Mike and Ann Thomas, two former Latter-day Saints who embraced a form of Protestantism in 1986, wrote the following where they show they clearly lack basic reading skills, not just basic exegetical skills:
. . . Peter
says that through faith in Jesus we die to sin and live a new, righteous life.
We are cut off from sin because in Jesus, sin and death are conquered. Paul
describes it like this:
Don’t you
know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his
death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order
that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father,
we too may live a new life . . . We know that our old self was crucified with
him so that the body of sin might be done away with, and we should no longer be
slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. (Romans
6:3-7).
Through faith
in Christ we are ‘born again’. Our original birth was as descendants of Adam,
who fell, and ‘the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men’ (Rom
5:18). Our ‘new birth’ (1 Pet 1:3) makes us children of God and we ‘received
the Spirit of sonship’ (Rom 8:15). (Mike Thomas and Ann Thomas, Mormonism: A
Gold Plated Religion [Aylesbury, England: Alpha, 1997], 164)
Firstly, Paul in Romans 6 is speaking about water baptism and how that is the instrumental cause of justification, not Sola Fide. In the symbolic view, baptism is similar to the relationship a wedding ring has to being married—it is an outward sign of something that it did not bring about as one being “in Christ” and justified precedes water baptism. However, Paul’s theology of baptism in this pericope is antithetical to this perspective. The apostle speaks of one being baptised “into [εις; cf. Acts 2:38] Christ,” including being a partaker of his death and resurrection, with baptism being the instrumental means thereof (through use of the preposition δια). Furthermore, Paul, through his use of the conjunction ωσπερ and adverb ουτος, both meaning "just as," likens Christ’s being raised by the Father to our being given, by the Father, newness of life through the instrumental means of baptism. Notice the explicit language of vv. 3-5:
Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptised into Jesus Christ (εἰς Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν eis Christon Iesoun) were baptised into his death (εἰς τὸν θάνατον αὐτοῦ ἐβαπτίσθημεν eis ton thanaton autou ebaptisthemen)? Therefore, we are buried with him (συνθάπτω synthaptō) by baptism into death (διὰ τοῦ βαπτίσματος εἰς τὸν θάνατον dia tou baptismatos eis ton thanaton): that (γαρ gar) like as (ὥσπερ hosper) Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so (οὕτω houto) we also should walk in newness of life. (Rom 6:3-5)
Commenting on the grammar of v. 5, Jarvis J. Williams noted:
The explanatory γαρ in 6:5 links the verse with his previous comments about the believer’s death with Christ through water-baptism in 6:3-4. His argument appears to be that believers died to sin and should no longer live under its power (6:2). Their water-baptism proves that they participate in the death of Jesus and experience a spiritual death to the power of sin (6:3). Therefore, Paul concludes that believers have been buried with Jesus through their participation in water-baptism, a baptism that identifies them with the death of Jesus (their representative [5:12-21]) and thereby kills the power of sin in their lives, so that they would live with Jesus in the resurrection just as Jesus presently lives in the power of his physical resurrection (6:4). Believers who died to the power of sin by being baptized into Jesus’ death will certainly (αλλα και) participate in a physical resurrection just as Jesus died and resurrected, because those who died to the power of sin (just as Jesus died = τω ομοιωματι του θανατου αυτου) will participate in a future resurrection (just as Jesus has already been resurrected) (6:5). (Jarvis J. Williams, Christ Died for Our Sins: Representation and Substitution in Romans and their Jewish Martyrological Background [Eugene, Oreg.: Pickwick Publications, 2015], 178).
In Rom 6:7, the KJV reads:
For he that is dead is freed (δεδικαίωται, dedikaiōtai) from sin.
The Greek of this verse is not speaking of being “freed” merely but justified—Paul uses the third person indicative perfect passive of δικαιοω, the verb meaning "to justify.” In Paul's theology, God not only simply "frees" a person from sin, but they are "justified/made righteous" through the instrumentality of water baptism. Don’t take my word for it; here are some scholarly resources:
The other, more likely explanation seeks to interpret the vb. [δικαιοω] not as “free,” but as “justify, acquit” in the genuine Pauline sense, and [sin], not in the sense demanded above (something like “obligation to the Torah”), but in its Pauline sense, an act against the will of God (so Lyonnet, Romains, 89; Cranfield, Romans, 310–11): the one who has died has lost the very means of sinning, “the body of sin,” so that one is definitively without sin; one has been freed of the fleshy, sin-prone body. In either case, a change of status has ensued; the old condition has been brought to an end in baptism-death, and a new one has begun (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB 33; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008], 437, emphasis in bold added)
Romans 6.7 has proved problematic in a number of ways, with the result that interpreters and translators often end up obscuring the meaning of this short clause complex: ‘For the one who is dead is justified from sin’ (Rom. 6.7). Often interpreters understand the sense of the lexeme ‘justified’ as indicating being freed (from sin) (Cranfield 1975-79: 1, 311). This may well be the consequence of what Paul is saying. However, the sense of the argument moves in a slightly different direction. Paul has been talking of death and life and the role of sin and slavery. Here he says that the one who is dead, that is, the one who is dead to sin in light of being crucified with Christ (Rom. 6.6), as he has suggested in Rom. 6.2 above, is one who is justified so as to be apart from or independent of or even free from sin. This is, in effect, a recapitulation of the argument that he made regarding Abraham in Rom. 3.21-4.25. The follower of Christ, who is dead to sin through identification with the death of Christ, is one who is justified or ‘righteoused’ apart from sin, that is, the person is no longer subject to sin. (Stanley E. Porter, The Letter to the Romans: A Linguistic and Literary Commentary [New Testament Monographs 37; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015], 135)
Mike and Ann Thomas then reference Rom 5:18. However, if they were to read the next verse, it should refute their Protestant soteriology.
