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I want to begin with some words of wisdom. I started reading books about paul. Then I got into the commentaries on paul. I started making notes and writing my own thoughts on paul when I saw

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so many different opinions in so many areas, but I discovered that the bible can shed a lot of light on the commentaries. Dr Wardlaw has a door prize for whoever can tell me who said that without

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looking it up, anybody know you got a lot of it. It was johnny Cash. Mhm The bible can shed a lot of light. Johnny Carl Bart did not write those lines, but I feel

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certain he would have loved them. I first encountered Carl Bart's commentary on Romans as a 22 year old first year student in seminary and I was mesmerized by it. That is not a claim to prodigy.

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I did not understand it, I still don't understand it, but I was drawn to it in in some deep way that I had no way to articulate . I still cannot articulate. Obviously, I have

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returned to this book, especially to the preface is very often throughout my career, I do it most often when I'm really down those days when I really don't have another word to write, I don't see

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anything in the text to say. I feel that what I'm doing is bankrupt. My vocation is could put its over. I don't see any way out . And this is where I go. I go

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most especially to the preface is and over the years I've learned the ways in which I have miss read them, but I go there just the same Now . The year 2019 marked the 10th anniversary of his

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commentary on Romans. The first edition of the commentary , The University of Geneva celebrated dedication with a fabulous international conference that brought together theologians, ethicists and even a few biblical scholars to reflect on the importance of

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the volume and its future. What I'm going to do this morning borrows from that paper, but I I do so not simply because I happen to have it on hand, but I did have it on

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hand and you'll understand why I needed to do that . But I wanted also to take this occasion to reflect on the way Bart's commentary shapes my own reading of scripture and why I think that has something to

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say for pastors and teachers, even in the fearful year of our Lord 2020 The young pastor, and remember he was a pastor when he wrote this, spent just over two years writing the 438 pages of

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the first edition of that commentary. Yes, I'll wait now. They're Kleenex up here in the preface , he declares his pre suppositions, he announces his concern to hear paul's voice in and for the present

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. He stipulates that he regards the search for the historical paul as important, but merely preliminary to the quest to grapple with the mighty voice of paul. He closes by commenting on his own joy in this

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labor and asking others to join in the discussion. Well, in one sense, he got for what he hoped for. The discussion was joined, but not in the fashion Bart had imagined among the more

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vehement early critics, was an important new testament scholar of the period. Adolf, you liquor of Marburg , who had actually been one of Bart's own teachers . You look a begins his review with a tone

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of courtly, condescending civility. He suggests that perhaps Pastor Bart understands himself to be writing for lay people . You know, this is practical. Exit jesus . He admits that there are things here that are

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edifying. At one point, he says that even approaches a work of art at this point, however , the veneer of civility slips away and the complaints began, bark does not take into account scholarly judgments

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other than his own. His text, critical decisions are often idiosyncratic. He takes the greek pistols as faithfulness rather than faith. Actually, a lot of new testament scholars to do that. Now. He

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identifies Israel in chapters nine through 11 with the church and he neglects history altogether. Indeed, you liquor finds Bart to be and I quote, a deadly foe of system, philosophy or theory. A denier

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of history. A despise er of the past. Along the way you look, her identifies Bart as a nonstick, a Mennonite. But Marcy and I sorry Marcy and I. Mhm. Some of my

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best friends are Mennonite, but none of my best friends are Marcy and I. He calls him a nonstick, a martial unite. And a pneumatic, he didn't even have twitter. Now these accusations appear

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in other reviews as well, where Bart gets other titles. He is abe iblis ist a spiritualist, a knee, Apollon ist an Enthusiast, a dogmatism and an anti know me in and that's just before

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breakfast, Undeterred by these responses. Bart issued the radically revised 2nd edition, which is the one most of us know in translation, um Together with a larger, much larger new preface. Neither the new

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preface nor the revised commentary put the controversy to rest among biblical scholars. At least there lingers the notion that the book is not a commentary at all. And frankly, I think many theologians don't read it

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as a commentary. They read it as a theological treatise. The reasons for the responses of biblical scholars are clear enough. He provides no historical introduction to the letter. He neglects philology. His forays into

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text criticism are few, and some of those are kind of strange. For several years, when I was still at Princeton Seminary Bruce, McCormick and I taught a course together on on romans and Bart's rumor

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brief in his lectures, McCormick compared Bart with a recalcitrant mathematics student who does her homework, but refuses to show how she got there. On this point , McCormick is certainly correct. A close examination of

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the commentary shows that Bart had done extensive reading, extensive reading of his predecessors. What he did not do was display that reading or engage the commentaries themselves , because his interest lay, as he said,

