To me it seems straightforward. Instead of spelling out in detail what rules you should follow in a new situation—say, if the authorities who Paul just got done telling you to obey order you to do something ‘wrong’—this passage gives the general principle that supposedly underlies the rules. That way you can apply it to your particular situation and it’ll tell you all you need to do as a Christian. Paul does seem to think that in his time and place, love requires following a lot of odd rules. But by my reading this only matters if you plan to travel back in time (or if you personally plan to judge the dead).
But I gather that a lot of Christians disagree with me. I don’t know if I understand the objection—possibly they’d argue that we lack the ability to see how the rules follow from loving one’s neighbor, and thus we should expect God to personally spell out every rule-change. (So why tell us that this principle underlies them all?)
Using exegesis (meaning I’m not asking what it says in Greek or how else it might be translated, and I don’t think I need to worry much about cultural norms at the time). But that doesn’t tell you much.
To me it seems straightforward. Instead of spelling out in detail what rules you should follow in a new situation—say, if the authorities who Paul just got done telling you to obey order you to do something ‘wrong’—this passage gives the general principle that supposedly underlies the rules. That way you can apply it to your particular situation and it’ll tell you all you need to do as a Christian.
Yes, I agree. Also, if you didn’t know what love said to do in your situation, the rules would be helpful in figuring it out.
Paul does seem to think that in his time and place, love requires following a lot of odd rules.
That gets into a broader way of understanding the Bible. I don’t know enough about the time and place to talk much about this.
But I gather that a lot of Christians disagree with me. I don’t know if I understand the objection—possibly they’d argue that we lack the ability to see how the rules follow from loving one’s neighbor, and thus we should expect God to personally spell out every rule-change. (So why tell us that this principle underlies them all?)
The objection I can think of is that people might want to argue in favor of being able to do whatever they want, even if it doesn’t follow from God’s commands, and not listen even to God’s explicit prohibitions. Hence, as a general principle, it’s better to obey the rules because more people who object to them (since the New Testament already massively reduces legalism anyway) will be trying to get away with violating the spirit of the rules than will be actually correct in believing that the spirit of the rules is best obeyed by violating the letter of them. Another point would be that if an omniscient being gives you a heuristic, and you are not omniscient, you’d probably do better to follow it than to disregard it.
Given that the context has changed, seems to me omniscience should only matter if God wants to prevent people other than the original audience from misusing or misapplying the rules. (Obviously we’d also need to assume God supplied the rules in the first place!)
Now this does seem like a fairly reasonable assumption, but doesn’t it create a lot of problems for you? If we go that route then it no longer suffices to show or assume that each rule made sense in historical context. Now you need to believe that no possible change would produce better results when we take all time periods into account.
How do you interpret Romans 13:8-10?
To me it seems straightforward. Instead of spelling out in detail what rules you should follow in a new situation—say, if the authorities who Paul just got done telling you to obey order you to do something ‘wrong’—this passage gives the general principle that supposedly underlies the rules. That way you can apply it to your particular situation and it’ll tell you all you need to do as a Christian. Paul does seem to think that in his time and place, love requires following a lot of odd rules. But by my reading this only matters if you plan to travel back in time (or if you personally plan to judge the dead).
But I gather that a lot of Christians disagree with me. I don’t know if I understand the objection—possibly they’d argue that we lack the ability to see how the rules follow from loving one’s neighbor, and thus we should expect God to personally spell out every rule-change. (So why tell us that this principle underlies them all?)
Using exegesis (meaning I’m not asking what it says in Greek or how else it might be translated, and I don’t think I need to worry much about cultural norms at the time). But that doesn’t tell you much.
Yes, I agree. Also, if you didn’t know what love said to do in your situation, the rules would be helpful in figuring it out.
That gets into a broader way of understanding the Bible. I don’t know enough about the time and place to talk much about this.
The objection I can think of is that people might want to argue in favor of being able to do whatever they want, even if it doesn’t follow from God’s commands, and not listen even to God’s explicit prohibitions. Hence, as a general principle, it’s better to obey the rules because more people who object to them (since the New Testament already massively reduces legalism anyway) will be trying to get away with violating the spirit of the rules than will be actually correct in believing that the spirit of the rules is best obeyed by violating the letter of them. Another point would be that if an omniscient being gives you a heuristic, and you are not omniscient, you’d probably do better to follow it than to disregard it.
Given that the context has changed, seems to me omniscience should only matter if God wants to prevent people other than the original audience from misusing or misapplying the rules. (Obviously we’d also need to assume God supplied the rules in the first place!)
Now this does seem like a fairly reasonable assumption, but doesn’t it create a lot of problems for you? If we go that route then it no longer suffices to show or assume that each rule made sense in historical context. Now you need to believe that no possible change would produce better results when we take all time periods into account.