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Paul's ‘Robust Conscience’ Re-Examined

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

John M. Espy
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Extract

For centuries most Protestant churches, true to the Reformers' understanding of man and the Law, have preached the Christian message by presenting first the Law, so that the hearer would come to recognize his or her sinfulness, and then the Gospel, that the hearer might be brought to hope, and eventually to faith, in Jesus Christ. As the New Testament begins with the stern exhortations of John the Baptist, so, it has been argued, the Christian proclamation should always and everywhere commence with God's command. But now, in seminaries and churches, some have seized upon new expositions of the Law and used them to oppose this preaching scheme as unworkable, since not all will have any sins against the Law to recognize; and even as wrong, on the grounds that this approach inevitably lapses into trying to make people ‘feel guilty’. The result is that many of the new generation of ministers are learning to preach only consolation, or, at most, the judgment upon certain social orders pronounced by popularized liberation theology. It is with this homilectical situation in mind that I offer the following remarks on Paul's understanding of man's relationship to the Law, and through the Law to sin.

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Articles
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New Testament Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , April 1985 , pp. 161 - 188
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

Notes

[1] Stendahl, Krister, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976) 38 f., 85, 96Google Scholar; Wayne Meeks, A., ‘The Christian Proteus’, in The Writings of St. Paul, ed. Meeks, (N.Y.: Norton, 1972) 442.Google Scholar Bultmann does not go so far; he sees that all may be addressed as self-assertive, if not as ‘sinners’. But his occasional suggestions (see ‘New Testament and Mythology’, Kerygma and Myth (Eng. tr., N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1961) 31Google Scholar) that the preacher should rather begin with the Gospel (and with a vague, demythologized Gospel at that) leave room for a much weaker proclamation.

[2] Kümmel, Werner Georg, Römer 7 und die Bekehrung des Paulus (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1929)Google Scholar; Bultmann, , ‘Romans 7 and the Anthropology of Paul’ (1932)Google Scholar, reprinted in Existence and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolf Bultmann, ed. and tr. Schubert Ogden, M. (N.Y.: Living Age, 1960) 147–57.Google Scholar See also Bultmann's, Theology of the New Testament, 1 (Eng. tr., N.Y.: Scribner's, 1951) 247–9, 266 f.Google Scholar (In these notes all references to the latter work are to Volume I.)

[3] ‘Romans 7’, 148 f.Google Scholar; cf. Kümmel, , The Theology of the New Testament According to its Major Witnesses (Nashville & N.Y.: Abingdon, 1973) 181 f.Google Scholar Note, however, p. 154 of Bultmann's essay (and cf. his Theology, 247)Google Scholar; he is not wholly confident that transgressions (of the ‘commandments’, at least) follow in every case. Cf. Theology, 247 f.Google Scholar, which suggests that Phil. 3. 6 is the cause of this uncertainty.

[4] At least, Bultmann never explains the nature of the sinful ‘desire’ of Romans 7 without appealing to these texts; see ‘Romans 7’, 149Google Scholar; Theology, 248, 266 f.Google Scholar

[5] Bultmann, , Theology, 266Google Scholar; cf. ‘Romans 7’, 149 f.Google Scholar This explanation is extremely popular; cf. e.g. Ethelbert Stauffer, art. έγώ, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard, Kittel, tr. Bromiley, Geoffrey W. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964, 1969), 2, 361 f.Google Scholar; Bornkamm, Günther, Paul (Eng. tr., N.Y. & Evanston: Harper & Row, 1971) 125Google Scholar; Dunn, James D.G., ‘Rom. 7, 14–25 in the Theology of Paul’, Theologische Zeitschrift XXXI.5 (Sep.-Oct. 1975) 261Google Scholar; note also Barrett, C. K., A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (N.Y., Evanston, London: Harper & Row, 1957) 152 f.Google Scholar; Schoeps, H. J., Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History (Eng. tr., Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961) 184Google Scholar; Kümmel, , Theology, 177Google Scholar; and Cranfield, C. E. B., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Epistle to the Romans, 1 (Edinburgh: Clark, 1975, 1977) 344 n. 3.Google Scholar (In these notes all references to the latter work are to Volume I.) Lyonnet, S. (‘L'Histoire du Salut selon le Chapitre VII de l'Épître aux Remains’, Biblica XLIII.2 (1962) 120)Google Scholar objects that this distinction according to standpoint is ‘too categorical’ to be likely. For other criticisms, see the next note.

[6] Maurice Goguel insisted years ago (‘ΚΑΤΑ ΔΙΚΑΙΟΣϒΝНΝ ΤHΝ ΕΝ ΝΟΜΩΙ ГΕΝΟΜΕΝΟΣ ΑΜΕΜΠΤΟΣ (Phil, 3,6): Remarques sur un Aspect de la Conversion de Paul’, Journal of Biblical Literature 53 (1934) 258 f.)Google Scholar that the testimony of Phil 3. 6 must not be weakened, as though Paul had felt his blamelessness only at times or had forced himself to feel it. This caution is correct, for Paul speaks of his blamelessness rather as an objective fact, as incontestable as his circumcision, his zeal, and so forth (cf. Stendahl, , Paul Among, 12 f.)Google Scholar. However, Goguel's own interpretation weakens the testimony of Romans 7, suggesting that the crisis which it describes was a temporary struggle which Paul underwent sometime between conversion and Christian maturity. On this view (and similar views, e.g. the argument of Lloyd-Jones, D. M., Romans (Banner of Truth Trust, 1973) 174Google Scholar, that Romans 7 represents a stage in conversion - a time of conviction, narrowed, in Paul's case, to the temporary blindness of Acts 9. 9), it is difficult to see why the chapter was written at all. Mitton, C. Leslie (‘Romans vii Reconsidered’, Expos T LXV.3–5 (Dec. 1953-Feb. 1954), 2, 100)Google Scholar is nearer the mark, I believe, when he distinguishes the two passages not as a wrong and a right perception of Paul's standing before God, but as a right perception of his standing before men (wrong only if taken as more than this) and a right perception of his standing before God: ‘In Ro 7 Paul speaks as at the judgment seat of God, who reads the motive and the hidden thought. In Ph 36 he is defending himself, his apostleship, and his interpretation of the gospel, against men who claim that their Jewish status and their strict Pharisaic obedience to the Law give them the right to pass judgment on him, who, in their eyes is either an upstart or a renegade, and so has no authority or proper standing. For the sake of his converts and his further missionary activities, Paul must answer their charges plainly. So he speaks not of the inner failures which only he and God know of, but of his earlier acknowledged success as a Pharisee, when he was required to offer outward obedience to certain specific moral and ritual regulations.’ See also below, n. 33.

[7] Bultmann, , Theology, 245, 248Google Scholar; and cf. ‘Romans 7’, 152Google Scholar; Bornkamm, , Early Christian Experience (Eng. tr., N.Y. & Evanston: Harper & Row, 1969) 96Google Scholar; Conzelmann, Hans, An Outline of the Theology of the New Testament (Eng. tr., London: SCM, 1969) 230 f.Google Scholar Note the more balanced statement of Gottlob Schrenk, art. θέλειν, TDNT, 3, 51.Google Scholar

[8] See especially ‘Romans 7’, 149Google Scholar (not helped much by 153–6), for a misleading statement in which the Law', ‘the way of the Law’, and ‘the direction of the way of the Law’ become jumbled together; and see Theology, 261 f., 268, 340–5Google Scholar, for more balanced expositions. On the distinction between Law as demand or command and Law as commandments, see Althaus, Paul, The Divine Command: A New Perspective on Law and Gospel (Eng. tr., Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966)Google Scholar, passim; cf. Longenecker, Richard N., Paul: Apostle of Liberty (N.Y., Evanston, London: Harper & Row, 1964) 144–7.Google Scholar Because Paul accepted this distinction, he did not object to Jewish Christians' adherence to the Law. Stendahl perceives this failure to object, but essentially supposes that for Paul there arc two Gospels (one for Gentiles and another for Jews), rather than two approaches to the Law.