The verb “to be made” in this verse is καθιστημι, which means “to constitute.” It does not have the meaning of merely legally declaring something to be “x” without it actually being “x.” Compare the following usages of the verb in the New Testament:
Theologically the most significant verse is R. 5:19: ὥσπερ γὰρ διὰ τῆς παρακοῆς τοῦ ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου ἁμαρτωλοὶ κατεστάθησαν οἱ πολλοί, οὕτως καὶ διὰ τῆς ὑπακοῆς τοῦ ἑνὸς δίκαιοι κατασταθήσονται οἱ πολλοί. Here, too, there is hardly any linguistic or material difference between κατεστάθησαν and ἐγένοντο. The meaning is that “as the many became sinners through the disobedience of the one man, so the many become righteous through the obedience of the one.” This does not imply that the forensic element is absent. 2 C. 5:21 and Gl. 3:13 show that in Paul ποιεῖν and γίνεσθαι do not necessarily bear an effective sense; they may also have an affective. The context decides. In R. 5 the forensic element is evident at v. 18 (κατάκριμα—δικαίωσις). Vv. 13f. also show that in the judgment of God the thing which counts is not exclusively the nature of the individual but the dominant character of the old (or the new) creation (→ ἐν, II, 541 f.). According to the current Jewish view God decides qualitatively in the sense that the quality ultimately decides His sentence and our destiny. Borrowing from other Jewish conceptions, Paul boldly reverses the relation. God’s sovereign sentence decides both destiny and quality. To be sure, guilt is involved. Yet it is in Adam that the many, and virtually all, became sinners. Conversely, the many, again virtually all, but in fact believers, become righteous in Christ in spite of their own sin (δικαιοῦντα τὸν ἀσεβῆ, R. 4:5). They will stand forth as righteous in God’s judgment. Pronounced righteous, they will then normally become righteous in fact as well (R. 8:3 f.). Here, however, the emphasis is on the judicial sentence of God, which on the basis of the act of the head determines the destiny of all. The subtleties which have rightly been found in the passage lie in the teaching rather than the wording. The suggestion that Paul has united senses 1. and 2. into a pregnant eschatological riddle is too artificial. (Albrecht Oepke, “Καθίστημι, Ἀκαταστασία, Ἀκατάστατος,”in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, 10 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–], 3:445–446)
BDAG, with reference to Rom 5:19, defines the term thusly:
3. cause someone to experience someth., make, cause τινά τι (Eur., Androm. 635 κλαίοντά σε καταστήσει; Pla., Phlb. 16b ἐμὲ ἔρημον κατέστησεν; POxy 939, 19 σε εὐθυμότερον; Jos., Ant. 6, 92; 20, 18; Just., A I, 33, 6 τὴν παρθένον … ἐγκύμονα κατέστησε) ταῦτα οὐκ ἀργοὺς οὐδὲ ἀκάρπους καθίστησιν this does not make (you) useless and unproductive 2 Pt 1:8.—Pass. be made, become (Menand., fgm. 769 K.=483 Kö. ἅπαντα δοῦλα τοῦ φρονεῖν καθίσταται; Herodas 1, 40 ἱλαρὴ κατάστηθι=be(come) cheerful; Diod. S. 17, 70, 3; Περὶ ὕψους 5; PRein 18, 40 [108 BC] ἀπερίσπαστος κατασταθήσεται=‘be left undisturbed’; EpArist 289 σκληροὶ καθίστανται; Philo, Aet. M. 133) ἁμαρτωλοὶ κατεστάθησαν … δίκαιοι κατασταθήσονται Ro 5:19 (FDanker in Gingrich Festschr. ’72, 106f, quoting POxy 281, 14-24 [20-50 AD] in possible legal sense; cp. PTebt 183; but cp. Cat. Cod. Astr. IX/2 p. 132, 12 of restoration to a healthy condition). The two pass. in Js where the word occurs prob. belong here also (φίλος τ. κόσμου) ἐχθρὸς τ. θεοῦ καθίσταται 4:4; cp. 3:6, where the text may not be in order.—JdeZwaan, Rö 5:19; Jk 3:6; 4:4 en de Κοινή: TSt 31, 1913, 85-94.—Restored text Hs 10, 3, 4 (POxy 404 recto, 19) (s. καθαρότης).—DELG s.v. ἵστημι. M-M. TW.
Elsewhere in their book, they write that:
The Scriptures
do teach that ‘if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord”, and believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved’ (Rom 10:9).
This being the case, then once saved we are baptised as a sign and a seal on
that which has already taken place. Baptism follows salvation, it does not lead
to it. (Mormonism: A Gold Plated Religion, 217)
For a full discussion of Rom 10:9 and why Mike and Ann Thomas
are guilty of eisegesis, see:
