Well, last time we started talking about the Great Commission, and so if you wouldn't mind turning back to Matthew chapter 28 Thought we could talk about that just a wee bit more So I'm in Matthew 28 verses 16 through 20 and I'll read the passage for us again Again a very familiar passage, but I think there's perhaps more to it in terms of it's importance for Matthew By the way, of course Matthew had a lot of resurrection appearances of Jesus from which he could speak about and The fact that he chooses to end on this one I think is evidence of some infacies motifs in the book of Matthew itself some theological infacies And that's where we've been coming from but the 11 disciples proceeded to Galilee he says in verse 16 to the mountain Which Jesus had designated and when they saw him they worshipped him, but some were doubtful and Jesus came up and spoke to them saying all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth Go there for a make disciples of all the nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit Teaching them to observe all that I commanded you and low I am with you always even to the end of the age The last time I Reminded you of our discussion of worship. We also talked about the nature of doubt here in Matthew and We had also begun speaking about this idea of all authority has been given to me on in heaven and on earth Now I had noted that this is the highest claim of authority in the book of Matthew all authority now and that there was had been this kind of escalation leading up to it and That the nature of this authority evidences a direct claim to deity if it was a right for The people to interpret his statement about the son of man appearing on the right hand of God the Father Almighty and That's to accuse him of blasphemy Then it was all the more right to see this claim to all authority as being a claim to deity and should you have any doubt of that in Matthew there is the striking Way that he says to baptize in verse 19 baptize them in the name and there's a singular word there in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and there you have the trinitarian name a Direct claim to deity on the part of the Sun because he claims to have the very same name as the Father and as of the Holy Spirit So this is the kind of authority that Jesus is claiming here and of course we recognize that he in fact has that authority It is in light of that authority that he has the following command go there for make disciples of all the nations baptizing and teaching now This is where I wanted to give you a little bit of background in terms of Greek
The four verbs there Go make disciples baptize teach those are the four verbs However, if you study the Greek three of them are participles and Only one is an actual imperative Okay, so literally what you have is The impartist the participle going and Then you have the main idea is to make disciples and Then you have two other participles baptizing and teaching Now it is not the case in English that we would normally say a going Make disciples Right, so it's not possible to translate it literally From Greek into English, which is why your English translation is almost inevitably translate instead of going its go Right as if it's an imperative, but it is not strictly speaking an imperative in Greek now That's not sufficient In terms of our discussion here in terms of the import of the verbs, okay Greek participles to give you a little bit of background here I do this with my ex-Jesus students. We talk about participles for like days at a time It's an exciting discussion That's why you should all take Greek The participles have a variety of different uses in Greek and The options then in terms of determining what is meant by the participle here as opposed to the participles here and here Are basically as follows first let me note that the going precedes make disciples The baptizing and the teaching follow This in my mind implies that the going the use of this participle Maybe different than the use of these two participles But the use of these two participles is probably the same Between one another when I talk about the use of the participles see more a little bit more what I mean One possibility with a Greek participle is around an imperative especially after imperatives, but around imperatives a Participal can take on the flavor of the imperative of the command So this could be go Like an imperative here and likewise this could be baptized as a command and teach As a command and in point of fact their English translations that do that they do that with all three almost every English translation Then I know does it with the first one go make disciples However, there is another use Of especially the possibility of go it would it would set up the kind of temporal context For the main verb and the main verb is the imperative make disciples Okay, so the temporal context would be like when you go or As you go all right So there's another option for going When we come down to baptizing and teaching it's less likely that they're setting up the temporal context for making disciples There's a couple other possibilities. We do this in English. Let's see if I say I Open the hatch Letting the water flow out It's a little odd phrase, but if I said something like that What's implicitly the connection of letting the water out? There's a participle with open the hatch well in order to like a purpose or that's the result Okay, so this could be purpose or result in order To baptize and in order to teach That's one of the option
another way of Doing a participle in English and also in Greek. I'm trying to think of a good example, but it would be something like I
taught them many things Reading the Bible and studying it thoroughly Reading studying those are our participles. I taught. Well, what's the connection between teaching and reading and studying? Well Grammarians would speak of that is something of instrumentality. I taught them many things how? By reading and by study Okay, so another option for baptizing is by baptizing and by teaching Okay baptize in order to baptize or by baptizing Teach in order to teach or by teaching and then if we come up to going go or As you go Okay Now, I'm not just going to leave you with a bunch of options here because I actually think that this passage has a direction in which it's heading And I'm going to suggest to you the direction I think it's heading and I would encourage you to read commentaries to see the degree which you would agree or the arguments that they employ I know most of you don't know Greek and that's fine. I'd love for you to learn Greek But I know that most of you don't know it. You might ask, well, how would I enter into this discussion? Well, you're probably going to have to be dependent on somebody else to take you into it Which means reading a commentary However, when I when I suggest that you read commentaries you usually shouldn't just read one You should read two or three to get a variety of opinions and to see the kind of arguments they employ So if you would I'm going to give you a commentary and you should test it with some others But here's here's my my point first of all the first thing that we can definitely say is the most important verb in this passage Is this make disciples? There's no question That that is the most important word verb that is in this in the great commission is to make disciples The question after that is how do these participals relate and I want to take them separately because again Going precedes and baptizing and teaching or after so let's look at going first
This is where you need to know a little bit about Greek grammar and to have some software Because they're software that lets you search and I've done a search Several occasions with regard to this passage in Matthew and the search would look something like this under what circumstances in the book of Matthew Because we're looking at the style of Matthew by the way Jesus who spoke in Hebrew or probably actually an Aramaic in this context Probably would not have phrased things using Particles like that this is good Greek so he probably said it slightly differently in Aramaic and what Matthew is doing is is bringing into Greek The intent of Jesus and what he said it So we're we're interested in Matthew's Greek then Because Matthew is is helping us get into and interpreting what Jesus said for us by using these Particles as he does so in Matthew what you can do is you can search for a Partisible preceding an imperative Okay, partisible preceding an imperative and Within a few words of one another because they're very close to each other in the Greek and See what generally happens with a partisible preceding imperative and there's actually a number of ones that are like this
And I'm going to To give you a few of these if I can find where I am on my page Sorry, I should have a number of my pages. I'm not a word. Here we are. Okay Here's some examples From Matthew Matthew 2.8 you don't have to look these up I'm just going to read them to you and listen if you would for the connection between the partisible and the imperative and He that is the angel sent them to Bethlehem and said or no, sorry. This is not the angel. This is Herod sent them that is the Magi to Bethlehem and said going Make a careful search for the child Or we would say go and make a careful search for the child. Okay? Now if you're listening to that what is what is Herod really after is he wanting them to go?
