Ted Grimsrud—March 22, 2024
The Apostle Paul has often been interpreted as a major influence in moving Christianity away from the peaceable message of Jesus. I want to counter that interpretation, though, by noticing key peace themes that are present in Paul’s thought and by challenging one key text interpreted to support the idea that Paul accepted violence. So, I will focus on Paul’s critique of idolatry in order to show how central to Paul’s theology the way of peace is. Then, in my next post I will offer an interpretation of the infamous Romans 13 passage that shows that those verses actually offer a peaceable message.
The idolatrous roots of violence and injustice
The biblical story portrays violence and injustice having roots in idolatry. If we use violence as our criterion, we could say that whenever human beings justify violence against other human beings, they give ultimate loyalty to some entity (or “idol”) other than the God of Jesus—loyalty that demands violence, always contrary to God’s will as expressed by Jesus. Paul joins other biblical prophets in rejecting any kind of loyalty that would justify violence.
I will consider Paul’s critique of idolatry and focus on the first three chapters of his letter to the Romans. He takes on two types of idolatry. He criticizes the idol of the Roman Empire (which is manifested as what I will call the idol of “lust”). Second, he critiques those (like Paul himself before he met Jesus) who believed that loyalty to Torah requires judgmental violence in defense of the covenant community (what I will call the idol of “judging”).
The gospel of God
Paul begins his argument in Romans with a programmatic statement: “I am not ashamed of the gospel; for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile” (1:16). When Paul asserts that the “gospel” has to do with God’s power bringing about “salvation” he appropriates common imperial terms. For Rome, “gospel” and “salvation” both point to what the emperor claims to offer. Paul, though, sets the true gospel and genuine salvation that come from the God of Jesus over against the claims of Caesar.
The gospel that Paul affirms is based on “faith” (better, “faithfulness”—an integration of belief and practice). Faith involves trust in God that leads to the practice of love and justice, mercy and compassion, generosity and care—all in contrast to the injustice and domination of Rome. With “justice of God,” Paul has in mind a transformative intervention by God to bring healing to all aspects of creation. God’s “justice” means that God works to bring healing in the face of brokenness (“restorative justice”). God’s “justice” is the characteristic of God that leads to salvation (not punishment) for God’s enemies (see Romans 5:1-11 for the affirmation that the justice-making work of God affirmed in 1:17 and 3:21 specifically includes God’s enemies).
Paul announces that God’s “justice” has now been “revealed.” The term translated “revealed” (apokalypsis—the word from which “apocalypse” comes) in the Bible indicates an epoch-defining, transforming message from God. God “reveals” that in Jesus God’s ways have been made present. Those who receive this revelation will never see the world the same again. For Paul, trust in Christ is a direct alternative to trust in Caesar. These are two “kings” who contest the same terrain—the ultimate loyalty of human beings. For those with eyes to see, Paul insists that the transforming work God does in creating a peaceable community out of Jews and Gentiles has been made visible and is worth their deepest commitment. Paul believes that trust in God leads to blessing all the families of the earth as promised of old. He will argue that this faithfulness most powerfully should be seen in the coming together of Jew with Gentile, united by a common commitment to the way of Jesus. Paul strongly desires that such a new community be clear in its witness in the heart of the Empire.
Idolatry I: The Nations (Rome)
After this introduction, Paul turns to the big problem. Why do people move from a lack of gratitude to a rejection of truth and then to trust in created things that leads to out-of-control lust, injustice, and violence? This is a destructive dynamic that Paul terms “wrath.” This means not a direct intervention by God but God “giving them up” to a self-selected spiral of death. As Paul will make clear in 5:1-11 and 11:32, God’s intentions toward humanity are for salvation—even when human beings position themselves as God’s enemies. Hence, we make a mistake if we interpret “wrath” as God’s punitive anger aimed at people God has rejected. We should understand “wrath” to be redefined by the gospel. “Wrath” characterizes how God works in indirect ways to hold human beings accountable, “giving them up” to the consequences of choices to give their loyalty to realities other than life and the giver of life.
In 1:17-18 we see a contrast. First, we have the salvific “revelation” of God’s justice. Then, in the next verse, we have the suppression of truth that leads to another “revelation,” one of God’s wrath. With justice, people see created things for what they are (as pointers to the creator), not as false gods. Justice leads to life. In contrast, wrath follows from giving loyalty to created things that results in truth being suppressed and a spiral of lifelessness. Created things may be seen as pointers to God, who is the one authentic object of worship. Or they can be seen as themselves objects of ultimate loyalty. God has built within creation itself directives that should lead to “justice” (linking “justice” here with a gratitude towards life that encourages kindness, generosity, and wholeness in relationships).
