Paul's Bizarre Views on Salvation: Exploring the Apostle's Confusing Explanations

Summary

Podcast Summary: Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Episode Title: Paul's Bizarre Views on Salvation: Exploring the Apostle's Confusing Explanations
Release Date: July 29, 2025
Hosts: Dr. Bart Ehrman & Megan Lewis

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles the complexity and variety of the Apostle Paul’s views on salvation as found in his New Testament letters, particularly Romans. Despite expectations of a simple explanation for how Jesus’ death and resurrection "save" humanity, Paul provides multiple, sometimes confusing, models using overlapping language. Dr. Bart Ehrman, renowned New Testament scholar, joins Megan Lewis to untangle the nuances, compare the judicial and participationist models of salvation, and answer questions about Paul’s intentions, linguistic choices, and their legacy in Christian thought.

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Main Discussion Segments

1. The Challenge of Understanding Paul on Salvation

[00:30–02:56]

• Paul’s explanation of salvation isn’t straightforward; he uses several models throughout his letters.
• Romans is significant as Paul’s most systematic attempt to explain his message to a church he didn’t found, seeking to clarify rumors and secure support for future missionary work.

  “Romans is the best place… He lays it out more systematically than he does in other places.”
  (Bart Ehrman, 04:27)

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2. Key Models of Salvation in Paul’s Writings

A. Judicial (Legal) Model

[08:23–15:35]

• God as lawgiver and judge, humanity as lawbreakers deserving a penalty (death).
• Jesus’ death seen as paying this penalty on others’ behalf; resurrection is proof the penalty has been satisfied.

  “If somebody offers to pay your $10,000 and you don’t accept it, then it’s not going to work. And so believing in Christ in this model means accepting the payment that Christ did, accepting the acknowledging that he’s done it, and trusting that it’s going to work.”
  (Bart Ehrman, 13:33)

• Salvation requires not just intellectual assent but trust in the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice.

B. Participationist Model

[17:56–25:19]

• Sin viewed not only as wrongdoing but as a cosmic, enslaving force; death is another cosmic power.
• Jesus’ death “destroys the power of sin”; believers participate in this victory through mystical union with Christ, effected by baptism.

  “Sin is not an act of transgression... Sin in this model is actually a cosmic power... that has imprisoned people and entrapped people and has enslaved people.”
  (Bart Ehrman, 17:56)

• In Paul’s view, baptism is not just symbolic but achieves actual mystical union with Christ, liberating believers from sin’s power.

  “When you’re baptized, you’re put under the water, and it’s like being buried. You are baptized in the name of Christ. You are buried with Christ in baptism. But since you’re buried with Christ, you have died with Christ.... You are mystically unified with Christ.”
  (Bart Ehrman, 22:18)

• Resurrection, in this model, is proof that Christ also defeats death—though believers’ resurrection is future.

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3. Overlapping Language and Interweaving Models

[25:29–28:19]

• Paul uses the term "sin" both for acts of wrongdoing and for a cosmic enslaving power, often in close proximity.
• Resurrection functions differently in each model:
  • Judicial Model: Resurrection shows Jesus’ penalty was accepted.
  • Participationist Model: Resurrection proves Jesus defeated death; believers have died with him but await resurrection.
• Paul sees faith and baptism as intertwined, assuming believers will be baptized.

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4. Integration and Additional Metaphors

[28:19–33:05]

• Paul does not treat models as mutually exclusive; his storytelling often merges the judicial and participationist images (e.g., Adam and the introduction of sin as both act and power).
• Other metaphors include reconciliation (Jesus as mediator restoring a damaged relationship) and redemption (price paid for freedom), each adding depth but not always aligning clearly with modern terms.

  “He has a bunch of different ways of understanding it, and you can find these different ways in his writings completely integrated. But to understand Paul, you’ve got to understand that when he's talking about one of these ways of understanding, he's not talking about the other way.”
  (Bart Ehrman, 47:50)

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5. Legacy and Scholarly Reception

[33:15–36:55]

• Historically, Protestantism focused on the judicial model, especially after Martin Luther.
• Recent scholarship (since the 1970s) recognizes Paul's apocalyptic (participationist) thinking, but most theologians still merge models rather than distinguish them.
• The judicial model persists because it’s easier for modern readers to grasp.

  “I think the justification by faith thing is pretty easy to understand... people tend to move in that direction without recognizing the depth of Paul’s thought on this issue.”
  (Bart Ehrman, 35:36)

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• Paul on “Salvation”:

  “Paul actually doesn’t use the term saved for something that’s happened to people already... For Paul, it refers to what’s going to happen when Jesus returns.”
  (Bart Ehrman, 05:19)

• Why does Paul mix models?