[9] A recent expression of an extreme Bultmannian viewpoint may be found in Nickle, Keith F., ‘Romans 7: 7–25’, Interpretation XXXIII.2 (04 1979) 186Google Scholar: ‘The desire to be religious is qualitatively the same rebellious act which Paul had described in chapter 1 and 2 as condemning everyone excuseless. The “evil which lies close at hand” is precisely the desire “to do right” (7:21). The “other law making me captive to the law of sin” (7:23) is precisely the “delight in the law of God” (7:22).’

[10] For criticisms of Kümmel and Bultmann, see especially Dunn, , 259 ff.Google Scholar; Byskov, Martha, ‘Simul lustus et Peccator: A Note on Romans ii.25b’, St Th 30 (1976) 86Google Scholar; Cranfield, , Romans, 346 n. 6, 363 n. 2Google Scholar; and Stendahl, , Paul Among, 87 f.Google Scholar, and The Bible and the Role of Women (Eng. tr., Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966), pp. 23 f.Google Scholar

[11] The most penetrating criticisms of Stendahl tend to be short and unelaborated; these will be noted below where pertinent. Sanders, E. P. (‘Paul's Attitude Toward the Jewish People’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review 33.3–4 (Spring-Summer, 1978): 175–87)Google Scholar replies only to Stendahl's thesis that Paul would not attempt to ‘Christianize’ the Jews; note, however, the concession which he provokes (Stendahl, ‘A Response’, ibid., 189–91).

The closest thing we have to a Bultmannian critique is Ernst Käsemann's ‘Justification and Salvation History in the Epistle to the Romans’ (Käsemann, , Perspectives on Paul (Eng. tr., Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971) 60–78)Google Scholar, to which Stendahl replied in ‘Sources and Critiques’ (Paul Among, 129–32).Google Scholar This exchange is something of a failure, perhaps because Käsemann reviews a full-blown ‘salvation history’ scheme such as that of Johannes Munck; and Stendahl, who at some points disagreed with Munck and who never went as far as he did in elaborating a positive thesis, has, by the time of his reply, further dissociated himself from Munck's suggestions (see Ibid., vi).

[12] ‘The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’, Harvard Theological Review LVI.3 (07 1963): 199–215Google Scholar; most recently reprinted in Paul Among, 78–96.Google Scholar Hereafter in these notes references to this article will cite the book's page numbers, with the Harv Th R pagination given in parentheses.

[13] Ibid., 80 f. (200–2).

[14] The other depends upon a philosophical and historical judgment as to the nature of obedience to the Law in Judaism, and essentially argues that Paul cannot mean what he appears to mean in these texts, because his statements would be inaccurate or unfair. But Paul does seem to mean that to rely on one's works of the Law for salvation is to walk ‘according to the flesh’;and that Jews, whatever their faith in grace and forgiveness, still relied ultimately on works unless their faith was an explicit faith in Christ (or, before his coming, in a type of him). This is indeed contrary to the Pharisaic view, as is Paul's belief that a man who offends against the Law at any one point comes under its curse (Gal 3. 10). The fact that the second opinion also appears in James 2. 10 f. should be enough to answer those (Moore, George F., Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1927, 1930), 111, 151CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goguel, , 260, 264)Google Scholar who suggest that Paul is simply distorting matters. The real solution is likely to be found in Christian experience. On the Damascus road Paul learned that the sin in him was one, that it was a core of covetousness and rebellion against God and His salvation, though it might find expression in diverse ways. God's words and commands are one, and culminate in the command to receive Christ; but the transgression of the least of these commands reveals a heart rebellious against the whole, and deserving the curse. Such sin cannot simply be forgiven; it must be cured or destroyed, or it will never stop. Thus we arrive at Paul's absolute alternatives: either one is a slave to Jesus in all things, or else one is his persecutor (cf. Jesus' own words, e.g. Luke 9. 50; 11. 23). On Rom 2–3 see below, pp. 164–5.

[15] Meeks, , 442.Google Scholar

[16] ‘The Apostle Paul’, 89 (208 f.)Google Scholar; cf. Stendahl, , ‘Paul Among Jews and Gentiles’ (1963–1964), Paul Among, 13 f.Google Scholar; Kümmel, , Theology, 150.Google Scholar

[17] ‘The Apostle Paul’, 80 (200), 90 f. (209 f.)Google Scholar; Paul Among, 14 f.Google Scholar; cf. Stanley, David, ‘Some Reflections on the Introspective Conscience from New Testament Data’, in Ecumenical Dialogue at Harvard: The Roman Catholic-Protestant Colloquium, ed. Miller, Samuel H. and Wright, G. Ernest (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1964) 260.Google Scholar As D. O. Via remarks (‘Justification and Deliverance’, Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 1.3 (1971) 208Google Scholar), the term ‘conscience’ is not used by Stendahl in any very precise sense.

[18] Stendahl, (‘The Apostle Paul’, 90 (210)Google Scholar) verges on this assumption in his dismissal of 1 Cor 9. 27. See the comment of David Catchpole in Theology LXXXI.684 (11 1978) 452.Google Scholar

[19] Cf. especially Nygren, Anders, Commentary on Romans (Eng. tr., Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1944, 1949) 434 f.Google Scholar

[20] See Pierce, C. A., Conscience in the New Testament (Chicago: Allenson, 1955) 45 ff.Google Scholar, 70, on conscience as ‘a pain which smites accusingly’, and 86 f. and 95 f. on its negative sense, its bearing witness to failure much more than to achievement. Cf., for the most part, Christian Maurer, art. σύνοιδα, συνείδησις, TDNT, 7, 917.Google Scholar This negative character of conscience is sometimes slighted or overlooked (Bornkamm, , Paul, 131 f.Google Scholar; Bultmann, , Theology, 216 f.Google Scholar; Stanley, , 259)Google Scholar, while Richard Longenecker's otherwise excellent study (Paul: Apostle of Liberty) is marred by a failure to consider the place of conscience at all. Conscience is the voice of a man's own mind speaking against the flesh, though God may speak through it (e.g. Rom 9. 1). The silence of Paul's conscience tells him that he has not by his life obstructed his ministry (cf. 2 Cor 6. 3), and this confirms the impression that in fact he has done more than any of the other apostles; ‘though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me’ (1 Cor 15. 10, RSV;cf. 2 Cor 1. 12). This can be proved by the testimony of other men's consciences; for they will find themselves accused if they should call Paul a deceiver or flatterer after seeing that he is not (2 Cor 4. 2; 5. 11; cf. 1 Th 2. 10), but that he speaks with ‘godly sincerity’ (2 Cor 1.12).

Conscience may be at fault (thus Paul's ‘faithfulness’, 1 Cor 4. 2 and 7. 25, may still be found wanting, 4. 4 f.); it may be too strict (1 Cor 8. 7 ff.; 10. 25 ff.), or, in those who persist in sinning against it, it may become corrupted (1 Tim 4. 2; Tit 1. 15). It is not the perfect judge (Pierce, , 78)Google Scholar, and at the end the Christian will not be judged according to it (1 Cor 4. 4 f.), but in this life it is a necessary guide for him: it, and not the Law as ‘commandments’ (1 Tim 1. 19, as against 1. 9; cf. 1. 5). For those who live according to the flesh it may be easier to sear conscience (the voice of man's own mind) than to be blind to the Law (the voice of God), and this is one reason why the Gentiles have deteriorated rather further than the Jews (Gal 2. 15); but when conscience is informed by the Holy Spirit, and instructed by the Law as ‘command’, one has a closer and more personal voice of God than the Law could give. Cf. below, n. 81.

