Welcome to the January 2024 edition of The Eclectic Web Journal!
This month, we discuss the importance of clarifying the Gospel and we discuss the identify of the Nephilim. We also evaluate modern apocalyptic language and we spotlight one of our favorite Firefly moments.
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BIBLE/ THEOLOGY: Not Goofing Up the Gospel
I thought that we would start off the new year by discussing the Gospel. We all talk about the gospel, but I’m not sure anymore that we’re all discussing the same thing. Then we wonder why the world is confused about Christians.
Another thing we tend to do is to try to cram the glorious content of Christianity’s redemptive message into a sixty-second speech. Sometimes that is necessary, but that mentality, as we will discuss, can be dangerous, too.
Not goofing up the content: Evangelicals have had many discussions about what Christianity is at its essence or what someone has to know in order to be saved. I emphasize that the Gospel can understood with four words: Sin, Substitution, Faith and Follow. Concisely, we are all sinners, we have all done things morally and ethically wrong, not just against each other, but against a holy and perfect God and the expectations that He placed upon humanity. Scripture is clear here: Romans 3:23 asserts, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (see also Isa 6:5, 64:6; Rom 3:9). The next word, substitution, reminds us that Christ became fully human, lived a perfect life, died in our place, and rose from the dead. He did this “for us,” as in Romans 5:8: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (2 Cor 5:21; 1 Thess 5:10; 1 Pet 3:18). Again, both Christ’s sacrificial death and literal resurrection are critical to this substitution and exchange (1 Cor 15:3-4).
Next comes the question of how we appropriate or receive the salvation, righteousness, and forgiveness that Christ provides. Our impulse is to wonder what we have to do to earn it, but the reality is that there is nothing that we can do to merit or earn salvation. We receive it by faith in Christ, His death, and His resurrection. We are saved by God’s grace when we trust in Christ. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast” (see also Luke 7:50; Acts 15:11). But this free gift of grace is not something that we can just sit on; rather it demands something of us. And that is our fourth word, “follow”; in response to grace, we choose to follow Christ. Jesus wasn’t just looking for converts, but disciples and followers. For instance, in Matthew 16:24 He said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” The Gospel is not just about getting salvation and forgiveness, but about serving and following God and the blessings one enjoys from doing so.
I believe that this addresses the issue of what is the bare minimum that people need to know in order to be saved. Beyond that, I think that God the Father knows who has genuinely trusted in Christ, and He is merciful and gracious even in our ignorance and ineptitude to extend saving grace to those who have truly believed even in the bare minimum.
Not Goofing Up the Presentation: As we said earlier, there may be a time or attention pressure compelling us to present a condensed gospel. We have to be careful of not minimizing the gospel in this process, that is, by presenting only the bare minimum that someone needs to know to be saved. I have taught that people should be prepared with a two-minute basic presentation, I have heard others talk about an elevator speech, meaning, if you only had 30 seconds to convey the gospel, what would you say?
But perhaps this kind of approach is not only unhelpful, but unrealistic, and doctrinally dangerous. It may be unrealistic, because, how often do we only have thirty or sixty seconds to present the gospel? Usually circumstances give us more time to do so, whether an ongoing conversation with a co-worker or a long discussion with a relative that you have not seen in a while. This may be theologically dangerous, too, because in our attempts to present the bare minimum elements of the Gospel, we often end up minimizing the gospel. We may leave out important aspects of the Good News, such as sovereignty of God, the inability of man, or God’s profound, deep, and vast love for us. I have heard people merely talk about the death of Christ, but not the resurrection; without the truth of Christ rising from the dead the entire thing falls apart.
There needs to be some balance: it is good to have a basic short outline of the gospel for those rare instances where we only have a minute or two to present it. However, it is preferable if we can take that basic outline and use it to elaborate on the wonderful truths of Scripture, of evangelical doctrine, and on the love and Good News of Jesus Christ. “Evangelism must . . . be conceived as a long-term enterprise of patient teaching and instruction, in which God’s servants seek simply to be faithful in delivering the gospel message and applying it to human lives, and leave it to God’s Spirit to draw men to faith through this message in his own way and at his own speed” (J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life, 164).