  “Paul doesn’t think about them as two distinct options. He thinks that anybody who believes in Christ will be baptized, because that’s just what always happened.”
  (Bart Ehrman, 28:34)

• Difference in sin language:

  “Sometimes it’s breaking the law, and sometimes it enslaves you. Well, an act of disobedience doesn’t enslave anybody.”
  (Bart Ehrman, 26:03)

• On Baptism and Mystical Union:

  “To my knowledge, none of [the modern views of baptism] replicates Paul’s. Paul’s view in Romans 6 is that when you’re baptized… there’s some kind of mystical union that happens.”
  (Bart Ehrman, 22:18)

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Key Segment Timestamps

• Paul’s different approaches to salvation in Romans: 02:32–06:35
• The judicial model explained: 08:23–15:35
• The participationist model and union with Christ: 17:56–25:19
• Discussion of Paul’s language and integration of models: 25:29–28:19
• Other metaphors and models in Paul: 31:01–33:05
• Legacy of Paul’s models in theology: 33:15–36:55

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Listener Q&A Highlights

[39:18–47:41]

• Burial of crucified victims: Roman practices made burial unlikely immediately after crucifixion.
• Did Gospel writers know Paul’s letters? No definitive evidence—ideas may have been common, not directly borrowed.
• Unforgivable sin: Attributing Jesus’ works to the devil, not arbitrary “bad” behaviors.
• Christian secret symbols (the fish): No historical evidence for using fish-drawing as secret recognition.

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Final Thoughts

Summary by Bart Ehrman:
Paul’s theology of salvation is far from simple or one-dimensional. He employs multiple, sometimes conflicting, metaphors and models to explain how Jesus’ death and resurrection “works” to bring reconciliation with God. Understanding Paul requires paying attention to these overlapping images and realizing their complexity:

“It’s complicated, but it’s worth puzzling through—and read the Book of Romans to try and understand it that way.”
(Bart Ehrman, 47:50)

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For an in-depth look at Paul’s views, listeners are encouraged to read Romans with an eye toward these different models, especially noting shifts in the use of language and imagery.

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Next episode preview:
Megan will be speaking with Dr. Hugo Mendez about his work, The Gospel of John: A New History.

Transcript

[Megan Lewis]

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[Megan Lewis]

Just how many ways can one person explain how Jesus, death and resurrection saves humanity? In the case of the Apostle Paul, the answer is probably more than you think. Why explain it one way when you can confuse everyone and use exactly the same terms to mean totally different things? Today, Dr. Bart Ehrman is here to clear things up for me and hopefully for you too. Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. The only show where a six time New York Times best selling author and world renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating little known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. Hello everyone. Welcome back to Misquoting Jesus. Today we are talking about the Apostle Paul's views on salvation and I said views plural because that's there are more than one. It's going to be an interesting one and I got thoroughly confused researching this so I'm very glad that Bart is here to un. Confuse me. We also have some information about new insights in the New Testament lecture and we will be doing some audience questions later as well before any of that. But how are you? How is London?

[Bart Ehrman]

London? London's good. It's good doing some theater and Sarah's a theater person and so we like, like to go into theater and just, I mean just kind of being here. It's just, it's, it's one of these inexhaustible cities and it's actually, you know, try New York and London, my two favorite cities in the world. And so yeah, yeah, I love it here. So I'm sorry you're not here but you're, you're going to be in England eventually. So not to London.

[Megan Lewis]

Yes. No. Well, I'll fly into London then promptly disappear and I'm doing visiting all of my siblings and both sets of parents and it's going to be a bit of a whirlwind but I'm looking forward to it. It will be a lot of fun.

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah.

[Megan Lewis]

Okay, so salvation, which you think is, is going to be relatively straightforward, you know, how. How does humanity become right with God and, and become saved and all this, all this stuff. It's actually not terribly straightforward when we're talking about the Apostle Paul. So to be begin with, whereabouts in the New Testament does Paul lay out his views of salvation?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, he presupposes his views in a number of places and he, he alludes to them in a number of places, especially in passages in First Corinthians and, But I'd say especially Galatians and Romans, you know, he doesn't have to spend a lot of time talking about his views because he's talking to people that he converted and they already know what he teaches about these things. And his letters usually are directed to. Toward topics that have arisen in his absence, like he's converted these people. They're now in a church and they're, they have problems about what to believe and how to behave and understanding the principles of the Christian faith. And, and so his letters are usually directed to these problems rather than to explaining what he's already told them. But the big difference is the, the letter to the Romans. It's the first of his letters in the New Testament. It's his longest letter in the New Testament, and it's the only letter that he has written to a church that he did not establish. He's writing to the Christians in Rome. Apparently, he hints, indicates at least that the reason he's writing to these Christians rather than one of his own churches is because he wants to take his missionary efforts from the eastern part of the empire where he's been ministering to the west. And he wants to go as far as Spain, which to him is the ends of the earth. And he needs a base of operation. And so he wants the Roman Church to be providing for a base of operation, probably moral support, but maybe also financial support. But the problem is that he knows that they've heard some things about what he preaches. And his, this letter is written to explain what he actually preaches, to straighten them out, to help them understand what he really stands for as opposed to what these other rumors are. And so you can get all of that from the letter itself. But it means that more than any of the other letters, he actually goes into something like a kind of. A more kind of systematic explanation of what his message is, what his gospel message is. And so he lays it out more systematically than he does in other places, even though it's not like systematic like today. Like if you buy a systematic theology, Christian systematic theology, we have these topics and they do it very taxonomically. It's not like that. But he does lay out his message. And so that's, Romans is the best place.