The “revelation” of God’s wrath (1:18) shows God giving those who trust in idols up (1:24) to descent into self-destructive behavior. The revelation of this wrath, thus, is not about direct punitive action by God but how when people trust in lifeless things, they thereby lose a connection with life. God has shown the world what is needed. “What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them…, seen through the things God has made” (1:19-20). However, when human beings turn from “the glory of God” to images that resemble created things, they lose their ability to discern God’s revelation. This is the dynamic identified in Psalm 115, where people become like the lifeless images that they worship.
Paul writes that “for this reason” (1:26) God gave those consumed by lust (the “lusters”) “up to degrading passions.” When they exchange trust in God for worship of created things, the lusters are led into “unnatural” behavior. What is unnatural is when intimate human relationships become occasions for death and alienation instead of life and wholeness. Paul likely has in mind the recent history of the Roman emperor’s court and its profligate sexual behavior. Paul sees lust as the problem here (not homosexuality as has often been assumed) because of how it diminishes humanness, reflects worship of “degrading passions” rather than God, distorts the revelation of God in the human, and fosters injustice.
In 1:28, Paul again refers to the dynamic where “God gives them up.” The revelation of God’s love becomes wrath for them rather than justice. When people trust in things other than God, their ability to think and perceive and see and discern is profoundly clouded. Paul refers to “things that should not be done” that result from “the debased mind” that in turn results from “God giving them up” (1:28) that results from “exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles” (1:23). The reference to “things that should not be done” points ahead to the vice list in 1:29-31 with a wide-ranging description of injustice and violence—the injustice and violence of the Empire’s leaders.
In his discussion of idolatry in Romans 1:18-32, Paul challenges his readers to see the nature of their would-be imperial Benefactors. They are God’s rivals. These Benefactors claim to act on behalf of the gods and for the sake of “peace” (they use terms such as Good News, Savior, and Pax Romana). They desire people’s trust and loyalty and worship. And they are actually profoundly unjust and violent. The Pax Romana’s “peace” is actually based on the violence of the sword. When “created things” are worshiped, the progression moves inexorably toward injustice—suppression of truth (1:18), refusal to honor and give thanks to God (1:21), darkened minds (1:21), the exchange of God’s glory for lifeless images (1:23), being “given up” to lusts that degrade their bodies (1:24), the worship of the creature rather than creator (1:25), degrading passions (1:26), shameless acts (1:27), debased minds (1:28), injustice and violence (1:29-31).
The Powers that exploit this progression into idolatry replace God as the center of people’s lives and as the objects of worship. In doing so, they so distort people’s minds so that instead of recognizing that those who practice such injustice deserve rejection people instead “applaud” their unjust Benefactors (1:32). People happily consent to their leaders’ injustice.
Idolatry II: Works of the Law
Paul then turns to a second, seemingly very different kind of idolatry. He critiques the way people in the covenant community embrace idolatry in relation to the law. Now, Paul does actually affirm the continuing validity of the law properly understood. See Romans 13:9: “The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet’; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” His problem is with how the law was seen by many in the churches who opposed Paul’s understanding of Jesus (and with how he himself viewed the law before he met Jesus).
Paul’s term “works of the law” from Galatians 2:16 (“We know that a person is justified, not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ”) helps us distinguish between his critique of how the law was understood among his opponents in the churches and his affirmation of the continuing validity of the law. Paul’s own earlier commitment to use works of the law as boundary markers clarifies his critique. He had protected the “true faith” with extreme violence. As Saul the Pharisee, before he met Jesus, Paul made an idol of works of the law in a way that led to violence in his harsh persecution of Jesus’s followers, just as bad as Rome’s violence.
Paul begins his critique of Idolatry II in Romans 2 with a surprising challenge. If one points fingers at other idolaters (such as the “lusters”) while denying one’s own tendency to worship idols, one will never find freedom from idolatry. Hence, “the very same things” (2:1) that those who point fingers (let’s call them the “judgers”) are guilty of are themselves forms of idolatry. When they welcome God’s judgment on others, the judgers actually condemn themselves because they too are idolaters guilty of injustice. They mistakenly believe that when they condemn the idolatry of 1:18-32, they may continue to practice idolatry themselves because they have God on their side. In claiming that their judging accords with “truth” (2:2), the judgers actually line themselves up with the “debased minds” who worship the creation rather than the creator and in doing so actually suppress the truth (1:18).
Paul had committed his own acts of violence in the name of the “truth.” However, after he met Jesus, he learned that violence is always a sign of falsehood. The “truth” he thought he served was actually a lie. The works of the law that he defended turned out to be idolatrous. So, as a judger he was just as much of an idolater as the lusters who run the Roman Empire. Paul makes affirmations about God that stand in opposition to all forms of idolatry. He writes of “the riches of God’s kindness and forbearance and patience” (2:4). The antidote to idolatry is recognition of God’s unconditional and abundant mercy.