In 2 Tim 1. 3 (cf. Acts 23. 1) it appears that conscience can be less severe than the Law, since Paul's ancestors were not accused by the one and presumably were by the other. But Paul's concern here is to stress tradition and God-given continuity (cf. 1. 5 f., 13 f.; 2. 2); he does not deny that his Spirit-quickened conscience is more probing than his fathers', but simply applauds the ‘negative righteousness’ to which they did attain. To see how one can live with a clear conscience, i.e. without faults or particular and evident omissions, and yet be a sinner, see below, pp. 163–4 in the absence of faith, such a conscience would become ‘defiled’ or ‘branded’ (1 Cor 8. 7 ff.; cf. Rom 14. 23; 1 Tim 4. 2–5; Tit 1. 15).

[21] Pierce, , 89.Google Scholar

[22] Ibid., 95 n. 6.

[23] See Stanley, , 259 f.Google Scholar

[24] ‘The Apostle Paul’, 79 (199).Google Scholar In fact, the best example of such a reading which I have been able to find is in certain passages of Karl Barth (The Epistle to the Romans (1918; Eng. tr., London, Oxford, N.Y.: Oxford, 1933, 1975), e.g. 268 f.)Google Scholar; and this is due not to his traditionalism but to his radical inwardness, which owes more to his philosophical presuppositions, and to his twin fears of antinomianism and historicism, than to Luther or Augustine. The ‘tradition’ has generally kept in view the fact that Paul was speaking didactically to a concrete historical situation; and I am loath to exchange this balance of ‘teaching and history’ for Stendahl's ‘more history’.

Indeed, replying to criticism, Stendahl claims, ‘But the decisive difference between Sanders and me lies in our attitude toward the text, toward the genre of the letters. I read Paul as a pastoral theologian, where Sanders reads him as a systematic theologian' (‘A Response’, 190).Google Scholar But because Paul is a pastoral theologian he speaks didactically, applying all his words to the situation which he is addressing. In fact, Stendahl does not read Paul as thoroughly pastoral, only as thoroughly contextual - and therefore subject to the rules of historicism, and of necessity writing things which are not valid always and every where. And this historicism goes well with a gnostic dualism which, despite their differences, he shares with Bultmann. Despite his claim to oppose ‘triumphalism’ (‘Sources’, 131 f.Google Scholar; Paul Among, 40)Google Scholar, Stendahl appears to conceive of a most tenuous link between the believer and ‘the flesh’ (see ‘The Apostle Paul’, 89 f. (209)Google Scholar; Paul Among, 48Google Scholar; and note also the candid statement in The Bible and the Role of Women, 36 f.).Google Scholar He questions even whether human nature remains the same through the course of history (‘The Apostle Paul’, 79Google Scholar (199 f.), 95 f. (214 f.)), and so is cautious when it comes to ‘translating’ or ‘modernizing’ the Bible's message (idem; cf. ‘Biblical Theology, Contemporary’, The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, 1 (N.Y. & Nashville: Abingdon, 1962), especially 430 f.)Google Scholar, or even to identifying that message (‘Sources’, 130).Google Scholar Bultmann, on the other hand, gives careful study to the Biblical meaning of ‘the flesh’ (Theology, 235 ff.)Google Scholar, and clearly states that there is historical continuity in conversion, that the self's basic nature is not changed (ibid., 268 f.). And yet, perhaps because he is quick to distinguish between the New Testament's message and its original philosophical framework (‘New Testament and Mythology’, passim), one fears that this nature may be for him quite distinct from ‘the flesh’. Thus, unregenerate man is defined as the split between ‘flesh’ and ‘mind’ (‘Romans 7’, 151 - an anthropology already false, since it is based on the unique situation of the Christian, as described in Romans 7), but the Christian is said to ‘live’ through his surrender to God (Ibid., 156 f.), and in Bultmann's description of him ‘the flesh’, the false will to be oneself, appears to have vanished; - so that we have at least the appearance of two very different natures. (Käsemann is aware of this problem; see ‘On Paul's Anthropology’, Perspectives on Paul, 9 f.Google Scholar, and note also 16, and Dunn, , 258, 268 f.)Google Scholar

[25] See e.g. Stendahl, , Paul Among, 12 f.Google Scholar (and, in ‘The Apostle Paul’, contrast the treatment of Phil 3. 6 on pp. 80 f. (200 f.) and 89 (208 f.)Google Scholar with that accorded Rom 5. 6–11 on pp. 89 f. (209)); Bultmann, , Theology, 266Google Scholar (and cf. ‘Romans 7’, 148)Google Scholar; Barrett, , Romans, 151 f.Google Scholar; Bornkamm, , Paul, 125, cf. 11Google Scholar; Lyonnet, , ‘L'Histoire’, 120Google Scholar; Philippe Menoud, H., ‘Revelation and Tradition: The Influence of Paul's Conversion on His Theology’, Interpretation 7.2 (Apr. 1953), 132 f.Google Scholar; note also Gustav Stählin and Walter Grundmann, art. άμαρτάνω, Karl Heinrich Rengstorf, art. άμαρτωλός, Stauffer, art. έγώ, and Walter Gutbrod, art. νόμος, TDNT, 1, 291, 327Google Scholar, II, 358, IV, 1077; Kümmel, , Theology, 150Google Scholar (and cf. Dunn, , 259).Google Scholar In many of these passages the citation of these texts is determinative for the interpretation of Romans 7.

[26] Rom 5. 8, 10; Gal 2. 17; cf. Gal 4. 3; Eph 2. 3; 1 Tim 1. 15; Tit 3. 3. The lack of more such texts is partially explained if we accept the view of Rengstorf (art. άμαρτωλός, TDNT, 1, 332Google Scholar; in opposition to e.g. Stanley, 258) that ‘sinner’ is for Paul a strong expression, never used without some relation to himself. This may also help to account for Paul's greater emphasis on ‘Weakness’, as observed by Stendahl (‘The Apostle Paul’, 91 (210 f.)Google Scholar; Paul Among, 40–52passim).Google Scholar

[27] Cf. e.g. Lyonnet, , ‘L'Histoire’, 120 n. 1.Google Scholar For the opposite claim, see Stählin and Grundmann, art. άμαρτάνω, TDNT, 1, 291Google Scholar; and cf. Schrenk, art. δικαιοσύνη, ibid., II, 202. But one must not go too far with the ‘blamelessness’: Holsten questioned the authenticity of the whole epistle because it, alone among Paul's writings, represents him as blameless (Vincent, Marvin R., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistles to the Philippians and to Philemon (N.Y.: Scribner's, 1897, 1906) 28, 99)Google Scholar; and Calvin said at one point that Paul was a special case, inspired to great piety even before his conversion (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 111.24.10).

[28] Cf. especially Vincent, , 98Google Scholar; Lightfoot, J. B., St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians (3rd ed., London & Cambridge: Macmillan, 1873) 145 f.Google Scholar; Longenecker, , 97 f.Google Scholar A more popular interpretation, which would not contradict this one, is that Paul is claiming only to have been blameless before men (Augustine, , ‘On Man's Perfection in Righteousness’, 24, 38Google Scholar; ‘Against Two Letters of the Pelagians’, I. 15Google Scholar; Sermon CLXX.5; Luther, , ‘Commentary on Psalm 51’ (1538)Google Scholar, Luther's Works Vol. 12. Selected Psalms I (St. Louis: Concordia, 1955) 354 f.Google Scholar; Calvin, , Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians (Eng. tr., 1851; reprinted, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948) 92f.Google Scholar; Mitton, , II, 100 f.).Google Scholar

[29] Cf. Longenecker, , 97 f.Google Scholar

[30] That scrupulosity is not itself an evil is shown by the texts which summon Christians to be ‘blameless’ in this way (Phil 2. 15; 1 Th 2. 10; 3. 13; 5. 23). They are to be without fault in the holiness which proceeds from love. These verses parallel those which exhort believers to aim at a clear conscience (1 Tim 1. 5, 19), though ‘conscience’ is the more general term, since its accusing voice can speak of sins either of omission or commission. The call to be without fault, or to omit nothing for which conscience could accuse one, is a reminder that Christian righteousness is no mere avoidance of transgression, but a positive accomplishment which can be raised to ever greater heights. And in theory, the Christian who pursues this challenge does not neglect ‘weightier matters’ to do so, for his scrupulosity proceeds in the first instance from the things of Christ.

