Spare the Rod... Please!

Once you build up this, this brittle foundation of it’s all perfect and all true and all inspired, any problem with it just. Just brings the whole thing crumbling down. It is a house of cards and you just kind of have to ignore that you already have taken cards out and just hope that it stays together. Hey, everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Things are good. It was, it was. It was Thanksgiving. I gave some thanks for us. It’s been a minute for the, for the listeners and viewers since Thanksgiving. But, but you and I just had our Thanksgiving and it was. I had a lovely time.

I had a lovely time as well. We’ll talk about this in our, in our after party, but.

Yeah, well, we’ll hear the, the travails of the McClellan family in the land of the magic mouse.

Yes. And what a, what a land it is.

It is one for sure. It’s. It’s actually several lands.

Of all the lands, it is definitely one of them. Yeah, actually, you’re right. It is several of them. So.

But for, for the, for those of you who aren’t our patrons, we’re just gonna have to dive into some, some Bible stuff. So first we are going to do a, we’re going to take issue with. With something in. In the Bible. We’ll, we’re within our segment Taking Issue. We’re going to be talking a little bit about. It’s a, you know what the whole show is about punishment. We’re just talking about punishment sort of as a concept. We’ll, we’ll keep it in the family for the first part and, and then go sort of a wider view of punishment.

There’s some within the family stuff that’s part of the reason there’s a punishment in the second one. But we’ll get.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that’s true.

All right. Well, with all of that mystery, let’s dive into Taking Issue. So we’re going to take issue with something. It’s. It’s a pretty common thing. You know, it’s funny because when we were talking about this, you said, hey, there’s this thing in Proverbs. Do you want to look at that? And I was like, sure. And it was. And you said, it’s about the, you know, the, the hitting of children or whatever. And I said, is that the spare the rod, spoil the child thing. And you said, well, that’s a. That’s not the actual biblical phrase. It does have the phrase spare the rod. The thing that freaked me out when I actually got to Proverbs.

What is it, 13? 13:24. Yeah.

Is that. It sounds worse than spare the rod, spoil the child. It’s like way. It’s like way harsher than that.

So let’s talk about those who spare the rod, hate their children.

Yeah. And. And just to kind — fill in the blanks for the people who are like, what’s this spare the rod, spoil the child thing? That’s the, the idiom that everybody has heard, which does not come from Proverbs. It’s obviously inspired by Proverbs, but that actually comes from a poem that was published between 1663 and 1678 called Hudibras by a. A gentleman named Samuel Butler. And it is a. It is a satirical poem written in a mock heroic style. And a lot of people who quote the spare the rod, spoil the child part are probably not aware of the context because it’s actually one line of, of four lines that are talking about how to spice up a problematic sex life where it says, what medicine else can. Can cure the fits of lovers when they lose their wits? Love is a boy by poets styled and spare the rod and spoil the child.

And, and the idea here seems to be drawing from the Proverbs thing. He spares the rod, hates his child. In other words, beat your kids vigorously. But here the idea is if, if your love life has. Has gotten a little lackluster, maybe try spanking.

Do you, do you own a whip? Do you have a writing crop somewhere?

Yes. Flagellation is the key. Yeah. So it’s. Yes. It’s a rather interesting context for people to pull that. One of those sayings that people are like, well, I think I know what it means. And then it’s like, well, if you look at where it comes from, you don’t know what it means. Yeah, like, like the, the, the doofus who keeps saying vox populi, vox dei. Voice of the people is the voice of God. Which, if you go look at the earliest Latin context, the person who’s saying it is basically saying, only idiots say the voice of the people is the voice of God.

Not unlike, not unlike the idea of pulling oneself up by their bootstraps.

Right, right.

Which is also. Gotta do that.

You gotta do that.

Which is also an impossibility that you’re. It’s it’s making fun of the whole concept. It’s not actually meant. It wasn’t. This happens a lot.

Yes. It would be ironic if we understood ironic by the sense that Alanis Morissette used in her song Ironic.

Ironically, non-ironic. All right, let’s. Let us then reel ourselves back.

Yeah. To Proverbs, if we must.

I was. I was going through some of the chapters surrounding this chapter. This. I found this chapter intensely hard to read as well as the chapters previous because it’s just these one-liners and it just hits you with them. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. There’s no like, narrative line or, or structure or anything. It is just.

