An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 215: Hey Paul, try just using one definition of “Law”. Also: should you pray for your pets? (Romans 6-10)

Romans 6-10
Hey Paul, try just using one definition of “Law”. Also: should you pray for your pets?

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT

For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Romans 6

“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

I used the last line of this chapter as the quote, whereas I normally go for something near the beginning that encapsulates the essence. Here, however, there’s a famous saying and so I thought I’d go with that, which once you’ve read the chapter is slightly different in context than in the way it is normally used.

Usually, “the wages of sin are death” is meant pretty much as an implied threat, but reading the rest of the chapter and it’s all a bit more metaphorical. Briefly, the chapter refers to death in the sense of a rebirth – sinners die and are reborn as non-sinners if they accept Jesus – “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life”.

So far, so fairly typical in a ritualistic sense; the baptism practiced by John the Baptist must have had a similar sense, of washing away sins and being reborn. The believer needs to enter the ritual world, needs to surrender himself to the ritual and come out the other side with a new self. This also mirrors the year-king/sun-king style myths from which the Jesus myth takes inspiration (or mirrors, depending on your viewpoint).

One question I have, though, is that is a person reborn then completely unable to sin? What happens if they backslide? Are they allowed a second chance to accept Jesus, or is it a once in a lifetime thing? Because quite evidently people that have called themselves Christian have committed offences that would, even if only applying the rules of their own religion, would be considered sins. So evidently acceptance of Jesus does not remove the *ability* to sin, but only the blame for prior sins, according to Paul.

Romans 7

“Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.”

This chapter gets confusing because I think when it refers to “law” it means different things at different times. Briefly, as far as I can tell, Paul gives an example that “the law” forbids a woman to marry another man unless her first husband is dead. Death releases her from “the law”. Likewise (?), those who follow Jesus are symbolically dead to “the law” and are thus free to follow Jesus.

However, also Paul considers the idea of “sin”, and seems, to my reading, to come close to saying that it is the legality and morals of the time and place that determine what is right and wrong, rather than absolute morality (which I’m sure is the opposite to what he meant). Paul says that “Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet”. Without “the law” telling him that coveting was wrong, he would not sin. Sinning, by this definition, is breaking, or thinking about breaking, “the law”. It’s still not clear what kind of law Paul is referring to – the law of a legal system, or natural laws, or God’s laws? However, Paul is quite clearly saying here that notions of right and wrong are determined by what people say are right and wrong, and he also veers into the idea of thought crime as well. Further, without the laws, there can be no transgression – “For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died”. So, in some ways, Paul is mirroring the Fall story – people only became sinners once they were aware that there was such a thing as right and wrong.

And here Paul veers a bit, because now he seems to say that “the law” is a thing that exists in and of itself (or, by his mythology, from God) “For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin”, and here Paul turns to the struggle within himself between his attempts to achieve this absolute right and wrong versus what he sees as his innate sinful nature; a struggle between “mind” and “body” in which the mind is good, and the body is bad –“But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members”.

Which is a fairly common theme to religions, that the earthly is a threat to the heavenly, that the material is bad and the spiritual is good. Which is fine in a way, but I think denying our nature as living beings is ultimately a self-destructive and futile route to take. The “mind” is not a separate thing from the body – our brains, that give us a sense of ourselves as a creature existing in time and space, are just as much a physical part of us as those parts that Paul deplores (one would assume anything to do with sex or eating). Don’t deny these aspects of ourselves on the rather dubious concepts of someone with absolutely no knowledge of neuroanatomy and modern psychology, rather, accept them, rejoice in what we can do as physical beings without feeling guilt for being so. That’s a sad, sad way of being.

Romans 8

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”

As well as the abnegatory tone of the last chapter, with which I objected, it also raised a question which was; if turning to Jesus removes sin and death, how come people that have claimed to have done so still commit sins (by their own world view), and still suffer and still die?

To which this chapter kind of answers, at least the last two. It’s not immortality *now*, but after death, that you get for converting. You still have to suffer and die in this life, but at least you get a shiny new one afterwards. Which is a nice comforting idea, I’m sure. But what about other creatures? Animals still suffer and die but they don’t get the chance to convert and get a shiny new afterlife. And if they only suffer and die because humans bought sin into the world, why should they suffer? And if it’s an object lesson to humans that they should obey God or things turn to crap for everyone (like a teacher keeping the whole class in detention for one misbehaving child), why is it not possible for humans to atone on behalf of animals? Can you beg God for forgiveness for your dog as well?

The rest of this chapter is a lengthy treatise on how faith can’t be taken away again once it has been accepted. Which comes across as part persecution complex (“For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter”) and part fanaticism (“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”)

Romans 9

“For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh”

I got a bit lost at the beginning of this chapter, but the gist of it seems to be two-fold. Firstly, like many of the Psalms, that God can do whatever God wants, because God is God, and you are not (“Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?”). This Paul illustrates with some discussion on the history of the Israelites.

The second and latter part of this chapter points out that, according to the prophecies of Isaiah, a “remnant” of the Israelites will be saved, and Paul determines that this means that only some Jews will be “saved” by Jesus, since they are more concerned with Law than faith. And therefore (?) it follows that Gentiles may also partake of the blessing of Jesus (otherwise there wouldn’t be many followers).

Romans 10

“How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?”

This chapter lays out a pretty fundamental element of Christian faith. That to “confess” Jesus and believe in His resurrection in your heart means salvation. (Confess here having one of those very specific meanings that only exists within the faith). That’s pretty much Paul’s route to “salvation”; it’s interesting that Paul likens “ascending to heaven” with “bringing Jesus down from above”, likewise “descend to the deep” as bringing “Christ from the dead”. So in other words, the ascent or descent of the person is metaphorical for attainment of faith.

The rest is about hearing the gospel, and how it is not so much merely proclaiming it but also a requirement of the person hearing to accept it. Paul gives a little get-out clause where he says that Isaiah predicted that some people would not listen.