Beeson Podcast, Episode 436 Frank Theilman March 19, 2019 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson podcast. Today I have the privilege of having a conversation with my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Frank Thielman. Frank Thielman is the Presbyterian Chair of Divinity here at Beeson Divinity School. He has served in this position for a number of years, almost from the beginning of our school. An outstanding, internationally known New Testament scholar whose books include Paul and the Law, Theology of the New Testament, the NIV Application Commentary on Philippians and Ephesians and now he's written a brand new magnum opus on Romans, the Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament from Zondervan, the Book on Romans. We're going to talk about that primarily today. Frank, welcome to the Beeson podcast. Frank Thielman: Thank you very much. It's so nice to be here. Timothy George: Well, you know, you've been with us almost from the beginning. You've seen all these things, students come and go. That's the thing that gives me the greatest joy in my work is seeing the students that have studied with wonderful teachers like you. When I have a chance to talk with them, many times they'll mention you and other faculty as one of the highlights of their experience at Beeson. Frank Thielman: It is a real joy to teach our students. They are wonderful people and one of the most encouraging parts of my work here over the years, has been to see how many of our students here end up pastoring wonderful churches, both large and small, and end up on the mission field often in very difficult places. They are doing just splendid work in advancing the Gospel and honoring the Lord Jesus Christ and that's so encouraging. Timothy George: You know, we pray for them every week in Chapel and some of the people we can't say where they are. They're in very difficult areas where it would be dangerous if we were to divulge the location they're serving. But they continue to be faithful in their witness and it's just a blessing to work with these wonderful students. Now, you're one of our premier faculty members and we have a whole faculty of premier faculty members but I would say you're right at the top of that list and have been for so many, many years. You've written this magnificent Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Romans. I suppose of all the books in the New Testament maybe Romans gets pride of place in terms of the times it's been commented on, the pivotal role that it's had in shaping theology and the movement of the church through the centuries. What drew you to Romans? Frank Thielman: Actually the things you mentioned were the hindrances to me in writing on Romans. There are so many good commentaries on Romans and many of them much better than the one I have written. A long time ago, I guess 12 or 13 years ago, Tom Schreiner, who is on the editorial board at the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, asked me to contribute the volume on Romans. At first I turned him down just thinking there are many good commentaries and I just don't know if I'm equal to the task. But he pressed me on it and encouraged me to think about it more and I did and prayed about it and decided that this would be a project that I would like to do. And so many years later now ... Zondervan has been very patient with me ... the book is finally out. Timothy George: Now you mentioned Dr. Tom Schreiner, professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, and himself an outstanding New Testament scholar, Pauline scholar, and so this is an area he knows very well. The fact that he would turn to you as a person to write this commentary speaks a lot about you and the stature you hold in this field. Now, when you have the task of writing a commentary on any book I suppose, but especially Romans, how do you go about it? What's the first thing you do? Frank Thielman: That's a wonderful question and it's hard to answer because there were a lot of things I think that went into the beginning of the writing of this book. One was that I had taught Romans here at Beeson and even in a preceding teaching assignment at another institution, for a long time before I sat down to write the commentary. So I had in my own head an idea about Romans and how to interpret it. So as I tackled the interpretation of it, I tended just to just to take it paragraph by paragraph and to read through it and then to read about that paragraph in other commentaries and in the monograph literature and the journal literature as well. Then I would just sit down and write. It's easy to get writer's block when you're writing about Romans because it is such a difficult text and there's so much that's so good that's written on it. I would try to just sit down and write out my own thoughts, my own interpretation of the Greek text and then read widely and correct what needed to be corrected and footnote where appropriate. Timothy George: And you in particular, I think this whole series is aimed to helping pastors ... Frank