The Gospel doesn’t have to be imposed on someone in thirty or sixty seconds. Ideally, it should be delivered through a relationship with someone where you have the luxury to have many long conversations about it over days or weeks or even years. Also, it should not be a lecture: it should include hearing people’s objections and doubts and concerns. We should ask them what their hang-ups are for trusting in Christ and explore any objections they have with Biblical substance and genuine sympathy for them. We should also know that many people’s barriers to receiving the Gospel are emotional. They may have legitimate anger at religious leaders that they know or the Gospel may be obscured by instances of hurt that they experienced in churches.
But to our point here, perhaps more people are not responding to the gospel because they are only getting that bare minimum gospel. They are not hearing and encountering the wonderful rich truths of God’s love, His forgiveness, and our profound need for a Savior. They hear about the death and resurrection of Christ, but they don’t know that Christ died in our place and out of love and compassion for us and that He rose miraculously to demonstrate His power over sin and death. In short, one wonders if a minimalistic Gospel is a Gospel that can actually be understood, and if it is a Gospel that can actually save.
We need to change our thinking on this. We wonder what is the bare minimum amount of information that a person needs to be saved. Instead, we should be sharing the most information that we can. We shouldn’t get lost on theological rabbit-trails, but we should take time to describe that people are dead in sin and unable to save ourselves, that God is rich in mercy, that Christ fulfills all the sacrificial and moral expectations of the Old Testament through His death and resurrection. We don’t want to overwhelm people with Biblical content on one hand, but perhaps we have too often underwhelmed people with an overly-simplistic, empty, and feckless Gospel.
Let’s move away from this notion about getting people the bare minimum content. Take someone out to lunch or invite them over for dinner. Tell them you would like to have a conversation about something that is important to you, and tell them that you want to address any questions or objections they may have. Don’t be shy, and don’t be ashamed of the Good News about the eternal life that only comes through faith in Christ (John 14:6; Romans 1:16).
POLITICS: Good, Bad, and Disturbing Things Heard In the GOP Debates
Unfortunately televised political debates today are more of a circus than a serious discussion of ideas and plans. However, at least some good ideas, as well as some bad ones, were articulated at the Republican Presidential debates in Fall 2023. In this article I want to survey some of the good things that we heard in the Fall 2023 GOP debates, as well as some bad and even disturbing statements.
First, let’s start with the good. I appreciate a snippet that they used of Nikki Haley one minute into the second debate: “We will stop the spending. We will stop the borrowing. We will stop the earmarks,” though I believe that this kind of fiscal responsibility is almost impossible in our nations’ capital. In that second debate, Tim Scott noted around the 26:18 mark that, “America is not a country in decline. Under Joe Biden, we are a country in retreat.”
I was grateful to hear these candidates pushing back against our growing dependence on China, articulating their concerns about the unsustainable national debt, and discussing the dangers related to our wide-open southern border. Mike Pence mentioned having a smaller federal government and resisting efforts to consolidate more power and influence in Washington even by means of something as helpful as healthcare. During the second debate Ron DeSantis emphasized the value of energy independence and American energy dominance. In the third debate Vivek Ramaswamy aggressively challenged the media and their obvious lack of journalistic integrity: “This is actually about you in the media and the corrupt media establishment. [Regarding] the Trump Russia collusion hoax that you pushed on this network for years, was that real or was that Hillary Clinton made up disinformation?”
I appreciate what the candidates said about public education, parental involvement with education, and the value of school choice. About one hour into the second debate, Nikki Haley mentioned, “We’ve got to quit spending time on this DEI [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion] and CRT [Critical Race Theory] and instead focus on financial literacy, on digital literacy, and on making sure that our kids know what they need to do to have the jobs of the next generation.” While abortion remains a tricky issue politically, I was grateful for the boldness of some of the candidates on this issue. In the third debate, Tim Scott seemed to connect the issue of abortion to adoption and education, as well: “We should not only be pro-life before the child is born, we should be pro-life after the child is born” (01:42:19).
To Ban or Not To Ban: The issue of abortion brought up something difficult and disturbing that the GOP needs to deal with. In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Roe v. Wade to protect the alleged right of citizens to have an abortion. In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case; they ruled that abortion was not a legitimate, constitutional right, and that the states had the right to decide the issue for themselves. Of course, the value of states’ rights is a critical plank in the conservative platform that prevents the federal government from amassing too much power. But then some conservatives wanted to turn around and federalize this issue by making abortion illegal. We didn’t like the federal permission given to people to have an abortion, but now some Republicans wanted to impose a federal ban.