[31] Sanders, , 184Google Scholar, objects to the view that Paul distinguishes two ways of keeping the Law - a Pharisaic ‘legalism’ versus some other way. He argues that the apostle's ‘criticism is not that zeal led them into “legalism”, but rather that it was directed towards the wrong goal altogether – towards the righteousness that comes from Torah obedience and not towards the righteousness that comes from God through Christ (Rom 10. 3–4; Phil 3. 9).’ But this leads us into Rom 2–3 (cf. below, pp. 164–5), where Paul says, not that the Law fails to make righteous because it is obsolete, but that it is obsolete, in some respects, because it cannot make righteous the man who walks in it ‘according to the flesh’, since he inevitably transgresses it at many points. The Law has always failed in this regard, as much before Christ came as afterwards; and so Paul is not criticizing merely the contemporary Jews. ‘The righteousness that comes from Torah obedience’ has not become a wrong goal, after being a right one for centuries. Rather, it has always been a wrong goal if pursued ‘according to the flesh’, so as to be ‘a righteousness of one's own’ (Phil 3. 9; Rom 10. 3); and this may properly be called ‘legalism’, since it is a matter of earning through ‘works’ (Rom 4. 4; 9. 32), and this necessarily involves definition and measurement. But the obedience, past or present, of Jews with faith in Christ or a type of Christ (4. 12) is still a response to the Law; but the Law is then regarded more generally (cf. n. 8 above), and the righteousness of obeying is not measured, for it is secondary to the righteousness freely received through Christ.

[32] Thus I agree with Bultmann (‘Romans 7’, 148Google Scholar) that the ‘doing of evil’ in Rom 7. 15 ff. must be more than just the failure to do the good perfectly (though see n. 62 below). But I would suggest that in Paul's mind the distinction does not require such sharpness: omission already implies transgression, because it shows that the heart is elsewhere, giving play to its inclinations towards sin.

[33] I am suggesting, then, that Phil 3. 6 shows man under the Law from the viewpoint of the flesh, a perspective more incomplete than incorrect; while Romans 7 shows the Law's judgment on the same situation. See n. 70 on the relation of Romans 8 and Gal 5. 16 f. to these texts.

[34] Schoeps, , 174.Google Scholar

[35] Stendahl, , Paul Among, 30.Google Scholar

[36] This is the great point which is missed by Stendahl in both of his explanations: the Law did not become ineffectual when Jesus came; rather, it appears from Paul's statements that it never served anyone successfully as a means to justification (cf. n. 31). See especially Rom 3. 20; 4. 13–15; 2 Cor 3. 6 ff.; Gal 3. 21 f.; and cf. the remark of Margaret Thrall, E. in The Expository Times LXXXIX.2 (11 1977) 57 f.Google Scholar Schoeps has the same problem,- e.g. 181 n. 5, where he cannot see the necessity of Gal 3. 15–18. In fact, Paul's thought is not as one-sidedly eschatological as such scholarship implies, for he presents Christ, not only as the end of the Law, but also as prior to it.

[37] ‘The Apostle Paul’, 93 (212).Google Scholar

[38] Nygren (266) suggests that chapters 5–8 take up in turn the Christian's freedom from wrath, sin, the Law, and death; but N. A. Dahl (‘Two Notes on Romans 5’, Studia Theologica V.1 (1951), 40Google Scholar; cf. ‘The Missionary Theology in the Epistle to the Romans’, Studies in Paul: Theology for the Early Christian Mission (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1977) 91Google Scholar) has shown that chapters 5 and 8 are more closely related than this scheme would indicate. However, the four powers of which Nygren speaks are also closely related; Paul has presented final, eschatological death as the culmination of wrath (1. 18, 32; also 2. 7 f., where ‘wrath and anger' are opposed to ‘eternal life’), and sin and the Law as leading up to it. I submit that in chapters 5–8 Paul has in view the Christian's deliverance from the whole process of wrath (cf. Nygren, , 211)Google Scholar: in 6 and 7 he examines the present features, sin and the Law, while in 5 and 8 he looks ahead to the final, eschatological deliverance.

[39] Bultmann, , ‘Romans 7’, 153Google Scholar; Conzelmann, , 229, 286.Google ScholarCf. Stendahl, , ‘The Apostle Paul’, 92 f. (211 f.)Google Scholar, followed by Dahl, , ‘The Doctrine of Justification: Its Social Function and Implications’, Studies in Paul, 111Google Scholar; though note also the latter's more balanced statements in ‘Two Notes’, 41Google Scholar, and especially ‘Missionary Theology’, 83, 85.Google Scholar Dunn (260) and Nygren (287 f.) criticize Kümmel and Bultmann on this point.

[40] Cf. e.g. the clear statement of Calvin, Institutes, IV.15.12.

[41] Nygren, (276, 288 f.)Google Scholar tries to argue that it is vv. 14–25 which return to v. 6, but see e.g. Conzelmann, , 285Google Scholar; Byskov, , 76.Google Scholar However, I do not believe that vv. 14–25 can simply be subsumed under vv. 7–12; rather, this passage serves as a connecting link, explaining why it is that those who no longer live under the tyranny of the flesh (v. 5) have also, of necessity, been discharged from the Law (v. 6).

[42] The analogy has caused some bewilderment, largely because the husband is usually understood to represent the Law (see Longenecker, , 146 n. 110Google Scholar; and note Barrett's difficulties (Romans, 136Google Scholar) with the phrase ‘the Law of the husband’ (v. 2), since on this view the two are supposed to be equivalent). In fact, this will not do; the Law is that which binds the woman to her husband, it is not the husband himself. Thus I take the husband as sin, and the marriage bond as the Law. Cranfield (Romans, 334Google Scholar) calls such a reading ‘extremely complicated and forced’; but he is responding in part to William Sanday and Arthur Headlam, C. (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (N.Y.: Scribner's, 1913) 172–4)Google Scholar, who have a rather different understanding of the ‘husband’ and ‘wife’. At one or two points Luther also appears to take the ‘husband’ to represent sin (Lectures on Romans (Luther's Works Vol. 25, St. Louis: Concordia, 1972) 57 f., 322 f.Google Scholar), but elsewhere he either allegorizes as Augustine did (ibid., 332), or else interprets the ‘husband’ as the Law (‘Lectures on Deuteronomy’ (1525), Luther's Works Vol. 9 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1960) 235Google Scholar; Lectures on Galatians (1535)Google Scholar, Luther's Works Vol. 26 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1963) 446Google Scholar; ‘The Gospel for the Sunday After Christmas, Luke 2[:33–40]’ (1522?), Luther's Works Vol. 52. Sermons II (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974) 131).Google Scholar

The marriage analogy is appropriate; it shows excellently how intimately and irreversibly the Law binds men to sin. It would not be as effective to speak of slaves and masters, as in chapter 6, for a slave might become free without the master's death, or the death might not avail to free him. But marriage presented a bond which, at least in Christian teaching (1 Cor 7. 39 - a parallel to Rom 7. 2 f.; cf. Matt 19. 3–9), could not be broken save by death. That the dominion of the Law becomes tyrannical is suggested by the verb κυριεύω, used in 6. 9 and 14 of death and sin (cf. Bauer, Walter, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (tr. and ed. Arndt, William F. and Gingrich, F. Wilbur, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1957), ad loc.).Google Scholar

[43] Nygren, , 270 f.Google Scholar; Cranfield, , Romans, 335.Google Scholar

[44] They were baptized into His death (Rom 6. 3 ff.), so that, while sin lives, they have died to it (6. 2, 7, 11; as also to the Law, 7. 4; Gal 2. 19). However, their participation in Christ's death and new life is imperfectly realized (6. 11 ff.); see below, pp. 171–2.