Nope. You know, it’s just aphorism after aphorism after.

Eventually your brain starts to turn into oatmeal and your eyes cross and it doesn’t really work anymore. So.

Especially if you have ADHD like me. Like me.

Not unlike me, though.

Like we do. And you. I struggled to pay attention, but I. Yeah, the. The chapter opens. Chapter 13 of Proverbs opens with. It’s kind of a bookend, actually. It opens with. A wise child loves discipline, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke. So that’s that part. It feels like, okay, we’re going to have a whole chapter about disciplining one’s child, and then we don’t.

Right.

Have a whole chapter about that. And then at the very end, we come back to the idea of disciplining children.

Yes. And the. The whole verse, and this is from the NRSVUE reads, “Those who spare the rod hate their children.” And in the Hebrew, it’s actually in the singular. He who or the. The sparer of his rod hates or is a hater of his son is. Is literally what it says. And those who love them are diligent to discipline them. And discipline here very clearly has reference to beating them with a stick, which is problematic.

When I was looking at different people talking about these verses, there was a lot of variance on how people were interpreting them. What that word rod in the original Hebrew actually meant, how it was used. Like, everyone. Everyone wants to get as far away from this verse as they possibly can.

Most. Most people do. Most people.

I guess not everybody. That’s true. We’ll get to some.

Yeah. But yeah, there I. I have a chapter in my. In my forthcoming book, The Bible Says So, out April 29, 2025. Pre-order.

Now there’s a link to pre-order in the show notes. You can just click the link in the show notes to pre-order the book. It’s so easy.

We’ve made it so efficient, so easy for you. And. But I, I, in the chapter on this, I was like, I wonder who has, who’s out there going, let’s beat our kids? Because I was, I was like, somebody’s got to be saying this. And it did not take long. It did not take long for me to find some people. But of the many different people saying this, I picked a tweet from John Piper, who is not just famous, but infamous as even more than famous. Then, yes, he’s not just famous, but on Twitter a few years ago, quoted Proverbs 13:24 and then said, “Spanking is not abuse, it is love.” And John Piper’s own son is, is someone I follow on social media who.

Yeah, me too.

Quite a clever dude. I think he would probably disagree with his dad about what spanking your kid is. But.

Well, and the thing is that, like, even that is a toned down version of messaging that has been around for centuries. Yeah, because absolutely. Spanking is one thing. This is, this isn’t talking about spanking. This is talking about getting a physical rod, getting a weapon and hitting your child with it.

Yes, a rod of discipline.

Or is it.

Or is it. Yes, this. Because I think this is a sign of, of some maturation in our society where we have a lot of people who recognize that this is dumb and, and harmful and just a pretty dirt bag thing to do. And so we have a lot of people now who are trying to renegotiate their understanding of the text and arguing that when you look at the word shevet in Hebrew, in the Hebrew Bible, it is frequently used to refer to a shepherd’s staff, which is used not to wail on your sheep, but to gently guide and correct.

Is much nicer and, and much closer to what modern psychology would tell you is an okay way to raise your child.

Yes. And it is, it is very well meaning and it is an effective means of trying to renegotiate what we want this text to mean. But it’s wrong. It is like, demonstrably not the case.

Okay, fine.

Sorry to throw cold water on that argument. I’ve had to do that a handful of times on social media, but it is true that the word shevet can be used to refer to a shepherd’s staff. It can also be used to refer to a threshing stick. Stick that you would use to thresh wheat and things like that. It can be used to refer to a spear that is used in battle. Whether or not this refers to the bo staff of Ninja Turtle fame, we don’t know for sure. That’s still up in the air.

But I would have to ask Michelangelo. I don’t remember which one uses the bo staff.

And I’m. I’m gonna get in a lot of trouble because I don’t remember if it is Michelangelo.

Everyone has to give me nerd points for that one. And. And take a couple away from Dan.

I’m almost positive it’s not Michelangelo. I think it’s Donatello. But I’m. I could. I could text Rob Paulsen and ask him, because he was. He was the voice of two different Ninja Turtles. And. And by the way, he has a. A blurb on the back of my book too, so. Perfect. So he’s going to be mad at me as well.

