Re: Romans1 translation
Submitted by Ray on 2002-10-3 22:12:31, Thursday
In reply to Romans1 translation submitted by footsy on 2002-09-28 13:29:50, Saturday
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Thought I'd add this to the discussion, though it may be lost as the thread moves down the board. I haven't contributed for quite a while though some of you may remember me from several years ago. (I never bothered to become official with bold username and sigpic.) What follows is notes and quotes from the video of a presentation, about 2 years ago, by Dr. Mark Allan Powell, a Professor of New Testament at a Lutheran Seminary in Ohio. The last paragraph, which is italicized and bold, is a direct quote from the video. The rest is just my notes summarizing what he said. It was presented to an audience which was predominently gay and Lutheran, and that is reflected in the manner of presentation. But it represents another way of looking at Romans 1. (1:26-27 are the two verses used to condemn gays.) The "good news" in Paul's message in Romans chapters 1 to 6 seems to get lost in the detail leading up to it: the mercy, love, and grace of God are so great that it includes all people, even the people who you think are the most revolting, disgusting people in the world! Ray ______________________________ Romans 1:26-27 For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error. [New Revised Standard Version Note that the text here isn’t quoted on the tape and Dr. Powell mentions only Romans 1:27.] First is the problem of discovering what it meant to the people to whom the author wrote. There are two camps. The conservatives say that Paul believes that any instance of same sex sex is an abomination to God. Richard Hays is prominent in this camp. The second group, led by Victor Paul Furnish and Robin Scroggs, argue that Paul is talking about something very specific, i.e., what’s going on in the Roman temple: prostitution, child molesting, abuse of some sort. Paul would not necessarily have been against same sex behavior at all. He was against this particular instance. Dr. Powell says that frankly he doesn’t know. He’s read what all the authorities have had to say, but he doesn’t know what Paul meant. Back to what does the text say to us today! The message that Paul was writing in the first six chapters of his letter to the Romans is that he wants to convince the Romans that the mercy, love and grace of God is so great that it includes all people, including the people who they think are the worst people in the world. Jesus tried something like that by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan. We don’t seem to gather from the parable that Samaritans are dirty, disgusting, bad people. But Jesus told the parable to people who thought Samaritans were dirty, disgusting, bad people! Paul, talking to Jewish Christian Romans, uses an example of pagan temple life as the most horrible abominable thing they’ve heard of to say that God’s grace and God’s mercy is so wonderful that it falls even upon people like that! Nobody thinks that the point of the letter Paul is writing to the Romans is to try to convince them that homosexuality is evil and wrong and sinful. It may be that Paul did think that. It’s certainly true that the Romans thought that. The difference now is whether you’re a Lutheran or not. If you’re a Lutheran, we identify authority of scripture with the message that the Holy Spirit has given Paul to pass on to the Romans. If you belong to some other denomination, then indeed you might have a problem. Because there are denominations and there are churches that think that even the prejudices of the Biblical writers we ought to accept. Lutherans don’t believe that way -- supposedly! ... It’s beyond argument that Paul believes slavery is a completely acceptable social institution. ... If you hold that kind of hermeneutic [way of detemining what the text says for us today], you have to approve of slavery. Paul did! It’s absolutely certain that Paul approved of capital punishment. Paul thinks capital punishment is a good thing! But he didn’t ever teach that, it just comes through! ... This is my point: Lutherans try to distinguish between the message that the person maintains God has given them to convey and what are simply their own human prejudices. |
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