He's really one thing them to make a careful search, right? And what do they have to do in order to make a careful search? Well first they have to get up and go. I mean they're sitting at his feet, right? And or standing probably in his royal hall and he says to them, okay, go make a careful search All right, that's his point Later in Matthew chapter 2 this is where an angel does speak to Joseph in a dream and he uses instead of the word go He uses the word arise because because Joseph is in a dream. He's lying down and the angel says a rising Take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt Now again, we wouldn't do that in English. We'd say arise take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt But but what is the crucial bit there? Is it get up? I mean if if if Joseph had just gotten up, would he have basically already accomplished everything? Now he's got to take the child and he's got to flee to Egypt That's the basic part and the a rising is just the motion that he has to do in order to start the command, okay? You're lying down get up We need it Another example Matthew 524 If if you have if your brother has something against you, right, you're supposed to leave You're offering at the altar go your way be reconciled to your brother and then it says and then coming Present your offering Well, what's the important verb there? Present your offering that the coming is just the necessary antecedent motion It's what you have to do in order to get to the part that really matters. You got to come back You know, it's like go do all this and then come back and present your offering All right, that's that's how it goes now there's there's multiple other examples of this one of the One of the interesting ones is a Matthew chapter 10 Another circumstance where Jesus is commissioning his disciples that he says This is it says going preach Saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand he'll the sick race that ed cleans the lepers cast out demons freely you receive freely give Now what's most important are they going or they're preaching And the going is just the necessary antecedent motion to get there in order to be able to preach to the people who need to hear You got to go to the sick in order to be able to preach to him and heal them etc Now I have a number of other examples and they all basically work like this okay In other words every example that I can find in in Matthew of a participle preceding an imperative the participle is a participle of motion in an alga situations like this And it's just the necessary antecedent motion to accomplishing the main thing Okay Now that being the case it is not as you go because it doesn't state the Those temporal circumstances of going But it is as if Jesus is looking out at the disciples and there's they're sitting there They're not sitting there. They're worshipping him. They're lying down And then they look up and Jesus pronounces to him and he's it's like he says get up make disciples go make disciples And so the emphasis in the passage is not ongoing So making disciples you just have to go in order to get there I mean obviously if they're up on a mountain there's 11 of them There are already disciples of Jesus. If he just came and he said make disciples They're kind of looking around at each other and they're saying well. I thought we already were disciples So it's kind of like get up get off your death go find some other people next disciples All right Now you can tell that this might be different than what you've heard in a mission's conference Uh the mission's conference slogans are usually something it depends on how big the banner is right It's it's either go there for and make disciples Or if you if you're out of room it's just go and make disciples or if you don't have any room at all You just have this tiny you know a big banner, but you want one word on it what word are you going to put on go That's the wrong word Okay The real word in this context is make disciples, okay? Now I don't want to say by By saying that that the great commission isn't about missions It is about missions, but it's not about missions because of the word go It's about missions because of the word of the words all the nations Go therefore and make disciples of all nations all the nations You got to go to the nations in order to make disciples of them and so I would recognize that but it's still It's not the word go Now the reason that that's important is our mandate isn't simply to go our mandate is to Make disciples now the question is how do you make disciples right that would be the next question that would be natural to ask How in the world do you make disciples? Let's look at the other two part of cipples baptizing and teaching now Let's just start with teaching here for a second I um I mentioned that there's at least three different ways you could translate this participle It could be a command and teach for taking of the flavor of the main imperative And continuing it down Or it could provide the purpose or result in order to teach make disciples in order to teach them Or it could be the means the means by which one accomplishes the idea of making disciples Make disciples how by baptizing by teaching now Let me ask you If you were to try and define discipleship in Matthew You're going to look at who made disciples in Matthew and who made disciples in Matthew well Jesus did How did Jesus make disciples? What did he do to make disciples? He took them everywhere but He taught them right? So the means of making disciples for Jesus was by teaching them So I would suggest that the best way to understand the part of cipples that come after make disciples is Make disciples how? By baptizing and by teaching Get up make disciples But how do we do it Jesus? Well you baptize them into the trinitarian name Father son and Holy Spirit and you teach them to observe everything which I have commanded you So let's unpack that for a second What is baptizing in the trinitarian name imply? Well implies baptizing them in the name of the Father son and the Holy Spirit And what do we know about the son at this stage in Jesus's ministry? He is crucified and he's resurrected And the good news that his life would be a ransom for many And that the Lord's Supper has been accomplished and we'll talk more about this later in terms of the intent of Jesus and his death and his burial and resurrection But that the Lord's Supper has been accomplished and he has inaugurated a new covenant by his blood Which is good for the remission of sins and that's the name in which we baptize people and that trinitarian God that has issued forth in the salvation of all of mankind By offering forgiveness in the blood of Jesus So the forgiveness and the blood of Jesus is in the baptizing especially I'm going to focus it especially there not only there, but especially there And then the teaching is to observe everything which I have commanded you what has Jesus commanded us? Well in the book of Matthew It's the whole book So fundamentally what you're supposed to do when you get to the great commission here is Understand that we've got to get up, but we've got to make disciples all the