Today, we continue our conversation with doctor Craig Keener on the Bible Backgrounds Podcast,
looking at the Mind of the Spirit, Paul's approach to transformed thinking.
Greetings in the Lord. This is the Bible Backgrounds Podcast with doctor Craig Keener.
Doctor Keener is the FM and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury
Theological Seminary here in Wilmore, Kentucky. Doctor Keener, good to see you
again. And you notice I have my Asbury shirt on. So we're advertising
for Asbury with my shirt because they're letting us use their studio. Yes,
graciously. Well, I think they like you around here. How many years
have you been working at Asbury now? Yeah, Yeah, they really like
having you and of course enjoy all the breath of research and the speaking ministry
that you have to the churches around the globe. I think that's part of
their mission and your mission. And so there's kindred spirits there and Asbray is
a great school to come and study. If people want to come and study
under you, it's a good seminary to come to. Now. Perhaps you
know doctor Keener from the Bible Backgrounds Commentary that he's written or other commentaries.
How many do you have out there? Now? You've got Acts, You've
got Matthew, You've got a bunch. Yeah. Yeah, there's thirty four
books, I think, not including the ones in process. But Matthew a
big version and a small version, John a big version of small version,
the two volume Win sixteen hundred pages, and that shorter Win, and then
Acts the four volume version of which this is the first volume, and then
the one volume version with Cambridge, and big and small one with Galatians,
a small one with it is going to be working on the Romans, a
big one right now, but I'm doing a big one on Mark instead at
the moment, small one in First and Second Corinthians Revelation. First Peter having
time to get to the other seat. I don't blame you, given the
size and scope of your research and how how deep you go. It really
is impressive. You're writing and even impresses non Christian New Testament scholars, so
they you have earned their respect, which there's there's something about in the Bible
about earning the respective outsiders. So I think you've done a great job.
First Thessalonians, Paul talks about winning the respect to Outsiders. I would love
to write a comment you for Sesslonian. Yes, Now, in this season
of the Bible Backgrounds podcast, we're looking at this book right here, the
Mind of the Spirit, and we're going to begin jumping in. Now.
It was last week we sort of were introducing the subject, but now we're
going to jump right on in. And for systematic theologians like myself, you
know, we're interested in the study of salvation or to salute us the order
of Salvation, and you sort of have structured your work along similar outlines,
and your first chapter is on the Corrupted Mind. So let me ask you
why is why is it that this is a good starting point for your study
on Paul's view of the mind. Certainly where Paul starts in Romans, but
it's also nicer. I learned this from Luke X. It's nicer to and
in a happier note. So Chris Mark Mark likes to emphasize the suffering.
I mean, it depends on what you're trying to emphasize. We need to
see what the problem is before looking at the solution. At least that's the
way Paul argues it out in Romans. And so that's that's where I started
the book. Yep. So in Romans one, we're looking at Paul's view
of the total depravity of the general population. I know that there are some
different takes on how to interpret that. What would you say is a good
summary of Paul's view of the corrupted mind. Paul shows that it wasn't the
way God meant us to be. It's not the way God created us to
be, but it's the way we humans made ourselves. So in you know,
he talks about the way of faith or faithfulness, depending how you translated.
But in Romans one sixteen and seventeen kind of a fesis statement for either
Paul's letter to the Romans or this part of the letter. Scholars debate that
I think it's probably for the whole letter. But after he speaks of God's
righteousness being revealed in the Gospel, he goes on in one eighteen to speak
of God's wrath being revealed from Heaven against all on godliness and the righteousness of
humanity who suppressed the truth by unrighteousness. And then he elaborates on how they
suppressed the truth, especially in verse twenty three, where he says that we
reduce the image in the glory of God to the image of humans and Greeks
did, and animals like Egyptians were condemned by Greeks and Romans for doing.
And then in one five he is also going to talk about how they suppressed
the truth. We corrupted our thinking by rejecting the truth. And of course
in a post truth age where anything goes. I mean, you've got that
in politics being used by both major political parties, Chris in academia, that's
an important thing to think about about. I mean, obviously there are different
perspectives, and we want to take into account the different perspectives, but there's
also a meta narrative. Contrary to what has often argued, we don't have
access to the complete meta narrative as humans. But in the Gospel, he
gives us what we need to know of that meta narrative of God's saving plan
and history. So he says in verses nineteen and twenty of Romans Chapter one,
Okay, how do we suppress the truth by unrighteousness? He says,
the truth about God was made known in what he created, So and this
was something that would have appealed to ancient thinkers would have understood it Cicero understood
it. Keepetitis, who was a stoic, elaborates on this. Ancient philosophers,
mostly accepting the Epicureans, recognized divine design and nature. They said,
you know, this can't be an accident that things work out this way,
and especially they noticed it in what's innate in humans. So Paul reasons from
this in verses nineteen and twenty both with what we see in the broader creation,
what we see in ourselves. The truth of God should have been known
to us. But in verse twenty one he says that instead of being grateful
expressing gratitude to God for his glory that suffused creation, we chose not to
be grateful, chose not to acknowledge him, and ended up worshiping the creature.
