Committed Critic

The discussion under one of my earlier posts has me thinking about what it means to over-intellectualize the Bible. And while I believe in the importance of critical study of the Bible (which will remain the focus of this blog), I want to dedicate a post to some more basic teachings in Scripture.

One day this week I read a couple of times through Titus, a book that doesn’t get much attention from Bible scholars. One reason is that critical scholars typically don’t think Paul really wrote it (a conclusion I tend to agree with), and another reason is that it lacks the more interesting (i.e., complicated) kinds of arguments we find in books like Romans and Galatians. Also, scholars often prefer theology that challenges the status quo, and the letter to Titus focuses more on passing along a tradition that’s already been established.

An emphasis on complex theological arguments would have been offensive to Paul, whether he wrote Titus or not. Paul famously resolved “to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2), and I’m guessing he would have burned his letters if he thought they would detract from that core of Christian faith.

So we turn to Titus. The short letter is focused mostly on moral teachings, but I’ll begin with two passages that are brief, forceful presentations of the gospel. Neither contains quite the whole gospel, but between them they present a well-rounded portrait of Christianity. The first is Titus 2:11-14:

For the saving grace of God has appeared to all people, training us to renounce impiety and worldly desires, and to live soberly, justly, and piously in this age, while looking forward to the blessed hope––the appearance of the glory of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself on our behalf, in order to redeem us from all wickedness and to cleanse for himself a chosen people, zealous for good works.

The second passage comes just a few verses later, in Titus 3:3-8:

Once, we also were senseless, unbelieving, led astray, enslaved to desires and all kinds of pleasures, going through life in evil and envy, hateful and despising one another. But when the kindness and goodwill of God our savior appeared, he––not by works of righteousness that we did, but according to his mercy––saved us through the washing of recreation, and the renewal of the Holy Spirit, which he richly poured upon us, through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we––justified by that grace––might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

The two passage use a lot of themes and terms from Paul’s other letters, only here they’re presented compactly, rather than explained at length. This is one reason scholars think the letter was written by a later person reading Paul and trying to continue his message, though of course it could simply be Paul setting forth the basics of his own theology.

Either way, it’s a very different reading experience than some of Paul’s other letters. When you read Galatians or Romans, if you want to take them seriously you’re practically forced into spending your time doing careful exegesis and trying to figure out what Paul’s argument is. Otherwise you have to ignore big parts of the text, or risk badly misunderstanding them.

Titus is much simpler. Despite a few red flags that are important but potentially distracting from the main point of the letter (like whether it’s right to insult Cretans and to tell slaves to submit to their masters), most of the teachings in Titus are pretty clear and immediately applicable to our lives: exhortation to things like self-control, good works, and avoiding divisions among believers.

There is a tendency for people like me, with an academic mindset, to spend our time on the difficult texts of the Bible like Romans, where we’re more likely to get bogged down in technical questions. That’s fine, but simpler texts like Titus often put more emphasis on simple morality, and as Christians we frankly should spend more time worrying about how to do good works than analyzing the more difficult theological texts.

Certainly Christians should understand the Bible, a skill that takes a lot of work. But understanding the entire argument of Romans isn’t part of the essence of being a Christian, at least not as a top priority. Instead, what we are called to hold is a series of simple truths, emphasized in one way or another throughout the New Testament: faith in Christ, salvation by his grace, cleansing by baptism, obedience to Jesus’ words, guidance of the Holy Spirit to do good works, and hope in eternal salvation. If anything detracts from our commitment to these, our priorities are probably misplaced.

One problem with the Christian emphasis especially on Romans and Galatians is that people develop the misconception that Paul was most concerned with people not focusing on works. Certainly when Jews were attacking Gentiles for not following the Jewish law, Paul opposed them. And certainly he insists that our works cannot merit salvation apart from God’s grace. But as I have tried to show here and more briefly here, being righteous entails good works in Paul’s theology; just because the good works are dependent on justification by faith, that doesn’t mean they’re any less important.

Turning back to Titus, the letter reminds us of Paul’s insistence that our own righteousness can’t save us and that salvation is completely dependent on God’s grace (3:5), but it focuses mostly on what Christianity is: living a life of good works, by the grace of Christ and for the glory of God. Over and over in Titus the term “good works” shows up. What is the church? A people God has created to be zealous for good works.

Scholars don’t always like simple moral teachings, because it’s easier to analyze theological arguments than to simply do good.

One common image that I grew up with in church is that the Bible serves as a mirror, in which we see who we really are before God. Reading Titus in light of this is a challenge, because its moral teachings include at least something to convict everyone. I once heard Randy Harris say in a sermon, “Christianity is about what we do in our mundane lives.” Once we adopt that principle, a mundane letter like Titus is a powerful guide.

Last year in a class I took on Romans, we were asked in our final exam to critique the “Roman Road to Salvation,” a series of verses from Paul’s most famous letter which are often used by evangelicals to walk someone through the process of becoming a Christian, often before they leave the web page that describes the process. I want to offer here a modified version of my answer.

The Roman Road exists in numerous forms (just google it to see what I mean), but it consists essentially of 5 points:

1. Everyone has sinned (Rom 3:23).
2. Sin’s consequence is death (Rom 6:23).
3. While we were sinners, Christ died for us (Rom 5:8).
4. Because of Christ’s death, we can be saved (Rom 10:9).
5. We are saved when we confess Jesus and believe in his resurrection (Rom 10:9, 13).

