Truth and lies in Romans
- 'the wrath of God is revealed...against...men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth' (1:18)
- 'they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator' (1:25)
- 'for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.' (2:8)
- 'if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth — you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself?' (2:19-21)
- 'Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, "That you may be justified in your words"' (3:4)
- 'But if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?' (3:7)
- 'Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive' (3:13)
- 'sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me' (7:11)
- 'I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit — that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.' (9:1-2)
- 'you will say "Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in." That is true.' (11:19-20)
- 'Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs' (15:8)
- 'such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.' (16:18)
So, I went through Romans like that because I'm trying to understand how Sin deceived Paul through the commandment (7:11). Not sure if it has helped. Does anyone have any thoughts?
Moo says Sin '"deceived" Israel into thinking it could obtain life through [the law]'. Calvin is no help. I haven't got Luther on Romans.
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NT-Romans
3 comments:
thanks. you're so observant. I'll mull this next time I'm in Romans. I have a hunch this is huge, having thought that truth as honesty (keeping a promise) and false as dishonesty are inseparable since reading titus, so I wonder if the theme of a promise may come in. I don't know whether it helps with Romans, but here's a powerful quote from Alasdair MacIntyre that I think you'll like:
"When an epistemological crisis is resolved, it is by the construction of a new narrative which enables the agent to understand both how he or she could intelligibly have held his or her original beliefs and how he or she could have been so drastically misled by them. The narrative in terms of which he or she at first understood and ordered experiences is itself now made into the subject of an enlarged narrative."
(http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521854375&ss=exc)
Good quote.
I think you are right that it is huge. Although I'm coming to the conclusion that Romans is just such a deep well it can never be summarised through one set of concepts (truth/lies, peace/hostility, etc).
I think I'll post on what I've come to think most of it is about in Romans next (but only briefly because I'm still thinking of creation - although this has been helpful with that). I'm going to read Titus first though.
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