Sure, rather than the creator and verse twenty two professing themselves to be
wise, they became fools. And if you look at I mean you can.
History illustrates this really well, that different things made sense to people in
different times based on their starting assumptions. Well, the Bible is pretty clear
that reverence for the Lord, the fear of the Lord, is the beginning
of wisdom and knowledge. Proverbs one eleven and so on. If we start
with the wrong assumptions, we come to the wrong conclusions. When I was
an atheist, I thought I could explain everything without recourse to the hypothesis,
hypothesis of a God. I mean, that's the way I talked about it.
Obviously, other kids wouldn't play with me. Christians get picked on,
but atheists get picked on too, you know, I know that from experience.
Although I didn't get beat up for being an atheist, I've gotten beaten
up for goodness for Christ before, physically and verbally. But yeah, and
so the mind was corrupted, humanity's way of thinking was corrupted. And then
Paul goes on to talk about that in other ways. I don't know if
I can keep going on this in Romans one or Yeah. You know,
I was gonna say, I find it fascinating. You know, when we
read Paul in Romans one, there, especially as an apologist, this exchange
of truth, right, he talks about exchanging the truth of God for a
lie, and so it's it's sort of innate for people. They're designed to
believe that God exists, and yet they've swapped it out and this impacts the
way they live. Uh, And you see it in how they act and
behave. So you just see how that that works out, which you know
gets us as we're talking about to the importance of a of a rightly ordered
mind. Right, and so even I sort of have this argument I call
an argument from utility that if you want to live a good life, you
want to do the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people,
Well, become a Christian, right, because it leads that way. But
getting back to to the life of the mind here of the corrupted mind?
Do you find have you found that in your study and research Paul's language in
Romans one receives inspiration or support from other ancient sources. Uh. And and
if so, how it's interesting One of the sources is is Scripture. So
you know, obviously God designing things, you know, the talks about God's
word in the Torah and in creation like that heaven is the glory of God.
Yeah, and it's in one nineteen too, so you have a lot
of that idea of divine design in nature already in the Old Testament. Paul
uses language of fusis or nature, which was used by Stoics and pretty much
everybody else. So the Storics were the ones who emphasized that the most.
But also when Paul speaks of what you talked about about the people exchanging things
three times, Paul says, and God gave them over. They made this
choice, so God gave them over. And that language also goes back to
the Old Testament. But in the Old Testament, the context is God giving
Israel over to you know, they chose, they chose the way of evil,
so God gave them over to just reap the consequences of their choices,
so they would choose those things even more well, philosophers made a consistent contrast
between reason and the passions. That's pretty much across the board in ancient philosophy,
so you've got it. Among Platonists, Stoics were really big on Epicureans
even talked about this in terms of Jewish thinkers and the diaspora, to which
Paul is writing outside the Holy Land and the diaspora, you have fourth Maccabees,
you have Philo of Alexandria, Jewish philosopher actually writing before Paul. Filo
was they speak in terms of reason versus the passions. Well, the only
way you're going to overcome the passions, they said, is through true reason.
And for them, true reason was found in the law, the Namas,
the Torah of God. For say Judean rabbis, you have them speaking.
And actually the Deadsi scrolls are already speak of the evil impulse. They
speak of the Yatzehiah, the evil impulse, versus the ya the good impulse.
And through studying the Torah, you could acquire more of this good impulse,
so you could overcome the evil impulse. So it was across the board.
There was widespread thinking among intellectuals of how the overcome the passions, and
a truly reasoned person would have to overcome the passions. Why don't I kill
my neighbor, I don't want to go to jail, Well that's reason.
Why don't I sleep around with everybody? I don't want to get body likes?
You know, that's reason. So they would talk about things like that.
Paul says that once they corrupted God's image. First of all, they
swapped the truth of God's image for idols images like people are like animals.