nations It's not just one people group all the nations and keeping with Abraham remember at the beginning chapter 1 How do we do it? Well we baptize and we teach Okay Now there might be other things involved, but those are the fundamentals that are highlighted here baptizing and teaching What do we teach to observe everything which he's commanded? How do we know the contents of what we need to teach? Well at the end of Matthew you get to the point of make disciples and you think how do I make disciples and then You're immediately beckon back to go to chapter 1 again and read through the whole thing again and again And again and learn what it means to be a disciple of Jesus And that fundamentally perhaps is what the book of Matthew is about It's about what it means to be a disciple so we know how to go about making disciples Okay, so there's the great commission in terms of its import in the context of Matthew And then of course Jesus promises us in that context That his authority which he has and which he is effectively dispensing to his people Is vouchsafed by his presence Where he says that I am with you always even to the end of the age Eventually we probably should talk about what the end of the age means in the book of Matthew But we probably should move on to other things does anybody want to ask this is a intended to be a devotional and we'll pray in a moment But does anybody want to ask any clarifying comments about the great commission because That's what I wanted to Bring up again and we've talked about it for a couple days running so you might have some ideas of questions The reason we emphasize go that she says how do we miss this? Why do we emphasize go the reason we emphasize go is because you can't say in English going make disciples You can't translate the participle So the translators are left trying to come up with a way and as I was suggesting I don't think as you go is the best way to translate it And it is the necessary antecedent motion so you do say go But then the problem is is as soon as you translate it that way into English We tend to emphasize whatever is the first in a string of imperatives Go and frankly the other part of it is is and this isn't a bad thing But in the last 200 years or so even jolacolism is woken up to the sense of we need to be about missions and we should I again would locate that in all nations. I wouldn't locate it and go and so Then you know, where's the great commission? What was it's all us to do what tells us to be about missions and that's about going But the danger here if I can say what the danger is the danger is that we can make missions into about going And it's kind of like I show up and I preach the gospel to these people and they respond and I'm done. I can leave now But this passage doesn't let us do that. It tells us that we have to make disciples We preach the good news the gospel and then when they respond we baptize But we also got to teach And so we dare not conceive of missions or evangelism or anything else is simply the proclamation of the gospel And then leaving It's got to be the proclamation of the gospel and then grounding people in what it means to be a disciple a follower of Jesus And what it means to be a member of the church effect Yes, it's one name for the father the son and the holy ghost. That's right
That's right It it is the case that some denominations emphasize that you shouldn't you baptize in the name of Jesus Because in the book of Acts that's what they do. It's it's it's shorthand there you baptize in the name of Jesus Whereas in Matthew the name is the father son of the holy spirit I don't want to make too much about this except that if you're baptizing in the name of Jesus Exclusive of the father in the spirit then you're going against the sense of this passage. Okay If somebody baptizes in the name of Jesus and they intend by that That Jesus is a member of the Trinity and this is all about the Trinity Then they're in keeping with the the focus of this passage and therefore I think the baptizing in the name of Jesus in the book of Acts is in keeping with the spirit of this passage But if you're making such a big deal of it that you baptize in the name of Jesus as if that's something separate from The name of the father versus the name of the holy spirit then you then you um are in danger of breaking the backbone of the Trinity and Pitting Jesus against the father and the Holy Spirit and to the extent that some denominations have gone almost that far Then I would have concerns for their Christology and for their view of God and the Trinity
Yeah Good question Well, shall we pray and we'll get back to our discussion of backgrounds Father, we as your people and when we approach this passage we are humbled By the great privilege and the huge responsibility that you have given to your people That our very Lord has come down in commissioned the church to be about making disciples And Father, we individually and corporately so fall down so often in this regard Enable us first of all to be good and proper followers of Christ to be disciples ourselves For we would desire to be those who truly worship him and do not doubt Enable us also to see the nations around us Be they next door be they down the city street or be they across the world And recognize the great need that they too have for Jesus for the father the son and the Holy Spirit and give us the ability the wisdom And the fire in our bellies To accomplish this commission for the glory of our Lord In his name we pray My goal in the next 45 minutes and we'll see if we can do this is to finish our discussion of backgrounds in general And then look specifically at backgrounds revolving around The crucifixion of Jesus because one of the things we're going to emphasize Throughout this class is the way that the different New Testament authors Treat the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord, okay But in order to understand that we also need to understand what crucifixion was like in the first century We'll get there in a moment This is where we ended last time as I recall Talking about the different kind of keys to understanding social class Among the Romans and hence among the Mediterranean world in the first century, okay Now after class what I was trying to I interacted with some questions and I what I was trying to convey by this is That class in the ancient Roman world wasn't just about how much money you had that was important Especially after you were you were shown to be a freed person or better or free and to be a citizen even better Then when you get down to the issues of petitions and playdeans and senators and equities which I know we didn't talk very much about But these are all about money and how much money you have So how much money you had was important, but it wasn't the only issue of importance Your your heritage you were born into a situation you might be born a slave In which case you were categorized as slave you might be born free in which case you were categorized as free You could sell yourself into slavery in which case you would move to a different Social class namely that of slaves where you're a possession of somebody else in the hopes that eventually you would be freed and become a freed person And then become a patron be it become a client of their patron who was your former slave holder and that might ultimately Though you were initially free your ultimate position as a freed person might be a greater economic means And more social connections and therefore you would be effectively at a higher social class So there's a lot of of dimensions going on here in terms of how people Understood their place in society in the first century And then also the issue of whether you are Roman citizen or not you could be born into The position of the Roman citizen or you could be declared By imperial command to be a citizen And as soon as you were declared a citizen then a whole set of different laws Of were focused on you and you were much better off So those are some of the issues and of course you'll recognize that the citizenship of Paul was significant in the book of Acts and that's what saves him from some very harsh penalties
