Part Two: Paul's Rejection of Jewish Synergistic Soteriology
2.1. Curse of the Law (Gal 3:10-12)
2.2. Law Cannot Give Life (Gal 3:21-22)
2.3. Christ Did Not Die For Nothing (Gal 2:21)
2.4.
Condemnation of Jews (Rom 2:17-24; 3:9-20)
2.4.1.
Jewish Sin (Rom 2:17-24)
2.4.2. Even Jews “Under Sin” (Rom 3:9-20)
Appendix A: Condemnation of Gentiles
2.5. Paul's Pessimistic View of the Human Being
2.5.1. “The Law of Sin” (Rom 7:7-23)
2.5.2. The Human Being as "Flesh"
Appendix B: Religious-Historical Antecedents to Paul's Negative Use of "Flesh"
2.6. Adam's Legacy of Sin and Death in Rom 5:12-21
Ahead
to Part Three: Paul’s
Non-Synergistic Soteriology
Paul's Rejection of Jewish Synergistic Soteriology
In conformity with his religious-historical
background, Paul the Pharisee probably held to a synergistic soteriology.
He would have divided human beings into two classes, the unrighteous and
the righteous. When in Phil 3:6 he described himself in his previous life
as a Pharisee as “blameless according to the righteousness in the
Law,” he probably meant that he considered himself as belonging
to the category of the “righteous.”
(1)
Paul formerly believed that he had acquired righteousness as a result
of doing what the Law required: it was a righteousness “in”
the Law, or as defined by the Law.(2)
For this he would be eschatologically rewarded. The phrase “in the
Law” (en nomô) could also be interpreted instrumentally:
righteousness by means of the Law (see Gal 3:11; 5:4)(3)
(As a Pharisee, Paul would have meant by the Law [nomos] both the
written Law and the oral law.) No doubt, in keeping with the assumptions
of his second-Temple Jewish background, Paul did not mean by “blameless”
perfectly obedient, but rather habitually obedient.(4)
Exactly how many transgressions of the Law to which Paul would have admitted
before his conversion is unknown, but there must have been some.(5)
Nevertheless, as an advocate of Jewish synergistic soteriology, he believed
that his record of obedience was adequate to qualify him as righteous
or, as he put it, “blameless.”
| For examples of Jews who, like Paul, viewed themselves as "blameless," see 2 Macc 7; Jub. 23:14-31; 1 Enoch 1-5; 85-90 (Animal Apocalypse); 91:1-11 / 94:1-104:13 (Letter of Enoch); 93:1-10 / 91:11-17 (Apocalypse of Weeks); Ps. Sol. 2:31; 3:11-12; 12:6; 14:10; 15:13; 2 Bar 14:12-13; 15:7-8; 24:1; 30:1-5; 44:7-13; 48:48-50; 51; 54:4-5, 16, 20-22; 59:2; 4 Ezra 7:77, 92; 8:33, 36; 1QS 4.15-23; 1QpHab 8.1-3; 4Q171; 1QH 14[6].18-19a, 29-32; 7.18b-20 [15.14b-16]; 1QM. Often the righteous are depicted as being persecuted by the wicked and therefore hoping for eschatological retributive justice (see B.D. Smith, Paul's Seven Explanations of the Suffering of the Righteous, 10-34) |
After his conversion, Paul
re-examines his former view and concludes that no Jew can be righteous
enough to become qualified for eschatological salvation. He agrees
that God relates to human beings as a righteous judge, but rejects the
idea that God could ever grant eschatological salvation on the condition
of habitual obedience to Law. This is because he comes to believe that
only those who perfectly obey the Law become so qualified. Because
he holds that no human being is without sin, Paul must now repudiate the
notion that God will reward the righteous for their obedience to the Law
by granting them eschatological salvation. So he now considers the category
of the “righteous” or, to use his own term, the “blameless”
(Phil 3:6), to be irrelevant to the question of eschatological salvation.
To be righteous is still insufficient in order to be qualified for eschatological
salvation, because even habitual obedience to the Law falls short of God’s
standard. At final judgment a person is either perfect or a sinner; there
is no third option.(6)
Paul, therefore, abandons any form of synergistic soteriology; he repudiates
the idea that a Jew can make any contribution to his eschatological salvation.
(The process by which Paul modifies his Pharisaic views after his conversion
is unknown, belonging probably to the so-called “silent years”
of his life.) No doubt the fact that Paul persecuted the church served
to disabuse him of his previously overly optimistic assessment of his
own ability to be obedient to God (1 Cor 15:9; 1 Tim 1:12-16).
2.1. Curse
of the Law (Gal 3:10-12)
In Gal 3:11a, Paul states that
no one is declared righteous before God “in the Law” (en
nomô), by which he means by obeying the Law (en is used
instrumentally). The use of the verb dikaioun is forensic and means
to acquit of guilt.(7)
His point is that no one will be declared by God to be without guilt because
he has done what the Law requires.
| There have been many recent, unconvincing attempts to explain Gal 3:10-12 without assuming that Paul believes that being declared righteous by obedience to the Law is futile because perfect obedience is required and no Jew can render such obedience. According to N. T. Wright, Gal 3:10 does not mean that everyone “from the works of the Law” is under a curse, because Paul himself claimed to be blameless (Phil 3:6) and because they could be forgiven of any sin Jews were never necessarily under the curse of the Law (145) (“Curse and Covenant: Galatians 3.10-14” in The Climax of the Covenant [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991] 137-56. (Wright accepts Sanders view that Judaism did not have a “problem” with the Law.) What Paul has in mind In Gal 3 is the nation not the individual: “What is envisioned…is not so much the question of what happens when this or that individual sins, but the question of what happens when the nation as a whole fails to keep the Torah as a whole” (146). Obedience to the Law was, according to Deut 27-30, supposed to be the means by which Israel would retains its membership in the covenant and becomes the means by which the promises to Abraham concerning the world would be fulfilled. But this did not happened; rather exile came because of national disobedience to the Law. For Paul, the death of Christ brought the exile to an end, and redefined membership in the covenant. His use of Hab 2:4 is to make the point that, because of Christ’s death, Israel is redefined as a community of faith. This means, for Paul, that gentiles can become members of the covenant community on the basis of faith. Likewise, Paul’s citation of Lev 18:5 should be taken to mean that the doing of the Law, as opposed to faith, “cannot be as it stands the boundary-marker of the covenant family promised to Abraham and spoken of by Habakkuk” (150). Wright’s interpretation of Gal 3:10-14 is so unnatural as to be incredible. But he is forced to adopt such an unnatural interpretation because he wrongly assumes that Paul is not saying that those “from the works of the Law” are under a curse because it is impossible for anyone to keep the Law perfectly and so gain (eternal) life thereby. Equally as unconvincing is the argument of James M. Scott that Paul’s meaning is that the nation of Israel would remain under the curse of the Law until the time of the eschatological restoration (“‘For as Many as Are of the Works of the Law Are Under a Curse’ [Galatians 3:10]” Paul and the Scriptures of Israel [eds. C. A. Evans and J. A. Sanders; JSNTSup 83; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993] 187-221. The fact that some Jews believed that the exile continued even after the return to the land under the Persians does not seem to be at all relevant to understanding Paul’s point in Gal 3:10. F. Thielman errs in holding that second-Temple Jews did not believe that keeping the Law was a condition of eschatological salvation (Paul and the Law [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995]). E. P. Sanders rejects the view that Paul believed that the Law could not be fulfilled (Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983] 20-27; see also C. D. Stanley, “‘Under a Curse’: A Fresh Reading of Galatians 3.10-14,” NTS 36 [1990] 481-511). According to him, Paul’s main interest is to argue that gentiles are declared righteous by faith. Nevertheless, as a result, he finds himself committed to the opposite position that no one can be declared righteous by the Law. Sanders reconstructs Paul’s line of argumentation as follows. First, he claims that what attracts Paul to Deut 27:26 is the association of Law (nomos) with curse, not the word “all.” Paul needed a passage to stand in contrast with Gen 15:6 and Hab 2:4, the only two Old Testament passages “in which the root dik- is connected with pistis” (21). Second, Paul’s point in citing his “proof texts” is “that those who accept the Law are cursed.” This means that Paul’s emphasis is not all the word “all.” Third, in the larger context of 3:8-14, 3:10-13 serves as the “negative proof of the positive statement of 3:8” (22). Gen 18:18, which says that all nations will be blessed in Abraham (3:8), serves as a proof text for his view that gentiles are declared righteous by faith, this being their blessing in Abraham. The key word “blessed” in Gen 18:18 leads him to Deut 27:26, a passage in which the word “cursed” occurs in conjunction with Law (nomos) (the only such passage in the Old Testament). In other words, Paul argues that, if the gentiles are declared righteous by faith then, as Deut 27:26 indicates, those of the works of the Law are cursed. Sanders is emphatic that Paul’s point is not that “the law should not be accepted because no one can fulfill all of it” (22). In fact, the argument and proof texts in 3:10-13 should not be given too much weight in determining Paul’s views; rather Paul’s views must be derived from what he himself writes. Sanders writes, “Thus I regard 3:10-13 to be subsidiary to 3:8 and to consist of a chain of assertions which are stated by Paul in his own words and which are proved by the citation of proof-texts which contain one or more of the key words in his argument” (22). He then concludes, “The argument seems to be clearly wrong that Paul, in Galatians 3, holds the view that since the law cannot be entirely fulfilled, therefore righteousness is by faith” (22-23). Sanders then produces evidence that indeed Paul believed that the Law could be fulfilled (Phil 3:6). The real reason that Paul rejects the Law as a means of being declared righteous is not because of the fact that it cannot be fulfilled but because of his view that salvation is through the death of Christ. He writes, “Thus the whole thrust of the argument is that righteousness was never, in God’s plan, intended to be by the law. This helps us see that the problem with the law is not that it cannot be fulfilled. Paul has a view of God’s intention which excludes righteousness by the law; his position is dogmatic” (27). According to Sanders, Paul begins from the dogmatic belief that being declared righteous only comes through Christ. Contrary to Sanders, the easiest way to explain Paul’s argument in Gal 3:10-14 is to assume that Paul believed that no Jew kept the Law perfectly and so every Jew fell under the curses of the covenant. Sander’s view does not explain why Paul would ever hold that those of the works of the Law are under a curse if he also believed that the Law could be fulfilled. Sanders’ method of relativizing Paul’s statements and eliminating some as “subsidiary” does not do justice to Paul’s thought. (See the earlier article by J. Tyson, “‘Works of the Law’ in Galatians,” JBL 92 (1973) 423-31.) See the critique by Thomas Schreiner, “Paul and Perfect Obedient to the Law,” WTJ 47 (1985) 245-78; M. Cranford, "The Possibility of Perfect Obedience: Paul and an Implied Premise in Galatians 3:10 and 5:3," NovT 36 (1994) 242-58. Cranford points out that if Paul would surely not quote Deut 27:26 if it actually made the opposite point that he hoped to establish: that being declared righteous comes from obedience to the Law. Cranford also notes that Sanders ignores Gal 5:3, which supports the view that Paul holds the perfect obedience to the Law is required. See also V. Smiles, The Gospel and the Law in Galatia (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998) 197-205. Obscurely, but in agreement with Sanders, Smiles claims that “the impossibility of obeying the law sufficiently is not Paul’s major point in quoting Deut 27:26” (201). He goes on to say that Paul’s point is to oppose the idea that the divine-human relationship can be based on the Law and human performance; he holds that human existence is always based on faith and grace, just as God’s dealing with Abraham demonstrates. Strangely, on this interpretation, even the obedient are under the curse of the Law. It seems that only if he assumes that obedience to the Law is always too imperfect to lead to being declared righteous can Paul effectively refute his Galatian opponents. Charles H. Cosgrove takes a similar salvation-historical explanation for Paul’s assertion that No one can be declared righteous by the works of the Law (Gal 3:10) (The Cross and the Spirit [Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988] 52-61). Even though he does not think that the question of “justification before God” was the central problem which Paul was addressing in Galatians, Cosgrove argues that the reason Paul says that “those of the Law are cursed” is because “Christ-Faith” is an eschatological reality, foretold in Hab 2:4, which has now displaced the Law. The Law by itself did not put anyone under the curse. He assumes, as does Sanders, that no one would be cursed by the Law because the Law provides means by which the guilt of transgression will be removed (“cult and confession”) (54). G. Howard rejects the traditional view of Gal 3 because of what he considers to be two false presuppositions (Crisis in Galatia [SNTSMS 35; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979] 49-54). First, he does not think that it is possible that Paul saw a dichotomy between works and faith, the former being a means of achieving merit and the latter beings its negation. This is because “Jewish Christianity continued to keep the law while it submitted to justification by faith” (52). If the two were so mutually exclusive, then this would not have been historially possible. What Howard misses is the fact that not all Jewish Christians believed in “justification by faith,” as Paul understood it. Rather, according to Acts 15:1, 5, there were Pharisaic believers who insisted that circumcision and obedience to the Law were conditions of being saved. Besides, a Jewish Christian may keep the Law for a reason other than being a means of “justification.” Second, Howard questions the traditional view that Paul held that perfect obedience to the Law was required, which explains why Paul is supposed to believe that from the works of the Law no one will ever be declared righteous. Howard questions the traditional view because he holds that Paul would surely have known that “the cultic aspect of the Law implied the imperfection of man” (53). In other words, the Law allowed for the possibility of atonement for violations of it. What Howard does not notice is that, according to the Law itself, not every violation of it is forgivable by means of the cult and that Paul rejects the view common among Jews in his day that any violation of the Law may be forgiven on the condition of repentance. According to Howard, Paul’s concern is the inclusion of the gentiles into the church and he believes that requiring them to submit to the Law would lead to their exclusion. Similarly, J. Dunn argues unconvincingly that the real issue between Paul and his Judaizing opponents was that of particularism and nationalism: Paul wanted the church to be inclusive of gentiles (“Works of the Law and the Curse of the Law” ; id., Romans 1-8 [WBC; Dallas: Word, 1988] lxiii-lxii) (see Cranfield “‘The Works of the Law’ in the Epistle of Romans,” JSNT 43 [1991] 89-101, esp. 91-93). L. Gaston interprets Paul as affirming that there were two ways of being declared righteous, one for Jews and the other for gentiles. Paul’s interest was principally in defending the right of gentiles to be equal partakers of salvation with Jews (Paul and the Torah [Vancouver: UBC Press, 1987]). Jews could continue to obey the Law as a means of making themselves righteous, whereas gentiles were to be declared righteous apart from the Law by faith. S. K. Stowers gives his approval of Gaston’s view (A Rereading Romans: Justice, Jews and Gentiles [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994] 176-93). Gaston’s position hardly represents Paul’s teaching about the righteousness of God. According to Schlier’s more existential interpretation, it is simply the doing of the Law that brings a Jew under the curse, because doing is opposed to faith (Der Brief an die Galater [14 ed.; MeyerK; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971]). It is clear, however, that for Paul it is not actually doing the whole Law that brings a Jew under the curse, even though Paul believes that human beings are inherently incapable of obeying the Law perfectly. Paul believes that in theory a human being could do the Law and be declared righteous thereby. H. D. Betz argues unconvincingly that Paul’s point is that the “Jewish concept of ‘works of the Torah’” does not lead to the fulfiment of the Torah. Paul supposedly holds that “salvation in Christ and the fulfilling of the Torah undoubtedly go together” (citing Gal 5:14, 19-23; 6:2), but affirms that the “Jewish Torah given on Mount Sinai” is the Torah that can give eternal life (Galatians [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979]146). |
In Gal 3:10, Paul provides the basis for his conclusion expressed in Gal 3:11a. He affirms that whoever attempts to do the works of the Law is cursed, because the Torah itself says that cursed is everyone who does not do all that is written in the Book of the Law (Deut 27:26).