That’s why. That’s why we have to include as many Ninja Turtle references as we can in the show.

Yes. Pizza dudes got 30 seconds. And it can also be used to refer to a cane used for corporal punishment by a slave master, a parent, or even God. And. Oh, shoot.

Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah, God. God. In. In Spanish, at least when I was in Uruguay, they would say bajar la cana, which means to lower the cane, which is what you do when your donkey or mule or whatever is not moving you. So, yes, God is known to bajar la cana from time to time. But when you look in Proverbs, the word shevet occurs a grand total of eight times, seven other times, in addition to our one occurrence in Proverbs 13:24 . And unfortunately, every single occurrence is explicitly a rod of discipline. You have Proverbs 10:13 . On the lips of one who has understanding, wisdom is found. But a shevet is for the back of one who lacks sense. Wow. So very clearly, this is about striking someone with this stick. Proverbs 22:8 . Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of anger will fall.

So another clear example of that. Proverbs 22:15 . Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far away. So beat the. The. The whimsy and the mischief and. And the creativity right out of your kids.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely not. We will not be having any, any shenanigans. Thank you.

Yeah, you want that far far away. Proverbs 26:3 . A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey, and a shevet for the back of fools. Proverbs 29:15 . The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a mother is disgraced by a neglected child. And then here are the two most explicit ones. One verse right after the other in Proverbs 23 , verses 13 and 14. Do not withhold discipline from your child. If you beat them with a rod, they will not die. If you beat them with the rod, you will save their lives from Sheol.

That is every occurrence of the word shevet in the book of Proverbs .

And save their lives from Sheol. I mean Sheol is a, the concept of hell.

Right?

That’s what we’re saying.

Not in the Hebrew Bible. Sheol was just the, the abode of the dead. But the idea here is, is death. The idea being that bad behavior leads to an early death. Something like that. And so by beating their, their whimsy and their, their childlike innocence out of them, you are lengthening their life so they will not, they will not die because, you know, they stole money from the wrong guy or something like that.

So it’s an intense. What, I guess what I’m, what I’m getting at is that like they’re, they’re not, they’re not going lightly with this. That is heavy handed. They’re, they’re saying this is the most important thing. You absolutely have to beat your kid.

Yeah, yeah.

Especially if they’re dumb.

Yeah. You want, just beat the dumb out of them.

Just beat the dumb out of them is what they’re saying.

Give them some, give them some, some wisdom welts. And yeah, this is, they weren’t shy about this. This, this wasn’t like, you know, the 20 or 30 years ago where it was a, you know, you gotta, sometimes, you know, it, this was like, oh yeah, beat the crap out of them. They’re not gonna die. And this is supposed to be, you know, Proverbs is wisdom literature. This is supposed to be words to live by. This is supposed to be, you know, follow these aphorisms and, and this stuff and you know, you’ll live a wise and an influential life. This is the How to Win Friends and Influence People of the, the fifth or the fourth centuries BCE and, and they are heartily two thumbs up for beating your child with a stick.

Yeah, yeah. And, and specifically with a stick. Don’t. Don’t waste your. Don’t. Like, you can hurt your knuckles. You don’t want to. You got to be careful with your.

You’re going to need Tommy John’s if. If you’re using your hand too much. Yeah, it is. It’s pretty gross. And it’s. It’s a part of the Bible that, as we’ve pointed out, some people are trying to domesticate, some people are trying to rehabilitate. But this is. These verses are always going to fall back into recidivism. Like, these verses cannot be rehabilitated. They are all in on beating your kids.

And we just have. You just have to say Bible got it way wrong here. The.

Whether you think this was King Solomon writing this or somebody else, by the way, it wasn’t King Solomon writing this. They just straight up got it wrong.

Yeah. I think. And I think a lot of people really struggle with that, you know, especially if they’ve been taught concepts of univocality, concepts of infallibility.

Right.

Biblical.

Like, it’s.

It’s hard to square that sort of thing. But I, I want to remind people that they’ve already done that. Like, you’ve already. You’ve already concluded that slavery is wrong. You know what I mean? Like, we’ve all concluded that. And that’s. That is going explicitly against things that are very much in the Bible.