I think abortion is tantamount to murder. However, conservatives risk speaking out of both sides of their mouths when they talk about abortion and whether the federal government should ban it completely, or partially, or not at all. Only Chris Christie spoke with clarity on this issue about one hour and 45 minutes into the third debate:
“For 50 years, conservative lawyers have been arguing that the federal government should have absolutely nothing to do with this issue constitutionally because it’s nowhere in the Constitution. And then Dobbs comes and we finally gain that victory, which was the creation of a constitutional right out of thin air that didn’t exist. And now we have people running to say, ‘Let’s short circuit the states from doing what they need to do and let’s go right to some type of federal ban.’”
He alone pointed out this unhappy irony. Conservatives were dissatisfied when there was a federal permission to have an abortion, but wanted the issue pushed back to the states. Now that it has been pushed back to the states, conservatives want a federal ban on abortion or a ban on abortion at 20 weeks or 15 weeks. Christie continued that the founders of our country were “really smart and [that] this is an issue that should be decided in each state. And I trust the people of this country, state by state, to make the call for themselves.”
This is a bit of a pickle for conservatives: we can’t eliminate abortion without imposing a federal ban. However, if we allow states to decide, many will vote to allow legal abortions for three months, six months, and even up to the moment of birth. Christie pointed out the irony, but no conservative presidential candidate has satisfactorily solved this puzzle.
Wipe Them Off the Map: But while rightly pleading for the lives of the unborn on one hand, some in these debates came close to calling for genocide on the other. The issue in the third debate was how the candidate would advise Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on how to respond to Hamas which attacked Israelis in October 2023. Tim Scott asserted, “I would tell Prime Minister Netanyahu, not only do you have the responsibility and the right to wipe Hamas off of the map, we will support you, we will be there with you, we’ll stand shoulder to shoulder” (17:28). Just before this, Nikki Haley, “Finish them” (14:33). Ron DeSantis said in the fourth debate that Israel has “a right to eliminate Hamas and win a total and complete victory so that they never have to deal with this again” (18:26). I suspect that most of us probably understood what these Republicans were saying and we recognized the dramatic rhetoric. But perhaps to the un-discerning ear – which may include many Americans – this sounds like the Republican party is calling for genocide.
While both sides in a war are usually culpable to some extent, the difference is that Hamas’s charter declares that they want to eliminate all Jews from the region, “from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea.” Imagine if our Constitution declared that in addition to crafting a well-ordered society, we also wanted to eventually destroy all Canadians and take their land. That would probably not fly domestically nor among the international community. Just because Hamas calls for the genocide of Jews, that doesn’t mean that we respond in kind. Certainly, Israel should take whatever means it deems necessary to protect itself, and the debate for us then becomes to what extent the U.S. military should be involved. However, the notion of exterminating a population or group of people is not something that GOP candidates should be suggesting.
Many have referred to the October 2023 attack as being Israel’s 9-11, that is, the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington D.C. on September 11, 2001. Yet, despite the damage these terrorists inflicted on us, we didn’t declare that we wanted to annihilate all Muslims or all Afghanistanis or all Iraqis. Genocide is not the answer, even though the destruction of many terrorists may be the result. Again, some Republican candidates have failed to speak clearly on this issue, while others, calling for what seems like genocide, have lost the moral high ground on this issue.
I’m sure in future articles we will continue to analyze the good, the bad, and the disturbing things that come out of these and future Republican presidential debates. The lessons from these debates, however, seems to be clear: Republicans need to continue to clearly articulate the value of a smaller federal government, the need to reduce the national debt, protect the southern border, and inject more choice into public education. At the same time, GOP candidates need to recognize where they can provide more clarity on some of these fuzzy topics. If we don’t provide clear answers, we risk abdicating important federal offices to those who do not just have fuzzy answers to these issues, but very wrong and destructive ones, as well.
ECLECTIC BIBLE QUESTIONS: Identifying the Nephilim
A question about the Bible that I received recently was in regard to the Nephilim of Genesis 6:4. A related question is whether it is possible that the “the mighty men who were of old” from Genesis 6:4 are related to the heroes in Homer’s writings or other ancient specimens that we sometimes read about.
The Nephilim have boggled the minds of churchmen for ages. Some theories are more mundane while some explanations sound like science-fiction. Some see fallen angels in the figures of the Nephilim, some see humans with super-human abilities, and some even posit that they descended from aliens. I hope to bring some clarity to this problem; we will probably never conclusively identify the Nephilim, but it is fun to entertain some speculation.
