People whose lives are oriented around the flesh (and thus the interests of mere bodily existence) think about matters of the flesh, but those whose lives are oriented by God’s Spirit consider matters of the Spirit. This is because the fleshly frame of mind can expect only death, whereas the Spirit-framed mind has life and peace.
—Romans 8:5–6
In contrast to the way of thinking depicted in Romans 7, which cannot overcome the passions, the new way of thinking in Christ is empowered by God’s Spirit that now dwells in believers. Embracing the truth of God’s gift of righteousness rather than striving to achieve it by finite flesh, this new approach can fulfill God’s will because the Spirit who knows God’s will guides, motivates, and empowers the believer.
The New Frame of Mind
Paul contrasts the φρόνημα of the flesh with that of the Spirit. Paul probably employs the term to contrast two dispositions or attitudes toward life, one framed by merely fleshly existence and the other framed by the reality of God’s presence, by the Spirit.
The term φρόνημα has no exact equivalent in English, and even in Greek its semantic range is wide enough that only context will define its sense. Given the semantic range of φρόνημα, the phrases often translated “mind of the Spirit” and “mind of the flesh” can refer to the divergent frames of mind, cognitive dispositions, or cognitive approaches of the Spirit and of the flesh.1 In today’s terms, one might think partly of how outlooks and character are shaped by the different worldviews, or approaches to reality, of these two spheres. One mind focuses on the matters of God; the other is oriented around only matters involving the self and its desires (Rom. 8:5–6).
Philo, who often employs the term φρόνημα, may provide a sample of Diaspora Jewish intellectual usage. He generally uses the term to mean disposition, attitude, or character.2 As such, it is a settled direction of the personality, not a matter of fleeting thoughts; certainly, this must be true also for Paul, who plainly depicts the corrupted mind of Romans 1:28–31 not as a matter of fleeting thoughts but as a matter of characteristic ones. This disposition may be intelligent,3 philosophic,4 untrained and undiscerning,5 free6 or slavish,7 proud8 or broken,9 noble,10 enduring,11 mature,12 or brave and courageous.13 (As one expects from Philo, such aspects of character often correlate with masculinity or with being effeminate.)14
Because ancient intellectuals often associated such aspects of character with one’s way of thinking, it is not surprising that for Philo the term φρόνημα often has cognitive associations, including in ways associated with the sort of intellectual thought elsewhere addressed by Paul. Thus, for Philo φρόνημα ideally contemplates matters beyond heaven rather than lowly ones.15 It can be divine, viewing matters from a divine perspective and desiring nothing earthly.16 It can be subject to or avoid pleasure.17 Ideally, it should think not only of its own locale but with wise knowledge about the cosmos.18
Paul certainly includes cognitive associations, because he clearly associates the meaning of this noun with the cognate verb φρονέω, which occurs in Romans 8:5. Yet Paul means even more than exclusively “disposition,” “character,” “attitude,” or “frame of mind,” because he uses the same language in relation to the mind of the Spirit19 (see 8:27), an idea discussed more fully in “Sharing the Divine Mind in Greek Thought,” later in this chapter.20 That is, for Paul, the new way of thinking is empowered by God’s own activity.
The mind-frame of the Spirit thus not only contemplates God and shares God’s agendas; it depends on God, recognizing the liberation accomplished in Christ (Rom. 8:2) and the consequent power to live a new way (8:3). This is the perspective that Paul has been communicating in previous chapters: believers are righted by Christ, not themselves (cf. 3:21–5:11), and this righting includes a new life in union with Christ (5:12–6:11). Just as Paul depends on Christ for being righted, he depends on God’s Spirit for being able to appropriate the cognitive moral character consonant with one who is righted. One who behaves by the new identity is thus walking by the Spirit. For Paul, the new frame for thinking is effective because it depends on the reality of Christ and thus of the new identity in him.
