But I witness a different law working in my body’s members, warring against the law that’s in my mind and taking me prisoner to the sin-focused law working in my body’s members. . . . Thus I myself am a servant to God’s law with my mind, but to a sin-focused law with my flesh.
—Romans 7:23, 25
In Romans 7:7–25 Paul depicts, in graphically anguished terms, existence without divine righteousness despite knowledge of the law. In contrast to the Gentile mind of 1:18–32, which is ignorant of God’s special revelation, the tormented figure of 7:22–25 has this revelation—and thus finds himself all the more explicitly condemned for his sin.1
Because scholars continue to debate the identity of the figure in Romans 7, I must survey first, and for much of this chapter, questions surrounding this issue. I will agree with the strong majority of scholars that this passage depicts life under the law. I will further argue that this is only life under the law without life in Christ; with a majority of current scholars, I deny that 7:7–25 depicts Paul’s current experience as a Christian. Paul’s pre-Christian existence, viewed retroactively as a Christian, could inform his presentation, but autobiography is not his interest here. The recognition that Paul depicts life under the law apart from Christ provides the foundation for the more specific observations regarding the mind later in this chapter.
Depiction of Christian or Pre-Christian Situation?
Scholars have approached Romans 7:7–25 from various perspectives and combinations of perspectives throughout history.2 My purpose here is not to note all important scholarship on the issue but simply to summarize and provide samples of the different views, and in the process also to advance what I think is the likeliest view, namely, the majority view that Paul depicts existence judged by the law and does not depict his own Christian experience.
Earlier Interpreters
Most of the earliest interpreters, who would have first read Romans as a whole more than piecemeal, understood this passage as referring to someone unconverted.3 Origen argues that Paul adopts here the persona of someone not yet fully transformed by conversion.4 Paul is simply becoming as the weak to the weak (1 Cor. 9:22).5 Like Origen, ancient commentators frequently viewed the narrator’s voice as that of a persona different from Paul.6 They anticipated many modern explanations. Ambrosiaster viewed Romans 7:14 as addressing those under the law.7 For Pseudo-Constantius, Paul speaks as an adult who earlier had been under law.8 For Cyril of Alexandria, 7:15 apparently “refers to the ignorant Gentiles, whose thoughts Paul is reproducing.”9 Diodore contends that “Paul is not condemning himself here but describing the common lot of mankind, which he sees in himself.”10 For Pelagius, the carnal, divided person of whom Paul speaks in 7:25 cannot be Paul himself, since God’s grace had set him free.11
At one time Augustine also recognized that in Romans 7:7–25 Paul depicts “himself as a man set under the law” and adopts that persona.12 While Augustine originally believed that these verses referred to the unconverted,13 however, he shifted his opinion in his later works, partly in reaction against Pelagius’s perfectionist views on the will.14 Augustine forthrightly notes that his dispute with the Pelagians occasioned his change of mind.15 The Western medieval church largely adopted the view that 7:7–25 depicts the life of believers. Compare already Jerome: “If Paul feared the lusts of the flesh, are we safe?”16 Yet even Augustine would not have taken comfort in all who shared his view. Earlier, for example, the gnostic thinker Valentinus apparently had also applied the passage to the pneumatic person’s experience.17
Views continued to vary over the centuries. Aquinas applied the passage to both the righteous and the unrighteous.18 Erasmus applied it to the unregenerate.19 The Reformers, and especially Luther, followed Augustine’s later view of the believer’s struggle.20 More in keeping with the earlier Greek fathers, Pietists such as A. H. Francke and J. Bengel interpreted the passage’s character as one convicted but not yet regenerate.21 Many Pietist thinkers found a process in Romans 7.22 Wesley viewed the person as unregenerate,23 arguing that Paul continues to develop the contrast between the Christian and pre-Christian life of the preceding context (5:12–21; 6:1–23; 7:5–6).24
Survey of Modern Views
Many significant exegetes do continue to view Romans 7:7–25 or 7:14–25 as a depiction of Christian existence between the times.25 Some also view 7:7–13 (which uses past-tense verbs) as preconversion experience and 7:14–25 (which uses present-tense verbs) as postconversion.26 Some recognize Romans 7 as portraying life under the law and view it as a warning to Christians, as to why they cannot succeed under the law.27 Similarly, some others also hold a mediating position in which the chapter depicts life outside Christ, but that depicted experience remains a threat to Christians if they depend on their own righteousness instead of Christ’s.28
Others—the majority of scholars today—contend that this section cannot refer to the Christian life.29 It is, as Rudolf Bultmann notes, “the situation of the man under the law in general that is described here, and described as seen by the eyes of the one freed from the law by Christ.”30 While the majority of scholars believe that the figure depicted here is not Christian, an even greater majority of scholars also argue that the passage clearly depicts life under the law.31 This is true even for many scholars who believe that Paul depicts the Christian life.32 For all, it is life under law without the Spirit.
Why would Paul depict life under the law so negatively? For Paul, the law was good (Rom. 7:12, 14, 16, 22),33 but whereas it could inform34 about righteousness (3:20; 5:13), as approached by merely human effort it nevertheless could not transform one to become righteous.35 The law testifies about the activity of the saving God (3:21, 31), but it must be approached by the way of faith in the saving God, not by works (3:27; 8:2; 9:30–32). As Hae-Kyung Chang points out, whereas Romans 6 shows “what Christ can do,” Romans 7 shows “what the law cannot do.”36 Indeed, the law brings knowledge of, and thus greater responsibility for, sin.37
Romans 7:7–25 as the Christian Life
Those who argue that Paul depicts the Christian life (his or generically) in Romans 7:7–25 or 7:14–25 understandably emphasize the present-tense verbs in 7:14–25.38 I will address this point in a separate section below. Other points supporting this view may be addressed more concisely here. Dunn notes that the present tense of 7:25b appears after the triumphal cry of 7:25a,39 a point that would be more relevant if 7:25b did not function as a concluding summary of the previous section, such as sometimes appears both in Paul (e.g., 1 Cor. 14:39–40) and in ancient sources in general.40 As is often noted, the triumphal cry is an interjection rather than part of the argument;41 it probably responds to 7:24b. Some supporters of the Christian-life view very plausibly appeal to Paul’s theology that allows for an “already” to be consummated in the “not yet”;42 that the already/not yet allows for such an approach need not, however, compel the approach here.43
Some contend that Paul’s view of the unbeliever is starker in Romans 1:18–3:20 (though the unbeliever does have conflicting thoughts, 2:15).44 The inability to obey in 7:14–25, however, is quite stark; as Moo puts it, “What is depicted in 7:14–25 is not just a struggle with sin but a defeat by sin.”45 The figure in this passage can do only evil and nothing good.46 The difference between this passage and 1:18–32 is the difference between one informed by the law and Gentiles without the law.
Most scholars recognize that Paul’s Christian depictions of his preconversion life in other passages differ from his depiction here (Gal. 1:13–14; Phil. 3:6). But those contexts describe Paul’s status or outwardly observable characteristics.47 Here, by contrast, if Paul addresses his pre-Christian existence at all, he is providing a retrospective view of its spiritual inadequacy.48 The other preconversion passages offer a greater problem for those who contend that Paul depicts his Christian life here than for those who view this passage as his pre-Christian life or as a non-Christian life. Should we actually suppose that Paul is suggesting that he succumbs to sin more now that he has been converted (a suggestion that would subvert his argument in Rom. 6–8 and in Gal. 2:16–21)? The Qumran sectarians were more stringent than the Pharisees, yet “a deep sense of personal sin co-existed with the conviction that they were the righteous (see esp. 1QH, often written in the “I”-style).”49
Some argue that Romans 7:14–25 must be the Christian life because Romans 5–8 as a whole addresses the Christian life.50 But Paul often offers digressions (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:1–27; 13:1–13), so finding one here would not be surprising.51 The thought of Romans 7:6b—serving by newness of the Spirit—is picked up again in chapter 8.52 Moreover, appealing to context actually cuts more sharply in the other direction; contextually, 7:7–25 is plainly life under the law, and the context also offers clear contrasts between the Christian and pre-Christian life (see 6:20–21; 7:5–6; cf. 5:12–21).
Supporters of the postconversion view sometimes also appeal to the mention of the speaker’s “inner person” in 7:22,53 but ancient hearers would not think that only believers had an “inner person.”54 Supporters note that the mind serves God’s law (7:22, 25), in contrast to 1:28; this observation is true, but only because this passage depicts life under the law, not life as Gentiles without it.55 Supporters also sometimes contend that the passage’s “I” serves God’s law (7:25), tries to obey (7:15–20), and celebrates the law (7:22).56 Granted that the figure desires to obey God’s law in Romans 7, the speaker fails, whereas for the believer in Christ, the Spirit provides success (8:2, 9).
In an argument that might feel more persuasive to many of us, Dunn notes that the postconversion approach better fits human experience.57 Since Paul is depicting life under the law, however, Paul might view any correspondence with Christian experience as part of the problem rather than the solution. Still, Paul himself would not have denied that bodily existence offers continuing challenges for believers (cf. Rom. 6:12–13; 8:12–13; Phil. 3:12; perhaps 1 Cor. 9:27);58 new identity in Christ does not obliterate susceptibility to sin.59
Romans 7:7–25 as a Non-Christian Experience
More often scholars argue that Paul’s depiction of life under the law cannot represent his current experience in Christ. They rightly note that a postconversion reading of the passage contradicts a straightforward reading of Romans 6:4, 7, 11–14, 17–19,60 as well as 6:20, 22; 7:6; 8:2–9. As Hans Hübner complains, “Here is an absolute antithesis, unsurpassable, ontologically total.”61 The person of 7:14 is unredeemed, “sold [as a slave] to sin”; by contrast, the believer, formerly a slave to sin (6:6, 14, 19–20), has been liberated from sin and enslaved to God and to righteousness (6:18, 22; cf. redemption in Gal. 3:13). The person of Romans 7:14 is fleshly (σάρκινος; cf. 7:18, 25), but in 7:5 the struggle “in the flesh” is depicted as in the past, and in 8:9 the one who belongs to Christ is “in the [domain of the] Spirit” rather than “in the [domain of the] flesh.”62 Nothing good dwells in the person of 7:18, but the Spirit and Christ live in Paul (8:9).63 The person of 7:23 is prisoner of the “law of sin,” but believers are freed from that law in 8:2; the law aroused passions when they were “in the flesh” (7:5), but now they have been released from the law (7:4, 6; cf. 6:14). Whereas 7:7–25 employs first-person pronouns repeatedly (perhaps twenty-eight times), it lacks mention of the Spirit, but reference to the Spirit pervades chapter 8 (mentioned roughly twenty times). Moreover, the wretched person of 7:24 does not even know the deliverer’s name.64
The context that introduces the discussion seems decisive. Paul tells his audience that they were under law till they received Christ (Rom. 7:1–4); life under the law thus reflects a pre-Christian status. Paul tells them “we” were (Greek imperfect) in the flesh, experiencing sinful desires aroused by law (7:5)—a description that fits 7:7–25 clearly. But now, Paul declares, we have been released (Greek aorist) from the law into the life of the Spirit (7:6). So the law-life and sin-struggle of 7:7–25 is not Christian life. The first section, 7:7–13, might draw from Paul’s past experiences, but the graphic use of the present tense in 7:14–25 does not refer to his present life, because it depicts a life “of flesh,” enslaved to sin (7:14). Paul has already explained that this is the former life (7:5), not the present one (7:6). For Paul, believers in Jesus should expect to experience new life in Christ and the Spirit, not continuing subjection to sin.
Thus, Paul’s “Who will free me?” (Rom. 7:24) is hypothetical; Paul knows that Jesus is the answer, and the believer is already freed in Christ. Nevertheless, although Paul’s depiction in Romans 7:15–25 is of life under the law, which in Paul’s argument is not directly true of Christians, others may be right to note that when professed followers of Christ seek essential status before God based on effort or any means other than Christ, analogous principles apply.65
Why Use Present-Tense Verb Forms?
If Paul does not refer to his own present life, why does he employ present-tense verb forms in Romans 7:14–25? Although the majority of scholars agree, based on context, that Paul cannot be depicting his current condition, explanations of the present-tense form in this section vary. Ernst Käsemann suggests that these verbs present the results of 7:7b–11 “in their cosmic breadth,” as in 1:18–3:20; 5:12–21.66 Citing the Jewish tradition of repentance, Peter Stuhlmacher suggests that the past experience is narrated as present because it remains “real in the present.”67
Some compare Paul’s use of the present tense in his description of his past activity in Philippians 3:3–6 with his use of the present-tense forms here; however, the verses most relevant for the comparison, 3:5–6,68 employ only participles (one grammatically present and the other aorist). Some cite for Romans 7 the lack of clear temporal transition in the context, observe the weak temporal markers in the text itself, and argue that the present verbs are imperfective; they suggest that Paul merely shifts “from his narration of life under the law in 7:7–12 to a description of the condition or state” here.69
Whatever other factors might be involved, scholars who suggest that Paul shifts to the present-tense form to heighten the narration’s rhetorical intensity70 are likely correct.71 Paul has already established in Romans 7:7–13 the setting that he depicts—a setting that is not Christian—so the shift to present tense may provide a vivid lament within this already-established setting.72 Certainly, a shift to present tense could communicate vividness.73 Criticizing Herodotus’s presentation of past events, for example, Plutarch suddenly shifts to addressing him in the second person, and in the present tense, as if interrogating him.74
In vivid rhetorical descriptions one could describe a scene as if one were experiencing it at that time.75 Such techniques were appropriate for past events as well as present ones.76 In fact, one scholar defines the rhetorical device of enargeia as “the description of a situation or action as though it were present.”77 Indeed, Paul sometimes apparently preached this way: Christ was depicted as crucified “before your eyes” (Gal. 3:1);78 depicting an action or scene as if before hearers’ eyes was a common way of describing vivid narration.79 Although the verbs are not historical presents (which are not usually consistent throughout a narration, in contrast to the consistency evident in Rom. 7:14–25), historical presents in narrative might provide an analogy insofar as they add vividness to scenes.80 If the Greek present functions more in terms of providing an inside rather than outside perspective, the aspect of these verbs is more relevant than the traditional understanding of their tense.81
We may add the observation that in Romans itself Paul uses present-tense verb forms to charge someone who claims to fulfill the law with a number of serious crimes (Rom. 2:21–23). That passage includes hyperbole, caricature, and vividness as here, although its repetition is tighter and the passage more concise. Likewise, Paul shifts from mention of Israel’s sin in the aorist tense (3:3; cf. 3:7, 23) to a litany of texts denouncing sinful behavior mostly using the present tense when in the indicative mood (3:10–18).82
More debated than whether the passage depicts Christian or non-Christian experience is whether the non-Christian experience depicted in this passage reflects Paul’s own pre-Christian experience. Most readers historically saw the “I” as Paul’s own experience but believed that he used it to typify experience more broadly.83 Because Paul elsewhere uses a generic “I” only briefly rather than in such an extended way, some continue to argue that at least an element of allusion to Paul’s experience remains.84 By contrast, even some earlier scholars such as Wilhelm Wrede (1859–1906) saw “I” in Romans 7 as a literary device depicting the situation of humanity needing redemption, a view often followed today.85 Scholars often find here allusions to Adam, to Israel, or to a combination of the two. Whether or not an element of autobiography remains, certainly the generic element invites attention.86 The same is true whatever other specific figures, if any, Paul has in mind.
Autobiographical?
Many believe that the passage does reflect Paul’s preconversion experience to some degree.87 Usually, supporters of this view emphasize that the passage sees Paul’s background from his new Christian perspective.88 (In light of Phil. 3, most scholars today, whatever their view on Rom. 7:7–25, doubt that before Paul’s conversion he viewed himself as a moral failure.)89
Not all agree as to whether to call this proposed allusion to Paul’s pre-Christian experience autobiographical. Some describe the passage as autobiographical,90 but many others reject the autobiographical interpretation, regardless of whether they believe that Paul includes insights drawn from his background.91 Certainly, introspection and self-disclosure were not characteristic of ancient autobiography, which emphasized “self-display.”92 Many deny that the passage need be relevant to Paul’s preconversion experience at all.93
Still others suggest that Paul speaks more generically but can do so persuasively because of his own background.94 Paul’s audience, after all, probably has heard of his pre-Christian zeal for the law.95 This approach may be helpful in explaining why Paul uses the first person here more extensively than in any of the other generic examples (noted below). Certainly, sages could use their own example to illustrate a principle,96 and Paul does so elsewhere (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:1–27).
On this approach, although Paul’s point is not primarily autobiographical, he uses the first person because he can personally identify with his people’s experience.97 Because Paul includes himself among the “we” once under the jurisdiction of the law but now set free in Romans 7:5–6, he depicts an existence that he acknowledges was once his own, even though he did not yet view it then in the way that he depicts in Romans 7. Thus, at the very least, because this passage depicts existence without Christ, its depiction must include Paul’s own pre-Christian condition as understood now in light of Christ.98
Generic or Projected “I”
Certainly, Paul does use “I” as an example or even generically at times (scholars cite, e.g., 1 Cor. 8:13; 10:29b–30; Gal. 2:18–21);99 sometimes the generic “I” even extends over a significant span of content (1 Cor. 13:1–3, 9–12), although rarely as extensively as Paul appears to do here.100 In Romans itself Paul may use “we” in a general way (as in 6:1) and “I” generically (as in 3:7),101 although some possible instances reflect Paul’s dialogue with an imaginary interlocutor.102 Ancient hearers could have recognized such usage. Prayers both in some biblical psalms (e.g., Ps. 118:5–14) and in some Qumran hymns (including 1QS 10.6–11.17) employ the first person generically, at least as the prayers were reused by liturgical communities. Israel speaks as “I” in some psalms and other biblical texts (e.g., Exod. 15:1–2; 17:3 [Heb.]; Ps. 129:1–3; Isa. 12:1–2; cf. Egypt in the Hebrew text of Exod. 14:25).
Some point out that Epictetus can speak in the persona of the ideal Cynic; such usage dramatizes his point.103 This practice is not limited to Epictetus. “When I say that ‘I’ do nothing for the sake of pleasure,” Seneca points out, “I am speaking of the ideal wise man.”104 Seneca similarly employs “I” hypothetically when he claims, “I live according to Nature if I surrender myself entirely to her.”105
Interpreters as early as Origen suggested that Paul was speaking in a different persona here, that is, using what is often called prosōpopoiia (προσωποποιΐα).106 Other rhetorically educated readers such as Rufinus and Jerome may have agreed, and Nilus of Ancyra independently viewed it similarly.107 Many scholars today, following especially the observations of Stanley Stowers, appeal to this literary device here.108
Although rhetorical teachers differed somewhat in their nomenclature,109 the figure we are calling prosōpopoiia was widely used.110 Plato, for example, could offer a funeral oration in the voice of his hearers’ ancestors.111 This device, one ancient teacher noted, energized one’s style.112 Because it was an elementary exercise, Paul could have learned it at an introductory level.113 With Phoebe’s assistance (cf. Rom. 16:1–2), Romans’ first hearers may have recognized this device and the voice of interlocutors more easily; some advised orators to distinguish characters by voice changes in how one reads.114
Some argue that Paul is not using prosōpopoiia, because he does not clearly introduce the device.115 Although such an introduction was common, however, it was not necessary.116 Even if some find the comparison between this passage and prosōpopoiia less than fully precise, it offers one analogy that helps us understand how ancient audiences could have heard a sudden change in narratorial voice. Since this passage explicitly depicts struggle under the law, and context equally clearly shows that Paul did not see believers as under the law in this sense, seeking analogies remains valuable.
Adam?
If Paul speaks in another persona, in whose voice does he speak? Some scholars suggest that he speaks in his own former voice, evoking his own past under the law, which may be at least part of why he employs “I.”117 But beyond this suggested connection, what other rhetorical possibilities exist?
If Paul speaks generically, it would not be surprising if he speaks for humanity. A majority find in the “I” another reference to Adam (building on Paul’s explicit reference in Rom. 5:12–21).118 Even some patristic commentators made connections between these figures.119 Some supporting arguments for this position are as follows:120
(Those who connect Romans 7 with the Jewish tradition of the evil impulse also could cite the connection of the evil impulse with Adam in later Jewish tradition.122 The connection, however, was not very widespread.)123
Others have criticized this position.124 Even cumulatively, the proposed parallels above (some of which repeat the content of others) are of limited relevance; the only relevant verbal link is the cognate verb translated “deceived” in both passages,125 and in Genesis Eve, not Adam, is the character who claims that the serpent deceived her.126 By itself, this one potential verbal link does not constitute a very clear allusion. By contrast, Paul’s verb for “covet” (ἐπιθυμέω, Rom. 7:7) does not appear in Genesis 3; it comes instead directly from a commandment to Israel in Exodus and Deuteronomy (Exod. 20:17; Deut. 5:21).127
Beyond this limited commonality the case for any deliberate allusion to Adam is weak. First, nearly all of the narrative action in Romans 7:7–25 follows the coming of the law (7:9), not precedes it. Second, whereas “commandment” (ἐντολή) readily applies to the specifically cited biblical command (7:7) or other commands given to Israel, nowhere does the Septuagint version of the Torah apply it to what God commanded Adam.128 Keeping the commandments of the law was associated with life, as Paul well knew (10:5).129 Conversely, breaking God’s law brought death.130 Further, Paul may sometimes use Adam typologically, but he can use other forebears as representative figures besides Adam: Abraham (4:12), Isaac (9:7–8; Gal. 4:28), or (admittedly plural) “our ancestors” (1 Cor. 10:1–11).
Most important, Paul earlier explicitly distinguishes the time of Adam from the time of the commandment (Rom. 5:13–14, 20).131 Adam may be in the background because of his association with sin and death (5:12–21), but the case for Paul speaking here in the persona of Adam is not strong.
Israel
More plausibly, although less frequently emphasized, Paul evokes Israel. Paul has specifically identified Israel as under the law (Rom. 3:19–20; cf. 2:12, 20, 23, 25; 7:1–6; 9:4, 31).132 Like the figure in Romans 7:9–25, Israel has failed to attain righteousness by the law, because they pursued it from the approach of works rather than that of faith (9:30–32). Most interpreters agree that the context is clear that Romans 7:7–25 depicts life under the law; as here, earlier in Romans the law has made people conscious of sin, and it even multiplied sin (5:14, 20).133 That Paul would identify with his people in this narration is also plausible (cf. his affirmation in 11:1); he becomes under the law for those under the law (1 Cor. 9:20), and elsewhere he can shift from “we [Jews]” (Gal. 2:15–17) to “I,” albeit as one who finds Christ (2:18–21).134
Other factors also may support this identification. First, the Jewish interlocutor earlier in Romans has spoken on behalf of Israel.135 Second, the contrast here between knowing and doing echoes the hypocrite of Romans 2:17–29—the difference being that here the transgressor recognizes his condition rather than boasts in the law (though this figure still rightly delights in it). This speaker is now reduced to his true state, stripped of self-deception with regard to sinfulness.136 Third, as a supporting argument (favoring the plausibility of, though not specifically indicating, the idea here), Israel sometimes spoke as a character even in the Old Testament (e.g., Ps. 129:1–2; Jer. 4:31; Lam. 1:11–22; 3:59–66). (Similarly, an entire tribe could sometimes speak as “I,” as in Judg. 1:3 in the Hebrew.)