The word Nephilim comes from the Hebrew word naphal meaning “to fall” or “to lie down.” This could also refer to those who fall on others, as in attacking them. Similarly, it could refer to those who cause others to fall, that is, they are “mighty men,” perhaps victorious military leaders. It is possible also that this is a play on words: they caused others to fall in battle, but eventually they themselves fell, were killed off, and are no more.
There was apparently a group of these unusually large individuals in Canaan referred to as “Nephilim” (Num 13:33). The LXX (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) uses the word gigantes, or “giants.” Of course, we don’t here mean human beings who were twenty or forty feet tall. Just normal people who were unusually tall. Several tall individuals are mentioned in the Bible who may have had some Nephilim genes in them. Og king of Bashan had a bed or a couch that was over 13 feet long, and presumably, he was only slightly shorter than that (Deut 3:11). Goliath, famous foe of David, was nine feet (1 Samuel 17:4; note in this verse that a “cubit” is a foot-and-a-half, so six cubits equals nine feet). By comparison, basketball stars Shaquille O’Neal and Yao Ming are 7′ 6″; Andre the Giant was 7′ 4″. Robert Wadlow, called the “Giant of Illinois,” was 8′11″ (died in 1940). It is possible that people can be that large, but in our context, it is still unusual.
Many people ascribe to the “angel theory” of the Nephilim in Genesis 6:4. This is the view that the “sons of God” were either angels or demons and these angelic-class beings hooked up with beautiful human women. This idea comes primarily from the apocryphal book of 1 Enoch (106:14-17), which has a high amount of attention to eschatology and angelology. To be fair, “sons of God” does refer to angels in a few places, like Job 1:6, 2:1, and probably Job 38:7. It is used of people in Luke 20:36, who are likened to angels in that specific context.
It is fun to imagine that the Nephilim are the offspring of angels and people; some point to Jude 1:6 and 2 Peter 2:4, but we have to be careful mixing Scripture and science-fiction or medieval fantasy. However, there are several problems Biblically with the “angel theory” view for explaining the identity of the Nephilim. First, we don’t see this kind of intermingling anywhere else, and Matt 22:30 and its parallel in Mark 12:25 indicate that angels don’t marry, and thus, they don’t procreate.
Also, while angelic-class beings can manifest themselves in a visible appearance, that doesn’t mean that they have a legitimate physical form. The further implication is that as spiritual beings they probably don’t have all the functionality of that physical form. When I participated in drama and theater in high school, we made set-pieces of walls with switches and windows, but those weren’t supportive walls, those switches didn’t work, and those windows didn’t look outside. They had the visual properties of being physical walls but lacked most of the functional properties of interior walls. The same with angels and demons; they sometimes have some kind of localized and visible dimensionality, but they are still incorporeal beings, and thus, cannot procreate nor participate in those kinds of physical acts. They cannot partake in the “joys of the flesh” because they have no flesh.
My own theory is that the Nephilim were genetically bred super-humans.
A few things to keep in mind as we think through this group of ancient super-people. First, the world would have us believe that we are evolving, getting better, smarter, stronger. However, I think that part of the idea of fallenness means that we are fallen, and have been falling for millennium. We are not evolving, but rather, we have been getting worse since being expelled from the Garden of Eden. Our genes have been slowly getting worse and worse; technology gets better, but our genes get weaker. We as human beings are far lesser people that the women and men of ancient times, physically, intellectually, and emotionally.
I believe that there were exceptionally large and strong individuals in those early generations, and that the intermarriage of royal families created an even stronger group of people given the genetic dynamism during those first ten or twenty generations of human history. The outcome is even stronger and more gifted individuals, and these are probably the Nephilim.
The phrase “sons of God” was sometimes a reference to kings and members of noble families. They thirsted for power and wanted to become “men of renown” (Gen 6:4). These individuals and their children were privileged and gifted, and therefore, took for themselves and their sons strong mates from other royal families. The “of men” in the phrase “daughters of men” could mean “best of men.” The royal and gifted men took brides who were socially and probably aesthetically among the “cream of the crop.”
Ancient people may not have understood genetics, but they certainly understood breeding. For instance, we see genetic or breeding manipulation in Genesis 30:32-35; genetic breeding was not unknown even that early in human history, and I think that the Nephilim proves that this happened with people, too. It was important to ancient families to breed strong sons to continue the line for the sake of the family and for the sake of their culture, city-state, or country.