Thielman: Yes. Timothy George: Who need to teach and preach from the Word of God in a special way. Say a little bit about the format and how that's brought about. Frank Thielman: That's right. This commentary series is intended for pastors who do know some Greek, although they're not expected to be experts in Greek. So that its target audience is people that have had a year or two of Greek, who can cope with the language, look up words, understand something about the syntax, but whose Greek may not be entirely fluent. So it engages with the Greek text, it comments on the Greek text but it does so in a way that is a little bit less complex than some commentaries on the Greek text. It also engages in a good bit of theological reflection. There's a section at the end of each chapter that reflects theologically on the preceding paragraph or two and that I think is unusual. Now, there are lots of commentaries with theological reflection of course, but it's unusual to find a modern commentary that has both all of the exegetical interpretative information needed as well as a good bit of theological reflection on that. Timothy George: I want to come back to the theology of Romans. You have a whole chapter on the theology of Romans in this volume. But take us back to Rome itself, to the place where this letter was originally intended by the Apostle Paul. When was it written, how was it conveyed? Paul himself would later go to Rome by tradition and be executed there. Frank Thielman: That's right. Timothy George: So tell us about that context of the earliest Christian community in Rome. Frank Thielman: I think that the Roman context of this letter is actually very important. Paul had never been to Rome when he wrote it. Of course he was hoping to go. He says that in Chapter 1 and in Chapter 15. He has a lot of friends there. We know that from Chapter 16. Timothy George: He knows them by name. Frank Thielman: He knows them by name and calls them by name and greets them. It's the longest list of greetings in any of his letters. He probably knew a great deal about the city of Rome. He certainly knew a lot about Roman culture. He was writing from Corinth which itself was a very Roman city. So understanding both the city of Rome and something about Roman culture I think, is very helpful for interpreting the letter. One of the things I tried to do in this commentary is to bring 1st Century Roman culture to bear on the interpretation of the text. One element of that culture to which I think Romans speaks, and it's not irrelevant to our own culture today, is that Rome was a highly stratified society. Social groups were carefully sequestered into their own places. They had their own locations, their own social locations. Frank Thielman: Part of the way the Roman Empire kept the famous Peace of Rome, peace and security of Rome, was by keeping people in their social place. Paul describes the Gospel in such a way in Romans that it breaks through a lot of those boundaries. So for example in the greetings at the end, he greets Jews along side Gentiles. He greets rich along side poor. He greets women along side men and highly values women as workers in the church. He's breaking down lots of social boundaries that would have threatened, I think, Roman culture in some ways. I actually think this is one reason the early church was persecuted by the Roman Empire because of the boundary-breaking nature of the Gospel. Timothy George: It was a threat to the social norm of the day. Frank Thielman: That's correct and people felt threatened by it. Paul is very careful in Chapter 12 to say that Christians should never retaliate with evil for evil. They should be nonviolent. They should be kind toward their enemies and their persecutors. So he never advocates any kind of violent overthrow of the social structures but he does advocate the notion that all humans beings are created in God's image and therefore are equal with one another in God's eyes, equally sinners and equally people who can embrace and believe the Gospel and be saved through it. Timothy George: You and I have both studied in Rome on short terms several times. It's an amazing place to go, isn't it? Frank Thielman: It is. Timothy George: It kind of takes you right back into that world in some ways. Frank Thielman: Yeah, that's correct. I went to Rome three times actually during the course of writing this commentary and each trip looked at different archeological sites in the city and to some extent outside the city, and those are some of the best memories I have of doing research for this commentary. Timothy George: You know, Rome is the sort of place you just turn a corner and you move back centuries and you feel you're just right there with the Apostles, walking along those pavements perhaps. And of course by tradition, both Peter and Paul were executed in Rome under Nero so it has a great, in the memory of the Christian Church as being a kind of founding church. Now, Roman Catholic Christians understand that in a different way than some of us Protestants do. But we all have to I