And you also will recognize that Paula directly addresses the issue of slavery And Ephesians and Colossians and Peter does the same And in doing so they are probably assuming not just slavery broadly But a very specific kind of slavery because they're writing primarily to cities And it's probably household slaves People who are cooking, taking account, cleaning Maybe looking after the education of the children Those kind of slaves Who had a much better social position than maybe slaves in the minds and such So that's a bit of the context there. Did anyone have any questions? I know we kind of ended quickly on that. Did anybody want some clarity on any of those?
Yes, well you would sell yourself to a particular individual Now once you sold yourself to that individual they can do with you what they want But you would set it up ahead of time to determine You know just in what sense they were anticipating making you a slave So the question was can you have some If you sell yourself in the slavery can you determine whether you end up in the minds or in a household Generally you wouldn't sell yourself to go to the minds because that was a death wish But you could sell yourself to work in a house
Yes The question is the shops and emphasis with those have been the result of being a client Could be There's a variety of ways that you get to be a shopholder One is if you have enough money already you can just go out and buy yourself a shop Another is if you're a parent um Already owns a shop you may eventually take over their shop um Another way is if you're a slave and you become a freed person and your patron then looks to set you up in a shop And you didn't actually necessarily even have to become their slave in order for them to become your patron so There's a variety of ways of ending up in that that position Yeah, good question
For those born into slavery was the seven-year thing it depends on the master there more often than not as far as I can tell uh Some masters were willing to free people more willing we've been others Yeah So plenty the old or plenty the younger excuse me um Who is a Roman author we especially know him from some of this letters both of his willingness to free his own slaves And he feels like that's a better way to live So it really depended more on your master than on uh Whether there was a specific societal wide kind of thing and that's my understanding at this stage Yeah Would you lose your citizenship if you sold yourself in a slavery? I don't know is the the answer to that um I was asked this a few days ago by some my and what I was unclear on is whether citizens Typically sold themselves in a slavery they probably did in Rome for instance um But I just don't know a specific ruling on that they're the ruling may be there to find in some historical documents, but I don't know Yeah, good question last question over here. I'm sorry. There's two. I'll take two. That's fine. Go ahead Yes Yes, if you were a freed person and you had children would they be considered free? Yes they would Which is is another reason that you might sell yourself in a slavery because you're not just looking for your own self-interest But the interest ultimately of your children. Yeah Why would you sell yourself in a slavery in the first place social advancement Because you're looking to associate yourself with a house of somebody who's much more wealthy And has a much better social standing And then they um would help get you set up in society Yeah, by the way the context of that um is in uh It's perhaps directly applicable. We were just discussing this also in another class of mine In 1 Corinthians chapter 7. Let me just read the passage for you
um Versus uh, this is math or 1 Corinthians chapter 7 I'm starting in verse 20 roughly Let each man remain in that condition which he was called where you called Wallace slave do not worry about it But if you were able also to become free rather do that So Paul is not um calling for slaves to be manumitted Or for them to rebel which is what would constitute if they all insist on being free But if their slave owner offers them freedom he encourages them to take it Uh for he who was called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord's Friedman You know if if you want to know um If you're a slave You're in Paul's mind your your class Or your citizenship is no longer I mean he doesn't use the word citizenship is no longer earthly but it's heavenly And even though you're a slave on earth In Christ's minds you have been freed by hand and you were his Friedman in that second class there Likewise he who is called while free is Christ's slave Paul himself at the beginning of the book of Romans calls himself a slave Paul a slave of Christ Jesus and you know you were calling in also in Romans six He uses the imagery of being changed from being slaves to sin To being a slave to Christ no longer possessed by sin but now possessed by Christ And so his point is is that everyone is possessed by Christ now who is a truly a Christian And then he says you were bought with the price do not become slaves of man Now what does that mean? I mean for us why would somebody become a slave of man? We probably want to view that somewhat metaphorically is and you know don't get too submissive to somebody else But that's not what Paul's talking about In this social context a free person could sell himself in the slavery and he is saying don't do that And in context the rationale appears to be that Even though you are of Christ You are the possession of the master and the master can force you to do things That you as a Christian shouldn't want to do So don't seek that situation But if you find yourself in that situation realize that you are free in the Lord So that's that's one of the ways that Paul interacts with with slavery A few things
The question effectively is should we see slavery as another kind of work And why is slavery permitted in the Bible? I mean that's what it comes down to in so many ways And is it that we just view this in light of our own history of slavery which is horrible And we would all recognize that the the US history of slavery is just abominable
Maybe we're not viewing slavery correctly
Let me do those in a slightly different order There are points of continuity and discontinuity between American slavery and slavery in the first century world It could be a lot better than we often conceive of American slavery But it could also be equally as worse if not worse Depending on the situation of the slave So What it seems to me is that because the the epistles are written to cities and because they're primarily addressing household slaves There tend to be addressing people that are on the upper end of slavery that they are better off Than many of the slaves that we think of when we watch roots or you know any of the many Stories of slavery that have come out since So that's that's one response secondly slave is not equivalent to work It is it is too often the case that when people get to the household tables the household codes And say Ephesians and the first one addresses husbands and wives and the next one addresses Children and their parents and in the last one addresses masters and slaves that we've been immediately applied that to our work situation Well most of us thankfully we're not in a situation where our The person that employs us owns us I mean like really physically owns us so that we can't get out of it without constituting an actual slave revolt and therefore mariting from the governing powers death Which is what it merited in the ancient world if you try to get out of slavery, okay So it the situation is not wholly analogous there are some similarities and there might be some principles that should be brought into the workplace But it's not a one-for-one so you got to be very careful in applying those to people's work situations And finally about slavery in the Bible my My general sense of slavery in the Bible is that it is permitted I would not say that God ever says it is okay He simply acknowledges it as a social form that is practiced during the time of the Old Testament and during the time of the New Testament And what he seeks to do through his people be they through Moses and the law Or be they through Paul is to curtail the excesses of slavery on the part of the masters And to encourage a right perception of what it means to be a slave on the part of the slaves So the social category is assumed It is not a creation category So some people want to draw analogies between you know slavery It was good that we did away with slavery Now we need to do away with other social stigmas such as homosexuality or something like that Well the relationship between men and women is a creational ordinance God designed people to be male and female And therefore the relationships between men and women and also The relationships the sexual relationships are determined by the nature of creation Whereas slavery is not a creational ordinance And so I would not draw the same sort of analogy there either although many people do in ethics in our society today So I mean that's just all very brief and there's a lot more we could talk about with this There's a book on slavery in the Bible written by Murray Harris And you may be interested to look at that He's a very capable New Testament exegy and it will stretch you in terms of your reading But it's worth reading So Anyway, I sort of need to move on if for no other reason because the the pictures of the universe are going to distract you from other things we need to read I had a few passages on patronage we read one. I'm going to skip through those Let me just very quickly identify to you with you the major philosophical movements in the first century The first thing I need to say about philosophy in the first century is uh It is much more powerful in terms of its educational import than philosophy is today
Today the word philosophy is left for The this one department working in a university And it's those classes that you want to avoid for the most part because you know they're going to be as a taric Right and there are a few people who engage in the reading of philosophers just for fun But we all know that they're pretty whacked out You know that's That's how we perceive a philosophy in any case right And and if if you wanted to ask okay, where do you get your understanding of The nature of the fabric of the universe and who or where it came from You would say probably from the Bible and from your Christian belief Somebody who doesn't have a Bible in front of them would say from science and ultimately I would say probably we need to integrate the two But that's a different matter If you were to ask uh, where should you get your ethics from? How should you live Where would you go to get answers to how I should live? Well you as Christians fundamentally go to the Bible and you read the teachings of Jesus and the law of the Old Testament to get a sense of what it means to live to live well and rightly Right In the ancient world they did not go to the scientists in fact the scientists were mostly philosophers And they certainly did not go to religion Because pagan religions just think about the ancient pagan myths of Zeus okay What does Zeus do as soon as he's given an opportunity Well he takes on a mortal body finds Pardon me some hot chick and goes off and has a child okay I mean that that is definitely the sense you should get as you're reading Zeus I mean the guy just doesn't know how to control himself and if you look at the rest of the of the stories of the deities be they the male deities such as Poseidon or you just name a deity or the female deities Such as in the in the Greek world Athena Diana You They're not much better frankly So do you look to these deities as a source of your morality? No Where are you going to look for a source of how you ought to live well in the ancient world the philosopher The philosopher in the ancient world primarily told you what the nature of the universe was its metaphysics And what it meant to live rightly your ethics So philosophers had a lot greater control in the ancient world than we do When we think of philosophers today and of course you realize why this becomes immediately of important for understanding the New Testament because Paul In X-17 he shows up in Athens and who is he in conversation with Stoic and Epicurian philosophers he they're specifically labeled in the text Stoic and Epicurian philosophers And you don't know what stoicism is and you think you know what Epicurianism is and you're wrong And so therefore you misinterpret what's going on in that context okay So here we go um I'm actually gonna Well, I will describe Platonism. I hate to describe Platonism because it gets into all this very esoteric kind of reality, but You are sitting in a chair, right? You're sitting in a chair as well pardon me with the camera. I'm going to sit to Am I sitting in a chair? No Question how do you know What constitutes a chair? Well, you might say four legs This has four legs You might say a back. Well, that's true. This doesn't have a back. So maybe this could be a bench Four legs and I'm sitting on it No, it's not a bench though. It's a table So what constitutes a chair? That's the question and that's that's the kind of thing that play don't Went around about a lot. It's one of the reasons why people today avoid philosophy classes in universities But what he was basically about is saying that we have a mental construct He was it was more than a mental construct But we have a mental construct of what constitutes a chair and therefore we're able to identify when you're in chair when you're not