| Contrary to T. Donaldson, Paul does not introduce another argument for the fact that a Jew cannot be declared righteous by the Law in 3:11-12, different from 3:10 (“The ‘Curse of the Law’ and the Inclusion of Gentiles: Galatians 3:13-14,” NTS 32 [1986] 94-112, esp. 102-3). H. Räisänen likewise argues that in Gal 3:10-12 Paul presents two different arguments for why no one can be declared righteous by the works of the Law (Paul and the Law [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986] 94-96). In Gal 3:10, Paul appeals to human inability to obey the Law; implicily he assumes that perfect obedience is required and concludes based on empirical evidence that no human being has ever and therefore cannot ever be made righeous through such perfect obedience (see parallel in Gal 6:13). Räisänen believes that Paul’s argument in Gal 3:10 is “artifical in the same sense as the contention that nobody fulfils the law in Rom 1.19-3.20” (109). No Jew would have agreed that perfect obedience to the Law was required, which means that Paul’s supposed empirical evidence for universal sinfulness is exaggerated. One could be said to fulfil the Law with less than perfect obedience. In Gal 3:11-12, according to Räisänen, Paul presents another argument for why no one can be made righeous by the works of the Law. It consists of affirming a priori that this Law is opposed to faith as two opposing principles Paul makes a similar point in Gal 2:21). What Räisänen does not take into consideration is that Paul does not agree with his Jewish contemporaries that imperfect obedience is sufficient in order to be made righeous thereby. This belief no doubt represents for Paul a radical departure from his Pharisaic heritage. Moreover, Räisänen wrongly holds that Gal 3:11-12 is independent of Gal 3:10: What Paul writes in the former presupposes his conclusion stated in the latter. |
Nothing less than perfect obedience
is required in order to be declared righteous. (Paul’s citation
of Deut 27:26 appears to be from memory because it does not correspond
to either the LXX or the Hebrew; it has verbal similarities with Deut
27:26; 28:58, 61; 29:19, 20).(8)
Paul refers to that class of people who seek to be declared righteous
by doing what the Law requires as “Whoever are of the works of the
Law” (hosoi ex ergôn nomou), which obviously includes
Jews, who hold that eschatological salvation is conditional upon imperfect
obedience to the Law.(9)
| K. Kuula claims that Paul’s statement in Gal 3:10 that everyone who is “from the works of the Law” is cursed because no one can obey the Law perfectly is a “gross exaggeration and, from the point of view of Paul’s opponents, a misinterpretation of the law” (The Law, the Covenant and God’s Plan, vol. 1, Paul’s Polemical Treatment of the Law in Galatians [PFES 72; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999] 68). He rightly claims that Jews did not believe that perfect obedience to the Law was required to be considered righteous. But what he overlooks is that Paul no longer holds that view and now believes that it is wrong. In fact, Paul’s citation of the Torah itself in Gal 3:10-11 (Deut 27:26; Lev 18:5) may be intended to prove that such an attenuation of the demands of the covenant is illegitimate. Kuula’s claim that Paul’s statement in Gal 3:10 “does not do justice to the traditional teaching of the observance of the law, because it totally omits the notion of forgiveness that the law teaches” (69) is inaccurate because the Law does not provide the possibility of a comprehensive atonement. Kuula also claims that the fact that Paul does not repeat his argument in Gal 3:10 for the unfulfilability of the Law in Romans or any other letter implies that Paul himself does not find this argument very convincing (70). It seems improbable that Paul would write something that he did not actually believe, even in a polemical context. Cranford argues that by the phrase "works of the Law" Paul means partial obedience, which implies actual disobedience ("The Possibility of Perfect Obedience: Paul and an Implied Premise in Galatians 3:10 and 5:3"). There is little to commend such an interpretation. |
| Paul no doubt would include his Judaizing opponents in the category of those who are “of the works of the Law.” In Gal 5:7, he asks the Galatian believers rhetorically, “You were running well. Who has hindered you from obeying the truth?” Of course, he knows that the answer to this question is those false teachers who have infiltrated the Galatian churches. In Gal 6:12-13, Paul accuses his opponents of wanting to “boast in the flesh” as the motive for requiring the Galatian believers to be circumcised. By such boasting he means taking pride in or taking credit for fulfilling the Law as a condition of being declared righteous, in this case the rite of circumcision. Paul ironically points out, however, that even the “false” teachers, who themselves are circumcised, do not keep the whole Law, which means that their status as righteous is threatened because only the perfectly obedient will be declared righteous. |
Implicitly, however, Paul would
include gentiles in this category insofar as gentiles have the law written
on the heart (Rom 2:14-15).(10)
In this context, the phrase “works of the Law” is probably
an objective genitive—works that fulfill the Law.(11)
In either case, it means human actions that conform to the positive and
negative stipulations of the Law. The unstated minor premise in his syllogism
in Gal 3:10 is that no is able to do all that the Law requires.(12)
Paul's argument runs as follows:(13)
Cursed is everyone who does not obey all of the Law (Deut 27:26)
No one is able to obey all of the Law (and so no one does)
Therefore, whoever seeks to obey all the Law (“whoever is of the works of the Law”) is cursed.
Moreover, Paul’s argument
requires that he hold a priori that no one is able to obey the
Law in its entirety as opposed to merely drawing an a posteriori conclusion—based
on generalization from experience—since otherwise his argument would
lack universality.(14)
The tacit assumption therefore is that human nature is such that no one
can obey the Law. It is clear that Paul does not accept the notion prevalent
among Jews of his own day that repentance was possible for the Jew who
transgressed a commandment for which the Torah allows no possibility of
atonement. He takes seriously the condition of perfect obedience set forth
in Deut 27:26: The only way to escape falling under the curse of the Law
is to obey all that the Law stipulates. For this reason, he rejects Jewish
synergistic soteriology as an inadequate solution to the problem of sin.
In Gal 3:12, Paul cites Lev
18:5, which could be called the Law-principle: “The man who does
these things will live by them” (see Rom 10:5).(15)
When he undertakes to keep the Law, a Jew makes the commitment to live
by the Law, which means that if he keeps the Law perfectly he will “gain”
(eternal) life. It is clear that the
purpose of the Law is to serve as the means by which a Jew gains eschatological
through obedience to it, which is consistent with Lev 18:5: "So you
shall keep my statutes and my ordinances, by which a man may live if he
does them; I am the Yahweh" (see also Deut 4:1; 5:33; 6:24-25; 8:1;
11:26-28; 28:1-14; 30:15-20; Prov 6:23; Sir 17:11; 45:5; Bar 3:9). (16)
See the use of Lev 18:5 in CD 3:14-16; 4QDa frg. 11.12 and Ps.Sol.
14:2-3; LAB 23:10;4 Ezra 14:30; m. Abot. 2.7)
Of course, such a person must also bear the consequences of failing to
keep the Law, as described in Deut 27:26. (Paul’s version of Deut
27:26 differs from the LXX, but the differences do not affect the meaning
of his text.) Thus, the Law is causally connected to both being cursed
and receiving life. Paul’s point is that the Jew is under obligation
to do all that is written in the book of the Law, as Deut 27:26 clearly
stipulates, or else fall under the curses of the covenant set out in Deut
27-32.(17)
In Paul’s view, submission to the Law will always result in coming
under the curse because human beings cannot keep the Law perfectly. The
life offered by Lev 18:5 becomes merely a theoretical possibility.
2.2. Law Cannot Give Life (Gal 3:21-22)
In this passage, Paul takes
up the question, “Is the Law, therefore, opposed to the promises?
The conjunction “therefore” (oun) indicates that this
question has arisen from what Paul has written in the preceding passages.(18)
In Gal 3:6-9, 14-18, Paul considers the example of Abraham and concludes
that his faith was reckoned as righteousness and that he received the
promises because of his faith. Paul’s opponents could object to
his position, however, by arguing that Paul must hold that the Law, given
to Moses 430 years after the promises made to Abraham, actually contradicts
the promises (3:17). Paul’s opponents did not understand Law and
promise disjunctively, as he did, and were accusing him of nullifying
the validity of the Law insofar as he opposed the Law to the promises
given to Abraham. For Paul, Law and promise represent opposite modes of
how God relates to human beings. Either God rewards or punishes human
beings based of their obedience or disobedience to the Law or God promises
and gives unconditionally to human beings what he has promised. (See Gal
3:18: “For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based
on a promise; but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise.”)
Paul’s response to the accusation is to deny the central assumption
of his opponents, namely that the Law was intended to give life, and so
could rival promise: “For if a Law was given that could give life,
righteousness would then surely be of the Law” (ei gar edothê
nomos ho dunameno zôopoiêsai ontôs ek nomou an hên
dikaiosunê) (Gal 3:21b). The conditional clause represents an
unreal condition, so that Paul is actually denying that the apodosis is
true. In other words, the condition in the protasis cannot be met: No
Law can give life. The verb “to give life” in this context
is soteriological, referring to granting eternal life or salvation to
human beings. (See 2 Cor 3:6; in Rom 4:17; 8:11; 1 Cor 15:22, 36, 45 where
Paul uses the term to refer to a believer’s resurrection.) Thus
Law and promise could only be in conflict when the former can result in
righteousness and thereby give life. For a person to have righteousness
from the Law is to have a record of perfect obedience whereby God can
declare him righteous eschatologically. But righteousness cannot come
from the Law since perfect obedience is impossible. Implicit in Paul’s
conclusion is that human nature is such that no one can be perfectly obedient
to the Law, which is what the Law requires as a condition of giving life.
The Law does not contradict the promises because they do not have the
same purpose; Law and promise are not two opposing means of achieving
“life.” Rather, “life” can only come by promise
alone.