This idea also solves another problem. The Nephilim were not a race of people, but a class; genetically-engineered in the top echelon of ancient societies. This helps explain why there are Nephilim both before and after the flood. Those mentioned in Genesis 6:4 would not have survived the flood if they were a race such that they again appear in Numbers 13:33 or as the Anakim mentioned here and in Joshua 11:21. If they described the way individuals were bred in ancient times rather than just an ancient unbroken lineage then this helps explain how they existed both in Genesis as well as in Numbers and Joshua and even centuries later in a figure like Goliath.
Just as these individuals gave rise to true stories in the Bible, they also animated myths and legends such as those in Homer’s writings. Hercules or Achilles may have been genetically gifted individuals of royalty and thus superior stock and then mythical stories sprang up around them.
It could be that God was grieved (Gen 6:3, 6) not just by the general evil in ancient times, but how those in charge, the “sons of God,” used their authority to gain more power, to exploit women, and to perpetuate a race of super-gifted and power-hungry individuals like themselves. It is dangerous to think that we could evolve and modify ourselves to be super-mortal and god-like figures. This is presumably one reason why God sent the flood in Genesis 6-9, and why God used David to defeat Goliath in 1 Samuel 17. Even the best of humans must remember that we are still mortal and God is immortal.
So what are your thoughts about the Nephilim; feel free to give us your feedback on our The Eclectic Kasper Facebook page and share your theories about who this group of people are.
APOCALYPTIC AUTHORS: Modern Use of Apocalyptic Code Words
Many of our readers know that I spent the last few years finishing my dissertation on the history of apocalypticism, and especially focusing on the eschatology and apocalypticism at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation (1517-1525).
But one of my attractions to this subject is how we still use dramatic and apocalyptic language in our theology, politics, and general discourse. The apocalyptic rhetoric and code words may have changed over the centuries, but they still carry a great deal of cultural resonance.
While working on the dissertation, I often thought about a meme that I once saw. The meme shows a sign in the window of a bookstore that reads, “Please note: The post-apocalyptic fiction section has been moved to Current Affairs.” The joke is that potential future promises and threats still have relevance for actual events today. The other implication is that our society is simply filled with dramatic rhetoric.
Today, the idea of “apocalypse” is more innocuous than it was in the past. Now, it usually refers to how a situation or event changes how we think or live at least temporarily. Adding “-pocalypse” or “-maggedon” to a word or phrase indicates a dramatic or perhaps overstated shift; the November 2016 U.S. Presidential election was frequently labeled the “Trumpocalypse.” As I point out in my dissertation, sometimes, these suffixes are used ironically of an inconvenience; a bad traffic jam is labeled “carmageddon.” A few years ago, Time magazine reported that in New Zealand an unusually-intense rainy season caused the loss of twenty percent of potato crops, a situation referred to as the “chipocalypse” (Megan McCluskey, “Time Off PopChart,” Time, October 30, 2017, 59). The notion of apocalypse continues to carry cultural resonance, but with fewer religious overtones and less urgency than it had in the past.
Perhaps because of their overuse, these words are sometimes today used more flippantly. After the traumatic experience of leaving The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien in January 2010 after hosting only a few months, O’Brien petulantly grew a beard. He kept this until May 2011, when it was partially shaved off during an episode of his TBS talk show, Conan, by Will Ferrell with battery-operated clippers (and completely shaved off-screen by a professional barber). This event was dubbed the “Beardpocalypse.”
An episode of The Office that aired 11 April 2013, demonstrated the “trauma” that employees endured when the office building’s lone elevator broke down. The episode is called “Stairmageddon,” a term coined by one of the employees as she watched her out-of-shape co-workers trudging up to the second floor. Keeping with the apocalyptic theme, Stanley, struggling up the one flight of stairs, declares, “This is an abomination!” (leveraging a word frequently associated in the Bible with the last days). Another employee, Oscar, notes the irony: “So when something as routine as elevator maintenance happens and people are forced to expend cardiovascular effort, we have to compare it to the end of time.”