For him as I said, it's more than just a mental construct the idea of chairness chairness Is is above me. It's beyond me. I learn what a chair is but the idea of chair pre-exist me Okay, and so he would talk about it in those terms now. It's not so important with chairs But if you get to a much more important concept such as beauty But what constitutes the good meaning good ethics as well as good living as well as goodness in anything Then we realize that goodness Is something that things just partake of this is this is a chair yes But it's only a concrete expression of what truly chairness is So what's real? Well, what's real for for Plato? I know this is odd But what's real for Plato is not so much this but it's the notion of a chair the idea of a chair or the form of a chair is what he would say Okay Now that sounds very odd to you. I know and we should I mean we'd probably take You know an hour to try and unpack that but that's what he thought of in terms of okay And you can see that what's going on there as soon as I bring in the idea of the good and I tell you it has ethical implications is He is woven together a metaphysics What is the world really like well material reality is only a vague expression a shadow if you would Of the real stuff which is the forms Now that's his metaphysics But it has ethical implications because in order to understand what good ethics is you first have to understand what the good is And that's what he mold around about okay now of the four philosophies here. That is the most obtuse But that's basically it if I asked you about middle Platonism just come back to me and say well it has something to do about chairness And the good and That's fine I would encourage you to do some reading about this because it's important in terms of understanding how some first century people thought But the most important philosophies in the New Testament and probably in the Roman world at this time were the philosophies of the Stoics and the Epicureans okay the Stoics believed that The world as we have it
Is is both is well it it's made out of a substance The less pure manifestation of that substance is the physical reality that is around us The purest manifestation of that substance is reason itself Okay So rationality then permeates the whole universe
And there's manifestations physical manifestations of that that only approximate the real reality which is reason But those are found in the material world that we see around this okay now if reason permeates The world that is around us and this reason they would call logos Or the word now by the way the beginning of John one mentions in the beginning was the Word actually the Greek word is logos so some people have too quickly in my opinion Immediately said oh he's picking up on a stoic notion there I think he has a much more complex origin to that but this is why some people apply it in any case The logos is this kind of reason almost a quasi-divine reason that permeates all that's around us now That means that the world in all of its silliness And the fate that determines the world is all moving in a rational direction whether we perceive it correctly or not
So how should you live now that's that was the metaphysics What's the ethics well how should you live Well, you should live in keeping with reason then Because to the degree that you are keeping in step with reason and you're keeping in step with the ultimate substance of the universe around you So the good life is the rational life for the stoics now this has some implications one of the more famous of which is Emotions can get in the way of reason can't they you've ever seen that in your life before You know you get too excited and therefore you stop thinking And so the stoics were very suspicious of emotions And they said that instead we should focus on our reason and our rationality And thus if you speak of somebody is a stoic today or that they they're they're they work stoically in their In their lives What you're basically saying is They're not very emotional and that is one ramification of the stoic belief But the stoic belief really was to to keep in step with reason Okay, and reason dictates what constitutes good ethics and good living All right So what's the most important thing in life for the stoic reason Okay, that was very much in keeping with with the idea of philosophy itself in the ancient world But it was all the more manifest among the stoics now Again, we can spend more time on that but I'm going to move on just for for for this sake and go on to epicureans The epicureans also had a metaphysic as to what constitutes the world and and for them The world is made up of of little packages of matter which they called atoms. That's where we get our word atoms from Okay, so little packages of matter And These packages of matter bounce into each other and they they glob up together and they manifest themselves in bigger things such as chairs and desks and our bodies Okay And they would argue that one of the ways you can see that this happens is that over time if you look at something it decays, right Parts of it seem to disappear. Well That's little pieces of matter that you can't perceive falling off And so they would argue that there was physical observation involved in coming up with this idea of atoms being material What does that mean about us? Well, it means you and I are just a bundle of atoms What happens when we die Well unlike most of the pagan world which had some concept of life after death It wasn't life in material bodies It was usually a very ephemeral idea of going to the the a lesion fields or something like that The epicurean said no, what happens when you die? Is you just decay away and your atoms disappear and you are no more Is that something to fear they ask? No Because you're not going to be in any pain when you die Because you're not going to be around anymore So don't worry about it But it also means you only have a few years on this life You know a few decades a score a few score of years Therefore what you need to do in your life is maximize pleasure and minimize pain Now this is where you misperceive the the epicureans Because to be an epicurean today Is to be somebody who just indulges in sensual pleasure Really good food you know you go to an epicurean shop and what are you getting Really good kitchen gear right Because your it's all about life is all about cooking and sensuality Well, that's not how if they would say They would say what maximizes pleasure isn't necessarily good food although that's not bad So you can enjoy that But what really maximizes pleasure is things like friendships Relatedness to other people and to living an ethical life That at the end you can be proud of So that's what maximizes pleasure So they had a much better notion of pleasure than you think they did But