[Megan Lewis]

So in Romans, how many views of salvation is Paul seeming to, to use?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, well, I don't know. You, it depends how you count, I guess. Here I'll, I'll tell you what, I'll tell you one, one kind of crazy thing that nobody almost always noticed. Paul actually doesn't use the term saved for something that's happened to people already. Like if you went up to Paul and said, have you been saved? Paul would say no. And it's because that specific term saved for Paul refers to what's going to happen when Jesus returns, that Jesus is coming back from heaven in the day of judgment and those who are on his side will be saved. And so when Paul uses the verb saved, it's in the future tense. And so when scholars talk about what he's talking about, they tend to use the term salvation just because it's kind of this kind of catch all term that can express, you know, like what's it mean to be right with God. And so that Paul doesn't use that term that way, but he certainly talks a lot about what it means to be right with God. And the thing about Romans is one of the key things about it that's people don't get and it's hard to get unless somebody points it out to you. He doesn't, he doesn't explain how salvation works the same way the whole way through. He has different understandings of how it works.

[Megan Lewis]

Are there like 12 understandings?

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[Megan Lewis]

And like how many understandings are we going with?

[Bart Ehrman]

So you want me to answer the question? Okay, yes, maybe. Okay. So there are two that are very, that are particularly prominent and there are three or four others. And it's not, it's not that he's coming up with alternatives to Jesus being the solution, you know, so he thinks in every way that he looks at it. He looks at it as human beings are in some ways alienated from God. And somehow or another the death and resurrection of Jesus can bring a restoration of the relationship so that people now can be right with God after having been alienated from God by, by the way they've conducted their lives by their sin. And so the issue isn't whether it's Jesus or something else, it's always Jesus. And it's always because of some kind of problem of alienation from God. But Paul has that as his basic concept, but he has different ways of expressing it and different ways of thinking about it. They're almost like analogies or they're like metaphors or they're like ways. They're models. Sometimes I call them models of salvation. What is the model that he's imagining for how it actually works? Now, I'll just say before we get into some of these, that, you know, people don't, people generally don't have any idea themselves, so people just haven't thought about these terms. But if you say Jesus, death brought salvation for your sins, how does it work? What, why, why does, why somebody else dying got anything to do with my salvation? You know, and people say, well, you know, if you have faith. But yeah, but what, how's it, how's it work? And so these models are ways of Paul trying to express how it works.

[Megan Lewis]

So we're going to start with one of them, which is known as the judicial model. What exactly is that? What does that mean in this context?

[Bart Ehrman]

So that's, so that's a term that's sometimes used for a way. I think that most people think about it, if they do think about it. And I, I do call it the judicial model. Other people call it the judicial model. Sometimes it's called the forensic model, which I don't think is helpful because people don't know what forensic means anymore. And so, so I call it a judicial model. And in this model, it's. So let me stress again, it's a way of thinking about, like, mechanically, just how does it work exactly. And in this model, the judicial model, you think of God as somebody who's given the law. He's a lawgiver. Not just the Ten Commandments, not just the law of Moses, but God. God has rules for how he wants human beings to live. And these are laws that he's given. So he's a lawgiver. He's also a judge. He's like a federal judge who judges criminal cases. So God's lawgiver. God's a judge. God's given laws to humans to how to behave, and they've broken those laws. Everybody breaks God's laws. And since they've broken the laws, they. There's a, there's a penalty. So there's a, there's a, you know, the crime has been committed and there's a penalty for the crime. So you see, this is thinking judicially. It's thinking of like a courtroom situation. Where God is both the lawgiver and the judge, and you're the defendant and you're found guilty. Since you're found guilty, there's a penalty, and it's the death penalty for breaking God's law. It's a death penalty. So that's why you die. And this is kind of based on the idea that Adam sinned and therefore he had to die. Everybody is a descendant of Adam. Everybody has to die. And they don't die just because Adam died. They died because they do the same thing. They sinned. And so there's a death penalty. And so everybody has a death penalty. And so the question is, what has Jesus got to do with that? Well, it's easier to do this illustration not with the death penalty, but with, say, like, you've been fined by the court. Suppose you've incurred a fine for breaking. Breaking the law. Like you, you. You've got to pay $10,000. And suppose, you know, suppose you can't pay the $10,000. Well, okay, it's cookies. So the. So in this model, somebody else pays your penalty for you. And so if you owe 10,000 and you can't pay it, somebody. If somebody else gives you the 10,000 to pay, then you're good. And so in this case, you owe the death penalty, but someone else pays it for you. Christ dies in your place. And so Christ dies to take the penalty off of you. And so the death of Jesus is what brings a person into a right standing before God because the crime's penalty has now been paid.

[Megan Lewis]

So if Jesus is paying the fine for your crimes, what is the resurrection doing in the judicial model?

[Bart Ehrman]

Right. So you would think that if somebody paid, that would be it, right? So Jesus died. So why does he get raised from the dead? So the way Paul looks at this. But let me back up and just say you can find Paul talk about it like this way in Romans, chapters one, two and three. This is kind of the basic way he lays it out. Everybody's broken God's law, everybody's guilty, whether they're Jew, whether they're. Whether they're Gentile, whether they try to be righteous or they don't try to be righteous. What doesn't. It doesn't matter. Everybody's broken the law, and so Christ. So Christ has to pay the penalty. So what's the resurrection have to do with it in this? It's a little bit hard to say because Paul doesn't spell this part out. But it looks like the idea is that Jesus died, he paid the Penalty universally for sin. Since it was a universal payment for sin, there's no more penalty. Jesus no longer has to pay the penalty because he's died. And so God raises him from the dead. By raising him from the dead, it shows that the penalty has been paid because he's no longer dead. And so the resurrection demonstrates that Jesus death pays the penalty for sins.

[Megan Lewis]

So it's almost proof that the penalty is paid. You don't need to worry anymore. You're all good.