Although he does not do so in his extant letters, Paul could have referred to Ezek 20:25 to make his point about the Law: "I also gave them statutes (chqym) that were not good and judgments (mšptym) by which they could not live (l' ychyw bhm)." Unexpectedly, God, speaking through Ezekiel, states that the Law was not good for the Israelites because they could not live by it, by which is meant could not keep the Law and gain life by it. The prophet is making an obvious allusion to Lev 18:5 "So you shall keep my statutes (chqthy) and my judgments (mšpty); the man who does these things will live by them (wchy bhm). His point is that the promise of life through the Law has turned out to be impossible, so that the Law now becomes the means of condemnation and curse. This is in contrast, for example, to Neh 9:13-14 "You gave them just ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments." Yet in 9:26, 29, Nehemiah comments that surprisingly the Israelites did not obey the Law ("And cast your Law behind their backs" [9:26]), so that implicitly what was good turned out to bring negative consequences. |
Paul explains in Gal 3:22,
“But the scripture has confined (suneklisen) everyone under
sin (hupo hamartian), in order that the promise by faith in Jesus
Christ might be given to those who believe.” In so doing he explains
how the Law functions salvation-historically. He does not specify which
passage(s) from scripture that he has in mind, but possibly he is thinking
of Deut 27:26,(19)
quoted earlier in Gal 3:10, or the catena of scriptures cited in Rom 3:9-18
(Ps 14:1-3; 53:1-3; Eccles 7:20; Ps 5:9; Ps 140:3; Ps 10:7; Isa 59:7-8;
Ps 36:1).(20)
He is convinced that the Old Testament itself states that perfect obedience
to the Law is impossible for human beings. For all to be confined “under
sin” means that all human beings have inevitably sinned and so are
no longer eligible to obtain life by meriting it through perfect obedience
to the Law. (The verb “to be confined” has negative connotations.
Paul uses the same verb in Rom 11:32: “For God has confined all
to disobedience.”) Human beings know that they are confined under
sin because of the representative Jewish experience of being under the
Law. To be under the Law is to transgress the Law and thereby to know
oneself to be disobedient to God: No dissembling is possible for a Jew
(see Rom 3:19-20; 5:12-13; 7:7-8; Gal 3:10, 19). It follows that to adopt
a synergistic soteriology is an unjustifiable attenuation of the demands
of the Law. Thus, the only option remaining is to receive “life”
by faith in Jesus Christ as the realization of God’s unconditional
promise.(21)
2.3. Christ Did Not Die For Nothing (Gal 2:21)
In Gal 2:21, Paul writes, “If
righteousness is through the Law, then Christ died for nothing”
(ei gar dia nomou dikaiosunê, ara Christos dôrean apethanen)
(Gal 2:21). In this context, the noun “righteousness” (dikaiosunê)
denotes that which human beings have insofar as they have perfectly obeyed
the Law; for this reason, they can be said to be acceptable to God. Although
somewhat cryptic, taken in light of what he writes in Gal 2:16-20, Paul
means that, if it were possible for a person to obtain a righteousness
by obedience to the Law, then Christ’s death would have been unnecessary.
The phrase through the Law (dia nomou) is a shorter synonym for
the phrase “from the works of the Law” (ex ergôn
nomou), which occurs twice in Gal 2:16-17 (see Gal 2:19 for a parallel
use of the phrase “through the Law” [dia nomou]). Paul
posits two possible ways of acquiring for oneself righteousness: through
the Law or by means of the death of Christ. In his view, these are mutually
exclusive. He believes, however, that the former is merely a theoretical
possibility, since no one can actually obey the Law perfectly and thereby
obtain righteousness. The protasis “If righteousness is through
the Law,” in other words, is false, and so the apodosis “then
Christ died for nothing” is likewise untrue (see Gal 3:18 for similar
construction).(22)
The fact that Christ’s death was soteriologically necessary implies
that righteousness is not obtainable through obedience to the Law, implicitly
because no one can obey it perfectly. Paul’s opponents would not
deny that gentiles are sinners and even that Jews sin, but they would
not draw the radical conclusion from this that righteousness cannot be
through the Law; rather they would adopt some type of synergistic soteriology,
in which imperfect obedience would suffice. (They do not work with an
either/or soteriology, as Paul does [see Rom 4:14; Gal 3:18].) Paul does
not agree with such a unjustified compromise.
2.4.
Condemnation of Jews (Rom 2:17-24; 3:9-20)
After arguing in Rom 1:18-32 that gentiles stand before God as without excuse (which no Jew would deny), Paul turns his attention to the Jew, who surprisingly does not fare any better than the gentile. Paul claims that Jews sin even with the Law. This assertion in itself would not find any opposition among Jews: It would be considered a truism, even among Paul’s Galatian opponents. What would be contentious, however, is the fact that implicitly Paul takes exception to the view that guilt resulting from transgressions of the Law can be removed and so not affect a Jew’s standing as righteous (2:17-24). He rejects the foundational premise of Jewish synergistic soteriology that repentance functions to remove guilt and to preserve one’s status as righteous. (In effect, he takes exception to Jewish presumption upon divine mercy.) Contrary to his pre-conversion position, Paul now holds that only perfect obedience is sufficient to become qualified for eschatological salvation. Because of his radicalization of the conditions of the covenant, Paul views the status of the Jew who violates the Law even just once as no different from the Jewish sinner or even the gentile. In his understanding, any Jew who has committed a sin for which there is no possibility of atonement is cut off from the covenant. Moreover, because he believes that even Jews also are “under sin” (Rom 3:9), Paul thinks that Jewish violation of the commandments is inevitable. It follows that no Jew will be able to stand before God at final judgment and claim that he has met the conditions of obtaining eschatological salvation. For this reason, the purpose of the Law must be otherwise than being a means of being declared righteous by perfect obedience to it.
2.4.1. Jewish Sin (Rom 2:17-24)
Paul adopts the genre of the
diatribe, which has parallels with Stoic writings.(23)
He begins in Rom 2:17 with a conditional clause, but strangely the protasis
lacks an apodosis. Likely, in spite of the appearance of being an anacoluthon,
Paul is not actually setting forth a condition, but making an affirmation.(24)
He says that Jews “rely upon the Law” (su . . . epanapauê
nomô) and “boast in God” (kauchasai en theô)
(see Jer 9:23 Ps. Sol. 17:1; 2 Bar 48:22) (see TDNT
III 359-65). The advantage to being a Jew is that Jews have received the
Law and thereby know what is the will of God and can discern what really
matters (dokimazeis ta diapheronta), that is what matters to God;
they are “instructed in the Law” (2:18) (see 3:2). (The phrase
dokimazeis ta diapheronta also occurs in Phil 1:10.) Or, as Paul
expresses it in Rom 2:20, Jews “have the form of knowledge and the
truth in the Law.” The terms “knowledge” and “truth”
in this context seem virtually synonymous, so that the phrase “of
knowledge and the truth” is probably a hendiadys (two terms used
to denote a single concept). According to Paul, the Law contains “the
form of knowledge and the truth,” which means that the book of the
Law is the embodiment of what God has revealed about himself and his will
(see War 2.229; Ant. 12.256). Thus to “rely upon
the Law” is justifiably to follow after it and to base on life’s
upon it.(25)
Because of their possession of the Law, Jews were in a position to be
teachers to those without the Law: “a guide to the blind, a light
to those who are in darkness, an educator of the foolish, a teacher of
children. (On the phrase "guide to the blind," see Isa 42:7;
1 Enoch 105:1; Sib. Or. 3.195; on the phrase "a
light of those in darkness," see Isa 42:6, 7; 49:6; Wis 18:4; T.
Levi 18:9; 1QS 4.27-28.) Josephus, writing in the late first century,
explains that the Jewish Law has been a great benefit to the world: “As
to the laws themselves, more words are unnecessary, for they are visible
in their own nature, and appear to teach not impiety, but the truest piety
in the world” (Apion 2.291).(26)
The second privilege enjoyed by the Jews is the fact they alone are able
to “boast in God.”(27)
What he means is that the Jews rightly exalt in the fact that they are
distinguished from gentiles insofar as they are the covenant people, God’s
special possession (see Deut 7:6; 14:2; 26:18; 1 Kings 3:8; 1 Chron 16:13;
Pss 33:12; 105:6; 106:4-5; 135:4; Isa 41:8; 43:10; 44:1-2; see also Ps.
Sol. 17:1; 2 Bar 48:20-24).
According to Paul, in spite
of the privilege of possessing the Law, Jews have been unable to keep
the Law consistently (2:21-24). Not doing what they have taught makes
Jews into hypocrites. Paul asks five questions, which are more declarative
statements than true questions.(28)
He begins by asking rhetorically, “The one who teaches another do
you not teach yourself?” (2:21). He then gives three examples of
what Jews have taught gentiles but have not done themselves; he does so
in the form of rhetorical questions. (The interpreter should not be sidetracked
by the question of whether Paul claims that all Jews are gross sinners
because they all steal, commit adultery or rob temples (Rom 2:21). His
point is that all Jews have sinned and therefore have violated the covenant.)
He says that Jews teach that it is wrong to steal, but themselves do so;
likewise they teach that adultery is wrong, but this does not stop them
from committing it. Paul also says that Jews detest idols but rob temples.
It is not clear, however, how Jews were guilty of robbing temples, unless
he was referring to robbing the Jerusalem Temple (see T. Levi
14:5; Ps. Sol. 8:12; CD 6.15). Perhaps he was referring to the
practice of some Jews’ appropriation of the plunder from pagan temples
(see Acts 19:37; Jos. Ant. 4.207).(29)
It is not enough to possess the Law; a Jew, more importantly, must do
the Law, for mere possession of the Law has little value.(30)
Paul’s fifth question
summarizes his accusation against his own people: “You who boast
in the Law, do you dishonor the Law of God by your transgressions?”
Paul says that Jews boast in the Law, but dishonor the Law and God through
their violation of it. (Even though it is in the form of a question, Rom
2:28 is really a statement.) In this context, the phrase “to boast
in the Law” is used in a negative sense because it means to assume
wrongly a spiritual superiority over gentiles simply by virtue of knowing
what the Law requires. Paul’s point is that to know the Law is no
better than not knowing it unless obedience follows upon such knowledge.
The result is that, rather than being teachers of those without the Law,
Jews become the occasion of cursing of the name of God. (See the parallel
in t. Naph. 8:6: "And God is dishonored among the gentiles because
of him [i.e., ’the one who does not do the good’].")
To make this point, Paul adapts LXX Isa 52:5: “The name of God is
blasphemed among the gentiles because of you.” What was true in
Isaiah’s time is also true in Paul’s day: Gentiles reject
the Jewish teaching and even blaspheme the God of the covenant because
of Jewish hypocrisy. One should not think that Paul is saying that every
Jews sins continually. (One must appreciate the rhetorical context in
which Paul is writing.) Rather, he is affirming that that even habitual
obedience to the Law still means violations of the commandments; implicit
in Paul’s argument is that assumption that a single violation of
the Law is sufficient to be called a Lawbreaker. (Just as Jas 2:10 indicates:
"For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he
has become guilty of all.") In other words, he rejects as mistaken
the notion that God is satisfied merely with partial obedience.(31)
In short, Paul rejects the possibility of adopting a synergistic soteriology
in which imperfect obedience would suffice to satisfy the divine demand.
2.4.2. Even Jews “Under Sin” (Rom 3:9-20)
A. General Statement
After a digression on the advantages
of being a Jew, still using the diatribe style, Paul asks, “What
then? Are we any better? Not at all.”(32)
Probably the subject of the sentence “Are we any better?”
is Jews, because Paul has been discussing the advantages of being a Jew
in Rom 3:1-8, so that it would be natural for him to ask the question
whether the salvation-historical status of Jews gives them a soteriological
advantage at final judgment.(33)
(Of course, Paul has already denied this earlier in Rom 2:25 “Circumcision
is of value if you do the Law; but if you are a transgressor of the Law,
your circumcision has become uncircumcision.”)(34)
It must be noted, however, that the verb proechometha could also
be interpreted not as a middle voice with an active meaning, but as a
passive voice and translated as “Are we any worse off.”(35)
In this case, Paul’s goal is to affirm that Jews, because of their
failure to fulfill their covenant obligation of obedience to the Law,
are not in a worse situation than gentiles who have never had the Law.
(But, of course, this is not a good thing.) This is because both groups
have equally failed to make themselves righteous through obedience to
what they know to be the will of God.
Paul then draws the conclusion
that Jews and gentiles do not differ from each other in one important
respect: Both are “under sin” (huph' hamartia) (3:9).
