Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture
Ep. 274 Nijay Gupta - Love at the Heart of Paul's Theology
When we think of the Apostle Paul, we often picture a stern, unyielding figure - the finger-wagging scold, laying down the law for the early Christian communities. But my guest today, Nijay Gupta, is here to shatter that perception and reveal the beating heart at the center of Paul's theology. In Nijay's new book, "The Affections of Christ Jesus," he makes a captivating case that what truly animates Paul's writings is an overwhelming, spilling-over affection - a profound, personal love that should reorient our entire understanding of the gospel message. As we dive into this conversation, Nijay makes the case that the dominant theological frameworks we've used to interpret Paul's work - the camps of justification by faith, the apocalyptic Paul, salvation history are missing something. He argues that what's been missing is a central focus on love, on the emotional, relational dimension that lies at the core of Paul's vision. And Nijay doesn't stop there. He also brings in the insights of Augustine, the great theologian of love, exploring how our deepest loves - not just our intellectual beliefs - are what truly shape the trajectory of our lives. So join me as we explore the affections that lie at the center of Paul's writings - the love that should be the starting point, not the afterthought, of our theology.
Nijay Gupta (DPhil, University of Durham) has written several academic books including Paul and the Language of Faith, and Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church. He has co-edited The State of New Testament Studies, and The State of Pauline Studies. Nijay co-chairs the Pauline Theology seminar of the Institute for Biblical Research and serves as a senior translator for the New Living Translation.
Nijay's Book:
The Affections of Christ Jesus
Nijay's Recommendation:
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Because Christ has so much affection, and it just spills over. It's like a blender with no lid, and it's just flying everywhere, and it's hitting me, and now I'm loving and I have affection. We're not used to thinking of Paul that way. We're used to thinking of him as wagging his finger. Do you want me to bring a rod of discipline when I come to see you, you better shape up, but that's not who he is.
Joshua Johnson:Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, when we think of the apostle Paul, we often picture a stern, unyielding figure, the finger wagging scold laying down the law for the early Christian communities. But my guest today, NIJ Gupta is here to shatter that perception and reveal the beating heart at the center of Paul's theology in DJs new book the affections of Christ Jesus, he makes a captivating case that what truly animates Paul's writings is an overwhelming spilling over affection, a profound personal love that should orient our entire understanding of the gospel as we dive into this conversation, nijay makes the case that the dominant theological frameworks we've used to interpret Paul's work, the camps of justification by faith, the apocalyptic Paul salvation history, are missing something. He argues that what's been missing is a central focus on love, on the emotional, relational dimension that lies at the core of Paul's vision. And nej doesn't stop there. He also brings in insights of Augustine, the great theologian of love, exploring how our deepest loves, not just our intellectual beliefs, are what truly shaped the trajectory of our lives. It's a rich, nuanced discussion that asks us to rethink some of our most fundamental assumptions about Paul and the Christian faith. Nijay has a gift for making complex theological ideas come alive, and I think you're going to find this conversation both thought provoking and deeply relevant to the way we understand the heart of the gospel. So join me as we explore the affections that lie at the center of Paul's writings, the love that should be the starting point, not the afterthought of our theology. Here's my conversation with knee. Jay Gupta, knee, Jay, welcome back to shifting culture. You're on for the third time. It's always a pleasure to have you.
Nijay Gupta:It's always a good sign when you're invited back. So thank you.
Joshua Johnson:Yeah, no problem. I think I will continue to invite you back as well. Today we're gonna dive into your new book, the affections of Christ. So you're looking at love through the theology of Paul. So the question is, what has been the predominant thought and thinking around the theology of Paul up to now, and why this book around love. Yeah,
Nijay Gupta:thank you. This is one of those things where it's kind of a no brainer to have a book on Love by Paul because of how often he talks about it, literally in every letter throughout the letter, beginning, middle and end. And yet we have this weird phenomenon where I remember, when I was pitching this book to the publisher, erdmans, I said, no one's really written on this in over 100 years. And it seems bizarre, but it really is sort of how theological conversations have developed. So if we're talking about the two or three biggest camps, you know you have Martin Luther and the notion of justification by faith. And that makes sense, because faith is used a whole lot in Paul's letters, perhaps as often as love. Maybe they're kind of neck and neck, but often, you know, often the if I'm going to use a focal image, the focal image of justification by faith is the law court, you know. And you have that old, you know, when I was a high schooler, someone would share the gospel of me and say, you know, you're like, at final judgment, there's a judge, but then the judge takes off his robe, and he comes and stands by you and says, I'll take your place. You know that whole thing, but, but the focal images is of justification, is innocence versus guilt. And so that ends up framing how you look at all of Paul as sort of, if I'm being reductive here, getting off the hook. I want to get off the hook for my sins. How do I do that? Another camp that's really popular is the apocalyptic Paul, so that these are scholars like Ernest caseman And to some degree, Karl Barth, but then today, barely given to Douglas Campbell, a variety of others, and what they're arguing is justification can seem very individualistic, and actually, Paul was more like an apocalyptic Prophet who's proclaiming the defeat over evil, sin and death, Satan, the cosmic powers, the anti God forces. It's this huge theater of war, this cosmic scope, and it's trampling on the head of Satan, all this stuff. And I would say the image is. Conquest, right? I think of the great Wesleyan hymn. You know, the dungeon filled with light I walk, I rose, walked forth and followed the this idea that we've been liberated like prisoners of war. We've been liberated from captivity, justification by faith, theologically true, liberated redemption from the powers. Theologically