I am a firm believer that taking verses out of context is an exceedingly troubling practice. In addition to the oft-lamented risk that we will simply make these passages mean whatever we want, we also miss out on the richness of the complex argument Paul does make.

However.

I also cannot help but believe that God intended for the Gospel to be understood clearly without a full-blown seminary degree, and to follow the argument of the book of Romans just about requires one. I’m exaggerating a bit, of course, but Paul’s argument is indeed complex and confusing. It could take a lifetime to master.

Perhaps we should look elsewhere in Scripture for something simpler to use with beginners. But in the meantime, I want to point out 5 specific points (from Romans) that we miss if we rely on the Roman Road for our understanding of salvation:

1. God’s election and calling. From the start of the book (1:5f), Paul emphasizes the role of divine calling in Christian identity. In 8:29 he insists that “those God foreknew he also predestined . . . those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” So for Paul it is election and calling (along with faith) that lead to justification, whereas the Roman Road suggests that God’s saving work was limited to sending Christ, leaving the rest up to the decision of the individual.

2. New life with Christ through baptism. The Roman Road leaves out most of chapter 6, where Paul describes how salvation actually takes place. In baptism, the believer is crucified and buried with Christ, then raised with Christ to a new life. We only have the eternal life of 6:23 because of the resurrection we experienced in 6:8-9. Thus the eternal life which the Roman Road promises only makes sense in light of our baptism.

3. Freedom from bondage to Sin and Death. For Paul, we used to be enslaved to personified Sin, which paid us wages of death (6:23). The crucifixion of the old self sets the believer free from this force in a transformation that, for Paul, amounts to salvation. The Roman Road assumes that we owe God a death because of our sin, and thus it lacks any reference to sin and death as Powers which bind us in slavery.

4. Obedience and new behavior. The Roman Road, because its adherents often wish to avoid any suggestion of justification by works (in line with, e.g., 9:32), makes no reference to a new kind of behavior by the believer, just as it made no reference to a new life or freedom from sin. Indeed, many hold that in Paul’s view, new behavior comes after salvation, not as a part of it. However, I would hold that salvation must be a change to something, and for Paul a person’s changed behavior is a part of what she becomes at salvation. Paul’s emphasis on a changed life can be seen, for example, in 6:12, 7:4, and 8:13.

5. The work of the Holy Spirit. Paul insists that only those who have the Spirit of Christ belong to Christ (8:9), and that it is by the (Holy) Spirit that misdeeds are put to death so that we might live (8:13). Furthermore, the resurrection of our bodies will take place because of God’s Spirit within us (8:12). These parts of present and future salvation are dependent on the Holy Spirit, which is not mentioned in the Roman Road.

The glossing over of these crucial points of Christian theology/spirituality leads to an important logical gap in the road. The Roman Road tries, as far as I can tell, to find the quickest logical path from “sinner” to “saved.” However, it ends up taking a different logical route than the one Paul actually takes in Romans. This should bother us.

The Roman Road interprets Christ’s death (by its 3rd point) as a means of substitutionary atonement, assuming that Christ died the death we were supposed to die. The logic goes something like this: when we sin, we deserve death; but Christ died instead, so if we believe in him we don’t have to.

According to Paul, however, Christ died as a sacrifice of atonement (3:25), which is a means of forgiveness, not a transfer of punishment. This is important because Paul is describing God as a just ruler willing to give up something to atone for our sin, not as an angry deity needing vengeance to appease his wrath. Subsitutionary atonement may indeed be suggested in the NT (e.g., 1 Peter 2:24), but I do not think it is Paul’s concern in Romans (or perhaps anywhere, though perhaps I’m overlooking something).

Furthermore, when Paul talks about the “wages of sin,” I think he means something very different than what the Roman Road supposes. Paul argues that in baptism we are crucified and raised with Christ, setting us free from our slavery to (personified) Sin (6:6-7), so that we no longer earn death, but become slaves to God and receive God’s free gift of eternal life. So Sin, in Romans 6:23, is not an action that demands a wage, but a master who pays a wage.

This changes the logic of the entire Road. Our problem is not some punishment that we deserve, but a Power who has control over us. Substitutionary atonement can only remove punishment, but Paul describes us as having a bigger problem. We are slaves to a cruel taskmaster, who pays us only death, and from whom we can only be set free (ironically) by dying (with Christ) and being raised again. This demands that becoming a Christian requires an entirely new life, and that simply believing that Jesus took away our punishment is insufficient.

Essentially, the Roman Road substitutes the idea of salvation and one benefit of salvation for what salvation actually is. In other words, it changes salvation from a powerful transformation via death and resurrection into an unobservable, internal alteration of our ultimate destination, which should be followed by an actual process of transformation but does not include such a change as part of its essence. I think such a suggestion would make Paul either laugh or cry. Well, more likely he’d write an angry letter.

This is a key reason, I believe, that salvation is meant to take place in a community (rather than in reading a web page), because understanding and enacting the process of salvation are necessary parts of undergoing it. Word, as they say, must put on flesh. (I owe that line to Rich Mullins.)

If we take Scripture as a revelation of God, then we must acknowledge that God revealed to us the book of Romans, not 5 scattered verses from Romans which we were meant to piece together as best we could. A simple presentation of the Gospel from Romans, if it is not true to the book’s own logic, is not likely to be God’s intent. So I would argue that it remains for Christians who want a simple, clear presentation of the Gospel to keep looking.