Luther also links Gal 2. 19 with Rom 7. 2 ff. (Lectures on Galatians (1519)Google Scholar, Luther's Works Vol. 27 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1964) 232Google Scholar; cf. e.g. Galatians (1535) 164).Google Scholar Indeed, light is shed on all of Gal 2. 17–19 by this reading of Romans 7. As he becomes a Christian, the man who was under the Law is found to be a sinner, because he recognizes that through the Law he has been wedded to sin. Yet he does not transgress in the sense of ‘committing adultery’ with Christ, for in baptism his ‘remarriage’ coincides with his ‘death’. He even dies through the Law as well as to it, since he joins by faith in the death of Christ, which was a death under the sentence of the Law (Gal 3. 13). But if, having become a Christian, he should go back to the Law - as Peter was doing - it would be evident that he had not died, that he was still living ‘according to the flesh’, and that he had indeed committed this ‘adulterous’ transgression.

[45] Many writers, taking ‘Thou shall not covet’ (v. 7) as a clear and exclusive reference to the Mosaic Law, make the ‘I’ a personification for Israel. Lyonnet, S. (‘“Tu Ne Convoiteras Pas” (Rom. vii 7)’, in Neotestamentica et Patristica, published as Supplements to Nov. Test. Vol. VI (Leiden: Brill, 1962) 160–5Google Scholar; cf. ‘L'Histoire’, 140–7Google Scholar) has shown, however, that ‘coveting’ is present in the account of the Fall (note especially Gen 3. 6), and that it is the essence of sin for Paul. This means that throughout these verses he is discussing Paradise and its prohibition, though in v. 7 he employs a formula which encompasses all other laws as well; and Lyonnet concludes that Paul's T means only ‘I in Adam’, so that his claim to have ‘lived without the Law once’ (v. 9) is to be understood as a nostalgic evocation of Adam's life before the Fall. But the Mosaic form of the quotation in v. 7 shows that Paul is not thinking only of Paradise; he also speaks on a more personal level.

[46] The two levels also help to explain such ambiguities as άνέζησεν (v. 9; for the difficulties, see Malina, Bruce J., ‘Some Observations on the Origin of Sin in Judaism and St. Paul’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly XXXI.1 (01 1969) 30 n. 43)Google Scholar; it may be that Paul intends ‘sprang to life’ of Adam and Eve, and ‘revived’ of his more contemporary subject.

[47] Thus, I am suggesting that χωρίς stands in Bauer's category 2bβ or δ instead of γ (899). This seems to be the best answer to Lyonnet's objection (‘L'Histoire’, 121 f.Google Scholar) that a Jew could never be ‘Without the Law’. Cf. the difficulties which Conzelmann gets into (233) when he attempts a less literal reading.

Lyonnet, (‘L'Histoire’, 129 f.Google Scholar) objects that an interpretation such as this one reduces the sense of v. 9 to ‘I thought I lived.’ But I argue (see below, p. 168) that the subject did possess a real, though partial, ‘life’; and that the unqualified language is necessary because of the two levels on which Paul is speaking. This seems to me more plausible than Bultmann's view, according to which Phil 3. 6 must mean ‘I thought I was blameless (cf. above, p. 160; or Lyonnet's explanation of v. 9, ‘I was living once - in the life of Adam.’

[48] So it is sometimes suggested that Paul draws on rabbinic traditions according to which the serpent seduced Eve (Scroggs, Robin, The Last Adam: A Study in Pauline Anthropology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966) 76Google Scholar; Hooker, M. D., ‘Adam in Romans 1’, N T St VI.4 (07 1960) 301–3).Google Scholar Paul's ‘know’ is surely something more than Augustine's rendering, ‘to approve’ (e.g. ‘To Simplician’, 1.1.8; ‘Against Two Letters’, 1.23), as Bultmann has said (Theology, 248).Google Scholar But I cannot agree with Bultmann's interpretation of v. 15 (‘Romans 7’, 155Google Scholar), according to which the subject is not aware that his actions are accomplishing death in him; we shall see that the ‘I’ has too great a self-awareness for this to be the sense. There are two partial alternatives: first, that he cannot ‘know’ what he is doing with any deep understanding, because he is not really doing it (Augustine, Sermon CLIV.11); and secondly, that he does not yet know which of the two warring inclinations will finally reach full realization - the good ‘willing’ or the unlawful ‘doing’.

[49] Only the combination of ‘sin through the Law’ can teach men to know good and evil; apart from this Adam and Eve knew only good (and so did not really know it), and all others know little besides sin and evil (and so do not really know them).

[50] The ‘death’ of 5. 12 ff.Google Scholar cannot simply be physical death (Lyonnet, , ‘Le Péché Originel et l'Exégèse de Rom., 5, 12–14’, Recherches de Science Religieuse XLIV.1 (01-03 1956), 65–7, 76 f.)Google Scholar; indeed, it is best understood as an all-encompassing or ‘total’ death (Barrosse, Thomas, ‘Death and Sin in Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans’, C B Q XV.4 (10 1953) 449 f., 455Google Scholar; cf. Lafont, F. Ghislain, ‘Sur L'Interprétation de Remains V, 15–21’, Recher Sci Rel XLV.4 (10-12 1957) 496–9).Google Scholar This is why Paul can say in 5. 14 that death reigned over all those between Adam and Moses, despite the case of Enoch (and, later, of Elijah), who did not die (Scroggs, , 79Google Scholar; Barrett, C. K., From First Adam to Last (N.Y.: Scribner's, 1962) 23)Google Scholar: he is speaking of spiritual death, in which all share. This interpretation has important bearings on chapter 7: for instance, the suggestion (based on 7. 8–13) that sin was simply ‘not perceptible’ until the Law came (Bauer, , 536Google Scholar; Schoeps, , 191Google Scholar; Augustine, ‘To Simplician’, I.1.4; ‘Against Two Letters’, I.16; Sermon CLIII.9, 13) cannot account for this strong language, the statement that sin was ‘dead’ and that its ‘coming to life’ meant ‘death’ for Paul.

[51] That the emphasis falls on contrast rather than parallel has often been remarked of vv. 15–17 (e.g. Sanday, and Headlam, , 138Google Scholar; Nygren, , 219–21Google Scholar; Lyonnet, , ‘Le Péhé Originel’, 81Google Scholar; Bultmann, , ‘Adam and Christ in Romans 5’ (1959)Google Scholar, in The Old and New Man in the Letters of Paul (Eng. tr., Richmond: Knox, 1967) 64Google Scholar; Cambier, J., ‘Péchés des Hommes et Péché d'Adam en Rom. v. 12’, N T St XI.3 (04 1965) 226Google Scholar; Scroggs, , 81 f.Google Scholar), but less commonly of vv. 12–14 (though note Barth, Christ and Adam: Man and Humanity in Romans 5 (1952; Eng. tr., N.Y.: Harper, 1956, 1957) 35 ff.Google Scholar with 92; Lafont, , 495 with 501Google Scholar; and Feuillet, A., ‘Le Règne de la Mort et le Règne de la Vie (Rom V, 12–21)’, Revue Biblique LXXVII.4 (10 1970) 481 f.).Google Scholar Viewing the entire unit in this way makes it clear that vv. 15 ff. are not a parenthesis (Scroggs, , 81 n. 17).Google Scholar

[52] This first chiasmus has been widely noted, but occasionally someone still overlooks it and the correspondence to which it points, and so misses Paul's meaning. For important and legitimate conclusions which may be drawn from this literary device in this passage, see Scroggs, , 79 n. 13Google Scholar; Wedderburn, A. J. M., ‘The Theological Structure of Romans V.12’, N T St XIX.3 (04 1973) 340Google Scholar; Englezakis, Benedict, ‘Rom. 5, 12–15 and the Pauline Teaching on the Lord's Death’, Bib. LVIII.2 (09 1977) 231 f.Google Scholar

