Romans 1: Summary
May 25th, 2009 by Micah Tillman | Start the Discussion |
[ Romans 1:1-7, 8-18, 19-25, 26-27, 28-32, Summary | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 ]
[ Doctrine of Total Depravity: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 ]
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While working through Romans 1, I have come to the following conclusions:
Paul is concerned in Romans 1 to protect his Roman readers from the temptation to become like the thieving, idolatrous oppressors among which they lived.
To do this, he appeals to Habakkuk’s vision in Habakkuk 2:4, where God tells Habakkuk that while the wicked try to achieve security and success for themselves through violence, money-hoarding and theft, and idolatry, the righteous person has faith in God.
He then points out to them the consequences of living the life of the thieving, idolatrous oppressors. That lifestyle leads to being abandoned by God, and to a decay of the person and relationships.
With these consequences in view, it should be much easier for Paul’s Roman readers to stick to the life of faith in God, rather than trying to be their own ultimate security.
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Now, what does this have to do with the Doctrine of Total Depravity? Critiquing that doctrine is the reason I turned to Romans in the first place.
The answer is that, while the Westminster Confession of Faith does not appeal to Romans 1 in support of the Doctrine of Total Depravity, I believe I have heard others do so. (Of course, I’ve listened to so many lectures from Reformed Theological Seminary by now, that things are blurring together.)
Reformed theologians see Romans 1 as describing the “noetic effects of sin,” and this fits in with the Doctrine of Total Depravity’s claim that all human faculties are effected/damaged by the Fall.
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That Romans 1 cannot be used to support the Doctrine of Total Depravity, however, can be seen by the fact that Paul is not describing all humans as “suppressing the truth,” as being “futile in their thinking” and having “darkened minds,” as being “fools,” or as having “debased minds” (all quotations NRSV, with variations).
Instead, Paul is describing a small minority of humans, namely, those humans who are rich, thieving, idolatrous oppressors.
This is the same group that Habakkuk, many of the Psalms, and Proverbs also railed against. And it is the group Aristotle called “the vicious.”
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However, this group is always a minority. There are very few rich people in the world. There are very few vicious people in the world. The levels of evil to which these people go, as described by Paul, Habakkuk, Psalms, Proverbs, etc., is extreme and highly unusual.
That people in this group are worth being written against by so many Biblical writers is due to their widespread power. They may be a minority, but they are a powerful minority, the consequences of whose lifestyle reach all those over whom they have power.
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Thus, while Paul can be said to be warning everyone about the consequences that a life of sin will have on one’s faculties, he cannot be said to be warning us all that our faculties have been so effected.
He is pointing the consequences of extreme sin to us, to warn us away from a road that we are not currently on, but may find attractive in some way or other.
Furthermore, in spite of the consequences of the lifestyle, it seems that Paul believes even the vicious people he is describing still know what is most important (i.e., their minds still can perform their chief/main function).
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So, if Paul claims the mental faculties of even the most extremely wicked still work (something that Aristotle would deny!) why should we expect the wills of the average person not to (as the Doctrine of Total Depravity would have us believe)?
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[ Romans 1:1-7, 8-18, 19-25, 26-27, 28-32, Summary | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 ]
[ Doctrine of Total Depravity: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Romans 4 ]