And so it’s okay to also go explicitly against this part of the Bible.

And, and so many people want to have it both ways. There’s so much cognitive dissonance among folks who are like, slavery bad. I’ve just gotta ignore that the Bible says slavery is good. Right. And then because. Because of the implications, as the great poet once said, because of the implication.

That’s an Always Sunny reference. Is that what.

That’s an Always Sunny. Yeah, yeah. A bad one. But also got to reject those ideals as well, because once any part of the Bible can be wrong, any part of the Bible can be wrong.

Right.

And so the implication is that the Bible is not a sufficient, infallible, inerrant, historical, univocal, authoritative guide for life, spiritual or temporal or anything in between. It. Once, once you build up this. This brittle foundation of it’s all perfect and all true and all inspired, any problem with it just. Just brings the whole thing crumbling down. It is a house of cards. And you just kind of have to ignore that you already have taken cards out and just hope that it’s. It stays together.

So. Yeah. Very problematic.

I think that it’s interesting. I think, like, I realized as I was sort of researching for this episode that it may not be immediately obvious to some of our listeners why we’re saying that it’s that these, that these verses should be categorically thrown out and not just, and you know, not just like John Piper says, taken to mean spanking is not a problem, spanking is okay. Or whatever.

So I did, so I saw, I started to dig into some of the, the research and we have well over 50 years of good psychological research about what is good for children psychologically in terms of discipline, in terms of how, how we, how children are corrected, etc, and what is like detrimental, deleterious to their mental health, to their like psychological well-being.

Going forward throughout life. Because you know, as you raise a child, obviously you’re building the, the brain infrastructure for the rest of their lives. And it’s very clear like they, There is like literally no doubt that any amount of hitting your child is harmful.

Like it doesn’t matter if it’s open hand on the bum. I mean, and I was spanked as a kid and like, my parents were very kind, good people like this, this, it’s understandable that, you know, things, more social ideas are going to change over time. And, and that’s not a bad thing. That’s a good thing. But, but yeah, I mean, so it’s so funny, you hear all these people of my generation, your generation, saying, you know, I was spanked as a child and I turned out great.

You hit children. You did not turn out great.

Yeah. So I mean, it’s like, I feel like I turned out well. And I don’t, and in the moment, I don’t think that the spanking felt like it did that much harm to me. It. I, you know, as I was when I was very little and I was spanked, I would cry.

Right.

But it didn’t feel like deep trauma. And yet, you know, there are, there are studies that I read one study that was, or read about a study that was done by some Harvard psychologists who did FMRI scans of children and as they looked at images of different faces and they looked at kids who had been spanked and kids who hadn’t been spanked. And strangely, the kids who had been spanked and had very, very similar responses as kids who had been like harshly beaten. So it does, you know, it basically causes fear neural pathways instead of nurturing, nurtured neural pathways. It’s, it’s genuinely bad.

Yeah. And one, one of the things that it does that you know that the. The subject is not really conscious of, is it. It changes your neural pathways when it comes to threats.

Like you respond differently to threats if you’ve had a history of that. I actually cite a few things in. In the footnotes in this chapter in my book. There’s an interesting one. Physical Punishment and Child Outcomes, A Narrative Review of Prospective Studies from the Lancet just a couple years ago by Anja Heilmann. There’s Corporal Punishment and Elevated Neural Response to Threats in Children by Jorge Cuartas, et al. From a couple years ago. Well, journal as well. A journal called Child Development, like it is. Yeah. There’s no debate it’s harmful. There are no positive outcomes.

And we have better alternatives now.

Yeah. Yeah. Much better alternatives. So despite what the Bible says, and it says it quite explicitly, and it says it quite emphatically in multiple places in. In multiple different ways and in multiple different places. And yes, is. Is very excited about it as well. Please don’t lay your hands on your kids. Yeah. It’s not a good thing, irrespective of what the Bible says. The Bible is wrong.

If your hand. If your household has a rod of anger, maybe that should go away. Yeah, we don’t. Maybe don’t have that rod.

Get a fishing rod.

And take your kids to the creek, for crying out loud, to the river. Take them up into the mountains. Yeah.

Get some sheep.

And then get a shepherd’s rod if you want to, but no, no.

