Peter, Paul, and Prosopopeia
Introduction
As it says in 2 Peter 3:15-16, “Consider the patient salvation of our Master, as our dear brother Paul writes to you in the wisdom he was given. He writes about all these things, talking about them in his letters. Some of it is hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist as they do with the other Writings, to their own destruction.” No greater understatement could be made, because misinterpretation is the greatest source of error next to mistranslation.
Prosopopeia (also called diatribe) is one of many literary devices used in scripture, and it’s defined as follows:
- personification, as of inanimate things
- a figure of speech in which an imaginary, absent, or deceased person is represented as speaking or acting
In order to recognize when and where this is used, we need to examine each context, which includes the larger context of topic and writer. We will test this approach by critically examining an excerpt of a huge book called The Deliverance of God by Douglas Campbell.
Paul, the misunderstood apostle
Paul’s habit in his letters was to preface the antagonist (he being the protagonist) with words such as, “One of you will say…” (Rom. 9:19), or by simply asking questions which he immediately counters (Rom. 6:1-2). So the question is whether he ever used diatribe or prosopopeia without such a preface, and it can have a significant effect on our interpretation of his words. We will begin with an overview of his letter to the believers in Rome.
Notice the chiastic form of the entire letter, and of portions within it. The section covered by the article is in point [D 1:18-8:11], and we see that Paul is laying groundwork as he moves toward his central point starting in chapter 9. So to take anything up to that as his conclusion is unwarranted, with or without considering it a diatribe. He draws on Old Testament people and events with his eventual central point in mind, but we must use caution in reaching premature conclusions. Now let’s examine the excerpt linked earlier.
- Da, 1:18–32 Non-Jews (opposing teacher or antagonist)
- Db, 2:1–3:8 Jews (both, back and forth)
- Dc, 3:9–26 Both groups (Paul, or protagonist)
- Dd, 3:27–5:5 Faith and law (both, back and forth)
Is the section on Gentiles really the antagonist? Certainly Paul accepted the fact of history and scripture that the Gentiles had worshiped the creation rather than the Creator, so we can’t say that every statement attributed to the antagonist must be false. That’s a crucial point, because we’ll see that Mr. Campbell considers everything the antagonist says to be against what Paul says.
Notice footnote 2 at the end of the second paragraph under “The opposing teacher's introduction of theme”: It implies that Paul was not condemning sexual perversion! If Mr. Campbell were consistent, he’d have to also say Paul did not agree that the Gentiles had worshiped false gods either. And that would make Paul a liar, as well as a rebel against God’s natural order as stated at the end of Genesis 2. This is a blatant twisting of Paul’s words, because it actually assigns error to the fact that the Gentiles “know God's decree” but violate it.
The truth is that Paul is establishing the situation which necessitated Jesus sacrificing himself. The clincher is that chapter 2, erroneously called his rebuttal, begins with therefore. Mr. Campbell has split Paul’s own argument to make him a liar and rebel against God. All this time Paul has presented the case that the world deserves God’s wrath against the Gentiles, but now he points his finger at the Jews who were thinking they were vastly superior to the Gentiles. That’s what the “therefore” is there for.
But the scatterbrained splitting continues in verse 6, where Mr. Campbell breaks into the middle of the sentence, “when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed, who will repay according to each one’s deeds.” Footnote 3 tries to conceal this by saying Paul wasn’t really talking about God’s wrath against us, but the wrath we bring upon ourselves, and that we won’t be held accountable for our actions in this life. Yet this same Paul stated this as a fact in 2 Cor. 5:10. Even Christians will be judged for our deeds, so how much more the unbelievers? Their judgment is stated clearly in Rev. 20:12.
Paul goes on through vs. 13 to show what he states in all his writings about the purpose and limitation of the law, so again this is not the speech of the antagonist, but his own point on his way to showing why Jesus came. You can see in the First Dialog how Paul’s questions from a hypothetical person aren’t necessarily antagonistic. Then skipping down to “the core of Paul’s argument”, we see backing for this lesson’s argument all along: that Paul is establishing the purpose and fault of the law, which necessitated Jesus coming to fulfil it on their behalf. He could not have made this case by being in opposition to those supporting statements, which Mr. Campbell attributes to error.
Under Reflections Mr. Campbell seems to argue that since the Bible contains statements of errors believed by others, then we can’t say “the Bible in its entirety contains an unchanging and eternal truth.” This is nothing short of undermining the inspiration of scripture. It goes on to anthropomorphize or allegorize scripture in general, which means it can be understood any way a person chooses, so just about any belief can be said to be Biblical.
What Jesus and Paul and the other NT writers did was to say what’s summarized in both Acts 17:30 and Heb. 1:1-2: that God has changed his dealings with mankind at times over the centuries. But Mr. Campbell turns them into contradictions, which can only be resolved by allegorizing the Bible and turning any teaching he doesn’t like into a diatribe.
The second paragraph states, “If Campbell’s thesis is correct, obviously this means that our misreading of Paul’s text of Romans has been colossal for almost twenty centuries.” Of course, there are indeed some teachings that clearly twist the scriptures, but such twists have to be established by scripture itself, rather than by assigning any unpleasant words to diatribe or allegory.
Conclusion
There can be no agreement between this allegorical approach and the literal approach. Bible study is impossible among people holding these opposing hermeneutics. So while prosopopeia or diatribe is a real thing, and Paul sometimes uses it, I believe Mr. Campbell is grossly misapplying it and causing Paul, and all of scripture, to contradict itself, which he covers over by allegorization. There’s simply too much in scripture to sweep away in regards to the wrath of God against evil, which is why Jesus needed to come in the first place. If you take one away, you take the other.
There may be a thousand little steps between an error and its implications, but we must discern and study the scriptures carefully for that very reason.