doesn't he come out with every so maybe quarterly like a here's like 10 books that you should really be like investing some time in.

Brian 55:18

Yeah, more often than quarterly and they are mammoth essays. And they're really worth though. Yeah, time. Yeah.

Seth 55:26

Yeah, they're like, yeah, I've read a few of them. And I'm like, this is really good. This is really good. But um, thank you so much again for coming on. I've enjoyed it. pleasure.

Brian and Sylvia 55:34

Pleasure! Thank you, Seth.

Seth Outro 55:47

Huge thanks to the Salt of the Sound for their music in today's episode. They have been gracious enough and I hope that you will go and listen to their music just hit play. Get them the lessons Just hit play. That's fantastic, fantastic music. And they have been such a big help by allowing me to use the show and more long form basis while I work on the back catalogue of transcripts. And so that's a lot of work. So much work, and I'm very appreciative. So, support the artists that allow this show to use their music and solve the sound is a big part of that. So I hope that each of you are having an amazing week. Truly hope that be blessed and I'll talk with you next week.