true. I'd say a third camp would be like salvation history, where we look at the Bible as an unfolding story, and the climax is what's being fulfilled in Jesus. You think of John Calvin. You think of some reformed theologians who emphasized this in the 20th century, ritterboss and so forth. And the idea there is fulfillment, and the image is a story that's unfolding and finally comes to a climax. And then if I were put a last one, I'd say union with Christ. And this is Schweitzer. This is Michael Gorman today, who's one of my favorite scholars. He also wrote the forward for the book. And I think every scholar agrees with union with Christ because of how often Paul says, quote, unquote, in Christ, right? The question is, what does it mean? There is a famous question that that EP Sanders asked, which is, what is real participation in Christ? And he meant by that, where does Paul get this language from? What are the inspirations, the influences. And the reality is we don't know. Is it mystical union? Is it this inexplicable dying and rising with Christ? Is it a family image? Is a covenant image? You know? Take your pick. So those have always been the categories I've worked with as I've talked about Pauline theology. But to be honest. I think what's missing is something that should be really, really obvious, that for Paul his faith, his religion, is a personal relationship based on love. Now, having said that, when you look at the major Pauline theologies, the big, huge ones. James DG Don's theology of Paul the Apostles, like 900 pages, and he writes Paul in the faithfulness of God, 1600 pages. You have all the you know. You have Douglas Moo, you have others. They'll sprinkle little things about love here and there. But usually love language in appalling theology comes at the very end in a little section called ethics. Okay, what do we have to do? Because we're supposed to, because we're Christians, and what I want to say Joshua is actually it has to go at the beginning of the conversation. It's actually the first thing that we should say. And it doesn't belong in this category called ethics. It belongs this category called Who is God? Who are we? Why we're created? Who is Christ? What you know? Who is the spirit? How does the Trinity work? It actually should belong in all areas of Pauline theology, New Testament theology, biblical theology, the gospel and theology. There you go. That's it in a nutshell. All right, we're done. Perfect, yeah, that's it. Shortest, shortest episode ever, perfect.
Joshua Johnson:It does remind me, as you walk through the different theologies and what people are focusing on, reminds me of the, I think, three predominant worldviews, of guilt, innocence, honor, shame, power, fear. So you're getting in, you know, the the guilt, innocence part about being a judge, the power fear of you know, there this is a war of cosmos. Yeah? Who wins? Yeah, there comes out on 10s. And I think union in Christ could go into some of this honor, shame. We're actually in a new family. We're adopted sons, as it says in Ephesians, like there's, there's union in Christ, right? That's the honor, shame piece. And I think this love goes through all of these world views, and it shouldn't just focus on one aspect. So how does that that work with Paul? How does, how does Paul actually, then weave love throughout to make it his like, predominant way of entering the discourse of who Jesus is and what we are about as followers of Jesus?
Nijay Gupta:That's a big question, and it's the right question, and it requires a whole book to go through it, or multiple books, but I will say a few things about that, and we can kind of go back and forth as we think about this. First of all, one of the reasons why I think this theme is so neglected in Pauline studies or New Testament theology or biblical theology, is I refer to as hiding in plain sight. Sometimes the terms in Christianity, we use the most mean the least to us because we overuse them. So you call a church Grace Church, or Grace chapel, as a tribute to the word grace, but because you use that word so often, I'll see you at Grace. Hey, make sure you show up at Grace. We'd like to hire you at Grace. You might kind of, you know, it just wears out. And so I think that happens with the language of love. I was translating through Ephesians For the book. It's one of the last chapters in the book, and he throws in the word love so often it's hard to know what it actually means, because it almost seems like. Like the way we pray. Sometimes we're like Dear lord. I just pray Dear Lord, that You would Dear Lord. And we just throw Dear lord in there as almost like a vocal filler. It feels like Paul is doing that with language of love. I don't think he's doing that. I think it's all intentional. But when you're a translator, translating, you're trying to figure out is, this means manner, instrument, causation, like, what is going on? Paul? So I think it's it's there so much, it sort of blends into the background, and we lose sight of it. But let me tell you, kind of get to the heart of what do I think is going on? I read St Augustine's confessions when I was in seminary for the first time. I read it in seminary about 2025, years ago, I didn't quite understand it. It felt like something that Catholics and reformed people care about, and I'm kind of Wesleyan, and I read it, and it was fine, and I wasn't, you know, it's one of those things where you read a great book and you just weren't ready to read it. And then I started kind of getting interested in his work again over the last five to 10 years. And Augustine is known as the theologian of love. And I kind of got reintroduced to Augustine through Jamie Smith. I don't know. Have you interviewed Jamie before? Not
Unknown:yet. I would love to talk. Not yet. I know. Oh, Joshua, you're
Nijay Gupta:missing out. You are missing out. He is. It's so funny when I think about people like Jamie Smith, and I'm not knocking him because I admire him, but I'm just saying this happens to a lot of scholars, where what we're basically doing with our new work is just it, reintroducing people to great theologians from the past. I feel like half of my work is just, you know, ripping off Dietrich, Bonhoeffer or or Augustine or others. Okay, so Augustine. Augustine had this theory, and I didn't know this 25 years ago because I didn't read him too carefully, but I know it now he had this theory. And the more I think about the more I process my own midlife crisis. I'm in my 40s. I'm prime to get my motorcycle and my leather jacket. The more I the more I think about this, the more it resonates with me. I start out the book with this quote, and actually the introduction is kind of a tribute. My introduction is kind of tribute to Gus and he says, when we ask whether someone is a good man, we're not asking what he believes or hopes, but what he loves. This is really important, because I think what Jamie often talks about Jamie Smith, is that we've