Nielsen’s Nook

In preparing for a sermon on the Unforgiving Servant in Matthew 18:21-35, I enjoyed some of the connections that came from the broader section of the gospel of Matthew that this pericope seems to punctuate.  Chapters 14 - 18 apparently form a unit¹ in which loads of things are happening.  The section begins and ends with consideration of kings and servants and through out considers two very different kinds of banquets.

Two Kings

Matthew 14 begins rehashing the death of John the Baptist at the hands of the wicked king Herod the tetrarch.  Matthew reminds us that Herod was a king that had unlawfully married his brother Philip’s wife (Matthew 14:3-4).  This Herod was the son of Herod the Great, who had ordered the murder of infants when Jesus had been born.²  In other words, the wickedness of Herod the tetrarch is nothing new; rather, it is iconic of the wickedness that beset this family dynasty.

Matthew 18 concludes with a very different king.  Where Herod had murdered and oppressed and thrived in the context of injustice, this king was one who was exceedingly merciful.  In fact, as the parable of the unforgiving servant goes, we find that this king (Gk. ο κυρίος) was one who found forgiving those who asked for pardon as something more valuable than the immeasurable sum of 10,000 talents.  For in the Greek world this was the highest sum for which the Greek language had a unique word (i.e., μύριοι). 

Two Servants

As mentioned Matthew 14, begins with the account of John the Baptist’s death.  John was the faithful servant, faithfully representing his good King.  He was imprisoned for being faithful to the call upon his life - calling sinners to repentance.  In any age, in any culture the call for repentance is always dangerous business.  At the hands of the unjust king Herod the tetrarch, John was handed over to the jailers and eventually his disembodied head was handed over to Herodias on a platter.

The section ends with the merciful and good king, who would forgive immeasurable debts, and a servant who is quite different than John the Baptist.  Where John had faithfully represented the king he served, the wicked unforgiving servant, who had deserved wrath and received mercy, represented wrath and not mercy to his fellow servants.  It is for this misrepresentation of the king by the wicked unmerciful servant to his fellow servants that this just king handed the unmerciful servant over to the jailers.

Two Banquets

Matthew 14 also begins with a banquet, Herod the tetrarch’s birthday party.  This king of death and sin had celebrated by severing the head of a faithful servant from his body.  The king who had presumably unassailable power as a Roman tetrarch, who commanded enormous taxes from the populous, that king had a banquet that ended in the death and sin to which he had paid tribute.

In the course of Matthew 14-18, the King of Glory, the Lord Jesus begins his feasts that will never end.  The bread of life, as the Gospel writer John would write, feeds the multitudes because he has compassion on them.  This is the same word that we find used by the king in the parable of the unmerciful servant (σπλαγχνίζομαι).  Admittance to this feast is only through the forgiveness and pardon of the king, who works in his servants to will and to act as agents of forgiveness upon this earth until he returns.

Conclusion

So it is that there were two kings.  The one was swallowed up by sin and death.  The other swallowed whole, not only sin and death, but also the grave and hell itself.  And the servants of these kings, while their fates may have seemed for a time to be quite unjust have been vindicated.  The dusty decaying bones of the wicked servant of the wicked king lie dislocated, strewn across a deserted banquet hall full of rotten food and repugnant vermin.  Meanwhile, the servants of the good King, feed upon not bread and wine that perish and rot but on the very body and blood of the King himself, who sustains them as they await the final banquet when injustice and wickedness are finally displaced forever.

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¹ Blomberg, Craig. Matthew. The New American Commentary ; V. 22. (Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman Press, 1992), 281.

² Craig S. Keener and InterVarsity Press, The IVP Bible Background Commentary : New Testament (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1993), Lk 9:5.

I am at one of my favorite cafes in Dallas preparing for the sermon I am preaching tomorrow.  While waiting in line I looked up and saw a man walking into the bathroom that looked just like Dustin Salter.  He was tall and had the same sort of bend to his neck (the difficulty that tall people seem to have living in a world full of us shorties).  He was wearing the same Teva sandals I used to see Dustin wear when auditing classes at Westminster.  I did not know Dustin well, but he made such an impression on me that this "sighting" gave me pause to consider again the loss of a good man, pastor and father a little more and to pray for those whom he left behind. That is mainly why I am posting this, so that those of you who are familiar with the Salters, would continue to pray for Leigh Anne and the Salter children, who I would imagine are still picking up the pieces and need our prayer.

This is not a particularly fun part of Romans.  St. Paul’s argument against any who might think they have standing before the Lord in and of themselves comes as great and overwhelming volleys of the most explosive ordinance.  I came across an ambiguity in the text that I was hoping perusers of this blog might comment on, giving me their thoughts.  Romans 1:26-27 read as follows in the NA27:

²⁶ Διὰ τοῦτο παρέδωκεν αὐτοὺς ὁ θεὸς εἰς πάθη ἀτιμίας, αἵ τε γὰρ θήλειαι αὐτῶν μετήλλαξαν τὴν φυσικὴν χρῆσιν εἰς τὴν παρὰ φύσιν, ²⁷ ὁμοίως τε καὶ οἱ ἄρσενες ἀφέντες τὴν φυσικὴν χρῆσιν τῆς θηλείας ἐξεκαύθησαν ἐν τῇ ὀρέξει αὐτῶν εἰς ἀλλήλους, ἄρσενες ἐν ἄρσεσιν τὴν ἀσχημοσύνην κατεργαζόμενοι καὶ τὴν ἀντιμισθίαν ἣν ἔδει τῆς πλάνης αὐτῶν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἀπολαμβάνοντες.

