Why We’ve Misunderstood the Book of Romans Since 430 A.D. - David Bercot

Lesson Transcript

Imagine Paul is your guide, and he's taking you through this magnificent palace of, you know, the emperor, okay? And he leads you through the door of a bedroom, let's say, and you go into this parlor, and it's all these amazing things, but you don't get to stay there very long, and he takes you out through another door.

And then you're in some little hidden passageway, and then he opens another door, and now you're in another room, and it's like, wow, this room is amazing too, you know, and you start looking around, but then in a few minutes he takes you out another door, and then you're in another room, you know?

And so what he's trying to say is, you know, Paul, instead of going, you know, this kind of order, he gives you a little bit of taste of something, and then he immediately goes to another point, you know, which is a brilliant point, and oh, that's wonderful, but then he doesn't just stay there, he goes to another. So you're going through this palace, and by the time you're done, you've gone through the whole palace, but it's been in this door out this door, kind of like Alice in Wonderland.

All right, well, David Burso, it is fantastic to have you back on the podcast. It's been a minute since we've done this. Yeah, it's good to be back, Reagan. So you have launched probably the biggest project I think you've done, and that's the commentary series. Yes. So New Testament commentary series based on the Ananiasian Fathers, the early church fathers, and a new volume just came out pretty recently as of this recording. It's the one on Romans. And I have to say, Romans is a pretty confusing book for me.

I really struggle with it, and I feel like there's probably a lot of other people in that same boat. So we want to dive into some of the things you found and what are lessons for us today, and just maybe clean some pieces that you've pulled. And obviously, there's this massive commentary that you've pulled from all of this, and so people can go get there if they want more information. But I feel like that'd be a good place to start. So without further ado, let's just launch right into it.

Let me go to the first question here. You credit what you consider the misinterpretation of Romans to be the writings of Augustine and Luther. And then you say this in, I think, the introduction. Augustine presented his radically new interpretation of Romans in the fifth century. Why do you think that was the case? Why did Augustine do that? And what was that interpretation? Okay, so, yeah, the whys are a little bit harder, but how it happened, I can explain.

You know, as far as whys, I mean, you know, I can't read somebody's heart or mind, but how it all happened, it was reacting so much of Christianity. The changes have come about because of overreacting to an out-and-out heretic or just someone maybe who's gone a little bit too far this way. And then somebody, I'm going to say with a good motive, swings way too far the other way, and they end up pulling the church with them. And that's happened over and over and over throughout church history.

And it's how doctrine has one of the big reasons why doctrine has changed as you go through history. It's not the only reason, but I'd say it's maybe the biggest factor. So in the fifth century, up until the beginning of the fifth century, so we're talking about the year 400, it's fairly uniform. I mean, whoever you read, whether it's people, say, in the year 96 AD, still in the first century, or it's Chrysostom in the late 300s, I mean, they're all saying basically the same thing.

They all understand Romans the same way. Now, I don't mean every single verse they have the same explanation, but the book as a whole. Okay, so then you get into the fifth century, and Augustine has become this figure in the West. He's up on this pedestal. He is the theologian, which is always dangerous when that happens in the church. When one man gets that much power, and Augustine was that man. He's brilliant. I mean, he is very good with his argumentation.

I mean, his writings are still read today by people other than scholars. You know, someone like Chrysostom, you know, no one reads him except somebody who's, you know, really into the early church or is, you know, some scholarly thing. But I mean, laypeople read Augustine, and he is very clear with his logic and how he lays things out.

And, you know, when you get that exalted where everybody looks up to you as the guy, and what had happened was the East and West, the Roman Empire was divided into East and West, and now the barbarians were overrunning the West, okay? And you see a divide between East and West. The West, there are few people who speak Greek in the West. Now, in the days of Paul, he could write to the Romans. When he wrote the book of Romans, he wrote in Greek. Oh, okay.

So we're saying at this point, Latin is starting to be much more prominent. Greek, which is the language of the New Testament. Right. Okay. Because we're a few hundred years after the time of Jesus. Augustine is writing, you said, around 400? Yeah, this is now he wrote things before 400, but he changed his view on Romans in the fifth century. Yeah, his early writings, he's pretty much in harmony with everyone else. But then in the fifth century, and it was because of a dispute with a man named Pelagius, okay?

A divide is beginning to happen between East and West on the understanding of the fall. Because the West is reading from Latin. By the time you get into the 300s and certainly by the year 400, very, very few laypeople in the West can read Greek. Even educated people like Augustine, he has some familiarity, but he's not fluent in Greek, okay? So they're reading a translation that has an error in it that states that we all sin in Adam, okay? Which is not what the Greek says.

This is Romans 5, where it talks about the fall. Through one man, sin entered into the world and death through sin, because in him all sinned. That's how the Latin reads. So we all sin somehow in Adam. So this view begins to develop in the West that we are guilty for Adam's sin. The guilt comes down to us, okay? Interesting. Now, which Latin translation is being used that had that error then? Well, it's called the Old Latin. It's something that would have been translated maybe in the first century.