[53] On ‘the world’ as equivalent to mankind, see Luther, , Romans, 46Google Scholar; Bultmann, , Theology, 255Google Scholar; Cambier, , 238, 248 n. 1Google Scholar; Cranfield, , ‘On Some of the Problems in the Interpretation of Romans 5.12’, Scottish Journal of Theology XXII.3 (09 1969) 329.Google Scholar For opposition, see Englezakis, , 233 f.Google Scholar

[54] This reading of v. 13 has several advantages. It answers the problems which for Bultmann (Theology, 252Google Scholar; cf. ‘Adam and Christ’, 62 f.Google Scholar) made the verse ‘completely unintelligible’. It explains why Paul singles out the period from Adam to Moses, instead of speaking of Gentiles at all times it is the clearest time in which to see sin present but not charged, since it was charged to almost none; and the clearest way to see the role of the Law. It also answers Lyonnet's objection, that sin was imputed (‘L'Histoire’, 126–8Google Scholar; ‘Le Péché Originel’, 76 n. 38, 82 f.Google Scholar; cf. Calvin, , Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans (tr. and ed. John, Owen, 1849; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948) 202 f.)Google Scholar; for the fearful judgments which he thinks of, and all of the judgments upon Gentiles even up through the Book of Judges, are corporate, and do not charge individuals with sin. Finally, this reading is also consonant with Rom 1.18 ff., for the universal sins described there are best understood as corporate rather than individual.

[55] Dahl, , ‘Two Notes’, 43 ff.Google Scholar; ‘Missionary Theology’, 91Google Scholar; cf. Lafont, , 501.Google Scholar ‘The coming one’ (v. 14) still seems to me to refer to Christ, not to Moses or ‘man under the Law’ (as is suggested by John Robinson, A. T., The Body: A Study in Pauline Theology (London: SCM, 1952, 1961), 35 n. 1Google Scholar; Scroggs, , 81)Google Scholar; thus the words effect a return to the main point of the contrast between Adam and Christ (though not from a parenthesis, as Robinson maintains). Cf. Cranfield, , Romans, 283.Google Scholar

[56] On Rom. 5. 15 ff., see especially Lafont, , 495Google Scholar; Feuillet, , 499 f.Google Scholar; Scroggs, , 81 f.Google Scholar Note that in vv. 15–17 we are shown the past, present, and future effects of Christ's act. I take ‘the many’ (vv. 15, 19) to be roughly the same as ‘the world’, the mass of humanity (perhaps as all except ‘the one’ - Sanday, and Headlam, , 140)Google Scholar; and this is the same as ‘all men’ (v. 18) so long as there is no Law to set up a standard of individual responsibility. (On the resulting question of universalism in vv. 18 f., as raised e.g. by Malina, , 28 f.Google Scholar, see especially the response of Barrett, , Adam, 73, 114, 117.)Google Scholar

[57] This ‘coming’ of the commandment (7. 9) is to the individual the ‘coming’ of sin and death (5. 12) into his world.

[58] The repetition of χωρίς νόμον. in vv. 8 f. brings out a contrast: the Law brings life, not to me - I die through it! - but to sin. This raises precisely the objection which Paul takes up in v. 13. Cf. also Cranfield, , Romans, 341.Google Scholar

[59] Cf. Calvin, , Romans, 258.Google Scholar See below, pp. 170–1: sin's excessive ‘sinfulness’ lies first in seeking to appropriate God's holy Law, and then in using it to bind me so that sin becomes a law of my behaviour. As Calvin says (ibid., 214 f.), this increase is in me a matter of knowledge and obstinacy (and, I would add, of the sins now being transgressions - this is the point of Gal 3. 19); I do not think with Augustine (who takes as his model a blocked flow of water which gathers force; e.g. ‘On the Spirit and the Letter’, 6Google Scholar; Sermon CLIII.7) that the desires themselves are necessarily made stronger.

[60] The course of argument here is also implicit in James 1. 13 f. James teaches that temptation is not from God, but from the evil already within men - though temptations may increase as one seeks to know God (cf. James 1. 2). Similarly, Paul says that death is not from God's Law, but from the sin already within men - even though it strikes the individual only through the Law.

[61] This repetition, together with the evidence which Dahl cites (the ‘I’ form, and - possibly - the cry for deliverance in v. 24), lends credibility to his suggestion that Paul here employs a confessional Style which has parallels in the Psalms and the Qumran hymns (‘Missionary Theology’, 84, 92–4).Google Scholar I am more hesitant, however, to believe that Paul is appropriating and commenting on an actual confessional statement. The vocabulary of the passage is so Pauline, and so much in keeping with the rest of this letter, that it seems unlikely that he is using a statement authored by someone else (as Dahl seems to imply, and as is clearly suggested by Edgar Smith, W. Jr., ‘The Form and Religious Background of Romans VII 24–25a’, Nov Test 13 (1971): 127–35).Google Scholar On the other hand, if Paul is using a statement composed by himself, it is remarkable that he should need to insert comments in order to bring it into harmony with his point of view (as Dahl appears to believe the comments are intended to do). There is further the question of context: Dahl seems to think that the confession begins in v. 14 (84, 92), but this would not explain the ‘I’ form in the preceding verses; I believe that the chapter is best read as a single and unified composition. For these reasons I prefer to think that Paul is using elements of a confessional style, but adapting them to his own purpose, which is not merely to engage his readers and have them concur in the subject's conclusions (Dahl, 94), but also to teach them something about the condition of a man. In accordance with this, he ‘confesses’ death - spiritual death - more than sin.

[62] Most of these differences are dealt with in the text, in the present paragraph and the next one, but a note is required to examine the difficult matter of the three verbs each of which can be translated ‘to do’. Much discussion has been given to ποιέω and πράσσω, with positions ranging from Bauer's, that there is often no distinction (705), to Christian Maurer's, that the difference lies in the extent to which the ‘doing’ is willed and is brought to completion (art. πράσσω, TDNT, 6, 636 f.Google Scholar It is hard to see how this theory can successfully be applied even to 7. 15, 19, apart from other texts in Romans). Bultmann wisely advises that these words must be interpreted in accordance with the third verb, κατεργάζομαι (‘Romans 7’, 156).Google Scholar After studying the occurrences of all three verbs in Romans, I would like to propose the following interpretations:

(1) κατεργάζομαι is a ‘doing’ with emphasis on the effect; to produce, to accomplish. This is not a new suggestion; it is Augustine's ‘fulfil’ or ‘perfect’ (Against Julian, III.26; Homilies on the Gospel According to St. John, XLI.12; ‘On Marriage and Concupiscence’, I.32; and cf. Sermon CXXVIII.13; Luther, , Romans, 64, 330, 342 f.)Google Scholar, and Bultmann's ‘bringing about’ (‘Romans 7’, 155 f.).Google Scholar This is the sense in which Paul's subject cannot ‘do’ the good (7. 18): he cannot bring it to anything approaching full fruition.

(2) ποιέω is a simple ‘doing’, without special emphasis. Luther, especially, seems to have run into great complexities in the effort to find a special meaning for this word (Galatians (1519) 361 and 365).Google Scholar

(3) πράσσωis a habitual ‘doing’, a practising. This is a far cry from Luther's interpretation, ‘desires’ (Romans, 70; cf. 64)Google Scholar; but, against Bultmann, it is not necessarily ‘a doing that is absol utely and in principle perverted’, and it may indeed be ‘a failure [albeit a consistent and habitual one] to fulfil the law fully and constantly’ (‘Romans 7’, 148).Google Scholar

I believe that it can be shown that Paul maintains a consistent regard for these distinctions throughout the letter. Thus, for example, πράσσω is always used rather than ποιέω of the ‘doing’ which receives God's punitive judgment (1. 32; 2. 2; 13. 4); probably Paul anticipates the objection that God is not just, and so indicates that those punished are not guilty of some mere lapse, but are habitual offenders. In 1. 32–2. 3, where Bauer thinks the words are used without distinction, this distinction makes sense of the occurrences of each; to paraphrase: ‘… who, knowing … that those habitually doing such things deserve death, not only try them themselves, but also (what is worse) approve of those who habitually do them … you, the judge, habitually do the same things. We know that the judgment of God is … on those habitually doing such things. Do you think, 0 man judging those habitually doing these things, and yet trying them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?’ The point is that apparent and public agreement with the right is not enough; though one may not be as bad as others, may even condemn them, yet one secretly agrees with them and partially imitates them. And this hollow virtue is as bad as the habitual baseness which one condemns.