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it did with the content of the letter rather than the commentary tradition. I contend, however, that the challenge of Bart's commentary is larger than this failure . This unwillingness to display his homework laid in the

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preface to the second edition, When Bart has turned from a defense of his method to the text of romans him itself, he writes this pollen is um has always stood on the brink of Heresy this being

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so, it is strange how utterly harmless and unexceptionable . Most commentaries on the epistle to the romans and most books about paul are those lines have haunted me for my entire career. I have them printed out

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and taped to my laptop so that I see them all day. Every day, pollen is um has always stood on the brink of Heresy. This being so it is strange how utterly harmless and unexceptionable most

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commentaries are. And we might ask about some of what the rest of us do, whether we write commentaries or not in the century since the publication of this book, His observations about the interpretation of scripture

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have been widely praised. They've been widely condemned, but the lines I just read to the best of my knowledge have largely been neglected. I want to propose that the real scandal, the real provocation of

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Carl barks commentary, is connected with this statement. This claim that paul is always on the brink and that we make him harmless unexceptionable. The problem for many of us is not simply that Bart did not

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play by the rules of the establishment. The problem is that he drew attention to the content and implications of romans in ways that were and are deeply disturbing , and it's for just that reason that we exige

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it's preachers, teachers, theologians need to read this commentary. I get no money for this endorsement. Bart does follow paul to the brink, pushing the letter to extreme conclusions. His exige ethical brinkmanship begins

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early on. The letter opens with a reference first to Christ Jesus 1st 1 And then to Jesus Christ verse four and verse seven. This is a reversal in word order that often prompts commentators to anxiety.

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Now, I promise I have never lost sleep over that question and I've lost a bunch of sleep over this letter. Bart has nothing to say about this detail. Instead, he declares that this jesus christ

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, our Lord is the gospel. It is the meaning of history. He takes this first moment early in the letter in the book to introduce his notion that jesus name marks the intersection, the No of

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the known plain by the unknown, the world of God, the primal creation of the final redemption. He writes that although this revelation took place in the early years of the first century, the particular charity

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of those years is dissolved because every era is a potential field of revelation and disclosure. And he's still talking about just the salutation of the letter another instance . And actually my favorite Comes with his discussion of

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the Adam Christ parallel in Chapter five, Paul's complicated comparison and contrast between the sin of adam and the obedience of christ relies on the assumption that all of humanity, it's my favorite word. It's a little

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greek word that gets you a lot of good, that all of humanity is caught up in the action of adam. So all of humanity is caught up in the action of christ. Now, most commentators

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get a little nervous at this point and they downplay the universal implications of paul's argument by contending that this new life is available for all who believe this new life is a possibility for all who believe. Interestingly

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, that passage does not talk about those who believe we get terribly fearful that someone might not get, might get what they don't deserve. As if deserving were part of polls vocabulary. Bart, however,

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once again stands at the brink. He writes of 5 19. In the light of christ acts of obedience, there is no one who is not in christ All are renewed and clothed with righteousness. All

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our become a new subject and therefore set at liberty and placed under the affirmation of God. To be sure, Bart goes on to say that this is a matter of hope of standing at the threshold,

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but he makes no distinction between those who believe that jesus is the christ of God and those who do not paul's bring up Bart's brinkmanship, You see, I'll start to confuse the two here. Bart's brinkmanship

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is especially pertinent when we get to romans 14, where paul addresses a conflict largely concerning food law. Let's call it what it is. There's a food fight going on. According to paul. There are

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those in Rome who believe that christians must still abide by kosher law. While others think that the christ event has freed them from any such obligation. This may align along ethnic lines. It may not.

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That's a little unclear. Scholars typically debate that sort of question whether there is an actual problem at Rome or whether this is theoretical rather than specific as early as origin, who is by no means a historical

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exit G. He's historical, he doesn't do history reconstruction as early as origin. Readers of paul speculate on the ethnic identities of the parties in this dispute and how it originated and what it means for the

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rest of the letter of all of that, Bart says not a single word. Instead, he declares that Romans 14 is a warning to all who find themselves in entire agreement with what has been said to

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this point in the letter and those and are persuaded that their own opinions have been fully confirmed. They are the ones who are in danger of destroying others . It took me several months to figure out how

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he got to that point and when I did, I thought it was one of the most brilliant things I had read in all these instances bark declines to engage in the routine acts. Tradition associates with commentary

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writing acts that often result in a form of taming the text to understand the literary forms, to comment on parallels with other text. To explain the historical context is to get a kind of handle on the

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text. That's kind of what I was doing yesterday . It is to make the text into an object that can be manipulated, that can be domesticated, that we can we've cut it down to our size