Condemnation comes to everyone who does evil—Jew first and also Gentile (2:9). The description of the two types of idolatry encompasses all kinds of people. Crucially, though, Paul immediately follows this terrifying word with a word of hope. Salvation also comes to all kinds of people, Jew first and also Gentile (2:11). Salvation enters through God’s chosen people and spreads to all the families of the earth. The judgers (such as Saul the Pharisee) forgot that salvation for them was intended to lead to salvation for all.
Paul understands “sin,” a term he introduces in 2:12, in terms of the idolatry he has described. He sets out the basic dynamic in 1:21: Sin and idolatry arise when people live without trust and gratitude, become futile in their thinking and darkened in their minds, leading to the practice of injustice and the movement toward lifelessness. “Sinning under the law” (2:12) seems to mean making an idol of some rule and using it to underwrite injustice. Paul argues that the law itself is not the problem. He affirms in 2:14 that some Gentiles do “do the law” even while ignorant of the written Torah. They do it “naturally,” linking back to the allusion in 1:18-32 that it is unnatural to worship the creature, to be ungrateful, to practice injustice, and to exchange the creature for the creator. The faithfulness or authentic obedience of Gentiles who do not know the written Torah shows that “what the law requires is written on their hearts” (2:15: to trust God, to live in gratitude, to do justice). This comment echoes Paul’s earlier affirmation that “ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things God has made” (1:20).
Paul asserts that “boasters in the law” dishonor God (2:23-24). For the judgers, the law had become a boundary marker. As such, the law (reduced to works of the law) had become a tool for violence. It had become a basis for asserting a cosmic division between circumcised and uncircumcised, rather than part of an affirmation of the solidarity of Jews and Gentiles as together creatures of the one God. Protecting this boundary had justified Paul’s own violence.
Law-idolatry had led to violent persecution of those who followed Jesus, the one who actually embodied the true whole-making intention of the law in its original expression. These people of the covenant, charged with witnessing to God’s justice for the benefit of all the earth’s families, instead witnessed to injustice. It is as if they are not part of God’s covenant people at all; their “circumcision became uncircumcision.” Paul asserts that some who are physically “uncircumcised” do indeed “keep the requirements of the law” (2:26). He thereby implies that “the requirements of the law” boil down to living with gratitude, generosity, and justice—or, as in Romans 13:8-10, the law simply means loving one’s neighbor. Paul does insist that we are “all” under the power of sin (3:9), but in saying this he does not assert that each individual is (he has clearly stated that some do keep the law) but argues that the Jews and Gentiles are equally liable to be under the power of sin (equally likely to be either lusters or judgers).
More on Idolatry II: Romans 7 and Paul’s own idolatry
Before addressing Paul’s resolution to the problem of idolatry that begins in Romans 3:21, let’s look at what Paul later says about his own struggles with the idolatry of works of the law in his agonized words in chapter seven. Paul there references his own experience as one who committed terrible acts of violence in the name of what turned out to be an idolatrous view of the law. The very act of striving to follow the letter of Torah led Paul to live in the “flesh” and unleash his “sinful passions” (7:5). These sinful passions had led to his “zeal” when he upheld works of the law through violence against followers of Jesus (Gal 1:14; Phil 3:5-6). When Paul writes, “the very commandment that promised life proved to be the death of me” (7:10), he has in mind how he applied the law in ways that deeply hurt others and thereby himself experienced death. No wonder he was so profoundly shattered when he met Jesus and realized that the one he had persecuted was shockingly the Messiah of the God he had sought so zealously to serve.
Paul had staked his life on a sense of responsibility to enforce the “truths” of Torah—and ended up becoming a murderer. He violated the actual truth of Torah as profoundly as anyone possibly could. Paul states flatly, “sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me” (7:11). This truly happened in Paul’s own life. His embrace of the legalistic approach to Torah coupled with an embrace of the need to enforce works of the law with violence opened him to be dominated by the very power of sin he thought he opposed.
When his zealotry sought to exploit the law by using it as a basis for violence and injustice, he showed himself to have been “sold into slavery under sin.” As a consequence, Paul was utterly bamboozled concerning the true message of Torah. “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” What he wanted to do was serve the God of Israel, faithfully practice Torah, and live a holy life. However, he actually worshiped idols instead of God. His mind was darkened. He ended up not serving God but doing the opposite (“the very thing I hate”); he served an idol.