And there was an official. There's different versions, but they're all saying that, okay? Now, Jerome is beginning to work on the Latin Vulgate. It had not yet become the main translation. And he follows that too. It was so ingrained in the West. He follows that in his translation. Even though he's translating from the Greek, he is, you know, aware of how Latin-speaking Christians are understanding the scriptures. Okay, so you have one view of the fall in the West that we inherit sin from Adam.

We inherit his guilt. Getting close maybe to total depravity. Not quite that far yet, but getting more. The fall is a big thing in the West. In the East, you have a bunch of views, and it's still that way today. Okay, so they recognize a fall, but some say we inherit Adam's mortality. Not his sin, but his mortality. That would be a prominent view among the Eastern Orthodox today. Others said this and that. Pelagius, he would be, well, in the East, he would be considered Orthodox in his lifetime.

But his view of the fall is more, we've been influenced and affected by Adam's sin because of his example. And the teaching that would have been handed down from a sinful parent to his children, and we're raised now in a world where sin is all around us, but we don't inherit necessarily a sin nature from Adam. Now, that was perfectly Orthodox in the East, but by now, because of the language barrier, to Augustine, that's like, wow, what are you saying? That's heretical, okay? Wow, okay, okay, I'm starting to see it.

This is very interesting. So Augustine comes into this situation, and then that's where we're picking up with what you were saying with these interpretations that Augustine is presenting. That works pretty different. Changes everything. Okay, so now Pelagius, he's actually from Britain. He is a Westerner. He's much more educated than Augustine. He is fluent in Greek. He reads Greek. He's familiar with this wide range of views of the fall.

And he leans, like I say, to the Eastern view, to the far edge of the Eastern view of, you know, the fall is mainly the environment we're born into, being kicked out of paradise, etc. So he's preaching, boy, I mean, you've had a state church now for nearly a hundred years. The word Christian means almost nothing. I mean, everyone born into the Roman Empire is a Christian, you know, pretty much unless you're a Jew. Pagan, it's forbidden, the pagan religions, etc.

So you have a church that's just made up of largely people who are nominal Christians. You have some really great sold-out Christians, but you mainly have the nominal Christians that you still see today in the Roman Catholic Church. Okay, so Pelagius, he's preaching against this lax discipline, this lack of godliness, and really emphasizing our need to obey the scriptures because we can obey them and we are held accountable to God.

And he criticizes, he's traveling now throughout the Roman Empire, preaching this no-nonsense of the Gospel of holiness. And he foolishly, I mean, although you should be able to do this, he criticizes Augustine because in his, I guess it's called his Confessions in English, it's his autobiography, in there he makes a statement, he's looking at becoming a monk maybe.

And so Augustine makes a statement, "Command whatever you will, God, and do what you command." Meaning, in other words, if you want me to be celibate, tell me to be it and then give me the power to do it. You do it, you know, you do it. And Pelagius says, well, it doesn't work that way. You know, God gives commands, he assists us, but he doesn't just do it for us. And so he criticizes, well, Augustine, I mean, he's up here on a pedestal. I mean, you don't criticize Augustine, you know.

So right away, he and his friend Jerome, boy, they jump on Pelagius. Well, now Jerome at that time, he's from the West, but he's living in Bethlehem. He's studying Hebrew. So they convene a council against Pelagius, okay? They're in the East. And, you know, the Eastern Christians listen. It's like, you're not saying anything heretical. He's fine. And then he convenes another council. They listen. Yeah, what Pelagius says is fine. It's maybe not what they all think, but it's within the realm of orthodoxy.

Okay, Augustine's not happy with that. So he convenes a council in Carthage, which is close to where he lives, way in the West, okay? These are Latin speakers, don't know anything about Greek. They don't even realize there's this difference of view between the East and West on the fall. And so these are Augustine's buddies, so they declare him a heretic, you know? So he's, you know, banned, excommunicated, and all of this in the West, which is where he is from.

So he then appeals to the pope, and he goes to Rome and explains to the pope his views, what his views are of the fall and our ability as fallen humans and, you know, how that all works. And the pope says, well, you know, there's nothing wrong with this. This is within the realm of orthodoxy. And he tells the ones that the bishops there in Carthig, you guys overreacted. You were too hasty in excommunicating him. He restores him, okay? Now, if that had been just a normal situation, it would have ended there.

But again, he's working against Augustine. Augustine is the most powerful man in the West, probably more than even the emperor, okay? So he and the emperor are friends. So he goes over the pope's head to the emperor and says, you know, hey, I don't like what the pope did. Pelagius, you know, I say he's wrong. I need you to back me up. So the emperor, you know, it's a state church now. He puts pressure on the pope, okay? Reinstate the excommunication.

So Pelagius is excommunicated, and maybe that would have ended, but Augustine feels like, okay, there's all these people who are following Pelagius. All right, we've got to put a stop. So he does all these writings against the quote Pelagians, but he moves their view. He misrepresents their view as saying that we humans don't need the help of the Holy Spirit. Okay, so you were looking at, we're starting at, this is so interesting in human nature, right?

Because you start with something that may have been fairly mild initially, but over time it becomes a us versus them scenario, and you almost get more entrenched, and it sounds like this is where Augustine starts taking some steps, putting down some lines on some things, right? And he starts moving. So what he used to teach, you know, he maybe, you know, had crossed the line a little bit on that statement, you know, command what you will, and, you know, do what you command. Okay, that was just one statement.