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. But Bart's reading is one of anti containment. If this commentary trashed the playground of theologian, it's that's because that's how Bart read the letter. This place, where this strategy of anti containment profoundly disturbs

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most readers and rightly so is Bart's treatment of Israel in Romans nine through 11, hear his interpretation not only stands on the brink of Heresy, it seems to plunge over into the abyss. Indeed, here

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a number of otherwise very sympathetic readers claim that Bart's interpretation is sheer super Session is um By way of reminder, Romans nine through 11 takes up explicitly the relationship between God and Israel, Paul's long exploration of

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the effects of the Christ event culminates in Chapter eight with this claim that the whole of creation waits together longs together for God's redemption. Then we have that glorious claim that nothing can separate us from the love

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of God. In christ, jesus, without a single word, by way of transition, Romans nine through 11 turns to consider just such a separation, the possibility of separation between God and Israel Israel has

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, as paul puts it tripped over the stone of stumbling, a stone put in place by God. That stone of stumbling is none other than Jesus himself . Israel or some part of Israel does not recognize

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Jesus as Israel's own messiah. What does this mean ? Paul works his way through. Obviously, I'm not going to give you that tour this morning, but he comes to announce in 1126 all Israel will

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be saved. That reminder of the content of these three very troublesome chapters serves to demonstrate how totally extraordinary how bizarre it is. To open Bart's commentary at Romans nine and find this now, in contrast with

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the Gospel of jesus christ, there is thrust on our attention Israel, the Church, the world of religion as it appears in history. Just a few lines further, he writes, the church confronts the

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Gospel as the last human possibility confronts the impossible possibility of God consistently through those three chapters of commentary, Bart rites of the church where Paul writes of Israel , he does not identify some segment of historic Israel

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is belonging within the church. He does not claim that the church is the new Israel or a spiritual version of Israel. He does not make that move at all beyond the connection. I quoted Israel,

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the Church, the world of religion, That move is made more extraordinary by the fact that nowhere in Romans nine through 11 does Paul ever use the word church? In fact, he never uses it in

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Romans at all. Until we get to chapter 16 . Now, Bart's move was attacked early on. It was sharply criticized by New testament scholar Adolf, You looker, but we should notice that you'll occurs

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critique runs directly counter to contemporary discussion of these passages . You look rejects the identification of the church with Israel, because wait for it. It implies criticism of the church to you liquor. Speaking of the

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Church where Paul spoke of, Israel is a problem because it identifies Israel's failings. You lookers thinking not my own as those of the Church, and Bart's exit jesus, thereby criticizes the Church. You look

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her complains that this move shows not even, I quote, a limited respect for what the gospel has accomplished. Bart's critique of the Church emerges again in the final lines of the review, where you liquor

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characterizes him as despising the past and confidently announces that the church christendom religion will not perish in our time . Of course, the criticism of Bart's exige ethical move runs in the opposite direction and rightly so where

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you look, Her bristled at Bart's criticism of the church. Contemporary interpreters reject rightly the erasure of Israel from the text of Paul's letter. Such a substitution is highly provocative, the more so in light of

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the devastation of World War Two and the subsequent crisis for christian theology, the anti Semitism that rears its ugly head today across the globe reinforces the risks involved in this reading. It is a historical, it

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threatens the particular charity of the letter. It invites the accusation of Super Session is um however, before we take our scissors to that section of the rumor brief and I know people who have at least figuratively

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, there are some things worth noticing In a period when Romans nine through 11 was largely being treated as an aside or an afterthought. Bart gave it thorough attention as an integral part of the letter. By

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contrast with Bart, the well regarded icsC commentary of the day by Sandy and Headlam, I assume some of you have used. It Introduces Romans nine through 11 with the assertion that Paul has now finished his

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main argument, hans leads Mons handbook to romans. This is the one, but I knew I would have to do this. This is the one. By the way that leads Mons handbook is the one

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that makes junior into junius and it takes almost 100 years to get junior back again. Leachman identifies this section of the letter as a practical problem, Paul must address Bart, by contrast, not only addresses

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this section of the letter seriously, but he gives it attention proportion to his attention to everything else in the letter. In addition to taking Romans nine through 11 seriously. As part of the letter, there

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are points where Bart shows genuinely independent insight. I'll have to give just one example, namely his comments . I'll take you back again to pharaoh. Probably nobody here has ever thought about pharaoh and romans as

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much as you have in the last two days. You'll recall the way paul talks about God's unilateral action of bringing Israel's existence about through the birth of Isaac and the choice of Jacob and then the raising up