[Bart Ehrman]

This is how you know, you know it's not just some, not just somebody died on a cross, lots of people die on crosses. But God, God accepted this sacrifice and so put an end to the death penalty for anybody who, for anybody who accepts it.

[Megan Lewis]

So if, if people have to accept this payment that Jesus made on their behalf, how do they go about doing that? Is it just something that everyone has regardless, or do you have to perform a specific action, pray in a certain way? What does the judicial model want you to do?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, so this too is a little bit complicated, but the issue is the, that the issue is debated. There have been scholars, always have been scholars who have said that if Christ paid the penalty of death, and it's the penalty everybody has, then everybody's saved. And this has been a debate within Christianity since the second century whether Christ's death is efficacious, whether it works for everybody or not. And the general view that has come down, the most widespread view, has always been, no, you've got to believe in Christ in order to have this salvation. And for Paul, Paul definitely thinks you have to believe in Christ. But for Paul, believe in Christ is like if you got the judicial model. Believing in Christ means you've got to accept the reality, you've got to agree with reality that Christ's death paid for your debt, paid for your penalty, but you've got to accept the payment. And so if you know, if somebody offers to pay your $10,000 and you don't accept it, then it's not going to work. And so believing in Christ in this model means accepting the payment that Christ did, accepting the acknowledging that he's done it, and trusting that it's going to work. So that belief for Paul is not just. It's not like subscribing to a bunch of facts or not subscribing to a bunch of propositional statements. You know, many Christians today think being Christian means that you agree with a bunch of propositions. You know, there's one God, Jesus is his son. Jesus died for your sins. Jesus was raised from the dead. You kind of intellectually agree with that and then you're saved. And that's not Paul's view at all. It's not intellectual assent to something. It's actually trusting that it works. It's trusting in God to bring your salvation through Christ. So it's a matter of trust rather than intellectual assent.

[Megan Lewis]

I see. Okay, thank you. We are going to take a very brief break, then we will be back to talk about one of Paul's other models of salvation and then look at why these two models use the same language to talk about different things.

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[Course Narrator]

Imagine this Jesus, the founder of Christianity and the Apostle Paul its greatest missionary teaching and shaping the Christian faith with opposing perspectives. While Jesus emphasized repentance in preparation for the coming kingdom, Paul focused on believing in Jesus, death and resurrection. So were they on the same page. Delve into the complexities of this debate in Bart Ehrman's online course, Paul and the Great Divide. In this eight lecture course, you'll discover why Paul rarely mention Jesus words and deeds and uncover the intricacies of their views on salvation, the Jewish law and ethical behavior. Barth will also explore the following burning Was Paul a true follower of Jesus teachings? Or is it right to say that Paul transformed the Jewish religion of Jesus to the Christian religion about Jesus? Don't miss this opportunity to explain explore the profound influence of Paul and Jesus on the Christian faith. Visit bart erman.com Paul to learn more or enroll today. And remember, use the discount code MJ podcast for a special discount.

[Megan Lewis]

Welcome back everyone to Misquoting Jesus. We are talking about Paul's view of salvation. Views? Plural? Really? We spoke before the break about the judicial model of salvation and now we are moving on to the participationist model of salvation. So Bart, what What is the participationist model of salvation?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, you know, I don't know if anybody else uses that term but. But I use it. I use it in my textbook because I couldn't figure out A better term for it. And it's a. It's a difficult thing. This one's. This one's. This one for me, is a little more interesting because. And. But it's harder to understand because we don't really have an analogy for this that I've ever been able to think of that. The judicial model makes sense to us. We have courtrooms, we got lawgivers, we got judges, we got penalties, we got, you know, debts. We got all that. We got all that. But we don't have what happens in this participationist model. It's more kind of mystical and spiritual and hard to figure out. So in this participationist model, the problem, once again, is that is the problem of sin, which brings about alienation from God. But in this model, sin is not what happens when you do something wrong. I mean, it is that, but it's not. That's really not what's going on in this model. Sin is not an act of transgression. It's not doing something that's against God's will, per se. Sin in this model is actually a cosmic power that's in the universe. It's a demonic force that is alienated from God, that's alien to God, opposed to God, and that has imprisoned people and entrapped people and has enslaved people. The power of sin is this cosmic demonic power that has. That controls people and forces them to do things that are contrary to God's will. And so Paul's an apocalyptic Jew. Apocalypticists believe that there were powers of evil in the world, such as the devil and the demons and things. Paul has a broader vision. It's not just kind of like individual supernatural beings. It's like this power of sin. And another power in the world is the power of death. So the power of sin forces us to do things contrary to God's will, even when we don't want to. You know, we want to do what's right, and sometimes we just can't stop ourselves. What is that? It's the power of sin that's forcing you to do things. You can't control yourself sometimes. The other power, another major power, is the power of death. The power of death is also trying to control you. And what happens is the power of sin is so powerful that eventually it hands you over to the power of death. And the power of death annihilates you. And so death isn't just when you stop breathing or your brain stops working. It's when you. You succumb necessarily to this demonic force that is completely out to destroy you. And it always succeeds because everybody's under the power of sin. And so the power of sin forces you to be alienated from God. It hands you over to the power of death. And Jesus death somehow solves that problem, but it doesn't solve it by being, you know, paying your debt for you, because the problem is not a debt that you owe.

