09 August 2022
Turn to Romans 8.
For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:5-8 NASB 1977)
Paul thinks in Hebrew. Because of his education, he is able to approach a decent translation of that thinking into Greek writing. It's a struggle, but the mystical outlook is not entirely foreign to Greek language. And then that Greek writing was translated in English for us. The folks who did that translation might not have a good grasp of Paul's Hebrew background. What they did have is a background in western thinking about Paul and his Hebrew outlook. And the translations of this passage in English tend to reflect that western orientation.
The Greek word phroneo is translated in English as "mind". It's ambiguous enough in Greek, but it's downright misleading in English. That word "mind" tends to represent for us the intellect, the brain, the rational capacity of humans. It misses the point. Paul is referring to a part of the human nature that we might call the ego, the conscious awareness. The Greek word itself refers to one's inclination or disposition, your interests and what motivates you to do things.
If your conscious awareness is in the fleshly nature, then you cannot possibly care about salvation. Wait! Did you forget what I've been teaching for as long as I've been writing this blog? That word "salvation" is not exclusively indicating spiritual birth. Rather, in the Greek vernacular, "salvation" is roughly equivalent to the Hebrew concept of redemption. It's a reference to this life. It's pointing to the question: How can I redeem my human existence?
God's answer to that question was originally depicted as the Flaming Sword, the Gate of Eden. With His Son, it became the Cross. How do you redeem your life and return to Eden? It's the Flaming Sword of revelation, the declaration of the Cross.
Paul goes on to talk about having your spirit raised from the dead, what Jesus referred to as spiritual birth -- the Spirit of Christ dwelling in you. Then he goes on to talk about how you can no longer live by the flesh, but by the Spirit. That's where the orientation of the mind comes in -- Who owns you? It's not a thing, but a Person. Do you submit to Him as your feudal Master and Lord? Then show it by how you live.
Paul goes on to say that the suffering of this life is simply not a significant consideration against the glory of the Lord. When you are oriented on His glory, the hassles of our fallen human existence are just background noise; we take it for granted and don't let it get in the way. Yes, we know that Creation is groaning with longing for us to be restored to our eternal bodies so that we can return to our original mission in Eden of managing the natural world. Right now, Creation is lacking our management, and it's suffering for it.
Meanwhile, nothing in Creation can separate us from our adoption as His children. And in the next chapter, Paul cries out that his own Jewish brethren are denied that adoption. It was theirs, but some of them didn't actually belong to it. It's not a matter of ethnic identity, but something else entirely. Only a remnant could be redeemed, because redemption wasn't of the Law itself, but what the Law manifested. It was the Person of God Himself. You see, in the ancient Hebrew intellectual traditions, a nations law code was not the thing, but how that law code taught you about the ruler. It wasn't the rote observance, but the way it cultivated an awareness of the Lord's moral character.
So, even the Gentiles could get in on this adoption because that's how God works. If some Gentiles could somehow be drawn to His character without even hearing about the written Law, it's because there was something inside of them that called out to them and revealed the intent of God's Law without the words. It was the law of faith written on their hearts.
Then, in Chapter 10, Paul says that bluntly: If you can commit your heart to Him in faith, you shall be saved. And now we come back to that Greek word "saved" (sozo). Paul used that word because someone who spoke Greek would be thinking about the concept of redeeming their human existence in this world. The Greek concept of afterlife was highly variable, but for the Hebrew, it was something beyond words. Any words you could come up would of necessity be symbolic or parabolic.
This is why the Old Testament says almost nothing about the afterlife. What they did say was veiled in dramatic terms because it was beyond knowing or telling for humans. Paul quotes from Deuteronomy 30:11-14 where the Lord told Israel that peace with Him -- redemption -- was not a matter of secret knowledge that cannot be spoken (in the heavens or in hell), but was written in their own hearts. The point was that they should be able to express ("in your mouth") His glory to the world by how they lived in the world. That is salvation, AKA peace with God.
You'll notice how the Old Testament said nothing about orthodoxy (right thinking). It talks about the net result of how you live reflecting His glory. That's what Jesus talked about most of the time. When the Apostles started writing in Greek, they found a language that lent itself to a more clinical discussion of those concepts for which Hebrew was totally symbolic. It's not that the beliefs about the afterlife suddenly came to life after the Cross, but that Greek made it easier to express certain thoughts about it. The New Testament emphasis is still living your life to His glory, not correcting your intellectual ideas about God.
Now, most scholars today will recognize the difference between formal Systematic Theology versus Biblical Theology. That latter is a matter of doctrine or teachings that are often ambiguously stated. The whole point of Systematic Theology was an attempt to nail down things that weren't too clear. It's the application of Aristotelian logic to ideas that are ambiguous and, at times, logically contradictory. It's a human effort to define boundaries that Christ and His Apostles didn't consider important. Systematic Theology is invariably a human product not on par with the more ambiguous teaching of the Bible. You cannot treat rational theology as Scripture.
The precision of careful statements is the kind of thing that consumed the Pharisees, but not Christ. Naturally, the Apostles were also not too interested in such Pharisaical precision. Their point was seldom careful formulation, but urging people to get closer to their Lord personally. Feel free to render doctrine as precise as you like, but don't you dare try to make it normative for others. They are supposed to be working it for themselves. In the end, Systematic Theology is a waste of time. If Paul talks about Creation as having a care and concern with how we act, and if Jesus commanded natural elements of the world as we might a person, then perhaps the idea that reality is so solid and consistent and inanimate isn't the right way to approach things.
Intellect is flesh. It cannot be made perfect. It will pass away at the Second Coming. It's the kind of thing Christ will wipe away when He makes a New Heaven and New Earth. What will be left is not whether you had the right ideas, but whether you were a faithful child of Your Father. Yeah, that's the Christian Mystic approach. It's aimed more at the pragmatism of making God smile.
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