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of pharaoh, paul here tweaks the exodus account, drawing attention to God's unilateral role while the exodus makes this hardening a cooperative venture. The interesting thing is that interpreters both christian and jewish reinforce this notion of

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pharaoh's guilt. Even Augustine and Luther significant conversation partners for Bart share the concern to protect God's reputation by making pharaoh the responsible party barked by contrast, and in my view rightly stays very close to the text

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. He writes that moses has no human preeminence over pharaoh. Both stand humanly under the harshness of God from this point of view, moses and pharaoh are interchangeable. Now, these are real strengths in Bart's

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treatment and they do not diminish the difficulties inherent in his identification of the church and Israel in this long section of the letter. Yet there are other considerations having to do with Bart's audience. Remember he wrote

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this commentary as a working pastor for some time. I have regarded this move on. Bart's part reading Israel writing church as an act of authority, real cunning as a pastorally shrewd move designed precisely to do

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what it did to shock the reader he wrote after all, for a christian audience. Most of his readers for the last 100 years have been Christian. Few people who are reading this commentary will have been

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unaware, at least in a general sense, that the topic of Romans nine through 11 is the relationship between God and Israel. If it's not in the sunday school literature, surely it's on the bible content

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exam, It should be most of Bart's readers then come to Romans nine through 11 with a sense of it. They we begin this text aligned with paul , we're standing with paul in the Gospel and we

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look at Israel, the choice of proposition is deliberate and important. We look at Israel, We take the pathos of those early lines of Romans 9 to be the fact that Paul himself is part of Israel

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, as he insists. He looks out at his kinfolk with longing. And Israel is the problem For readers steeped and that sort of understanding of Romans nine through 11, encountering Bart's treatment is stunning. When

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readers who are aligned with the Church c church, rather than Israel, they are invited for the first time to sense the depth of paul's grief. But this is not just pathos. The reader is now

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get it reading about herself, her church, her faithlessness, not that of someone else's any criticism of Israel now false. Where on the church? In this way, Bart's exa jesus forces a reckoning with

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any and all forms of christian arrogance, judging by you'll occurs response, I suspect here I'm doing a little mind reading. I suspect that this may well be what so provoked him. In Bart's Exa jesus

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, he found a lot in Bart's treatment of the first half of romans that bothered him, but it's with this critique of the church that his seething disappointment burst into flame. Now attributing barks highly unusual interpretation

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to pastoral ingenuity is a defensible way to understand what he did, ironically, it also replace an element in your lockers review. Remember I said, he asserts rather condescendingly, that Bar is writing practical theology

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, you know, it's not important what you look for. Mrs, of course, is what Bart's practical theology conforms to the letter itself. After all , paul two is writing practical theology. So what

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is this good for? There's a lot more to say. If we had more time, I would comment on the way Bart's treatment of romans nine through 11, while simply wrong. Right. I do

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not want to give some misimpression about that. It is simply wrong historically and exit genetically. It's nonetheless in touch with some deep strands in the letter itself . But the title I gave for this morning includes

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the phrase why I read carl bart on romans and I want to turn to some comments on that particular point. First of all, Bart helps us to put historical criticism in its rightful place. That is

00:31:53.680 - 00:32:07.480

not intended as a rejection of the work of historical criticism. To take a single example. It matters a great deal not just to me personally, but it matters a great deal to us all that.

00:32:07.480 - 00:32:30.230

The greetings of Romans 16 singled out a number of women who are in leadership positions. It matters that many of the people greeted in Romans 16 bear names used exclusively for enslaved persons. It matters that many

00:32:30.230 - 00:32:50.710

of those names are those used in the eastern part of the empire. These are border crossers too. These details give or they should give our hearing of the letter a specificity that is otherwise lost. Nevertheless

00:32:51.440 - 00:33:06.620

, there are pitfalls in that quest for historical setting . For one thing, it is highly susceptible to error as bart like to remind his critics and indeed some of his exige ethical points have stood up better

00:33:06.620 - 00:33:22.310

than the people at the time who thought they had all the keys to the interpretation of the letter. More to the point. What bothers me more is the quest for the historical setting can buffer the impact

00:33:22.310 - 00:33:42.850

of the letter. If romans was written to seek only to seek support for Paul's planned mission to spain , then it's radical claims about the human situation may not be heard as they should. If it was

00:33:42.850 - 00:34:00.620

intended only to unite jewish and gentile believers in Rome , or if it was meant to garner support for the collection in Jerusalem. However important those things are , it then becomes easy to skip right what past

00:34:00.620 - 00:34:15.590

, what God paul has to say about God's action in jesus christ. In other words, it can be a way of blunting the force of the text . I'm not saying any of those issues is unimportant

00:34:15.600 - 00:34:34.280

. I'm talking about the larger horizon of the letter . That brings me to the second reason. I go back to Bart's commentary early and often for all its flaws, and there are many Bart's rumor brief

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, confronts us with the size and urgency of the Gospel in all its otherness. God here intrudes on a world enthralled with its own power and with its own idols. Despite the fact that we are all

00:34:55.970 - 00:35:16.840

week godless sinners, the letter reminds us that God will not let us go. Even now in Bart's own formulation, the Gospel is the victory over with by which the world is overcome. A world.