Relation to the Defeated Mind of Romans 7
The fleshly frame of mind and the Spirit frame of mind provide two opposing ways of experiencing reality. As Charles Talbert puts it, the fleshly frame of mind is “an orientation to life in which absolutizing some part of the physical, finite order is the defining characteristic”; by contrast, Spirit cognition involves “an orientation in which God is one’s ultimate concern and one’s enabling power.”21
The contrast between the two ways of thinking in Romans 8:5–9 cannot correspond, as some have suggested, to the internal struggle depicted in 7:15–25; rather, that passage, in which the law-informed mind cannot overcome the fleshly desire for sin, corresponds only to the fleshly mind in 8:5–9. The person of 7:14–25 recognizes the goodness of the law (7:16) but proves unable to fulfill it—like the fleshly mind in 8:7: “The fleshly frame of mind is inherent enmity against God, for it does not subject itself to God’s law, nor is it capable of doing so.”
The law is fulfilled not in those who depend on the flesh—that is, on themselves—but rather in those who depend on the Spirit (8:3–4). In 7:25 the caricature serves God’s law with his “mind” (νοῦς) yet nevertheless fails because of the sin-law active in his members (7:23, 25). In Romans 8 it is this sin-law and its consequent verdict of failure from which the law of the Spirit liberates us (8:2), enabling us to fulfill the law’s purpose (8:4). Likewise, the figure of 7:24 is enslaved to a body destined for death, a characteristic of the fallen person of 7:7–25 (7:9–10, 13). By contrast, the frame of mind influenced by the Spirit promises life and peace instead (8:6; cf. 8:2, 13).
As noted above, the fleshly frame of mind in 8:5 summarizes the frame of mind depicted in 7:15–25.22 Some ancient hearers might also have brought to Paul’s language some more general considerations about negative ways of thinking, which they often associated with being ruled by the body’s desires. As already noted, Gentile intellectuals sometimes warned against pleasure ruling the mind or soul23 and sometimes warned against the false ethical views of the ignorant masses.24 By discipline of the mind, some argued, wise people could learn to abstain from any pleasure, to endure any pain.25 Later Platonists even wanted to dissociate the mind from the contemplation of matter,26 though the Stoic thinkers dominant in Paul’s day would not have concurred.27
Although not using Paul’s precise terminology, Philo and probably other Hellenistic Jews could have understood a reference to a mind directed toward the flesh. In contrast to the sort of wisdom found in the law of Moses, Philo opines, a different mind loves the body and passions.28 Philo speaks of a mind that loves the body and would have been perishable if God had not inspired it with the spirit of life.29 Philo divides humanity into two races: those who live by the divine Spirit and reason, and those who live for the pleasure of the flesh.30 As noted in the previous chapter,31 many Judean teachers treated passion for pleasure as functionally roughly equivalent to the evil yēṣer.32 For Paul, this fleshly mind is a mind fixed on earthly, mortal, selfish matters as opposed to the exalted Lord (Phil. 3:19–21)—an autonomous mind that does not acknowledge Jesus as rightful Lord.
Nevertheless, however much Paul’s ideas may have connected with Diaspora thought, his specific language, contrasting the spheres of human flesh with God’s Spirit, is plainly Judean.33 It reflects first the Septuagint use of σάρξ (especially in Gen. 6:3, where σάρξ is contrasted with God’s Spirit) and more broadly early Jewish usage, including usage of the equivalent Hebrew term, such as is also reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls.34 In Judean tradition “flesh” was not by itself evil, but its mortality and finiteness deprived it of moral perfection, making it susceptible to sin.35
For Paul, then, the “way of thinking involving the flesh” is a chronic perspective or disposition from mere human, bodily existence as opposed to a life perspective and disposition informed and led by God’s presence.36 Those whose ultimate interests are purely temporal, satisfying their own desires, contrast with those with interest in and divinely provided access to the eternal God.
