Oct 11 2007
what to do with my need
I am teaching on Romans right now. It is a wonderful process. I am learning so much and am being so inspired by reading this book so closely. I love Romans.
This Sunday we are discussing 1:18 – 3:20. This section is all about idolatry sin and death. It is great stuff.
In particular, Paul wants his readers to see that the foundation of all sin is a decision to turn away from submission to God and instead fashioning God’s in our own image. It is this fundamental decision that start all of humanity down the road away from the power of God’s righteousness and into a head on collision with the purposes and will of God.
Luke Timothy Johnson has a wonderful commentary on Romans that I find so very compelling. In his comments on this section, he suggests that Paul’s conception of sin is not just as a moral category but also a relational one. (Ie. We are not just breaking the rules, we are rebelling against God.) Based upon this he suggests that for Paul, sin is not the opposite of virtue (which is our common understanding), but rather sin is the opposite of faith. In that section, LTJ writes this:
Idolatry begins where faith begins, in the perception of human existence as contingent and needy. But whereas faith accepts such contingency as also a gift from a loving creator from whom both existence and worth derive, idolatry refuses a dependent relationship on God. It seeks to establish one’s own existence and worth apart from the claim of God by effort and striving (“works”) of one’s own.
That is great stuff. You may want to read it again.
How will I respond to the reality of my frailty? My first impulse is very Greek. I want to be important - to write important books, to impress people and change history so that I will be remembered. I know that some of my readers are classics scholars so you can correct me but I remember learning about this ancient Greek notion called arête which meant something like excellence but it also implied a sort of greatness that lived beyond this life. I wanted that. In fact sometimes I still want it.
I think that in our culture the most popular response is denial. By scrambling for as much control as possible we insist, “I am not frail, I am the master of my universe.” I suppose this is the response of secular humanism.
At least for the last 200 years, the opposite option has been available in nihilism. We can decide that our frailty is emblematic of our ultimate meaninglessness.
There are other responses I suppose.
How will you respond to the reality of your own frailty?
Are you trying to establish your value and permanence through striving on your own?
Will you accept this reality as a “gift from a loving creator from whom both existence and worth derive?”
on the walk
-Ethan
“How will you respond to the reality of your own frailty?”
I think many people try to deal with this through the empiricism of science. Unfortunately it solves nothing. ask scientists what is on the edge of the universe. they do not know.
I usually find myself quivering in an inability to comprehend what is out there. My solution
“O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!”
[…] Posted in Uncategorized at 1:50 pm by alexlozada My teammate Ethan Magness quotes from Luke Timothy Johnson’s Romans commentary in his blog. Another section from the same commentary that clarifies my thinking on sin “Both Jews and Greeks can be virtuous - the can do good deeds … As Paul uses the concept, sin has to do w/ the human relationship w/ God - or, better, w/ the breaking of the human relationship w/ God. In this sense, the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith…. It is a matter not of ’sinful acts’ but of a fundamental disposition of human freedom, a basic rebellion of the will against God.” […]