Idolatry is about exchange: some reflections on Romans 1:18-32
What would most people in the west today say idolatry is? Amongst my non-Christian friends most wouldn’t really believe in the possibility of idolatry at all –
after all don’t believe in any god, or don’t believe you can know which is the
true God, like most of my friends, then you can’t believe in idolatry!
Perhaps the
sort of thing they would think of is the worship of the Hindu gods like Ganesh.
On the whole they would think that was pretty silly and would actually find it hard to imagine
that anybody could really, actually think that worshipping such a figure had
any real impact at all. They would probably imagine that even Hindu’s don’t
REALLY believe it makes any difference; because the idea of worshipping an idol
is so far from their whole way of thinking about the world.
Christians,
of course, are a bit more familiar with the concept of idolatry. Most of us
have heard enough talks or read enough on the subject to know that you don’t
have to actually think that something is divine in order to make it an idol. In
fact we know that most of the things we are most prone to make into idols in
our western European culture are not even pretending to be divine; things like
sex, power or money not idols because we think they are God but because we
devote ourselves to them as if they
were gods.
However even that insight that’s
still not quite at the heart of the Bible’s teaching on idolatry.
I think the single most
important feature of idolatry in the Bible is that it always about an
exchange; you can’t simply add devotion to something to your life because whenever
you do that you also take something away. It is the creation, as Tim Keller puts it, of "counterfeit gods."
This idea is
expressed in two places in Romans 1, a passage which speaks about Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, and also about all of us, showing that their sin is repeated by
us all down the ages:
1:23 - They
exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images.
1:25 - They
exchanged the truth of God for a lie.
Idolatry
isn’t just an unfortunate accident. It’s not that we overlook something that we
ought to do. Instead we take something, the glory of God, and swap it for
something else, images. We possess the truth, and trade it in for a
lie.
In Romans
1:18-20 Paul demonstrates that when we did that, you and I, we
knew what we were doing. God has made plain and obvious in the world that he
exists, v19, and that he is eternal and all powerful, v20. That much is visible
from the universe that God has made.
So there is no
logical, rational or reasonable reason at all for anybody not to believe in God.
The reality of his goodness is, v20, “clearly seen” in the world. We have all
taken the good things that we all have; the knowledge that God exists, that he
is eternal and all-powerful. A knowledge we all possess, no matter how hard we
try to suppress it, and exchanged it for something else.
This means that our crime, our sin, is much worse than simply ignoring or failing to spot something. Imagine that my wife builds for me a beautiful garden, with wonderful flowers, fountains, paving and trees. It would be a terrible rejection of her love and affection if I simply never went in the garden. But our idolatry, our worshipping something else, our exchange of the truth for a lie, is far more akin to hiring a JCB to trash it all and then putting down
concrete over the whole garden.
Idolatry is
about exchange. So although there are many other ways of describing sin (lawlessness, rebellion, transgression...) all sin is, in one way or another, an
expression of idolatry. We'll consider that more in part 2...
3 comments:
I would love to see you interact with Doug Campbell who has demonstrated that 1:18-32 is not Paul's voice but the voice of his interlocutor. He writes:
"Romans 1:18-32 is in fact the fullest presentation of the Teacher's position that we receive from the hand of Paul...The apostle summarizes compactly in Romans 1:18-32 what he takes to be the Teacher's usual opening -- his arresting prooimion or excordium. Here Paul provides what we might call a cameo of this material. This short summary is full enough to provide the Roman Christians with everything they need in order to recognize this opening when they hear it elsewhere (if they have not already done so) and to be familiar, after study, with its main principles and moves. It is also distinctive enough to be recognizable against the broader backdrop of Paul's own material. But for critical argumentative reasons, Paul is interested at this point only in reproducing the Teacher's opening. He is going to exploit the underlying commitments of this opening in various ways through to 3:20, all of which are ultimately embarrassing. Indeed, Paul's entire argumentative strategy here is little more than a slow impalement of the Teacher on the dangerous implications of his own rhetorical prelude... And Paul has labored over this cameo. (He knows the topos well, perhaps even having used it previously himself.)"
I've not seen the piece - sounds interesting, I'll try and look it up.
In general terms however I'd be pretty wary of a claim that Campbell has "demonstrated" that Paul is not speaking in his own voice in 1:18-32.
Certainly that's certainly not what the vast majority of all scholars of every part of the church or of Christians have thought for 2,000 years! This does not in itself make the position wrong but it means massively weighty evidence will be needed.
I think that in general we should be suspicious of readings that require an elaborate reconstruction - something like seeing two voices in the text with no straightforward textual markers to indicare that, which is what Campbell seems to be proposing (of course he would no doubt say they are straightforward - but if this is so why is he the first reader in 1,800 of commentary on Romans to see it?! Are the other readers all just a bit dim? Does he has special insight into the C1st that writers of the C2nd-4th didn't have?
In any case I think such readings in general should have to carry a high burden of proof because:
a) it's not at all clear that the first readers would have understood the kind of things many contemporary scholars claim to see in the text and
b) such scholars almost always disagree vehemently amongst themselves about which bits of the text refer to whom, or which sources they come from - witness the almost infinite range of positions on J, E, P and D in the Pentateuch or on the Q material in the synoptic gospels. This makes me think the "demonstrability" is not nearly so obvious as such scholars like to think - if it was why would they almost all disagree with each other despite often sharing basic theological commitments and applying more or less similar academic "tools"?
c) These readings are often used to undermine a Christian systematic theology or ethical position which is not only historic but which is also taught elsewhere in the Scripture. The now "obscure" text (which was "plain" before the reinterpretation!) is then used to throw into question the less contentious texts - in an opposite of the classic reformation approach to hermeneutics. Obviously I can't comment from the extract on whether Campbell is doing that as there's not sufficient material.
Try his "The Deliverance of God" where his view is set out in full. It's tough going but well worth the effort. Whilst Campbell's approach is unique, it should be understood that many others have argued that 1:18-32 form part of a speech-in-character dependent upon Wisdom of Solomon, and maybe Gen. 2-3. That Paul is interacting with someone seems to be clear from Rom. 2:1ff.
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