The more “faithfully” Saul the Pharisee followed his rigorous path, the more he sinned. It turned out to be the wrong path. It set him actively to oppose God. When his eyes were opened (Jesus’s revelation to him of Jesus’s true identity), he realized that the “true Torah” (love of neighbor, 13:8-10) condemned what he was doing. Paul dwelt in a “body of death” (7:24), both in the sense of being the cause of death to others in his zeal and of being spiritually dead himself due to his idolatry and bondage to the Powers. He needed to be “rescued.” He needed outside intervention to save him when he did not even realize he needed to be saved. He was subsumed in a “body of death.” However, the rescue came, which is the story of Paul’s gospel.
“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our lord,” Paul concludes chapter seven (7:25). Jesus intervened and shook Paul’s world to the foundations. When he rescued Paul from death, Jesus made clear that he is indeed God’s Messiah, the one worthy of trust, the one who reveals the true meaning of Torah. When Paul trusted in Jesus and realized that Jesus’s God was the God he wanted to serve, Paul found liberation from the bondage that had turned him into a murderer. He was transformed from an exclusivist persecutor to one who welcomes the Other.
Justice apart from idolatry
Let’s turn to the conclusion to Paul’s argument in Romans 1–3. We see that Paul’s own liberation was due to a revelation of Jesus apart from “works of the law.” This liberation guides Paul’s response to the problem of idolatry. The idolatry problem is solved when, “apart from the law, the justice of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the justice of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe” (3:21-22). Paul has already made it clear that salvation comes apart from works of the law. True circumcision has to do with the heart—living in gratitude and love, practicing genuine justice. Those who may be physically circumcised are actually as if uncircumcised if they are unjust.
God’s “justice” here joins the thread throughout the first three chapters that links together justice, injustice, and God’s just judgment. Contrary to Saul the Pharisee’s idea that “justice” should lead to persecution of followers of Jesus, now Paul the Apostle sees that justice involves reconciliation. It blesses all the families of the earth. God’s work is primarily a work to “make known,” to enlighten those whose idolatry had darkened their minds. The “law and prophets” attest to God’s disclosure of justice, the same message as Paul’s. To be just is to love God and neighbor and value mercy more than sacrifice. The law and prophets also attest to problems that arise when the law becomes an idol that underwrites injustice. Torah, in Paul’s view, is totally compatible with God’s justice in Jesus. Torah witnesses to the purpose of human life for all people: live peaceably as Torah itself commands (Romans 2) and as the gospel enables.
Jesus’s faithfulness in his life discloses God’s justice. Jesus showed that the law means to serve human beings, not human beings to serve the law. Jesus’s life of freedom from the Powers and their idolatries frees (“redeems,” 3:24) all those who trust in his way as the true disclosure of justice. Jesus confirms God’s work already seen in the liberating stories from Israel’s scriptures. Paul emphasizes the abolition of boundary markers as the basis for relationship with God when he asserts “there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (3:22-23). The Gentile lusters are idolaters, but equally so are the Jewish judgers. They all “fall short of the glory of God,” are all unjust, all violate the true meaning of Torah, all fail to live gratefully.
When Paul speaks of Jesus’s blood as the means of “a sacrifice of atonement” put forward by God (3:23), he refers to Jesus’s self-sacrificial life (“the life is in the blood,” Lev 17:14) that led to his crucifixion as a witness to God’s justice. Jesus lived a life of giving to others. When he persevered to the end, he embodied God’s justice in face of the injustice and violence of the Powers. God “put forward Jesus” in order “to show God’s justice” (3:25). Jesus’s self-sacrifice was “effective” through his faithfulness (3:25). He was faithful, consistently and amidst all opposition and thereby showed God’s healing justice to a broken world.
There is no place for self-superiority. “What becomes of boasting?” Paul asks. “It is excluded” (3:27). As all have practiced idolatry, all have access to the healing justice of God through trust in Jesus’s faithfulness. This “boasting” is excluded by the true law (“the law of faithfulness,” 3:27), which is Torah as it was intended from the start. God’s gift of Torah meant to reinforce trust in God and faithfulness to the vocation of blessing all the families of the earth—not to provide for “works of the law” (rigid boundary makers) that would underwrite boasting. Any sense of superiority was revealed to be hypocrisy in light of the judgers’ own injustices (such as Saul the Pharisee’s violence in the name of the works of the law).
Idolatry is overcome through trust in the God revealed in Jesus. Such trust leads to the reconciliation of all sorts of different people whose practice of healing justice tears down the walls that divide people. The idols (e.g., Empire and works of the law) characteristically push people toward violence. God’s healing justice pushes people toward restored relationships. Paul’s message of this healing justice is a message of peace that reinforces Jesus’s life and teaching.
Thinking Pacifism 
Thanks for this, Ted.
It’s very clear, and I find it nourishing and helpful.
I appreciate the encouragement, Peter!