This distinction also lends support to my interpretation of 7. 13 ff.: in v. 15, when according to my view Paul is explaining what it is to be ‘carnal’, he speaks merely of his subject's ‘doing’ against his will; but in v. 19, where the ‘I’ is seen to be ‘sold under sin’, this doing' becomes habitual.

[63] On ‘carnal’ cf. Augustine, City of God, XXII.21 (though note also the rather weaker statement in ‘Against Two Letters’, I.17); on ‘spiritual’ cf. Calvin, Institutes, II.8.6; Sanday, and Headlam, , 181.Google Scholar

[64] I suspect that the difference between άγαθόν and καλόν, both here and in Gal 6. 9 f., is like that between ‘good’ and ‘right’ (cf. Bultmann, , ‘Romans 7’, 155)Google Scholar; the second is derived from the first, less ‘lofty’, more likely to diminish to ‘mere duty’, but more concrete. The shift in terms is significant, for ‘right’ is defined by the Law; the word helps us to confirm that we are still talking about a man under the Law.

[65] Or, possibly, ‘being seen to be’ (see the argument in Mitton, , II, 100 f.Google Scholar, with its implications for Philippians 3); but see n. 50 above.

[66] Mitton, , III, 132–5.Google Scholar The objections to Milton's interpretation of αύτόςέγώ are summarized by Packer, J. I., ‘The “Wretched Man” in Romans 7’, Studia Evangelica Vol. II Part I, ed. Cross, F. L., published as Texte und Untersuchungen Band LXXXVII (1964) 625Google Scholar; and Ronald, Y. K. Fung, ‘The Impotence of the Law: Toward a Fresh Understanding of Romans 7: 14–25’, in Scripture, Tradition, and Interpretation, ed. Ward, W. Casque and William Sanford LaSor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978) 39 f.Google Scholar Fung seeks to avoid these problems by interpreting the subject as an imimmature, legalistic Christian; consequently, he regards Romans 7 and 8 as two stages of Christian maturity, rather than two views of the same Christian existence. One must ask, Do not these interpretations miss the depth of Paul's identification with his subject? No matter why he chooses to employ the first-person singular here, it must be seen that he refuses to draw back from it; still less will he dispose of it neatly by characterizing it as ‘immature’, and so, somehow, not vitally and essentially ‘I’.

[67] For the problems which the change of tense creates for Bultmann's interpretation, see especially Packer, , ‘Wretched Man’, 624.Google Scholar On the cry of v. 24, see Nygren, , 286, 301 f.Google Scholar

Two other features of the passage are best explained by the notion of a Christian subject: the mind which wills the good (v. 23), in sharp contrast to the ‘mind’ of 1. 28 (Packer, , 625Google Scholar; see also Conzelmann, , 181, 234)Google Scholar; and the ending, v. 25b, which is grossly anticlimactic unless the point of the passage is to describe a present state and the hope of a future deliverance (see Packer, , 625 f.Google Scholar; Käsemann, , Commentary on Romans (Eng. tr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980) 211 f.Google Scholar Cf. the helpful remarks of Bruce Hollenbach, ‘Col. II.23: Which Things Lead to the Fulfilment of the Flesh’, N T St XXV.2 (01 1979) 257 f.Google Scholar; Byskov, , 75 f.Google Scholar; and Dahl, , ‘Missionary Theology’, 85Google Scholar; and note the unacceptable alternative solution of Dodd, C. H., The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1932, 1960) 114 f.).Google Scholar

[68] See e.g. Conzelmann, , 195.Google Scholar This seems legitimate; surely it is hard to establish the kind of distinction which Charles Hodge suggests (Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (rev. ed.; Philadelphia: Claxton, 1864) 360)Google Scholar, or to sidestep the question as Calvin does at one point (Romans, 261).Google Scholar However, I may suggest two possible slight distinctions. The first is that ‘sold’ suggests a legal transaction; in chapter 7, unlike chapter 6, the subject is being sold (or married) to sin through the Law, instead of simply being captured by sin. Secondly, there may be some merit in the traditional suggestion that all or part of this ‘selling’ occurred in Adam (see e.g. Augustine, ‘On the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin’, II.28; Sermon CLIII. 14); perhaps Paul is still thinking of the first couple.

[69] This point isoften missed (e.g. Dodd, , 107 f.Google Scholar; cf. Stendahl, , The Bible and the Role of Women, 36 f.).Google Scholar For a balanced view see Dunn, , 271–3Google Scholar; and cf. Cyprian, , ‘On the Lord's Prayer’, 16Google Scholar; Augustine, ‘Commentary on the Lord's Sermon on the Mount’, II.23 f.

[70] The ‘body’ can be redeemed, but not the ‘flesh’; see Robinson, , 30–32, 76Google Scholar, on the distinction. On the ‘flesh’ see Ibid., especially 17–19, 22 f., though I differ with him in regard to the Christian (see Dunn, , 264–9).Google Scholar The phrase ‘the body of this death’ (v. 24) is in fact no objection to the subject's being a Christian (as is thought by Conzelmann, 230), but a further proof of it: for one is delivered from this, not by conversion or growth in grace, but only by the final resurrection through the grace of Christ (8. 23); until that time all will be ‘carnal’ to some extent (cf. 8. 10; Packer, ‘Wretched Man’, 626; Käsemann, ‘On Paul's Anthropology’, 16; Augustine, ‘On Marriage and Concupiscence’, 34 f.; ‘Against Two Letters’, I.23 f.; Sermons CLIV. 8, CLV. 15; John Owen, in Calvin, , Romans, 274 n. 1).Google Scholar 8. 9 must not be taken to mean that the flesh is dead for Christians; Gal 5. 16 f. shows that this is not the case. The flesh continues to exist and to resist the Spirit; this is the experiential truth, and it also explains the relationship between Romans 7 and 8. In Romans 7 we are shown a man under the Law - hence, of necessity, ‘according to the flesh’, though not apart from the Spirit (see the next note); this man, even though a Christian, must be dominated by sin. In Romans 8 we see the quality of life, in the flesh but not ruled by it, at which the Christian may aim - is free to aim - through the Spirit and apart from the Law. (Cf., though overstated, Sanday and Headlam, 182: in one chapter the subject is under the power of indwelling sin, in the other of the indwelling Spirit.) Gal 5. 16 f. speaks to Christian existence as we find it, with Spirit and flesh still warring. Cf. especially Packer, , ‘Wretched Man’, 626Google Scholar, on Romans 7 and 8; and Stanley Toussaint, ‘The Contrast Between the Spiritual Conflict in Romans 7 and Galatians 5’, Bibliotheca Sacra CXXIII.492 (10-12 1966): 310–14Google Scholar, on Romans 7 and Gal 5. 16ff.

[71] Cf. (but with qualifications) Bultmann, , ‘Romans 7’, 150Google Scholar; Theology, 240, 264Google Scholar; Robinson, , 25 f.Google Scholar This suggests that the αύτόςέγώ (v. 25) may refer to ‘I according to the flesh’ - a reading which would appear to agree with Packer's ‘I, even I’ (‘Wretched Man', 625 f.)Google Scholar, but also to profit from his opponents’ ‘I by myself, I apart from Christ’.