Pelagius probably should have left it alone. But if Augustine had been a humble Christian, you know, no big deal, you know? Wow, all the people who criticize me, if I responded that way, man, I'm going to go to the emperor and, you know, you're... If anybody doubts, just look at the comments from other episodes we've done with you. Yeah, I mean, so you should be able to do that, you know, man. And it was a mild criticism, but like I say, you don't do that to Augustine.

So he does all these writings pulling from Romans, okay? Like Romans that we'll be talking about, Romans chapter 9, and all these statements that you can proof text, trying to argue we, and he moves, his position was here, and he ends up moving all the way here. He misrepresents Pelagius as saying that we don't need God's grace and his power at all. We can do it all, which is not what Pelagius was saying, but that's what people still think because they know Pelagius through Augustine, okay? Oh, okay.

Meanwhile, Augustine keeps moving. It's not just that, no, you know, we're not as strong as you think, Pelagius. It's he finally moves to the point of we can do nothing. We humans have no role in our salvation. We cannot believe. We can't have faith. We cannot obey. We are absolutely, we have no role. It's all God. God does every bit of it. 100% of our salvation is God. 0% is human. Now that is heresy. I mean, the church had never taught that.

And if it had been anyone else saying it, it would have been like, what on earth are you saying? This is heresy. But it's Augustine. And I mean, he was like way up on a pedestal because he had defended the church against the Arians and against different, you know, real heretics. But now he's the one who becomes the heretic. But yeah, he's so powerful. I mean, he's so looked up to, number one. Number two, he has so many influential friends in high places, including the emperor himself, you know?

So he moves the whole Western church where they end up adopting this view that, yeah, we can do nothing on our own. It's 100% God. Not only that, it's all predestined. So not only do we not have any power, but God decided before we were created whether you're going to be saved and I'm not going to be saved. You know, we have no say on that. That's already been decided. Yeah, so this is where we're starting to see the origins of what would now be like Calvinism today and things, you know, things like that.

Calvinism is just purely, Calvin took Augustine, he organized it maybe a little better, came up with a brilliant system. And but yeah, it's almost pure Augustinian. Okay, so I'm going to look here in your introduction and pull a chunk because this gives context then for some of these things. So like for example, on the first page, you're saying, you know, how Augustine's presenting this radically new interpretation of Romans in the early fifth century.

So this is, you're basically being given us the backdrop of how we even got there. So you do have a section here on page seven, and then you're going into how that influences Luther, which is another huge chunk, right, of our understanding. You get another change, right? Yeah, yeah. And then, um, but this is a point that I want to pull back to, um, a little bit later on.

You said the church has had a uniform understanding of the key points of Romans up to this point, but then this is where we start seeing some of these new things splintering out and really a lot of, this is just my perspective, right? But I've tried to read Romans now and I feel like I have so many different things that I've heard. I can't even untangle it anymore. Right, right.

So maybe walk us through that a bit where there was, you're saying there was a uniform understanding or at least somewhat uniform understanding of Romans up to this point. Right. So if you were to summarize, what is Romans about? What is, especially the Ananiasian fathers, the early church fathers previous to Augustine? What would you say? What would be the answer to, or what would have they said is Romans all about?

Okay, so yeah, so why it was written, what the issue is that if you just read the book of Acts, it's, you know, people who weren't influenced by Augustine and then later by Luther, I mean, they all read it and it was obvious what the context is, that the Jews, the Christian Jews are telling the Gentiles, look, you have got to be circumcised and live by the law of Moses to be saved. You know, it's fine, okay, we baptize you, but at some point you've got to be circumcised.

You've got to live by the law to be a Christian. It's not, you can't just come in, you can maybe come in as a Gentile, but you're going to have to become a Jew at some point, okay? There's no salvation outside the law of Moses. And that's why they had the Jerusalem Council, Acts 15. You know, the Jews are saying, you know, we've got to circumcise them and make them live by the law of Moses. And all the apostles were there, plus Paul and Barnabas, plus James.

And they say, no, the Jews, you know, the Gentiles are saved just like we by grace through faith in Christ. You know, they don't have to live by the law. They even send out a letter to go to all the churches. And you'd think that would end it. But I mean, the Jews were so adamant on this. Now, to be fair to the Jews, I mean, think about it. For 1500 years, God gave them the law. They didn't make up this law. God gave it to them.

And the promises, you could easily read the Old Testament and think this is going to go on forever. This law, and in their minds even, the law became so important. The rabbi started teaching it, you know, it was in heaven first. It came down from heaven. And like, you know, the Torah existed before man was even created. I mean, they really put it on a ridiculous pedestal. But the point is, it was from God. Jews had always lived this way. They were punished.

They were sent into exile because they weren't obeying the law. So when they got back from exile, it was like, man, we're going to obey this from now on. And, you know, no more idols, no more, you know, we're going to keep the Sabbath, all of this stuff, you know? So yeah, this is all from God. And it's suddenly like, whoa, whoa, you're saying now we don't have to live this way? That you're the one who brought the Sabbath law. We didn't make it up.