Contrast with the Law-Approach of Romans 7
In Romans as in Galatians, the “flesh” offers an inadequate response to God’s righteous standard in the law (Rom. 7:5, 14, 25; 8:3–4, 7; cf. 2:28; 3:20; Gal. 2:16; 3:3, 5; 5:16–19; 6:12–13). The law is good, but flesh is weak (Rom. 7:14); as N. T. Wright puts it, “the material on which” the law “had to work was inadequate” for generating true righteousness.37 God condemned sin in the flesh by having his Son undergo sin’s appropriate condemnation as a sin offering, so that those who walk by the Spirit could fulfill the demands of the law38 never truly met by those who walk by the flesh (8:3–4).39 If “walking” evokes here the biblical and Jewish idiom of walking according to the law,40 the mention of “walking by the flesh” might recall human inability to serve God’s law (7:5, 14, 18, 25), an inability explicit in 8:3.41
In contrast to the flesh’s inability to achieve the ideal of the law, the Spirit empowers true righteousness, providing an internal rather than external law (Rom. 8:2, 4; cf. 7:6; Gal. 3:2, 5; 5:18, 23). The mind of the Spirit, then, is a mind led by righteousness such as appears embodied in the principles of the law (cf. Rom. 8:2), providing obedience (Ezek. 36:27; cf. Deut. 5:29; 30:6) and perhaps also fulfilling the ideal of continuous meditation on, and hence continuous experience of, God’s true law (Deut. 6:6; Josh. 1:8; Pss. 1:2; 119:15, 23, 48, 78, 148). This mind directed by the Spirit is presumably at least part of what it means to be “led by the Spirit” (8:14; cf. Gal. 5:16–23).42 It is a mind genuinely directed toward and empowered by God.
Paul does not imply that only the one who continually and infallibly follows the will of the Spirit is justified, and that everyone who has ever been distracted by fleshly desire is condemned. People of the Spirit and people of the flesh are ideal types (see the discussion below). Paul is saying instead that those who have the Spirit, and thus may follow the Spirit at all, have been justified even if they require more training and progress, whereas those who lack the Spirit have only the flesh to depend on.
Living according to righteousness that exceeds mere animal instincts—in other words, supernaturally—thus also demonstrates that God has justified Jesus’s followers and (cf. Rom. 3:26) that God was righteous/just in declaring them righteous. God is vindicated, or shown just,43 if someone can really overcome sin at all by God’s Spirit. Christ has done this, and those in union with him also may do it enough to vindicate his righteousness (even if not perfectly). Any signs of divine righteousness vindicate the truth of the gospel by demonstrating divinely generated activity; as in Romans 3:3–4, human failures, conversely, do not indict this righteousness. Perhaps often only God knows what believers would be like without his righteousness, but Paul expects that at least often it should be evident that God’s work in them goes far beyond what mere effort or conditioning would produce.
Two Ways of Thinking
Scholars have frequently explored the dominant biblical and Jewish motifs of Paul’s description of flesh and Spirit,44 which certainly inform how we should understand Paul’s contrast between the “frame of mind of the flesh” (φρόνημα τῆς σαρκός) and the “frame of mind of the Spirit” (φρόνημα τοῦ πνεύματος).45 Although this Jewish understanding contributes most to our understanding of the passage, I want to explore briefly how an audience familiar with the sort of language represented in Greek and Roman philosophy would have heard Paul’s argument here.46 This exploration may make available additional nuances for understanding how members of a probably mixed real Diaspora community would have heard Paul’s words, as well as surfacing some aspects of his message often overlooked.47
Greek and Roman philosophers contrasted two ways of thinking, wisdom and folly, as ideal types (see discussion below). Although they would not have adopted the biblical language of “flesh” (σάρξ) and (God’s) “Spirit,” some associated folly with bodily passions and true wisdom with transformation that comes from meditating on God. Some elements of Paul’s argument (such as the importance of right thinking or of depending on a divine rather than merely personal, human perspective) would have been more intelligible to them than were other elements (such as radical dependence on the one God through Jesus Christ).
The Emphasis on Wise Thinking in Philosophy
Philosophers emphasized the importance of reason. Thus, for example, reason was the element within a human that embraced philosophy;48 philosophy claimed to offer reason as the cure for the human discontent with nature.49 In fact, for Stoics (the most popular philosophic school in Greece and Rome in Paul’s era) the virtues were themselves types of knowledge.50 Any ignorance produced defects with regard to virtue. True prudence involved the recognition that the only true good that one could control was virtue, and the only true evil was vice.51 Thinking rightly also involved not fearing fortune but remaining joyful in hardship, thus controlling the one matter over which one held power, namely, oneself.52 Stoics felt that falsehood perverted the mind and that this distortion produced the harmful emotions.53
Φρόνησις, a cognate to Paul’s term in Romans 8:6–7,54 was one of the four traditional Aristotelian virtues, by Paul’s era widely used beyond Aristotelian circles;55 the term and its cognates often describe the sound thinking appreciated by Stoics56 and others.57 For Stoics, this virtue involved right and virtuous thinking.58 The real heart of philosophy, a Stoic might contend, lies in thinking on (φρονεῖν) the things that are necessary and contemplating them.59 Perhaps relevant for Paul’s comments about the perspective of the flesh involving death (Rom. 8:6) is that for Stoics, thinking (φρονεῖν) the right way included overcoming the fear of death.60
Jewish sources composed in the Greek language, especially sources already particularly influenced by Greek intellectual thought, also speak of purifying the mind from evil desires,61 sometimes by meditating on what is right.62 Some of these sources speak of meditating on wisdom63 or on what is good.64 The Alexandrian Jewish Letter of Aristeas concludes by praising its dedicatee for spending most of his time on study that is helpful for the mind.65 Philo regards as imperishable in humans only their intellect.66 Just as Stoics emphasized the need to agree with nature’s decrees, many Jews emphasized that right thinking recognized God’s rule over human affairs.67
Ideal Types
Some felt that character was inborn and therefore not readily changed.68 Others, including many Stoics, felt that training could adjust one’s nature.69 In either case, descriptions dividing humanity into two antithetical categories normally functioned as ideal types and were not meant to take into account a range of mixtures between good and bad.
Two Categories in Humanity as Ideal Types
In terms of literary form, Paul’s contrasts here are not unusual.70 Ancient auditors understood that the rhetoric of absolutes often involved ideal types rather than perfect virtue or vice.71 As noted below, this structured way of articulating matters fit, and therefore was comprehensible in, both Gentile and Jewish rhetoric.72
Traditional Stoics divided humanity into two categories: the wise, virtuous, and otherwise perfect (an extremely small minority); and the foolish and vice-ridden (the masses of humanity).73 “There is nothing in-between virtue and vice,” they argued.74 Virtues were inseparable; whoever had one had all75 (and thus, whoever had virtue could simply act accordingly).76 There were no degrees of virtue or vice—though this simply meant that all virtue was by definition completely virtue, and all vice was completely vice, not that some virtues and vices were not more beneficial or harmful than others.77
At least by this period, however, Stoics, may have often employed these categories as ideal types.78 The wise man was an ideal, a definition, so that tautologically he was completely virtuous;79 everything he did, he therefore did well.80 Thus, for example, he was inerrant, trusting only what was true and never believing unsubstantiated opinion.81 Likewise, he was complete, having every virtue;82 the worthless person, by contrast, lacked every virtue.83
Stoics might recognize that in practice mental transformation took time,84 and they often spoke of “progress” in virtue.85 The Stoic philosopher Seneca, for example, acknowledges that his own progress in virtue is not yet adequate.86 He speaks of “the ideal wise man,” who is ruled by nothing,87 yet he admits his own imperfection.88 Another first-century Stoic, Musonius Rufus, similarly concedes that though we philosophically trained people know better, we still fear loss, and we love temporal things by habit, so we must continue to train ourselves.89 Even the early Stoic Chrysippus does not consider himself, his associates, or his teachers to be wise.90 The Stoic ideal may have existed only in theory, but it remained an ideal toward which Stoics would strive;91 one could be wise enough to be making progress toward the ideal type of perfect wisdom.92
Other thinkers sometimes ridiculed this Stoic way of speaking.93 Lucian points out that Stoic sages themselves do not claim to have achieved this ideal wisdom.94 Critics opine that since Stoics allow progress toward virtue, they are wrong to deny the possibility of degrees of vice and virtue.95 Nevertheless, many ancient thinkers did not mind some paradox as a device for communicating a point.96
Persian dualism also contrasted good and evil as pure types.97 In ordinary speech Greeks and others also contrasted good people with shameless ones.98 In a practical way, writers also could contrast ideal categories, such as wisdom or virtue and pleasure.99 Allowing for more shades of commitment, Aristotle contrasts the fully virtuous person with the person whose allegiance is divided between reason and desire.100 Euripides, speaking of extremes, notes, “Those who are without self-control, and in whom the evil of enmity and injustice overflows, are evil, while those in whom the opposites prevail are imbued with virtue”; but Euripides also recognizes explicitly that others are mixed.101
Jewish Ideal Types
Jewish sources could also divide humanity into ideal categories, without assuming that individuals behaved perfectly righteously or absolutely wickedly. The biblical wisdom tradition also divided humanity into wise and foolish, again to some extent as ideal types.102 Sirach, for example, explains that “good is the opposite of evil, and life the opposite of death; so the sinner is the opposite of the godly.”103 The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs also include such contrasts: “God has granted two ways to the sons of men, two mind-sets, two lines of action, two models, and two goals. Accordingly, everything is in pairs, the one over against the other. The two ways are good and evil; concerning them are two dispositions within our breasts that choose between them.”104 The image of or choice between the Two Ways appears in both Gentile and Jewish sources,105 and some scholars appeal to its relevance to Paul’s portrayal here.106
A moral division between righteous and wicked, those with knowledge of God and those who lack it, pervades the Dead Sea Scrolls as well,107 in which God’s Spirit purifies the righteous remnant community.108 Yet although the Qumran covenanters apparently did believe that all behavior originated with either the spirit of truth or the spirit of perversity,109 they acknowledged that only God could justify them fully.110 Like the Stoics, the community that produced the scrolls also recognized their own imperfection; here the righteous could be called “perfect” in some sense, yet they could recognize their weakness before God.111 Later rabbis warned against violating the least commandment112 yet acknowledged that nearly everyone sins.113
Paul himself has just divided humanity into those who are in Adam and those who are in Christ (Rom. 5:12–21), but Paul himself recognizes that those in Christ still need to be exhorted not to sin (6:1, 11–13, 15–16; 8:12–13). When Paul contrasts the corporate identities of those born into Adam and those baptized into Christ, the difference is not that the latter group has become incapable of sin. Rather, the difference is that the latter group, now in Christ, is capable of living out God’s true (divinely given) righteousness, to the extent that they recognize their identity with Christ, in whom sinfulness was not expected (6:11).
Thus, when Paul divides humanity into those with the character of the flesh and those with the character of the Spirit, he must be addressing ideal types rather than differentiating levels of commitment within those types.114 All those who have the Spirit are people of the Spirit (Rom. 8:9); all others belong in the sphere of helpless, mortal humanity—that is, in the flesh (or, as many commentators put it, in the sphere of the old Adam). That is, the actual division is based not on the degree of accommodation to the “flesh” but on whether or not the Spirit is active and bringing transformation.115 The Spirit effects true righteousness; ideally, this Spirit-activity produces perfect character, but ancient hearers could recognize that in practice this ideal might not obviate the value of progress.
Sharing God’s Mind
Paul contrasts the fleshly mind with the mind of the Spirit. Since this biblical and early Jewish contrast refers to God’s Spirit, Paul is speaking of divine empowerment, and in a way that most of his audience likely understood.
Given potential ancient analogies, Paul probably means more than metaphor when he speaks about “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16), thinking the way that Jesus did (Phil. 2:5), thinking according to the Spirit (Rom. 8:5), and the like.116 Besides Romans 8:6, the one other place in his letters where Paul speaks of τὸ φρόνημα τοῦ πνεύματος is later in the same discussion, at 8:27, where the phrase refers to the mind of God’s Spirit. God knows the mind of the Spirit, who dwells in believers and intercedes in God’s way.117
Thus, he speaks of not merely a frame of mind that accords with God’s but one that is inspired or activated by God. For Paul, this is part of the promised eschatological outpouring of God’s Spirit.118 Paul may also believe in an inward prompting (if Rom. 8:14 suggests this)119 and an affective assurance of relationship with God from the Spirit (8:16),120 but he also expects God’s Spirit to help shape the thinking of those who are in Christ, as in 8:5–7.121 This perspective becomes obvious again in 1 Corinthians 2:16, where believers who have the Spirit also experience some of the mind (νοῦς) of Christ.122
Sharing the Divine Mind in Greek Thought
Paul’s reasoning comes from Scripture, but his language would also have resonated with educated Gentiles. Indeed, some might have overcontextualized his language, as if he were speaking of the mind’s divinity.123 Although some thinkers spoke of mortal minds that did not know what was good the way the gods did,124 others spoke of the mind’s divinity or ability to achieve some divinity. A fragment from the fifth-century BCE tragedian Euripides suggests that the individual mind was a god.125 Gentile thinkers often associated the mind with what was divine.126 Some claimed that of all human benefits, reason alone shared in the nature of the divine.127
For a Stoic, the ideal was to be of “one mind” with God and hence to accept reason and the will of fate;128 a person who had progressed this far had become virtually divine, though such a person was difficult to find.129 One can approach God only rationally, Stoics opine, because God is pure Intelligence.130 The first-century Stoic Seneca opines that the human soul is divine;131 God is superior in that he is completely reason or soul, without admixture with other elements.132
Such interests were widespread among Greco-Roman intellectuals. A friend of Zeus, one orator decides, would think like Zeus, by which the orator means desiring what is virtuous rather than what is shameful.133 A much earlier orator advises hearers to “cultivate the thoughts of an immortal.”134 The Stoic philosopher Epictetus urges being “of one mind” with God.135 For Seneca, this could include contemplating questions about what God does with the universe, thereby transcending one’s “own mortality.”136 Later Platonic thinkers suggest that “the god-filled intellect . . . is united to God, for like must gravitate to like.”137 Further, only the mind knows the divine law, which is stamped on it.138 Through virtue, one should make one’s “thought like God.”139 The mind should obey God because like a mirror it reflects his image.140 For Philo, a Jewish Middle Platonist, intelligence represents a divine element in humanity (though mortals are not thereby identified with God).141 One’s disposition could be divine and focused on divine matters.142
Not only did one need to think like God and think about him; a few thinkers also recognized the need to depend on God for this power. One could learn philosophy, but mere recitation of information was not enough. Only divine indwelling, Seneca recognizes, can make one good: “God is near you, he is with you, he is within you. This is what I mean, Lucilius: a holy spirit indwells within us,143 one who marks our good and bad deeds, and is our guardian. As we treat this spirit, so are we treated by it. Indeed, no man can be good, without the help of God.”144 God comes into people, and no mind that lacks his presence is good.145
Thus, for Platonists one experienced the divine mind through meditating on God’s perfection, and Stoics accepted the divine mind by embracing fate. By contrast, for Paul, as we have mentioned, the Spirit internalizes God’s law (Rom. 8:2–4), as the prophets have promised.146 The new mind exists by virtue of being in Christ, and one accesses the divine mind through the experience of the Spirit. Like Philo,147 Paul would have rejected any notion of reaching God by pure reason apart from revelation. Like Philo and some other Diaspora Jews, however, he may have allowed for divine inspiration of reason at times.148
Indwelling Deity in Gentile and Jewish Thought
Despite some exceptions, Jewish monotheists generally were much more careful than Gentiles about depicting themselves as divine;149 their reverence for the one God precluded it. Being moved by divine agency, however, was far less questionable, since it was supported in Scripture itself.150 Both Jews and Gentiles entertained notions of deity dwelling with or in people. Gentile references to deities dwelling in or affecting mortals’ minds are not, of course, as relevant to Paul’s discussion as Jewish sources concerning the Spirit of the one true God, but they illustrate that Paul’s imagery need not have been unfamiliar or unintelligible to even some of the less biblically literate members of his real audience.
Although in Scripture Gentiles might sometimes recognize that the divine Spirit was in Israelite servants of God (Gen. 41:38; Dan. 4:9, 18; 5:14), the more common Hebrew idiom noted the Spirit coming “on” someone, especially for a divine task.151 Sometimes the expressions could be equivalent, at least for someone who would bear the Spirit long-term and not simply temporarily (Num. 27:18; Deut. 34:9). Eschatologically, God would put his Spirit within his people to transform them (Ezek. 36:27) and on them to empower them (Joel 2:28–29). Probably partly for theological reasons, Paul more often speaks of the Spirit working in and among God’s people (e.g., 1 Cor. 3:16; Gal. 6:8).
How could Gentiles and Diaspora Jews have understood Paul’s language about God’s or Christ’s Spirit dwelling in believers? Some writers claim that Socrates had a god within him.152 Plutarch stresses that the divine νόμος should always dwell within the good ruler.153 A Neoplatonist poses an alternative in which either the divine or an evil demon dwells in the soul.154 Denying that a person is ever alone, Epictetus speaks of the presence of the deity in all people: “God is within, and your own genius [δαίμων] is within.”155 Likewise, “you are a fragment of God; you have within you a part of Him. Why, then, are you ignorant of your own kinship?”156 The Roman Stoic Seneca similarly insists that God comes into people (in homines venit), divine seeds being sown (semina . . . dispersa) in them.157 Such language was not pervasive, but it was intelligible.