In some cases, the usage is less comic and ironic. The global pandemic which began in the Spring of 2020, a once-in-a-century virus from which many nations and individuals are still recovering, was often referred to as the “Coronapocalypse.” Eschatological threats pervade political discourse; in December 2017, Nancy Pelosi asserted that the GOP tax plan would inaugurate the apocalypse: “This is the end of the world. The debate on health care is live/ death, this is armageddon.” In January 2020, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reported that the Doomsday Clock, originally founded in 1947, moved closer to midnight. “The clock is now set at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to symbolic doom and the first time the hands have been within the two-minute mark.” In January 2023, it was moved ten more seconds closer to midnight in light of international strife and alleged ecological threats. The concept of apocalypse, even stripped of its religious overtones, still generates strong rhetorical power today.
Is it that we endured apocalyptic and culturally traumatic events or is it that we decided to discuss and interpret those events, and many less-significant events, in apocalyptic terms? Author William Langewiesche asserts, “The dread that Americans felt during the weeks following the September 11 attacks stemmed less from the fear of death than from a collective loss of control—a sense of being dragged headlong into an apocalyptic future for which society seemed unprepared” (American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center [New York: North Point Press, 2002], 75). The assertion seems to be that the crisis could only be understood in apocalyptic terms and it thus prompted a high level of societal anxiety.
And yet, one could also argue that the obsession with apocalyptic language in our own culture wasn’t just introduced by traumatic events, like the space shuttle disaster in 1986 or the attack on September 11. It also seems to have been injected into our national conscious as much by media who tried to use the apocalyptic language to attract viewers.
In fact, one of my pet peeves is the dramatic and hyperbolic language used by political pundits around national elections. Around each presidential election or intervening mid-term election, we are told that our vote or our failure to vote could permanently change the landscape of the country. Candidates issue empty promises of utopia and simultaneously fail to address some of the real problems in our country like homelessness, a wide-open southern border, or an unsustainable national debt. Others declare that the upcoming election (again presidential or mid-term), could be the most important election of our lifetimes. Of course, that could not be true, because most of us are more than two years old, and these pundits have used this same rhetoric in the previous seventeen elections. Our dramatic and at times apocalyptic rhetoric masks real problems and gets politicians voted into office, even though those candidates fail to use their office to solve those problems. This apocalyptic rhetoric and these scare tactics are used frequently, shamelessly, and often, baselessly.
Toward the conclusion of my dissertation, I tried to connect the religious apocalypticism of the early sixteenth century with the dramatic rhetoric that we often hear today. Some prominent evangelical mouthpieces trumpet a looming moral doom in the West while some environmentalist voices peddle a message of impending ecological calamity; both sides employ at times hyperbolic and extreme rhetoric to motivate change and action in their audiences. Apocalyptic statements are used to manipulate people to behave in certain ways, or are used to create fear so that people will vote in certain ways.
This rhetoric is not sustainable. Our news networks have become institutionalized versions of the boy-who-cried-wolf, and are losing what little credibility they still have. If we continue to bellow out dramatic and even apocalyptic rhetoric, we will fail to address real problems and provide actual solutions.
I will conclude this article about the concerns regarding apocalyptic rhetoric the same way that I concluded the dissertation: “Perhaps understanding how people responded to eschatological promises and threats in the past could help us navigate with sense and sobriety through the maze of apocalyptic . . . rhetoric that is increasingly expressed in political, social, and religious discourse today.”
ROMANS: The Obligations of Grace, Part 2, Romans 6:16-18
Romans 6:16-18: Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
It is possible to be a Christian, but still live like an unbeliever? Not only is it possible, but that is the situation for many people who claim to be believers in Christ. We are all sinners, but someone who continually submits to a sin habit or to their sin nature doesn’t seem to understand the doctrine of grace and how liberating and meaningful God’s grace can be.
While the imagery of slavery is very politically charged in our society, it is quite appropriate for the point that Paul is trying to make in Romans 6 about the obligations of obedience that we have to God in light of the tremendous grace and mercy that He has shown to us.
The word “obey” or “obedience” is repeated three times in verse 16. Paul challenges any notion that no longer being under law or Mosaic law somehow means that the believer no longer has obligations. Rather, the believer remains obligated to God, and locked into a relationship where obedience is required and expected.
The imagery that Paul uses to communicate this idea of our obligation to obey God is the word “slave” or “servant.” This is from the Greek word doulos, which only occurs only five times in Romans. Meaningfully, the first time is in Romans 1:1, and Paul uses it of himself. Paul calls on believers to understand their spiritual obligations in the same way that he has. The other four uses of this word in Romans occur in this passage, here in 6:16 (twice), and also in vv. 17 and 20. Again, though this is sometimes an uncomfortable word in our modern vernacular, it is, for Paul, an ideal analogy for someone who understands the grace of God and the obligations that grace demands of us.