been trained to be brains on a stick, meaning we think of ourselves in terms of what we think or what we believe, and that ultimately we act out of ration, we act out of logic. And the reality is we don't, we don't do those things. Why am I 30 pounds overweight? Why am I, you know? Why do I watch Netflix instead of do chores, like, you know, that sort of thing. And what Augustine is pointing out is you can read all you want. You can watch infomercials all you want. You can watch how to videos, YouTube, all you want. But your life isn't going to change unless you point your loves at the right things, your heart at the right things. And, you know, it sounds kind of logical, but that's just not the way we've been trained through the enlightenment, through our educational system. My daughter's in college, and, you know, I'm sure the professors are doing what they can, but the basic college system in America is focused with intellectual knowledge. And the reality is Augustine was right. We have to be really thinking about what we yearn for, what we want, to make sure those things are pointed in the right direction. I'll give you a life example, then you can come back at me with with your thoughts on that about seven, eight years ago, I like tell time now based on the pandemic. So this is before the pandemic. Six, seven years ago, I went to the ER with what I thought was a heart attack, and it turns out my heart checked out fine. It was a severe anxiety attack. Nothing had happened in particular I could think of, but just, you know, a lot of things building up, and a lot of little things. And secular hospital, secular physicians, and they said, you know, we're going to recommend you to a biofeedback therapist. And I went to a biofeedback therapist, and she said, Have you ever thought of meditation? And I'm like, I'm a Christian. I should know these things. But the point of that was, we're not brains on a stick. The problems we have in life or the fulfillment satisfaction we have in life are such a web of our thoughts, our feelings, our heart, our experiences. I really wanna apply that to Paul. We gotta stop thinking of Paul as a thinker, as merely a thinker, or merely a theologian or merely a writer. We have to think about him as someone I love this quote from Michael Gorman, someone so Michael Gorman says this in his one of his books, he says, Paul was nothing if not overwhelmed by the love of God. What if that was the starting point for how we think about our lives, how we think about Paul, how we think about. The Bible, how to think about Jesus, how we think about God. So, I mean, if I had to sum up my book, I'm basically saying, I think Augustine is right, and I think this is the best way to read Paul, because
Joshua Johnson:Paul had this, this encounter with Jesus that is overwhelming. Yeah, it's hard not to say that his starting point would be someone who is overwhelmed with the love of God, like, yeah, yeah, I have this encounter. And I think that's that is the difference, I think, between being a head on a stick and actually being motivated by your love, I think, is encountering the love of of Christ, the affections of Christ, like, if I encounter His love, and I encounter him as a relationship, as a personal relationship with him. I can be motivated out of that. I think Paul was, but you're right. I think that most people talk about Paul and his books in an intellectual, rationalized manner, right? So how do we reorient so our church is parking in Ephesians For the year. Yesterday we went Ephesians one, like, four through 10, like, that's We just parked in that a lot of like, in Christ, through Christ, yeah, all these prepositions that are in and through and not with. So tell me what, what Paul's thinking about, especially when you talk about the those prepositions, what is love? I know that's big. We'll get into some of that because misconceptions. But what is it in instead of with Christ, or like Christ beside us, but we're in Christ like there's a and what does that love have to do with the in and the through?
Nijay Gupta:What is real participation in Christ? That's what you're asking. You know, I think, I think we can kind of do a broad target, Paul, Paul, in First Corinthians, talks about being in Adam, so we could start there. What does that mean? And he's talking about kind of this old humanity, this broken humanity. He can also talk about casting off the old man, the Palaios Anthropos, the old person, Crucifying the flesh, that sort of thing. The way I like to explain it is when you think of the old stamps, where you have kind of a stamp model, and then you put an ink and you stamp it, if that, if that model is broken in any way, if it's been corrupted, if it's, you know, misshapen, then every time you stamp it, it's, it's going to stamp something broken, it's going to look wrong. And so Paul views the point of our lives as rejecting the old stamp, form the old image, and conforming to the image of the sun, we're being reset into that image. So I think is in Christ. Language has to do with being in Christ, participating in Christ, but mostly being formed in Christ. What does that mean that's in a dynamic living relationship? I wrote a book called Paul language of faith for that reason, of thinking about what it means to be in Christ in that way. But I also think of Colossians, where he talks about being hidden in Christ, that idea, and that comes back to things like family. My kids are hidden in me in the sense that I care for them. I take care of them. You know, it's interesting when we go to the airport, TSA is so careful about checking my identity and making sure I'm the right person. But if my kids are minors, two of them are minors. They don't need ID. They don't care who they are. They don't even know if they're related to me. They kind of have to just assume. And then they say, Who do you go with? And then they say, I go with this guy. What's his name, that sort of thing. So their identity is dependent on me. They have no they have no verifiable identity, except they're with me. So the whole time when the airport, especially when they were little, I'm like, You need to stay by my side, because I'm your ticket out of here, literally. And I think Paul's thinking kind of in those terms. And the reality he believes is that we will be doomed to be misshapen, in Adam, in the flesh, in our polio Anthropos or old man or old person, if we stick with the old ways. But if we stick with the if we go the new way in Christ, then we're going to conform to the proper image. And what that means for someone like Augustine is we're going to love ourselves rightly. We're going to love Christ and God rightly. We're going to love our neighbor rightly. We're going to love our friends rightly, and we're gonna love strangers and enemies rightly. And so we often think of salvation as just, I gotta get myself into heaven, you know, any way I can. And Paul's way of thinking it, of it is I can create so much chaos and damage not being a healthy person. You. Uh, not being a rightly oriented person, not loving the right things in the right ways. If I get those things aligned, if I get aligned rightly with Christ, then the output of my love is going to be fully effective, and I'll be able to love myself well and love others well, and that sort of thing. There's actually salvation is actually a means to an end, and the end is that we become true humans that love ourselves, our neighbors and our enemies and God rightly in