Hitting a little crook. Yeah, a little shepherd’s crook. Teach him how to. How to. How to raise some sheep, by the way. You do not swaddle them and put them in a manger.

I’m gonna swaddle a sheep, damn it. I’m gonna do it, despite what you hear.

And don’t anoint them with oil, because that’s not gonna help either.

Well, all right. That was. That was a little depressing, that. That whole thing, beating children is not a fun topic. So let’s move on to a really interesting chapter and verse. So we’re starting this ch. Chapter and verse in First Corinthians, chapter 5. Am I right about that?

Yep. Johnny 5 still alive. Drive 55 arrive alive.

Just. Just. Just nonsense. 90s references pour out of you in. In amazing ways. Actually, Johnny 5 is probably 80s. Huh?

Is it? That’s probably. That’s probably 80s. I don’t know. There was a sequel, wasn’t there?

don’t know. There was a sequel, wasn’t there? Who knows? What. What. Anyway, 1 Corinthians 5 has what we’re not going to be talking about because there’s a lot about. It’s like the heading, the subheading or the, the chapter heading in the NRSVUE says sexual immorality defiles the church. But that’s not the point that we’re most interested in. No, I think as we talk about this, what we’re interested in is a moment where. And this is. Is this Paul? Is that who we’re talking about?

This is Paul. Yeah.

And Paul is writing and he says he starts with, oh, you naughty Corinthians. You guys have somebody among you who is living. A man is living with his father’s wife.

Are we meant to believe that the father is dead now or.

No, I, I think what we’re probably meant to understand is that this is the dude’s stepmother. So there’s a whole genre of this kind of thing.

On certain websites that exist on the internet, you might find some stepmom stuff. Don’t look it up, Mom. Don’t look it up if you’re watching.

But so, and just some background, like Paul is writing this. These letters are, these are epistles, letters that Paul is writing where he’s gone through. He’s been on his mission trip, he’s established a church. He’s like, all right, guys, you got it from here. And then he gets a letter months or years later and they’re like, dear Paul, we’ve been having an issue with so-and-so. And so he’s writing back and he’s like, we talked about this. And then he’s giving them some advice and everything. And here he actually mentions that he had written a previous letter to the Corinthians and we don’t have it. So there’s a, there’s a.

So this is actually second Corinthians.

Well, yeah, you could say there’s a zeroth Corinthians if you were a moron like me. But there was an earlier letter and he’s getting something back. And they’re evidently talking about some dude who is living with his stepmother. And in this time period, you would have second marriages if a man divorced his wife or his wife died or something like that. Second marriages, as with a lot of folks today, the second marriage is to a woman who’s much younger. And so there would be a lot more age proximity between stepmothers and the oldest child in first-century Rome. And so shenanigans with stepmothers were probably not all that uncommon. And you know, stepmothers become like they’re the classic villain of Disney movies and all kinds of fairy tales. The step, excuse me, the stepmother is the villain. So we’re dealing in

pretty common tropes here, but evidently Paul is particularly upset with them because they’re kind of proud of it or something.

Yeah, it’s tricky. He says, and you are arrogant. Should you not rather have mourned so that he who has done this would have been removed from among you? He’s very. He’s very upset. Yeah, they seem to be saying it doesn’t matter or something. Anyway, he does not like their reaction to this whole situation.

And this is right out of Leviticus 18:8 is the one of the “thou shalt nots.” It’s “thou shalt not engage in shenanigans with your father’s wife.” Yeah. And in this period, a lot of people think, oh, everything went back in first-century Rome or an earlier Greek society. But no, there were laws against this kind of incest in this time period. And so Paul recognizes that even the Romans think that this is out of pocket. So Paul’s like, what is wrong with y’all? Didn’t, I thought I raised you better. You know, I avoided the hitting. But he goes on, “For I, though absent in body, am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing.”

“When you are assembled and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus.” And so basically saying, look, next time you guys meet, you are to hand this man over to Satan for the.

Yeah, that’s a crazy thing. It’s not, make sure that this guy gives himself over to God. He says, you guys hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Yeah, but it’s what he says next that’s fascinating.

Because Satan is apparently going to destroy his flesh so that the spirit may be saved in the day of our Lord, or the day of the Lord, rather.