You're the one who said, you know, you can't eat this kind of meat and that kind of meat. You're the one who gave us the law of circumcision. We didn't make any of this up. And now you're just pulling the rug out from underneath us. Hmm. So you can understand why the Jews are like, this isn't fair. You mean these Gentiles, they've been worshiping idols. They've been living in immorality. And all they have to do is just come, have faith in Jesus, repent, they're baptized, they're part of the church.

They don't have to live by the law. They can eat pork, no circumcision, the Sabbath. I mean, all of this, it's like, well, this isn't fair, God, you know? Yeah. So they just, I mean, Paul, everywhere he goes, he's pushing against this. The Jewish Christians trying to force the Gentiles to come under the law. You see it in Acts. If you, when you read Galatians, which was written before Romans, you see it there. It was so strong that even Peter and Barnabas, it was like, well, we better just back off.

These Jews are so adamant on this. It's just better not to make an issue here at this point in time, you know? And then Paul got real upset with them for for doing that. But yeah, Peter's like, I'm with the Jewish church in Jerusalem. I've got to worry about their reaction. And is it worth, is this the the time and place to say, okay, nope, this is how it is. Well, that led to then, okay, we need to have a a conference of all the apostles, everybody. We need to make a definitive ruling.

But like I say, even though they did that, the Jews wouldn't accept it. They keep pushing. So Paul, in Galatians, he addressed it nicely. But in Romans, he decides, okay, I'm going to take everything I said in Galatians and I'm going to expand it and really go into even more detail. So Romans is, I don't know, maybe twice as long as Galatians. I'm just guessing. I don't know. But yeah, he really goes into detail.

But that is what he is trying to once and for all, you know, destroy this idea that Gentiles have to live by the law or that even Jewish Christians have to live by the law. So there's six key points and I don't know them by memory, so I'm going to just read them from here that if you, I call it his great argument. So it's like in English, it's 8,000 words long. I mean, it's the longest sustained theological argument in the whole Bible.

See, that, that, I did, this just shows the ignorance, right, on my part, because I never even realized that. Like I'm reading through your introduction here and you're just saying, you know, that yeah, this chunk text is like the longest theological argument in the Bible or in the New Testament. I just never thought of that as a chunk to untangle, if that makes sense. And it's not presented as a chunk. And that was, well, I'll go into the history of this commentary in a little bit, but okay.

So his six points, you know, his thesis is neither Jews nor Gentiles any longer have to live under the law of Moses. You know, we're saved by faith, by grace, you know, through faith in Jesus Christ, through his blood. It is no longer from the law of Moses. So here's his six points that he develops. All mankind lies guilty before God and needs salvation. And by the way, I don't think there's only one of these six points that is even controversial today among Protestants, I mean, or even Catholics, okay?

Number two, the law of Moses is unable to save or justify Jews, let alone Gentiles. Neither circumcision nor obedience to the law of Moses are necessary any longer, okay? Number three, all humans, Jews and Gentiles alike, are saved and justified only by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ, okay? The law plays no part in salvation. Number four, there is no partiality with God. Jews and Gentiles stand as equals before him. See, the Jews were having trouble. We'll accept the Gentiles, but not as equals.

And Paul is really hammering, no, a Gentile who is uncircumcised, who does not keep the regulations of the law, but keeps the moral teaching of the law, he is a real Jew. The Jew who is outwardly a Jew and has, you know, the tassels and is circumcised and does all these regulations, but doesn't have faith in Christ, which means he's not really keeping the law because here's the Messiah and you've rejected him. He's not a Jew, Paul is saying. He is not a Jew, okay? So this is really radical.

Believing Jews and believing Gentiles together make up the new Israel of God. So God is now looking not at fleshly Israel, but at an Israel that is made up of Jews and Gentiles who are grafted into the Jews, which he's always allowed Gentiles to join the Jews, but now the Jews who reject Christ are being lopped off. He goes into that in chapter 10 and 11. Okay. Mm-hmm. Now, this is something that I had never caught in Romans that is all throughout it.

God has not been unfair to the Jews in bestowing grace and salvation on the Gentiles. So. You would ask, you know, you mentioned how complicated Romans is. Okay. One of the things that complicates is Paul starts developing these points and he's realizing his Jewish brother, man, they're getting really, really mad. So he has to keep coming back over and over again. Number one, saying, hey, I'm a Jew myself and I love, I love the Jews so much. I would die for them.

I would be, you know, let Christ, you know, be cut off from Christ if it would save the Jews. That's how much I, so don't think I'm anti-Jewish. And God hasn't been unfair. You're saying God is unfair to let these Gentiles come in. He is not unfair. And he develops that argument. His last one, now this is the one where Protestants, many Protestants today would reject, but it's just as much a point as these other five.

Whether we are Jews or Gentiles, after our initial salvation by grace through faith, God requires us to walk faithfully with Christ, producing godly fruit for the remainder of our lives. However, we do not do this solely on our own strength, for we have the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. So there's one phase of salvation. You know, when you come in, you don't have to have any works. I mean, these Gentiles, I mean, think of the day of Pentecost. Well, those were Jews, okay? Think of the Philippian jailer, okay?