Next, they corrupted God's image and themselves. So in the beginning, God
made us is the climax of his creation Genesis one twenty seven. In his
image, we were to be the image of God. Of Christopher Philo.
You know, he broadens it some to the rest of creation, but especially
humans are created in the image of God, and God created this male and
female. But Paul talks about how we switch that. And also you know,
in Genesis it's you know, male and female. And then in Genesis
too the female is taken out of a male. But then the husband and
the wife become one flesh, so they become one again. So that marriage
is meant to speak of that of that original design, which is not to
say I mean I was I was forty when I married my wife Medine,
so I know how it is to be single. Also in fact I was
born single. But anyway, but just in a generic way, you know,
marriage is meant to reflect the Ephesians talks about about that. But in
Romans one he says verses twenty four to twenty seven, we corrupt through sexual
messing up the image of God with idols. Then we went to messing things
up with the image of God and ourselves using our sexuality and wrong ways.
And then he speaks of same sex marriage. Well not marriage. They didn't
actually have that back then, with a couple exceptions, but it was not
the way we were physically designed to relate to each other. And so in
all of this, you know, you look at some of the Jewish polemic,
Well, they didn't actually usually say it to gentiles, but they would
say it to each other about how messed up their gods were. And some
gentiles even made fun of this, or they would reinterpret it like Zeus wasn't
really raping a girl. He was just Zeus represents justice and he's meeting with
wisdom or something. But you look at the myths of the way the gods
acted, and basically they were the way passionate humans would want to act if
they could get away with it. And so you have God's raping girls and
sometimes boys you have and sometimes grown women, and having affairs outside of marriage.
And Hephaistus catches his wife Ephrodite and an affair with airs, and all
the gods come and laugh at them because they caught him in this net.
Zeus is doing this all the time. Heir is jealous and always killing or
punishing the poor mortals that were ensnared. Sometimes they it was voluntary, but
and and and Zeus rapes a boy, Aganimity takes him to and you also
have Apollo, you know, with both genders love interests. So you have
Paul addressing this and saying, you corrupt the image of God and all these
false gods, and then you end up corrupting God's image in yourselves. So
he speaks of the sexual things, and then he goes on with other things
God gave them over so they couldn't think about what was right ethically to a
corrupted mind. And the two things that he highlights though, are the idolatry
and the sexual immorality. Because when Jewish people would condemn gentiles, the two
things that they would highlight were these These were exclusively gentile sins, so worshiping
idols that was exclusively gentile in their period, the you know Second Temple,
early Jewish pre seventy but post exile majority of excellent. Danger of having too
much information in here is that I have to qualify everything and anyway. So
the other thing that they would condemn gentiles for was their sexual immorality. So
they said, you know, a gentile girl who's over the age of I
forget it was one or two or three. You can assume she's been molested.
They just had this view of this was common behavior among gentiles, sexual
immorality, especially male sexual immorality towards towards women to a great extent. I
mean, that's an exaggeration about you know, them all being molested that young.
But the idea of gentiles, gentile men exercising their sexual passions in a
way the Jewish people didn't allow that was based on truth. But they acknowledged
that there were Jewish people who did sexual immorality too, but especially same sex.
