19 - Appendices
Appendices 1. Baptism and Death to Sin in Romans 6:1-23 2. On the true Translation of Anthropos 3. Contradictory Interpretations of Romans 6:1-23 Baptism And Death To Sin InRomans 6:1-23 As we have said, another factor which indicates that the death to sin which Romans 6:1-23 teaches is not a present, inward death, but solely a judicial death, is its being linked back with the initiatory baptism of those Roman believers to whom Paul wrote. It is not a death effected now, but a death professed then. Observe the verb-tenses again in Romans 1:1-4.
"We who DIED to sin, how shall we any longer live therein? . . . All we who WERE BAPTIZED into Christ . . . WERE BURIED therefore with Him through baptism into death." The verbs in capitals are all aorists, betokening a completed act in the past. Clearly that death to sin had been assumed and symbolised as an already finalised act when those long-ago Christians were baptized.
It is generally agreed that the reference in Romans 6:1-4 is to water baptism. As we have said, the reference cannot be to a spiritual baptism, for it was an immersion into death, whereas spiritual baptism is into new spiritual life. That the reference was indeed to water baptism is strikingly confirmed by a most interesting annotation which I here quote, by kind permission, from The Letter to the Romans, by Dr. William Barclay, Lecturer in New Testament and Hellenistic Greek at the University of Glasgow.
"But then, having recoiled like that, he [Paul] goes on to something else. ’Have you never thought,’ he demands, ’what happened to you when you were baptized?’ Now, when we try to understand what Paul is going to go on to say, we must remember baptism in the time of Paul was different from what baptism commonly is today,
(a) It was adult baptism. That is not to say that the New Testament is in any sense opposed to infant baptism.. . but infant baptism is the result of the Christian family, and the Christian family could hardly be said to have come into being as early as the time of Paul. A man came to Christ as an individual, often leaving his family behind, in the Early Church,
(b) Baptism in the Early Church was intimately connected with confession of faith. A man was baptized when he entered the Church. And he was entering the Church direct from paganism. Baptism marked a dividing line in his life. In baptism a man came to a decision which cut his life in two, a decision which often meant that he had to tear himself up by the roots, a decision which was so definite that for him it often meant nothing less than beginning life all over again.
(c) Commonly, baptism was by total immersion, and that practice lent itself to a symbolism which sprinkling does not so readily lend itself to. When a man descended into the water, and the water closed over his head, it was like being buried in a grave. When he emerged from the water, it was like rising from the grave. Baptism was symbolically like dying and rising again. The man died to one kind of life and rose to another kind of life. He died to the old life of sin and rose to the new life of grace. He went down into the water a man of the world, and rose a man in Christ.
"Now, again, if we are fully to understand this, we must remember that Paul was using language and pictures that almost anyone of his day and generation would understand. It may seem strange to us, but it was not at all strange to Paul’s contemporaries. The very language he was using was the very language they used.
"The Jews would understand it. When a man entered the Jewish religion from heathenism it involved three things—sacrifice, circumcision and baptism. The Gentile entered the Jewish faith by baptism. The ritual was as follows. The person to be baptized cut his nails and hair; he undressed completely; the baptismal bath must contain at least forty seahs, that is two hogsheads of water. Every part of his body must be touched by the water. As he was in the water he made confession of his faith before three fathers of baptism, and certain exhortations and benedictions were addressed to him. Now the effect of this baptism was held to be complete regeneration; the man was a new man; he was born anew. He was called a little child just born, the child of one day. All his sins were remitted because God cannot punish sins committed before he was born. The completeness of the change is seen in the fact that certain Rabbis held that a man’s child born after baptism was his first-born, even if he had had children before baptism. Theoretically it was held—although the belief was never put into practice—that a man was so much a completely new man that he might marry his own sister or his own mother. He was not only a changed man, he was a new man, a different man. Any Jew would fully understand Paul’s words about the necessity of a baptized man being a completely new man.