I mean, this guy, I mean, he's just a pagan, you know, and a jailer at that. I mean, he probably beat several people up that day, was probably cursing. He may have worshiped some false god that morning. And then at midnight, you know, this earthquake happens and, you know, he's quaking before Paul himself. And what must I do, you know, to be saved? Paul witnesses to him. He believes he's baptized that night. No works. I mean, this guy is just filth right out of the Gentile world and boom.

Because he believes and repents, he's baptized. He is now accepted and he's justified by faith. But now he has to live by Christ's teachings. He can't go back to living the way he was. So he's saved by faith and grace. But yeah, now he's a branch on the vine of Christ. He has to produce godly fruit. And yet God will give him the power. He's not on his own to do this. But yeah, he doesn't go back to the sow returning to the mud or the dog to its vomit, you know, whatever.

So that's a big part of Paul's argument that is just as much a part of Romans as these other teachings. Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of that, that last point, um, before. Like, so, so I think what, what we're seeing here, there's a lot of context that Paul is writing out of that, that's pretty easy to miss if we're not paying attention. Is that, is that right? Because that's one of the questions I had is like, why does Romans feel so complicated to us today?

Is that because we've heard so many different ideas tossed around and so many different theological frameworks? Or is it the way Paul is writing this? Or is it the context of the times? Like what, what's leading to all the confusion? So it is both. So we've heard these other interpretations that we've heard them so many times. When you start reading Romans, man, you hear Luther, whether you've ever read one of his writings, his teaching is everywhere. And it's infiltrated the Anabaptists, you know, big time.

So it is really hard to get that, you know, free of your mind is part of it. Now I said there's these six points. It'd be so nice if Paul wrote like Augustine. See, Augustine is a Westerner. He writes in Latin. He thinks like a Westerner. And that's why he's so popular in the West. He's easy to follow. Paul is an Easterner. He writes in Greek. He does not think like a Westerner.

So the Greek writers, you know, in reading the early church, I always loved the Western writers like Tertullian, Lactantius, and them, yeah, I can follow them. You get into Origen, Clement of Alexandria. I love them as people, you know, but wow, the way they attack a problem, the Greek way was just different than the Western way. There's just, you know, there's a difference there. So Paul doesn't do one, two, three, four, five, six. He does one, three, five, two, one, four. I mean, he just keeps going.

He gets, he starts with one, he ends with six. But yeah, I mean, he's jumping all around. So it's one, six. I mean, like I say, it's, it's all these different ones and he keeps repeating them. So it's maybe five, five, three, four, four. I mean, it sounds like a musical thing, you know? Yeah, yeah. So that's where it is so confusing. And where I got so mentally fatigued, you know, I started this thing, well, now it's been like, um, almost three years ago. Okay.

So I worked on it nearly a full year and I just reached a point where mentally I just couldn't take it anymore. It's like, I, I can understand the early Christians, but I've got to put this back into Paul and they're able to work through this because they're Easterners and then they're writing in Greek and, and, and that sort of thing. But I felt like I maybe understood it, but how, how can I present this to other people? Because I mean, it's, it's got me so mixed up.

So I just, I had to take a break because I was about to go insane. I thought I was going to pick it back up in six weeks. And then it was so nice to not have to wrestle with Romans. It went on for actually a year and a half that I just stayed away from it. And then it was, um, a year ago at Kingdom Fellowship Weekend that at our book table, people kept saying, uh, when's the Roman commentary going to come out, David? When's the Romans commentary?

And, oh well, I'm not sure, you know, because I knew in my mind I had decided I'm just not going to finish it, you know? And yet I put so much work in. So then, you know, I talked with Deborah, my wife, you know, and it's like, wow, maybe I should finish that thing. You know, how, how long could it be, you know, how long could it take, you know, to finish? So having left it alone, when I got back in it, it was a little bit more clear.

It was just good to step away and then you come back to a problem, you know, after you've just let it, left it alone a while. And sometimes it becomes more clear. And so I reread what I had written and it's like, okay, this is, see, I had written like already eight versions of this commentary by then. Whoa. It's now this, what you're reading now is version something like 17, okay? But I had already done like eight versions of it, okay?

When I say eight versions, I don't mean that each one is a totally new one, eight revisions, you know? Wow, that is a lot to untangle here. Okay. Yeah. So, so then I, I read it and I, okay, I kind of see this, but now this will not make sense to anyone else. I mean, if it's been this hard for me, then anyone else reading this is going to be, okay, we still don't get it. Okay. So I start, I went through, I don't know how many times I read Romans during this process.

And after each, let's say, section, heading, whatever, which are all, of course, man-made. He didn't write in chapters and all of that. Okay. And sometimes the chapters help and sometimes they confuse us because this is men putting these chapter divisions and he's not writing in any division. It's one long argument, you know? And you got to think of it as one argument. And you start in your mind dividing it up as, oh, now we're in chapter nine, like we're in a new thing. No, Paul didn't make that chapter.

That's something, you know, a human did. Okay. Robert Stephanus. Okay. So we are, um, what I'm doing is reading through and after each section, the way it's divided into sections in, in the New King James, but I'm not paying complete attention. I'm following Paul's argument, okay? As, as informed by the early Christians, I've read them a bunch of times. Okay. I see their understanding, Paul. Okay. So, okay, this is what they're seeing.

