Wright’s Into the Heart of Romans– Part Four

Last updated on: February 16, 2025 at 1:02 am by Ben Witherington

Wright’s Into the Heart of Romans– Part Four 2025-01-27T22:57:21-05:00 Ben Witherington

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One of the more interesting aspects of Tom’s treatment of Rom. 8.5-11 which is the next subsection, is his reading of the last verse of the section, which he takes to mean that the Holy Spirit who lives within the believer ‘will give life to your mortal bodies on a parallel to the way God physically raised Jesus from the dead. This Spirit is said on the one hand to be God’s Spirit, but also elsewhere Jesus’ Spirit (presumably because Jesus sent the Spirit to the believers after he returns to heaven). It appears that Tom takes the story in John 20 about Jesus breathing on the original disciples (excluding both Judas and Thomas) on Easter Sunday night, to refer to the actual dispensing the Spirit to them. There are two problems with this reading: 1) in the Farewell Discourse, Jesus had already said that it was necessary for him to go away and not be seen, so he could send another parakletos to them; and 2) the disciples a whole week later are not out spreading the Gospel they are still hiding behind closed doors for fear of the Jewish authorities. There is no evidence at all that they had already received the Holy Spirit. That didn’t happen until Pentecost. Tom’s basis for his conclusion is John 7.39. (see p. 65) which equates Christ being lifted up on the cross with Christ being glorified. But that is only the first stage of his glorification, the second being his ascending into heaven and sitting at the right hand of the Father from whence he sends the Spirit. On p. 67 Tom once again insists that the purpose of Torah was to give life, but in fact that is not what Jesus himself suggests. He says it was given to hard hearted Israel to keep them in line. It has to be remembered that over and over again in the OT we hear about Israel’s sin and even idolatry at points. The Torah could not give life to anyone in a fallen condition. It could tell them what was wrong and right, but it could not correct the problem. It was a guide to the good and holy life, but it could not give it.

There are more problems on p. 70. Here Tom takes the Greek word soma to refer to the whole person, not merely the physical body. Yes, it refers to the whole physical presence of a person, but no it does not refer to the whole person, not least because the person also has a human spirit, Romans 8 elsewhere makes clear. So the deeds of the body must be put to death says Paul. Paul rightly says in 1 Cor. 15 that the current fallen body, the corruptible body cannot inherit the Kingdom, which he in 1 Cor. 15 calls flesh and blood. But note that elsewhere the term flesh. (sarx) can be used to refer to our sinful or fallen inclinations as in Gal. 5 where it is contrasted with the fruit of the Spirit. Paul is perfectly capable of using terms like law or flesh and other words in more than one sense and he does. Tom is right however that what Gal. 5 is basically about is basic mindset or life orientation– is the mind focused on the flesh in the moral sense, or is it set on God, and manifesting the fruit of the Spirit in one’s life.

One of the odder statements in this book is found on p. 82, but the whole context should be cited: “God’s Spirit has come to dwell within us, enlivening our own spirits [so far so good], so God’s own spirit will hold on to us hereafter until the time of the resurrection…it is the human spirit that is commended to God upon death [as Jesus does of his own spirit on the cross]. Thus insofar as God’s Spirit has as it were become us taking on our identity to live and work through us, so after death we remain in the multi-track life-giving memory of God’s own Spirit, until the time of the resurrection.” It is not completely clear what Tom means by this, but if it means that believers do not have a conscious identity, quite apart from the Spirit after death, as is depicted in various places in the NT (e.g. in Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus), or in the book of Revelation where believers are conscious and even complaining in heaven ‘how long O Lord’, but are just held in memory by God, that is not what the full witness of the NT suggests. Perhaps, because Tom has such an allergic reaction to the idea of ‘dying and going to heaven’ that it has skewed his understanding of Paul at this point. But it seems clear to me that 2 Corinthians does support the idea of the spirit of the believer and so his internal being including his mind and personality, being present with the Lord. Nor do I think Paul subscribed to the Adventist notion of soul sleep. Jews did speak of death as like sleep (both Jesus and Paul do so) precisely because they believe that in the light of the resurrection, death is no more permanent than sleep. It is something one comes back from refreshed and renewed in a resurrection body like Christ’s. One more point is important –when Paul says absent from the body and present with the Lord, he does not mean one gets his resurrection body in heaven when one arrives there. The contrast in 2 Cor. 5– absent from or out of THE body and present with the Lord. In fact Paul see’s three conditions— at present we live in a body that is temporary, so he calls it a tent, very fitting for one who was tent maker. He contrasts this with being naked in the presence of God, without a body. What he would prefer as the Greek says was to be alive until the resurrection and so be further clothed with the resurrection body— three different condition, and only the being absent from body is what describes life of the believer in heaven. This is not Platonism, it’s early Jewish belief coupled with the resurrection belief.

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