As he began the section titled “Addicted to Control,” in Unpunishable, Danny Silk said: “The progression of human behavior we see in Genesis 3-6 is exactly what Paul describes in detail in Romans 1.” After an extended quote from Romans 1, he said: “This passage gets right to the heart of what is wrong with us and how we’ve ended up in the state we’re in.” He correctly said the passage got right to the heart of what is wrong with us and how we ended up in the state we’re in. But I do not agree that it gives us the point of origin for the core belief of his punishment paradigm. It seems he made an interpretive leap and read the punishment paradigm into the text, again making Unpunishable biblically unpalatable.
Rather than applying proper exegesis as he interprets Scripture, Danny Silk has repeatedly imputed his sense of the punishment paradigm onto the texts he examined. As a result, he often missed what Scripture was really saying. This was true with how he presented the text in Genesis about Adam and Eve and the consequences of the Fall, and continues to be true here with Romans 1. It is one thing to conceive of a belief system such as the punishment paradigm, but it quite another to say (as Silk does on page 66) that the central mission of the Biblical story was to free humanity from it: “The full arc of the story of the Bible shows us that God’s entire mission in human history is to set us free from the punishment paradigm and lead us into a completely new, punishment-free relational paradigm with Him, ourselves, and others.”
Does the full arc of the biblical story show us how God’s mission in human history was to set us free of the punishment paradigm? Let’s first be clear of what Silk means by the punishment paradigm. On page 38 of Unpunishable, Silk presented the following description of the punishment paradigm:
| The Punishment Paradigm | |
| Core Belief | My flaws and failures make me unworthy of love, belonging, and connection. I deserve disconnection and punishment. So does everyone else with flaws and failures. |
| Motive | Fear of punishment/disconnection |
| Behavior Strategies | 1.Avoid punishment—either by hiding and fitting in through ‘pleasing, perfecting, and performing,’ or by refusing to fit in by rebelling and making my own rules.
2.Punish others when they scare, hurt, or offend me. |
| Goal | Self-preservation |
In the punishment paradigm, the person is aware their flaws and failures make them unworthy of love, belonging and connection. This awareness leads to a fear of punishment or disconnection and to behavioral strategies of avoiding punishment and punishing others. The goal of these strategies is said to be self-preservation. This sense of the punishment paradigm was seen in Silk’s discussion of Romans 1:28, where he said our unwillingness to honor God’s worth and our attempt to place other things, including ourselves, in that place of supreme value introduced shame, “the painful belief in our own unworthiness.”
The idea of feeling shame also suggests an awareness that the person’s rejection of the true knowledge of God makes them unworthy of love, belonging and connection and deserving of punishment. But there is nothing in the text of Romans 1:28 to indicate this awareness. Other texts in the passage support this lack of awareness. Rather, it is the opposite of what Silk suggested—they are not aware. God gave them up to a debased mind since they did not see fit to acknowledge Him. Because of their unrighteousness, they suppressed the plain truth God revealed to them. They became futile in their thinking and their hearts were darkened (Romans 1:18-19, 21-22, 28).
According to Robert Mounce in his commentary on Romans, the “worthless mind-set,” indicates our ability to think about moral issues is undermined. “Turning from the light of revelation disqualifies a person to think correctly about the issues of life.” Douglas Moo, in his commentary on Romans indicated that when God gives someone over to a worthless mind-set, they are disqualified from being able to understand and acknowledge the will of God.
Paul stresses that people who have turned from God are fundamentally unable to think and decide correctly about God and his will. This tragic incapacity is the explanation for the apparently inexplicable failure of people to comprehend, let alone practice, biblical ethical principles. Only the work of the Spirit in “renewing the mind [nous]” (Rom. 12:2) can overcome this deep-seated blindness and perversity.
This inability is suggestive of Augustine’s discussion of the fourfold state of the Christian life in The Enchiridion (see Part 2), where he said after the Fall we were not able not to sin (non posse non peccare). If as Moo suggested, a debased or worthless mind-set makes people unable to comprehend, let alone practice, biblical ethical principles, how could they recognize their flaws and failures? How would they be able to see they deserved disconnection and punishment? How could they feel shame for behaviors they were not aware of as wrong?