In this context, Paul thinks of “sin” (hamartia) as
a power, to which all human beings, including Jews, are under or subject
(see Rom 7:14; Gal 3:22). In the case of the Jew, being subject to sin
leads to disobedience to the Law. Implicitly, Paul affirms that the reason
that both gentiles and Jews sin is that both are under the power of sin.(36)
(Paul has radicalized the idea of sin so that it is not an act but a power
that dominates and produces acts thereby.) Given his rejection of Jewish
synergistic soteriology, to be under sin has dire consequences for Jews,
because transgressions of the commandments resulting from being under
sin will disqualify the perpetrator from obtaining eschatological salvation.
B. Catena (Chain) of Old Testament Passages
To demonstrate from scripture
his point that all are under sin, in Rom 3:10-18, Paul strings together
a catena of quotations from the Old Testament. His use of the Old Testament
is quite literal; he believes that it teaches in various places what he
makes clear and systematic. The introductory clause “As it is written
that” is Paul’s typical way of introducing a quotation from
scripture; this catena of Old Testament texts is by far the longest quotation
in the Pauline corpus. Paul’s catena consists of three strophes
(Rom 3:10-12; 3:13-14; 3:15-18.(37)
The first strophe consists of two sets of three lines, whereas the second
and third strophes consist of two sets of two lines.
1. Rom 3:10-12 / Ps 14:2-3 (LXX 13:2-3); Ps 53:2b-3 (LXX Ps 52:2b-3); Eccles 7:20
|
Rom
3:10-12 |
Ps
14:2-3 |
Ps
53:2b-3 |
Eccles
7:20 |
| 10
There is no one righteous, not one 11 There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God; all have gone astray; together they have become useless. There is no one who does right—[there is] not even one. |
2
The Lord looks down from heaven upon the sons of men to see whether
there is one who understands or seeks God. All have gone astray; together
they have become useless. There is no one who does right—there is not even one |
3
God looks down from heaven upon the sons of men to see whether there
is one who understands or seeks God 2b There is no one who does good. |
Because
there is not a righteous man on the earth who will do good and not sin. |
2. Rom 3:13-14 / Ps 5:10b (RV
5:9b); Ps 140:3b (LXX Ps 139:4b); Ps 9:28a (RV 10:7)
|
Rom
3:13-14 |
Ps
5:10b |
Ps
140:3b |
Ps
9:28a |
| Their
throat is an open grave and with their tongues they keep deceiving,
the poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing
and bitterness |
Their
throat is an open grave and with their tongues they keep deceiving |
the poison of asps is under their lips | whose mouth is full of cursing, bitterness and deceit |
3. Rom 3:15-18 / Isa 59:7-8a; Ps 36:1 (LXX Ps 35:2b)
|
Rom
3:15-18 |
Isa
59:7-8a |
Ps
36:1:2b |
| 15
Their feet are swift to shed blood, 16 destruction and misery are in their paths 17 and the path of peace they have not known. 18 There is no fear of God before their eyes |
7
But their feet run to evil; they are quick to shed blood. And their
thoughts are thoughts of foolishness; destruction and misery are in
their paths 8a and the path of peace they do not know and there is
no judgment in their paths |
There is no fear of God before their eyes |
It should be pointed out that this catena of texts stands in opposition to the apparent optimism of the Torah concerning the possibility of obedience (see Deut 30:11-20). This anticipates Paul’s later interpretation of the role of the Law in salvation history.
C. Concluding Statement
Rom 3:19-20 represents Paul’s
concluding statement concerning Jews. In Rom 3:19, he states “We
know that whatever the Law says it speaks to those in the Law.”
When he uses the introductory phrase “We know,” Paul intends
to make a statement that is self-evident to himself and to his readers
(see Rom 2:2; 7:14; 8:22; 2 Cor 5:1; 1 Tim 1:8). The self-evident statement
that he makes is that the Law has applicability only to those who are
“in the Law” (en tô nomô), by which he
means Jews (see Rom 3:2; 2:18-20). (Paul also uses the expressions “to
have the Law” [nomon echein] [2:14] and “to know the
Law” [ginôskein nomon] [7:1].) In Paul's view, the
ultimate purpose of being “in the Law” is for Jews to conclude
that no one can “be declared righteous from the works of the Law”
(3:20). In other words, Jewish experience under the Law has for its purpose
that “every mouth and may be closed and the whole world stand guilty
before God” (3:19b). Paul’s use of “every mouth”
and “the whole world” should not be interpreted to mean that
he thinks that all human beings and not just Jews are “in the Law.”
Rather, gentiles come to know vicariously of the impossibility of being
declared righteous from the works of the Law through Jewish experience,
which serves as representative for all human beings.(38)
In this context, the phrase “works of the Law” is an objective
genitive, meaning human actions that conform to the positive and negative
stipulations of the Law.(39)
Paul uses the term ex ergôn nomou ("from works of the Law") seven times in his extant letters (Rom 3:20; Gal 2:16 [3 x]; 3:2, 5, 10; he also uses the shortened form ex ergôn ("from works") four times (Rom 4:2; 9:12, 32; 11:6). Paul also uses the phrase chôris ergôn nomou ("without works of the Law") in Rom 3:28 and the shortened form chôris ergôn ("without works") in Rom 4:6 (H.-J. Eckstein, Verheißung und Gesetz. Eine exegetische Untersuchung zu Gal 2,15 4,7 [WUNT 86; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1996] 21). The phrase "from works" (ex ergôn) in Rom 4:2-4; 9:32 is an abbreviation of “works of the Law.”
A Hebrew parallel of Paul’s phrase erga nomou (“works of the Law”) occurs in 4QMMT 3.29 (“some works of the Law”) (mqtst m'šy htwrh). In this passage, the phrase “works of the Law” is probably a subjective genitive, meaning “the Law’s works,” or the works that the Law requires of human beings under it. (On this question, see M. Abegg, “Paul, ‘Works of the Law’, and MMT,” BAR 20 [1994] 52-55; R. H. Bell, No one seeks for God [WUNT 106; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1998] 224-37; D.J. Moo, “‘Law, ‘Works of the Law,’ and Legalism in Paul,” WTJ 45 [1983] 73-100; R. K. Rapa, The Meaning of “Works of the Law” in Galatians and Romans [SBL 31; New York: Lang, 2001] 54-55). The phrase “some works of the Law” probably refers back to the list of halakot that the author includes in the letter (B 3-82). (See Michael Bachmann’s “4QMMT und Galaterbrief, ma’ase ha-torah und erga nomou,” ZNW 89 [1998] 91-113). Thus, contrary to J. Dunn, by the phrase “works of the Law,” the author of the letter does not mean only this list of of more than twenty-four halakot, which distinguishes his group from other Jewish groups (J. Dunn, “4QMMT and Galatians,” NTS 43 (1997) 147-53). Rather, by the term “works of the Law” he means everything that the Law requires. Only the phrase “some works of the Law” is restrictive (being a partitive genitive); it refers to this previously stated list of halakot (see C. E. B. Cranfield, “‘The Works of the Law’ in the Epistle of Romans,” JSNT 43 [1991] 89-101; T. R. Schreiner, “‘Works of the Law’ in Paul,” NovT 33 (1991) 217-44; M. Silva, “The Law and Christianity: Dunn’s New Synthesis,” WTJ 53 [1991] 339-53; B. Witherington, Grace in Galatia: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998] 176-77). J. De Roo argues that “works of the Law” (m'šy htwrh) in MMT C 27 does not refer to the Law’s precepts but to the actual performance of the Law by the kings of Israel: “Remember the kings of Israel and contemplate their deeds (m'šyhmh)” (“The Concept of ‘Works of the Law’ in Jewish and Christian Literature,” Christian-Jewish Relations through the Centuries [ed. S. Porter; B. Pearson; JSNTSup 192; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000] 116-47, esp. 138-44). Since the author does use m'šym in MMT B2 to mean not deeds but laws, De Roo’s interpretation is not convincing (see E. Qimron and J. Strugnell, Qumran Cave 4: V, Miqsat Ma’Ase Ha-Tora [Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 10; Oxford: Clarendon, 1994] 139).
Likewise, in 4QFlor (4Q174) phrase “works of the Law” (m'šy htwrh) is found (1.7). In this passage the men of the community, metaphorically described as a Temple, are said to “send up, like the smoke of incense, the works of the Law.” What is meant is that they offer up to God in a quasi-cultic manner their acts of obedience to the Law. (Some believe, however, that the original phrase was “acts of thanksgiving” [m'šy twdh] [see J. Kampen, “4QMMT and New Testament Studies,” Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives on Qumran Law and History [ed. J. Kampen and M. Bernstein; SBLSS 2; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996] 138-39, n. 40; F. Garcia Martinez, “4QMMT in a Qumran Context,” Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives on Qumran Law and History, 24.) In 1QS 5.21; 6.18 the similar expression “his works in the Law” occurs. In this context, "works in the Law" refers to what a member of the community has done by way of obedience to the Law; it is one this basis that he is evaluated and promoted. Moreover, in 2 Bar 57:2 the synonymous phrase “works of the commandments” occurs. Abraham is said to have accomplished the “works of the commandments,” which are his works in obedience to the commandments. On this topic, see also J. Tyson, “‘Works of the Law’ in Galatians,” JBL 92 (1973) 423-31; F. Avemarie, “Die Werke des Gesetzes im Spiegel des Jakobusbrief: A Very Old Perspective on Paul,” ZThK 98 (2001) 282-309. On the phrase “works of the Law” see also U. Wilckens, “Was heisst bei Paulus” ‘Aus Werken des Gesetzes wird kein Mensch gerecht’?” Rechtfertigung als Freiheit: Paulusstudien (Neukirch: Neukirchener Verlag, 1974) 77-109; S. Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004) 298-321; B. Eastman, The Significance of Grace in the Letters of Paul (SBL 11; New York: Lang, 1999) 75-78; R. K. Rapa, The Meaning of “Works of the Law” in Galatians and Romans (SBL 31; New York: Lang, 2001) 53- 70. See St-B. III 160-62 for the rabbinic evidence. |
To be declared righteous is
a forensic term meaning God’s confirmation that a person has met
the requirements set out in the Law.(40)
Paul’s position is that no Jew has been able to conform his actions
to the Law and therefore no Jew will be declared righteous on the basis
of what he has done.(41)
The problem is not with the works of the Law themselves, but with the
failure to do them.(42)
Paul’s assertion presupposes that being declared righteous by the
works of the Law is impossible without perfect obedience and that no human
being can render to God such obedience.(43)
In other words, he rejects the possibility of a synergistic soteriology,
in which only partial obedience suffices. What the experience of being
“in the Law” actually accomplishes is to define sin and bring
its violators into a state in which they know themselves as sinners: “For
through the Law is a knowledge of sin” (dia gar nomou epignôsis
hamartias) (3:20).
It should be noted that Paul’s statement, “Therefore from works of the Law no one will be declared righteous” (3:20a) appears to be an adaptation of Ps 143:2 [LXX 142:2]. If so, then Paul is responsible for adding the phrase “from works of the Law” (ex erga nomou) to his source, in order to make the citation more applicable to his argument.
| According to V. Smiles, Paul “reverses” the meaning of Ps 143:2 (The Gospel and the Law in Galatia [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1998] 130-32). While he recognizes that no one could stand as “righteous” in a lawsuit against God, the psalmist is far from accepting Paul’s belief that no one will be declared righteous by the works of the Law. The fact that the psalmist says in 143:8 “Teach me the way in which I should walk “ and in 143:10 “Teach me to do your will, for you are my God” means that he believes that righteousness is possible. Smiles writes, “For the psalmist, humanity’s one hope of attaining ‘righteousness’ is the Law’s guidance in the divine ‘way’ and ‘will’. Paul, however, detaches God’s ‘will’ from the law and defines it purely in terms of Christ’s death ‘for our sins’ (1:4c)” (132). Contary to Smiles, it would seem that Ps 143 does support Paul’s view and there was no need to claim that Paul has “reversed” the original meaning of the text. The fact that the author asks God to teach him how to be obedient does not lead necessarily to the idea that obedience to the Law leads to being declared righteous before God. In fact in light of Ps 143:2, one would expect the opposite conclusion. F. Mußner questions whether Paul even quotes from Ps 143:2 at all, since Paul’s addition of the phrase “from the works of the Law” changes the meaning of the cited text completely the gentile believers in Galatia would not be able to recognized the allusion to the psalm (Der Galaterbrief [HTKNT 9; Freiburg: Herder, 1974] 174-75). It is not clear that the addition of this phrase would change the meaning, rather than clarify it. |
As Paul uses this text, the future tense “will be declared righteous” is understood eschatologically, as referring to final judgment. Paul also substitutes the term “flesh” (sarx) for “living creature” (zôn) (Ps 143:2: “For not any living creature [pas zôn] will be declared righteous before you”). Paul likely prefers the word “flesh” because of its negative connotations: The reason that no one can be declared righteous eschatologically by “the works of the Law” is precisely because human beings are flesh, i.e., weak and sinful.
| In Rom 11:32, Paul offers a summary statement of his view on the human condition and God’s response to it. (Rom 11:32 picks up the two themes of 11:30-31: disobedience and mercy.) After speaking about how gentiles have been incorporated into Israel, he concludes, “For God has shut up all in disobedience in order that he may have mercy on all.” He means by “all” (tous pantas) primarily both all types of human beings under discussion, Jews and gentiles. This is suggested by the presence of the definite article (BDF § 275 [7]). This means that Paul is again denying the soteriological advantage of being a Jew and having the Law. (Implicitly, this is because Jews cannot keep the Law completely, and so be declared righteous thereby.) (See Eskola, Theodicy and Predestination in Pauline Soteriology, 145.) |
Appendix A: Condemnation of Gentiles
2.5. Paul's Pessimistic View of the Human Being
Paul does not view human beings (Jews or gentiles) as morally neutral, equally balanced between good and evil, which he probably believed when he was a Pharisee. Rather, he rejects the idea that human beings are truly free to do what God requires, since they are naturally inclined towards disobedience. This explains why Paul believes that no one is able to keep the Law perfectly.