what is striking to me about the epicureans is how 21st century they are in so many ways You see Because I think the average person that you encounter in your day-to-day life Would say that You know when I die I just am going to disappear I'm not going to worry about it. I'm going to live life to the fullest And that's very epicurean in many ways in terms of its philosophy So when Paul encountered the Stoics and Epicureans, you know what really set them off at the end of the book of Acts of end of Acts chapter 17 It wasn't that he was teaching about this very interesting philosophy although they thought he was really odd there But you know what sent him off was when he talked about the resurrection But because for the epicureans that meant life after death and they didn't believe in that And the Stoics Didn't really care about the body because they were more interested in reason So this whole notion of the resurrection really Jumbled with their categories The Sennics are important for us to study because some people Called Jesus a Mediterranean cynic Okay Now what is a cynic? Well a cynic was a person who engaged in social critique and they were very poor They were mendicant traveling philosophers Okay And what this meant was that They looked at the world that's around us and in the way that society Constructs itself and they saw it as very false and very illusional You know we dress up in fine clothes We behave very civilly to one another But deep down there's something else about us that that we really need to get in touch with We're really interested in our own pleasures. They would point out and things like that. Well, well You know what really matters in life is virtue And virtue they would define not as acting well But being well inside Thinking virtuous thoughts Living in the virtue of wisdom So you could be virtuous Regardless of whether you are poor or rich
That's good You could be virtuous really Almost apart from human society What inhibits you virtue is the way that you are forced into a certain mold by society So therefore they would do various things to challenge society They would rail against it publicly visibly and audibly They would do things that were shocking To show that really you know all these fancy clothes and all this stuff is inhibiting who we really are as people So what would be shocking? Well, I don't know how about defecating in public Go to the city center and show the world what it really means to be human That's the kind of shocking thing that they would do They would travel around with the staff and a bag and a long beard and a philosopher's cloak And that's all they would have and they go from town to town Until somebody would take care of them Now you can see some analogues there with Jesus critiquing of society Yes The idea of wandering around the idea of wandering around without a lot of money Okay But I think you can also I hope see some Significant distinctions between what Jesus was trying to do He wasn't just about virtue as in an internal state He wasn't just about even just about right living He was about going to the cross and dying and being resurrected on our behalf For the remission of sins and he was also about Teaching people to live rightly in community with one another Yeah, those kind of things And He didn't do some of those shocking things in public All right, so four different Ancient philosophies any questions on these
The question the question effectively is some of these different philosophical categories Especially I would argue Platonism and also Stoicism Had a good deal of influence on the early church and later writers as well such as C. S. Lewis who is very platonic in his way Especially of describing heaven Should we be distressed by that? Well, I have two reactions to it There's that there's kind of this evangelical purist reaction to say To any extent that any of those philosophies were incorporated into Christianity we need to rip them out of there And that seems to me an overreaction because the church rightly understood that That God graciously gives wise and worthy thoughts to even the most pagan of people I mean part of that you know when you talk about the Francis J for Institute and you go to watch a movie The way Jerem Barrett will teach you to watch a movie is you don't say it's good or it's bad He'll teach you to say what is Christian about the movie and what is not Christian about the movie And I would say that that's the way that we should approach philosophy as well is to determine what is right and Christian about it and what's not Now it is the case that philosophical categories can overtake our systematic theology basically as soon as you're doing systematic theology You are systemizing and that means that you are incorporating the understanding of scripture With some sort of philosophical perspective that allows you to create a system And that can be very good, but it can also be a Problem if you choose the wrong system to bring it all together So I would encourage caution But you don't throw out the baby with a bathwater. I mean very short answer, but we just have a minute for the answer There's that good question All right for the sake of time. I'm going to move on and talk about religion I'm sorry. There's something about Epicurian philosophy. I'll skip that for a second In terms of religion in the ancient world Roman religion pagan religion You have to think of not just one category, but many categories basically if we think of the ancient world in religion We're thinking Zeus right You know, that's that's what we tend to think Well, there were at least four different categories of religion in the ancient world There were house gods you and I if we were good Roman citizens Right when we came in our door if we had If we own a house or an apartment right when we come in our door We're going to have a little place where we put our little house deities which are little idols That represent to us the particular deities that we worship and these may not be big deities like Zeus They might be a much smaller deities Okay, so we're going to have our little house gods along the way In addition to that there is the pantheon these are the big deities these are the ones that you you know about These are the ones that the planets are named after You know, if the Greek god is Zeus the the Roman expression that's Jupiter So you think of the Roman gods. So you got mercury, Mars, Jupiter You know, it's going out you get you get you get your your different deities Those are the famous ones and they're the ones that had the big temples And in a city you wouldn't just have a temple to to to Jupiter Or to Zeus his Greek expression You would have a temple to to Jupiter and Mars and Diana and all of these would be there and all of them would be worshiped in the city and the the goal in part is if we worship all the deities Then none of them are going to get it hop and mad with us Because if you read any Homer You know that you don't have to you don't have to just Let me put it positively all you have to do is kick off one deity and you're in a lot of trouble That's you know, you can do everything right with Zeus and Athena But if