think, admire the great work that God did through the Apostles in Rome. Frank Thielman: Oh, yes, absolutely. It's a wonderful place I think, for all Christians of all traditions to visit and benefit from. There's a huge amount of Christian history that took place there so those were wonderful trips that I remember well. And you're quite right about the ruins of ancient Rome just being folded right in to modern Rome. There are 1st and 2nd Century apartment blocks right by train stations. Not far from the Trevi Fountain is a wonderful archeological site with a 1st Century Roman apartment building in it. This is very seldom visited but it's well kept up actually by the Modern Antiquities Society in the city of Rome. You can imagine Paul. When you go there and visit it, you can imagine Paul staying in an apartment like this. So it just opens one's eyes I think, to what the world was like for these early Christians. Timothy George: Now you mentioned theology and I guess Romans has just been forefront in the great theological revolutions in the history of the Christian faith. You think of course, of Luther and his commentary on Romans from 1516 which actually wasn't published in his lifetime but later was discovered. We think in the 20th Century of course, Karl Barth had you might say a love affair with Romans in some of his early writings. He wrote a commentary on Romans that is different than any commentary on Romans that I've ever read so it's almost an existential experience to read it and yet it had a great influence on the way people thought about God, about the transcendence of God, about the coming of God in Jesus Christ. So say a little bit about, you might say, the after life of Romans. How Romans has continued to inform the people of God through the centuries. Frank Thielman: It really is amazing the number of significant people in Christian history for whom Romans has been such an important book. St. Augustine converted through hearing part of Romans read and then himself engaging in the interpretation of Romans in his writings and even in a commentary on Romans. Way before Augustine, Origen wrote the first extant commentary on Romans which is actually well worth reading even today. Some of the most important interpretive problems in Romans, Origen has interesting solutions for. He reflects on the texts theologically in a way that's quite helpful at points. Of course, this is true of the Protestant reformers, Luther, Calvin later, John Wesley much later, all heavily impacted by Paul's letter to the Romans. So yes, it's been a very significant text in the history of the church. Timothy George: Now, you've been fishing in these waters for a long time even before this commentary. Your book, Paul and the Law. I can't do an interview with Dr. Frank Thielman on Romans and not ask you about justification. Frank Thielman: Okay. Timothy George: It's such a central theme of course in Romans and really in all of the Bible in the New Testament. These words Paul uses, the righteousness language. Words like righteous, just, justification, justify. He uses those far more in Romans than he does anywhere else though you find them in Galatians and elsewhere. How does Paul use these terms? What is justification? Frank Thielman: Justification is being set right with God. It is God's powerful initiative to put us right with himself. The way we understand justification I think, has an enormous impact on how we think about salvation, how we think about humanity and its need for salvation so it is a very important term. It's a very important theological concept. The interesting thing about Romans is that Paul uses justification language in two pretty distinct ways throughout the letter. In Chapters 1 to 5, judicial language predominates in Paul's use of justification termination, or judicial concepts predominate in his use of the terminology. So that we can imagine a courtroom and God declaring us free from punishment which I think is probably the right basic meaning of justification. That God declares us free from the punishment that we deserve. Frank Thielman: Then beginning in Chapter 6, Paul uses justification language, particularly the word righteousness, which of course in Greek is justification language even though we have to change English words to talk about it. He uses it in primarily an ethical sense, to talk about doing what is right and being the kind of person that follows the path that God has laid out for us in his Word. So that when we are united with Christ by faith and after we have been declared right with God through the Gospel, we then become people who are not slaves of sin but we are slaves of righteousness. Paul kind of apologizes actually for using that metaphor of slavery to just talk about the Christian life because there are elements of it that don't fit but he does use the term slave of righteousness. Frank Thielman: What he means by that is that we become capable of doing what God wants us to do and our service to him now is a service that he has laid out in his Word and we're following his Word and this is