2.5.1. “The Law of Sin” (Rom 7:7-23)
Rom 7:7-23, part of his apology
for the Law, is one of the most controversial passages in Paul’s
letters. In it he provides his most explicit explanation for the fact
that a Jew (or anyone else) cannot even get close to being able to obey
the Law perfectly, and so obtain life.(44)
In a synergistic soteriology, transgressions of the commandments would
not be a problem since the possibility of repentance always stands open,
but Paul rejects any compromise of the demands of the covenant. Using
the first person singular, as if he were relating his own personal experience,
he describes “his” life under the Law as a complete failure.(45)
Since the experience of the “I” of living in abject defeat
under the Law does not fit his own glowing evaluation of his life as a
Pharisee (Phil 3:4-6; Gal 1:13, 14),(46)
Paul’s use of the first person in Rom 7:7-25 is intended not as
autobiography but as representative of the Jewish experience before Sinai
and after the giving of the Law.(47)
Paul makes use of this rhetorical device for the purpose of speaking of
the collective Jewish experience of being under the Law.(48)
The closest parallel to Rom 7:7-23 is found in Gal 2:17-20. Only insofar
as he is a Jew does Paul speak autobiographically.(49)
Moreover, any autobiographical elements are from Paul’s post-conversion
perspective and do not represent a pre-conversion struggle with sin and
the Law.(50)
This is because it was only from a post-conversion perspective that Paul
concluded that his life under the Law was a failure,(51)
because he came to realize that only by perfect obedience to the Law could
a Jew be declared righteous.(52)
(It seems too speculative, however, to speak about Paul’s repressed
and unconscious struggle with the Law.)(53)
In Rom 7:7-13, Paul describes historically the Jewish experience of coming
under the Law, which explains his use of the aorist tense. (Rom 7:12 is
the response to the original question in Rom 7:7 "Is the Law sin?"
It is Paul’s overall purpose in Rom 7:7-13 to defend himself against
the charge that he makes the Law to be sin.) He then seamlessly moves
from speaking about a singular event in the past—Israel’s
coming under the Law—to describing in Rom 7:14-23 by means of the
present tense the Jewish experience of being under the Law.
| Some have argued that by nomos (law), Paul means, not just the Law given through Moses, but any law given by God to human beings, even the law written on the heart of the gentiles (Rom 2:14-15) (see A. Feuillet, “Loi de Dieu, loi de Christ et loi de l’esprit d’apres les Epitres pauliniennes,” NovT [1980] 29-65; C. K. Barrett, The Epistle to the Romans [BNTC; London: A & C Black, 1967] 140). From the context in Rom 7:7-23, it is implausible that Paul means by nomos (law) anything but the Law of Moses; nevertheless, even though historically only Jews came under the Law, Paul would no doubt argue that their experience was typical of what would happen to anyone who came under the Law (see Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 428). In this way the so-called existential view articulated by Kümmel (and others) has some validity: the “I” of Rom 7 represents the human being under the Law (Römer 7, 117-32). |
Each part begins with a statement
made in the first person plural: Rom 7:7 “What shall we say therefore...?”;
Rom 7:14 “But we know that....” That Paul has in mind the
experience of Israel under the Law is suggested by Paul’s citation
of the commandment “Do not covet” as an example in Rom 7:7
(see LXX Exod 20:17; Deut 5:21).(54)
An objection to this interpretation
of Rom 7:7-23 is that Paul’s statement in Rom 7:9 “I was alive
without the Law” could not be true of any Jew.(55)
Strictly speaking, Rom 7:9 could only be true of the first man, Adam,
for only Adam was alive in the fullest sense. (See Paul’s use of
the verb "to live" in Rom 1:17; 8:13 to express the idea of
being in state of having the hope of eternal life because of Christ.)
Earlier in Rom 5:12, Paul writes that human beings even without the Law
were already under death; those who did not sin as Adam did (“in
the likeness of the transgression of Adam”) by disobeying a specific
commandment, nevertheless, were still subject to death: “Death reigned
from Adam to Moses” (5:14). This has led some exegetes, by a process
of elimination, to interpret the “I” in Rom 7:7-13 as referring
to Adam alone.(56)
The alternative to the adoption of the Adam hypothesis is to understand
the phrase “I was alive without the Law” as referring to a
state of relative life in the absence of the Law, of “the situation
of Israel before the giving of the law at Sinai—when sins were not
‘being reckoned’.”(57)
(Paul does see a significant difference between sinning without the Law
and sinning as under the Law.) Given the absence of other clear indicators
in the context that Paul has Adam in mind, it is still best to interpret
the “I” as representative of the Jewish experience.(58)
This is not to deny, however, that some echoes of Gen 3 are to be found
in Rom 7:7-13. That there would be such echoes is not surprising since
Paul can connect Adam’s sin with Jewish sin because those under
the Law sin in the likeness of the transgression of Adam (5:14). Unlike
those who sin without the Law, including all human beings between Adam
and Moses, Jews sin by violating a commandment.
| See Theissen, Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology, 203-204. The commandment not to covet cited by Paul in 7:7 recalls the prohibition against desiring and eating the fruit of the tree (Gen 2:7). Likewise, the expression “Sin...deceived me” (hê...hamartia...exêpatêsen me) (7:11) is reminiscent of “The serpent deceived me” (ho ophis êpatêsen me) (LXX Gen 3:13). Death as a consequence of sin in 7:10 could be understood in light of Gen 2:17, 3:3, 4, and the expression “the commandment for the purpose of life” (hê entolê hê eis zôên) (7:10) may be related to the “tree of life” (to xulon tês zôês) (LXX Gen 2:9; 3:24. ). An obvious objection to interpreting the “I” of 7:7-13 as Adam is the fact that Paul quotes from the Decalogue (“You shall not covet”) and, of course, the Law was not given until the time of Moses. This would suggest that Paul is speaking simply of the Jewish experience under the Law. Defenders of the Adam hypothesis claim, however, that Paul is implicitly appealing to the Jewish tradition that covetousness or illicit desire is the root and essence of all sin, including that of Adam (4 Macc 2:6, 16; Apoc. Mos. 19; Adam and Eve 19; Philo, de opf. mund. 152, Deca. 142-43; 150, 153, 173; spec. leg. 4.84-94, 130-31; Apoc. Abr. 24:9; see TDNT 3.168-71) (see Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, 196 Theissen, Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology, 204-206). The absence of any clear reference to Adam in Rom 7:7-23 tells against the view that Paul is describing the fall of the first man. Nevertheless, the identification of covetousness as the root of all sin may be the reason that Paul chose the tenth commandment as his example. (In 4 Macc and Philo’s works, however, desire seems to be identified with sin under the influence of Stoicism.) |
In Rom 7:7-25, Paul denies
that a Jew is actually able to obey the Law, even though he agrees with
it in “the inner man”: “I concur with the Law of God
in the inner man (kata ton esô anthrôpon)” (7:22;
see 7:16: “I agree that the Law is good”).(59)
The phrase “inner man” in this context appears to be the functional
equivalent of “conscience”: It is the human faculty that distinguishes
the good from the evil. It is also the functional equivalent of “mind”
as it occurs in Rom 7:23 (“in the mind”). Similarly, in Rom
7:15b, Paul says,”What ‘I’ do not want to do ‘I’
do, but what ‘I’ hate to do ‘I’ do.” Using
the typical or representative “I,” he says, “I found
that the commandment that was intended to bring life brought death, because
sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me,
and through it put me to death” (7:11). (Paul uses the word “commandment”
[entolê] because he earlier cited a specific commandment
[“You shall not covet”] as an example of how the Law becomes
complicit in causing disobedience [7:7-8a].) Paul’s statement presupposes
the Law-principle, “Keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys
them will live by them” (Lev 18:5). The ostensive purpose of the
Law is life, for perfect obedience to the Law would bring (eternal) life
as its consequence.
Paul then explains how a personified
“sin” used the commandment to trap “me.” In his
view, sin remains inactive without the Law (see 7:8b-9). The result was
that ironically what was intended to bring (eternal) life (eis zôên)
brought (eternal) death. When presented with the Law for the first time,
a human being naively assumes that he can obey it; the unexpected result,
however, is bondage to sin, so that the Law is passively complicit in
producing violations of itself. (The use of the phrase “Sin...deceived
me” in Rom 7:11 is probably an intra-textual echo of Gen 3:13: “The
serpent deceived me”; see 2 Cor 11:3; 1 Tim 2:14.) This was the
Jewish experience of the Law. As soon as he becomes aware of God’s
requirements in the Law, a Jew’s latent tendency to sin—defined
as the violation of a commandment—comes to life: “Sin sprang
to life” (7:9). Paul envisions sin as a potential power ruling over
human beings that becomes actual in the presence of the Law.(60)
Thus, he describes the “I” as “sold as a slave under
sin” (7:14; see also Rom 3:9; Gal 3:22) and “fleshly”;
similarly, in Rom 7:17, 20, he describes “sin” as something
that dwells in “me” that prevents “me” from doing
what “I” know to be the good (hê oikousa en emoi
hamartia).
It must be stressed that Rom 7:14-25 does not describe the believer’s life as under the Law, for what Paul says in this passage is hardly consistent with what he says in chapters 6 and 8 about a believer’s freedom from sin and life in the Spirit (contrary to A. Nygren, Commentary on Romans [Philadelphia:Fortress, 1949] 284-302; Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, 1.342-45; Dunn, Romans 1-8, 374-412; Barrett, The Epistle to the Romans, 145-53; Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 256-73; D. Wenham, “The Christian Life: A Life of Tension?” Pauline Studies. Essays Presented to F. F. Bruce on His 70th Birthday [ed. D. Hagner and M. Harris; Exeter: Paternoster, 1984] 80-94; D. Garlington, Faith, Obedience and Perseverance (WUNT 79; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1994) 110-43). The cry of despair in 7:24 inconsistent with Paul’s view that believers necessarily live in odedience, as elucidated in Rom 6. Besides, Paul would never describe a believer as sarkinos (7:14) (see 7:5-6; 8:5-9) and “sold under sin” (see 6:17-19) (To be “sold under sin” [7:14] and to have “sin dwelling in me” [7:17, 20] ]appear to be a synonym for being “under sin” [Rom 3:9; Gal 3:22], which is descriptive of the non-believer.) (Dunn reads 7:14-25 in particular as autobiographical, as an expression of Paul’s experience as a believer living in the “eschatological tension”: “It is not Paul the pious Pharisee who speaks here, but Paul the humble believer; and whoever else he speaks of he certainly speaks of himself” [Romans 1-8, 407].) Theissen points out that the transition between 7:13 and 7:14 is too weakly marked “to be considered the transition between pre-Christian and Christian periods of life” (Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology, 183). Moreover, it seems strange that Paul could ever describe the believer’s life without reference to the Spirit (Kümmel, Römer 7, 104-17; see Bultmann, “Römer 7 und die Anthropologie des Paulus,” Imago Dei. Festschrift S. G. Krüger [ed. H. Bornkamm; Giessen, 1932]) (compare with 7:6 and 8). Simply put, Paul would not agree that continued sin was inevitable for the believer. As J. Christiaan. Beker expresses it, Paul believes that the believer’s situation is that of posse non peccare (“able not to sin”), as opposed to the situation of non posse non peccare (“not able not to sin”) that characterizes the human being as under the Law (Paul the Apostle. The Triumph of God in Life and Thought [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980] 217-18; see Martin, Christ and the Law in Paul, 75-84). The contrast between the “I” described in Rom 7:14b as “sold under sin” and 7:23 as “imprisoned by the law of sin” with Paul’s description of the believer as “set free from sin” (Rom 6:18, 22) and “set free from the law of sin and death” (8:2) leads to the conclusion that the “I” in Rom 7:14-25 is not a believer (see Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 441-51; see also Theissen, Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology, 182-83). (This is opposed to Luther’s view of the believer as simul iustus et peccator [“at once justified and sinner”].) Similarly, the fact that problem that the “I” has is death (7:24; see 7:10, 11, 13) should lead the exegete to the conclusion that Paul is not describing the life of a believer, because for Paul death is the consequence of being under the domination of flesh and sin (see 6:16, 21, 23; 7:5; 8:6, 13).