And then I'm reading and then I write down, okay, verses chapter two, verses one through ten. He's talking about, you know, we all need salvation. Okay. Chapter two versus whatever. He's saying Jews and Gentiles are equal. So I'm making this long list. I don't know it's going to be six points. I'm just making a list of what's he saying. So when I get done, and I don't know how long I spend on that, a couple of weeks, then I look at my list and I start realizing, okay, this one basically is the same here.

It's just a nuance of this. And I'm finally able to reduce it. Okay. He really covers six main points. Each one is a little nuanced. He says it a little different. And like I say, they're not in any kind of perfect order. But yeah, I'm finally grasping. Okay. I see Paul really, he knows where he's going with this. He's arguing the Greek way, which is the Greek way is if we're talking about, um, like we're talking about Romans. Okay.

And I say something about, you know, okay, Paul wrote this, you know, Paul was from Tarsus. By the way, you know about Tarsus? It's, it's this city, blah, blah, blah. And then I go into this big thing about Tarsus. That's how Greeks did something. If something is related in some way to what they're talking about, uh - huh they feel like, oh, I better explain that a little bit. So it's almost, think of it almost like weaving all these things weave together. Yeah.

Whereas maybe more Western Latin style would be like, here's a checklist or something. You know, you go down logically. The Greek is if there's a nexus, you follow that nexus. So the way Origen describes it, and he's not saying this in criticism. He loves Romans. I mean, to him, man, this is a marvelous book. Cause of course, Origen thinks, you know, in this, he loves complicated arguments.

So his, the way he describes it, he says, imagine Paul is your guide and he's taking you through this magnificent palace of, you know, the emperor. Okay. And he leads you through the door of a bedroom, let's say, and you go into this parlor and it's all these amazing things, but you don't get to stay there very long. And he takes you out through another door and then you're in some little hidden passageway and then he opens another door and now you're in another room.

And it's like, wow, this room is amazing too, you know, and you start looking around, but then in a few minutes, he takes you out another door and then you're in another room, you know? And so what he's trying to say is, yeah, Paul, instead of going, you know, this, this kind of order, he's, he gives you a little bit of taste of something and then he immediately goes to another point, you know, which is a brilliant point and oh, that's wonderful. But then he doesn't just stay there. He goes to another.

So you're going through this palace and by the time you're done, you've gone through the whole palace, but it's been in this door out this door, kind of like Alice in Wonderland. Oh, wow. Okay. And then it leaves people like myself feeling a little confused because it's like, I'm not even sure what to do with all of this. And this is Augustine's problem. He's a Westerner. He doesn't understand the Greek way of thinking. He can't read Greek. He's trying to make sense as a Westerner. And so, yeah, we can't do that.

I mean, we can't get away from the fact we think as Westerners, but yeah, we have to realize Paul isn't writing as a Westerner. He thinks the way a Greek, uh, thinker, uh, approaches things. And we've got to give credit to that. We have to get back into that world. We can't try to bring him into the 21st century. We have to get back into Paul's world and not some imaginary world. Look at how the Christians who lived right after Paul, how did they understand this book?

I mean, the most amazing thing we have is in the year, it's either 96 or 97, we have the letter, uh, it's usually called First Clement because apparently the one who penned it was Clement. He was an elder in the church of Rome. But the letter is from all the elders in Rome. Now you remember this is Romans. The letter from Paul was to the church in Rome. Before the first century is over, we have a letter from those elders in Rome. They're writing to the church in Corinth. Okay.

Unfortunately, they're not discussing Romans. They would solve everything. They're dealing with, they're having dissension in Corinth. And so that's why they're writing the Corinthians to encourage them to, hey, look, we got to get our acts together. It's better to give way. Gloss and height would be the Anabaptist word, you know, uh, instead of insisting on having your own way and all that. But in there, they touch on subjects that are covered in Romans.

So you can see how the elders were understanding some of these basic concepts and they are not understanding it the way Luther or Augustine, either one. The things they say, you know, you can see that they're being informed by Romans because they state some of the same things, you know, we're saved by, uh, grace, you know, through faith in Jesus Christ. But then the next paragraph, you know, um, we have to walk worthily if we're going to be saved in the end. And that's in Romans two.

And you know, in chapter two of Romans, and you can see, okay, this is how they're understanding it. And then you just go from there. I mean, you've got other writings, you know, Justin Martyr and other ones, Ignatius, all the way up. And like I say, all the way to you get to the fifth century, even Augustine, they're all saying basically the same thing. And then because of this overreaction, everything changes.

And because you have a state church, you didn't have a state church, it would have been like, okay, well, we don't agree with you, Augustine. You know, you can do what you want, but we don't agree with you. But when you're in a state church with an army, yeah, they can not only excommunicate you, they banish you. I mean, he didn't just, Plagius didn't just get excommunicated. Yeah.

The soldiers took him and he got banished to the edge of the empire, you know, and you better be, stay here and be quiet or that's the end, you know? So yeah, Augustine wins through the force of, uh, of arms. So it's, but it's so amazing. We can go back actually to the first century and get their thought processes from the elders in Rome itself. Wow. Yeah. That's really interesting. Like I, so as you were working on this commentary, this is not, um, you wouldn't really say this is a commentary you wrote.

It's more going through what the early church was saying and pulling those pieces into a single place, essentially. Like you're not engaging with a lot of the more recent scholarship, say, on. No, no, no. Okay. No, no. I, I didn't, in fact, I didn't even read those guys. I did not want to be influenced by them. I, I, I wanted just, what did they say back then? Mm-hmm. And so I, I just looked at, like I say, the early Christian writings.

Of course, then I looked at Augustine, like, okay, how I, I had done this before because, you know, it's like, why did things change? And I'd read Augustine, you know, uh, these writings against the Plagians, you know, 40 years ago. And of course, I had read Luther as well. So I was, I was aware of, of those changes, but I thought, uh, I, I knew there were modern, uh, scholars who, um, it's called like, what is it? The new Paul, the new, um. There's a number of different ones.

But yeah, yeah, of how they put it, the, the, uh, new understanding of Paul. Mm-hmm. And so when I was through, when I finished this, I thought I want to read these guys to see what they're saying in case I need to relook at something, but I don't really want to be influenced by them because I, yeah, this is what they believed back then, you know? Now I put it in easy for a Westerner to understand, you know, I don't just have a bunch of early Christian quotes.

I do try to, you know, put their arguments in a way that, you know, you and I can understand it, you know, because I, I saw how hard it was even for me, like I say, wrestling with this. But it is interesting. Yeah. The new perspective on Paul, uh, is a whole lot closer to the early church. It's not exactly the same, but it's a whole lot closer.

It's a welcome, uh, wow, I'm glad some people are, are, uh, yeah, finally standing up to Luther and saying, hey, you know, maybe Luther, uh, overreacted, uh, misread Paul, mispresented what Paul is saying. So that, that's, yeah, that's very encouraging to me that, yeah, some people are doing that. Now the new perspective doesn't rely as much on the early Christians, unfortunately. What they did was, let's see what the Jews were saying in the first century. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

And, and we're reading Paul as a response to the Jews and, uh, Luther was misrepresenting the Jews in their mind anyway. And so he's, he's, he's misreading Paul because he's misrepresenting the Jews. Okay. So they're saying this is what the Jews really believed in the first century. And Paul is countering that, which in the end, it gets back to very similar to what the early Christians were saying. But I'm very disappointed. It's like, why do you go to the Jews and not go to the early Christians?

I mean, to me, that's the elephant in the room. It's like, wow, you've got the elders in Rome in the first century who, you know, touch on many of these topics. You don't go to them. You go to see what the Jews were, were believing. But nevertheless, it still, it brings scholarship a lot closer to what the early Christians were, were saying. And yeah, once you see it, uh, like I say, just finding the light bulb, I mean, but it did take, like I say, it was, it was a lot of work.

Um, but man, when the light bulb came on, it's like, hey, this book isn't so terribly difficult. And that's where I hope, I know it will take a lot of reading because, you know, now it's clear to me, but it, I mean, it was a, you know, like I say, a year and then it took another six months of intense work. I, I would start right after breakfast and I would work till 10 at night, six days a week, you know, breaking for supper, you know, and a little devotional time relaxation at 10 o'clock at night, you know?

But yeah, it was really intense to, to get through this. So, um, it is without a doubt the hardest book of the New Testament to understand outside of the apocalyptic part of Revelation, which everyone's going to have their own. But it's, it is the hardest book. And yeah, I'll let you talk. I'm going, I'm not giving you a chance to say anything. That's great.

So I, I think what you're, um, maybe advocating for or whatever you want to call it is that historic snapshot of what was, what was the church saying at the time? Let's, let's look at them. Let's pull a slice of, of that. And, and how does that help us understand what Paul? So if you're talking, um, Clement of Alexandria or, you know, first Clement being written in 96 or 97 and, you know, Romans was written, what year was that?

Well, 50, 55, some might put it as late, 60, probably not as late, but, but yeah, within 30 to 40 years of Romans itself being written. So you're, you're saying, you know, like that proximity to Paul, there's a lot of value there. We should be paying attention to it. And that's why you just put a lot of work into compiling that. Um, and that's pretty neat. You know, I, I think, I think you're onto something there. Yeah. And it's terrible that it's been ignored. I mean, that people, and they praise Augustine.

Oh yeah, Augustine. Yeah. Finally, someone with insight. And it's like, what's the matter? You think all these, these people who were personally taught by the apostles, who were part of that generation, that, oh, they don't understand that, but a Westerner who doesn't even read Greek, who's, you know, counteracting, who, who changes his own view to counteract somebody because he's in this personal feud. That's absurd, you know?

And you come up with this doctrine that it's all predestined, that we do nothing in our salvation. So why does Jesus even bother to preach the Sermon on the Mount? We can't live that, you know? If we do, it's because God does it. And it's like, I mean, it's a terrible overreaction, but, and people think today people associate Augustine, you know, with Calvin and with Protestantism. They don't get it in their heads. This was Roman Catholic theology.

This was the Roman Catholic church who promoted Augustine, who made him the father of the Roman Catholic church. It was Roman Catholic councils that, you know, condemned Plagius and made Augustine's view, you know, become the official view of the Roman Catholic church. That's the irony. This is Roman Catholic doctrine. It is interesting that, yeah, then worked its way into the, the Reformation and all of that, which would have been through Luther, Calvin, and so forth. Yeah.

I've, yeah, I guess I never thought of that before. Yeah. Well, Luther was an Augustinian monk. So yeah, his whole basis was built on Augustine. He goes just a little further. Now, Augustine's big point is we don't do anything and God's going to be mad at us if we said that we obeyed. And it's like, you don't, he doesn't want you to take credit. He wants all the credit because you didn't do anything, you know, to Augustine. That's the big thing that you take credit for nothing.

To Luther, yeah, that's true, but more importantly that it's faith alone. And if you think works play any role in this, then that's works righteousness. And wow, you're outside of Christianity. Now, see, Augustine had no issue with works. His point was God does the works. Yeah. You just need to recognize you didn't do those. You might think you did, but it was really God working through you. But yeah, I mean, he didn't have any negativity on works. It was Luther who made works a negative, uh, you know, term.

And, and that has influenced so many people. Mm-hmm. So yeah, it, um, to me, it was just exciting when the light bulb, you know, finally came on. It's like, okay, I've, I've got to be able to put this where other people, yeah, can, can get the same benefit that, that I did without having to spend, you know, a year and a half, two years, you know, working through all of these, these writings and that sort of thing. So yeah, hopefully that's what I've been able to, to do to a, yeah, some degree anyway.

So, so as we tie all the pieces together, Romans is an intimidating book, right? You, we've been saying how it's, it's, it's complicated. It's hard to get our minds around. What would you say as an encouragement to leave with our listeners to dig into that book, to dig back into, into God's word, into the book of Romans and, and read it for themselves? What would you say to encourage them? Okay. So I, I just a way that'll make it easier to understand it correctly.

If I had to give someone a recommendation, it would be start with the Sermon on the Mount. Read the Sermon on the Mount. I mean, just clear your mind of everything else you've heard about salvation and everything else. Just read the Sermon on the Mount. What did Jesus say? Okay. Read the book of Acts. What was happening in Acts when Paul preached? We have some of his sermons to people. I mean, where he's presenting the gospel. How did Paul present the gospel to people when he was preaching?

What were the things he was working against in the book of Acts? Okay. Mm-hmm. Then, okay, you're ready to, to go into Paul. Read, I would probably say read James first because James is very clear. He, he's still a Greek writer, but he, he reasons more like a Westerner and he's very easy to understand. Read James to make sure you're getting, you know, the whole perspective. But then read Galatians as a shortened version of Romans. Now, don't read Galatians through Luther's eyes. Just read the book.

It's what, five chapters or whatever it is. He makes the same points, but Galatians to me is a pretty easy book. I mean, the context is really clear. He's talking about the Mosaic law that the Jews were trying to force the Gentiles, you know, to live by the law or they wouldn't eat with them, et cetera. He shows that there's a, these things in the Old Testament prefigured the, the church and the, and the unbelieving Jews. And then he goes into how we must live as Christians.

It's the same thing he does in Romans, but Romans is, is a lot more complicated. So if you've got Galatians down, then, then yeah, go through Romans, use the commentary as, as an aid, you know, let the people who spoke the same Greek as Paul, who lived in that culture, who thought like him, yeah, take advantage of their, of their insights. They're not inspired, but yeah, they at least, like I say, thought like him.

And it's amazing because these are just a scattered group of people, some speaking Latin, some speaking Greek, some living in Egypt, some living in Europe, and they're all saying the same thing, you know? So that, that's what's really reassuring. And it was a united church. I mean, before it was a state church, you had one church.

So they were all able to agree, which today nobody can, but you had a period there of nearly 300 years without a state church when you had one church that all Christians just about were able to agree on what the scriptures mean, which to me shows they had the Holy Spirit. You don't have that kind of unity without the Holy Spirit, you know, unless you have the sword, which is a totally different thing. Yeah. So thanks for, thanks for sharing all of this.

I'm, I'm really hoping this episode will encourage people to give Romans another read. And, and I think what you were outlining there of other context to read, like reading Galatians first, things like that. I think that's, that's really helpful because it, it's a big chunk to take all at once. It is, it is, it helped me.

I don't know how many times I read Galatians when I was working on Romans because there's so many parallels and I, and I realized, man, Galatians, I can, I can, I can grasp it, you know, and he's saying the same things, but yeah, he's just saying it in a much more detailed, complicated way in Romans. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Wow. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, David. This is, it's been enjoyable. Yes. There's a lot. We, we, there's a lot, a lot to unpack here.

Um, so yeah, I really hope this inspires people to, to dig back into God's word and, uh, and, and give it another shot. So, amen. All right. Thank you for sharing. Thanks for listening to this episode with David Berceau. We've had him on the podcast several other times, and you might find the episode we did with him about how he was an Anglican priest interesting, and you can find that linked in the description below. If you like this podcast, leave us a rating and review.

It really does help more people find this content. And of course, you can find everything we've made over on our website at anabaptistperspectives.org. Thanks again, and we'll see you in the next episode.