The ‘I’ is not in fact apart from Christ or without the Spirit; as Nygren says (294 f.; cf. Mitton, , III, 133 f.)Google Scholar, such an abstraction is not possible, for the great characteristic of the Christian is is that he has received the Spirit. But the Law measures one's showing in the flesh; and as the Spirit does not improve this showing, but rather inducts one into a new life in Christ, the Spirit's influence is not measured by the Law, nor well expressed through it (see the opposition in Gal 3. 3, and cf. Matt 9. 15–17 and parallels). However, there may be value in seeing how poor a showing one makes; cf. Packer, , Knowing God (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity, 1973, 1975) 233 f.Google Scholar

At the same time, the Law as command, in Althaus' sense, still applies to the believer, and is part of his guidance in walking ‘according to the Spirit’ and not ‘according to the flesh’. Cranfield seems to make this same point when he argues (Romans, 319 f., 338, 373Google Scholar) that the believer is discharged not from the Law as such, but only from its condemnation, which he links with the Law grasped merely as ‘letter’ (see 356, 376 n. 1).

[72] Yet I agree with Stendahl to this extent, that it is possible to be too introspective, to devote oneself to rebuking one's flesh, instead of heeding Paul's summons (e.g. in 8. 1 ff.) to proceed with the new life ‘according to the Spirit’.

[73] Hence the contemptuous tone of Gal 2. 15; those with the Law have a certain moral superiority to those without it, though the distinction is in the Law rather than the men.

[74] Cf. 4. 19, where Abraham's deadness and faith are much like the Christian's in 8. 10. Note also 2 Cor 3. 14 f., where those merely under the Law-without the faith of 4. 13 - are blind. Cf. Luther, , ‘Lectures on Hebrews’ (1518), Luther's Works Vol. 29. Lectures on Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews (St. Louis: Concordia, 1968) 218 f.Google Scholar The point is strangely overlooked by Donald Davies, M., ‘Free From the Law: An Exposition of the Seventh Chapter of Romans', Interp VII.2 (04 1953) 160 f.Google Scholar

Does this mean, in turn, that only the Gospel brings true recognition of sinfulness (Bornkamm, , Paul, 121Google Scholar; cf. Luther, , Romans, 334 f.Google Scholar; Barth, , Christ and Adam, 56 f.Google Scholar)? The answer seems to to be a qualified ‘yes’. Perhaps the best formulation is that it is Gospel as Law which first opens a man's eyes to his sinfulness (e.g. Jesus' appearance to Paul in Acts 9), even as the ‘Old Testament Christians’ right use of the Law was a use of it as Gospel, in faith and hope (e.g. Abraham's circumcision). On the limits to which one can conjoin Law and Gospel in this way, see Althaus, , 27 f.Google Scholar; Bultmann, , ‘Adam and Christ’, 76.Google Scholar

[75] Cf. above, n. 61.

[76] Stendahl, , Paul Among, 4Google Scholar; cf. ‘Saint Paul and the Jews’, Engage/Social Action III.12 (12 1976) 21 f.Google Scholar; ‘Sources’, 132.Google Scholar He adds that the centre of Romans is chapters 9–11, with their non-Christological doxology; does this mean that Christ, with justification, is to be thought of as a subsidiary part of Paul's ‘Jews and Gentiles’ message? In fact, these chapters can hardly be the climax, for the ‘anguish’ of 9. 1–3 follows from the ‘groaning’ of 8. 22 f. (and 7. 24). The reason that Christians must wait and suffer for the redemption of the body and deliverance from the flesh, ‘the body of this death’, is that they must also wait and suffer for the redemption of Israel, Paul's -and Jesus' - ‘kinsmen according to the flesh’. The Church is not complete without both of these redemptions.

Stendahl's concern for Jewish-Christian relations is commendable, and it is true that some traditional interpreters, abandoning Paul, have placed particular blame upon the Jews. But Paul would reply, not by denying the sinfulness of some, but by affirming the sinfulness of all, with or without the Law. This is not anti-Semitism but anti-Pelagianism, an opposition of any man who would achieve righteousness ‘in the flesh’. And surely Stendahl's belief that the Law failed because of Israel's corporate sinfulness is a position more conducive to anti-Semitism than that which he opposes.

[77] As to the centrality of justification by faith, Stendahl maintains that it is merely a device which Paul employs in the service of his main theme, the relation of Jew and Gentile; it establishes the Gentiles' right to share in God's promises to Israel, (Paul Among, 2–4, 27Google Scholar; ‘Saint Paul and the Jews’, 20Google Scholar; ‘Sources’, 131).Google Scholar But Paul continually says that the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile is possible only because of the prior reconciliation of each to God through faith in Christ (e.g. Rom 10. 12 f.; 2 Cor 5. 18–20; cf. Eph 2. 16–18); and Paul's kerygma, the word which he preaches (Rom 10. 8, 17), concerns this prior reconciliation. Cf. Catchpole, 452; Via, 209. At times Stendahl appears to acknowledge this (e.g. Paul Among, 29)Google Scholar, but I fear that such passages may be vestiges of a time when he accepted J.Munck's thesis that Paul's whole ministry was aimed at the eschatological salvation of Israel. Now that he has parted company (ibid., vi) with this (admittedly imbalanced) interpretation, he seems more hesitant to say that the Jews need any sort of ‘Christianizing’ in order to be saved. (See especially ‘Saint Paul and the Jews’, passim; though note also his concession in ‘A Response’.)

[78] The formula ‘simul Justus et peccator’ - ‘at the same time righteous and a sinner’ - is thus fully applicable to Pauline anthropology (against Stendahl, ‘The Apostle Paul’, 82 (202)Google Scholar; Paul Among, 14Google Scholar; cf. ‘Biblical Theology’, 425 f.).Google Scholar The Christian is simultaneously righteous, if considered in Christ, and sinful, if regarded according to the flesh. Roy A. Harrisville (‘Is the Coexistence of the Old and New Man Biblical?’, Lutheran Quarterly VIII.1 (02 1956): 20–32)Google Scholar separates the titles so as to make them not really simultaneous: ‘Whenever the believer takes refuge under the alien righteousness of Christ he is Justus; whenever he seeks his own righteousness he is peccator’ (29). Here again is the view that only the ‘lapsed’ Christian should be called a sinner; whereas I have argued that anyone, considered according to the flesh, is a sinner. Harrisville believes that the subject of Romans 7 is a Christian, but he seems not to recognize that this subject is losing his struggle with sin; for he says that the Christian may live without sin, as is ‘made clear’ in Romans 8. This misreading of Romans? is the great problem with Harrisville's article; he ascribes his position to Luther (29), but it is precisely Luther's comments on Romans 7 (and, for that matter, Augustine's - see Sermon CLIV.7–9) which demonstrate his belief that the Christian isat the same time righteous and a sinner (see e.g. Romans, 63, 66, 332, 336).Google Scholar

This formula does not mean that the Christian may excuse continued indulgence in sin by appeal to Romans 7; sec Augustine, e.g. Sermons CXXVIII.6 f., 10, CLI.1 f.

[79] ‘Formula of Concord’, The Book of Concord, tr. and ed. Tappert, Theodore G. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959) 479.Google Scholar Note Stendahl, , ‘The Apostle Paul’, 86 (206).Google Scholar

[80] Kässemann has said: ‘Paul's doctrine of justification … is paralysed if its attacking spear-head [i.e. the doctrine of the Law] is blunted, and for that reason it is only seldom that it has been able to determine theology and the church’ (‘Justification and Salvation History’, 71).Google Scholar It is sometimes claimed that Paul himself did not use the Law in his missionary preaching (Meeks, , 442Google Scholar; cf. Stendahl, , ‘The Apostle Paul’, 87 (207)).Google Scholar But this is incorrect, for Paul does present the heart of the Law, what Althaus calls ‘the divine command’ - which is, above all, the command to know God (Rom 1. 18 f.; cf. Acts 17. 26–30). And Rom 11. 13 ff. suggests that he believes that an acquaintance with Israel's history and standing before God can also benefit Gentiles.

[81] The ‘command’ (see the last note), as presented by Paul, has the same individualizing effect as the Law; it is a reinforcing of, and a preparation for, the individual voice of conscience.