"The Greek would understand. At this time the only real Greek religion was found in the mystery religions. These mystery religions were wonderful things. They offered men release from the cares and sorrows and fears of this earth; and the release was by union with some god. All the mysteries were passion plays. They were based on the story of some god who suffered and died and rose again. The story of the god was played out as a drama. Before a man could see the drama he had to be initiated. He had to undergo a long course of instruction on the inner meaning of the drama. He had to undergo a course of ascetic discipline. He was carefully brought up and prepared. The drama was played out with all the resources of music and lighting, and incense and mystery. As the drama was played out the man felt himself one with the god; he underwent an emotional experience of identification with the god. Before he entered on this he was initiated. Now initiation was always regarded as a death followed by a new birth, by which the man was renatus in aetemum, reborn for eternity. One who went through the initiation tells us that he underwent ’a voluntary death’. We know that in one of the mysteries the man to be initiated was called moriturus, the one who is to die, and that he was buried up to the head in a trench. When he had been initiated he was addressed as a little child and fed with milk, as one newly born. In another of the mysteries the person to be initiated prayed: ’Enter thou into my spirit, my thought, my whole life; for thou art I and I am thou.’ Any Greek who had been through this would have no difficulty in understanding what Paul meant by dying and rising again in baptism, and, in so doing, becoming one with Christ. We are not for one moment saying that Paul borrowed either his ideas or his words from such Jewish or pagan practices; what we do say is that he was using words and pictures that both Jew and Gentile would understand and recognise." And now, against that background, read again Paul’s words at the beginning of Romans 6:1-23. "We who DIED TO SIN. ... we who were BAPTIZED into Christ were baptized into His DEATH. We were BURIED therefore with Him through baptism into DEATH." Surely it is as plain as can be, that the believer’s death which Romans 6:1-23 teaches is not a death which has yet to be effected in the believer’s inward condition. Much less is it a maintained experience of dying. It is a completed death already past, which put something away once for all, and is symbolically testified to in the rite of believer’s baptism. On The True Translation OfAnthropos
We have shown how the Authorized Version, also the English Revised and the American Standard Versions uniformly translate all 546 occurrences of the Greek word, anthropos, in the New Testament as "man" or "men" or "man’s". What about more recent versions? Their testimony is just as solid that the true translation of anthropos is "man". Not one of them anywhere translates it as "nature", as though it were an "old nature" inside man.
We find, however, that some more modern versions have a fondness for breaking away from the phrase, "old man", in Romans 6:6, as also in Ephesians 4:22 and Colossians 3:9. What are we to say about them? At the time of my writing these lines I am on far travel, and cannot get to my own bookshelves. The only alternative versions at hand are: the American Revised Standard Version, the Berkeley Version, Weymouth’s, Moffatt’s, Ferrar Fenton’s, the New Testament in Basic English, and J. B. Phillips’ Letters to Young Churches. How, then, do those seven newer versions translate anthropos in Romans 6:6? Not one of them translates it as "nature". Two of them retain "man", four prefer "self", and Phillips, "selves" (a merely arbitrary plural). Can we let those five get away with the word, "self", in Romans 6:6? Let the following statistics provide an answer. We have gone through all the 546 texts in the first six of our seven modern versions, and the 154 in Phillips (who covers only the Epistles), a total in all of 3430. Ferrar Fenton and the New Testament in Basic English never once in all 546 occurrences of anthropos translate it as "self". The R.S.V. and Moffatt give it as "self" only twice out of the 546 (Romans 6:6 and Romans 7:2); the Berkeley Version similarly only twice (Romans 6:6 and Ephesians 3:16); Weymouth only four times out of the 546 (Romans 6:6, Romans 7:22, Ephesians 4:24, Colossians 3:9); and Phillips never once outside Romans 6:6. Could anything more plainly indicate how irregular and suspicious the expression, "our old self" is in Romans 6:6?
What, now, about "old man" (anthropos) in Ephesians 4:22 and Colossians 3:9? Two of our seven modern versions retain the word, "man". The R.S.V., Berkeley, Weymouth, Moffatt, have "nature". Phillips has a mere circumlocution in the first text, and returns to "man" in the second. Again we scan the 546 occurrences of anthropos, to see if it is translated as "nature" anywhere else. In the A.V., E.R.V., and A.S.V. it is not even once so translated. What of our seven new versions? Three of them never once render it as "nature". As for the other four, here are the figures: Apart from Ephesians 4:22-24Colossians 3:9, the R.S.V. and the Berkeley translate anthropos as "nature" only once (2 Corinthians 4:16); Weymouth only twice (Romans 6:6, 1 Peter 3:4); Moffatt in one verse only (John 2:25). Is not this statistical evidence enough in itself to show that those who turn the "old man" and the "new man" of Ephesians 4:1-32 and Colossians 3:1-25 into two "natures" are importing an altogether alien idea?
Even that is not all. Look at those seven newer versions again. Here and there, each of them, for the sake of useful variety, uses a variant from "man" as a translation of anthropos. Occasionally in the singular it is rendered as "person", or "human", or "him", or even as "fellow"; and, in the plural, as "people", or "others", or "everyone", or even in a uni-plural way as "mankind"; but always, without exception, it means the total human being; it never means a mere part, such as might be called an "old nature". Those versions which have substituted the phrase, "our old self", or "our old nature", in Romans 6:6, Ephesians 4:22-24, Colossians 3:9, have side-stepped etymological propriety; for the change which they have thereby effected in our English text is not merely verbal, but basal. To that degree, at any rate, they have slipped from strict translation into well-intended but incorrect interpretation.