Some suggest that Paul has in mind both Adam and Israel here.137 The problem with this generous approach in this case is that, as noted above, the claimed echoes of Genesis 3 are weak here. Still, on a more implicit level, Adam’s sin probably informs all of Paul’s anthropology, including here, whether he specifically refers to the story or not. Further, the passage explicitly addresses only those under the law, which would include not only Jews by birth but also proselytes. Many argue that most of the Jesus believers in Rome were now Gentiles (see Rom. 1:5, 13; 11:13), and at least some of these may have felt obligated to observe the law.
It is likely going too far, however, to think that in this chapter Paul has in mind primarily Gentiles and/or God-fearers under the law,138 given the clear statements in Romans about Israel’s status under the law. Granted, Paul elsewhere depicts only the Gentiles as being enslaved by passions and desire (Rom. 1:24, 26–27; cf. 1 Cor. 6:9–11; 1 Thess. 4:4),139 a common Jewish view.140 But apart from Paul not necessarily agreeing with his contemporaries, he cites neither idolatry nor specifically sexual sin here, what Jewish people often regarded as the most distinctively Gentile vices (as Rom. 1:23–26 probably presupposes). Instead, Paul specifies coveting here, which was also a Jewish sin specified in the law (which he cites in 7:7; a prohibition that Gentiles did not have, unless innately in the natural law of 2:14–15). Paul applies ἐπιθυμέω and its cognates to Israelites in 1 Corinthians 10:6; the terms presumably include Jewish behaviors in Romans 6:12; 13:9; and Galatians 5:16–17, 24.141
Further, Jewish people did not believe that only Gentiles had passions; as noted, Jews also spoke of the Torah as helping them to combat passion. In Romans 2:17, 20, 23, and more clearly in Romans 3:19 and 7:1–4; 9:4, 31, those under the law are Jews, as also in 1 Corinthians 9:20 (see also Paul’s use of “circumcision” versus “uncircumcision”). In Romans Paul is probably not addressing Gentiles under pressure to be circumcised, as in Galatians; nor does his mention of “you Gentiles” (Rom. 1:13; 11:13) mean that every member was Gentile (cf. 16:3, 7, 11).
This is not to deny that Paul’s depiction of life under the law could serve as a warning to the believers in Rome, many or most of whom were Gentile (Rom. 1:5, 13; 11:13) but who probably originally learned about Jesus through Jewish believers. Of course, Israel’s experience under the law is human experience under the law,142 and the struggle to observe the law might prove even greater for proselytes who have not grown up keeping many of the commandments by culture and habit. The corrupted mind of 1:18–32 is the pagan mind; for Paul, the better-informed but powerless mind here is the mind of all under the law without Christ. But Paul continues to illustrate that all—both Gentiles and Jews, both those under the Torah (as here) and those having only more general natural law, are under sin without Christ (2:11–16; 3:9, 19–20).
Survey of the Context and Function of Romans 7:7–25
Paul offers a very curious statement in Romans 6:14: “For sin will not rule over you, because you are not under the law but under grace.” How could being “under the law”—the law that Paul acknowledges as good and inspired (7:12, 14)—facilitate the reign of sin? Paul has already noted that the law has increased the transgression involved in human sin, presumably by showing sin more explicitly for what it is (5:13, 20). This explanation fits Paul’s overarching argument in the early chapters of Romans: Gentiles have limited knowledge and will be punished for their sins accordingly; those who know the law have greater knowledge and will also be punished for their sins accordingly (1:18–3:31, esp. 2:12, 25; cf. Amos 3:2). Fuller knowledge bequeaths fuller responsibility.
In Romans 7:1 Paul revisits what it means to be “under the law.” The law “rules over a person” and thus has jurisdiction over a person, and the right to condemn, as long as the person lives. Those who have died with Christ to sin, however (6:2–11), have also died to the rule of the law (7:4, 6).143 This comparison occasions for Paul’s imaginary interlocutor the question as to whether, in linking the law and sin, Paul is identifying the two (7:7). Paul will respond, in the graphic monologue of 7:7–25, by showing how the law has increased transgression. Like Gentiles who do not have the law, both ethnic Jews and proselytes have sinned; but because they have the law, they have sinned more knowingly and hence face stricter judgment (2:12, 23; 3:20; 4:15; 5:13, 20; 7:5–9). The law can inform but not transform—by itself it cannot keep one from sinning.144
As already noted,145 Jewish tradition emphasized that the law empowered people to overcome passions or, in more Judean tradition, the evil impulse. Paul, however, contends in Romans 7:5 that the law in fact arouses sinful passions, perhaps by focusing attention on them and thus revealing mere reason’s vulnerability regarding attempts to ward them off. In 7:6 Paul notes that those who are freed from the law no longer serve in the oldness of the letter; this deliverance refers back to the old life in Adam being crucified, freeing from slavery to sin those united with Christ (6:6). Further, those freed from the law serve in the newness of the Spirit (7:6),146 a description that refers back to the beginning of new life in Christ (6:4) and forward to the renewing of the mind (12:2), as well as to the discussion of the liberating Spirit in 8:2–16, 23, 26–27.
The figure in Romans 7:7–25 is clearly under the law (7:7–9, 14, 23, 25). This figure is in the flesh (7:14, 18, 25), just like the past state Paul described in 7:5 (“while we were in the flesh”; contrast 8:9). Sin works in his members (7:23), again as in 7:5. This figure is enslaved to sin (7:14), in contrast to one who has been enslaved to God and freed from sin (6:18, 20, 22), and in contrast to the new life described in 7:6. The empowerment of the Spirit that characterizes the new life (7:6) is conspicuously absent in Paul’s description until he reaches 8:2–16.
As noted earlier, it is thus clear from the context that Romans 7:7–25 depicts life under the law, the old life of 7:5; the new life in the Spirit of 7:6 is elaborated in chapter 8. Ancient writers sometimes briefly outlined the points they were about to cover;147 with many commentators, I believe that Paul does so in 7:5–6.148 Thus, against those who object that Paul cannot describe a figure different from his current life because, they argue, he does not introduce the figure differently, we may note that in fact he does introduce the figure differently.
Because of controversies about the interpretation of Romans 7, it was necessary to survey introductory issues before turning to the central point of this chapter. Now, however, I turn to the question of the mind and passions also raised by Romans 1.
The Problem of Passion
Although some behaviors are more easily avoided, the problem of desiring what one should not runs deeper. It addresses not simply one’s behavior but one’s character, yet it also raises questions. For example, in defining one’s identity, where does one draw the line between a momentary interest in what one should not desire, perhaps prompted by something as fleeting as confusion, and a simmering and even cultivated passion that could well lead to unjust action?
Desire was a problem not only to Gentile philosophers (as noted in chap. 1)149 but also to many Jewish thinkers. Jewish thinkers, however, had their own distinctive approach, often related to the Torah, and differed in various regards even among themselves, for example, a more Hellenistic approach in 4 Maccabees or Paul than in the rabbis, and a different approach to the Torah in Paul than in most other Jewish sources.
Passion and the Law in Hellenistic Jewish Sources
In chapter 1 I addressed Gentile thinkers’ opposition between reason and the passions and how Paul contends that depraved reason, against some pagan intellectual expectations, ultimately simply proliferated slavery to passion.150 Hellenistic Jewish authors, like many philosophers, saw passions as harmful (and, beyond philosophers, as sinful).151 For the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo, for example, the mind that loves the body and passion, enslaved to pleasure, cannot hear the divine voice.152 Like most Gentile philosophers,153 these Jewish thinkers contended that the key to overcoming passions was reason.154
For Jewish thinkers, the epitome of this reason that overcomes passion was found in the Torah.155 There is strong evidence suggesting that the Jewish community in Rome had a highly developed knowledge of the law and its superiority to other ancient legal collections.156
Other thinkers had already compared law and reason, although often favoring the latter for the wise. Some defined law in terms of reason agreed on by a state.157 Some argued that philosophy was better than law, because it taught right living from within.158 Stoics felt that only the wise could understand and obey true law.159 Many thinkers believed that the wise or virtuous needed no law, since they would do what was right without one.160 Some suggested that if all people were good, honor would provide sufficient restraint without written laws.161 Such ideas became common even beyond philosophers (cf. Gal. 5:23; 1 Tim. 1:9).162
Appealing to a textual authority more compelling for them than the opinions of Gentile thinkers, Jewish thinkers found in the law of Moses explicit warrant against passion. The tenth commandment, “You shall not covet” (οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις, LXX Exod. 20:17 and Deut. 5:21, using ἐπιθυμέω), specifically addresses overcoming passion.163 Citing this very commandment (Rom. 7:7), Paul argues that the law was never meant to eradicate passion; only Christ frees one from sin.164
Desire in Romans 7:7
Jewish people were not the only ones who recognized that it was wrong to covet what belonged to someone else; some Gentiles also noted this.165 The line that Paul specifically quotes here, however, is Jewish, explicitly from “the law,” the same law that is the subject of his preceding context (Rom. 7:1–7a).
AVOID OVERSPECIFYING DESIRE HERE
The sense of such coveting here is likely general, referring to any inappropriate desire. By contrast, some scholars suggest that the sin here is coveting religious honor166 (an issue elsewhere in Romans, but there typically designated as “boasting”; Rom. 2:17, 23; 3:27; 4:2), or “covetous insistence on Jewish priority among Jews in Christ,” “the one human sin that the Law cannot help one overcome.”167 Granted that such behavior epitomizes sin under the law in Romans, it is by no means Paul’s only illustration of sin here (2:21–22; 13:9), and it is never described exclusively in these terms.
Somewhat more generally, but still probably too specifically, some scholars suggest a sexual reference here, viewing ἐπιθυμία and its cognates as sexual “lust.”168 Experiencing new hormones, an adolescent might experience that aspect of the prohibition against coveting as the most difficult.169 In the Septuagint, desiring a neighbor’s wife appears as the first example of the prohibition. This may be why 4 Maccabees 2:1–6 applies the prohibition (cited in 2:5) especially to a young man’s (Joseph’s) reason overcoming sexual desires.170
Ancient philosophers often did speak of people who simply indulged bodily passions as beasts;171 the ideal instead was to cultivate the distinctively human gift of the intellect. Dogs could copulate in public (so could Cynic philosophers, but this was not the philosophic norm); philosophers despised humans ruled by their sex drive. That sexual passion was prominent in Paul’s consideration of bodily based sinful ways and thoughts is clear from his letters (Rom. 13:13–14; Gal. 5:17, 19; Col. 3:5; 1 Thess. 4:4–5; cf. 1 Cor. 6:9), which correspond with Jewish thought about Gentile behavior on this issue. It is also suggested by the context of the key text cited in Romans 7, although Paul’s argument here is more general and by no means exclusively sexual. Paul’s specific example of not “coveting” or “desiring,” given its first object in Exodus 20:17 (LXX),172 naturally includes this issue of a mind ruled by sexual desire. The law can make one wish to suppress such desires, but biological impulses are not easily harnessed by suppressing them, since focusing on them feeds their flame.
Some scholars associate the evil impulse in later rabbinic literature especially with sexual sin.173 Although that association does appear to have been prominent,174 the impulse had broader associations,175 often, for example, with idolatry.176 Others thus demur from a sexual reference here, arguing that this proposal is too specific.177 The real sense is not likely so specific as in these suggestions; Paul may choose this commandment because it is the one least observable to others, addressing exclusively the heart.178
Philo opines that the Decalogue climaxes with the prohibition of coveting, or desire (ἐπιθυμία), because it is the worst threat, originating from within.179 Some argue that this specific commandment remains in view throughout Romans 7:7–25 and in 8:4.180 Influenced by Stoicism, some Hellenistic Jewish circles read this commandment as a prohibition of desire more generally.181
It is also possible, however, to define desire here too broadly. Unlike the most extreme Hellenistic thinkers,182 Paul would not demand the conquest of every bodily desire.183 For example, Paul probably does not oppose sexual desire in marriage184 or appreciation for food.185 On such points Paul reflects not the austerity of some Gentile thinkers but thoroughly conventional, mainstream Jewish views (as well as the common views of most ordinary people in antiquity).
When Paul speaks of passions, he does not define them, unlike some philosophers, but his association of forbidden desire with the law’s command not to covet probably presupposes what the biblical commandment contextually specifies: desiring what belongs to someone else. What the body desires may even be necessary for survival or the biblically mandated propagation of humanity;186 but the mind remains responsible to limit the fulfillment of those desires to what God’s law permits. A thirsty person’s craving for water or a person’s reproductive drive are not wrong of themselves, but desiring someone else’s well or spouse is wrong. Desire must be harnessed rather than in control.
The problem of conquering desire arises when desires that were created for good if directed by moral reason instead rule the person. As Paul laments,
I see a different law in my [bodily] members, battling against the law in relation to my mind, and taking me prisoner by the law in relation to my members, the law that provokes sin. . . . Who will free me from the body [thus] doomed to death? . . . Thus, with respect to the mind, I’m emphatically serving the law that comes from God—but, with respect to the flesh, the law in its role of provoking sin. (Rom. 7:23–25)
Whereas a strong-willed intellect might prevent such desires from bearing fruit in outward action, the very attempt to suppress a thought inevitably draws attention to it. A merely passing or intrusive thought at most poses a question that may be ignored or rejected as easily as affirmed, but one’s resistance can be worn down by the question’s continuous exposing of the issue, especially for someone who scrupulously endeavors to suppress or resolve the question on their own rather than leaving the defense of one’s righteousness to Christ. The least failure could discourage especially the most scrupulous.187 Paul has chosen the prohibition of coveting not randomly but because it addresses the heart and as such is the most difficult to regulate. Only the preassurance of one’s righteousness can protect one from condemnation by God’s standard, and for Paul this preassurance of acceptance is genuine only in Christ.
Thinking about sin to resist it still leaves sin and condemnation framing the question and defining the subject, so that one must settle for resisting it some of the time. As long as one’s objective is to overcome sin much of the time, perhaps comparing oneself with the less scrupulous, one may celebrate one’s successful performance of commandments. If one’s view of God’s standard is perfection, however (as apparently in Rom. 3:20–24; 4:2; 5:18; Gal. 3:22), one who is conscious of any failure may fixate on sin and guilt. The new revelation in Christ provides an entirely new frame of reference—not sin, but God’s gift of righteousness in Christ; not the flesh, but the Spirit. Romans 7 connects with philosophers’ emphasis on self-control and self-mastery, but only to show up how inadequate this emphasis is by itself. The mind may know and will to do what is right, but this ability offers righteousness that is merely relative to more willing capitulation to sin. With respect to sin, informed consent is all the more culpable (cf. 1:32; 2:15; 7:15–18).
Excursus: Ancient Views concerning Lust and Other Illicit Desires
Ancient summaries of blamelessness sometimes stressed that particular praiseworthy persons never even thought or intended anything dishonorable.188 Greek philosophers often felt that thoughts and intentions, not merely deeds, could be evil.189 Thus Thales, a sixth-century BCE philosopher, reportedly believed that the gods knew and required purity even of thoughts.190 Seneca condemned as impious a woman whose virtue stemmed merely from fear.191 Other thinkers argued that a friend of Zeus would not desire anything evil or shameful.192 Even law could punish known plotting,193 although not simply inward attitudes. Pharisees emphasized inward attitudes and not merely external behavior.194 Some Jewish writers condemned even contemplating evil.195
Many viewed anger as problematic;196 controlling it was honorable.197 Anger became dangerous especially when it escalated to the extent of the desire to kill.198 Some warned that anger could easily lead to murder.199 Some argued that to lose one’s temper was to lose one’s mind, that is, experience temporary insanity.200 Stoics opposed anger;201 Epicureans viewed it negatively but did not believe, as Stoics did, that it could be eradicated.202
Views on sexual desire varied, though most Gentiles at the popular level did not view it as problematic.203 Even philosophic approaches varied, Epicureans naturally approving passion, with a Neoplatonist such as Porphyry wanting to control it.204 Many schools of philosophic thought, however, viewed it ambivalently or negatively.205 Some viewed intercourse as positive only for the common good provided by procreation.206 Some philosophers, especially Stoics, opposed lust because it meant that pleasure rather than virtue dominated one’s thoughts,207 though Stoic philosophers did not condemn sexual arousal in the service of intercourse.208 Diaspora Jewish intellectual thought often echoed Greek philosophic approaches.209
By contrast, many men in the ancient Mediterranean thought lust a healthy and normal practice.210 Among the most common magical spells were those used to secure love.211 Some of these describe self-stimulation as a way to secure intercourse with the object of one’s desire,212 even if she is married.213 Still, even many people who otherwise thought lust acceptable disapproved if the woman was betrothed or married,214 though it was not legally punishable.215 Virtuous people wanted to avoid being the object of lust,216 for which reason married women in many places wore head coverings.217
Jewish writers, however, generally viewed lust far more harshly, often warning against gazing on beautiful women.218 Some writers, in fact, viewed it as visual fornication or adultery,219 as did many early Christians.220 A pious rabbi might praise God for a woman’s beauty, but he would see it only by accident.221 Some later rabbis went so far as to praise a predecessor who had never looked at his own private parts.222 Likewise, other Jewish teachers employed the hyperbolic rhetoric that equated the thought with the act or treated the former as worse.223
Judean Passions: The Evil Impulse
Although Paul’s language resembles especially Hellenistic Jewish thinkers, who in various ways had already bridged earlier Jewish concepts and Greek thought and drawn on the law, somewhat similar concepts already existed in Judean and other traditional Eastern Jewish thought.224 Thus, in connection with Romans 7 or other Pauline texts, many scholars cite the rabbinic teaching of the two impulses, the yēṣer hāraʿ (the evil impulse) and the yēṣer haṭōb (the good impulse).225 Other scholars reject the relevance of this material for Romans 7.226 I view the yēṣer as relevant in the sense of providing an analogy native to Judean teachers, though not as directly relevant in this case (at least to Paul’s wording) as the Hellenistic Jewish sources.
JEWISH THOUGHTS ON THE EVIL IMPULSE
Later sources are more diverse than early ones. Later rabbis differed regarding details of the yēṣer’s operation,227 and views became elaborated over time through discussions of various topics and texts.228 Thus, in some sources this impulse was necessary and could be harnessed for good, for procreation and the like.229 Perhaps in keeping with the earlier sectarian Jewish understanding of the two spirits, one good and one evil,230 the rabbis developed the idea of a good yēṣer to counter the evil one.231 Just as reason defeats the passions in many hellenized sources,232 following the good impulse defeats the evil impulse.233
Although rabbinic elaborations about the yēṣer are later, the idea of an evil inclination clearly predates Paul’s period. It appears at Qumran234 and elsewhere.235 In Genesis 6:5 and 8:21, foundational texts for the later doctrine, God saw that every inclination (yēṣer) of the thoughts of the human heart was evil daily, and from humans’ youth.236
Based on some rabbinic evidence, some scholars have connected the evil impulse with Paul’s idea of “flesh.”237 Rabbinic thought did not, however, connect the evil impulse specifically with the body very often.238 A stronger possible connection would be that these impulses function as the closest rabbinic equivalent to the conflict between reason and passions.
TORAH ENABLES ONE TO OVERCOME THE EVIL IMPULSE
Overcoming the evil impulse resembled Gentile and Hellenistic Jewish thinkers’ emphasis on overcoming passions. Stoics believed that human efforts, cooperating with nature, could overcome inborn impulses.239 As noted, many philosophers appealed to reason to overcome passions, and Hellenistic Jews likewise often appealed to law-informed reason.240 Rabbis similarly urged people to overcome their evil impulse,241 praised those who overcame it,242 and prayed for help to overcome it.243 Some conceded, perhaps tongue in cheek, that if someone was succumbing to the evil impulse, they should commit their sin where no one will know it to prevent the worse offense of profaning God’s name.244 By and large, however, the sages urged people to overcome.
The conflict between reason and passion, or between the good and evil impulse, thus offers an indirect analogy for Paul’s contrast between how the law informs one’s mind and how it condemns one in connection with one’s physical urges (Rom. 7:23). As the law was the common Hellenistic Jewish source of reason for controlling the passions,245 so in Hebrew and Aramaic Jewish texts the law protected people from the evil impulse;246 the law was the cure for it.247 Likewise, the reverse could be true: the evil impulse worked to keep people from studying and believing the Torah.248
When did the law come, bringing death to this figure (Rom. 7:9)? Historically, it came in the time of Moses (5:13–14), most relevant to the extent that this figure represents Israel. It would be recapitulated in the life of Jewish children when they became conscious of the law, or of proselytes when they joined the Jewish people and (in the case of a man) were circumcised.
When might someone Jewish first become conscious of violating the Torah? In the line of Jewish tradition followed by later rabbis, a person was born with an evil impulse;249 a young man became an adult at puberty250 and thus became responsible for keeping the Torah around age thirteen.251 That was also when some later rabbis felt that the good impulse entered a boy, in keeping with his responsibility for the Torah.252 Some thus suggest that Paul refers here to something analogous to the bar mitzvah, which would have occurred at about this age.253 Against this suggestion, the ceremony as we know it began in the fourteenth century.254 Nevertheless, coming of age certainly represented a significant transition in ancient Jewish as in some surrounding cultures.255 Puberty rites are common in many traditional cultures;256 Romans had a coming-of-age ritual in the mid-teens.257 In the rabbis, full responsibility for the Torah accompanied coming of age.
Yet the consciousness of sin, of which Paul speaks here, surely could begin earlier than one’s social coming of age;258 certainly, instruction in the Torah did.259 Paul does not specify the time when the liability function of the law (Rom. 2:12; 4:15; 5:13; 7:9, 23–24; 8:2; 1 Cor. 15:56; 2 Cor. 3:6–7) becomes active; presumably, he would regard it as whenever the person becomes conscious of the demands of the law.260
Internal Conflict
Paul here depicts life under the law. A modern psychologist might reasonably diagnose the figure here as struggling with something like an anxiety disorder linked with an obsessive-compulsive disorder and rooted in a religious fixation.261 Whether or not this is the case, however, Paul’s hyperbole draws on the language of struggle current in his day.