And of course they said that's a purely gentile sin, and they regarded
that as against nature. They weren't thinking in terms of modern genetics, but
where male and female general organs fit each other, to put it somewhat crudely,
and that argument from nature. Some of the Stoics, Roman Storics especially
used that in this case. But I mean Paul's language is also something that
pretty much all Jewish people, the diaspora, Judea and Galilee. I mean,
they all held these they are articulated these kind of views. But it's
also a setup because Paul's audience is gonna they're gonna be sympathetic, you know,
Wisdom of Solomon makes an argument like this, so does Amos Prophet Amos
chapters one and two. Judgment on Ammon, judgment on judgment on the Philistines,
and everybody saying amen, Amen. Then he says, and judgment on
you, because you alone have I chosen on all the families of the earth
almost three two. Therefore I will judge you for your iniquities. Well,
Paul gets this. Everybody's saying amen. Judgment on those idolatries, judgment on
those people committing sexual immorality, even in ways that Jewish people would never think
of. And then he then he comes to this vice list at the end,
and God gave them over so envy, slander, gossip, disobedient to
parents, arrogance, by the boasting. By the time he's done with this
vice list, all of humanity is undersind And so it's a way of saying,
hey, none of us can justify ourselves. We all need the gospel
that I talked about back in verses sixteen and seventy. They didn't have versus
back then. Yeah, yeah, he says, as you mentioned, he
gives this vice list, and he basically says, and you do the same
things exactly. Yeah, And now granted maybe the Christians do it to a
lesser degree, but within the scope where we do the same sort of things
of the people that we right, No, but yeah, it's true,
yea, And especially when you get to those those general I mean things like
jealousy and arrogance, and yeah, the corrupted mind is still there. It
even lingers for the Christian and we'll get into that as we talk in future
weeks about more about the passions and the flesh, the mind of the flesh,
why we need the renewed mind that's right on. Yeah, let me
ask you here since Romans one is a popular verse to use in apologetics conversations,
so this is sort of my question to you when thinking about apologetic methodology,
and as you likely know, there are different camps and philosophies on how
to do apologetics. Would you say that the non Judeo Christian person is able
to reason their way into Christian belief and what might be that relationship then with
divine grace? So you know, some people think we can just reason our
way to Christianity and that leaves a place, allegedly for divine grace not to
get involved. Paul's very clear that God revealed his righteousness, his way of
making righteous, or his covenant faithfulness. There's a debate abit but he revealed
that in the Gospel, So the Gospel gives us access by revelation. He's
also revealed himself in creation. So even without the Gospel, we have access
to enough to know right from wrong and to know that at least sometimes we've
done things that are wrong. But He's also clear that our minds are corrupted,
and that means that we are it's going to be limited. We're not
going to recognize things the way in our pristine form, ideally the way we
were meant to be, we would recognize God's grace. And some settings are
more alienated from others, or more alienated than others, with overlays of multiple
ways of getting around the truth of God, and so it's harder for some.
I was for my age. I was one of the harder cases,
I think, and the best I could come to, and this was God
working on me as well. But the best I could come to was okay.
And actually this was starting from Platonism because I was I was very inconsistent
philosophically. I started out I was a purely naturalistic, by which I mean
anti supernaturalistic metaphysically just materialist in the one hand, But on the other reading
Plato, I became an idealist, and those don't actually mesh too well.
But but what I got from Plato was he was concerned about the immortality of
the soul. But his argument from innate knowledge I didn't think worked too well,
and I ended up asking the question, what value is life if it's
so transitory? And yet I'm cognizant of my own being in a direct way,
I'm not cognizant of anybody else's, So my experience tells me that there's
something there. But I had a beginning. I'm finite, I'm mortal,
and there's no way my life can have ultimate meaning or purpose unless that's invested
by something infinite, And there's no you know, if there's nobody infinite,
you know, the best of all possible worlds would be if there was an
infinite person. I had to be personal, so it could care enough about
me to give me that, or I could plug into that somehow and loving,
But even that wouldn't help me because I wasn't loving, So why would
a loving infinite being care about me. That's as far as my platonic philosophy
could take me. One sixteen and seventeen, God revealed the truth in the
Gospel. The day that I first heard the Gospel, I blew it off.
It wasn't presented to me in the most intellectual fashion. But I walked
home so convicted by the Holy Spirit that I was converted from atheism to Christianity
within the span of a couple hours in my bedroom. By the presence of
the Holy Spirit present in the Gospel converted me. And I know that's not
everybody's experience, but just my experience does line up. I think with Romans
one. There there are shadows of truth that we can still access, but
we need the Gospel actually to meet God in Christ, the fullest revelation of
Himself in Christ, the saving revelation of his Self in Christ. And it
led you to a transformed way of thinking. Yeah, although the transforming has
been taking some time. Amen, Christ, Yes, that's right. Yes,
thanks for chatting with me about your view on Paul's take of the corrupted
mind. And that's sort of as you mentioned, we need to diagnose the
problem first before we can sort of get the good news the prescription and the
good news that's to come thereafter. If you want to learn more about doctor
Keener's journey, you can look at his treasure trove of resources. Head on
over to Craig Keener dot com. There you can subscribe to his website and
find articles, blog posts, videos, and even his cartoons. At his
site, you can subscribe to receive email updates. You can also follow doctor
Keener on Facebook, Twitter, and his YouTube channel. But if you want
to see the latest videos of the Bible Backgrounds Podcast before everybody else does,
go to Apologetics three fifteen dot com. At that site you can see doctor
Keener's video channel, and if you subscribe to his AP three fifteen video channel,
you can be entered to win the IVP Bible Backgrounds Commentary New Testament signed
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So go to Apologetics three fifteen dot com, click on videos and subscribe to
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