It is interesting that in the second half of v. 16, Paul doesn’t distinguish between a believer and an unbeliever, but simply states that we are servants and slaves of the one we obey. Whereas the unbeliever only has the capacity to be a servant of sin, which leads to death, the believer has the capacity to choose between continuing to serve sin at the risk of temporal punishment and harm, or obedience to God for temporal as well as eternal blessing. Unfortunately, not enough believers decide to grow in their glorious obligation to grace, but rather, continue to wallow in their sin.
Paul is more positive in v. 17. He thanks God for the fact that he, and his believing audience are no longer slaves to sin. Rather, they became “obedient of heart.” That is, they were given the capacity to obey God’s truth and righteousness through faith, and they chose, for the most part, to walk in obedience to that truth.
Paul ends this verse with an interesting phrase, namely, that the Roman believers were obedient to that type or form (the Greek word tupos, as in “type”) of teaching to which they were committed. The standard teaching is a reference to Christian truth and practice, which is also called the “common faith” (Titus 1:4), the “common salvation” (Jude 1:3), or Peter’s phrase “a faith of the same kind as ours” (2 Pet 1:1). Also, this faith is not just something committed or entrusted to the audience, but it is something that they themselves were committed to. Some teachers, and even false teachers, of that day as well as our own, see themselves as masters over the ideas to which they adhere; in contrast, Christians submit themselves to Christian teachings and ideas. Believers are underneath, submissive to, and also formed by Christian doctrine and practice that we have received; our obligations to these doctrines and to our God is both our privilege and our liberation.
Our own country has a sad an unfortunate history with slavery, even involving many of our Founders and Framers. Slavery continues to cling tenaciously to modern politics a century-and-a-half after its abolition. Thus, there is a cultural block to our understanding of what it means to be a servant or slave even when the Master is God Himself.
Here in v. 18, Paul provides a contrast to the previous bondage that a believer had to the master of sin when she or he was in a pre-conversion state. The verb eleutheroō means “to be released” or “liberated”; it is used also in John 8:32, 36, in Galatians 5:1, and will be used again in Romans 6 and later in Romans 8 (Rom 6: 22; 8:2, 21). The notion of being liberated is found frequently in the NT, and Paul’s point is that there is some obligation that we have to the One who liberated us. Paul uses the verbal form of “slave,” specifically, the verb douloō, “to enslave” or “to make (someone) a slave.” Significantly, both of these verbs are aorist tense, both pointing back to a specific time when we were simultaneously liberated from sin and transferred into ownership by God.
Also significant is the fact that both verbs are passive in form; that is, we were passive participants in this transaction from being transferred from the slavery to sin to the status of being justified and owned by God. This idea purports well with the slavery concept, where the individual or family has no say-so in their own transfer of ownership. The very notion of a human being transferred from ownership from one party to another seems like an inhumane indignity. But theologically, this is a liberating reality; God graciously transfers us from the bondage of sin into bondage to Himself. This is done without our effort and without respect for our will, and we should be grateful for that.
Much of the rest of the book of Romans describes what the life of a liberated believer should look like. But we can make a few preliminary comments. Paul will talk about living by the Spirit of God in Romans 8, and loving each other and using our gifts in Romans 13. Understanding the obligations of grace includes living by the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and appreciating the virtues that wisdom produces in our lives (James 3:17).
We all follow something, whether a human leader, God, or our own flesh and desires. Not only is it best to be a servant of God, but there is no other service and obligation that is so liberating and meaningful than that.
BROWNCOAT BAY: Great Firefly Moments – “May Have Been the Losing Side . . .”
This article was originally from the May 2023 edition of The Eclectic Web Journal, and is presented here with minor modifications.
*** Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for the episodes described. ***
When is the losing side not the wrong side? Actually, probably more often than we think!
In a way, this is one of the more interesting motifs of Firefly and the follow-up film Serenity. It’s not a show about the winners or the people in control, like the Federation in Star Trek. And it’s not about people who fought against a powerful political force and won, like the Alliance in Star Wars.
Firefly tracks two people who were the underdogs in a war, and then lost the war, and yet they still feel that the cause they fought for is right. In fact, they seem to lose frequently, or, at best, to barely escape. But the losing that they often endure in the series doesn’t make them wrong.