Ancient Beliefs about Internal Struggle
Ancient autobiography avoided the sort of introspection that appears in Romans 7:7–25.262 This observation does not mean, however, that introspection did not occur.263 Stoics did “look inwards and interrogate themselves.”264 Nor was it likely unfamiliar in Jewish piety.265
Ancient hearers would not have found the sort of struggle depicted in Romans 7:15–25 strange. In ancient sources the conflict between reason and passions, or between a good and evil impulse, could be intense. Thus, one man decided that his conflicting desires corresponded to two souls, one of which sometimes overcame the other.266 Another was smitten by a woman’s extraordinary beauty; because he was of noble character, he struggled hard, by using his reason, to fight severe passion.267
Already committed to overcoming the passions by reason, many philosophers recognized the reality of internal conflicts. Platonists in particular saw the conflicted person as divided, with parts inside warring.268 Even the good soul experiences a struggle against evil, trying to attain good, because it cannot avoid all association with the world.269 Some philosophers urged people to internal unity, against being of two minds, having varying opinions, and being at war with oneself.270 If a Platonist heard Romans 7:7–25, it would sound like the “worst-case scenario where the appetites succeed in storming ‘the citadel of the soul’ . . . to replace its rightful ruler, reason.”271
Early Stoics, by contrast, viewed the self, the ruling part of the soul, as unitary.272 For early Stoics, false beliefs warred against innate virtue.273 The ideal virtuous person would always desire only what was right and thus not struggle,274 but few claimed to achieve perfect virtue.275 People “do not know what they wish, except at the actual moment of wishing,” Seneca opined; no one “ever decided once and for all to desire or to refuse.” One must press on “to perfection, or to a point which you alone understand is still short of perfection.”276
Yet Stoics and others might view any struggle as especially intense for those who have not resolved their allegiance or found ways to subdue their passions.277 Seneca warns that those who are unwilling to acknowledge the cause of the problem, and simply try to restrain their desires inside them, end up depressed, with “the thousand waverings of an unsettled mind.”278 For the Jewish eclectic Middle Platonist Philo, the passions and desires to do wrong stir within the soul the most violent of wars. When temperance controls the passions, however, it ends the war, establishes peace, and brings proper respect for law.279
Envisioning Someone Overwhelmed by Passion
One dramatic depiction of internal anguish attracted frequent attention in antiquity: Euripides’s fifth-century BCE portrayal of Medea, when she decided to take vengeance on her unfaithful husband Jason by killing her own children.280 With her mind she understood that the action was wrong, but rage nevertheless controlled her.281 Although Euripides’s account provided the best-known version, Paul’s language is even closer to some other retellings of Medea’s behavior, especially that of Ovid.282
Early philosophers such as Plato and the Stoic Chrysippus deployed this prominent example in discussions about reason and the passions.283 Many rejected Medea’s reported belief. Plato’s Socrates questioned Medea’s claim, observing that one who genuinely knows what is right will do what is right.284 Stoics likewise regarded wrongdoing as based on wrong belief and ignorance, rejecting the common Platonic idea that irrational elements vie with reason in the soul.285 A generation after Paul, one Stoic philosopher, though aware that others use the example of Medea to argue that passions can overwhelm reason, maintains that her conflict arises from mistaken judgment.286 Also observing that Medea “did not know where the power lies to do what we wish,” he advised, in good Stoic fashion, that this power comes only by giving up wanting anything but what God wants.287
One need not suppose that Paul read Euripides to recognize that the tradition of thought that he addresses was first popularized by that source.288 Likewise, one need not assume that Paul is here assuming the persona of Medea289 to recognize that he is playing on a familiar theme of his milieu. If Paul is adopting the persona of Medea, as a male actor in a theater could do, ancient auditors might also view the moral failure in this passage in a feminine way. Some writers in antiquity associated passions with what was feminine, but Paul’s undisputed letters do not do so.290 Full adoption of the persona is unlikely, though, and mere analogies are never precise.
We have reason to doubt that ancient hearers, even highly educated ones, would necessarily think of Medea when they heard Romans 7:15–25, although some undoubtedly did so. Euripides himself, for example, offers a similar depiction of a man about to rape a boy.291 Stoics could also allude to Euripides’s language of overpowering passion with general applicability, without specifically calling attention to Medea herself.292 Certainly, not all actual ancient auditors heard Paul as referring to Medea. When Cyril of Alexandria warns about a wrong comparison between Romans 7 and Greek mythology, he alludes not directly to Medea but to Fate controlling all human actions.293 The issue for Paul’s immediate audience, then, was not Medea herself but the sort of struggle that various writers used her case, and sometimes other cases, to exemplify.
Bondage of the Will? Wanting to Do Right
Romans 7:15–21 contains many verbs of willing (7:15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21)294—the figure is able to want what is right, but the greater power of sin prevents its execution.295 What is the point of narrating the figure’s unsuccessful willing to do right here? Although Paul’s interest is not in constructing a consistent anthropology, understanding some of his culture’s options regarding will may prove helpful in establishing a range of thought within which he moves here.296
Aristotle addressed ἀκρασία, the weakness of the will.297 In his thought the fully virtuous person wants to do right,298 but others are divided—both one who does right only by self-control and one who fails because of ἀκρασία.299 Most thinkers valued deciding for what was right rather than desiring what was wrong. For example, Hellenistic intellectuals recognized the value of willing in the sense of deliberation or discussing before acting, something more rational than mere desire.300 Stoics considered what was worth wanting.301 In a sense, one could say that Stoics distinguished the irrational will—“desiring” what one wanted that one should not want—from the rational will, the ruling cognition.302 Writing later, Augustine believed that Stoics countered desire, the experience of the foolish, with will, the experience of the wise.303
Some others agreed on the importance of wanting what is right; the eclectic Middle Platonic thinker Plutarch suggests that only those who follow reason are truly “free”: “For they alone, having learned to wish [βούλεσθαι] for what they ought, live as they wish [βούλονται]; but in untrained and irrational impulses and actions there is something ignoble, and changing one’s mind many times involves but little freedom of will.”304 While other components of the later concept of “will” appear in various sources, however (such as reason, free choice,305 and perversion of the will), it may have been Augustine in particular who brought them together in their later form, making the will central.306 The Augustinian synthesis of late antiquity should not be read back into Paul.
Many observe that Paul was not writing as a Stoic here. The speaker has reason and cognitive knowledge, yet his passions prevail. Nor was Paul like Philo or the author of 4 Maccabees; the speaker knows the law, yet neither philosophy nor the law delivers this person from conflict and defeat.307 Commentators who note that Paul, unlike philosophers, did not regard knowledge as enough to liberate a person are technically correct; in Romans, such liberation requires divine action. Nevertheless, there may be a sense in which Paul agreed with philosophers here. The world and especially the biblically informed know enough to be condemned, but saving truth is revealed in the gospel (Rom. 1:17–18). It is not mere information the speaker needs, but this speaker does need a different form of what some might call knowledge: divine truth understood by faith (Rom. 6:11).308
Paul’s point of emphasizing “willing” here is to underline the failure of not only knowing the law but even of desiring to obey the law as sufficient to achieve righteousness. Whereas the Gentiles in Romans 1:18–32 sinned without full knowledge of God’s law,309 the Jewish person of 7:7–25 sins with full knowledge of it, and even with desire to obey that knowledge. General revelation in creation (1:19–20) offers some moral truth about honoring God (1:21–23) and others made in his image (1:24–32); special revelation in the Torah reveals more truth even more finely.
By themselves, however, both revelations merely teach moral truth rather than giving life (cf. Gal. 2:21; 3:21); for that, a yet fuller knowledge is needed: knowledge of the good news (Rom. 1:16–17; cf. 10:14–17). That good news was announced in advance through the prophets who foretold the promised era of restoration (Rom. 1:1–2; cf. Isa. 52:7), a restoration now inaugurated in Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:1–4).
Paul may allow that people can perform positive actions in obedience to rational guidelines such as the law, but he regards genuine transformation by the gift of righteousness as inseparable from the new creation in Christ (cf. Rom. 5:12–6:11).310
Law in One’s Body versus Law in One’s Mind (Rom. 7:22–25)
Paul depicts here a divided person. Biblical law informs this figure’s mind or inner person, revealing God’s righteous standard, but the law operating in the person’s (physical) members pulls the person in a different direction, preventing the mind from exercising complete control.
Law in the Mind
The figure here rightly delights in the Torah (Rom. 7:22), as Jewish sources suggest that Jewish people normally did.311 But one can appreciate moral truth (7:16) and even feel good about mastering intellectual knowledge and yet find oneself unable to suppress contrary desires or inclinations.312 Whatever others see outwardly, the desires remain, although the speaker seems ambivalent about owning them as part of the “I,” the rational, controlling identity (yes in 7:14–16, 19, 21; no in 7:17, 20, 23–25; perhaps both in 7:18).313
Paul contrasts the “inner person” (Rom. 7:22) with the “members” (7:23). From 7:23 it seems clear that Paul equates the law in the inner person (7:22) with “the law of my mind.” The inner person here does not specify the new person in Christ (cf. 6:6; Eph. 2:15; 4:22, 24; Col. 3:9),314 as it might if Paul were depicting Christian existence, but something more like the soul or (in this context) the mind, as opposed to the body (see 2 Cor. 4:16; Eph. 3:16).315 Plato’s language of the “inner person” remained current in Paul’s day, although Paul adapted the image for his distinctive purposes.316 The law in the mind informs him of what is good.
The Law, the Body, and Sin
The law317 has a different effect on this figure’s members318 than on his mind; he wants to do right but cannot do so,319 because his body moves him in a different way (Rom. 7:22–23).320 Thus the law-knower here cries out for deliverance from the body of death (7:24)—presumably meaning the body under sin’s sentence of death (5:12–21; 6:16, 21, 23; 7:5, 9–10, 13; cf. 1:32).321 Because his flesh is vulnerable to sin (cf. 8:3), the law functions for him as a law condemning his sin and consequently as a sentence of death, from which he must be freed (8:2). His mind serves God’s law, but his “flesh” serves the law that highlights sin (7:25). His perspective thus is captivated by the flesh rather than by God’s Spirit (8:5–8).
Why does Paul contrast the mind here with members, the body, and the flesh? Some ancient interpreters heard in Romans 7 a struggle between the body and the soul.322 This approach is certainly an oversimplification (not least because Paul never uses the term translated “soul” in this manner); nevertheless, ancient interpreters’ recognition that Paul connected the mortal body with vulnerability to vice323 picks up on an idea in Paul that modern interpreters sometimes seem eager to avoid. Even if Paul is simply playing on an idea in his culture, in this context Paul clearly does in some sense connect sin with the behavior, desires, and mortality of the body:
That for Paul sin also pervades even the law-informed mind (Rom. 7:23, 25) shows that, whatever role the body might play, the mind too is vulnerable to sin. Paul will not, then, simply present the body as sinful and the mind as good. He allows, with philosophers and Jewish thinkers, that reason should choose to control desires when they contravene moral law. For Paul, however, this consistent success of reason appears even more hypothetical than Stoicism’s ideal sage—in practice, Stoics did not claim to have attained perfection. (For most Jewish sources the same could almost be said for achieving sinlessness.)324 Nevertheless, Paul argues that one is reckoned as the ideal in Christ; even before one attains full maturity behaviorally, the ideal has somehow become the premise rather than the goal (Rom. 6:1–11; 8:3–11; see chap. 2, above).
Stoics focused not primarily on the bodily character of passions but on the danger of false beliefs.325 Paul may be closer to the Stoic understanding on this point, though his views are not identical with those of Stoics. Contrary to Stoic expectations, Romans 7 emphasizes that merely correct belief about right and wrong cannot adequately address passion.
This was true even for correct belief based on moral teachings of Scripture. Whereas among Gentiles who lack sufficient revelation the mind ends up party to “fleshly” desires (Rom. 1:25–28; cf. Eph. 2:3; 4:17–19),326 the law-trained mind can refuse to assent to such desires and yet find itself unable to extirpate them (Rom. 7:22–25). Rational religion falls short of transformation in Christ.
Bodily Desires in Ancient Thinking
As noted earlier, some philosophic approaches highlighted the classic struggle between reason and the passions—passions that were biologically generated and sociologically shaped, not guided by sound reason.327 In Jewish teaching the law was supposed to liberate or protect one from passion’s control.328 Here, however, the law facilitates the identification and thus power of biologically driven passions, perhaps repressed but not eradicated, and likely suppressed but not subdued.
Excursus: Flesh329
Paul’s use of “flesh” would not be completely novel in a Greek context. Occasionally, Greek sources already spoke of the “flesh” (σάρξ) as worthless.330 Some scholars suggest that the usage stemmed originally from reaction against Epicurus.331 Epicureans claimed that those made of flesh (σάρκινον) naturally viewed pleasure positively.332 For a first-century Stoic, the divine consisted purely of reason, not flesh (σάρξ),333 and excellence belonged to moral purpose rather than to flesh.334 For one second-century Stoic, one should “disdain the flesh: it is naught but gore and bones and a network compact of nerves and veins and arteries.”335 Some later sources warned against descending “into the flesh [σάρκα].”336
Especially given Paul’s contrast between “flesh” and (God’s) “Spirit,” however, Paul’s language echoes Jewish usage much more clearly. Scholars have sometimes jumped too quickly from the usual Old Testament holistic usage to Paul’s usage337 as if Paul were simply writing to ancient Israelites using equivalent Greek terms.338 Against the expectations of some, when the Septuagint uses σῶμα, it normally does so with physical connotations.339 Jewish sources sometimes commented on the difference between bodily and nonbodily parts or aspects of a person;340 thus, for example, a Tanna attributed the soul to heaven and the body to earth.341
Despite some similarities of language elsewhere, Paul’s contrasting use of “flesh” and “Spirit” in Romans 8:4–6, 9, 13342 reflects especially his background in Judean thought, such as in the Dead Sea Scrolls.343 The contrast appears in the Old Testament in Isaiah 31:3 but most notably in Genesis 6:3,344 which appears in a highly influential section of Scripture.345 In these sources the contrast is between humanity as flesh (like other mortal creatures) and God’s own Spirit.346 In the Old Testament, humans as flesh are mortal and prone to weakness.347
Paul often uses “flesh” as weakness348 but also goes somewhat further,349 yet in a way consistent with some Jewish circles’ development of the language. Unlike some other early Jewish sources,350 the Dead Sea Scrolls develop the sense of weakness in a moral direction, including susceptibility to sin,351 a sense that the equivalent Greek term often bears in Paul.352 Clearly, when Paul contrasts flesh and the Spirit in Romans 8:4–9, 13, he speaks of God’s Spirit, as the full context shows (cf. also 1:3–4; 7:6; 1 Cor. 5:5; Gal. 3:3; 4:29; 5:17; 6:8), the clear exceptions being 2 Corinthians 7:1 and Colossians 2:5.353
Many ancient thinkers connected passions with the body.354 Socrates, for example, reportedly insisted that a philosopher “disdains the demands of the body and is not enslaved by the pleasures of the body.”355 He also reportedly asked who was less enslaved by passions of the body than he.356 Plato complains that “the body and its desires” lead to violence for the sake of money and, worst of all, distraction from philosophic study.357 The Platonist tradition disparaged the body more than did many other thinkers.358 Bodies distracted people from divine reality.359
A second-century orator warns that “the function particular to the flesh,” which humans share with animals, “is Pleasure,” and “that particular to the intelligence is Reason,” which mortals share with the divine.360 Most pervasively in ancient sources, the body, in contrast to true being, was mortal.361 Many spoke of the body as a prison or chains detaining the soul.362
With its limitations, materiality itself sometimes became a problem. Some Stoics envisioned people as souls who did not even own their bodies;363 whereas the heavens were pure, bad things happened on earth because it consisted of corruptible matter.364 Later Platonists sought to purify their immortal souls from passions and attention to perishable matter.365 Some later sources developing the Platonic tradition even presented love of the body as evil.366
Such attitudes toward the body, ranging from ambivalent to hostile, naturally led to asceticism. Carneades, a second-century BCE Skeptic, ascetically neglected his body, supposing that this would increase his intellectual concentration.367 For a mildly ascetic later Christian source, love of pleasure is what makes the body unbearable for the soul.368
Hellenistic Jews did not escape the influence of such language. Thus they could associate the body with passions.369 Philo speaks of the soul entombed within a body in this life;370 death was an escape.371 “Flesh” (σάρξ) is alienated from what is divine.372 The soul was presently enslaved to the body through its passions.373 For others, drunkenness allowed pleasure to stir the body to adultery.374 Satan blinded a man “as a human being, as flesh [σάρξ], in my [the man’s] corrupt sins” until the man repented.375
Paul and the Body
When Paul speaks of the “flesh” or associates passions with the body, he adapts some of the language of his day to argue his point. But did Paul, like later Neoplatonists and many gnostics, view the body as evil? Did he envision a conflict between body and soul? Despite pagan criticisms,376 and against some gnostic thinkers, even patristic writers defended materiality in the “flesh.”377
Some earlier Pauline interpreters suggested that Paul desires liberation from the body and its passions in a way resembling the thinking of Platonic philosophers.378 This comparison certainly risks exaggeration, especially in view of Paul’s expectation of the body’s resurrection (Rom. 8:11, 13, 23; perhaps 7:24b–25a).379 Nevertheless, many scholars who have downplayed Paul’s distinctions among elements in the human personality have also overstated their case.380
In Paul the body, guided by a renewed mind (Rom. 12:2–3), could be used for good (12:1; cf. 6:13); but under other circumstances the body could also be used for sin (1:24; 6:12–13; 7:5) and even be closely associated with it (6:6; 8:10, 13; cf. 7:24). Relevant to our discussion of the “fleshly mind,” bodily passions could war against the mind (7:23). Though the mind might disagree with bodily passion (7:23, 25), it could find itself subject to it and corrupted by it (1:28). Thus, the frame of mind shaped by the flesh, by human frailty susceptible to temptation, cannot please God (8:8). In this context only new life in the Spirit could free a person (8:2).
For Paul and for the Jewish tradition he follows, creation and bodily existence are good. One is not delivered from some bodily limitations, such as mortality, until the resurrection (Rom. 8:11), but the presence of the Spirit nevertheless gives life in the present so the body can be an instrument for good rather than evil (6:13, 19). By itself, however, bodily existence is susceptible to a range of drives that in themselves cannot recognize right or wrong. These drives could intersect with what Jewish people considered fundamental behaviors of pagan life, such as sexual impropriety or eating food offered to idols (1 Cor. 10:6–8).381
No one, including Paul, would have denied that virtually everyone had such biological passions as hunger, necessary for survival, and procreation, necessary for the propagation of humanity.382 Nevertheless, whereas in principle reason could veto the proposals raised by passions, the pull of these passions pervaded the functioning of the intellect, a pervasiveness exposed all the more plainly by the law. One might avoid acting on covetousness, but covetousness itself arose in the heart before the law could instruct against it. Indeed, by exposing right and wrong, the law spotlighted it rather than rooted it out.
Scholars debate the extent to which Paul and other Jewish contemporaries agreed with wider Greek conceptions and the extent to which they simply appropriated and adapted the language. As noted in my discussion of Romans 6,383 Paul does not oppose all desire and certainly not all unpleasant emotion; when he provides specific examples of prohibited desire, it refers to desiring to possess or perform what Scripture has already prohibited.
For Paul, the “flesh” and the Spirit generate contradictory desires, though Paul seems more comfortable associating the language of “desire” especially with the predilections of the flesh (Gal. 5:16–17; cf. 5:24; Rom. 6:12; 13:14; Eph. 2:3). Although in principle believers’ desires are dead (Gal. 5:24) as one is dead to sin in principle (2:20; Rom. 6:2–10), in practice one must continue to address these desires when they arise (cf. Rom. 6:2–13; Gal. 5:13–16; 6:1; Col. 3:5), perhaps by reckoning them dead (Rom. 6:11). Increasingly identifying with Christ and the Spirit, one may embrace the Spirit’s desires; a life with the Spirit would protect one from living merely for physical impulses (Gal. 5:16–17).384 In any case, Paul is clear that the divided person is not the ideal and that the law, far from unifying the person, in fact divides this person.
Paul affirms the body, whose destiny is resurrected glory, but the flesh is connected to a side of existence dominated by bodily passions, some of which, if unrestrained, lead to violation of God’s law. Translating such language into modern terms might help us understand more concretely the sorts of concepts that Paul was articulating, although ancient and modern psychologies lack correspondences at many points. Today we understand that someone who develops a chemical dependency will have a craving for those chemicals on a physical level. In the same way, an adolescent whose habits connect particular sorts of images with sexual arousal will develop a neurochemical pattern of those images regularly triggering such arousal.
Religious convictions do not automatically change patterns in the brain; one may be disgusted by and reject habitual responses on the level of one’s conscious will, but the “temptation” remains.385 Empirically speaking, religious practice, of whatever kind, by itself does not ordinarily alter such patterns;386 Paul was aware of this in his Letter to the Galatians, in which he associates the flesh both with religion (Gal. 3:2–3) and with sinful behavior (5:16–21, 24). The best that mere religion can do is recognize right from wrong, cover over the wrong, and insist on different behavior.387
An Image of Defeat
Philosophers often claimed to be soldiers winning victories against passions.388 In one pseudepigraphic letter Diogenes the Cynic exhorts, “If you are trying to subdue the human passions, summon me, for I can wage war [πόλεμον] against these just like a general [στρατηγεῖν].”389 Philo exhorts the mind to fight against passions, particularly pleasure.390 Thus, in Romans 13:12–14 Paul exhorts that, against desires, one put on the armor of light.391 Later rabbis spoke of using and obeying the Torah to battle against the evil impulse.392
In Romans 7, however, the embattled figure concedes defeat. The outcry “Wretched person that I am!” need not reflect a particular persona.393 Such laments appear in dramas and elsewhere,394 apparently because they reflected the way people actually spoke when lamenting their situations.395 One later first-century Stoic warns an interlocutor, who complains about being wretched in his flesh, that he ought to abandon attention to the flesh.396
The plea “Who will free me from this mortal body?” continues the image of the prisoner and resembles some other ancient passages where the answer is only death.397 The answer here, however, is in Jesus Christ (Rom. 7:25a). This answer is partly developed for people in Christ in 8:1–17, and it ultimately is fully developed in 8:10–11, 13, where the body is dead but the Spirit that raised Jesus will raise those who put the body’s works to death.398
The law active in the members wages war against the law active in his mind, making him (and thus also his mind) prisoner of war to the law focused on sin (Rom. 7:23).399 Prisoners of war were usually enslaved or executed.400 Here the prisoner is a slave to sin (7:25; cf. 6:6, 16–17, 20) and awaiting death (7:24). Other thinkers described one ruled by passions as enslaved and a prisoner of war.401
Excursus: Ancient Military Metaphors
Military metaphors were naturally common.402 Orators, for example, often used military metaphors,403 sometimes for moral issues.404 When battling against internal temptations, Dio Chrysostom demands, what defense or armor or bodyguards does one have “unless it be words of wisdom and prudence?”405
Military imagery was particularly pervasive in philosophers.406 Thus, one of Socrates’s admirers declares that those tempted by desires have found in Socrates an ally, or fellow warrior (συμμάχῳ), against passions.407 Diogenes the Cynic declares that he has battled against hardships408 and pleasure.409 A Cynic sage could fortify his mind like a city ready to withstand siege.410 Another Cynic could claim to be a soldier like Heracles, battling pleasures.411 Stoics saw life as a battle against hardships;412 wisdom arms the wise person for life as weapons arm a soldier.413 Even an Epicurean could contend that one must fight against vices.414 Not surprisingly, Hellenistic Jewish writers sometimes also used such warfare language.415
Paul develops this military imagery elsewhere in his letters, including this one. Thus, he uses similar warfare language for his ministry of challenging false ideologies that subvert God’s truth (2 Cor. 10:3–5). Most relevant regarding Paul’s usage here is his comment about the armor (ὅπλα) of light later in Romans 13:12, alluding back to this text and probably to becoming “instruments” or “weapons” (ὅπλα) of righteousness (Rom. 6:13). In that context one must put aside works of darkness such as excessive feasting, drunkenness, sexual sin, lack of self-control, rivalry, and envy (13:13). Instead, one must put on the armor of light, which is putting on the Lord Jesus Christ (13:14a).416 This contrasts with premeditating ways to indulge fleshly passions (13:14b), such as those behind the acts just listed in 13:13.
With reference to this book’s subject, such a depiction of internal conflict becomes particularly relevant in Romans 7:22–25, regarding the law in the figure’s mind. The Jewish mind under the law may delight in the law (7:22, 25) and indeed differs positively in many respects from the pagan mind that has fewer restraints on its passions in 1:28. Nevertheless, it is still a mind that cannot in itself defeat the sin of entertaining misplaced desire but can only await the promised eschatological deliverance from it (7:24).
Thus, Paul illustrates the inadequacy of any approach to the law that depends on flesh—on human ability to fulfill it.417 One can approach God’s law in one of two ways: the way of boasting,418 or the way of reading it so as to inculcate trust in the God to whom it bears witness (Rom. 3:27; cf. 3:31–4:3). The law may be seen as a moral standard exposing sin and declaring punishment, or it may be seen as the law for which God’s Spirit within Jesus’s followers empowers the people of the new covenant (8:2). The law may be pursued by human works, or it may be pursued by faith (9:30–32; 10:3–6).
Romans 7:15–25 depicts neither the ideal Christian law nor Paul’s current experience but Paul’s graphic dramatization of life under the law. Unlike the lawless Gentiles of 1:18–32, this passage’s figure is intellectually enlightened by the truth of God’s law. Even such true moral information, however, cannot free one from the verdict of one’s passions. One can be freed only by the gift of a new life based on divine righteousness.
Whereas Romans 7:15–25 depicts what Paul goes on to describe as the mind of the flesh, in 8:5–9 Paul offers a stark alternative experience of life with God in terms of the mind of the Spirit.
1. A gender-neutral pronoun would work best here, but for the sake of selecting one gender or the other, I fall back on the conventional default masculine pronoun, especially in view of the teaching role in Rom. 2:18–20, in this period presumably filled by a male.
2. For much more detailed summaries, see Schreiner, Romans, 380–92; Jewett, Romans, 441–45; MacGorman, “Romans 7,” 35–38.
3. With, e.g., Morris, Romans, 284. For the ancient view that it is autobiographical but pre-Christian, see MacGorman, “Romans 7,” 35; Robinson, Wrestling, 83–84.
4. Reasoner (Full Circle, 69, 84) sees this as one not yet converted but being convicted and thus in the process of conversion; see Origen Comm. Rom. 6.9–10 (PL 14:1085–91; Burns, Romans, 170–73). In Comm. Rom. on 7:17 (CER 3:274, 276; Bray, Romans, 193), Origen opines that Rom. 7:17 depicts someone who knows right and has Christ but is not yet mature.
5. Origen Comm. Rom. on 7:14 (CER 3:270; Bray, Romans, 190; Burns, Romans, 154, 171–73); he compares Paul to the psalmist sometimes identifying with sinners (e.g., Ps. 38:6–8).
6. Stowers, “Self-Mastery,” 537; Stowers, Rereading, 268; Bray, Romans, 189–90.
7. Ambrosiaster Comm. on Rom. 7:14 (CSEL 81:233–35; Bray, Romans, 190). Cf. Ambrosiaster Comm. on Rom. 7:24 (CSEL 81:245; Bray, Romans, 197): Paul addresses one born in sin, but in Christ people can “put sin to death.” John Chrysostom notes here (Hom. Rom. 13 on Rom. 7:24; Bray, Romans, 197) that law and even conscience could not save.
8. Ps.-Const. Rom. on 7:14, 25 (ENPK 49, 52; Bray, Romans, 191, 199).
9. Cyril Alex. Rom. on 7:15 (PG 74:808–9; trans. Bray, Romans, 191; Burns, Romans, 176).
10. Diodore of Tarsus, catena on Rom. 7:15 (PGK 15:89; trans. Bray, Romans, 191); cf. Diodore, catena on Rom. 7:22 (PGK 15:89; Bray, Romans, 195).
11. Pelagius Comm. Rom. on 7:25 (PCR 105; Bray, Romans, 199).
12. Aug. Simp. 1.1 (trans. Bray, Romans, 182).
13. Reasoner, Full Circle, 70, on an unregenerate Jew’s existence prior to law and under law (citing Aug. Prop. Rom. 37–48, on Rom. 7:8–8:3; Div. Q. 66.4–5; Simp. 1.1, 7).
14. Reasoner, Full Circle, 84 (on 70 noting a shift already in Aug. Guilt 1.27.43 and full change in Ep. 6.138–55); Moo, Romans, 443–44 (citing Aug. Retract. 1.23.1; 2.1.1; Ag. Pelag. 1.10–11); Bray, Romans, 196, 199 (citing Aug. Nat. Grace 55.65, on Rom. 7:23; Prop. Rom. 45–46, on 7:25; Ag. Jul. 23.73; Burns, Romans, 178–79); cf. Ag. Jul. 70 (in Bray, Corinthians, 172). Talbert (Romans, 186) notes that Augustine treated the passage as pre-Christian in Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans and Confessions but as the Christian life in Marr. 28–32; Retract. 2.1.1.
15. Aug. Retract. 1.23.1 (Reasoner, Full Circle, 71, noting on 70–71 that this was a matter of polemic, not of exegesis).
16. Jerome Hom. Ps. 41, on Rom. 7:23 (trans. Bray, Romans, 197). For Caesarius (Serm. 177.4 [Bray, Romans, 199]), the deliverance of which 7:24 speaks occurs at the resurrection.
17. Pagels, Paul, 32.
18. Berceville and Son, “Exégèse.” Aquinas (Lecture 3, on Rom. 7:14) shows how the interpretations of both the early Augustine (Div. Q. 83) and the later Augustine (Ag. Jul. 2.3.5–7) can make sense, though he prefers the latter (Levy, Krey, and Ryan, Romans, 163; cf. also 166–67, on 7:17). In a sinner, sin dwells in both flesh and mind; in the righteous it dwells only in the flesh (Aquinas Lecture 3, on Rom. 7:24; p. 171).
19. Morris, Romans, 284.
20. Moo, Romans, 444; Johnson, Romans, 2; Stuhlmacher, Romans, 114. Talbert (Romans, 186) cites here Luther’s Lectures on Romans (scholia on 7:7) and Calvin’s commentary on Romans.
21. Moo, Romans, 444.
22. See Krauter, “Römer 7.”
23. Moo, Romans, 444. MacGorman (“Romans 7,” 35) identifies this as autobiographical but pre-Christian.
24. Wesley, Commentary, 501–2.
25. Barth, Romans, 240–57 (religion revealing humanity’s depravity), 270; Nygren, Romans, 284–96; Cranfield, Romans, 1:344–47; Bruce, Romans, 151–52; Ziesler, Righteousness, 203–4; Dunn, “Romans 7,14–25,” 267; Dunn, Spirit, 312–16; Dunn, Romans, 1:405; Dunn, Theology, 472–77; Morris, Romans, 287; Packer, “Wretched Man”; Packer, “Malheureux”; Combs, “Believer”; Thurén, “Rom 7 avretoriserat” (allowing for Pauline exaggeration); Jervis, “Commandment”; Jervis, “Conversation.” This is also the usual popular reading; see, e.g., Watts, Wisdom, 70.
26. See Banks, “Romans 7:25A,” 41; Morris, Romans, 277, 287.
27. Toussaint, “Contrast,” 311–12. Toussaint views the conflict in Gal. 5:17 (with the Spirit) as normal for believers, but the conflict in Rom. 7:14–25 (with the new nature) as only when believers try to live under the law (310–12). Clearly Rom. 7 lacks the Spirit.
28. Mitton, “Romans 7,” 134; also (following Mitton) Hunter, Romans, 74; Caird, Age, 119; Stewart, Man in Christ, 99ff. Depending on how it is framed, this position does not necessarily conflict with the majority position.
29. Das, Debate, 204–14; Deissmann, Paul, 178–79; Kümmel, Römer 7; Bornkamm, Paul, 125; Ridderbos, Paul: Outline, 126–28; Dahl, Studies, 111; Gundry, “Frustration,” 238; Sanders, Paul and Judaism, 443; Achtemeier, “Reflections”; Achtemeier, Romans, 120–26; Fee, Paul, Spirit, People of God, 134–35; Byrne, Romans, 226; Hübner, “Hermeneutics,” 207; Talbert, Romans, 188–91; Stuhlmacher, Romans, 115; Aletti, “Rm 7.7–25”; Keck, Romans, 180; Watson, Gentiles, 289; Matera, Romans, 167; Lamp, “Rhetoric.”
30. Bultmann, Old and New Man, 33; cf. Bultmann, Theology, 1:266. His student Conzelmann contends, “[Paul] is not . . . picturing his feelings before his conversion, but the way in which he later came to know himself through faith” (Theology, 163).
31. With, e.g., Nock, Paul, 68–69; Bultmann, Old and New Man, 33, 41, 45; Bultmann, Theology, 1:266; Bultmann, “Anthropology”; Bornkamm, Paul, 125; Bornkamm, Experience, 93; Schoeps, Paul, 184; Goppelt, Judaism, 116n7; Ridderbos, Paul: Outline, 129–30; Davies, “Free,” 162; Manson, “Reading,” 159; MacGorman, “Romans 7,” 40–41; Nickle, “Romans 7:7–25,” 185; Longenecker, Paul, 86–97; Deidun, Morality, 197–98; Byrne, “Righteousness,” 565; Newman, “Once Again”; Blank, “Mensch”; Ladd, Theology, 508; Fee, Paul, Spirit, People of God, 134–35; Wright, Romans, 95, 131; Bony, “Lecture”; Talbert, “Tracing”; Chang, “Life.”
32. E.g., Toussaint, “Contrast,” 311–12; Dunn, Baptism, 146–47; Bruce, Apostle, 194; Parker, “Split.”
33. Applied differently, cf. the contrast between the righteous law and Israel’s wickedness in 4 Ezra 9:32–33.
34. Like philosophy (with which Hellenistic Jewish thinkers sometimes identified the law), the law informs but (insofar as it remains dependent on human ability to fulfill it) cannot transform. Philosophers often believed that true knowledge and right beliefs transformed; Paul agrees to the extent that the right belief is Christ, but it is still Christ the object of that belief who transforms. Jewish teachers often presented the law as an antidote for sin, although they stressed obedience in addition to knowledge. For Paul, the law transforms only if written in the heart.
35. The weakness of the law with respect to righteousness was not the code itself but rather the flesh (Rom. 8:3); see Sanday and Headlam, Romans, 186; Longenecker, Paul, 114–16; Keck, Paul, 128; cf. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 8. Sanders (Law and People, 78) sees inability to keep the law as unique to Rom. 7 (but cf. 8:7; Gal. 3:21; some cite Jer. 18:12; Josh. 24:19; Isa. 64:7d); in any case, merely human righteousness is inadequate in Rom. 3:20; 6:14; Gal. 2:16; 3:10–11, 22; Phil. 3:9. Paul consistently argues that salvation is only through Christ (with, e.g., Sanders, “Romans 7”).
36. Chang, “Life,” 279.
37. Some rabbis also believed that the law did this; Smith, Parallels, 168, cites Mekilta of R. Simon 20.20. For ignorance as sometimes mitigating a degree of guilt, see, e.g., Num. 15:22–31; 35:11, 15; L.A.B. 22:6; Pss. Sol. 13:7; T. Reub. 1:6; Jos. Asen. 6:7/4; 13:11–13; BGU 5.65.164–5.67.170. At greater length, see the sources in Keener, Acts, 2:1102–4.
38. Morris, Romans, 285.
39. Dunn, Theology, 474; Dunn, Romans, 1:398–99; cf. Morris, Romans, 286. No manuscript evidence supports relocating 7:25b before 7:24, as Moffatt and Dodd attempt (Dahl, Studies, 85; Fitzmyer, Romans, 477), or dismissing 7:25b as a gloss, as Bultmann (and Lichtenberger, “Beginn”) attempts (Byrne, Romans, 233; Jewett, Romans, 457). Thanksgiving could follow lament in the Psalms (Stuhlmacher, Romans, 113). Jewett, Romans, 457–58, suggests “a Pauline correction,” “perhaps in conjunction with a pause in dictation,” and on 473 suggests “a marginal gloss added by Paul himself that was probably intended to be placed between v. 23 and v. 24.” (On afterthoughts or corrections, see Rhet. Her. 4.26.36; e.g., 1 Cor. 1:16; Men. Rhet. 2.9, 414.26.)
40. E.g., Xen. Hell. 3.5.25; 4.8.19; Cic. Fin. 3.9.31; 4Q270 frg. 11, col. 1.15.
41. Wenham, “Tension,” 83. On interjections, see Anderson, Glossary, 41; Rowe, “Style,” 143. In addition to Paul (cf. Rom. 6:17; 1 Cor. 15:57; 2 Cor. 2:14; 8:16; 9:15), others also employed the interjection χάρις τῷ θεῷ; cf. Philo Alleg. Interp. 2.60; Epict. Diatr. 4.4.7; Crates Ep. 33; Diogenes Ep. 34; for papyri, cf. O’Brien, “Thanksgiving,” 61.
42. Nygren, Romans, 284–96; Dunn, Theology, 473–76; Dunn, Unity, 195; cf. Morris, Romans, 286, citing Rom. 8:23.
43. Cf. Chang, “Life,” 257, noting that Paul in context emphasizes the “already.”
44. Morris, Romans, 285.
45. Moo, Romans, 445, allowing that believers may struggle with sin. Cf. also Stuhlmacher (Romans, 115–16), who recognizes that believers may face temptation.
46. Gundry, “Frustration,” 238.
47. Gundry, “Frustration,” 234; Moo, Romans, 450.
48. Wenham, “Tension,” 84; Sanders, Paul and Judaism, 443.
49. Gundry, “Frustration,” 234; cf. Byrne, Romans, 217; see in detail Talbert, Romans, 199–220.
50. Morris, Romans, 285–86; cf. Ramm, “Double,” 17 (Rom. 6–8).
51. Wenham, “Tension,” 83; Moo, Romans, 424; Chang, “Life,” 279.
52. Moo, Romans, 424.
53. Elsewhere applied to believers (2 Cor. 4:16; Eph. 3:16).
54. See Wenham, “Tension,” 83. The phrase appears elsewhere; see, e.g., Betz, “Concept”; Aune, “Duality”; and the discussion below (pp. 98, 241n28).
55. Further, Rom. 7:22–23, 25 is irreconcilable with Rom. 12:2 and Phil. 2:13 (Ridderbos, Paul: Outline, 128).
56. Noted by Moo, Romans, 446 (who views the person as unregenerate, 448–49).
57. Dunn, Theology, 476–77.
58. Wenham, “Tension,” 84–85.
59. If one may compare modern conversions, they do not usually erase all prior psychological patterns or the hormones and biochemistry to which those patterns are often connected.
60. Jewett, Romans, 466, also noting the ethical expectations in Rom. 12–16; Gundry, “Frustration,” 238, contrasting 7:14–25 with 6:1–7:6; 8:1–39.
61. Hübner, “Hermeneutics,” 207, contrasting Rom. 7:17, 20 with 8:6.
62. As is regularly noted, Paul uses “flesh” in multiple ways (e.g., bodily existence in Gal. 2:20); the context of the term’s usage in Romans, however, decides the usage here against a depiction of Christian experience. Yet even in the harsh language of 1 Cor. 3:1, Paul may hesitate to apply σάρκινος to believers, prefacing it with ὡς and in 3:3 preferring the potentially weaker σαρκικός.
63. The contrast also applies to 1 Cor. 6:19 and Gal. 2:20 (recognized already by Origen; see Stowers, Rereading, 266–67).
64. Jewett, Romans, 472.
65. Cf. Mitton, “Romans 7,” 134; Hunter, Romans, 74; Caird, Age, 119; cf. Stewart, Man in Christ, 99ff., regarding anyone who “lets Christ go.” This application does not follow from the present tenses, however, since Rom. 7:14–25 is clearly not Paul’s condition when writing.
66. Käsemann, Romans, 199.
67. Stuhlmacher, Romans, 112, 115. Perhaps he refers to the use of the present tense in Jewish confessions.
68. Gundry, “Frustration,” 228–29, relying on the present verbs of Phil. 3:3–4 to establish the implied tense in 3:5–6; cf. Das, Debate, 213.
69. Das, Debate, 213, on the imperfective aspect focusing additional attention on an event, following Porter, Idioms, 30–31; Seifrid, “Subject,” 321–22; see also here Seifrid, Justification, 230, 234. Grammarians currently debate the extent to which indicative tenses mark not only aspect but time (albeit only generally, since everyone who defines them as having a usually temporal function admits exceptions).
70. E.g., Fee, Paul, Spirit, People of God, 134–35.
71. This is the case even though ancient rhetorical critics sometimes critiqued those who were inconsistent in verb tenses (Dion. Hal. 2 Amm. 12).
72. I am not using “lament” as a technical designation of genre here. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that the psalmist often lays out the past situation or plea in which he called on the Lord, narrating it as if present (e.g., Pss. 28:1–5; 31:11–18), before narrating and praising God for the deliverance (e.g., Pss. 28:6; 31:22). Cf. discussion of such psalms in Broyles, Conflict; Broyles, “Lament,” 386–89; Miller, Cried; and (with reception history) Waltke, Houston, and Moore, Psalms; for some ancient Near Eastern context for laments more narrowly, cf. Gwaltney, “Book”; Hallo, “Lamentations.”
73. This is the case whether interpreters prefer the emphasis on imperfective aspect or (usually) temporal marking with respect to present indicative verbs.
74. Plut. Mal. Hdt. 26, Mor. 861F.
75. Anderson, Glossary, 125, citing Longin. Subl. 15.1. Cf. Hermog. Inv. 3.15.166–68.
76. Hermog. Inv. 3.15.167. Narration could start with either present (Hermog. Progymn. 9, “On Ethopoeia,” 21–22; Nicolaus Progymn. 10, “On Ethopoeia”) or past (Hermog. Progymn. 10, “On Ecphrasis,” 22) action, but shifting the period of time discussed helps maintain attention. Also citing Hermogenes, Tobin (Rhetoric, 238) suggests that Paul follows a respectable rhetorical form by using the aorist in Rom. 7:7–12, the present in 7:13–23, and the future in 7:24–25a.
77. Rowe, “Style,” 143–44, citing, e.g., Demosth. Embassy 19.65; Cic. Phil. 2.34.85. This method did not always use present verbs but could include these as well.
78. Though Paul probably has in view his own cruciform life as well as his preaching; see Gal. 2:20.
79. E.g., Arist. Rhet. 2.8.14, 1386a; 3.11.1–2, 1411b; Rhet. Her. 4.55.68; Cic. Or. Brut. 40.139; Sull. 26.72; Vell. Paterc. 2.89.5–6; Sen. E. Controv. 1.6.12; Quint. Inst. 9.2.40; Theon Progymn. 7.53–55; Longin. Subl. 15.2; Pliny Ep. 5.6.40; Hermog. Progymn. 10, “On Ecphrasis,” 22–23; see, further, Keener, Acts, 1:135.
80. For historical presents, see Aune, Dictionary of Rhetoric, 215 (who notes that Mark uses these more than 150 times). These appear also in Latin narrative, e.g., frequently in Caesar C.W., e.g., C.W. 1.22, 25, 33, 41, 59; 2.21, 25, 26, 30; and occasionally in Cicero (he slips in a present in Quinct. 4.14, though the narratio is mainly past tense; also in 5.20). Cf. perhaps also Philost. Vit. Apoll. 8.1–2.
81. On this approach to verbal aspect, see in an introductory way Campbell, Advances, 106–9, and Das’s suggestion, above, concerning the imperfective use of the present.
82. The aorist indicative does appear in Rom. 3:12a, 17, and the imperfect in 3:13. The present indicative appears in 3:10–11, 12b, 14, and 18.
83. Noted by Moo (Romans, 425).
84. Moo, Romans, 427.
85. Donaldson, Paul and Gentiles, 14–15.
86. Cf. Newman, “Once Again”: whether or not the chapter reveals Paul’s history, it implies others beyond Paul, because Paul is depicting life under the law. Philonenko (“Glose”) supports K. G. Kuhn’s gnomic interpretation.
87. E.g., Gundry, “Frustration”; Milne, “Experience”; others noted below. Rubenstein (Paul, 11), noting his own Jewish experience under the law, thinks that it also would have fit Paul’s.
88. E.g., Denney, “Romans,” 639 (on 7:7–13); Stewart, Man in Christ, 99ff.; Caird, Age, 119; Martin, “Reflections”; Kim, Origin, 52ff.; Schreiner, Romans, 363–65. Contrast Espy (“Conscience”), who thinks that it depicts even Paul’s pre-Christian awareness of his inadequacy. Some even read it psychoanalytically (Rubenstein, Paul; Sandmel, Genius, 32–33). But as Chilton (Rabbi Paul, 53) notes (citing 1 Cor. 15:9), Paul’s persecution of the church sufficiently explains any “guilt.”
89. See, e.g., Goppelt, Times, 72; Jewett, Romans, 464; Campbell, Deliverance, 141.
90. E.g., Sandmel, Genius, 28.
91. E.g., Enslin, Ethics, 12; Goppelt, Judaism, 116n7; Goppelt, Times, 72; Dahl, Studies, 111; Sanders, Paul and Judaism, 478–79; Dunn, Romans, 1:382; Longenecker, “Hope,” 22. Some who reject the label of autobiography see Paul depicting his pre-Christian experience from a Christian perspective (Goppelt, Judaism, 139–40).
92. Judge, Jerusalem, 60.
93. E.g., the more existentially directed reading in Bultmann, Old and New Man, 16; Bultmann, Theology, 1:266.
94. Robinson, Wrestling, 82; Moo, Romans, 431; Watson, Gentiles, 290; Dunn, Romans, 1:382; Hultgren, Romans, 681–91. For partly Paul’s experience but especially concerning Israel under the law, see Moo, “Israel and Paul.”
95. Jewett, Romans, 444–45.
96. E.g., Mus. Ruf. 9, p. 74.13–19.
97. Talbert, Romans, 201 (noting that Paul identifies with his people also in Rom. 9:3).
98. Campbell, Deliverance, 141; cf. Nock, Paul, 68–69; Hunter, Romans, 71; Prat, Theology, 227ff.; Ridderbos, Paul: Outline, 129–30; Achtemeier, Romans, 124; Byrne, Romans, 217. Rhetorically, whether “I” refers to Paul or not, it invites audience identification (Keck, “Pathos,” 90).
99. Byrne, Romans, 217; Wright, Justification, 120; Wright, Faithfulness, 508; Morris, Romans, 277 (although Morris applies Rom. 7:13–25 to believers, 287); for Paul identifying with Gentile hearers in Gal. 3:14, cf. Gager, Anti-Semitism, 222. Longenecker (“Hope,” 22) emphasizes that Kümmel showed this in Paul and ancient literature already in 1928. Some interpreters counter by noting that sometimes Paul does use “I” autobiographically (Gundry, “Frustration,” 229, citing Phil. 3:4–6).
100. Cf. 2 Cor. 12:2–4, which is usually regarded as the opposite approach—Paul depicting himself as another (see, e.g., Lincoln, Paradise, 75; Bultmann, Corinthians, 220; Furnish, Corinthians, 524, 544–45; Martin, Corinthians, 398; Lyons, Autobiography, 69; Danker, Corinthians, 188; Thrall, Corinthians, 778–82; Matera, Corinthians, 278).
101. Schlatter, Romans, 160, noting that “I” is more suitable here because Paul is depicting “the individual’s inner life.” The “we” of Rom. 3:5 becomes “I” in 3:7, probably speaking for Israel more generally. In the context leading up to 7:7–25, Paul often uses the first-person plural (e.g., 4:16, 24–25; 5:1, 5–6, 8, 11, 21; 6:4, 6, 23; 7:4–6), including himself but speaking generically.
102. Some explain the “I” in terms of the diatribe style (e.g., Enslin, Ethics, 13; Johnson, Romans, 115), although some characteristics of diatribal style are debated today.
103. E.g., Talbert, Romans, 186; Johnson, Romans, 115, citing Epict. Diatr. 3.22.10.
104. Sen. Y. Dial. 7.11.1 (trans. Basore, LCL, 2:125); that he does not refer literally to himself is clear (7.18.1).
105. Sen. Y. Dial. 8.5.8 (trans. Basore, LCL, 2:195).
106. Stowers, Rereading, 266–67; Stowers, “Self-Mastery,” 537; Reasoner, Full Circle, 69, 84; Talbert, Romans, 187. Origen may refer to a person under conviction (cf. Reasoner, Full Circle, 69). Anderson (Rhetorical Theory, 204–5) counters that Origen suggested this approach only tentatively.
107. Stowers, Rereading, 268.
108. E.g., Stowers, Rereading, 16–17, 264; Édart, “Nécessité”; Tobin, Rhetoric, 10, 226–27; Talbert, Romans, 187; deSilva, Introduction, 620; Bryan, Preface, 139–40; Aletti, “Rm 7.7–25”; Aletti, “Romans 7,7–25”; Witherington, Romans, 179–80; Keck, Romans, 180; Keck, “Pathos,” 85; Jewett, Romans, 443; Kruse, Romans, 298, 305; Rodríguez, Call Yourself, 134.
109. Later rhetoric distinguishes ēthopoeia (ἠθοποιΐα), when one speaks in the character of another person, as here, from prosōpopoiia, in which inanimate objects are meant to speak (Hermog. Progymn. 9, “On Ethopoeia,” 20); Demet. Style 5.265 seems to include both as prosōpopoiia. Others distinguished the terms differently (Aphth. Progymn. 11, “On Ethopoeia,” 44–45S, 34R; Nicolaus Progymn. 10, “On Ethopoeia,” 64–65).
110. E.g., Proclus Poet. 6.2, K198.29–30 (addressing Plato); Tzounakas, “Peroration.”
111. As noted in Demet. Style 5.266.
112. Demet. Style 5.265.
113. Stowers, Rereading, 17.
114. Stowers, Rereading, 18, citing the first-century rhetorical teacher Quint. Inst. 1.8.3.
115. Anderson, Rhetorical Theory, 204–5. Aune (Dictionary of Rhetoric, 383, following Anderson, Rhetorical Theory, 232) suggests that Paul instead uses personal example. Given irregularity in the use of chronology, however, Hock (“Education,” 211) wonders whether ancients would still have viewed Paul’s figure as prosōpopoiia. Jewett (Romans, 444) cites for the figure an anecdote from Epictetus’s past used to illustrate and advance his argument in Epict. Diatr. 1.18.15–16; 1.29.21; but this is not really prosōpopoiia even by Jewett’s definition on 443.
116. Tobin, Rhetoric, 227, citing Quint. Inst. 9.2.36–37.
117. Cf. Jewett, Romans, 445.
118. E.g., Davies, Paul, 30–32; Hunter, Romans, 71–72; Goppelt, Judaism, 140; Manson, “Reading,” 158; Käsemann, Romans, 196 (citing Jewish tradition); Dunn, “Romans 7,14–25”; Dunn, Romans, 1:383; Dunn, Theology, 98–100; Dunn, “Adam,” 133–35; Martin, Reconciliation, 57; Deidun, Morality, 196; Morris, Romans, 282–83; Talbert, Romans, 187 (on 187–88 comparing Eve’s “desire” in Apoc. Mos. 19:3), 191 (with Adam as the model for the self, not the subject); Grappe, “Corps de mort” (comparing 4 Ezra 3:4–5); Chow, “Romans 7:7–25”; Campbell, Deliverance, 141; Matera, Romans, 174; cf. Nock, Paul, 68; Bornkamm, Experience, 93; Cranfield, Romans, 1:342–43; Schoeps, Paul, 184; Bruce, Apostle, 194; Stuhlmacher, Romans, 115. Most of these scholars also emphasize the role of the law here. Some focus on “deceived” and emphasize esp. Eve’s role here (Busch, “Figure”; Krauter, “Eva”).
119. See (in Bray, Romans, 184, 186, 188) Ambrosiaster Comm. on Rom. 7:13 (CSEL 81:231); Theodoret Interp. Rom. on 7:10 (PG 82:117); Diodore of Tarsus, catena on Rom. 7:9 (PGK 15:88); Didymus the Blind, catena on Rom. 7:13 (PGK 15:4). Origen viewed 7:7–13 as Israel’s relationship to the law, whereas 7:14–25 applied to humanity’s (Reasoner, Full Circle, 69). This could make sense of the shift in imagery, but why a transition from one “I” to another with no explicit demarcation? Further, “for” in 7:14 and “for” in 7:15 clearly connect the persons.
120. Although many have made some of these connections, I follow here the extensive and helpful list in Watson, Gentiles, 282–84. To his credit, Watson also recognizes the allusion to Sinai in Rom. 7:9 (p. 282). Given the emphasis on knowledge in Rom. 7, Watson’s suggested possible correlation between the Torah and the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gentiles, 285) is more tantalizing, since Jewish tradition identifies the Torah with a tree of life (Abot 6:7; Sipre Deut. 47.3.2; Tg. Neof. 1 on Gen. 3:24). Some compare the warning not to covet (7:7) with the serpent’s invitation to become like God (Gen. 3:5–6; Talbert, Romans, 187).
121. Some patristic commentators viewed personified Sin here as the devil (in Bray, Romans, 186: Didymus the Blind, catena on Rom. 7:11 [PGK 15:3]; Ambrosiaster Comm. on Rom. 7:11 [CSEL 81:229]). Some Jewish traditions also linked the serpent and the devil (cf. Wis. 2:24; 3 Bar. 9:7; cf. Rev. 12:9; Acts John 94; the devil utilized the serpent in Apoc. Mos. 16:1, 5).
122. Noting the two yods in Gen. 2:7, some rabbis suggested that God created Adam with two impulses (b. Ber. 61a; Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Gen. 2:7), though others differed; earlier, 4Q422 1.9–12 probably connects an evil inclination with Adam (though possibly, as in Gen. 6, with Noah’s generation; cf. 4Q422 1.12–2.8). Cf. the idea that the serpent infused humanity with lust when he slept with Eve (b. Yebam. 103b).
123. Baudry (“Péché”) distinguishes emphases on Adam, Satan, or the evil impulse as sin’s origin among early Jewish sources.
124. E.g., Moo, Romans, 428–29, 437; Schreiner, Romans, 360–61; Jewett, Romans, 447, 451–52; Das, Debate, 216.
125. Ἐξαπατάω in Rom. 7:11 and (with explicit reference to Eve) 2 Cor. 11:3; ἀπατάω in Gen. 3:13; cf. also 1 Tim. 2:14; Philo Alleg. Interp. 3.59–66 (using ἀπατάω, which appears seventy-three times in the Philonic corpus; Philo allegorizes in Creation 165); Jos. Ant. 1.48 (using the same verb as Paul, ἐξαπατάω, which appears twenty-one times in Josephus; Josephus uses ἀπατάω thirty-six times). Paul’s usage is not limited to Eve (1 Cor. 3:18; 2 Thess. 2:3); the other Romans reference to deception involves not Adam and Eve but false teachers (Rom. 16:18, though that context might actually evoke Adam in 16:19–20). Extrabiblical parallels (some noted below) are easier to find because the corpus is so large, but the corpus that Paul unquestionably shared with his first audience is Scripture. Perkins (“Anthropology”) finds correspondences between Rom. 7:7–25 and some Adam material in Nag Hammadi sources.
126. With Gundry, “Frustration,” 230.
127. As also noted by Gundry (“Frustration,” 230).
128. It does appear in Jos. Ant. 1.43, but Josephus employs this noun seventy-six times, sometimes (though not usually) also for the laws or stipulations of Moses (Ant. 6.133; 7.318, 338, 342; 8.94, 120, 337).
129. See Deut. 8:1; 11:8 LXX; 30:16; Neh. 9:29; Prov. 6:23 LXX; Ezek. 18:21; Sir. 17:11; 45:5; Bar. 4:1; 2 Macc. 7:9, 23.
130. Deut. 30:15–20; Tob. 3:4. Granted, Adam could be viewed as experiencing spiritual death in passions (Philo Alleg. Interp. 1.106; cf. 3.107), but Philo does not limit that description to Adam (Posterity 61, 73–74; Drunkenness 135; Studies 87; Rewards 159; cf. Embassy 14).
131. See Schreiner, Romans, 361; Das, Debate, 217.
132. Moo, “Israel and Paul”; Moo, Romans, 430–31; Karlberg, “History”; Bryan, Preface, 140–45; Napier, “Analysis”; Kruse, Romans, 299, 305, 319–20. Moo (Romans, 426) cites other examples of those who hold this view, including Chrysostom; Hugo Grotius; E. Stauffer; N. T. Wright; Ridderbos; and P. Benoit. Given the emphasis on the law, Talbert (Romans, 196) concludes that the “self” here is a Jewish one rather than Gentile; cf. Gorman, Apostle, 373: “the frustrated human (and especially Jewish) condition apart from Christ.” In 1981, before being familiar with many Romans commentaries, I concluded that Rom. 7:14–25 could not reflect Adamic humanity in general (1:18–32; 5:12–21) but could reflect Adamic humanity under law (2:12–29; cf. Rom. 9–11). Schreiner, Romans, 362–63, offers a plausible objection to Israel here but may press the analogy too forcefully.
133. Talbert, Romans, 188 (also suggesting that the Jewish boy receiving the Torah may recapitulate Sinai); cf. Schreiner, Romans, 343. The idea was intelligible in an ancient context; scholars (Haacker, Theology, 126–27; Talbert, Romans, 189) cite texts about laws emphasizing vices and making them more tempting (Cic. Tull. 9; Ovid Am. 2.19.3; 3.4.9, 11, 17, 25, 31; Metam. 3.566; Sen. Y. Clem. 1.23.1; Publ. Syr. N 17; Tac. Ann. 13.12.2; 13.13.1; cf. 4 Macc. 1:33–34; L.A.E. 19).
134. If Gal. 2:15–21 reflects or elaborates Paul’s words to Peter in 2:14 (“you as a Jew”), then “we” Jews includes all of ethnic Israel, believing or unbelieving. The difference in Rom. 7:15–25 would remain the use of the present tense for depicting life under the law.
135. Cf. Rom. 3:7; 4:1. Thus Paul responds in 8:2, “set you [singular] free.”
136. Granted, the figure in Rom. 2:17–23 is addressed in the second-person singular, in contrast to the first-person singular here. There may be special reasons, however, for the first-person usage here; aside from possible identification with Paul’s pre-Christian past (mentioned above), see the discussion below.
137. Streland, “Note” (rightly noting Israel but citing Jewish tradition comparing Israel’s idolatry in Exod. 32 with Adam’s fall); Byrne, Romans, 218; Talbert, Romans, 188; Dunn, “Search,” 331n44; Grieb, Story, 72; Kruse, Romans, 299; cf. Watson, Gentiles, 282.
138. See Stowers, Rereading, 39, 273–84, esp. 273–81; Stowers, “Self-Mastery,” 536; Tobin, Rhetoric, 237; Das, Debate, 221–35; Wasserman, “Paul among Philosophers,” 82; Rodríguez, Call Yourself, 134; cf. Gager, Anti-Semitism, 222–23. Regarding Gentiles more generally, cf. Origen’s view of law in Rom. 7:7–13 as natural law (Reasoner, Full Circle, 68).
139. Stowers, Rereading, 273.
140. Cf. Stowers, Rereading, 273–75.
141. Also Eph. 2:3; Titus 3:3; πάθημα appears in Gal. 5:24 as well as in Rom. 7:5, although πάθος appears only here (Rom. 1:26) and in 1 Thess. 4:5 and Col. 3:5. Despite their negative role in some passages, in most passages Paul does not denigrate Gentiles when mentioning them (e.g., Rom. 1:5, 13; 2:14, 24).
142. Cf., e.g., Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 242.
143. I am not devaluing the various points omitted here, but I reserve them for a fuller commentary on Romans, or refer readers to my short commentary on Romans (Keener, Romans).
144. That is, it has functioned as any civil law might; the problem for Paul thus is not the law but the human heart (Rom. 7:14). But ideally the matter is different if God writes the law in the heart (Deut. 30:6), as would be the case with the new covenant (Jer. 31:33; Ezek. 36:25–27; 2 Cor. 3:3, 6). Paul believes that this comes only through divine action, through the Spirit (Rom. 8:2; 2 Cor. 3:3, 6, 8, 17–18).
145. See pp. 29, 32, 74; fuller discussion, pp. 77–78, 87–90.
146. Some understood freedom in terms of civic responsibility (cf. the contribution of this idea to Statius Silv. 1.6 in Chinn, “Libertas”).
147. See, e.g., Gorg. Hel. 6–8, 20 (with 6–19); Pliny E. N.H. 33.21.66 (with 33.21.67–78); John 16:8–11; Pliny Ep. 6.29.1–2; Dio Chrys. Or. 38.8; Tac. Ann. 16.21 (with 16.21–32); Arius Did. 2.7.5a, p. 10.6–7 (with p. 10.7–15); Gaius Inst. 1.9–12; Men. Rhet. 2.1–2, 375.7–8; 2.1–2, 385.8 (with 385.9–386.10); Apul. Apol. 27 (with 29–65), 61, 67; Porph. Marc. 24.376–84. Cf. Anderson, Glossary, 32–33; Rowe, “Style,” 134.
148. With, e.g., Seifrid, Justification, 232; Stowers, Rereading, 270; Stuhlmacher, Romans, 115; Osborne, Romans, 173; Barclay, Gift, 502n14; cf. Harrison and Hagner, “Romans,” 116.
149. Pages 19–23.
150. Pages 1–29.
151. E.g., 4 Macc. 3:11; T. Dan 4:5; T. Ash. 3:2; 6:5; also Sir. 18:30–32 (cf. 6:2, 4); desire is seen as the origin of all sin in Apoc. Mos. 19:3; sexual desires can be dangerous in T. Jud. 13:2; T. Jos. 3:10; 7:8; T. Reub. 4:9; 5:6. Philo castigates “lovers of pleasure” in Creation 157–59; Alleg. Interp. 3.161; Sacr. 32; cf. sexual “pleasure” in T. Iss. 3:5. T. Reub. 2:8 maintains the biblical posture that desire for intercourse is good but warns that it can lead to love for pleasure; Philo (Creation 152) complains that woman brought man sexual pleasures, introducing sins. Rulers must avoid being distracted by pleasure (Let. Aris. 245), for people are prone to pleasure (277; cf. 108, 222).
152. Philo Unchangeable 111. This contrasts with the sacred mind uncorrupted by shameful matters (Unchangeable 105). For Philo, the garden’s serpent is pleasure (e.g., Creation 157–60, 164; Alleg. Interp. 2.71–74; Agr. 97).
153. See discussion on pp. 21–23.
154. E.g., 4 Macc. 1:1, 9, 29; 2:15–16, 18, 21–22; 3:17; 6:31, 33; 7:4; 13:1–2, 7; Philo Creation 81; Alleg. Interp. 3.156; see also Tobin, Rhetoric, 231; Stowers, “Self-Mastery,” 531–34; on 4 Maccabees, note Krieger, “4. Makkabäerbuch”; Dijkhuizen, “Pain”; cf. Fuhrmann, “Mother”; Dunson, “Reason.” In contradistinction to orthodox Stoicism, 4 Macc. 3:2–5 affirms that reason subdues rather than eliminates passions. Cf. T. Reub. 4:9; Jos. Ant. 4.328–29. In early Christianity, see, e.g. (in Bray, Romans, 195), Pelagius Comm. Rom. on 7:22 (PCR 104–5).
155. See 4 Macc. 2:23; see also Campbell, Deliverance, 564. For law providing self-mastery over passions in Josephus and Philo, see Stowers, “Self-Mastery,” 532–34; also Rodríguez, Call Yourself, 129, 155. In principle, good laws were supposed to make good people (Polyb. 4.47.3–4), since law is not ruled by passion (Arist. Pol. 3.11.4, 1287a).
156. See Tobin, Rhetoric, 28–30. Rome was one of the ancient centers of book publishing and distribution; see White, “Bookshops,” 268, 277 (though Pliny mentions other sites).
157. Rhet. Alex. pref. 1420a.26–28; the agreement articulates something like a social contract view.
158. Crates Ep. 5.
159. Arius Did. 2.7.11i, p. 76.33–36; cf. 2.7.11d, p. 68.1–3, 6–8. Cf. Mus. Ruf. 2, p. 36.18–19, arguing that all have the capacity for such virtue, even if unfulfilled.
160. Dio Chrys. Or. 69.8–9; Lucian Dem. 59; Diog. Laert. 2.68 (Aristippus); Porph. Marc. 27.424–25; cf. Max. Tyre Or. 36.5 regarding Diogenes; Ovid Metam. 1.89–90, on the primeval world. Those who follow nature’s laws will never err (Cic. Off. 1.28.100); innate law renders others superfluous (Max. Tyre Or. 6.6; cf. Porph. Marc. 27.422–23; Philo Abr. 16); the virtuous act wisely and hence are free to do what they wish (Philo Good Person 59). Cf. also Arist. Pol. 3.8.2, 1284a, which some compare with Gal. 5:23 (Bruce, “All Things,” 90).
161. Dio Chrys. Or. 76.4.
162. “Virtue outranks . . . law” (Menander Karchedonios frg. 4, in Stob. Anth. 3.9.16; 4.1.21; trans. Arnott, LCL, 2:133); the ideal is for a city not to need laws (Men. Rhet. 1.3, 360.12–13). In practice, of course, many thinkers did praise the value of laws (e.g., Aeschines Tim. 4, 13; Polyb. 4.47.3–4).
163. Tobin, Rhetoric, 231–32, citing 4 Macc. 2:4–6; Philo Decal. 142–53, 173–74; Spec. Laws 4.79–131. In Philo Spec. Laws 4.80, desire for what one lacks is the most troublesome passion.
164. With Stowers, “Self-Mastery,” 536; cf. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 232; for the law’s salvific inadequacy, also Romanello, “Impotence.” Paul was more pessimistic about human ability to master passions than Philo and esp. 4 Maccabees (Gemünden, “Culture des passions”). Hübner (“Hermeneutics,” 208) rightly emphasizes in Rom. 7 the “many verbs of understanding” (7:7, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 21, 22, 23) and (on 212–13) verbs of “willing” (7:15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21), but focuses on the inability to understand in 7:15 (p. 212).
165. See, e.g., covetousness in Thucyd. 3.82.8; Diod. Sic. 21.1.4a; Cato Coll. Dist. 54; Mus. Ruf. 4, p. 48.9; 20, p. 126.18, 21; Dio Chrys. Or. 13.32; 17; 34.19; Lucian Charon 15; earlier, Instruction of Ptah-hotep in ANET 413; envy in Hesiod W.D. 195; Musaeus Hero 36–37; Eurip. Oed. frg. 551; Xen. Mem. 3.9.8; Thucyd. 2.35.2; Philod. Prop. col. 24.7; Corn. Nep. 8 (Thrasybulus), 4.1–2; Cic. Fam. 1.7.2; Epict. Diatr. 4.9.1–3; Dio Chrys. Or. 34.19; 77–78; Fronto Ad M. Caes. 4.1; Hermog. Inv. 1.1.95; Philost. Ep. Apoll. 43. See further sources in Keener, Acts, 2:1206–8.
166. Jewett, Romans, 451, comparing Gal. 1:14–15.
167. Nanos, Mystery, 358 (cf. 362, 364–65).
168. As in, e.g., Rom. 1:24; 1 Thess. 4:5; 2 Tim. 3:6; Prov. 6:25; Sir. 20:4; Matt. 5:28; Jos. Ant. 1.201; T. Reub. 5:6; Did. 3.3; Ign. Pol. 5.2–3; Herm. 1.8; 2.4; Mus. Ruf. 7, p. 56.17–18. But this was only part of the term’s semantic range; see, e.g., Rom. 6:12; 13:14; Gal. 5:16–17, 24; Eph. 2:3; 4:22; 1 Tim. 6:9; 2 Tim. 4:3; James 1:14–15; 4:2; 2 Pet. 1:4; Mark 4:19; John 8:44; Acts 20:33; Num. 11:4, 34; Prov. 12:12; Sir. 18:30–31; Wis. 16:3; 19:11; 1 Macc. 4:17; 11:11; 4 Macc. 1:32, 34; 3:11–12, 16; 1 Clem. 3.4; 28.1; 2 Clem. 17.3; Galen Grief 42–44 (esp. 43). God’s “commandment” (Rom. 7:8–13) could apply to sexual issues (T. Jud. 13:7; 14:6), but again, this was a very narrow part of the term’s range (cf., e.g., 1 Cor. 7:19; 14:37; Eph. 2:15; 6:2; Col. 4:10; Gen. 26:5; Lev. 26:3; 4 Macc. 8:29–9:1; 16:24).
169. Gundry, “Frustration,” 233, noting that the youth reaches the age of maturity and responsibility under the Torah at the same time he reaches sexual maturity.
170. The analogy with Rom. 7:7 probably simply reflects consideration of the same biblical command (Charlesworth, Pseudepigrapha, 78).
171. As noted in chap. 1; see pp. 23–24.
172. “Your neighbor’s wife” appears second in Hebrew, but the LXX transposes it with “your neighbor’s house” or “household.”
173. Davies, Paul, 21; Gundry, “Frustration,” 233.
174. See, e.g., Abot R. Nat. 16 A; b. Sanh. 45a; Ruth Rab. 6:4; perhaps Num. Rab. 10:10. Marrying was a good defense against it (b. Qid. 30b), and unlike the inclination to idolatry, the inclination to sexual immorality was the only one that still tempted Israel (Song Rab. 7:8, §1). Cf. the “spirit of intercourse” that, though healthy in itself, made one vulnerable to sins of pleasure (T. Reub. 2:8), an idea consistent with the original form of Stoicism (see Brennan, “Theory,” 61–62n31).
175. See, e.g., Sipra A.M. pq. 13.194.2.11 (general); Pesiq. Rab Kah. Sup. 3:2 (suicidal impulses). Rosen-Zvi (“Ysr”) argues that only the Babylonian Talmud associates the evil impulse especially with sexual immorality.
176. Song Rab. 2:4, §1; Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Exod. 32:22; Davies, Paul, 30; Urbach, Sages, 1:482.
177. Schreiner, Romans, 369–70; Jewett, Romans, 448, 465; Das, Debate, 216.
178. Hunter, Message, 86. Its addressing the heart also invites consideration of how to read the other nine (Kaiser, Preaching, 65–66; see also the use of the commandment’s demands on the heart in Matt. 5:21–28). Both Paul (Rom. 13:9) and, presumably, his source, Jesus (Mark 12:29–31), treat love as the summary of the law. For the tenth commandment as a summary of the law in Philo, see Knox, Jerusalem, 131.
179. Philo Decal. 142. For it as the root of all sin, Dunn (Romans, 1:380) cites Philo Creation 152; Decal. 142, 150, 153, 173; Spec. Laws 4.84–85; Apoc. Mos. 19:3; James 1:15. For the emphasis on the heart in some other early Jewish ethics, see, e.g., m. Ab. 2:9; b. Ber. 13a; Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Lev. 6:2; Bonsirven, Judaism, 95; Montefiore and Loewe, Anthology, 272–94; Pawlikowski, “Pharisees.”
180. Ziesler, “Requirement.” Some might find this suggestion too specific.
181. Dunn, Romans, 1:379, citing 4 Macc. 1:3, 31–32; 2:1–6; 3:2, 11–12, 16; Philo Alleg. Interp. 3.15; Posterity 26; Stowers, Rereading, 60 (cf. 47), citing esp. Philo and 4 Maccabees. It applies even to craving food in a way that brings complaints against God’s provision (1 Cor. 10:6; in the LXX, Num. 11:4; Ps. 105:13–14 [106:13–14 ET]).
182. Most opposed excessive desire rather than proper desire (Deming, Celibacy, 45, 69n70, 128nn85–86); for Stoics, some desires or interests could be morally indifferent and thus acceptable provided they were kept within natural bounds.
183. Like others, he was even capable of using ἐπιθυμία in a positive way in the right context (Phil. 1:23; 1 Thess. 2:17).
184. See 1 Cor. 7:9 (despite the way that some interpreters understand 1 Thess. 4:4–5). In earlier Jewish sources, see comment in Mueller, “Faces.”
185. See Rom. 14:2–3, 6; 1 Cor. 9:4; Col. 2:16; cf. the echo of a traditional Jewish benediction in 1 Tim. 4:3–5.
186. Compare some rabbinic approaches to the yēṣer. Kruse (Romans, 330) helpfully cites Gal. 5:16–25 (note esp. 5:17) in connection with the sinful frame of mind in Rom. 8:5; Gal. 5:19–21 exemplifies what the flesh desires, and 5:22–23 what the Spirit desires.
187. On Pharisees as particularly meticulous, see Jos. Life 191; cf. War 1.110; 2.162. Whatever his didactic hyperbole, Paul’s standard appears even more exacting.
188. Val. Max. 1.12.3; 2.1.1–2.
189. Boring, Berger, and Colpe (Commentary, 58) cite Aelian Var. hist. 14.28, 42; Epict. frg. 100; Diog. Laert. 1.36; Plut. Busybody 13; Cic. Fin. 3.9.32; Arist. Magna moralia.
190. Val. Max. 7.2.ext.8; Diog. Laert. 1.36.
191. Sen. Y. Ben. 4.14.1.
192. Dio Chrys. Or. 4.43.
193. See Apul. Flor. 20.7–8.
194. E.g., m. Ab. 2:9; b. Ber. 13a; compare rabbinic discussions of kawwānâ (on which see Bonsirven, Judaism, 95; Montefiore and Loewe, Anthology, 272–94; Pawlikowski, “Pharisees”); cf. Jos. Ag. Ap. 2.183, 217 in Vermes, Religion, 32. Rabbinic documents may appear more legalistic because they are legal documents, but this does not represent all of rabbinic, Pharisaic, or Jewish ethics (Davies, “Aboth,” 127; Vermes, Religion, 195); the covenantal perspective is better represented in early Jewish prayers (Segal, “Covenant”).
195. E.g., Let. Aris. 132–33; though contrast b. Hul. 142a, and avoiding sin in one’s thoughts was a high standard (T. Zeb. 1:4). Cf. atonement “for the sinful thoughts of the heart” (Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Lev. 6:2, trans. Maher, 134).
196. See, e.g., Publ. Syr. 214; Cic. Quint. fratr. 1.1.13.37–39; Lucian Dem. 51 (quoting Demonax); Diog. Laert. 8.1.23; the many sources cited in Keener, Acts, 3:2308–9.
197. See, e.g., Cic. Phil. 8.5.16; Prov. cons. 1.2; Plut. Contr. A., Mor. 452F–464D (entire essay); Educ. 14, Mor. 10B; Diog. Laert. 1.70.
198. E.g., Matt. 5:21–22; 1 John 3:15; cf. T. Gad 1:9; 4:4; Sen. Y. Ben. 5.14.2; Davies and Allison (Matthew, 1:509) cite Tg. Ps.-Jon. and Tg. Onq. on Gen. 9:6; Der. Er. Rab. 11:13.
199. Cf. Demosth. Con. 19; Sir. 8:16; Ps.-Phoc. 57–58; Did. 3.2; cf. Hor. Ep. 1.2.59–62; Boring, Berger, and Colpe (Commentary, 57) cite Plut. Uned. R. 6, Mor.
200. Cato the Elder 16 in Plut. S. Rom., Mor. 199A; Hor. Ep. 1.2.61–62; Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 18.14 (quoting favorably Epicurus); Philost. Ep. Apoll. 86.
201. E.g., Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 123.1–2; Dial. 3–5; Mus. Ruf. 3, p. 40.21; 16, p. 104.18 (emphasizing self-control); Epict. Diatr. 1.15.1–5; 2.19.26; Arius Did. 2.7.10e, pp. 62–63.15–16; 2.7.11s, p. 100.6–7; Marc. Aur. 6.26.
202. Procopé, “Epicureans,” 188–89. For an Epicurean warning against anger, see, e.g., Philod. Crit. frg. 12; for Stoics favoring its eradication, see Van Hoof, “Differences.”
203. In what follows, I have augmented material from Keener, Matthew, 186; cf. also Keener, “Adultery.”
204. Sorabji, Emotion, 11, 273–80; on Epicurus, see, e.g., Max. Tyre Or. 32.8. For diverse views on self-stimulation, see Sext. Emp. Pyr. 3.206; masturbation appears negatively already in the Negative Confessions in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Spell 125 (Wells, “Exodus,” 230).
205. See, e.g., the condemnation of Paris’s choice of the erotic life in Heracl. Hom. Prob. 28.4–5; Proclus Poet. 6.1, K108.18–19.
206. Sorabji, Emotion, 276, citing Philo Spec. Laws 3.113; Mus. Ruf. frg. 12 Hense; Porph. Marc. 35; Ps.-Ocellus Nat. Univ. 4; many early Christian sources. (Sorabji [Emotion, 276–77] cites Aug. Ag. Jul. 4.14.69 to note that Augustine allows intercourse for health as well as for procreation.) Cf. also Deming, Celibacy, 94; Ward, “Musonius,” 284.
207. E.g., Epict. Diatr. 2.18.15–18; 3.2.8; 4.9.3; Marc. Aur. 2.10; 3.2.2; 9.40; cf. Nock, Christianity, 19; Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 95.37; Arius Did. 2.7.10c, p. 60.14–19. For diverse views among Stoics, see Sorabji, Emotion, 281–82.
208. Brennan, “Theory,” 61–62n31; Sorabji, Emotion, 283; Deming, Celibacy, 128.
209. Cf. Luz, Matthew, 1:295, for Stoic influence on Hellenistic Judaism. Luz cites Philo Creation 152; Good Person 159; Spec. Laws 4.84; Decal. 142; L.A.E. 19; Rom. 7:7; and James 1:15. He also parallels the rabbinic use of the yēṣer haraʿ.
210. E.g., Ach. Tat. 1.4–6; Apul. Metam. 2.8; Philost. Ep. 26 (57); Diog. Laert. 6.2.46, 69; Diogenes Ep. 35, to Sopolis; Artem. Oneir. 1.78.
211. E.g., PGM 4.400–405; 13.304; 32.1–19; 36.69–101, 102–33, 134–60, 187–210, 295–311, 333–60; 62.1–24; 101.1–53; charms and formulae in Frankfurter, “Perils”; Jordan, “Spell” (P.Duk. inv. 230); Jordan, “Formulae” (P.Duk. inv. 729); Horsley, Documents, 1:33–34. See also Dunand, Religion Populaire, 125; Frankfurter, Religion in Egypt, 229–30; Graf and Johnston, “Magic,” 136, 139; Dickie, “Love-Magic”; Yamauchi, “Aphrodisiacs,” 62–63. In written sources, see, e.g., Eurip. Hipp. 513–16; Theocritus The Spell (GBP 26–39); Virg. Ecl. 8.80–84; Pliny E. N.H. 27.35.57; 27.99.125; 28.4.19; 28.6.34; 28.80.261; 30.49.141; 32.50.139; Quint. Decl. 385 intro.; Philost. Hrk. 16.2; Apul. Metam. 3.16–18; T. Jos. 6:1–5; in farce, Tibullus 1.2.41–58; Lucian Dial. C. 1 (Glycera and Thais), 281; 4 (Melitta and Bacchis ¶1), 286; Lucian Lover of Lies 14–15. Regarding the charge against Apuleius, see Bradley, “Magic”; Nelson, “Note.”
212. PGM 36.291–94.
213. PDM 61.197–216 = PGM 61.39–71; cf. Eurip. Hipp. 513–16.
214. Cf. Ach. Tat. 4.3.1–2 in context; Char. Chaer. 2.2.8. Cf. illicit lust for young men in Cic. Cat. 1.6.13. In Val. Max. 2.1.5 adulterous eyes (cf. 2 Pet. 2:14) are those that seek intercourse. A leader who controls his passion regarding beautiful women was seen as honorable (Val. Max. 4.3.ext.1; Plut. Alex. 21.5; Men. Rhet. 2.1–2, 376.11–13).
215. Char. Chaer. 5.7.5–6; 8.8.8.
216. Women in Sen. E. Controv. 2.7.6; a young man in Val. Max. 4.5.ext.1.
217. See sources in Keener, “Head Coverings”; more on head coverings in Llewellyn-Jones, Tortoise.
218. E.g., Job 31:1, 9; Sir. 9:8; 23:5–6; 25:21; 41:21; Sus. 8; 1QS 1.6–7; 4.10; CD 2.16; 11QT 59.14; 1QpHab 5.7; Sib. Or. 4.33–34; Pss. Sol. 4:4; T. Iss. 3:5; 4:4; T. Reub. 4:1, 11; 6:1–3; T. Jud. 17:1; m. Nid. 2:1; Abot R. Nat. 2 A; 2, §9 B; b. Ber. 20a; Yebam. 63b; y. Hag. 2:2, §4; Gen. Rab. 32:7; Pesiq. Rab Kah. Sup. 3:2; cf. Bonsirven, Judaism, 113; Schechter, Aspects, 225; Vermes, Religion, 32–33; Ilan, Women, 127–28. Knowledge of Jewish tradition does appear in some love charms (PGM 36.301).
219. T. Iss. 7:2; T. Reub. 4:8; b. Nid. 13b, bar.; Shab. 64ab; y. Hal. 2:1; Lev. Rab. 23:12; Pesiq. Rab. 24:2; see Keener, Marries, 16–17.
220. Matt. 5:28 (admittedly hyperbolic); 2 Pet. 2:14; Justin 1 Apol. 15; Sent. Sext. 233; Tert. Apol. 46.11–12; cf. Herm. 1.1.1; lust leads to adultery in Did. 3.3.
221. Y. Ber. 9:1, §16.
222. Y. Sanh. 10:5, §2. Some Tannaim reportedly deemed it wrong for a man to hold his genital organ when urinating (b. Nid. 13a; Gen. Rab. 95 MSV); handling the organ excessively was deemed worthy of the appendage being amputated (m. Nid. 2:1).
223. E.g., b. Qid. 81b; Lachs, Commentary, 96–97, citing b. Ned. 13b; Yoma 29a; Num. Rab. 8:5.
224. Davies (Paul, 23) goes too far by identifying Paul’s “flesh” with the rabbis’ evil impulse, but the evil impulse does offer an analogy to his more Diaspora-focused approach.
225. Davies, Paul, 20, 25–27 (citing Williams, Fall and Sin, 150); Marcus, “Inclination” (on esp. Gal. 5:16–17); Martin, Reconciliation, 60; Barth, Ephesians, 1:230 (on Eph. 2:3); Stuhlmacher, Romans, 109; Shogren, “Wretched Man”; this was also what I emphasized in my own earlier years of teaching. Cf. also Marcus, “Inclination in James,” on James 1:14; 4:5.
226. E.g., Urbach, Sages, 1:472, preferring instead Hellenistic Jewish sources such as 4 Maccabees; Porter, “Concept.”
227. Alexander, “Ambiguity.” Note the carefully edited composition about the evil impulse in Abot R. Nat. 16 A, as discussed by Schofer (“Redaction”); cf. the lengthy collection in b. Suk. 51b–52b; more texts in Montefiore and Loewe, Anthology, 295–314; Urbach, Sages, 1:471–83.
228. For example, the evil impulse deprives one of the present and/or coming world (m. Ab. 2:11; Lev. Rab. 29:7). God remained sovereign over the evil impulse (Gen. Rab. 52:7) but (according to some) regretted having created it (b. Suk. 52b; Gen. Rab. 27:4; cf. also Schechter, Aspects, 284; for its creation, also Exod. Rab. 46:4). It grows within one (b. Suk. 52ab). Angels lacked this impulse (Lev. Rab. 26:5); it desired people like Cain (Song Rab. 7:11, §1); Israel was delivered from the inclination to idolatry but still needed to resist the inclination to sexual immorality (Song Rab. 7:8, §1).
229. Gen. Rab. 9:7; Eccl. Rab. 3:11, §3; Kohler, Theology, 215; Davies, Paul, 22; cf. y. Suk. 5:2, §2; good sexual desire in T. Reub. 2:8; Mus. Ruf. 14, p. 92.11–12; frg. 40, p. 136.18–19. One should love God with both impulses (Sipre Deut. 32.3.1).
230. E.g., Jub. 1:20–21; 1QS 4.17–26; 5.5; T. Jud. 20:1; Herm. 2.5.1; 2.6.2. Cf. the contrast between virtue and vice within, in, e.g., Max. Tyre Or. 34.4.
231. E.g., Sipre Deut. 32.3.1; b. Ber. 61b; Eccl. Rab. 2:1, §1; cf. perhaps already T. Ash. 1:3–6. Scholars often cite the two-impulses doctrine (e.g., Ladd, Theology, 440). The idea of the good yēṣer is later than that of the evil one (Rosen-Zvi [“Inclinations”] even suggests that the good yēṣer is merely the person oneself).
232. See pp. 21–23.
233. T. Ash. 3:2; Abot R. Nat. 32 A; b. Ber. 60b; Eccl. Rab. 4:14, §1. For good works opposing the evil impulse, see T. Ash. 3:2; b. B. Metsia 32b; for habit opposing sin, cf. m. Ab. 4:2; y. Sanh. 10:1, §2; for wisdom opposing sin, cf. 1 En. 5:8.
234. 1QS 5.5; CD 2.15–16 (the same in 4Q266 frg. 2, col. 2.16; 4Q270 frg. 1, col. 1.1); 1QHa 13.8; 4Q417 frg. 2, col. 2.12; 4Q422 1.12; 4Q436 frg. 1a+bi.10; cf. “the inclination of flesh” in 4Q416 frg. 1.16; 4Q418 frg. 2+2ac.8; also the two spirits in 1QS 3.25–4.1; Seitz, “Spirits”; Price, “Light from Qumran,” 15ff.; Baudry, “Péché dans les écrits.”
235. Sir. 37:3; Jub. 35:9 (= 1Q18 frgs. 1–2.3; 4Q223–224 frg. 2, col. 1.49); L.A.B. 33:3; 4 Ezra 7:92 (cf. Thompson, Responsibility, 356); cf. Jub. 1:19; Sir. 15:14–15, 17; 21:11; 27:6; Philo Creation 154–55; T. Reub. 2:8; Bonsirven, Judaism, 103. For the two spirits, see Jub. 1:20–21; T. Levi 19; T. Jud. 20:1–2; T. Gad 4; T. Ash. 1:3–6; 3:2; 6:5 (with ἐπιθυμία); T. Zeb. 9:8; Herm. 2.5.1; 2.6.2; Bright, History, 450. For a similar idea (of two accompanying spirits) in a traditional culture, cf. Mbiti, Religions, 114.
236. On the context, cf. Hirsch, Genesis, 56–57. Later rabbis thus warned that the yēṣer was so evil that even its creator testified how evil it was in Gen. 8:21 (Sipre Deut. 45.1.3).
237. Davies, Paul, 340, cites a rabbinic source in which the evil impulse ruled over all 248 members of the body. This idea appears (Abot R. Nat. 16 A; 16, §36 B; Pesiq. Rab Kah. Sup. 3:2; y. Shab. 14:3; Urbach, Sages, 1:473–74), although is less pervasive than the simpler claim that there were 248 bones or members in the body (t. Ed. 2:10; b. Erub. 54a; Gen. Rab. 69:1; Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Gen. 1:27; Cohen, “Noahide Commandments”). Tannaim and later rabbis apparently debate the yēṣer’s specific location in the body in b. Ber. 61a; the good inclination preserves the body from Gehenna (Tg. Qoh. on 9:15). In Lev. Rab. 12:3 the Torah is life to all the members.
238. Urbach, Sages, 1:472. For rabbis’ appreciation for the body, cf., e.g., Kovelman, “Perfection”; for comments about embodiment even in some Diaspora Jewish sources, see Mirguet, “Reflections.”
239. Long, Philosophy, 184–89, esp. 188. Later, in the Hermetica, divine powers overcome the twelve evil inclinations (Reitzenstein, Mystery-Religions, 48–49).
240. E.g., 4 Macc. 1:1, 9.
241. See Sipra Sh. M. d. 99.2.3 (following Deut. 10:16); Pesiq. Rab Kah. 24:4 (citing Ps. 4:5); Ruth Rab. 8:1 (citing Ps. 4:5); also the command to Cain in Tg. Neof. 1 on Gen. 4:7; Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Gen. 4:7. One could use oaths to overcome it (Num. Rab. 15:16; Ruth Rab. 6:4), but training it was difficult (Pesiq. Rab Kah. 23:7).
242. Such as Abraham (y. Ber. 9:5, §2; Sot. 5:5, §3; Gen. Rab. 59:7; Num. Rab. 14:11); all three patriarchs (b. B. Bat. 17a); Moses, David, and Ezra (Song Rab. 4:4, §2; others debated David [b. B. Bat. 17a] or, more plausibly, denied his victory [y. Ber. 9:5, §2; Sot. 5:5, §3]); or R. Simeon b. Eleazar (Deut. Rab. 2:33). The wise (Gen. Rab. 97 NV) and the truly mighty (b. Tamid 32a) conquer it; one who overcomes the evil impulse is like one who has conquered a city (Abot R. Nat. 23, citing Prov. 21:22).
243. E.g., “May the good inclination have sway over me and let not the evil inclination have sway over me” (b. Ber. 60b, Soncino p. 378; cf. prayer for the good inclination in y. Ber. 4:2); some construed the blessing of Num. 6:24 to mean, “May God keep you from the evil impulse” (Sipre Num. 40.1.3; Num. Rab. 11:5); cf. also Ps. 91:10 (b. Sanh. 103a). Prayer for the evil impulse to be uprooted, however, would be answered only eschatologically (Exod. Rab. 46:4). Already in 4Q436 frg. 1a+bi.10 one thanks God for protecting him from the evil impulse.
244. E.g., b. Qid. 40a; Hag. 16a. This is likely a homiletical way of emphasizing the horror of profaning God’s name, and not all the rabbis concurred even with the illustration.
245. E.g., 4 Macc. 2:23; with, e.g., Stowers, “Self-Mastery,” 532–34; Byrne, Romans, 219. See Gemünden, “Culture des passions,” correctly nuancing the varied approaches of 4 Maccabees, Philo, and Paul.
246. Sipre Deut. 45.1.2; Pesiq. Rab Kah. Sup. 3:2; b. Ber. 5a; Suk. 52b; Lev. Rab. 35:5; Pesiq. Rab. 41:4; Montefiore and Loewe, Anthology, 124; Davies, Paul, 22; Urbach, Sages, 1:472. For the law against sin more generally, see m. Ab. 4:2; Qid. 1:10; Pesiq. Rab Kah. 15:5; Urbach, Sages, 1:366; Smith, Parallels, 64.
247. E.g., Abot R. Nat. 16 A; b. Qid. 30b, bar.; B. Bat. 16a; Tg. Qoh. on 10:4; Moore, Judaism, 481, 489–90; Davies, Paul, 225n2. Rabbis also considered repentance a cure for the evil impulse (Davies, Paul, 23); one could sacrifice the impulse by confessing sin (b. Sanh. 43b; Lev. Rab. 9:1).
248. Sipre Deut. 43.4.1; b. Tem. 16a; Pesiq. Rab Kah. 4:6; Num. Rab. 19:5.
249. Abot R. Nat. 16 A; 30, §63 B; Pesiq. Rab Kah. Sup. 3:2. Certainly from one’s youth (Exod. Rab. 46:4), though not from one’s conception (b. Sanh. 91b; Gen. Rab. 34:10).
250. E.g., y. Ter. 1:3, §1; cf. discussion in Gen. Rab. 91:3. Cf. perhaps twelve in 1 Esd. 5:41. Wishing to emphasize that he was a prodigy, Josephus speaks of exploits when he was fourteen and “like a mere boy” (Life 9). Stoics believed that people acquired reason not inherently but near age fourteen (Iambl. Soul 2.15, §609).
251. M. Ab. 5:21 (a late second-century rabbi); Gen. Rab. 63:10. Cf. Nock, Paul, 68n1. Other roles also had age requirements (e.g., CD 10.1).
252. Abot R. Nat. 16 A; Pesiq. Rab Kah. Sup. 3:2; cf. also Davies, Paul, 25. Minors were exempted from some commandments (e.g., m. Suk. 2:8; Hag. 1:1; b. Ketub. 50a; y. Hag. 1:1, §4; Suk. 2:9).
253. Davies, Paul, 25; Nickle, “Romans 7:7–25,” 184; Martin, Reconciliation, 57; Lohse, Environment, 184; Gundry, “Frustration,” 232–33 (though recognizing, more explicitly than many others, the medieval origin of the current ceremony); Jewett, Romans, 451. The phrase “son of the law” appears earlier for all Jacob’s descendants (2 Bar. 46:4).
254. Sandmel, Judaism, 199; Safrai, “Home,” 771; Schreiner, Romans, 369; Das, Debate, 215. Cf. the historic development of Western Christian confirmation, eventually at a similar age.
255. With Safrai, “Home,” 2:772; cf. ancient coming-of-age rituals in Wiesehöfer, “Youth,” 854. Traditional Greek culture also recognized legal distinctions (e.g., Aeschines Tim. 18, 39). Xen. Cyr. 1.2.8 claims that Persian boys traditionally became men around sixteen or seventeen years old.
256. E.g., Eliade, Rites, 41; Mbiti, Religions, 158–73 (esp. 159–60, 171); Dawson, “Urbanization,” 309; Kapolyo, Condition, 43–44.
257. Suet. Aug. 8.1; 38.2; Calig. 10.1; Vergil 6; Pliny Ep. 1.9.2; 8.23.2; 10.116.1; Gardner, Women, 14; Dupont, Life, 229; Croom, Clothing, 122. For legal maturity near puberty, see, e.g., Gaius Inst. 1.196; 2.113; 3.208; Schiemann, “Minores.” For age classifications, see, e.g., Suder, “Classification”; Binder, “Age(s)”; Overstreet, “Concept”; Keener, Acts, 2:1447–48; for the age of puberty, see Wiesehöfer, “Pubertas,” 177.
258. Philo (Rewards 25) expects the deception of idolatry to infect children from infancy. Deissmann (Paul, 92–93), thinking of 1 Cor. 13:11, cites a Jewish tradition regarding a boy’s ninth year, although conceding that the source is quite late. For knowledge of right and wrong at age twenty, see 1QSa 1.10–11. Before the Torah, one rabbi concluded, accountability began at age one hundred (Gen. Rab. 26:2).
259. Jos. Ant. 4.211; Ag. Ap. 1.60; 2.204 (cf. also 4.209, 309); m. Ab. 5:21; Dunn, Romans, 1:382. Jewett (Romans, 450–51) retorts that a boy was not required to obey the law until initiation; rabbinic sources speak of adult accountability, however, not of earlier knowledge of sin.
260. For this reason, some identify the figure here as a Gentile converting to Judaism (e.g., Tobin, Rhetoric, 42) or as humanity’s coming of age (e.g., Dunn, Romans, 1:382; cf. Gal. 3:23–25; 4:3–4). Cf. Origen in Burns, Romans, 68–69; but his use by Augustine brought “age of accountability” into “the exegetical tradition” (Reasoner, Full Circle, 71, citing Aug. Guilt 1.65–66).
261. For Juan-Luis Segundo’s thoughts (1926–96) on anxiety in Rom. 7, see Philipp, “Angst.” Beck (Psychology of Paul, 122) notes (with van den Beld, “Akrasia”) some resemblance to splitting but warns that this pathology does not fit Paul’s own personality.
262. Judge, Jerusalem, 60, contending that Augustine’s approach to Rom. 7 led to modern literary and film interest in motivation, moral dilemmas, and the like.
263. See Stramara, “Introspection.”
264. Sorabji, Emotion, 13, noting that they even had “a special word, prosokhē, for the introspective supervision of one’s own thoughts and actions” (citing Stob. Anth. 2.73.1 Wachsmuth; Epict. Encheir. 33.6; Diatr. 4.12; frg. 27; Plut. Progr. Virt. 12, Mor. 83B; Garr. 23, Mor. 514E).
265. One pre-Christian work might offer this idea: “The righteous person is always inspecting his or her house, to remove unrighteousness done by violations,” or, as OTP 2:654 translates, “his unintentional sins” (Pss. Sol. 3:7–8, here 3:7). Though the Syriac differs (Trafton, Version, 50, 55), “the righteous person” is clearly the subject in the Greek sentence; “unintentional” corresponds with “ignorance” (ἄγνοια) in 3:8. Many associate Psalms of Solomon with Pharisaic piety (Rost, Judaism, 119), or at least with the mainstream Jewish piety to which Pharisaism belonged (Sanders [Judaism, 453–55] suggests non-Pharisaic piety). Cf. also Yohanan ben Zakkai’s premortem questioning of his direction in Abot R. Nat. 25 A; b. Ber. 28b; Gen. Rab. 100:2.
266. Araspas in Xen. Cyr. 6.1.41, explaining his former slavery to passion for the captive and his new resolve to please Cyrus.
267. Char. Chaer. 2.4.4 (ἀγῶνα λογισμοῦ καὶ πάθους).
268. Meeks, Moral World, 44 (citing Plut. Flatt. 20, Mor. 61DF); Stowers, “Self-Mastery,” 529, 538; Sorabji, Emotion, 303–5 (esp. on Plato’s divided soul; more generally, 303–15). Cf. Philo Alleg. Interp. 2.91; Stoike, “Genio,” 278 (on Plut. Mor. 592B); Iambl. Soul 2.11, §369; for Plato’s tripartite soul, see, e.g., Plato Rep. 6.504; 9.580D; Tim. 89E; Diog. Laert. 3.67, 90; Lucian Dance 70; Iambl. Soul 2.11, §369 (cf. discussion in Merlan, Platonism, 25–27); for that of Pythagoras, see Diog. Laert. 8.1.30; for Middle Platonists (also drawing on Aristotelians and Posidonius), see Vander Waerdt, “Soul-Division.” For intellect, soul, and body, see, e.g., Porph. Marc. 13.234–35.
269. Max. Tyre Or. 34.2. Cf. Virtue and Vice warring over elements within the soul in Max. Tyre Or. 38.6.
270. Iambl. Letter 9.4–5, 7, 10 (Stob. Anth. 2.33.15).
271. Wasserman, “Paul among Philosophers,” 82, citing Philo Alleg. Interp. 2.91–92; Plato Tim. 70a; Rep. 560b. Cf. Wasserman, “Death.”
272. Sorabji, Emotion, 303, 313–15; Brennan, “Theory,” 23. It had merely different capacities rather than parts (Sorabji, Emotion, 314). Stoics accepted eight parts in the soul, of which the unified ruling part was only one (315; see Diog. Laert. 7.1.110, 157; Iambl. Soul 2.12, §369); the soul was part of the self (Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 113.5). Aristotle’s followers denied that the soul had components (Iambl. Soul 2.11, §368); Epicureans saw the soul as united but distinguished rational and irrational functions (Long, Philosophy, 52).
273. Chrysippus in Stowers, “Self-Mastery,” 529; cf. Hierocles Love 4.27.20 (in Malherbe, Moral Exhortation, 95); for prior goodness needed to attain virtue in Stoicism, see Stowers, “Resemble,” 91; for the potential for virtue but the need to acquire it, see Frede, “Conception,” 71. Paul rejected innate virtue, at least in a salvific way (Rom. 3:23; 5:12–21; he might accept intrinsic worth as God’s image or objects of God’s love). Whereas Chrysippus viewed emotions as the results of reason, Galen suggests that Posidonius accepted more of the Platonic allowance for emotion alongside reason (so Cooper, “Posidonius,” 71; Gill [“Galen”] doubts that Galen completely understood Chrysippus).
274. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 52; Engberg-Pedersen, “Vices,” 613; cf. Mus. Ruf. 2, p. 36.16–19. Engberg-Pedersen (“Vices,” 612) notes that Aristotle allowed for a self-controlled person who experienced some internal conflict but always achieved good, in contrast to the person so conflicted that sometimes they followed irrational desires; cf. van den Beld, “Akrasia.”
275. See, e.g., Haacker, Theology, 128–29, on Seneca. Most people believed that Stoics were wrong to ignore degrees of vice and virtue (Cic. Fin. 4.24.66–68; Plut. Progress in Virtue), which was the idea that all true wrong was equally wrong (Pliny Ep. 8.2.3); Stoics regarded virtues as inseparable (Arius Did. 2.7.5b5, p. 18.15–20). Stoics believed that all offenses were equal but not the same (Cic. Parad. 20; Arius Did. 2.7.11k, p. 84.15–17; 2.7.11L, p. 85.34–37; p. 87.1–7, 13–20; 2.7.11o, p. 96.22–29; 2.7.11p, p. 96.30–34; Diog. Laert. 7.1.120; cf. Epict. Diatr. 2.21.1–7; contrast Marc. Aur. 2.10); others complained about this view (Cic. Fin. 4.27.74–75), especially Epicureans (Diog. Laert. 10.120). Jewish teachers often valued even the least of the commandments like the greatest (e.g., m. Ab. 2:1; 4:2; Qid. 1:10; Sipre Deut. 76.1.1); some Diaspora Jews even echoed the Stoic teaching that all commandments were equal (4 Macc. 5:19–21).
276. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 20.6 (trans. Gummere, LCL, 1:135, 137). Cf. Ep. Lucil. 52.1–9: “What is this force that . . . does not allow us to desire anything once for all? . . . None of our wishes is free, none is unqualified, none is lasting” (in Malherbe, Moral Exhortation, 62).
277. Meeks (Moral World, 47) suggests that Stoics and Platonists agreed that one must distinguish real happiness from transient pleasures, and that one learns this by “repeated, deliberate choice, a lifelong struggle for rational mastery.”
278. Sen. Y. Dial. 9.2.10 (trans. Basore, LCL, 2:219).
279. Philo Creation 81. For Philo, the soul has three parts, each divided into two (Heir 225; Alleg. Interp. 1.70, 72; 3.115; Conf. 21); this presumably follows Plato’s tripartite soul (Diog. Laert. 3.67, 90). But Philo is not consistent in this regard and elsewhere thinks of two parts (Studies 26; Dillon, Middle Platonists, 174).
280. The story was widely known and retold, e.g., Cic. Tusc. 4.32.69; Hor. Epode 3.9–14; Virg. Ecl. 8.47–50; Ovid Metam. 7.391–97; Pliny E. N.H. 24.99.157; Plut. Poetry 3, Mor. 18A; Lucian Hall 31; Char. Chaer. 2.9.3; Paus. 2.3.6–7; Philost. Ep. 21 (38); Libanius Invect. 7.32; Speech Char. 1, 17; Descr. 20.1–2; Gr. Anth. 7.354; second- and third-century CE sarcophagi in Gessert, “Myth.” Cf. further Dräger, “Medea.” Cf. an apparently different version in Philost. Hrk. 53.4; possibly Apollod. Bibl. 1.9.28.
281. Eurip. Med. 1077–80 (cf. 1040–48, 1056–58). This is cited by Renehan, “Quotations,” 24 (following the 1963 Sather Lectures of Bruno Snell); Stowers, Rereading, 260–61; Stowers, “Self-Mastery,” 525; Talbert, Romans, 193; Tobin, Rhetoric, 232; Bendemann, “Diastase”; Bryan, Preface, 143; Longenecker, Introducing Romans, 370. That Euripides invented this tradition is evident in Arist. Poet. 14.12, 1453b. Renehan (“Quotations,” 25) cites also Eurip. Hipp. 380–83; frg. 220 Nauck; frg. 841 Nauck; Plato Prot. 352d; Xen. Mem. 3.9.4. Euripides spoke elsewhere of inability to do what is best (Eurip. Oenom. frg. 572, from Stob. Anth. 4.35.8).
282. Ovid Metam. 7.17–21 (esp. 19, 21). See for this point Renehan, “Quotations,” 25 (noting that Snell missed this example, and comparing also Hor. Ep. 1.8.11; Menander frg. 489 Koerte); Käsemann, Romans, 200, recognizing that this passage is often cited; Moo, Romans, 457; Byrne, Romans, 228; Tobin, Rhetoric, 234; Bendemann, “Diastase”; Bryan, Preface, 143.
283. Stowers, “Self-Mastery,” 525–26; Stowers, Rereading, 262; Bendemann, “Diastase”; see Gill, “Galen,” 121, 137; Gill, “Did Chrysippus Understand?”
284. Stowers, Rereading, 261, citing Plato Prot. 352D, and contrasting Arist. N.E. 7.
285. See Stowers, Rereading, 262–63; Tobin, Rhetoric, 234.
286. Epict. Diatr. 1.28.6–9, cited in Stowers, Rereading, 262; Bryan, Preface, 144; Tobin, Rhetoric, 234.
287. Epict. Diatr. 2.17.21–22 (ποῦ κεῖται τὸ ποιεῖν ἁ θέλομεν; trans. Oldfather, LCL, 1:342–43; cf. also Tobin, Rhetoric, 233). Others cite also allusions to Medea in Epict. Diatr. 2.26.1–2 (Stowers, Rereading, 262; Moo, Romans, 457; Byrne, Romans, 231; Talbert, Romans, 193; Tobin, Rhetoric, 234; Jewett, Romans, 463–64); Plut. Virt. 441–52 (Bryan, Preface, 144). Her cutting her children’s throats also appears in Epict. Diatr. 4.13.14–15.
288. Renehan, “Quotations,” 26; Tobin, Rhetoric, 233, 242.
289. Stowers (Rereading, 271–72) appears to treat Medea as the persona Paul adopts; but as Stowers himself has noted, philosophers applied the example of Medea’s struggle more widely; she can be an analogy without constituting the persona here. Partly because Galen says that Euripides used Medea to portray “barbarians and uneducated people,” whereas Greeks use reason over anger (Galen Hippoc. and Plat. 3.189.20–190.1; Stowers, Rereading, 276), Stowers argues that the “I” figure here must be a Gentile (277). One could as readily assume that Paul adopts a feminine persona here; see comment below. Jewett (Romans, 462–64) questions the allusion to Medea in Paul.
290. Cf. in Lucret. Nat. 3.136ff. the rational animus versus irrational anima (in Long, Philosophy, 52); the emphasis on passion’s feminine character in Philo Alleg. Interp. 3.11; Sacr. 103; Worse 28, 172; Giants 4; Cher. 8; or “even” a woman overcoming emotion in 4 Macc. 16:1–2; ancient male views on women’s character are discussed in Keener, Acts, 1:610–19. Most important, similarities with the portrait of Phaedra (cf. Phaedra in Eurip. Hipp. 377–83, cited in Stowers, Rereading, 261; and in Sen. Y. Hippol. 177, cited in Talbert, Romans, 193) and some other examples suggest that some connected such irrational passion more with what was feminine. See esp. Gemünden, “Femme,” who argues that, unlike some others in antiquity, Paul does not relate reason and passions in gender-specific ways.
291. Eurip. Chrys. frg. 841. For reprehensible men doing the opposite of what they should, see, e.g., Pliny Ep. 4.2.8. Bad persons cannot live as they wish (Epict. Diatr. 4.1.2–5); apparently similar language in Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 67.2, however, simply refers to partial incapacitation due to old age. Jewett (Romans, 463) suggests Paul’s subversion of the law by his pre-Christian persecution of Christians, as viewed in retrospect; but Rom. 7:7–25 sounds more conscious of the internal struggle than Paul would have recognized before his conversion.
292. See Arius Did. 2.7.10a, p. 56.24–33, esp. 32–33. Similarly, Stoics did not always describe even Medea’s struggle in language clearly resembling Rom. 7. Although Paul’s Stoic contemporary Seneca depicts Medea’s vacillation in Sen. Y. Med. 926–30, 988–90, his language is not as close to Paul’s as is that of some of the other passages.
293. Cyril Alex. Rom. on 7:15 (PG 74:808–12; Burns, Romans, 175). Cosmic fatalism became an increasing problem in late antiquity.
294. Noted by Hübner (“Hermeneutics,” 212–13), though he construes Rom. 7:15 as reflecting “our basic inability to understand what we do, to understand ourselves” (emphasis his, p. 212).
295. Cf. Keck, Romans, 193, noting that the problem is not inability to choose right (Deut. 30:19) but inability to carry out “the right choice.”
296. Cf. Löhr (“Paulus”), who addresses briefly human will in ancient sources and then “willing” and “will” in Paul’s letters.
297. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 52, citing Arist. N.E. 7.1–10.
298. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 52, citing Arist. N.E. 1.13.17, 1102b26–28.
299. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 52, citing Arist. N.E. 7.8.4, 1151a11–20, in context.
300. Rhet. Alex. pref. 1420b.20–21 (βουλεύεσθαι); 1421a.10–11.
301. Arius Did. 2.7.11f, p. 70.3 (distinguishing “what is worth wanting” [βουλητόν] from “what must be wanted”). Epict. Diatr. 4.1.2–5 (trans. Oldfather, LCL, 2:244–47) opines that no one wants to live in error; a bad person is thus one who does not live as they wish (θέλει). Yet imperfect people often “do not know what they wish” except when wishing it (Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 20.6; trans. Gummere, LCL, 1:135).
302. Matheson, Epictetus, 31. Platonists and Aristotle also distinguished rational interest in what was good from desire for pleasure (Sorabji, Emotion, 319–20), though Aristotle also distinguished rational desire from reason, unlike Platonists (322–23) and Stoics (328–30).
303. Aug. City 14.8.
304. Plut. Lect. 1, Mor. 37E (trans. Babbitt, LCL, 1:204–7). For condemnations of fickleness in antiquity, see, e.g., Cic. Fam. 5.2.10; Vell. Paterc. 2.80.1; Plut. Cic. 26.7; Pliny Ep. 2.11.22; Fronto Ad amicos 1.19; Apul. Apol. 77; further, Keener, Acts, 1:1037n469; by Stoics, Arius Did. 2.7.11i, p. 78.15–18; 2.7.11m, p. 96.5–14. Aristocrats attributed this disposition especially to the masses (e.g., Lucan C.W. 3.52–56; Quint. Decl. 352.1; Quint. Curt. 4.10.7; Dio Chrys. Or. 66) and sometimes to other peoples (Cic. Flacc. 11.24; Caesar Gall. W. 4.5; Jos. Ant. 18.47) or to women (Virg. Aen. 4.569–70).
305. I have surveyed the discussion regarding determinism and free will in late antiquity, including in patristic sources, briefly in Keener, Acts, 1:927–36. The issue was probably less dominant in Paul’s own era.
306. Sorabji, Emotion, 11–12, 335–37. Augustine rejected the Manichaean theory of two souls, but his own “experience of struggling against lust convinces him that we have a spiritual and a carnal will” (Sorabji, Emotion, 315–16). Sorabji (Emotion, 339) questions whether Augustine’s particular configuration of the concept, a configuration that became dominant, is helpful.
307. E.g., Tobin, Rhetoric, 235; Jewett, Romans, 464.
308. Creation provides Gentiles with some potential knowledge that they are doing wrong (Rom. 1:19–20 [shrouded in 1:28]; 2:14); Jews have greater moral knowledge through the law (here). In Paul’s view, only those in Christ have the fuller transforming knowledge of the gospel.
309. The natural law in the heart (Rom. 2:14–15) is less complete than the Torah.
310. See Odeberg, Pharisaism, 60–61, on Rom. 2:17–24; Barclay, Gift, 497. Lafon (“Moi,” on 7:15–21) connects recognition of one’s will with inability to achieve righteousness.
311. Cf. Rom. 10:2; Neh. 8:9–12; Ps. 19:8; Jos. Ag. Ap. 2.189; Pesiq. Rab Kah. 27:2; b. Yoma 4b; Lev. Rab. 16:4 (purportedly from Ben Azzai); Song Rab. 4:11, §1; Pesiq. Rab. 21:2/3; 51:4; Urbach, Sages, 1:390–92; Bonsirven, Judaism, 95; see especially the Tannaitic sources in Urbach, Sages, 1:390; most fully, Anderson, “Joy.”
312. Philosophers claimed that one needed self-discipline, not mere knowledge that one should control pleasures (Mus. Ruf. 6, p. 52.15–17); hearing without obeying was unprofitable (17, p. 108.38–39). Later rabbis debated whether learning or implementing Torah took precedence; both were needed (cf. m. Ab. 5:14), but many preferred learning because it was the prerequisite for action (Sipra Behuq. par. 2.264.1.4; Sipre Deut. 41.2.5–6; b. Qid. 40b; y. Hag. 1:7, §4); rabbis too, however, recognized that one could learn without doing (Sipre Deut. 32.5.12; b. Sanh. 106b), and this was inadequate (early sages in m. Ab. 1:17; 3:9, 17; cf. Let. Aris. 127; Abot R. Nat. 24 A).
313. Perhaps the figure increasingly realizes that this is not the identity in God’s image the figure was created to be. Stowers (“Self-Mastery,” 537–38) compares the divided self in Platonism.
314. The term ἄνθρωπος by itself need not point back to Rom. 6:6 (although the outer person of 2 Cor. 4:16 awaits resurrection; cf. 5:1–5); the term appears some 126 times in Pauline literature.
315. So also ancient interpreters, e.g. (in Bray, Romans, 195–96, 198), the rational soul in Ambrosiaster Comm. on Rom. 7:23 (CSEL 81:243); Pelagius Comm. Rom. on 7:22 (PCR 104–5); Severian of Gabala, catena on Rom. 7:24 (PGK 15:220); the mind in Theodoret Interp. Rom. on 7:22 (PG 82:125).
316. Plato Rep. 9.588A–591B (esp. 588A–589B); Stowers, “Self-Mastery,” 526–27; Markschies, “Metapher”; Betz, “Concept”; Judge, Jerusalem, 60. Aune (“Duality,” 220–22) finds analogous phrases rare until the church fathers and Neoplatonists but does identify the expression in Philo, who preceded Paul. Philosophers often warned against concern for “externals” (e.g., Epict. Diatr. 1.4.27; 1.11.37; 2.2.10, 12; 2.16.11; 4.10; Marc. Aur. 7.14). By contrast, Paul probably employs the language in an ad hoc manner (Tronier, “Correspondence,” 195).
317. Although some prefer to translate “principle” here (Bergmeier, “Mensch”; Kruse, Romans, 309–10), sometimes comparing the good and evil impulses (Bruce, Apostle, 197) or the Greek idea of an immanent law in nature (Dodd, Bible and Greeks, 37), the context focuses on the law, so there must be at least a play on that sense here (with, e.g., Wright, Faithfulness, 1:506, 510). Paul does, however, play on both universal law and Torah (Rom. 2:14; cf. perhaps Ps. 19:4 in Rom. 10:18).
318. The ideal auditor understands from the term’s usual sense that these are members of his body, here and in Rom. 6:13, 19; 7:5 (explicit for Christ’s body in 12:4–5; 1 Cor. 12:12, 14, 18–22, 25, 27). Paul might have envisioned different kinds of sins for different members (so Theodore of Mopsuestia, catena on Rom. 7:23 [PGK 15:132]); cf. Rom. 3:13–18.
319. For the compatibility, on different levels, of Paul’s portrayal of humans as able to do some good and yet (as here, e.g., Rom. 7:18) not ultimately able to do good, see discussion in Westerholm, Justification, 38–49.
320. Gentile thinkers could also speak of divine law as being inaccessible to those ruled by passion; this was true for the later writer Porphyry (Marc. 26.402–4), for whom passions were inextricably linked to the body.
321. With, e.g. (in Bray, Romans, 198), Jerome Ruf. 1.25; Theodoret Interp. Rom. on 7:24 (PG 82:128). Cf. similar phrases for mortal bodies in Epict. Diatr. 2.19.27; Marc. Aur. 10.33.3; the body as a corpse in Epict. Diatr. 1.9.19; 1.9.33–34; Marc. Aur. 4.4. Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 179, associates this with the body of the entirety of the old humanity; association with Adam, based on 4 Ezra 3:4–5 (Grappe, “Corps de mort”), fits the proposed associations with Adam elsewhere in Rom. 7 but seems too specific. Whether “this” (masculine or neuter) belongs with “death” (Sanday and Headlam, Romans, 184; cf. Exod. 10:17) or, less likely, with “body” (Jewett, Romans, 472) does not ultimately alter the association between them.
322. Severian of Gabala, catena on Rom. 7:24 (PGK 15:220; Bray, Romans, 198).
323. E.g., Ambrose Death 2.41; Jerome Ruf. 1.25; cf. Ambrosiaster Rom. 7:14–25.
324. Jub. 21:21; 1QS 11.9; 1 Esd. 4:37; 4 Ezra 7:138–40 (68–70); Moore, Judaism, 467–68; Bonsirven, Judaism, 114; Sandmel, Judaism, 187; Flusser, Judaism, 62. Some exempted a few persons from sin, such as perhaps Abraham (Pr. Man. 8; T. Ab. 10:13 A), Moses (b. Shab. 55b), Jesse (Tg. Ruth on 4:22), or Yohanan ben Zakkai (Abot R. Nat. 14 A).
325. Stowers, “Self-Mastery,” 540.
326. Arguing in a different way, Eph. 2:3 apparently applies the same principle to Jews as to Gentiles.
327. Although the human mind’s activity is more connected to neurochemistry than ancient thinkers imagined, and many specific expressions of instinct are influenced by human experience and choices, ancients were right in recognizing sexual instincts, sudden fear reactions, and other innate drives as somehow connected to the body. Of course, they could not have anticipated the complexity of the connectedness in terms of hormones, the amygdala, or even how the brain adapts to new stimuli in conjunction with thinking.
328. Fourth Maccabees, perhaps with apologetic for potential Gentile hearers in view, depicts the deliverance more strongly than the rabbis’ in-house discussions.
329. Although I adopt the conventional English translation “flesh,” σάρξ has been translated a variety of ways (Creve, Janse, and Demoen, “Key Words”); for important lexical considerations, see Dunn, Theology, 62–73 (esp. the warning on 70); Marshall, “Flesh.”
330. Despite the partly correct warning about later usage in Davies, Paul, 18. For ὕλη and ψυχή, see, e.g., Philo Posterity 61.
331. Epicurus sometimes applied σάρξ to the location of desire (Schweizer, “Σάρξ,” 103), and was apparently often followed on this point by Hellenistic Judaism (105).
332. Plut. R. Col. 27, Mor. 1122D. Plutarch also complains of those who view the entire person as fleshly, i.e., bodily (Plut. Pleas. L. 14, Mor. 1096E), and notes that the flesh by nature is susceptible to disease (Pleas. L. 6, Mor. 1090EF). But even as late as Porph. Marc. 29.453–57, negative “flesh” pertains primarily to externals, so the issue is more “body” and especially “matter.”
333. Epict. Diatr. 2.8.2.
334. Epict. Diatr. 2.23.30; cf. similarly 3.7.2–3, also against an Epicurean.
335. Marc. Aur. 2.2 (trans. Haines, LCL, 26ff.).
336. Porph. Marc. 9.172–73 (trans. O’Brien Wicker, 55); instead, one should flee from the body (ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος; 10.176), gathering the dispersed elements of one’s soul up from the body (10.180–83).
337. See, e.g., Grant, Judaism and New Testament, 62; Sandmel, Judaism, 178; cf. Davies, Paul, 18–19 (appealing to rabbinic thinking for the differences; cf. Davies, Origins, 145–77); Hunter, Gospel according to Paul, 17.
338. Flusser, Judaism, 63. Following Bultmann, Conzelmann (Theology, 176) emphasizes holism in Paul; nevertheless, on 177 he acknowledges a sort of anthropological dualism.
339. See Gundry, Sōma, 16–23. Robinson (Body, 31) treats σάρξ as humanity distanced from God but σῶμα as humanity “made for God.” Gundry (Sōma, 50) sees σῶμα as “the physical body, roughly synonymous with ‘flesh’ in the neutral sense”; cf. Craig (“Bodily Resurrection,” 53–54), who also follows Gundry.
340. See Moore, Judaism, 451 (though also the qualification on 502).
341. Sipre Deut. 306.28.2; later, cf. Gen. Rab. 8:11.
342. See also Gal. 3:3; 4:29; 5:16–17; 6:8; Phil. 3:3; cf. Rom. 7:14; 1 Cor. 3:1. Sometimes in contrast with the Spirit, σάρξ refers simply to the body (John 3:6; 1 Tim. 3:16; 1 Pet. 3:18; 4:6), as it also does when the contrasted spirit is human (Mark 14:38; 1 Cor. 5:5; 2 Cor. 7:1; Col. 2:5; 2 Clem. 14.5; Ign. Magn. 13.1; Trall. pref.; 12.1; Phld. 11.2; Smyrn. 1.1; Pol. 5.1).
343. See Frey, “Antithese”; Flusser, Judaism, 64–65. Pryke (“Spirit and Flesh,” 358) understands it as good vs. evil spirits.
344. Though the Hebrew is worded differently in 4Q252 1.2, the LXX of Gen. 6:3 uses the same words for “flesh” and “Spirit” that Paul does.
345. With, e.g., Ladd, Last Things, 30–31; Ladd, Theology, 458; cf. Klausner, Jesus to Paul, 486–87. Cf. also Jub. 5:8; 1 En. 106:17. Even in Philo Heir 57, the Spirit alongside reason, contrasted with fleshly pleasure, is the divine spirit.
346. Robinson (Body, 11–14) argues that the OT is so holistic that it lacks a term for “body” and a distinction between “body” and “soul” (perhaps an exaggeration; cf. Isa. 10:18 in MT and LXX). Humans are flesh also in traditional Jewish sources, such as, e.g., Jub. 5:2; Sir. 28:5; physicality seems implied in, e.g., Gen. 17:11–14; Jdt. 14:10.
347. Baumgärtel, “Flesh”; Davies, Paul, 18.
348. For flesh as humanity, e.g., Rom. 3:20; 1 Cor. 1:29; Gal. 1:16; for weakness, e.g., Rom. 6:19; 8:3; 1 Cor. 7:28; 2 Cor. 1:17; 5:16; 7:5; Gal. 4:13–14; for mortality, 1 Cor. 15:50; 2 Cor. 4:11; Phil. 1:22, 24. Sheldon (Mystery Religions, 79) cites OT language as more relevant than the mysteries.
349. Bornkamm, Paul, 133.
350. The decomposition of flesh (m. Sanh. 6:6; Moed Qat. 1:5), even understood as atoning for sin (e.g., Pesiq. Rab Kah. 11:23; b. Sanh. 47b), does not suggest that the body was viewed as evil.
351. Meyer, “Flesh”; Driver, Scrolls, 532; Wilcox, “Dualism,” 94–95; Best, Temptation, 52; esp. Flusser, Judaism, 62–65. See 1QS 3.8; 4.20–21; 9.9; 11.7, 12; 1QM 4.3; 12.12; 1QHa 5.30; 12.29–32; 17.14–16 (Sukenik 4.29–32; 9.14–16; 13.13); perhaps CD 1.2; 4Q511 frgs. 48–49 + 51.4; as in Scripture, its range of meaning remains extensive, sometimes referring simply to kinship (CD 5.9, 11; 7.1; 8.6) or humankind (1QM 15.13; 17.8; 4Q511 frg. 35.1; 1Q20 1.25, 29) or to physicality alongside the heart (spirit; 1QM 7.5). In Greek, in T. Job 27:2 (OTP)/27:3 (ed. Kraft), Satan contrasts himself as a spirit with Job as “a fleshly person,” i.e., weak and mortal.
352. Dunn (Romans, 1:370) correctly notes that “it is precisely the weakness and appetites of ‘the mortal body’ (= the flesh) which are the occasion for sin.” Likewise, “the problem with flesh is not that it is sinful per se but that it is vulnerable to the enticements of sin—flesh, we might say, as ‘the desiring I’ (7.7–12)” (Dunn, Theology, 67).
353. Unlike Seneca, Paul uses “Spirit” to refer to God’s Spirit in Christ, not a shared possession of humanity (Sevenster, Seneca, 79–80); Paul thinks not of “two ‘parts’” of people but rather of “two modes of existence” that characterize the old aeon and the new aeon (Ridderbos, Paul: Outline, 66). He is not anti-body (pace Kohler, Theology, 215).
354. E.g., Plato Phaedo 66CD; 83CD; Aeschines Tim. 191; Cic. Resp. 6.26.29; Sen. Y. Dial. 2.16.1; Dio Chrys. Or. 4.115; 13.13; Max. Tyre Or. 7.7; 33.7; Philost. Vit. Apoll. 7.26; Proclus Poet. 6.1, K121.14–15; Iambl. Pyth. Life 31.205; Letter 3, frg. 2 (Stob. Anth. 3.5.45); Porph. Marc. 14.243–44; 33.506–7; Philo Alleg. Interp. 3.161. Cf. matter in Iambl. Soul 8.39, §385; Letter 3, frg. 4.5–6 (Stob. Anth. 3.5.47). Even Epicurus thought the mind superior to the flesh (σάρξ), because mind grasped proper pleasure best (Diog. Laert. 10.145–20).
355. Socratics Ep. 14 (trans. Stowers and Worley, 257, 259).
356. Xen. Apol. 16, ταῖς τοῦ σώματος ἐπιθυμίαις.
357. Plato Phaedo 66CD (trans. Fowler, LCL, 1:231).
358. Seneca, for example, thought that the body, though temporary, can be of service to the mind (Sen. Y. Dial. 7.8.2). Stoics viewed everything, even spirit (πνεῦμα) and virtues (Arius Did. 2.7.5b7, p. 20.28–30), as “bodies.”
359. Plut. Isis 78, Mor. 382F; Max. Tyre Or. 11.10; Iambl. Letter 16, frg. 2.1–2 (Stob. Anth. 3.1.49). Any particularities weakened the original, universal whole (Proclus Poet. 5, K52.7–19, 23–24).
360. Max. Tyre Or. 33.7 (trans. Trapp, 266; cf. 6.1, 4; 41.5); see also Epict. Diatr. 1.3.3; cf. Sipre Deut. 306.28.2. For the true nature of deity being intelligence rather than “flesh” (σάρξ), see Epict. Diatr. 2.8.2. For passions vs. reason ruling lower animals, see, e.g., Arist. Pol. 1.2.13, 1254b. Philosophy thus converts a person from a beast into a god (Marc. Aur. 4.16).
361. E.g., Cic. Resp. 6.26.29; Sen. Y. Dial. 1.5.8; Epict. Diatr. 2.19.27; Iambl. Pyth. Life 32.228; Marc. Aur. 4.4; 10.33.3. Cf. later Manichaeans and Mandaeans in Reitzenstein, Mystery-Religions, 79 (which Reitzenstein wrongly thinks [449] influenced Rom. 7:24).
362. E.g., Plato Gorg. 493AE; Phaedo 82E; Cratyl. 400B; Heracl. Ep. 5; Epict. Diatr. 1.9.11–12; Max. Tyre Or. 7.5 (recalling Plato Rep. 514A–516B); 36.4; Philost. Vit. Apoll. 7.26; Iambl. Letter 3, frg. 2 (Stob. Anth. 3.5.45); Gnom. Vat. 464 (Malherbe, Moral Exhortation, 110). Thus a philosopher being ground to death “declared that he himself was not being ground, but only that thing of his in which, as it chanced, he had been enclosed” (Dio Chrys. [Favorinus] Or. 37.45; trans. Crosby, LCL, 4:45).
363. E.g., Epict. Diatr. 1.11–12 (though Sorabji [Emotion, 215], commenting on 1.22.10, suggests that such ideas may have been Epictetus’s innovation).
364. Hierocles Gods (Stob. Anth. 2.9.7).
365. Iambl. Soul 8.39, §385; 8.43, §456. Cf., earlier, Plato Rep. 10.611C.
366. Porph. Marc. 14.244–50; 25.394–95 (though the real source of evils comes from choices in the soul, 29.453–57). Love of the body is ignorance of God (13.227–29), and one must hold the connection with it lightly (32.485–95). Cf. Plot. Enn. 1.8 on the secondary negativity of the body; matter is evil (1.8.4), worthless (2.4), and unreal (3.6.6–7). Many gnostic thinkers also apparently found matter problematic (Hippol. Ref. 6.28; 7.20); some cite dualism in Orphism (Tarn, Civilisation, 354; Guthrie, Orpheus, 82–83, 174).
367. Val. Max. 8.7.ext.5; cf. a later Neoplatonist in Eunapius Lives 456 (albeit reported differently in Porph. Plot. 11.113). Seneca indulged the body for health but otherwise was hard on it to subdue it to his mind (Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 8.5); cf. even the rhetorical claim in Fronto Nep. am. 2.8.
368. Sent. Sext. 139a–139b. Passion is dangerous and must be suppressed in Sent. Sext. 204–9. In Diogn. 6.5–6 σάρξ wars against the soul (cf. 1 Pet. 2:11). Later Christian asceticism drew from existing trends in late antiquity (see, e.g., Judge, Jerusalem, 223).
369. E.g., Philo Alleg. Interp. 2.28; Sacr. 48; Posterity 96, 155; Unchangeable 111; Agr. 64; Plant. 43; Abr. 164; Mos. 2.24; T. Jud. 14:3.
370. Philo Alleg. Interp. 1.108; Unchangeable 150; Conf. 78–79; Spec. Laws 4.188; cf. Alleg. Interp. 3.21; Heir 85; so also the Christian work Diogn. 6.5.
371. Philo Cher. 114.
372. Philo Giants 29 (usually employing σῶμα in this way, but using σάρξ here because he quotes Gen. 6). It is our fleshly nature (σαρκῶν φύσις) that hinders wisdom’s growth; souls “free from flesh and body [ἄσαρκοι καὶ ἀσώματοι]” can celebrate with the universe (Giants 30–31; LCL, 2:460–61); flesh prevents people from being able to look up to heaven (Giants 31).
373. Philo Heir 267–69 in Stuhlmacher, Romans, 109, who compares the cry for liberation from the body in Rom. 7:24; see, further, Wolfson, Philo, 1:433. In terms of rational command, one would normally envision the body as slave to the mind (Arist. Pol. 1.1.4, 1252a; 1.2.10, 1254a; cf. Cic. Resp. 3.25.37; Sall. Catil. 1.2; Heracl. Ep. 9; Philo Sacr. 9; reason ruling the senses in Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 66.32), all the more when some called slaves “bodies” (Deissmann, Light, 165; BDAG cites, e.g., Tob. 10:10; 2 Macc. 8:11; Jos. Ant. 14.321).
374. T. Jud. 14:3.
375. T. Jud. 19:4 (OTP 1:800; Greek in Charles, Testaments, 95). The Lord accepts repentance because people “are flesh [σάρξ] and the spirits of deceit lead them astray” (T. Zeb. 9:7; OTP 1:807; Charles, Testaments, 128).
376. Some pagans critiqued Christians for their high view of the body (e.g., Origen Cels. 8.49; Cook, Interpretation, 113); but cf. Cyril Alex. on Rom. 6:6 (Burns, Romans, 139).
377. Talbert (Romans, 162) cites here Tert. Flesh 15. Bray (Corinthians, 56, 108, and Romans, 165) cites Chrys. Hom. Cor. 17.1; Hom. Rom. 11 (on 6:13); Theodoret Interp. Rom. on 6:13 (PG 82:109); and Aug. Contin. 10.24. Still, cf. Aug. Ag. Jul. 70 (in Bray, Corinthians, 172).
378. Schlatter, Romans, 3, 157 (but cf. 167).
379. Schlatter himself makes distinctions between Paul and Platonism here (Romans, 167). Paul lacks Platonic vocabulary of the “soul” (see appendix A, below), though he does speak of the “inner person.”
380. Commentators after Bultmann (with his commendable modern appreciation of the whole person) have often shied away from such non-“Hebrew” ideas. Some scholars have, however, noted some anthropologically dualistic language (e.g., Vogel, “Reflexions”; Pelser, “Antropologie”; earlier, Glover, Paul, 20).
381. Cf., e.g., Rev. 2:14, 20; Acts 15:20; Sib. Or. 3.757–66; t. Abod. Zar. 8:4; b. Sanh. 56a, bar.; Pesiq. Rab Kah. 12:1.
382. This is not a cultural issue; Confucius, who warned against lust (Anal. 9.17; 15.12 [47]), also found no one who loved virtue as much as feminine beauty (Anal. 16.7 [82]).
383. See pp. 39, 81–82.
384. I am grateful to Prof. Jim Hernando of the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary for this insight (personal conversation, Feb. 5, 2015).
385. Freud highlighted repressed desires, defense mechanisms, and their development in humans’ unconscious minds. Unfortunately, popular culture has sometimes appropriated the recognition of unconscious or barely conscious desires as revealing one’s identity and thus shaping one’s inevitable choices and destiny; if repression is hypocrisy, resistance seems ultimately futile. (Popular culture also readily embraced his overemphasis on sexual aspects of desire, central as those are in mammals after puberty. Puberty appears later in the physical maturation process for humans than for most other mammals [cf. Stormshak, “Comparative Endocrinology,” 157].) In contrast to such approaches dependent solely on human resources, Paul affirms the genuine activity of God’s power through the Spirit to transform.
386. Cf. the complaint about many evangelicals’ sexual and marital behavior in Sider, Scandal.
387. Cf. Odeberg, Pharisaism, 66, 72: Jesus would affirm most Pharisaic ethics, but the genuinely Christian approach requires inner transformation.
388. E.g., Xen. Mem. 1.2.24; Oec. 1.23; Sen. Y. Nat. Q. 1.pref.5; Lucian Phil. Sale 8. For athletic victories, cf. Dio Chrys. Or. 8.11–9.18.
389. Diogenes Ep. 5 (trans. Fiore, 96–97). Cf. battling against popular opinion in Diogenes Ep. 10; against pleasure and hardship in Ep. 12.
390. Philo Alleg. Interp. 2.106. Reason also fights against passions in 4 Macc. 3:4–5.
391. For the armor image, see also Eph. 6:11–17; 1 Thess. 5:8; Ign. Pol. 6.2; cf. 2 Cor. 10:3–4; 1 Tim. 1:18; 2 Tim. 2:4; Rev. 12:11; comment below (pp. 110–11). Despite the image’s possible Cynic roots, some (e.g., Downing, Cynics and Churches, 137–41) focus too exclusively on it; but a background in philosophers and moralists (Dibelius and Conzelmann, Pastoral Epistles, 32–33; Lincoln, Ephesians, 437; Malherbe, Moral Exhortation, 159–60) is reasonable.
392. Schechter, Aspects, 272–73; for fighting against and subduing the evil impulse, see also, e.g., m. Ab. 4:1; Ruth Rab. 8:1.
393. Stowers (Rereading, 271–72) cites Medea’s cry in Seneca’s Medea. Ancient interpreters generally viewed the wretchedness more generally; see, e.g. (in Bray, Romans, 197), Ambrosiaster Comm. on Rom. 7:24 (CSEL 81:245); Chrys. Hom. Rom. 13 on Rom. 7:24. Smith (“Form”) finds parallels in some preconversion liturgical laments (albeit with very limited evidence). If a particular figure is in view, it is probably Israel under the law (with Grieb, Story, 76). In Rom. 3:16 Paul employs a cognate for his present term for “wretchedness” for sinners under the law.
394. E.g., Aeschylus Ag. 1260; Ovid Am. 1.4.59; Metam. 9.474; Terence Andr. 882; Phorm. 1006; Moth. 293; Plut. L. Wealth 5, Mor. 525D; Apul. Metam. 3.25; Jos. Asen. 6:2 (OTP; 6:5 in Philonenko’s Greek text); cf. Lysias Or. 24.23, §170; Isa. 33:1 LXX; Mic. 2:4 LXX; 4 Macc. 16:7.
395. Cf. Demosth. Aphob. 1.66 (Or. 27). The outcry functions almost like a pathetic “Woe is me,” Epict. Diatr. 1.4.23–24; 3.13.4; 4.1.57; 4.4.21.
396. Epict. Diatr. 1.3.5–6; cf. 1.12.28, where Epictetus responds to a similar claim of wretchedness by urging contentment. Epictetus repeatedly levels this label of wretchedness against foolish imaginary interlocutors (Diatr. 1.4.11; 2.8.12; 2.17.34; 2.18.27; 3.2.9; 3.22.31; 4.1.21; 4.6.18). Some people criticized others as wretched; see Dio Chrys. Or. 34.2 (noting the view of some concerning Cynics); Wis. 3:11; 13:10. In common usage, such language also could express sympathy, such as “Poor fellow!” (Epict. Diatr. 4.6.21).
397. Many philosophers considered suicide the appropriate answer to “Who will release me from these pains?” (Diog. Laert. 6.21; cf. Max. Tyre Or. 7.5; on philosophers and suicide, see Keener, Acts, 3:2498–507, esp. 2503–5). See comments on ancient beliefs about the body as a prison above, p. 104, and below, p. 268 (where death was the means of release, e.g., Epict. Diatr. 1.9.16); and Sevenster, Seneca, 82–83. Gnostics naturally construed this passage as seeking release from the body (Pagels, Paul, 32–34), but Paul is no gnostic here (Bornkamm, Experience, 99). Of course, people could also cry for deliverance (Apul. Metam. 11.2, preferring, however, death to nondeliverance).
398. That resurrection is the ultimate answer to the body’s corruption was also recognized by some ancient commentators, e.g., Caesarius Serm. 177.4 (in Bray, Romans, 199).
399. Cf. fleshly desires (1 Pet. 2:11) or the flesh (Diogn. 6.5) warring against the soul.
400. Jewett, Romans, 470–71.
401. Dio Chrys. Or. 32.90; Iambl. Pyth. Life 17.78; cf. Philo Sacr. 26. In popular literature, see Xen. Eph. Anthia 1.3–4. The metaphor does appear more widely, e.g., for “captivating” one by beauty (Jdt. 16:9).
402. E.g., for love in Ach. Tat. 2.10.3; Catullus 67.21; Lucian Lucius 10 (intercourse); Apul. Metam. 2.17; hyperbole for verbal arguments in Hor. Ep. 1.18.15–16; a comparison for military exhortations in 2 Macc. 15:11.
403. E.g., Dion. Hal. Demosth. 32; Cic. De or. 3.14.55; Sen. E. Controv. 9.pref.4; Pliny Ep. 1.20.3; 4.22.5; 7.25.6; Tac. Dial. 32, 34, 37; Fronto Eloq. 1.16; Lucian Nigr. 36; Philost. Vit. soph. 2.1.563. For arguments as weapons, see also Hor. Sat. 2.3.296–97; Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 117.7, 25; perhaps Heracl. Ep. 7.
404. E.g., Cic. Fam. 4.7.2; Brut. 2.7. For luxury as the greatest enemy, see Dio Chrys. Or. 33.28.
405. Dio Chrys. Or. 49.10 (trans. Crosby, LCL, 4:303).
406. E.g., Epict. Diatr. 1.14.15; 4.5.25–32. Val. Max. 4.1.ext.2 claims that Plato in moral combat guarded his soul from vice; in 8.7.ext.5, Carneades is a “soldier of wisdom.”
407. Xen. Mem. 1.2.24; cf. Oec. 1.23.
408. Dio Chrys. Or. 8.11–16, esp. 13, 15.
409. Dio Chrys. Or. 8.20; Diogenes Ep. 5; pleasure and hardship in Dio Chrys. Or. 9.11–12; Diogenes Ep. 12. He also recommends battling popular opinion (Diogenes Ep. 10); his wallet is a “shield” (Diogenes Ep. 19).
410. An image earlier advanced by the Cynic sage Antisthenes (Malherbe, “Antisthenes”; Malherbe, Philosophers, 91–119, esp. here 97–101). Antisthenes reportedly declared, “Wisdom is a most sure stronghold. . . . Walls of defence must be constructed in our own impregnable reasonings” (Diog. Laert. 6.1.13; trans. Hicks, LCL, 2:13).
411. Lucian Phil. Sale 8. For the comparison of Diogenes with Heracles, see Dio Chrys. Or. 8.28–34.
412. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 96.5; Hierocles Love (Stob. Anth. 4.84.20). Cf. similarly Dio Chrys. Or. 16.6.
413. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 109.8.
414. Philod. Prop. col. 4.6–15.
415. One could speak of sin raising up walls and towers (T. Levi 2:3); Moses’s armor (ὅπλα) is prayer and his message in Wis. 18:21–22. But see esp. Philo, e.g., in Alleg. Interp. 3.14, 155; Dreams 2.90; Abr. 243; Mos. 1.225.
416. “Clothing” one with moral attributes or God’s Spirit appears in various ancient texts, e.g., L.A.B. 27:9–10; also the LXX of Judg. 6:34; 1 Chron. 12:19 (12:18 ET); 2 Chron. 24:20; cf. Odes Sol. 25:8; garments of future restoration in Isa. 52:1; Pss. Sol. 11:7; 1 En. 62:15–16; garments of wisdom in L.A.B. 20:2–3.
417. Or, on another reading, on ethnic exclusivity. The macrostructure of Romans clearly addresses righteousness for both Jewish people and Gentiles, and its argument climaxes in 15:8–12 with biblical support, from each part of the canon, for welcoming Gentiles. Ethnic possession of the law is relevant in 2:17, 23–24; 3:2; and 9:4. The more specific issue in Rom. 7, however, while supporting the larger discussion of corporate identity, involves moral righteousness and the inability of Jewish people as well as Gentiles to secure this experience as well as status apart from God’s gift in Christ.
418. Depending on one’s theological framework, this is boasting either in one’s achievements or in one’s ethnic heritage in the covenant. I see the former emphasis in the particular argument of this passage and the latter with respect to Romans’ larger macrostructure.