[Megan Lewis]

So what does Jesus death and resurrection do to repair this broken disconnection with God and free humanity from the power of sin and death?

[Bart Ehrman]

Okay, so in the, in this model, and again, you know, we're going to say in a little bit, Paul kind of thinks about these things both at once, even though they're, they're, you know, they're actually, you can sketch them as different. They're different things in this way of understanding things. Since sin isn't like breaking the law, sin is a power that's enslaved you. Your problem is enslavement. And so you have to be liberated. You need to be set free. You have to be set free from this power. Christ's death destroys the power of sin. And the way it works is in this way of thinking about things, Christ takes the power of sin into himself and he dies. And since he dies, he kills the power of sin. And so the power of sin is rendered powerless for anyone who participates with Christ in his death. And so the problem is enslavement. And the, the solution is liberation by Jesus destroying the power of sin.

[Megan Lewis]

So how do people participate in this, this destruction of sin? How do they achieve liberation?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, so in this model, it's not by accepting the payment, because it's not a payment model, it's not a judicial model. In this case, it's liberation. Christ has killed sin. But the question is, that's nice for him. So now, you know, he's not under the power of sin. What's it got to do with me? Well, what happens in Paul's thinking is that the follower of Jesus becomes united with Christ and participates in Christ's victory. And this is where it gets strange for a lot of people. I mean, the whole thing might sound strange to a lot of people, but where it gets especially strange is because that does not happen by believing in Christ, it happens by being baptized. This is in Romans, chapter six. And Paul, like all the early Christians that we know of, Paul just assumed that when somebody comes to be a follower of Jesus, they get baptized. It's kind of how you enter into the church by being baptized. But for Paul, baptism is not at all what any of the modern Christian Denominations say that I know of. So, you know, in the Roman Catholic tradition, today you baptize the infant to get to deal with the problem of original sin. It gets rid of the original sin, okay, so that they can then start serving God if they want to. In the Presbyterian Church, it's not getting rid of the original sin. The Presbyterian Church baptism is to show is the replacement of circumcision. It's how somebody joins the people of God. It's the new covenant. So baptism of a child is bringing them into the people of God, just as circumcision did for Jews. For in the Baptist tradition, it's neither of those things. In the Baptist tradition, baptism is an outward sign of an inward reality. You've been cleansed of your sins. And baptism doesn't do anything in the Baptist except for show that you've been cleansed of your sins. And so it's an outward sign. So there are. There are a variety of views of baptism in the. In the modern world among various Christian groups. And to my knowledge, none of them replicates Paul's. Paul's view in Romans 6 is that when you're baptized, you're put under the water, and it's like being buried. You are baptized in the name of Christ. You are buried with Christ in baptism. But since you're buried with Christ, you have died with Christ, you are at that moment, there's some kind of mystical union that happens. There's a unification. You are mystically unified with Christ. And since you're unified with Christ and he has overcome the power of sin. Sin. You have overcome the power of sin not by anything you did, but by participating in Christ's victory. And so you are now liberated from this power that had previously enslaved you by being baptized.

[Megan Lewis]

That is not at all what I expected going into this. This research. This was definitely a new one for me.

[Bart Ehrman]

Okay, well, it's a different thing for everyone, but, you know, it's just, you know. So that's why I call participation, because you're participating in the victory that Christ won, because you're now one with Christ.

[Megan Lewis]

I see. Excellent. Thank you. Before we go on and look at how these two work as one or work together for Paul, I wanted to just ask about the. The language because as you pointed out already, both models talk about sin. We've got the actual act of sinning. You've got the cosmic force of sin. Are there other linguistic similarities or instances where Paul is using the same terminology to mean different things?

[Bart Ehrman]

One thing I'll say is if somebody reads The Book of Romans. Just look at every use of the word sin, and you'll notice that he uses it in these two different ways. He doesn't. He doesn't come out and say, okay, first I'm going to talk about my judicial model. Now I'm going to talk about my participation. It's not like that. He weaves them together. But if you look at what he says about sin, sometimes it's breaking, you know, it's disobeying God, and sometimes it enslaves you. Well, an act of disobedience doesn't enslave anybody. It's just an act of disobedience. But so, so it is being used differently. And so he. For both models, sin is the problem. In both models, Christ's death deals with the problem of sin. In both models, it makes a person right with God. And in both models, the resurrection, the resurrection is key. So I guess I didn't say this part with the judicial model, the resurrection shows that the payment's been accepted. In the participationist model, the resurrection is equally important, but for a completely different reason. I said earlier that you got the power of sin and to hand you over to the power of death. How do you know that Christ conquered the power of sin? You know that he did because he conquered the power of death. The resurrection shows that he overcame death, which was even a bigger power than the power of sin. So he overcame all the powers, and it's proved by his resurrection. But this is the sticky point for Paul. You have died with Christ. When you're baptized, you have not yet been raised with him. The resurrection shows that he conquered death, but you're still going to die. You're not going to be raised with Christ until Christ returns and the resurrection of the dead happens. Only then will you be brought into a glorified body that cannot die anymore. So Paul himself does not believe that you've been raised with Christ, just that you've died with him. So the problem is sin. The solution is Jesus death. It brings about a restored relationship with God, and it's proved by the resurrection in both models. But each model uses these terms differently.

[Megan Lewis]

So if one model requires people to have faith in Christ in order to achieve salvation, and one requires baptism in order to achieve the same thing, could people have one or the other, or did you need both?