our guide for what is right and good. So Paul can use the word in these two ways. I think personally he doesn't mix the uses. There are scholars who argue that justification language in the early part of Romans contains within it the seed of the moral transformation that's then talked about in Chapter 6. But I think if you look at the language closely, he does separate the two concepts one from the other. Frank Thielman: I think that reminds of something that is important. The way the great creeds of the church talk about justification is that they use justification as a systematic theological concept that may not line up with the exact terminology of the Scriptures. In other words, they are describing concepts that the Scriptures will sometimes cover by the use of a single word. I think justification and righteousness language in Paul is one of those words that covers more than one topic within systematic theology. So that Paul can use righteousness language to talk about both what systematic theologians call justification and sanctification. Timothy George: I wonder if you would comment on the basis of this freedom from punishment entailed by justification and I'm thinking in particular of one verse, Romans 3:25, and that term mercy seat. That seems so central to Paul's argument there in Romans 3. Frank Thielman: Yes, it's a very unusual Greek word. It's the Greek word hilastērion. It's the word that's used in Leviticus Chapter 16 to describe the piece of furniture in the Holy of Holies that was on the Ark of the Covenant. It's the lid of the Ark of the Covenant with cherubim on either side of it and it was the place where blood was sprinkled on the Day of Atonement. And this is the word that Paul uses in Romans 3:25 and 26. In that passage there in 21-26, he uses hilastērion to talk about Christ being the place of atonement for our sins. It's an interesting word in Greek. The root, hilas ... The word is hilastērion. The root, hilas, refers to reconciliation. And the suffix, tērion, in Greek refers to a place where something happens. Frank Thielman: So a hilastērion is a place where reconciliation happens and it is, I think, in Paul's thinking, the cross of Christ, Christ's death, is the place where reconciliation happens between God and man and humanity at God's initiative. He takes that initiative and we are reconciled to him through the death of Christ. So he is the place of reconciliation. Paul makes it very clear, I think, in 3:21-26, that this sacrifice in which Jesus becomes the mercy seat, he is both the place of the sacrifice and the sacrifice itself. This is a substitutionary sacrifice. He is dying in our place so we are reconciled to God by the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus. Timothy George: That seems to be borne out elsewhere in Paul. For example 1 Corinthians he says, "Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us." So the whole metaphor of the Passover, what it involved, the event, the things leading up to it, the deliverance. Christ is the Passover. All of these things combined into one is our deliverance from this punishment which issues in justification. Frank Thielman: Very helpful parallel. That's exactly right. Timothy George: Now another passage in Romans that I have often been troubled with ... I think I've got it right but I'm willing to be corrected by someone more knowledgeable than I myself ... is Romans 7. This famous, you know, when I want to do, I can't do and when I try to do, I don't do. This, I, that shifts back and forth. This is a classic debate say, between Calvinists and Armenians and lots of other people come on different ... How do you read Romans 7? Frank Thielman: Romans 7 is a very difficult passage. I mean, we all have to start by saying that and I don't think anyone should be faulted for choosing one or the other reading of it. I mean there are probably some readings that are a little outlandish but it's a very difficult passage. What makes it difficult is really two things. Paul uses the term, I, throughout 7:7-25. So on a surface level it seems very clear he would be talking about himself because he uses the word, I. And yet he also says some things that don't seem to pertain, based on his preceding argument, to himself in the present as a Christian. For example he says, "I am sold under sin". Whereas in Chapter 6 he has just said, "We are free from the domination of sin," and so on. Frank Thielman: So everyone recognizes this is a difficult text and how to read it is a fraught question. I think the first thing to recognize is what Paul's doing in his argument at this point. 7:7-25 is a defense of the Mosaic Law against the charge that the Mosaic Law is on the side of sin. Paul wants to make the case that even though it is true that the law brings wrath, as he said in 4:15, and that the law when it comes onto the scene causes sin to increase, as he said in 5:20 and 21, that despite those truths, the law itself is not sinful and the law is not something separate from God but God gave it. Frank Thielman: So part of what he's doing in Chapter 7 is describing the connection between the law and sin as a way of exonerating the law from any involvement in and of itself as the law of God, in evil. And so in 7:7-12 ... 