Yeah. We got a couple of different ways to read this because some texts say Lord Jesus, and some. Actually, I’m gonna look up which those are.

We’re going to the book.

We’re going to the book. I’m pulling out my. My Nestle-Aland 28th edition to pull this up and see what. What we’ve got here. So at the end of verse five, we’ve got Kyriou the genitive of Kyrios. And yeah, so P61, Sinaiticus, a handful of others read Jesus or add Jesus. So Lord Jesus, some add Lord Jesus Christ, some add our Lord Jesus Christ. So yeah, a bunch of different readings.

And those are, those are just all the things that you just said, those lists of like numbers and letters.

Yeah, those are manuscripts, or various ancient.

Versions of this, that, that we have at least fragments of or something.

Yeah, yeah, but that’s just an interesting text critical question. But ultimately the point is what the hell is going on here?

Right? Yeah, it does sound like a description of the afterlife question mark that I have not heard.

Yeah, because. Well there, there are a couple different ways to, to read both clauses. Well at least a couple. There, there are multiple different ways. Hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Like Satan wasn’t just around like, I’ll kill anybody you want. Just hand them over and I’ll kill them. So there are scholars and I think if you look at, there’s an old Hermeneia commentary series on First Corinthians from the 70s where I think he says this obviously refers to death these days. I think more scholars would suggest that probably doesn’t seem to be in view. They, they had no authority to execute anybody. And the last thing Paul was going to do would be to engage in extrajudicial capital punishment. So it seems to be we’re going to kick him out from the protective shell of the Christian community. Like he’s no longer going to be a part of the body of Christ. And so he’s going to be under the influence of Satan out there in the, the wild and woolly world, whatever woolly means.

And that is I think definitely an 80s reference. Bull Durham was from the 80s. Good, that was a deep cut. But uh, the, a lot of scholars today would suggest the idea seems to be he’s going to be subjected to the buffetings of Satan, at least his, his flesh, his body will. And this reveals kind of the, the dualism, the Platonic dualism that Paul seems to be promoting where the fleshly existence is the baser, corrupt one. And then spiritual existence. Your, your divine spirit is the higher one. And you know, the two happen to be together in life. But ideally you want to transcend the flesh and return to the spirit. And so maybe the idea is the buffeting of, of Satan and the punishment of the flesh results in either it results in your purification like refiner’s fire.

This purifies your spirit. You undergo these punishments, and then you’ve paid your debt to God and then you are saved. That the Spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Maybe that’s what it is. There are other scholars who suggest by being subjected to the buffetings of Satan, they’re going to repent and come back to the fold. And, and in that way, the Spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. And that brings up the question what it means for the Spirit to be saved in the day of the Lord. Because as a lot of scholars have pointed out, Paul does not say his spirit. Paul just says the Spirit.

Right.

And does that mean the man’s spirit? Does it mean the congregation’s spirit? There’s this notion that, that the church has a spirit that is governing and guiding it. And so is it about ensuring that you have purged the community of this leaven? Because Paul talks about in the very next verse, your boasting is not a good thing. Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all of the dough? And so the idea may be, you know, talking about another, another saying that a lot of people get wrong, a bad apple. A lot of people say, oh, he’s just a bad apple, no big deal. Well, what does the bad apple saying mean?

Right.

Bad apple ruins the bunch.

Which is the same as a little leaven. A little yeast leavens all the dough. In other words, if you keep this corrupt influence within the body of the Church, you’re going to corrupt the entire body of the Church. And so the idea is purge him, you know, pop him like a zit so that the Church. The body of the church and its spirit is able to be saved. I don’t know which one it is. Scholars are still arguing over this, but one of I, I think the reading that, that certainly seems to make sense is that this, in some sense, this has to do with this man’s own salvation.

Which feels like you just did a magic thing.

Yeah. Or I just made it up. But yeah, it’s. It’s a word that actually occurs in the Book of Acts , but it means the restoration. Usually it’s. It’s used to refer to restoration of all things. The idea, and, and we have some early Christians who talk about this, is that ultimately the goal of, of all of this is that everyone be saved. And so you have Christians like Origen and, and others. Origen’s probably the most influential Christian theo. Theologian of the first five centuries, well, probably up to Augustine, but was ultimately branded a heretic and condemned, as will happen.

Sure, sure. I mean, yeah, obviously you’re not going to throw away the insights. You’re just gonna.

Right.

Hang the guy as a heretic. That’s.

Well, it was long after his death, actually. It was, it was a posthumous hanging, condemning. Yeah, we figuratively hang thee until thou art dead. And. But yeah, he advocated for in some sense a brand of universalism. And some people think Paul is doing the same. He talks about the restoration of all things elsewhere, he talks about all being saved in Christ. And so for some folks, this is just another reference to this idea that even if someone is handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, the ultimate end of that process is that the Spirit is saved.

Yeah. I gotta say, when I read it, my initial impulse was was that what it was saying was it was almost. So initially my brain said this is posthumous. After this guy is dead, he is going to be handed over. And there’s, I’m not saying that this is correct, but this is where my brain went. Yeah, after he was dead, he, he would be handed over to Satan. His flesh would be destroyed by Satan. And that seemed in my mind and I love this interpretation. It’s, it’s not correct, but I, I think it’s so much better than the hell that. Or than the concepts of hell that I’ve heard before. But like the idea that Satan has a job, that job isn’t eternal conscious torment. It’s destruction of the bad parts, the corrupt parts of the self, so that the spirit can then go on and be, and be exalted in some way.

That’s how I read it.

Yeah. You, you might say that he is the, he’s the cancer treatment. If sin is the cancer, he is, he’s the treatment that, yeah, sure, it makes you lose your hair, but hopefully it gets rid of everything and then you get to go on and, and be saved in the end.

Satan is chemo. I like it. Yeah. I mean it just, it does seem like the idea, like I just love the idea that this guy is bad, that this, that his, his behavior is abominable and we need to do whatever the work is for him to be saved.

Yeah. And, and, and Paul never seems to like the, the only part of the Pauline epistles that makes any kind of plausible reference to any notion of hell is something that is in Second Thessalonians, I think, which a lot of scholars don’t even believe was written by Paul, where it just talks about eternal destruction and which, which could mean a couple of different things. You’re destroyed and it’s permanent, like annihilationism.

Right?

Boom, that’s the end. That’s the—you just don’t exist anymore. Right. Or it could mean a lot of, a lot of people who think that we already have uniformly eternal conscious torment represented throughout the New Testament will say, no, it means this process of destruction that lasts forever. But I don’t think that’s supported by anything. Paul never uses any of the three words for hell anywhere. And so whether it’s Gehenna, Tartarus or Hades, they never occur in any of Paul’s writings. And, and so a lot of people think, well, he’s, he has no concept of postmortem divine punishment. If he does, it seems to be annihilationism anyway. And so, yeah, some, some people just want to lean into universalism. And, and we, we have within some of the Gnostic literature an idea that the punishment that you undergo is actually intended to be an education and a purification so that ultimately you have the knowledge that is saving so that you achieve salvation.

So there are streams of tradition within Gnosticism that are universalist as well.

It’s, I think it’s also worth mentioning that at no point in this story does Paul say, call him to repentance, make give him X, Y, and give this sinner X, Y, and Z work. It’s not saying any of that. It’s just saying you guys need to shut. Like it does say shun him. It says sort of like, you know, you need. We need to socially shame this and, and kick it out from among us. But it’s not, it’s. It’s. It. At no place does it say he needs to do X. It just says, you guys kick him out, leave him to Satan. Satan will destroy his flesh. And then, and then his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

Yeah. And, and Paul goes on verses 9 through 13, I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons. And then he gives kind of a caveat that I think is funny. Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world. He’s basically, don’t associate with sexually immoral people. I don’t mean all the, all the. The Gentiles that are around you, you gotta. You kind of gotta deal with them. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy or an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler. Do not even eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging those outside? Meaning outside the. The church? I’m not judging the Gentiles. Are you not the judges of those who are inside? God will judge those outside. Drive out the wicked person from among you. So his concern seems to be for the reputation of the church.

And for the. What he perceives to be the spiritual health of the church. Basically saying, hey, you guys, you’re functioning as a group and you need to pop this guy like a pimple and get him out of there. Get him out from underneath your skin, because otherwise you know that the. That yeast is gonna leaven the. The whole lump.