|
No doubt sin in this sense
is closely related and perhaps even synonymous with “flesh”
(7:14, 18). Sin is also described as another law (heteros nomos)
at work in “my” body or physical existence (“in my members”)
(7:23a). In this context, “law” means a (causal) principle
(This use of nomos is partially parallel to the use of nomos
in Rom 7:21: “I find this law (that) when I will to do the good
evil is present to me.”)(61)
As used in this passage, nomos means something like “general
rule.”(62)
Since the phrase “another law” is followed by “in my
members” and later in the verse “the law of sin” (ho
nomos tês hamartias) is also followed by the same phrase (“in
my members”) (7:22-23), it follows that “sin” is that
other (causal) principle: It is a law or causal principle for the purpose
of sin.(63)
There are parallels to Paul's pessimistic view of the human being in the Thanksgiving Hymns. That no human being could ever meet God's righteous standards is a theme repeated throughout these compositions. In 1QH-a 4(12).29-30, the teacher confesses, "He [a human being] is in sin from his mother's womb and until old age in guilty iniquity. And I know that righteousness does not belong to man, nor perfection to the son of man." The teacher affirms the general sinfulness of human beings; it follows that a human being is neither righteous nor perfect (These terms are in synonymous parallelism, corresponding to "man" and "son of man"). One could say that in 1QH 4(12).29-30, sin is conceived somewhat as a sphere in which one exists, from which sinful actions naturally follow. In the community psalms, this negative view of the human being is even more dominant. In 1QH-a 1(9).21-27, in contrast to God as creator, who is righteous in all his acts (1[9].6), the author describes himself as existing in weakness and sinfulness: "I am a creature of clay, kneaded in water, foundation of shame and source of impurity, oven of wickedness, building of sin, a spirit of error and perversity, without knowledge" (1QH-a 1[9].21-22). Because of this, the author stands before God in trepidation: "I am…terrified by your righteous judgments" (1[9].23); he fears that if God were to judge him he would stand condemned. In the same vein, the author asks rhetorically, "What will a man say about his sin? How will he defend his iniquities? How will he reply to righteous judgment?" (1[9].25-36a).The expected answer is that a human being will not be able to do any of the things specified in the questions. In conclusion, the author contrasts God as creator with the human beings as creation once again: "To you, God of knowledge, belong all the works of righteousness and a foundation of truth; to the sons of man the service of sin and the works of deception" (1Qh-a 1[9].26b-27). God as foundation of truth and his works of righteousness stand in contrast to the service of sin and the works of deception of human beings. To be a foundation of truth is to be the origin of all that is good, which explains why God's works are qualified by righteousness. Human beings, on the other hand, do only wickedness. Similarly in 1QH-a 3.23-24, the author confesses, "I am a creature of clay, kneaded in water. With whom am I to be counted and what is my strength? Because I dwell in the domain of sin." He describes himself as weak and insignificant, using the same phrases found in 1QH 1.21: "a creature of clay kneaded with water" (see also 4.29). He has no claim to greatness; rather he dwells "in the domain of sin." The phrase "domain of sin" is used in 1QH-a 2.8 (10.12), where it describes the author's opponents who take offence at him and attempt to destroy him. As used in 1QH-a 3.24, it denotes the sinful existence in which the author finds himself. Again, the attribute of weakness is conjoined to sinfulness, but without explanation as to why these necessary belong together. The same portrait of the human being occurs in 1QH-a 9.14-15. The author begins by confessing "No one is declared righteous in your judgment or innocent at your trial" (9.14b-15a), and then proceeds seamlessly to describe human weakness before God (9.16-17); the implication is that sinfulness and weakness are necessarily correlated. Thus, being weak means that the human being is fundamentally sinful; he is one whose "foundation is shameful nakedness [ ] over whom a spirit of perversity rules" (see the use of the phrase in 1QH-a 3[11].21; 11[19].12). The phrase "shameful nakedness" is probably an allusion to Adam and Eve after Adam's sin (Gen 3). To be ruled by a spirit of perversity is to have a basic disposition towards disobedience (see 1QH-a 7.27 "perversity of heart." Again the assumption of the interpenetration and inseparability of weakness and sinfulness obtains. |
2.5.2. The Human Being as "Flesh"
Paul expresses the human plight
as incapable of obeying God perfectly and therefore of making themselves
righteous by means of the terms "flesh" (sarx) and "fleshly"
(sarkinos). Although he uses the term "flesh" in several
different ways, most importantly flesh in Paul's writings can mean the
human being as a willing instrument of sin or what theologians call "the
sinful nature" or "the lower nature." As such, it
denotes a function or aspect of a human being but is portrayed by Paul
almost as a substantial entity, a component part. In Paul's thought, human
beings are naturally "in flesh" or "fleshly"; only
with the ingression of the Spirit does this cease to be true.(64)
(In Rom 6:12; 7:7-8, "sin" plays the role that "flesh"
does in other passages from Paul's writings.)
A. Gal 5:13
Paul says to the Galatians that their calling to freedom should not become an opportunity for the flesh (eis aphormên tê sarki); rather they should serve one another by means of love. Practically, he does not want the Galatians to conclude that their freedom from Law means that they can act contrary to the principle of love. The "flesh" is conceived almost as a quasi-substantial entity standing in opposition to the human will that seeks opportunity to subvert the latter.
B.
Gal 5:16-21, 24
Paul says that "walking in the Spirit" will result in not fulfilling “the desire of the flesh” (epithumia sarkos) (5:16). The genitive phrase “the desire of the flesh” is a genitive of origin ("The desire originating in the flesh") or a subjective genitive ("The flesh's desire"). On either interpretation, flesh is conceived as almost a quasi-substantial entity, one that produces a fundamental illicit desire in a human being; in other words, the flesh is a evil principle or causal agent. (The Spirit desires what is contrary to the flesh and vice versa [5:17].) There follows a list of “the works of flesh” (ta erga tês sarkos): "sexual immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing and things." These works are the manifestations of the principle of the flesh. Paul assumes that without the Spirit a human being will by default walk in the flesh.
C . Rom 7:14, 18
In the context in which he speaks of being "sold under sin" (7:14) and the "indwelling" of sin (7:17, 20), Paul also says that "I am fleshly" (ego de sarkinos eimi) (7:14) and "I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh" (oida gar hoti ouk oikei en emoi, tout' estin en te sarki mou, agathon). Paul views the natural state of the human being as being unable to obey the Law, which he describes as being "fleshly." He almost objectifies the "flesh," and conceives it as a quasi-substantial entity, insofar as he portrays the flesh as inhabiting "me" and exercising full control.
D. Rom 8:5-8
Paul contrasts "those
who are according to the flesh" (hoi kata sarka ontes) and
who "think on the things of the flesh" (ta tês sarkos
phronousin) with "those who are according to the Spirit"
(hoi kata pneuma [ontes]) who "think on the things
of the Spirit" (ta tou pneumatos [phronousin]) (8:5).
Flesh and Spirit are two mutually-exclusive principles or causal agents
operative in human beings. He holds that by default the person without
the Spirit is controlled by the flesh.
E. Eph 2:3
After describing how believers
formerly lived "according to the age of this world" and "according
to the prince of the power of the air," Paul adds, "We formerly
lived in the desires of the flesh" (anestraphêmen
poe en tais epithumiais tês sarkos hêmôn). To live
in the desires of the flesh is to be dominated by the inclination towards
disobedience exercised by the flesh, or sinful nature.(65)
As in Gal 5:16, the genitive phrase “the desires of the flesh” may be
a genitive of origin ("The desires originating in the flesh")
or a subjective genitive ("The flesh's desires"). It seems that
the desires of the flesh are of two types, those of the body and those
of the mind: "Doing the desires of the flesh and the mind" (poiountes
ta thelêmata tês sarkos kai tôn dianoiôn).
On this interpretation the second reference to "flesh" (sarx)
denotes the body as opposed to the sinful nature.
| There is a tradition in second-Temple Judaism that traces the origin of moral evil to the Watchers, angels who corrupted human beings in antediluvian times (see Brandenburger, Adam und Christus, 20-26). In 1 Enoch 6-11, it is said that the Watchers not only had sexually relations with women (6; 7.1-3; 9.8-9; 10.11), but taught evil to human beings evil, revealing to them heavenly secrets (7:1; 8:1, 3; 9.6-8; 10.7-8; 19:1; 54:6; 64:2; 67:7; 69:27); for this reason the earth was full of sin (see 9.9-10). The same idea occurs in the Book of Jubilees (4:15, 22), except that the offspring of the Watchers played a major role in the corruption of humanity (5.1-4; 7.21-25.) (See also CD 3.4-7; T. Reub. 5.6-7; T. Naph. 3.5). ( In the Book of Jubilees, the remainder of the fallen angels are under the control of Mastema (10.8, 11). Another source of corruption in the postdiluvian period is the (evil) spirits of the offspring of the Watchers (1 Enoch 15.8-9; 16.1; Jub. 7:27; 10:1-12; 11:4-5; 12:20). Paul doubtless believed that Satan and the spirits under his authority lead human beings astray, but he would add that they do so because human beings have the potentiality to be so led. |
Appendix B: Religious-Historical Antecedents to Paul's Negative Use of "Flesh"
2.6. Adam's Legacy of Sin and Death in Rom 5:12-21
In addition to teaching that
human beings—both Jews and gentiles—will be judged on the basis
of their own volitional acts, Paul also believes that all human beings
participate in Adam's sin and inherit death as the penalty of this primeval
transgression.(66)
Paul believes that both guilt and death originated with Adam and was passed
onto his descendants because of their solidarity with him. (For partial
parallels to this view, see Adam and Eve 44; Apoc. Mos.
14, 32; 4 Ezra 3:7, 21-22; 4:30; 7:116-18; 2 Bar. 17:2-3;
23:4; 48:42-43; 54:15, 19; 56:5-6.) Paul never explicitly reconciles these
two views of sin as individual and as corporate (The author of 2 Baruch,
however, rejects the idea that a sinner is counted as such because of
Adam's sin: "But each of us has become our own Adam" [54:19;
see also 54:15].) In Rom 5:12-21, Paul contrasts the effects on the human
race of the two representative "men" (anthrôpoi),
Adam and Christ. Rom 5:12 represents the first half of the contrast (protasis),
which is introduced by the conjunction "just as" (hôsper);
the second half of the contrast (apodosis) introduced by "so also"
(houtôs kai), however, does not come until 5:18b. (Because
the apodosis is so far removed from the protasis, Paul chooses to reiterate
the latter in Rom 5:18a "So therefore through the trespass of one
resulted in the condemnation of all human beings....") Rom 5:13-17
is a digression or parenthesis, in which Paul explains in more detail
the origin of sin and death with Adam. In Rom 5:12, he states that it
is through one man that sin entered the world and with sin came death
(see the synonymous clause in 5:17: "If through the transgression
of the one death reigned because of the one"). From what he says
in 5:13, it is clear that Adam's decision to sin was representative, with
the result that he brought the punitive consequence of his sin—death—to
all of his progeny. When he says that "Sin is not reckoned in the
absence of Law" but also that "Sin was in the world (already)
until the coming of the Law" (5:13), Paul can only mean that all
human beings are sinners by virtue of their participation in Adam's sin.(67)
In other words, to use older theological terminology, Adam functioned
as the federal head of the human race, so that his choice to sin belongs
to all. Otherwise, Paul would have a hard time explaining how all sin
was in the world between the time of Adam and Moses when there could be
no sin, since there was no Law. Sin was in the world, not because of the
personal sins of Adam's progeny, but because of their corporate participation
in Adam's sin. (Before the coming of the Mosaic Law, according to Paul,
only Adam sinned in the strict sense of the word, because only he disobeyed
a commandment; Paul appears to acknowledge the difference between the
sin of Adam and that of his progeny by his statement "Death reigned
from Adam to Moses even over those who did not sin in the likeness of
the transgression of Adam" [5:14]. Adam's progeny sinned, not like Adam
by violating a commandment, but by virtue of their corporate identification
with Adam.(68)
This interpretation is confirmed by Paul's concluding statement
in 5:12: "Because all sinned."(69)
(There has been debate about how to interpret the phrase eph' ho;
likely, ho is neuter and the phrase eph' ho should be taken
as conjunction meaning "because" or "for this reason that."(70)
(see 2 Cor 5:4; Phil 3:12; 4 for other occurrences of the
phrase as a conjunction). Paul's enigmatic point is that the reason that
death extends to all human beings is that all participated in Adam's sin
or "all sinned [i.e., with Adam]." As Ridderbos puts it, "It
was not their personal sin, but Adam's sin and their share in it, that
was the cause of their death."(71)
Further support for the
interpretation of the federal headship of Adam (and by contrast of Christ)
is Paul's statement in 5:19, which is parallel to the protasis in 5:12
(and 5:18a): "For just as through the disobedience of the one man
many became sinners..." The many became sinners, not because of their
own sins, but because of their corporate identification with Adam.(72)
| Similarly, in 1 Cor 15:20-22, Paul writes, "Death came through a man" and "In Adam all die." The prepositions "through" (dia) and "in" (en) both have a causal sense: through the agency of the first man death came into the world, and because of Adam all die. Elaborating on this in 1 Cor 15:25-28, Paul says that, although through his death and resurrection Christ has begun to reign, has begun putting all of his enemies under his feet, the subjugation of the last enemy, death, remains in the future: "For he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death." Death will only be defeated at the final resurrection of the dead, when the dead will be raised incorruptible at the last trumpet (1 Cor 15:50-57). Not until this time will "Death will be swallowed up in victory" (15:54). |
It is also possible that, for Paul, Adam's representative sin brought not only guilt (because all sinned in Adam) and death but the propensity to sin (original sin); but even if he does not trace the propensity to sin to Adam, Paul certainly holds that human beings, including Jews, are by nature "in the flesh" or in subjection to “the law of sin,” and therefore inveterate sinners.
