There you have it ... the definition of hyperbole. You know how it works. You make an overstatement to make a point. Your teenage daughter asks if she can go to a church group gathering. "Who will be there?" you ask. "Oh," she assures you, "everyone." So you ground her for lying to you because you know that there will not be 7 billion people at that gathering. No, of course you don't. You understand that "everyone" is hyperbole. You understand she is exaggerating for effect, and you understand the intent. Easy.
Hyperbole is not, by definition, a lie. It is making a point. Does the Bible use this technique? Yes, indeed, it does. Take, for instance, Mark's claim when Jesus was in Capernaum. "And the whole city had gathered at the door" (Mark 1:33). We don't actually believe that every man, woman, child, dog, cat, sheep, and building were standing at the door of the house Jesus was in. We understand that there was a very large crowd. When Jesus told us not to worry about the speck in your brother's eye when you have a log in your own, He wasn't really suggesting that anyone had a log in the eye. It was hyperbole, an exaggeration for effect. We get it. We're okay with that.
There is a feeling among some -- a feeling, not necessarily a thought -- that the nature of a hyperbole makes it free of truth claims. That is, once it is classified as hyperbole, it can't be falsified. But we know that isn't true. If your daughter told you "Everyone will be there" and three people showed up, she wasn't honest. While the "everyone" was hyperbole and, therefore, not literal, it still meant "a lot of people". If Mark wrote that the whole city showed up and it was actually only a little boy and his lamb, Mark would have been dishonest. Hyperbole, while not woodenly literal, means to say something, and if that something isn't true, it's a lie.
So now we come to the biggest hyperbole fail in the Bible. I'm referring to Romans 3.
What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, "There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one" (Rom 3:9-12).It seems like every time I bring up this passage, someone feels the need to explain to me that it's hyperbole, not literal. So, let's examine that.
First, we've defined hyperbole. Second, I showed that the Bible uses that literary tool to express truth. So, I will agree that this text is, indeed, hyperbole. If there is, in fact, not one righteous person, then that would exclude Christ, wouldn't it? If there is none who does good, that would exclude Christ, wouldn't it? Indeed, we understand that believers are "created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them" (Eph 2:10). That we are to do good is a given. So that moves this text to the hyperbole category. And now we run into our problem.
Having acknowledged that this text is not woodenly literal, it appears to lose any meaning to many (most?) Christians. They contend that it is hyperbole and then proceed to tell me that lots of people seek God (maybe even most), that lots of people do good. And now we have a failure to communicate (or a lie). If by terms like "none", "all", and "not even one" we mean "lots and lots ... even a majority", it is no longer hyperbole; it is a lie. If the text says "there is none who does good" followed by an emphasizing "there is not even one", and we understand it to mean "lots of people routinely do good", that is a hyperbole fail.
I agree that it is hyperbole, but I can't seem to make any sense out of the discarding of the sense of the hyperbole because we see it is hyperbole. The sense of the text is that very, very few are righteous, that seeking God is an extreme rarity, that doing good is not at all a common occurrence. Paul is quoting the Psalms and indicating there is a problem here. If we set it aside as hyperbole, we nullify his intent and make the Word a lie.
5 comments:
I'm not sure it would be hyperbole because the quotation of Psalms is couched in the clause, "those who are under sin". But we know from elsewhere that believers are no longer under sin, and it can never be said Christ was under sin, so believers and Christ would be removed from the equation, making it no longer hyperbole. I understand it thus," Of those under the set of being under sin, none are righteous, not even one, there are none who understand, there are none who seek after God, there are none who do good, not even one." That appears to be the structure of the passage. I guess if you look at the passage outside of the context of Scripture you could arrive at hyperbole. I can't even bring "none who do good" to hyperbole because we are told that compared to God, even our good works are as filthy rags. If our good works are so soiled, then I can completely see that "none do good" means exactly that.
Well, since the context is "we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin" (Rom 3:9), you would have to agree that that is hyperbole, right, since not all are under sin?
The other question this brings, though, is if that "all" who are under sin isn't hyperbole and, therefore, not all suffer from the conditions in verses 10-18, won't you have a problem with the apparently same "all" of Rom 3:23 referring to all? (And if it does not refer to all, including Christ, is it also not hyperbole?)
On the fact that we do good works over against "There is none who does good", there is an interesting dichotomy there. We are designed for good works (Eph 2:10), but in the final analysis, "It is God who is at work in you both to will and to do His good pleasure" (Phil 2:13). So He does the good works through us and then rewards us for doing them. Nice arrangement.
Again, I think if you look at that section by itself, yes, I can agree it is hyperbole. But take it with the rest of Scripture and all are under sin before redemption. Romans 6 tells us we who are saved are no longer under the law, dead to sin, and sin is no longer or master (not over us anymore). In our natural state, we are all under sin. And this we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Yes, Christ is outside of that all, otherwise that hyperbole would mean that some have not sinned and are up to the glory of God. One would have to always assume Christ is not a part of any "all" because He is different from us in that He is also God. If every instance of "all" were to include Christ then much of them would become hyperbole and not all that helpful.
As for the works portion, I've always understood that to mean all our good works that we do that do not bring glory to God because all the works He had set for us to do must bring Him glory or they weren't from Him. The "good works as filthy rags" has always meant good works fine outside of Christ to me, otherwise the Bible would be lieing because people do "good" things all the time. You don't have to be a Christian to be a humanitarian, but all humanitarians that are doing good for anyone but God are sinning, from my understanding.
Of course, all of this means that a careful study of Scripture in the context of Scripture is paramount to understanding Scripture, otherwise you come to an either useless or decieptful Bible
Of course, my main point is not that it is hyperbole, but that transforming statements like "there is none who does good; no, not one" into "lots of people do good" cannot be satisfied with "It's hyperbole." Hyperbole or not, if by "There is none who seeks for God", Paul meant "Lots of people seek for God", we would have to classify it as a lie.
I completely agree
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