Joshua Johnson:the culture that we're in at the at the moment in 2025 in the United States of America, some Christians are talking about love is there's a wrong sense of what love is. Right both sides, people are arguing against each other. No, love is weak and yeah, yeah, do that or love needs to be. You know, it's tough love. You have to make sure that people are following the law and the letter of the law, and that is love. What does Paul say that love is? And I know that it's hard to get a definition of love, and I think, yes, I think it's for this reason. I think it's because God is love, and we can't put God in a box. And so if God is the essence of love, we can't really put love in a box, but we can try to orient to ourselves around this concept. What is it? What is Paul saying it is, and how does that reorient us as as culture of how we view love?
Nijay Gupta:Great, great question. Someone asked me this on Friday last week, and I, I've prepared notes and things. I never prepare a definition of love. It's, it seems like the most obvious question to ask, but the problem is, when you've studied this for 567, 1020, years, you have trouble actually deciding how you're going to say it, because it's one of those things where you know, can you define what the kingdom of God is? And what I like to say is, Jesus never tells us what the kingdom of God is. He only tells us what it's like. And Paul never tells us what love is. He only tells us what it's like. So Joshua, I'm going to tell you what it's like. I mean, the easy place to go would be first, Corinthians, 13. I'm not going to do that, because everybody's been to a wedding has heard. Who's been to wedding has heard has heard that. But what I will say is, for Paul, the example par excellence is Galatians 220 I've been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, and life I live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. This is the closest I think Paul gets to a definition of love is giving oneself over to and for a person, as the Old Testament very clearly lays out, it's human nature to love yourself. And what does that mean? I'm very protective of my own well being. I lock my doors. I turn on the alarm at night, I lock my car when I go into work or go into a restaurant, I'm very productive of my own well being. And then what does Leviticus say? Love your neighbor as yourself, as as you take take care of your neighbor, look after your neighbor, be considerate of your neighbor, show kindness your neighbor as you naturally do yourself. We all know how to love ourselves, right? We know that. So then what's it mean for our neighbor? So for Paul, the ultimate act of that is we're going to sacrifice whatever for our own well being. But are we willing to sacrifice for another's well being? Anyone that's a parent, rational parent, caring parent, knows what that means, right? Lost sleep, lost money, so much, lost money for our kids, but it's all worth it. Let me give you an example I just I thought about recently, as I told you my my friend last week asked me about it. Paul says in Philippians, two, four, look, not to your own interest, but to the interests of others. Now the verb here for look is cappe Oh, which means literally, to look at, to put your to put your eyes on. And he's not saying physically look. He's saying pay attention to so he's saying pay attention not just to your own interests, but the interests of others. So think about this way. Imagine, you know, I had this experience once where I lit a match, but I had my finger on the match when I lit it, so it actually started burning my finger. And I was freaking out, and I called the hospital and all that. And put it nice. You know, when you burn your finger, your first reaction is, I gotta save my finger. I don't want to have scars, third degree burns. Whatever it is, okay? Imagine, you know, you're sitting by candle. Your Sleeve catches on fire. You're not you don't feel it yet, but you see it. You're gonna put it out right away, because you're worried it's gonna hurt you, right? You're worried it's gonna get to just naturally. Okay. You come home from work, your apartment buildings on fire, and. Hasn't gotten to your apartment yet, you're gonna call right fire department, because you know it's gonna affect you at some point. Okay, think about this way. We're so quick to protect ourselves. What happens when you see something happening to someone else? Do you say, I gotta fix that problem? I gotta help that person? Or do you say, not my problem? That's going to tell you about what you love, because that instinct, I don't have time for this. I don't care, not my problem. We don't say that to our kids. We don't say that to ourselves. That tells us something about love. Now, you can't love everybody all of the time in the exact same way. But I think what's really clarifying is what Paul says in Philippians two. Look, pay attention, to put your mind on when you're thinking of somebody you know days later and you text them and say, you know, oh, you know, I heard you were, you know, had a doctor's appointment. You're worried about a tumor or a cyst. How did that go? Like, that's love, isn't it? Because what you're doing is you're like, I'm worried about you, I'm concerned about you, I care about you. That's love. It's not, it doesn't have to be. It's going to look differently for different people. Some people cry a lot, some people don't. Some people are very ocean. Some people aren't. But all of us know, have our own way of expressing care and concern we all do. And then the question is, where do we where do we choose to extend that? And where do we make a decision this person doesn't deserve love that gets dangerous, that gets that gets into what you're saying about some of the patterns we're seeing in modern culture today, that
Joshua Johnson:is definitely dangerous. And then, you know, love is just for us and our own, and it's not for others and the stranger, the orphan, the widow, whatever it is that our love is not for them, and that's that's a dangerous territory to get into. Yeah, one of the things you do talk about in your book, or you write about in your book, is the emotionality of love and Paul's use of emotions. And I think a lot of people, when they think of Paul, they don't think of an emotional person, right? They think of no this hat on a stick, very deep theological things, but not these emotions. So how do emotions play into love? Especially through Paul?
Nijay Gupta:Again, we could spend hours upon hours talking about this, but I want to mention a couple things. One is, we'll come back to theory. Well, let me give you an example. We'll come back to theory. So the title of the book is one of my favorite. I love book titles. I spend so many hours and hours thinking about book titles, and what are the best book titles I could have for my books. I'm really proud of this one, because this came out of me doing some commentary work on Philippians, and just translating through Philippians from Greek. And Paul says the Philippians, he's in prison, and they're struggling as well where they are. He says to them, I long for you with the affections of Christ, Jesus, chapter one, something seven or nine. And what struck me about that is he could have just said, I miss you full stop, because that's what we would do. We would just say, I haven't seen you in a while. I'm kind of lonely. I miss you. That's I'd say to my kids. That's what I'd say to my wife, that's why I say to my friends. But he says this weird thing where he says, I long for you, or I yearn for you with the affections of Christ. Jesus, what a weird thing to say, especially when you know the word affections in Greek means bowels. So the bowels were seen as the seed of emotion. We say, like heart palpitations, right? When I saw that person, my heart skipped a beat, they would say my gut shook. So when Jesus has compassion over Israel, it says his gut shook. Literally, it says his gut shook. And we translate that as he had compassion, which is a fair translation. So that's really interesting, because he's connecting something very emotional and visceral to Christ, Jesus, and the way I imagine it is, Christ is this endless factory of affection and love and compassion and tenderness and mercy Paul talks about the second Corinthians chapter one, when he says, Hey, we're experiencing all this affliction, but whenever we experience affliction, through and because of Christ, we gain comfort encouragement, also through Christ, there's kind of like a transformation or Productivity Process of metabolism that when we experience difficulty suffering, if we're plugged into Christ, if we have a tube connected to Christ, he's going to be an endless production of splash non. Splash non means guts. So Paul's saying I feel this deep way about you because I'm connecting to the guts. Factory of Christ. I mean, how many times have you read Philippians, one and never thought about that? That Paul saying I wouldn't feel this way after I weren't connected to the emotion factory of Christ, the compassion factory of Christ. And it's a really powerful image. I long for you the factions, because Christ has so much affection, and it just spills over. It's like a blender with no lid, and it's just flying everywhere, and it's hitting me, and now I'm loving and I have affection. We're not used to thinking of Paul that way. We're used to thinking of him as wagging his finger. Do you want me to bring a rod of discipline when I come to see you. You better shape up. But that's not who he is. When I think about I'll give you one more thing I'm working on, Second Timothy at the moment. And second Timothy has so much emotion in it. Paul's in prison, and there have been these factions that have been created where there's entire groups of people that are against Christians, that are against Paul. He says, All Christians, all Asian Christians, have turned against me. I mean, that's crazy. He said, All No one came to me at my court defense. No, no one stood up for me. I'm a court defense. He said. He lists off all these people that left him Demas because he loved the world. And he says to Timothy, I need you here. Come sooner rather than later, incredibly vulnerable. He says, In Philippians two about a about Timothy, he's like a son working with a father. When he's with me, nobody cares more about you than him. Nobody cares more about the things of Christ. He says, nobody cares more about the things of Christ. If I'm like Silas reading this, I'll be, I'd be a little hurt. Paul. Paul has a lot of emotion language, a lot. If you counted it up, it would, it would be hundreds upon hundreds of verses. We just screen it out because of the ways we've been taught and, and I'm, you know, I want to be part of a kind of a movement to bring this back. Okay, real quick. On emotion theory, I dip in a little bit into what I what's called appraisal theory of emotion. So I grew up thinking emotions are just things that happen to you, you know, like you're in the your little kid, you're in the car, your older brother is taunting you, and you say, Mom, tell him to stop. He's making me mad. And then what does your parents say? No one can make you mad, you know. But when we say they're making me mad, because we think it's a reaction. And I differentiate between micro emotions and macro emotions. Micro emotions are you step on attack, a Lego, whatever it is, and you're and you're mad, you know, you start cussing up a storm, right? That those are instinctual macro emotions happens all the time, but emotion theorists talk about these macro emotions, where you experience depression for a period of time, months, weeks, months, maybe years. Or you're in a great rhythm at work, and you just are elated for a long period of time because you got your dream job or whatever. Or you just met, you know, boyfriend girlfriend. You just have a wonderful relationship. So this, this theorist, Richard Lazarus. He calls it subjective, well, being, this idea of like you have a your your soul has a radar for how things are going in your life, a long term radar. And you kind of have, where am I at in life? You know, am I up here? Am I down here? And our emotions can are strongly tied to our experiences, on whether things are going the way we want them to or not. So in that sense, I've always wondered why, why do the biblical writers command emotions rejoice? That'd be like, you know you're having a down day, and I just yell in your ear, be happy like you can't. You can't just muster up on nowhere. But ancient moral philosophers have been talking about this for a long time, going all the way back to the Greeks and even before that, and it's not so much they're saying Be happy. They're saying change your perspective in such a way that you realize some of these bad things happen to you actually may have good outcomes. You're actually changing your sense of your appraising, reappraising your sense of your environment, to say, Okay, let's say you're getting on a plane. You're supposed to be sitting with your spouse. There ends up being a shake up. Your spouse gets seated somewhere else. You get seated next to a stranger. Me, I'm like, This is my worst scenario. I don't want to be talking to strangers. But