[Bart Ehrman]

Okay, yeah. So that's a really good question. I get asked that question a lot. And I think the reality is that Paul doesn't think about them as two distinct options. He thinks that anybody who believes in Christ will be baptized, because that's just what always happened. And so he. He uses both to explain this, this one phenomenon, and the way. But the way he does it is that he interweaves them. And so one way to illustrate this is he talks about Adam for a lot. For example, talks about Adam and Eve in, like in Romans, chapter five, to try and explain how it all works and the way it appears to work for Paul to show how these models are actually integrated in his mind. Rather than being like distinct categories, they're integrated in his mind. And the way it works is that Adam and Eve were, were created and the world was good and God gave them a commandment and they broke the commandment. They, Adam committed a sin. Because Adam committed a sin, the power of sin was introduced into the world. So you get the judicial model, breaking a law, and you get the participation model. The power of sin then comes into the world. The power of sin forces people to sin. So the participation model explains the judicial model. And because people have to sin, that means that they're ending. They're enslaved to sin, and they can't break out of sin because sin's a bigger power than theirs. Christ's death not only pays the penalty for their sin, but it also destroys the power. So that in theory, people who are believers in Jesus, who have been baptized don't have to sin anymore. They don't have to commit sins anymore. This led to a problem in Paul's churches because, you know, he told them, look, you know, you're no longer under the power of sin. But they kept sinning. And so sometimes he threatens them, saying, you know, you better watch out because, you know, you might be condemned after all. And so, but, but that's how, in his mind, that's how it's working. These two are being integrated into, into each other.

[Megan Lewis]

So you kind of hinted that Paul has other models of salvation as well, or it looks like he's got other ways of thinking about it. Do all of these seem to. All of the extra models seem to feed in and kind of work together with the other two? Or is this just Paul finding different ways of explaining the same thing depending on who he's speaking to?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, I think depending on how he's. Who he's thinking, speaking to. And it's just like the mechanics of it are less his concern, frankly. I mean, it's. The mechanics aren't as important as that. It really works. If you believe in Jesus, death and resurrection, and are baptized, you're going to be made right with God. But he has other ways of, kind of other ways of explaining, like how it works. Like another way he explains it is that since you've done things against God, you're alienated from God. Like two friends who have an argument and they're at odds with each other and you know they're going to be, you know, and it's. Neither one of them is happy about it. They need somebody to kind of mediate, to talk to them, to. To get them back on the same page. And Christ serves as the mediator then. And so it's more like a reconciliation of an estranged relationship. So that's not quite the judicial. It's not really quite the participation. It's a reconciliation thing. Another way he talks about it is like redemption, where like paying a price in this case, not paying a penalty, but like actually paying money over to somebody to say to. Or to set a sl free, you know, you pay a manumission price. And so it's like redeeming a coupon or something. God gives you the coupon in Christ and so it redeems the coupon. And so look, there are a range of ways or range of terms that Paul uses for these things. And so he talks about redemption, he talks about reconciliation, he talks about ultimate salvation. For the judicial model, the term that Paul tends to use is justification. So if people think of Paul's doctrine of justification, or sometimes called the justification by faith, then that's his view that you're justified by. So that's a judicial idea. Being justified means being put into a just based on a just God, that you're in a just relationship with a just God because somebody's paid your penalty. So that's the doctrine of justification.

[Megan Lewis]

Do scholars have any theories on why Paul has so much variety in how he talks about and describes salvation in his letters?

[Bart Ehrman]

I rarely hear scholars talk about this variation. Usually when scholars talk about it, they, like Paul, kind of integrate them together and almost act as if they're the same thing and they're not the same thing. And so what it used to be for a long time that the. That the. Used to be that people had like a particular view of it. And this was also. This was especially true in the Protestant tradition. When Martin Luther started the Protestant reformation in the 16th century, he took the judicial view of Paul and ran with it. He thought this was Paul's view, justification by faith. And until I, up until the time I was a graduate student, I guess Maybe into the 70s, virtually every Protestant theologian understood Paul to have this doctrine of justification by faith. But then people started understanding that Paul also had an apocalyptic side to him. And this, this participation model, what I'm calling is an apocalyptic perspective. And so then people tried to kind of integrate the two of them. But for a long time people, everything about Paul was about justification because even people weren't Lutheran but any Protestant kind of inherited that. And there's a new movement for understanding Paul in the late 70s and 80s that is called a new perspective on Paul which incorporates this other thing, but the, the participation is thing, the apocalyptic thing. But scholars still kind of don't recognize that these are different models. They're ways of thinking about salvation rather than like they're not explaining how it actually works, they're ways of imagining how it works. For Paul, what matters is that it works. And these are ways of imagining how and why it works.

[Megan Lewis]

This is my final question and I'm kind of ad libbing a bit here, so forgive me if it doesn't make a lot of sense. It seems to me, hearing you describe these two models, that the judicial model is the one that has carried forward the most into modern Christianity. Do you think that's because Christians are less familiar with the idea of apocalypticism or do you think that it's because the judicial model is, is just easier to understand and makes more sense to us?