Aphrodite is hacked off with you. Sorry You know there's going to be war So you got to make sure that you keep all the deities happy so you have temples to all of them Okay, in the ancient world and your city There were also these things that are called mystery religions Which typically came out of the east or out of Egypt These were religions that were very private that you had to be inducted into and they had certain mysteries that they would convey to you Things that they wouldn't tell publicly You know the secret handshake well it's more than that It was it was what what the religion is really about and these were known as mystery religions And then finally there was emperor worship emperor worship started very Shortly after the rise of the emperors It took on its fullest expression much later But there are aspects of its expression fairly early on where you worship the emperor or the previous emperor who when he died had become a god Okay, and that was part of your duty to the Roman Empire was to worship the emperor now I'm going to give you some quick examples just a few quick pictures to kind of bring you into this right So when we think of the pantheon we think of the big temples Right such as the pantheon here in Athens
Also if you take a city such as Corinth and I just gave a class of holes I don't know it was like an hour and a half tour of Corinth, okay But if you look at the map of Corinth you've got Big temple big temple smaller temple Variety of temples through here and there are other temples all scattered around and if you were to take a tour of Ancient Corinth with a tour guide such as Palsanius he would be pointing out here's a temple to Athena And here's a temple to Aphrodite and here's the temple of Zeus and and that's what the ancient world was was just full of temples Expressing worship to the pantheon of deities because remember you got to keep them all happy These temples could be huge one of the seven wonders of the ancient world on the same Mental scale at least as the great pyramid of Giza Was the temple to Artemis in Ephesus And of course, you know where that comes into in the Bible because what was it that happened in Ephesus Well people stopped worshiping Artemis and the sober Smiths got hacked off and so great as Artemis of the Ephesians in the theater This this is one column That has been put back up of the temple of Artemis and if if you look Right here. I'm sorry. I have to do it here. There is a person There's the column It was gigantic This is what the goddess Artemis look like Because every good pagan temple had a cult deity of an idol That was in the temple itself that you that you would be able to look on and you tell well there's Artemis and you'd worship her right there That's Artemis Deities would have other expressions and they would have other functions too So each deity would have its own kind of special thing that it did for you. This is a schlepyus Who was the god of healing And there were temple precincts dedicated to a schlepyus and if you were sick If you had for instance This didn't come out so well, but there's a big lump right here on a vote of offering given as a thanks to epith
Sorry, just lost it a schlepyus And apparently the guy had a big growth right here and he went to the temple of a schlepyus to be healed So you know, this is one of the things the deities would do for you. They would heal you in antiquity What is also not recognized by those Christians today is is that religion was woven through all of life So everything you did if you went to the theater at the theater they would start with an offering to the god or goddess In whose honor that theatrical play was being conducted The great games and antiquity and this is a stadium in Asia Minor at Aphrodisius The games that were held there were held in the honor of Of the god or goddess in this case because Aphrodite was worshiped especially in Aphrodisius where it gets its name so the Olympic games were held in honor of Zeus The Ismian games were held in honor of Poseidon and this is this is what you did so So religion is so much a part of your life that pretty much everything you do has a religious dimension to it Which undoubtedly made it difficult for Christians to live in antiquity now house gods
Is it gonna change there we go This is an example of I believe this is from Pompeii When you when you enter into your house This is where you would have a little ledge and you would put all your house deities And then these would remind you of specific house worship that you engaged in So this is a lorarium where the lairais which are your house deities Would be worshiped and then the serpent is a is a common protection symbol at the beginning of the house So everybody would have their own old deities if they worship in addition to the big stuff Okay, and then in terms of mystery religions I have here a picture of a relief about the worship of Isis And they're all carrying typical symbols of Isis worship. I won't go into that very much But we know a little bit more about the worship of Isis than some of the other mystery religions because it's described in a book known as the golden ass and And You get a sense of being inducted into this religious Context we can talk more about that as it comes up finally. I'm gonna end with emperor worship and then we're gonna stop Emperor worship Emperor worship with big time stuff at the end of the first century Into the first century in Ephesus and I think Paul was in Ephesus wasn't he? And by the way John also was in Ephesus according to church history and probably the book of revelation Is in context of some of the stuff going on in Ephesus There was a temple to demission and this is the foundation of the temple of demission It was gigantic and and the temple of demission was the cult statue of demission who himself was an emperor And this is what it looked like there's my friend Tim hanging out there kind of Doing the doing the demission look But you can see just how gigantic it was that's the arm. That's the head. But there was a whole statue um That started with a foot when all the way up to that And that's what demission had built to honor himself now the Romans didn't like demission as a result of this because it was proper as an emperor To have people worship the emperor before you So it was proper for Augustus to have Julius Caesar worshipped And so in Ephesus there was a temple to the divine Caesar mainly to the divine Julius Caesar Augustus Caesar But Augustus wasn't supposed to claim worship for himself Demetian claimed worship for himself Nero claimed worship for himself and so did Gaia's colligula all in the first century So they all broke with Roman protocol And especially sought to have people worshipping them in the east where people were much more inclined to it than in the west then in the west and in Rome so some context then of the religions in which people in Jesus's day were found I guess we'll talk about religious ritual on Wednesday and we'll actually get to our discussion of crucifixion there This is taking a while longer than I thought, but hopefully this is helpful background to you as your approach your study of the bible