²⁶ For this reason God gave them over to shameful passions. For their females exchange the natural relation for what is beside nature. ²⁷  In the same way also the males gave up natural relations with the female, inflamed in their desire for each other, male with male, committing the shameful deed and receiving the required recompense for their self-delusion.[a]

So my question is mainly about the idea of self-delusion (the way I translated τῆς πλάνης αὐτῶν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς here.  What are your thoughts regarding footnote [a] below and whether my translation here is viable or not?

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[a] τῆς πλάνης αὐτῶν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς has been taken as follows. τῆς πλάνης αὐτῶνspeaks to a wandering or delusion that is possessed by those committing the lewd acts being addressed. There is ambiguity in the text. If ἐν ἑαυτοῖς is taken as a dative of sphere then it speaks of where the required recompense is received (ESV, NIV, NRSV). If it is taken to modify the nature of the delusion, then we find that they receive the due recompense for the delusion that is in themselves, i.e., self-delusion.

It’s easy to make people watch — just blow up a car, slit someone’s throat. The hard part is making them watch while also making them think about what exactly it is that they’re watching.

Still Searching, but With Darker Eyes
The New York Times
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: August 3, 2007

Just a thought I had at the office today, doing a most ordinary thing:

One may do the ordinary in such a way as to prevent ever approaching the extraordinary.

A colleague of mine has engaged me in a conversation about the nature of culpability, knowledge, revelation (both general and special) and the idea of suppression (κατεχόντων in Romans 1:18 below).  I am waiting to hear back from him regarding the posting of some thoughts he presented via email, which are as stimulating as they are charitable.  In the interim, I’ll post some thoughts I am working through and hope that you, the reader, would in charity help shape my thoughts along the way.  Today, I’ll begin with a translation that as all translations do, betray something of the mind of the translator.  The next post will seek to work through more concrete thoughts on this dense passage and then we’ll seek to interact with comments and critiques.

The Text and Translation

Romans 1:18-21 (NA27)
¹⁸ Ἀποκαλύπτεται γὰρ ὀργὴ θεοῦ ἀπʼ οὐρανοῦ ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ἀσέβειαν καὶ ἀδικίαν ἀνθρώπων τῶν τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐν ἀδικίᾳ κατεχόντων, ¹⁹ διότι τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ θεοῦ φανερόν ἐστιν ἐν αὐτοῖς· ὁ θεὸς γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἐφανέρωσεν. ²⁰ τὰ γὰρ ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ κτίσεως κόσμου τοῖς ποιήμασιν νοούμενα καθορᾶται, ἥ τε ἀΐδιος αὐτοῦ δύναμις καὶ θειότης, εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτοὺς ἀναπολογήτους, ²¹ διότι γνόντες τὸν θεὸν οὐχ ὡς θεὸν ἐδόξασαν ἢ ηὐχαρίστησαν, ἀλλʼ ἐματαιώθησαν ἐν τοῖς διαλογισμοῖς αὐτῶν καὶ ἐσκοτίσθη ἡ ἀσύνετος αὐτῶν καρδία.

Author’s Translation
¹⁸ For God’s wrath is being revealed from heaven upon all godlessness and unrighteousness of humanity, which is suppressing the truth in unrighteousness ¹⁹ because what is known of God is shown in them - for God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible qualities, which are his eternal power and divinity, are being clearly perceived since the moment of ^a creation of the cosmos by the things made by him ^b with the result that they are without excuse ²¹ because knowing ^c God they neither glorified him as God nor gave him thanks, instead they have become futile by their reasoning ^d and their senseless heart has become darkened.

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^a ἀπὸ here is being used to mark out the beginning point from which God’s invisible qualities began to be perceived. By saying that this began at the moment of creation, Paul is saying that there has never been a time in which creatures had an excuse for not glorifying and giving thanks to God.

^b a simple divine passive, where God is clearly implied as the subject.

^c It is worth noting that γνόντες τὸν θεὸν employs a present active participle which would seem to govern the way we understand the subsequent verbs in the passage.  In other words, the not glorifying and not giving thanks to God and the consequent futility of thought and darkening of the heart are also ongoing and active in their scope. 

^d The curious phrase ἐματαιώθησαν ἐν τοῖς διαλογισμοῖς αὐτῶν employs a dative construction (ἐν τοῖς διαλογισμοῖς) that might be explaining not simply the sphere in which this futility has come but also a means by which it has come in the sense that and in so far as this reasoning (διαλογισμοῖς) has been analogous to the suppression of Romans 1:18 (κατεχόντων).  The result of suppressing the truth in unrighteousness would seem to be both rendering one to be without excuse (ἀναπολογήτους) and bringing about a worse state than before - i.e., the heart and mind are darkened and futile.