13 is a transitional verse ... but in 7:7-12 Paul uses past tense verbs to describe an, I, who has been under the law and for whom the law has come onto the scene and which has kind of enslaved him. The question is, who is Paul talking about there? Is he talking about himself autobiographically? Is he talking about Adam perhaps and using the, I, to refer to Adam? Is he talking about Israel and Israel's experience of the law? Frank Thielman: I think Paul is probably talking about the law's action on anyone's life who is not a believer. When they become aware of the requirement of God and yet before the Holy Spirit has come to indwell them, they become aware of their inability to really do what God requires of them. They become aware of the fact that they are a sinner and the law makes that really clear to us. Then in 7:13-25, Paul uses present tenses and this is where people get rather exorcized about it. Whether Paul is describing the present existence of the Christian or describing something that is typical of an unbeliever. I think the reason this is such a hotly debated topic has to do with differing views over the history of Christian interpretation of where sanctification fits within the Christian life. Frank Thielman: My own view is that Chapter 8:1-17 really answer this question for us. Paul, I don't think in the first instance, is talking about a believer in 7:13-25. The language he uses there does show a struggle with sin that would be surprising for an unbeliever but it's a struggle that is so intense and so under the slavery that the law through it's connection with sin has imposed, that given what he said in Chapter 6, I don't think it can refer to a believer. And then in Chapter 8:1-17, Paul shows the believer's freedom from that terrible slavery that sin has used the law to put people under. And we see there the freedom that Christians now have to do the law of God. It's not that we do it perfectly. Timothy George: By the power of the Spirit and [crosstalk 00:27:34] Frank Thielman: By the power of the Holy Spirit, exactly right. So I am a Calvinist but I read 7:13-25 in a way that is not traditionally associated with Calvinism. Timothy George: You're a Calminian. Frank Thielman: No, no. Timothy George: Can that be true? Frank Thielman: I'm not even a Calminian. I'm just a Calvinist. Timothy George: Well, you're challenged my own understanding of that. I'm going to go back and re-read what you've said about it and what you're saying is compelling in some ways, particularly that way you sliced 7 in terms of a believer/nonbeliever application. Well, we're almost out of time and this is really a terrible question to ask you near the end of an interview but you've got to talk about Romans 9 to 11. That's another locus classicus for the doctrine of election and been hotly debated of course. It's a hard passage in some ways to understand. How do you think Paul meant Romans 9 to 11, especially with reference to the stumbling of Israel? Frank Thielman: It's a really good question and again, it's very much like Romans 7. It's one that has divided Christians down through interpretive history. Once again I think the solution to looking sort of beyond the divisions at what Paul was saying here, lies in recognizing the place of Romans 9 through 11 in his argument and asking ourselves the question, what were the reasons that Paul wrote Romans 9 through 11? And he wrote these chapters for reasons that are quite different than answering questions about free will and predestination. That was not uppermost in his mind. I think he has a set of presuppositions that certainly come into play in what he says in Romans 9 through 11, so it's appropriate to derive a doctrine of predestination from these chapters. Frank Thielman: But in the first instance, it's not what Paul was intending. Romans 8 ended with the statement that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Yet Paul knows that in his own preaching experience, when he goes into the synagogue to preach, it's primarily the Gentiles seated in the synagogue who respond to the Gospel. Not entirely. There are many Jews like Paul himself who come to faith but they're outnumbered by the Gentiles. So the huge question before Paul at the end of Romans 8 is, if nothing can separate us from the love of God, and Paul's promises to his people Israel are true, then how is it that the Gospel seems to have separated so many Jewish people from the love of God? Frank Thielman: And he needs to show that in Chapters 9 through 11 that what's happened in the proclamation of the Gospel is not inconsistent with God's purposes for his people Israel in the past and as he has prophesied for them for the future. So Romans 9 through 11 are really about Israel and the place of Israel in God's purposes. So in Chapter 9, I think Paul wants to show that God's people have never been co-extensive with ethnic Israel