All our lives we’ve heard variations of the phrase “might makes right.” But implicitly, we know, that might just helps you to win, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are right.
This quote in the title of this article is from the Firefly episode “Bushwhacked,” the second aired episode, but the third in the series (remember that Fox aired the pilot episode last after they cancelled the show). Serenity’s captain and crew are captured by the powerful government alliance that oversees the planets in humanity’s new star system five-hundred years in the future. A clever exchange takes place between captain Mal and his inexperienced but overconfident captor, Commander Harken:
Commander Harken: I notice your ship’s called “Serenity.” You were stationed on Hera at the end of the war. Battle of Serenity Valley took place there, if I recall.
Mal: [sarcastic] You know, I believe you might be right.
Harken: Independents suffered a pretty crushing defeat there. Some say that after Serenity, the Browncoats were through, that the war ended in that valley.
Mal: Hmm.
Harken: Seems odd you’d name your ship after a battle you were on the wrong side of.
Mal: May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.
The matter-of-fact way in which Mal delivers this line reflects that he recognizes the verbal trap; Harken is antagonizing Mal into getting defensive, but Mal’s reply is thoughtful and profound. He’s not about to entertain Harken and re-litigate a war that’s in the past. He wants to communicate that the loss of the battle and the war didn’t dampen his sense that their cause was just. In a sense, this quote gets to the heart of the series, and speaks to an important aspect of life: right is not defined by who wins and loose.
Many revolutions feature rebels who would echo similar sentiments. We lost, that doesn’t demand that we were wrong. We were overpowered, outflanked, outnumbered but not incorrect in effort or in intent. And, of course, this is a big theme in our own media and entertainment, from Braveheart to Star Wars, multiple examples of rebels opposing those in charge with mixed results.
It seems like every series nowadays leverages this trope to some degree. Or it features some brooding protagonist with a dark and painful past (Batman, John Wick, The Last of Us). However, for Mal, the brooding is deeper than having lost a loved one. Mal labors under this painful and confusing contradiction, specifically, the paradox that on one hand, he lost, but, on the other hand, he was right.
Most of us know that wrong isn’t as subjective as we make it out to be in our society. Oppression, excessive interference, manipulation, all have been historically not awesome. These historical patterns, in addition to the moral problems, remind us that wrong is usually fairly easy to identify.
Also, this reminds us that often that in life there is a clear difference between a loss and something that is outright wrong. The outcome is not the battle or the war, but the continued fight even though that fight has yielded many losses. Their conviction was that the major loss in Serenity Valley was not a referendum on the appropriateness of the cause. In fact, the crew of Serenity continue to fight against the Alliance throughout the series and until the end of the film Serenity. They may have lost the battle, and even the war, but they still carry the cause, and fight under the conviction that they are right, and that makes them mighty.
I recognize that not all Browncoats are Christians, and I don’t mean to get preachy. Some of you may resonate with Mal’s adage: “Sermons make me sleepy,” and even as a preacher myself, I don’t disagree.
Mal’s quote about being the losing side but not the wrong one has some deep resonance for many ideas or movements, but especially for Christianity. Church history demonstrates how the church often fights, and often loses. Of course, Christianity’s worst wounds are self-inflicted. But today, it seems like Christianity is losing big: losing the cultural wars, losing the younger generations, losing the rhetorical battles in our society. However, none of the losing that we go through undermines the legitimacy of our faith.
For many people who struggle today to work hard, feed their family, and fight against the many injustices in our world, we may feel like we’re on the losing side. But like Mal, who ends up gaining some vindication in the series and in the film, we have confidence that despite the losses, that doesn’t mean that our cause isn’t just or that our efforts aren’t beneficial.
So, keep your chin up, and don’t allow the losses to shake your faith or make you think that your cause isn’t right. You may be losing, but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong!
The Eclectic Web Journal is written by Matt Kasper and edited by Martha Kasper. Matt is a graduate of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Dallas Theological Seminary, and recently completed a PhD in Reformation history from Georgia State University. Matt is the pastor of a small church northeast of Atlanta called Grace Atlanta Bible Church, and is involved in several other groups and activities in the Atlanta area, as well.
We had written a decade’s worth of articles in our previous web journal, called, The Eclectic Kasper, which we published from 2011 to 2021. Those articles are also arranged topically in our “Eclectic Archive,” which you can access here.
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