another you know, I could hear my wife saying, this is an opportunity to meet somebody, to practice your, you know, nice conversation skills, you know, that kind of thing. Maybe share the gospel with them, or, you know, whatever it is, brighten their day. That would be an example of reappraisal, where you're saying, Okay, I could grudge it and say, I'm having a bad day. Or again, I can hear the angel, my wife on my shoulder, saying, This could be good for you. You could learn something. Maybe you're helping them not have to sit next to somebody they didn't want to sit next to. So when it comes to love, our natural instinct is to set up our lives where we love certain people and hate other people. That's just the nature of things. And Jesus, it's funny whenever I teach. On Jesus and love, especially with undergraduates or young people. Jesus, when He says, Love your enemies, someone will always bring up, I thought you weren't supposed to have enemies. Why does Jesus say Love your enemies? It's kind of funny. Jesus isn't saying he has enemies. What he's saying is it's just normal human instinct to have enemies. He's not saying you should have them and then you should love them, but it's so it's just funny when people like, why does Jesus say Love your enemy, you shouldn't have enemies. Our natural instinct is to hate our enemies, but that whole example I gave you of your finger on fire, your apartment building, and when we drive by something and say, Not my problem, the gospel is actually saying to us, God could have said that about you. He could have said, You creatures took this in the wrong direction. Not my problem. But Paul remembers, hey, I was a persecutor. I actually tried to kill and did kill Christ's people, and yet he gave himself for me, and then the calling is for us to be ambassadors and ministers of reconciliation, Second Corinthians, because the love of Christ compels us. And so you can't just tell somebody Love your enemy. You have to start with how they see the world, reappraise how they see the world. And maybe my enemy is actually somebody deserving of love. All right, that was a lot. That was a lot to think about.
Joshua Johnson:That was a lot. There's a couple of things. One, how crazy was this, this emotional love language towards God that Paul was saying in Roman culture back in the day? Yeah, that was part
Nijay Gupta:of the stimulus for this book, in some ways, because I wrote the book strange religion, which I know you've read, and in strange religion Larry Hurtado. I was reading some work of Larry Hurtado, who's a New Testament scholar, slash historian of early Christianity, and he pointed out to me, it reminded me that Greco Roman religion didn't really talk about love in a relational affection way. They would sometimes talk about sex, like a god coming in human form to have sex with somebody. Or, you know, there are, you know, sexual cults of that time, but but a loving personal relationship with God that was actually seen as dangerous in the Roman world. It'd be like, going up to your governor and saying, I love you. Can we spend more time together? Like they would put you in the loony bin for that, because that's it's it's a political professional relationship, not a personal friendship relationship. But the crazy thing is, Paul was actually going around from place to place, saying, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life, like, like, as silly as that sounds, you know, Charles Cranfield, a well known New Testament scholar from the 20th century, he said Paul's Gospel could be summed up in four words in Romans, chapter eight, four English words, God is for US. So imagine how beautiful a message it would have been in the ancient world, in the Roman world, where you are afraid of the gods, you want to just leave your sacrifice and say your peace and leave because you're worried you're going to put a toe out of line and you're getting struck with lightning or zapped or get a curse on you, and to have someone say there's one most high God, and He is for you. He's on your team. He wants to make your life rich and beautiful and blessed. What an incredible message in a world where you are absolutely terrified of offending the gods, and to hear Paul say this God, because of his love for you, is patient and not easily offended. That would be, that would be extremely rare message to hear the ancient world. It's
Joshua Johnson:still subversive, counter cultural, and it's it's rare to actually be in and consumed by a love of God. That is for us, that is something that we still don't quite grasp on the whole Yeah, I know, as it's said, but I don't know how many people actually grasp that. I don't know how many people that you know in Ephesians, one, it says that we are adopted sons of God, like we're like brothers of Jesus, like, I don't, I don't know how many people think like that is crazy. I don't know you think about it. That is a crazy notion. It's hard to wrap my head around. But as you were looking through Paul and this his notions of love, did you notice him either shift or change the way he spoke about love throughout his letters, like from the beginning, like the first types of his first letters into the the last letters that he had. Is there any shift or change or or is he pretty consistent in what. Says about love, I
Nijay Gupta:think he's pretty consistent. We can come back to Ephesians. In a moment, I will say something that most readers of Paul don't think about, is Jesus died and rose, you know, in the 30s, 80 or, you know, late, late 20s, early 30s, whatever we say there and then Paul's first letters. Let's say Philippians or, sorry excuse me, first, Thessalonians or Galatians appear in the early 50s. So there's something that scholars call the tunnel period. The tunnel period is from Pentecost, where we have record to Paul's letters. We have 2015, 20 years where we don't know what was going on in that time in terms of writings, you know, and yet, we probably have evidence of some of that in Paul's letters, of things that were generated during that time, but not specifically written by Paul. So take, for example, in Ephesians, where he says, wake up, oh sleeper, let Christ shine on you. I love the idea that he's borrowing this from something from the tunnel period, but we actually have one of these in, probably in First Corinthians, chapter 16, the very end of the letter, where Paul does a very out of character, unusual thing, where he gives a curse statement at the end of a letter. Extremely unusual he does the beginning of Galatians. Extremely unusual at the end of a letter, because it's kind of a bummer way of ending a letter. He says curses anyone who does not love the Lord Jesus. First of all, cursing somebody is really bizarre. It's called a