00:35:16.850 - 00:35:35.560

He means a world in rebellion. Even as we may resist some of Bart's moves. We want to recast them. We quibble, he relentlessly proclaims the word. We cannot escape this book without being confronted

00:35:35.570 - 00:35:52.960

with the size of the Gospel. He reveals our reductions for the counterfeit. They are whether ours is the gospel of personal salvation or individual spiritual growth or social renewal. Bart demands that we see our hopes

00:35:53.440 - 00:36:15.960

however rightful they are as merely part of the vast horizon of God's redemption. There's no wonder this letter repeatedly breaks into ducks ology. It shouldn't surprise us that paul again and again punctuates his argument with Amen

00:36:19.430 - 00:36:29.050

. One of these days, I'm going to do that and a bunch of pastors are actually going to say, Amen. Amen! I keep trying. I had I had real hopes for this group.

00:36:29.630 - 00:36:43.770

Mhm. All right. The third and final reason I go back again and again. The Barts interpretation of romans is his practice of turning the letter on its audience. That move he makes in nine through

00:36:43.770 - 00:37:02.490

11 is consistent with his exit jesus throughout he turns the letter so that it pricks the audience himself included bark delights in placing christian theologians themselves squarely with the rest of humanity on the all too human side of

00:37:02.490 - 00:37:21.950

the line. At removed from God. Those who are devoted to God's law becomes sinners, including and I quote the clergy and their friends, the doctors of the theological faculty, those active and social reform

00:37:22.630 - 00:37:44.840

, And those who publish books such as the one I am now writing. Yeah. In another spot , he compares theologians and philosophers to boils and ulcers that enable the disease from which all suffer to be

00:37:44.840 - 00:38:04.500

diagnosed. I especially value this element in the commentary by contrast with some others that I read maybe including my own when talking about the second half of romans , one. Biblical scholars generally talk about paul's analysis

00:38:04.510 - 00:38:23.830

of gentile sin. When talking about Romans nine through 11, we unanimously speak about Israel. That's all fine. We're describing what's in the text, But in chapters five through a the same scholars slip into

00:38:24.320 - 00:38:45.160

we language without quotation marks, identifying ourselves with paul and his uh his audience. We are the heirs of the spirit. We are co heirs with christ called and glorified and so forth. In other words

00:38:45.170 - 00:39:04.020

, we readers are quite happy to identify with the subject of Paul's discourse. When the language is positive . Even with Romans seven, we will identify because that I gets itself redeemed, But we're sure that

00:39:04.020 - 00:39:22.830

Romans one is about somebody else's idolatry, That Romans nine through 11 is about somebody else's faithlessness. We have yet to hear 2. 1 with all its sharpness. Who are you? To judge another?

00:39:22.220 - 00:39:42.650

You there when you judge another, you're condemning yourself . We close our ears to 1113, I'm talking to you. Gentiles. Get over yourselves. That's a rough paraphrase. It's not literal in other words

00:39:42.660 - 00:39:55.960

, bark, penetrates with laser like clarity into paul's concern about something I can only call arrogance. There may be a better way to put it. Please note, I did not say I do not mean

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jewish arrogance and you have never heard me use the word legalism. What Bart? What paul is concerned with is religious arrogance, whether jewish or gentile. He is concerned about human arrogance. And Bart saw

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that arrogance in his own teachers, shocked to the core when his own esteemed teachers joined in a manifesto in support of Kaiser Wilhelm the second and his war policy. A whiff of that arrogance permeates you lickers

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s a with its defensiveness about christendom, we may be tempted here to find a big disconnect between Bart's world and our own. I think most of us are under no delusions about christendom. We know that

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the protestant hegemony of the 50s is over, finished cook put, but arrogance is not finished, is it? I can well imagine Bart joining his voice to that of paul, crying out in stark terms

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against our arrogance in all its forms, whether it is gender arrogance or ethnic arrogance or racial arrogance or political or national arrogance or as johnny cash would say the bible can shed a lot of light on the

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commentators, including ourselves and that my friends is why I read carl Burton, thank you can't do it