Following the Old Testament, Jewish people sometimes referred to God or his Spirit dwelling in or among his people. In the Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom enters into holy souls to make them both friends of God and prophets.158 In Pseudo-Philo, “a holy spirit” (spiritus sanctus) not only “came upon” but also “dwelled in him,” inspiring prophecy.159 The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs speaks similarly. Thus, Joseph had the Spirit of God in him and therefore did good (cf. Gen. 41:38).160 In the eschatological time God will dwell in (or with) any compassionate person he finds.161 God’s people must avoid sin so “that the Lord may dwell among you,”162 and “the Lord will dwell among” those who do right.163 Philo too offers some analogies for helping us grasp how Paul’s Diaspora audiences may have understood him speaking about God indwelling those devoted to him.164
Paul’s idea does not depend on Greek thought: his mention of both the law and God’s Spirit more directly echoes the biblical prophets, according to whom it was ultimately God’s Spirit that would enable God’s people to serve him fully (Ezek. 36:25–27).165 Paul also limits this divine activity to participants in God’s covenant (Rom. 8:9), and they remain fully human, though agents of the divine. But some of Paul’s thought would nevertheless have been intelligible in a Gentile milieu.
Experiencing the Spirit
As is widely acknowledged, the Spirit is a central element in Paul’s theology;166 for Paul, the gift of the Spirit is the defining mark of believers.167 Although the academic or anthropological approach commonly found in Gentile philosophy overlaps with Paul’s concerns at various points, it cannot parallel Pauline thought fully. For Paul, divine initiative itself, rather than some innate divinity accessible simply by human reason, activates divine reality in one’s life.
Whereas one may try to embrace a new identity cognitively, one experiences this reality by the Spirit. Responding to the Spirit includes cognitive embrace, but the embrace must acknowledge the divine initiative rather than fail to recognize and express gratitude, as did those who abandoned the knowledge of God in Romans 1:18–32.
The Spirit adds a subjective, relational element that the human mind and will, empowered by the Spirit, may serve but not control. Although in Romans 6 Paul speaks of walking in newness of life (an aorist subjunctive in 6:4, the meaning of which is debated),168 he speaks more of believers’ identification with Christ in terms of Christ’s past death and resurrection and their past baptism. That is, this aspect of his argument may be approached objectively.
Although Christ’s death and resurrection have been completed, God’s Spirit applies this reality to believers in the present. God’s Spirit appears here as continuing to act, so that believers’ experience of the Spirit remains present. The Spirit continues to activate the new and continuing life in Christ (cf. Rom. 7:6; 8:2, 10) and will someday transform believers’ bodies (8:11, 23) as God through the Spirit raised Jesus (1:4). The Spirit presently and continually dwells in believers (8:9, 11), empowering believers to actualize the death of sin (8:13), leading God’s children (8:14), and instilling confidence that we are in fact God’s children (8:15–16). The Spirit inspires believers’ experience of relationship with God as Father (8:15), interceding within us on our behalf (8:26).
The subjective or relational dimension of the Spirit’s activity is evident in many of the Spirit’s works. The Spirit, for example, distributes gifts among believers (1 Cor. 12:7–11) and produces moral fruit within them (Gal. 5:22–23). That is, the Spirit is more than a doctrine to confess or to abstractly explain God’s activity; the Spirit is active in believers’ lives. The Spirit attests and communicates the message of the cross (1 Cor. 2:4); without the Spirit the message will not be understood (2:10–15).169 Nevertheless, the full activity of the Spirit is not automatic: believers might forget that the Spirit dwells among them (1 Cor. 3:16) and in them (6:19) or has righted them (6:11). This neglect does not stop the Spirit from dwelling in believers, but it may impede a degree of the Spirit’s activity.
At the same time, the Spirit does not only work in ways that exclude potential alternative or complementary natural explanations; that is a modern conception popularized in the aftermath of Hume’s essay on miracles.170 A way of thinking pervaded by the Spirit’s activity might be indistinguishable from a mind renewed to discern God’s will (Rom. 12:2) or a mind that understands the wisdom of the cross (1 Cor. 1:18, 24; 2:15–16). The Spirit touches us in multiple ways and through different aspects of our personality.171 Paul speaks not only of the Spirit bearing witness with the human spirit that believers are God’s children (Rom. 8:16) but also of the Spirit’s activity regarding thinking (8:5–7; cf. 12:2). Some Christian individuals and groups may gravitate toward one of these emphases or the other, but we are most complete when we welcome all the Spirit’s activities.