It also, like it’s. It’s also very important to point out that when. That this is. So what we have is a chapter in which sexual immorality is explicitly judged as being really bad. And the only example given has nothing to do with homosexuality. It is. It is explicitly a heterosexual, but just naughty relationship and an unsanctioned relationship.

Yeah. And he refers to it. So the NRSVUE uses this word sexual immorality to translate the Greek word porneia, which is where we get the word porn from. And it. In the oldest, most widespread usage, it primarily referred to sex work or to adultery, which were kind of the two prototypes of inappropriate sexual activity in the ancient world. And then as it was used more and more, it. The gaps were kind of filled in with any. Any other sexual activity that was considered unseemly by a given social group. So a. A lot of people want to know, does. Does the Bible say anything explicitly about sex before marriage? And the answer is not directly, but probably an awful lot of them thought that porneia was an umbrella term that included sex before marriage as long as the social group considered that to be an inappropriate sexual activity.

And. And Paul was one who thought everybody should be celibate anyway, so. Right. Paul was.

It’s all porneia to him.

Yeah. Yes, it’s. It’s all porneia to. To him. And who. Oh, shoot, I can’t remember the name of the Supreme Court justice.

Who knows it when he sees it.

Yeah. Who knows it when he sees it.

I actually cited that Supreme Court case in a paper once. Where I was t. I was talking about why you can’t define conceptual categories. But that’s a classic, classic example of that. But Paul knows it when he sees it. And it’s everything basically.

And it’s. Does it involve sex then it’s porneia.

Porneia, porneia, porneia. But that is. Yeah, it is a, a glimpse into at least one of the examples of something that he condemns as porneia. And it is something that is explicitly condemned in Leviticus 18:8 . So he’s well within the, the Jewish sexual ethic when he’s talking about problems with, with stepmother stuff.

So there you go. I, Yeah, I, in order to sort of do some research for this segment, I actually went back and listened to a, an. An older episode of a very good show that I, that I listen to sometimes called Data Over Dogma where I went and listened to one of our, one of our, our episode from over a year ago about hell because I wanted. Because it’s. This seems to present like you say it. It. There’s a possibility here that we have. I mean what. One of the things that we discussed in that episode was just that there are so many different conceptualizations of what the afterlife looks like, whether there is punishment for the wicked, etc.

Yeah yeah. There was, there was no single authoritative concept. Everybody was basically, you know, I always, and I go back to Talladega Nights, I think of Jesus as.

Wearing one of them tuxedo T-shirts or a.

Baby and he’s got this eagle with these big old wings and. But like everybody’s just sharing their own opinion.

And it just. The accident of preservation. What gets, what gets into the Bible, what doesn’t. And then later literature that my, my 15-year-old, I was driving her to school this morning was talking about how they were reading Dante’s Inferno at school and I was like really? I didn’t get to read that when I was in high school. But. And she was like that dude was messed up. But that, you know, that kind of literature is what solidifies a lot of that kind of stuff is what creates these consensus views that then become go from de facto doctrine to de jure doctrine. Because yeah, if you take the Bible at its word, it has a ton of different, often self-contradictory things to say about how God punishes the wicked after death. And, and this is a good example of a rather confusing thing that Paul says about what goes on with, with people who mess around with their stepmoms.

Yeah. All right. Well, there you go. Don’t look up stepmom porn. Unless you want to. But I think. Yeah, fascinating stuff. Uh, I love it. I think that that’s good. Don’t hit your kids. Also.

Stepmoms don’t spank. No spanking.

You can spank your step unless it’s consensual. Wait a minute. I don’t. Okay, you’re great. You know what? You’re all going to have to sort yourselves out. We’ll talk. We’ll figure it all out in the afterparty. And you guys can come along to that if you want to. You can become a patron of this show over on Patreon.com/dataoverdogma, thereby gaining access to an early and ad-free version of every episode of the show. Plus, at the $10 a month level or higher, you can. You can. You can hear the afterparty, which is us having a bunch of fun. If you guys would like to write into us, you can do so at contact@dataoverdogma.com. And we’ll talk to you again next week.

Bye, everybody.

Spare the Rod... Please!

Segments

The Transcript

Scripture Index

Terminology