[Bart Ehrman]

I'd say probably both. It is, it's, it's easier to grasp and get your, get a handle on. There are of course Christians today who have apocalyptic views of things, but they tend not to be like the Jewish apocalypticists. So people who think Jesus, Jesus is coming back very soon, you know, that's an apocalyptic view, but they don't have, and they believe in the devil and demons and things, but they don't have Paul's kind of big picture of what, what's really going on in the cosmos, the cosmic world, the universe, where there are these powers of evil that are fighting it out and that, that Christ is the one who conquers these powers of evil and that you can participate in that. That just isn't the way we tend to think about things. And as I said, it's really hard to come up even with a good analogy for it. So I think the justification by faith thing is pretty easy to understand. It's not particularly complicated. And so people tend to move in that direction without recognizing the depth of Paul's thought on this issue. But if you just read, you know, if you read Romans, as I said, the first three, possibly four chapters, the first four chapters of Romans really is mainly expressing a judicial model. But after that, once you hit chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8, it's really more of a participationist model. And if you don't understand that, you're not going to understand this, this really, really deep and interesting book.

[Megan Lewis]

Thank you so much, Bart. We're going to wrap up the interview portion of the podcast for the week. We've got some news on upcoming events and then we have listeners questions.

Welcome to our upcoming Highlights and Events segment where we catch up on Bart's courses, community updates and all the latest news from the Biblical Studies Academy and beyond.

So as I explained last week, our conference New Insight in the New Testament is coming up in late September 27th to the 28th, and I wanted to give you a little bit of a sneak peek into what you can expect. So I'm going to be talking about very briefly about Dr. James Tabor's presentation which is titled did Jesus Shape the Gospels or did the Gospels Shape Jesus? That's quite a provocative question. The title of the talk is the Making of a Messiah. And in this session, Dr. Tabor is going to explore how the gospel writers used Hebrew Bible prophecies to frame Jesus as the Messiah and ask whether Jesus may have consciously acted to fulfill those scriptures. Can we really trace historically which came first, the actions or the interpretations? This is just one of the very thought provoking sessions that the NINT is going to have. Bart, what are your thoughts on that topic?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, that's going to be good. I wasn't sure how he was going to do this, but you know, James Tabor is really terrific and people love his stuff. And this is the kind of issue that I'm really, really interested. I'm going to be really fascinated what he said, what he says. And I'll be interested in seeing whether I agree with it

[Megan Lewis]

and correct me if I'm wrong. You're going giving reactions and responses to, to all of the talks, aren't you?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yeah, I think one of the special events is going to be I'm going to be, you know, it's not like I'm going to get the last word or anything like that, but that's a topic that is, has long been debated for a long time, but most people wouldn't have, wouldn't have thought about either side of it really. And so it's, it's, it's. Yeah, that's going to be good. That's going to be a good one.

[Megan Lewis]

If this is interesting to you and you would like to hear seven other also fantastic interesting presentations. You can go to bartehrman.com to register for the conference. And now we are going to have some listeners questions.

Now it's time for questions from listeners where BART answers real questions submitted by misquoting Jesus fans. If you'd like to submit a question for future segments, Please visit bart erman.com/bars foreign.

We have some excellent questions this week. First up is about the crucifixion and the listener says in learning more about crucifixion, I heard a lot about how the Romans used public shame as part of the punishment. With the body being left on the cross to rot and be devoured by scavengers. All of this adds to their message of what will happen to troublemakers. It seems that to allow a body to be taken down for a decent burial would reduce the punishment and remove that message. With that in mind, how likely would it have been for Jesus body to even make it as far as a tomb?

[Bart Ehrman]

This is an issue that I first addressed in writing in my book How Jesus Became God, where I argued that in fact it's unlikely that Jesus was given a decent burial on the day of his crucifixion. That stirred up a lot of reaction, a lot of protest. But I laid out the arguments for it and they're what this person is just sedating is similar to. It's the arguments that I give in my book, but I give the data, you know, and the thing is that you can see, you can read. You can read a lot of authors, Greek and Roman authors, when they don't. Nobody ever describes actually how they perform the crucifixion. In other words, there's no details about how they actually attach people to crosses or how they stood the crosses up or they don't describe things, but they do refer to them. And they will sometimes refer to the cadaver after death. And in every instance it's the person is being left on the cross for to deteriorate and stuff as public shame. And so that I agree with that person saying it seems unlikely to me that they made an exception for Jesus. You know, I don't think they made an exception for the two other guys he was crucified with, or the six they crucified the next day, or the four the day before, however many. I just. And so there are objections to it that people have raised. Some people say it's against Jewish law for that be hanging on the cross overnight. And that's absolutely true. Deuteronomy 21 says it's against the Jewish law. But the Jews didn't kill him, the Romans did. And the Romans were not interested in following the niceties of Jewish law. And you say, well, there would have been a rebellion. Yeah, well, there were rebellions and they were put down. And so I think that. I think on balance, it's really, for me, I don't think Jesus probably was given a burial that day. Now, that doesn't mean he was never buried. At some point, his remains went somewhere and, you know, they. They were disposed of somehow, maybe put in a ditch, for example, with other crucified victims. We don't know. So something happened. He was eventually buried, but. But not the day of his crucifixion.

[Megan Lewis]

I don't think next question is related to the letters of Paul. And the question says, do the gospel or did the gospel authors know about Paul's letters and were they influenced at all by his writing?