malediction, but he could say anything there, except curse anyone who doesn't have faith curses anyone who, uh, disrespects or doesn't please Jesus. But he uses the word love. Here's the real kicker. His favorite word for love is agape, or the verb agapao. But in that case, he uses filet O, which is the more common Greek word for love, even though, amongst Christians, the more common word is agape. The only reason I can think of why Paul uses filet o there when, throughout the whole 16 chapters of First Corinthians, his preference, his strong preference, is for agape, and it would make sense to use it there in chapter 16. The only reason I can think of is it is reflecting liturgy, some kind of liturgy from that tunnel period. I don't like to speculate about those things because a lot of guesswork, but that one is weird enough that it gives us part of that, but in terms of sort of evolution of his thinking. The only thing I would say, and it's not doesn't really answer your question, is, I came to my own weird new theory about Ephesians. And I know you're doing stuff with Ephesians, so maybe you thought this is interesting. Prior to writing this book, there were two kind of camps that I thought about in terms of who wrote Ephesians, or why Ephesians was written. One camp is there's some weird things in Ephesians household codes. He doesn't mention people's names. So some people think Ephesians was written by someone else, not Paul. After Paul passed away, because some of it sounds like Paul, maybe some of it doesn't. Other people argue strongly. No, it's Paul. He's in prison. He's writing to Ephesians and all this stuff. I have my own weird theory. So let me just get your take on whether you think this is plausible. But if he is in prison, and he's not doing well, you know, prison was not a very friendly place, and he's thinking about his death, and he has some friends around him, and so they may even be saying, Hey, listen, you might not have much gas left in the tank. So this is, this is the time start thinking about legacy. And if he's doing that, not knowing that he actually, actually would go on living and be able to write the pastoral letters and all that, but he's still thinking, Okay, I've done a lot of preaching and teaching in my life, but this could be my last chance at writing something that will go out into the world. So I actually like to think of Ephesians as Paul's greatest hits album. So when you have, like a greatest hits album for you two, or for Coldplay or whatever it is, in one sense artificial, because it's not its own thing. So in some ways, it's not like the artist, because it is artificial, in the sense that they're not generating brand new stuff. On the other hand, it's the most like them because it's exactly, it's exactly their best works, so to speak, Greatest Hits. So what if Ephesians was Paul's greatest hits album? Because you got unity of Jew and Gentile. You have justification and Grace language. You have lots about faith. You have lots about, you know, how the church should be a family. You have lots about growth, you know, all this stuff. If that's the case, and again, there's no way to prove it, but I love this idea. Then it's telling and important that he chooses to focus. So much on love and grace, I mean two words that just stick out like sore thumbs, love and grace, love and grace. So I could just imagine ticket kiss, or whoever, brainstorming with Paul okay, what songs should go on the greatest hits album, what should be the key themes. And I just love the idea that Paul's, you know, as he's talking and just gesturing, gesticulating, his shackles are Clank, clanging and clattering, he just gets excited, like, Okay, we gotta talk about grace. We gotta talk about love, whatever songs we choose. That's gotta be what sticks with people after they after they listen through the whole album, that is telling us something about who Paul is. If we if we ask the question, Paul is a theologian of what? How should we answer that? Jesus Christ, obviously, Apostle of Gentiles, obviously. But the third word I put there is apostle of love.
Joshua Johnson:It's beautiful. My, my, my quick question there with Ephesians, why? Why would people think that he didn't write it if his name is on it? And so do names actually matter? This is for for people when you when you were reading these letters, do names matter at the beginning, like
Nijay Gupta:they do, they do. And I'm going to answer this academically, but let me give you a modern case. This is probably 10 years ago. I got, I get a Facebook message from someone I know, someone I know pretty well, and let's call them Bob. And so I get a Facebook message from Bob. I know Bob very well, and I talked to Bob a lot on the phone, and I get this Facebook message and it says, knee, Jay, how are you? And I immediately know it's not Bob, because Bob would never, ever, ever say knee, Jay, how are you? Bob just gets right to the point. And so this person had their name, they had their picture, but they had cloned the profile, and they were trying to scam people. So sadly, this happened in the ancient world as well. So we actually have forged documents from the ancient world of Paul's name that all scholars agree on are false. We have something called third Corinthians. We have something called the letters of Paul and Seneca, which are completely fabricated. They don't have any connection to Paul. So we know that this was possible. Now the stuff, this is the New Testament. I personally think Paul had something to do with all of it, even if he wasn't the one putting his hand on the paper. Because they used letter secretaries, which are like dictation scribes. They had like help, kind of like writing center, kind of help. So they had that kind of help. They had professional support. They had all this kind of stuff. Scholars have disagreements about this. And so you have far on one side, as people like me saying Paul had something to do with all of his letters. They were all written in his lifetime. And then you have all the way on the other side, people like Bart Ehrman or Neil Elliot are saying seven, perhaps even more, letters are not written by Paul and some of them may even have been written as ways of distorting the Pauline tradition. I think we have to be really careful of sort of the imagination that goes into the skepticism. However, pseudepigraphy is what it's called. It's writing under someone else's name, you know, in an act of deception. Or, yeah, I would say that forgery. It did happen in ancient world. There's a physician named Galen G, A, l, e n or gallon. We have evidence of him trying to clarifying, hey, there's lots of stuff out there in my name, not all of it's true, so be really careful. What, what, what the source is for this stuff.