This is a troubling reinterpretation of the redemptive-historical storyline of the Bible. Silk seems to substitute his personal belief system, namely the punishment paradigm, for the biblical theological center of God’s redemptive plan in salvation history. There is an organizing principle to the Biblical story, but it is not centered around God’s intent to set us free from the punishment paradigm. Rather, it is centered around the redemptive plan of God: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. This is the big picture, the grand narrative, the full arc of the story of the Bible. This is what centers the Biblical story.
When Silk said the “full arc” of the biblical story, that “God’s entire mission in human history” is to free humanity from the punishment paradigm and lead humanity into “a completely new, punishment-free creational paradigm with Him,” he was submitting the theological belief system of his punishment paradigm as the biblical-theological perspective that describes the unfolding of God’s purposes in salvation history. On page 73 he said from the very beginning God was after the hearts of His people. He wants to bring them out of their old slavery mindset into “the relational culture He wants to establish with them.” Yet as the biblical story unfolds, God’s people repeatedly fail to make the internal shift from “the fear of punishment to the fear of God.”
According to the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, “Biblical theology is principally concerned with the overall theological message of the whole Bible.” It seeks to understand the parts as they relate to the whole canon of Scripture. Biblical theology maintains a conscious focus on Jesus Christ. Both the Old and New Testaments are read as being about Jesus and “God’s faithfulness, wisdom and purpose in the progress of salvation history.” It is an approach that describes the ‘world views’ and literary shapes of the Bible. In biblical theology, it is important to be sure your interpretation corresponds to the communicative intention of the text. “Otherwise interpreters will describe not the theology of the text but only their own agendas and ideologies.”
Biblical theology emphasizes the progressive nature of biblical revelation in Scripture from Genesis through Revelation. It approaches the Bible as a story that develops and unfolds as it progresses through each book of the Bible. “It notices developing concepts, patterns of thought, and symbols or imagery that begin perhaps with some suggestive significance but are later filled with deeper significance.” In his pursuit of a biblical foundation for his punishment paradigm, Silk sees evidence for its core belief in Romans 1, where he should notice signs of Paul’s discussion of the continuing effects of original sin.
In a brief YouTube video, “What Every Christian Know About Biblical Theology?”, Greg Beale, a professor of New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, said the first thing a Christian should know about biblical theology is that it is “the organic development of biblical supernatural revelation from the beginning of the canon to the end.” In other words, there is a storyline of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration—new creation and ultimately consummation of the new creation. “The whole Bible is unified by that storyline.” This unification rests on the assertion that there is ultimately one divine Author behind the story.
In Part 1 of this article, we saw where Silk’s reinterpretation distorted the redemptive-historical sense of the Fall. In Part 2 we noted how Silk disregarded the biblical theological significance of avon described by Tim Mackie of the Bible Project in his video—the same one Silk cited and quoted from in Unpunishable. In Romans 1 he inserted the punishment paradigm and made the passage about transforming what he called the core belief of the punishment paradigm rather than our need for a Savior because of original sin and rebellion in the Fall (Romans 7:15 ff).
In order to illustrate this error, rephrase Silk’s above-quoted statement about the full arc of the Biblical story and make it about original sin instead of the core belief of the punishment paradigm. “The full arc of the story of the Bible shows us that God’s entire mission in human history is to set us free from original sin and lead us into a completely new, sin-free relational paradigm with Him, ourselves, and others.” The rephrased statement does capture the biblical theological center of God’s plan in salvation history—our redemption from original sin, not the punishment paradigm.
There are many different resources available if you want to do further study on biblical theology. But let me point you to one the Gospel Coalition presents titled, “What is Biblical Theology?” This course is based on a book by James Hamilton by that same name, and uses Hamilton’s book as the course textbook. If you follow the link to the Gospel Coalition website, you will find three sermons by James Hamilton, “The Bible’s Big Story,” “The Bible’s Symbolic Universe,” and “The Bible’s Love Story.” The sermons can be listened to for free, and there are additional resources available to you on biblical theology without requiring you to purchase Hamilton’s book.
Read other sections of this article, “Unpunishable is Unpalatable” here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 4.