Contradictory Interpretations OfRomans 6:1-23 That our emended interpretation of Romans 6:6 is true is shown by the contradictoriness of other views. For instance, the Century Bible comment on Romans 6:6 is,
"The believer by faith appropriates and applies to his own old self the condemnation and execution which are vicariously represented on the Cross of Christ; and so by his acceptance of that sacrifice he once for all, in a decisive act, separates himself from sin."
Yet Romans 6:6 teaches no such thing as that the believer "in a decisive act separates himself from sin"—for we simply cannot separate ourselves from innate sin, or from our "own old self". Nor does Romans 6:6 teach that the believer applies to "his own old self" any such "condemnation and execution"; it tells us something that God did, once for all. Or again, the commentator, Barnes, says,
"This ’old man’, this corrupt nature, is represented as having been put to death in an agonizing and torturing manner . . . Death in this manner was most lingering and distressing. And the apostle here, by the expression, ’is crucified’, doubtless refers to the painful and protracted struggle which everyone goes through when his evil propensities are subdued; when his corrupt nature is slain . . . Nothing will better express this than the lingering agony of crucifixion."
What strange contradiction! Romans 6:6 says nothing about any such present "protracted struggle" in which "evil propensities are subdued". It tells of a past, over-and-done-with crucifixion, and a corresponding once-for-all "destruction" of the "old man" in total.
Take the following further comment from the Century Bible.
"The old self is dead, ’the old man was crucified with Christ’; the new self is alive, but while it is living unto God it is not dead to sin. . . . This thorough change is not yet altogether completed; it is still an ideal to be realised. The believer must consciously present this ideal to himself, as the acceptance of an ideal is the first step toward its realization."
Again, what strange confusion! The so-called "old self" is "dead", but even the "new self" is not completely dead to sin. That is still an "ideal to be realised"! Acceptance of that ideal is "the first step" towards the realization of something which can never be realized—for at each stage the believer has to admit that "this thorough change is not yet altogether completed"! And how far removed is this from the clear-cut testimony of Romans 6:1-23, that the pattern of our death to sin is our Lord’s own death—"In that He died, He died’unto sin once for all." Barnes and others say that "the body of sin" means the same as "our old man", or our "sinful and corrupt nature". W. H. Griffith Thomas, a scholarly holiness expositor, Evan Hopkins and others, reject that, and say that the two must be carefully distinguished: the "old man" is our "old self"; whereas the "body of sin" is our physical body considered as "the seat or instrument of sin." This latter distinction makes Romans 6:6 teach that "our old self" was crucified with Christ so that our physical body, considered as "the seat of sin" might be "destroyed". Having taken that position, however, they must needs re-define that word, "destroyed", to make it mean no more (supposedly) than "reduced to a state of impotence." Is not that a futile dexterity with words? Says Dr. Griffith Thomas, "Thus while it approximates as nearly as possible to the thought of literal destruction, it significantly stops short of it, and shows that sin is not destroyed but only robbed of its power by the counteracting principle of union with Christ." To be respectfully plain, what the above quotation amounts to is, that the Scripture word does not mean what it says. I am not within a million miles of insinuating that those able and sincere brethren were intentionally warping the Scripture. The fact is, they were so wedded to the counteraction theory that to them Romans 6:6 presumably had to conform. As for making this almost-but-not "destruction" something which refers to our physical bodies "considered as the seat or instrument of sin", that is quite unallowable. The physical body is not the seat of sin; and in more cases than otherwise it is not even the "instrument" of sin, for many of the gravest sins are those of the mind, apart from the body. And as for "destroyed" meaning "not destroyed but only robbed of its power by the counteracting principle of union with Christ", that counteracting union with Christ is not taught in Romans 6:1-23; it still awaits us in Romans 8:1-39, where it is our continuous union with Him in His life, and not our forever-past and once-for-all judicial union with His death.
Pages might be filled with sheaves of quotations more or less similar to the foregoing, but we forbear. Among the quotable authors are many whom we highly esteem for their consecration and ability and brotherliness; and however convinced we are that their theory of Romans 6:1-23 is mistaken, the beauty of their Christian character is ever a shining challenge to us. Along with them we pray the longing prayer, Oh, to be all that God meant me to be While on earth He allows me to stay;
Till in shadowless rapture my Saviour I see, In the land that is fairer than day!