[Bart Ehrman]

This has become again, a much debated issue in recent years. There are scholars on both sides of this issue. My view is that if the authors of the Gospels knew Paul's letters, they give no convincing indication of it. People say, yeah, but the theology of Mark is so much like Paul's. Well, yeah, but, you know, so, I mean, yeah, that doesn't mean he read the letters that we have. So we have. We have seven letters that undisputeably scholars call the undisputed Pauline letters. There's no reason for thinking Mark read these particular letters. And it's no reason Paul, that Mark had to know about Paul. A lot of people were saying the death and resurrection of Jesus saved people from their sins. And so that was kind of a common theme. So the fact that Mark and Paul have it in common, they have it in common with hundreds of other people, too. So I think if you want to argue that somebody did know somebody else's letters, you've got to have some evidence that they knew these letters. Did they know Paul's teachings? Well, they may have known Paul's teachings without knowing that Paul taught them. They may have been widespread teachings. And so I don't really know. The gospel that's closest to Paul is Marx in many ways. So there are interesting similarities. It doesn't mean that he read Paul's letters, but there are interesting similarities. Luke, you would expect to have a lot of similarities with Paul because Paul's his hero in the book of Acts. Luke gives no indication even in the book of Acts that he even knows that Paul wrote letters. Paul never writes a letter in the book of Acts. And neither Luke nor Acts cites Any of Paul's letters. And so. So you can go on like that. You could say that Matthew's written against Paul, could say that he's writing later than Paul. He's against Paul's view of the law. So. But I don't know that he. They read any of the letters. But it's a disputed point in the

[Megan Lewis]

context of Jesus mission. Why would the writers of the Bible make blasphemy of the Holy Spirit and unforgivable sin when everything else can be pardoned?

[Bart Ehrman]

Yes. So the unforgivable sin is frequently misunderstood. Historically, it's been hugely misunderstood. People often attribute a particular sin to it. And so some people will say, for example, not believing in. Not. I'm sorry, yeah, not. Oh, no, no, killing yourself. Killing yourself is the unpardonable sin. Because if you commit suicide, you can't, you know, repent later because you're dead. And so that's the unpardonable sin. Or, you know, back in the 19th century, you know, masturbating was the unpardonable sin. I don't know how they came up with that one, but they did. And then, you know, there you pick something that you don't like and you say, that's the unpardonable sin. But, you know, the thing is, all you need to do is read it in its context and it's pretty obvious what it is. So you find this in the Synoptic Gospels. And the unpardonable sin is what happens is Jesus. Opponents are accusing him of doing miracles through the power of the devil, through Beelzebub. And Jesus says that any sin, you know, against God can be forgiven or against, you know, against me can be forgiven. But you cannot sin against the Holy Spirit. The sin against the Holy Spirit is attributing the work of Jesus to the devil. In other words, Jesus saying that Jesus is from the devil. Well, you can't be forgiven for that because the only way to have salvation is through Jesus. And so if you say he's from the devil, you can't have salvation. That's why it's unpardonable, not because it's something that, you know, some people don't like in their kind of social settings.

[Megan Lewis]

Final question for the day. When I was a young boy raised in the evangelical faith, I was told that the early Christians who were unequivocally targeted and persecuted, executed by Roman authorities, when wanting to speak to fellow Christians, would make half a fish with their feet in the dirt and wait for the other person to complete the Other half as a sign or a code word that they were safe to talk to. How accurate is that? And do you know where it came from?

[Bart Ehrman]

I'm not sure where it came from. Most people get it from Hollywood movies or from people who saw bad movies about early Christianity from Hollywood. There's no. No reference to that anywhere in ancient early Christian writings. Christians, by and large, were not persecuted. And, you know, I mean, they were sometimes, but Christianity was not an illegal religion, not declared illegal. It wasn't illegal to be a Christian until, you know, 300, 200 years, turned 20 years after Jesus death, turned 20 years after his death. Christians did not go into the catacombs to hide. We have no evidence of them doing secret signs to each other. The thing about the fish is that the term ichthus did come to be a Christian symbol. Ichthus is the Greek word for. Is the Greek word for fish. And when you spell Ichthus, if the first letters would spell out the name Jesus Christ, okay, it'd be Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. So people then came up with the idea that they're drawing a fish, and then, oh, they have to be secret. So somebody draws half the other, draws the other half. Yeah, I don't think there's any truth to that, but it is. I imagine it comes from Hollywood, but I don't know.

[Megan Lewis]

Thank you very much, Bart and audience, thank you all for your questions. Now, Bart, before we finish for the week, would you mind summarizing what we spoke about today?

[Bart Ehrman]

Well, we. We're talking about an issue that seems like it should be simple, but as it turns out, gloriously complicated. How Paul understood salvation to work. How is it that Jesus, death and resurrection makes someone else right with God? And is it. Is it that he's, like, paid a judicial penalty? Is that he's. He's liberated people from an oppressive power? Is it something else? He has. He has a bunch of different ways of understanding it, and you can find these different ways in his writings completely integrated. But to understand Paul, you've got to understand that when he's talking about one of these ways of understanding, he's not talking about the other way. So, yeah, it's complicated, but it's worth puzzling through and read the Book of Romans to kind of try and understand it that way.

[Megan Lewis]

Absolutely. Audience, thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the Code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Barth's courses over at www.barterman.com. misquoting Jesus will be back next week, but not with Bart. I'm going to be talking to bart's colleague at UNC Chapel Hill, Dr. Hugo Mendez, about his the Gospel of John A New History. Make sure you join us then. Thank you all and goodbye. This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis. Thank you for joining us.