Joshua Johnson:This is good. This has been fascinating. Need, you have a lot of questions, but we don't have time. No, but what's uh, so what do you hope this book will do for the discourse around Paul and his theology and for the readers?
Nijay Gupta:Yeah, in brief, really two things. One is better understanding what Paul's Gospel actually is. Too often we think of Christianity, or the gospel, as getting saved. We think about it as a transaction. We think about it as I show up at church, or I get baptized. And for Paul, it's a living and transformative relationship with Jesus Christ through the Spirit to the praise of God. It's a relationship based on love, and it begins not with me mustering love, but it begins with the one, the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me, really understanding Christ's scope, oh, his his attentiveness to me, and really understanding that, that's number one. So let's say three things. Number two is really understanding the Augustinian concept that we really have to dig deep into our own lives and figure out, I guess, to talk about the problem of. Having our sin, distorting our loves. I think Paul really understood that, and really trying, as part of our religion, as part of our Christianity, as part of our faith, trying to heal those misdirected, misguided loves, and we do that through Christ. And third, I give a lecture. And I have a chapter in the book I give a lecture on Paul and love of enemy, and it's called what happened in Ned Flanders, this lecture I give. And the idea is, you know, 20, you know, 40 years ago, 4045, years ago, with The Simpsons, the stereotypical white male evangelical was Ned Flanders, maybe a little legalistic, but kind, gracious, nice, helpful. Fast forward 2025 that image has shifted, and I'm not gonna tell you what it shifted to, but just guess who would be the mascot for the white male evangelical and I'm not critiquing evangelicalism as an outsider. They're part of my weird family, so I accept this is a problem I've been a part of and contributed to for a long time. But imagine how that's changed, and we've gotten away from love and kindness being the heart and spirit of our theology, our ministry and our Gospel, what a witness we would have if we change. Oh. What about love? What about justice? What about judgment? Okay, there are moments of truth telling. There are moments of judgment and justice and condemnation, but our resting place is God is for us. We are for God and we are for other humans in this world. We gotta get that right before we can have a renewed reputation in this, in this, in this place.
Joshua Johnson:Amen. Thank you. That was great. I agree. A couple recommendations for us, anything that you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend,
Nijay Gupta:oh, so much. Okay, wild robot. This is a kind of a kids movie. It's a family movie. But gosh, if you ever watched it, watch it and think about it as a meditation on the incarnation. If you've watched it, Joshua, re watch it and think about it as meditation and the Incarnation, that's pretty cool. And reading, I'm reading right now. I just finished reading Beth Barr's new book, The pastor's wife, which actually comes out in March. But you might have gotten a copy of it. I got a girly copy of it, and your name is in it. A lot. My name is in it. She was very nice to consult me on a few things, but it's fantastic. It's some of her best writing. I It's been a while since I read a previous book making big womanhood, but I think this is even better if I if I got to say it's tough to us for sequel to be an original, but I do think this may be a better read for me, even though I love both books. So we'll go with that. Those two things are wild robot. Oh, shrinking. Love shaking. And if you want to tap into your Splunk, non your guts, exactly, don't watch it with your kids, because it's got a lot of foul language, a lot of lot of foul things. But gosh, talk about digging deep into your soul. Figure things out. Shrinking is all about that. Yeah, we,
Joshua Johnson:we just finished shrinking season two, I think last week, and the final episode, my wife looked at me. She goes, whoever cries first wins.
Nijay Gupta:Yeah, that's Oh gosh, it was me. I cried first, but I think Harrison Ford's best performance ever. Yeah,
Joshua Johnson:he's amazing. He's amazing. It's so good. It's so good. Excellent, excellent recommendations. Thank you. How can people go out get the affections of Christ, Jesus? Anywhere else you want to point people to? Yeah,
Nijay Gupta:buy it wherever you buy books. But one thing I really appreciate is reviewing it and rating it on Goodreads authors live by reviews and recommendations. If you hated it, just don't review it. It's okay. We don't know. I'm just kidding. And then I have a sub stack called Engaging scripture, where I do a lot of book recommendations, I do some book reviews, I talk about resources. I'm just a book nerd through and through. So if you love getting resources, then check out engaging scripture. Well.
Joshua Johnson:DJ, this was fascinating. Thank you for taking us deep into the theology of love, from Paul and his perspective on love and what that looks like, and that we can actually because God is for us, that we have been loved by Christ through Him, that He has given everything for us, that we can actually have our bowels moved as well and spill over so that we could look for the good of others. And so it was fantastic. I love this conversation. So thank you so much. Appreciate
Nijay Gupta:that anyone that really. Reads my book. I'm a big fan of theirs too, because I appreciate it so much. You.