in a physical sense. God's people is more than just being a descendant of Abraham and he shows that from Scripture. It's very important for him to show that from Scripture which he does in 9:1-29. Frank Thielman: And then in 9:30 to 10:21 the second major section of Romans 9 through 11, Paul shows that Israel has received many preachers and has itself rejected the Gospel often, not always but often when it has heard the Gospel. Here I think he gets into the issue of Israel stumbling and he brings up the issue of why so many within Israel have stumbled over the Gospel. And he says, "They have stumbling over the stumbling stone who is Christ." I think there Paul probably has in mind his own pre-Christian existence. He stumbled over the stumbling stone who was Christ. Frank Thielman: The chief priests, many of the Pharisees, many within the Sanhedrin, stumbled over the proclamation of the Gospel and they stumbled over Christ because Christ threatened their own interpretations of the Mosaic Law which often were exclusivistic of the outcast that Jesus reached out to and because Jesus threatened their positions of power and privilege. So I think primarily in Romans 9:30 to 10:4 when Paul talks about the stumbling of Israel, he's talking about the Jewish people of privilege who rejected Jesus and engineered his ... Together with Pilate, schemed to put him on the cross and Paul was part of that circle. Frank Thielman: Remember, according to Acts, he received letters from the High Priest in Jerusalem to persecute the Christians in Damascus. So he was part of this inner circle. I think that primarily is who Paul is talking about there. Timothy George: You know when we get to the end of 11, there's just one of these great texts in one of the Bible I think. I'm going to read it and then have you comment on it because Paul is drawing here from the Old Testament. It's a doxology, it's a praise to God. It's a kind of confession in a way of how much we don't understand about the deep mysteries and eternal purposes of God and yet how we are drawn to the center of all God's revelation in Jesus Christ. Here's what it says and then you will give a comment, please. Frank Thielman: Sure. Timothy George: "How deep is the wealth and wisdom and knowledge of God? How undiscoverable his judgments and untraceable his ways? For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has become his advisor or who has advanced him a sum and will be repaid by him? Because all things are from him and through him and for him. Glory belongs to him as age gives way to age. Amen." Frank Thielman: It's a wonderful text. Yeah. I think Paul having come to the end of this complex explanation of the ways of God with his people Israel in Chapter 11, recognizes that there are elements of God's purposes in history that can never be grasped by human wisdom. And he indicates that even though we can't grasp them, we can trust God to be gracious. He will never be a person that any human being can give to and justly demand repayment from God for that gift. It's quite the reverse. God gives to us and we then repay him with our very often inadequate obedience. So I think Paul is talking there about the complexity of God's ways with human beings. He's developed in Chapter 11 a very complex argument about what God is doing with his people Israel. Frank Thielman: He implies that some within Israel have already been saved. That the reason many within Israel have rejected the Gospel is to allow the Gospel mercifully to go to the Gentiles. But when God's purposes are finished with that advancement of the Gospel to the Gentiles, Paul says then all Israel will be saved. I don't think that means all Israel that's ever lived down through time and we have to allow for some hyperbole in the word, all. But it does mean that many, many Israelites will be saved through the Gospel before the second coming of Christ. I don't see any other way to interpret that. Frank Thielman: Well, this is a very complex scenario that Paul has just outlined and in the course of it, he has interpreted Scripture all the way through in such ways that it supports this scenario. I think he recognizes there are real mysteries here and he's commenting on the mystery and the inability of us to grasp what God is doing in this wonderful doxology at the end of Romans 9 through 11. It's a reminder I think, to any interpreter of Romans and especially of Romans 9 to 11, to approach the text with humility. Timothy George: Yeah. A summons to humility. Well, my guest today on the Beeson podcast has been my wonderful colleague, Dr. Frank Thielman, a marvelous New Testament scholar of international repute. He has written many books and his most recent one is The Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Volume on Romans from Zondervan. Thank you for this commentary and thank you for this conversation. Frank Thielman: Thank you very much, Dean George. I've really enjoyed it. Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson podcast with host, Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson podcast.