The Ezra Apocalypse begins with Ezra's analysis of the cause of the national catastrophe as God's not having removed the propensity to sin from the Israelites. God gave the Law to His people as a means of obtaining life; since Adam's descendants were under the influence of an evil heart (cor malignum), however, the Law was in their hearts along with an evil root (malignitas radicis) (4 Ezra 3.20, 22). The term evil heart denotes the human being as fundamentally disobedient, the heart being the moral center of a human being. This innate propensity to disobedience is also expressed by the metaphor of the evil root in the heart, and is causally linked to Adam's sin, as Adam's legacy to his descendants, the common destiny of all humankind, although ultimately no explanation is provided for the origin of the evil heart (4.4). The angel agrees with Ezra's analysis of the human predicament, and compares the transgression of the first man to a grain of evil seed (granum seminis mali) sown in his heart, which produces much fruit of ungodliness among his progeny (4.26-32). Ezra plaintively wonders why God did not remove the evil heart, so that the Law might bear fruit in them; to this, however, he receives no response (3.20-27). Later in the third dialogue (7.45-48), Ezra complains similarly, "For an evil heart has grown up in us, which has alienated us from God…and not just a few of us but almost all who have been created" (7.48). In the second dialogue, Ezra is reassured that at the end of the age "the heart of the earth's inhabitants will be changed and converted to a different spirit" (6.26-27; see 7.113-14); what is being described is the eschatological transformation of Israel, the removal of the innate propensity to sin. It must be stressed, however, that, although it greatly hinders it, this legacy of rebellion bequeathed by Adam to his descendants does not close off totally the possibility of obedience to God. About the multitude who perish the angel explains, "For they also received freedom, but they despised the Most High, and were contemptuous of His Law, and forsook His ways" (8.56). Nevertheless, great effort of will is required to nullify the influence of the evil heart; life is compared to a contest, in which a person must choose to obey and actually do so (7.127-31). Ezra explains to the people that if they rule over their minds and discipline their hearts that they will live and after death find mercy (14.34-36). The effort required to become and remain righteous explains why so few will gain a place in the age to come (7.45-61; 8.1, 41; 9.14-24; 10.10). |
Footnotes
(1) See P. T. O’Brien, The Epistle to the Philippians (NTGTC; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991) 378-81. On Phil 3:4-8 see T. Eskola, Theodicy and Predestination in Pauline Soteriology (WUNT 2d s. 100; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1998) 225-30; A. Das, Paul, the Law and the Covenant (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2001) 215-22.
(2) M. R. Vincent, Epistles to the Philippians and to Philemon (ICC; New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons, 1897) 98; G. F. Hawthorne, Philippians (WBC; Dallas: Word, 1983) 134.
(3) H. Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975) 138, 170.
(4) See T. Schreiner, The Law and Its Fulfillment (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993) 114-21.
(5) K. Stendahl ("Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West," HTR 56 [1963] 199-215) and E. P. Sanders (Paul, the Law and the Jewish People [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985] 23-24) do not notice that, when he says that he was "blameless" in Phil 3:6, Paul means that he formerly believed himself to be righteous because of his habitual obedience. It is unlikely that he meant that he had been perfectly obedient for his entire life. After his conversion, Paul rejects the category of the "righteous" as soteriologically irrelevant and so retrospectively includes himself in the category of the "sinner" along with the rest of humanity (see T. Schreiner, "Paul and Perfect Obedience to the Law: An Evaluation of the View of E. P. Sanders," WTJ 47 [1985] 245-78).
(6) R. Gundry, "Grace, Works, and Staying Saved," Bib 66 (1985) 1-38.
(7) See L. Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1956) 224-74.
(8) Paul’s preference for this particular version of Deut 27:26 may be motivated by the fact that it contains the adjective "all" (pasin), which serves to emphasize the theological point that he seeks to make (R. Y. Fung, The Epistle to the Galatians [NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988] 141; T. Schreiner, "Paul and Perfect Obedience to the Law: An Evaluation of the View of E. P. Sanders," 256 n. 15; R. Longenecker, Galatians [WBC; Waco: Word, 1990] 117; H.-J. Eckstein, Verheißung und Gesetz. Eine exegetische Untersuchung zu Gal 2,15-4,7 [WUNT 86; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1996] 124). It is possible, however, that Paul used the LXX and modified it. It is also possible that Paul made his own translation of Deut 27:26 under the influence of LXX Deut 27:26. It is even possible that he quotes from a version of the LXX that is otherwise unknown (see H. D. Betz, Galatians [Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979] 144-45). For an overview of Paul’s view of the Law and its development, see U. Wilckens, "Zur Entwicklung des paulinischen Gesetzverständnis," NTS 28 (1981-82) 154-90.
(9) See Tyson, J. Tyson, “‘Works of the Law’ in Galatians,” JBL 92 (1973) 423-31, esp. 430.
(10) F. Mußner, Der Galaterbrief (HTKNT 9; Freiburg: Herder, 1974) 223-24.
(11) See the discussion in Räisänen, Paul and the Law, 176-77. Even if the phrase "works of the Law" is a subjective genitive, meaning works that the Law requires, Paul would assume that anyone who could rightly be described as "of the works of Law" would actually conform to what the Law requires.
(12) See E. Burton, The Epistle to the Galatians (ICC; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1921) 137; Mußner, Der Galaterbrief, 224-25; Van Dülmen, Die Theologie des Gesetzes bei Paulus (SBT 5; Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1968) 32-35; J. Eckert, Die urchristliche Verkündigung im Streit zwischen Paulus und seinen Gegnern nach dem Galaterbrief (Biblische Untersuchungen Bd. 6 [Münchener Universitäts-Schriften]; Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet) 1971, 77; Wilckens, "Zur Entwicklung des paulinischen Gesetzverständnis," 167-69; H. Hübner, "Gal 3,10 und die Herkunft des Paulus, KD 19 (1973) 215-31; Das, Paul, the Law, and the Covenant, 145-70; I.-G. Hong, The Law In Galatians (JSNTSup 81; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993) 78-86; R. Longenecker, Galatians, 118; R. Y. Fung, The Epistle to the Galatians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988) 142; B. Byrne, ’Sons of God’-’Seed of Abraham’ (AnBib 83; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1979) 151-52; see D. Hagner, "Paul and Judaism. The Jewish Matrix of Early Christianity: Issues in the Current Debate," BBR 3 (1993) 111-30. This is contrary to D. Fuller, "Paul and ’the Works of the Law’," WTJ 38 (1975-76) 28-42 who argues that the phrase "works of the Law" refers to the sin of bribing God insofar as one attempts to earn by favor in a legalistic manner. Paul’s citation of Deut 27:26 is intended to mean that the Law itself forbids bribing God (Deut 10:17) and so anyone who attempts to earn God’s favor through the works of the Law is under a curse. This argument seems less credible that assuming the implicit minor premise "No one is able to obey all of the Law." For the same view, see R. Bring, Christus und das Gesetz (Leiden: Brill, 1969) 109-15; id., Commentary on Galatians (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1961) 121-24.
(13) N. Young argues unconvincingly that the implicit minor premise in Paul’s argument is "if those ex ergôn nomou do not do all the requirements of the Law" ("Who’s Cursed-and Why? [Galatians 3:10-14]" JBL 117 [1998] 79-82, esp. 86; see C. D. Stanley, "’Under a Curse’: A Fresh Reading of Galatians 3.10-14," NTS 36 (1990) 481-511, esp. 500-50, 505). Paul is not affirming that everyone who is under the Law is cursed because they are unable to obey the Law perfectly. Rather his larger point is that, if they are compelled to place themselves under the Law, Paul’s gentile converts will necessarily fall under the curses of the covenant because they will not keep all the commandments. This is because the Judaizers were not requiring that Paul’s Galatian converts become obedient to all the commandments and even they themselves did not obey all the commandments (Gal 6:13). Contrary to J. P. Braswell, Paul’s implicit premise is that those of the works of the Law are actually cursed because they have not met the condition of the covenant, which is perfect obedience ("’The Blessing of Abraham’ Versus ’The Curse of the Law’: Another Look at Gal 3:10-13" WTJ [1991] 73-91).
(14) D. J. Lull argues unconvincingly that the reason that Paul says that those whose lives are based on "works of the law" are "under a curse" is because the Law itself, understood as scripture, requires faith. (The Spirit in Galatia. Paul’s Interpretation of Pneuma as Divine Power [SBLDS 49; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980] 123-25). In this way, one is able to avoid importing the idea that Paul believes that no one can do all that the Law requires.
(15) Paul may cite Lev 18:5 because the Galatian false teachers were using this passage to prove to the Galatians the necessity of keeping the Law as a condition of obtaining eternal life. See C. K. Barrett, "The Allegory of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar in the Argument of Galatians," Rechfertigung. Festschrift für Ernst Käsemann zum 70. Geburtstag (ed. J. Friedrich et al.; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976) 1-16; Smiles, The Gospel and the Law in Galatia, 201-203; P. Sprinkle, Law and Life: The Use of Leviticus 18:5 in Early Jewish and Christian Interpretation (WUNT 2/241; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2008) 134-42
(16) See Sprinkle, Law and Life: The Use of Leviticus 18:5 in Early Jewish and Christian Interpretation.
(17) Mußner, Der Galaterbrief, 225-26; T. R. Schreiner, "Is Perfect Obedience to the Law Possible? A Re-Examination of Galatians 3:10," JETS 27 (1984) 151-60; id., "Paul and Perfect Obedience of the Law: An Evaluation of the View of E. P. Sanders." Contrary to Rapa, The Meaning of "Works of the Law" in Galatians and Romans (SBL 31; New York: Lang, 2001) 159.
(18) See Mußner, Der Galaterbrief, 250-54; Eckstein, Verheißung und Gesetz, 205-12.
(19) Burton, The Epistle to the Galatians, 195.
(20) Mußner, Der Galaterbrief, 252.
(21) On this passage see R. B. Hays’ literary analysis (The Faith of Jesus Christ. An Investigation of the Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1-4:11 [SBLDS 56; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983] 121-24; 157-74. Hays represents the view that pistis is not an objective genitive but a subjective genitive: Jesus Christ’s own faith (see Gal 2:16; 3:7;, 8, 9, 11, 24; 5:5). See also Morna D. Hooker, "Pistis Christou," NTS 35 (1989) 321-42 for same view. For critique, see J. Dunn, The Theology of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993] 57-58.
(22) Betz, Galatians, 126. Paul’s view of the Law is contrary to his previous view that the Law was a manifestation of the grace of God (see Deut 4:8; Ps 119; Jub. 2:31-33) (E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63BCE-66 CE [London: SCM, 1992], 241-78; esp. 267, 275-78).
(23) See Epictetus, Diss. 2.19-20; 3.7, 17 (D. J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans [NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996] 157).
(24) See Dabelstein, Die Beurteilung der ’Heiden’ bei Paulus, 95-96
(25) See the use of the verb epanapauein ("to rely upon") in LXX 2 Kgs 5:18; 7:2, 17; Ezek 29:7; Micah 3:11; 1 Macc 8:11 (12) but not with the Law as its object. Contrary to D. Moo, Paul is not saying that the Jews believed that possession of the Law exempted them from judgment: "So, in Paul’s day, Jews thought their reliance on the Law would exempt them from judgment" (The Epistle to the Romans, 160). He bases this interpretation on the fact that Israelites in Micah’s day "relied upon" Yahweh; Moo thinks that the Law has replaced Yahweh as the object of their misguided confidence. Some Jews relied upon the covenant-the fact of the unconditional promises to the patriarchs-but did not rely upon the simple fact of their possession of the Law as the means by which they would be exempt from judgment.
(26) Michel, Der Brief an die Römer, 86-87.
(27) Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, 164-65.
(28) Michel, Der Brief an die Römer, 88-89.
(29) See W. Sanday and A. C. Headlam, The Epistle to the Romans (ICC; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1902) 66; St.-B. 3.113-14; H. Schlier, Der Römerbrief (HTKNT 6; Freiburg: Herder, 1977) 86; E. Käsemann, Commentary on Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980) 71; Wilckens, Der Brief an die Römer, vol.1, Röm 1-5, 150; J. D. Derrett, "’You Abominate False Gods; But Do You Rob Shrines?’ (Rom 2.22b)" NTS (1994) 558-71.
(30) See Philo, De conf. ling., 163 for a similar list of vices. In t. Naph. 4.1, 4 Ezra 8:20-36 and t. Sotah 14, it is conceded that tragically Jews do not always obey the Law.
(31) Similarly, in Gal 6:13, in refutation of his Judaizing opponents, Paul declares, "Not even those who are circumcised obey the Law, but they want you to be circumcised!" This is a reductio ad absurdum argument: If Jews cannot keep the Law, then why do they attempt to bring gentiles under the same impossible condition.
(32) R. K. Rapa, The Meaning of "Works of the Law" in Galatians and Romans, 239-45
(33) See Eskola, Theodicy and Predestination in Pauline Soteriology, 125-42, 160-64. Paul takes the radical position that all are under sin; thereby he effects a "radicalization of the concept of sin." Eskola calls this the "principle of paradoxical polarization," which is an unclear term referring to the fact that because of the universality of sin no longer can Jews think of themselves as obtaining eschatological salvation for themselves through their obedience to the Law (137-38). Eskola also uses the unusual and confusing term "predestinarian theology," by which is meant Paul’s view that God has "predestined" sinners to undergo eschatological judgment. In Paul’s view, all human beings are so predestined because all gentiles and Jews alike are "under sin."
(34) Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, 1.189.
(35) See Sanday and Headlam, The Epistle to the Romans, 77; S. K. Stowers, "Paul’s Dialogue with a Fellow Jew in Romans 3:1-9," CBQ 46 (1984) 707-22. Bell argues that the verb is a middle voice with a middle force meaning "Are we making excuses?" (No one seeks for God, 211-12).
(36) L. Schottroff, "Schreckenherrschaft der Sünde und die Befreiung durch Christus nach dem Römerbrief des Paulus," EvTh 39 (1979) 497-510; Bell, No one seeks for God, 214-15. As Bell points out, Paul cannot be interpreted as teaching that gentiles or Jews can actually be righteous in the strong sense of the word.
(37) Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, 1.191.
(38) Contrary to J. Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT; 2 vols.; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1959, 1965) 1.106; B. Martin, Christ and the Law in Paul (Leiden: Brill, 1989) 101.
(39) Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 207-10. See also the singular "the work of the law"[to ergon tou nomou] in Rom 2:15
(40) Dunn claims to have discovered the true meaning of Rom 3:20, which has been "misunderstood by generations of commentators" (Romans 1-8, 158-59). Paul meant by "works of the Law" those actions that served to identify Jews as Jews, in particular circumcision. The hidden middle term in the argument is the "function of the law as an identity factor, the social function of the law as marking out the people of the law in their distictiveness."
(41) In Rom 3:20, Paul may not even be assuming that perfect obedience is required to be declared righteous, unlike Gal 3:10. Rather, because all human beings are "under sin," he is content to point out that Jews are not even capable of imperfect obedience and sincere repentance. Even with the lowered standard Jews still fall short (Bell, No one seeks for God, 250-51; Schreiner, "Paul and Perfect Obedience of the Law: An Evaluation of the View of E. P. Sanders").
(42) Wilckens, "Was heisst bei Paulus" ’Aus Werken des Gesetzes wird kein Mensch gerecht’?"; A. van Dülmen, Die Theologie des Gesetzes bei Paulus, 173-79; Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, 1.197-98; Schreiner, Works of the Law in Paul, 228-30; Westerholm, Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988), 120-21; D. J. Moo, "’Works of the Law’ and Legalism in Paul," WTJ 45 (1983) 73-100, esp. 91-99; B. Eastman, The Significance of Grace in the Letters of Paul, 115-17. Paul is not criticizing Jews for legalism, i.e., the sinful attempt at making oneself righteous by keeping the Law (contrary to Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament [2 vols.; New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons, 1951, 1955] 1.262-67; Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, 89, 102-103; F. Hahn, "Das Gesetzverständnis im Römer-und Galaterbrief," ZNW 67 (1976) 29-63, esp. 36, 39, 43-44; H. Hübner, Law in Paul’s Thought [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1984] 113-24; Fuller, "Paul and ’the Works of the Law’"; R. Bring, Commentary on Galatians (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961).
(43) Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 213.
(44) See Peter von Osten Sacken, Römer 8 als Beispiel paulinischer Soteriologie (FRLANT 112; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975) 194-220; Van Dülmen, Die Theologie Des Gesetzes bei Paulus, 106-19.
(45) Cranfield provides a list of all the possibilities that have been suggested for the interpretation of Rom 7 (The Epistle to the Romans, 1.340-70).
(46) Contrary to M. Winger, By What Law? The Meaning of Nomos in the Letters of Paul (SBLDS 128; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992) 159-96.
(47) A. Feuillet prefers to interpret the "I" universally, as referring to all human beings, even Christians ("Loi de Dieu, loi du Christ et loi de l’esprit d’après les epîtres pauliniennes," NovT 22 [1980] 29-65, esp. 31-41). The "Law of God" refers to all ethical standards ("toutes les lois divines positives") against which a human being may struggle (40).
(48) W. G. Kümmel, Römer 7 und das Bild des Menschen im Neuen Testament (ThB 53; Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1974) 76-84, 111-17. Contrary to Kümmel, the "I" does not represent all human beings but relates only to Jewish experience (see 132). Nevertheless, Jewish experience would be representative of human beings. K. G. Kuhn finds parallels in 1QS 11:9, 10 ("Peirasmos-hamartia-sarx im Neuen Testament und die damit zusammenhangenden Vorstellungen," ZThK 49 (1952) 200-222, esp. 210.
(49) Other examples of Paul’s use of this rhetorical device include Rom 3:5-9; 1 Cor 6:12, 15; 10:29-33; 11:31; 13:13, 11, 12; 14:11, 14, 15; Gal 2:18-19; 2:20; the same rhetorical device occurs outside of Paul’s writings (see Kümmel, Römer 7, 117-32). Contrary to L. Thurén, the rhetorical use of the first person is consistent with what one would expect from Paul (Derhetorizing Paul. A Dynamic Perspective on Pauline Theology and the Law [WUNT 124; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2000] 117-26). Thurén claims unconvincingly that 1 Cor 15:56 serves as a parallel to Rom 7:14-25.
(50) Dunn, Romans 1-8, 381-82; 387-88; contrary to M. Seifrid, Justification by Faith. The Origin and Development of a Central Pauline Theme (SNT 68; Leiden: Brill, 1992) 150-52; id., "The Subject of Rom 7:14-25," NovT 34 (1992) 313-33.
(51) S. Stowers argues that Paul makes uses of the ancient technique of prosopopoiia ("Romans 7.7-25 as a Speech-In-Character (prosôpopoiia)," Paul and his Hellenistic Context [ed. Troels Engberg-Pedersen; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995] 180-202). In his Rereading Romans, Stowers argues unconvincingly that the "I" represents gentiles who come under the Law (39-40; 258-84). He interprets Rom 7:14-25 in light of Rom 1:18-2:16. In part, he comes to this conclusion because of his view that the Law was not a "problem" for Jews as it is for the subject of Rom 7.
(52) Thus Kümmel’s objection to a typical or representative (and so an autobiographical reading of sorts) reading of Rom 7:7-13 is invalid if Paul could have re-interpreted his experience as living under the Law after his conversion (Römer 7, 84). See Theissen’s careful critique of Kümmel’s argument for the "fictive" use of "I" in Paul’s letters (Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology, 190-201).
(53) Theissen, Psychological Aspects of Pauline Theology, 222-65.
(54) See J. N. Aletti, Israël et la loi dans la lettre aux Romains (LD 173; Paris: Cerf, 1998) 135-65. He argues that the "I" is the pious Jew who experiences the negative effects of coming under the Law. Such an interpretation would be possible if these pious Jews were those of the generation of the exodus because only this generation came under the Law in the strict sense.
(56) See S. Lyonnet, "L’histoire du salut selon le chapitre vii de l’êpitre aux Romains" Bib 43 (1962) 117-151; id., "’Tu ne convoiteras pas’ (Rom 7.7)"; Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, 191-98; Martin, Christ and the Law in Paul, 75-84; Dunn, Romans 1-8, 381-83, 401-402; T. Laato, Paulus und das Judentum (Åbo: Åbo Akademis Förlag, 1991) 137-82.
(57) Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 437-38; see Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, 1.351; Van Dülmen, Die Theologie des Gesetzes bei Paulus, 106-19; Seifrid, Justification by Faith, 150.
(58) See Kümmel, Römer 7, 86-87; E. Brandenburger, Adam und Christus: Exegetisch-Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zu Röm 5:21-21 (WMANT 7; Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1962) 214-19.
(59) On the anthropological term "inner man," see R. Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms: A Study of Their Use in Conflict Settings (AGJU 10; Leiden: Brill, 1971) 391-401.
(60) Contrary to Brandenburger, Adam und Christus, 205-19.
(61) F. Watson makes the claim that the origin and nature of Paul’s views on the Law are not psychological or theological, but is to "be found in a specific social situation" (Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles [SNTSMS 56; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986] 28). According to this reconstruction, Paul began his apostolic career as a missionary to Jews, but failed to make much headway. He then began to preach to gentiles, but, in order to make it easier to make gentile converts, did not require full submission to the Law. This then led to a separation of the gentile Christians from the Jewish community, which included Jewish believers (see 28-38). It is methodologically unadvisable, however, to look for ulterior motives for everything that Paul states as a theological conviction.
(62) Contrary to Dunn, Romans 1-8, 392-96; 409-10; N. T. Wright, "The Vindication of the Law: Narrative Analysis and Romans 8.1-11," The Climax of the Covenant, 193-219.
(63) See Sanders’ unconvincing argument for Paul’s inconsistency in Rom 7 (Paul, the Law and the Jewish People, 76-81).
(64) E. Brandenburger, Fleisch und Geist. Paulus und die dualistische Weisheit (WMANT 29; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1968) 47-58
(65) See O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, 161-64.
(66) P. von Osten Sacken, Römer 8 als Beispiel paulinischer Soteriologie (FRLANT 112; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975) 160-75.
(67) F. F. Bruce, Romans (TNTC; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985) 118-26; Ridderbos, Paul. An Outline of His Theology, 95-100; Murray, Romans, 178-210; contrary to Cranfield, Romans, 1.269-95; Dunn, Romans 1-8, 269-300. See also Eskola, Theodicy and Predestination in Pauline Soteriology, chap. 3.
(68) Martin argues that Paul means that sin is counted before the Mosaic law because there is a law already in the world to which all human beings are subject; in this way all human beings are "under the Law," but not the Mosaic Law (Christ and the Law in Paul, 74-75). He argues in general that Paul believes that there was a law between Adam and Moses so that gentiles can be said to under the law (hupo nomon) (100-104; 118-20).
(69) See Cranfield for a list of all interpretive proposals (The Epistle to the Romans, 1.274-81).
(70) BDF 235(2); see 2 Cor 5:4; Phil 3:12 for other occurrences of the phrase as a conjunction. On this passage, see Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, 274-81; Martin, Christ and the Law in Paul, 72-74.
(71) Ridderbos, Paul. An Outline of His Theology, 96
(72) See Brandenburger, Adam und Christus, 15-67 for a consideration of the idea of original sin in early Judaism. Brandenburger holds that Paul’s teaching about "original sin" stems from gnostic Christian Adam-anthrôpos speculation and not second-Temple Judaism, in which the idea of sin as destiny is absent. Gnostic Christians introduces the idea of the two Adams into their interpretation of the work of Christ; Paul is then forced to adopt this idea but tone down the mythological and dualistic elements. It is debatable that Paul takes over Adam-anthrôpos speculation and incorporated this as a important part of his soteriology.
Ahead
to Part Three: Paul’s Non-Synergistic Soteriology