Paul’s emphasis on God’s Spirit in Romans 8 reveals that more than mere academic judgments about a text or theology is needed; genuine faith in (i.e., full recognition of) the real activity of God in one’s life enables one to live out the reality Paul describes. Such faith recognizes the present reality of God’s activity in one’s own life and community. Yet it is not simply a self-improvement technique or a matter of self-discipline; it is God’s gift in the sense that it acknowledges and so welcomes the divine initiative in Christ.
The one who trusts in Christ’s work for being put right forensically should also trust in Christ’s work for being put right behaviorally. Instead of merely trying to control their sinful impulses (though self-control is also a fruit of the Spirit, Gal. 5:23), believers may be conscious that Christ is living through them. In Pauline theology the Spirit of Christ lives in believers (Rom. 8:9–10), Christ lives in them (8:10; Gal. 2:20), and Christ is “our life” (Col. 3:3–4; cf. Phil. 1:21).172
Charles Sheldon’s late nineteenth-century question, “What would Jesus do?” is an apt one for Pauline theology, but perhaps even more fully, Paul would urge believers to consider “What is Jesus like?” and to confidently expect that same moral character to be expressed in them. Thus, we read about the “fruit” of God’s presence in believers by the Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23, 25; cf. Rom. 15:30; Eph. 5:9; Phil. 1:11), in contrast with the works that express the natural predilections of the flesh (Gal. 5:19–21).173
The Frame of Mind of the Spirit Is Peace (Rom. 8:6)174
In light of Paul’s previous argument in Romans, the general point of his mention of “death” and “life” in 8:6 seems clear enough: whereas sin results in a sentence of death, those who are in Christ receive eternal life. But what does Paul mean by “peace”? Most obviously, he means “peace with God”—reconciliation that ends one’s enmity in relation to God (Rom. 5:1, 10–11); this contrasts with the frame of mind hostile toward God in 8:7.175
Because of the ancient context in discussions of the mind, I will explore here a potential additional nuance, namely, internal peace, although it appears less explicit than peace with God. When ancient writers spoke of something like “peace” (quietness, lack of disturbance) in connection with the mind, they could refer to inner harmony or tranquility. (The information provided here, especially that from ancient philosophy, will also inform the discussion of Phil. 4:7 in chap. 7.176 It may be more relevant there than here, but it is treated here because it occurs earlier in the book.) While Paul undoubtedly thinks of more than tranquility (as I suggest below), discussions of internal tranquility among ancient philosophers could suggest that this is part of the sense that Paul and his real audience would hear in this context. At the very least, “peace” certainly ends the internal “warring” of the fleshly mind in Romans 7:23, just as “death” echoes the state of the figure in 7:10, 13, and 24 (and 5:12–21; 6:16, 21, 23; 7:5).177
Tranquil Minds in the Philosophers
Given differences in wording, Paul’s language of “peace” need not correspond with philosophic ideals of tranquility or of ending the war of passions, but the association merits consideration. Stoics valued tranquility and peace of mind,178 as did Epicureans179 and others.180 For Stoics, following Aristotle, “A virtue is a state (hexis) of mind, one that need not always be active but may precisely be activated in the appropriate circumstances.”181 Both Stoics and Epicureans sought tranquility through understanding truth.182 Not just Stoics but also others warned that ignorance and desire for pleasure caused most mortals to be perturbed in mind.183
Various philosophies claimed to provide peace and tranquility;184 this promise could contrast, as in Romans 8:6, with preoccupation with “death.” Epicureans, for example, claimed to establish peace of mind by banishing superstition and fear of death.185 Many thinkers,186 including Stoics187 and Epicureans,188 claimed that the fear of death was irrational. How bravely a philosopher dies, ancient observers often maintained, is a real test of that philosopher’s beliefs and character.189 A philosopher should remain unafraid when facing dangers.190
Consequently, one sign of true philosophers in general was to be their tranquility even in hardship.191 Granted, philosophers often fell short of this standard;192 yet they did not believe that this failing negated the value of their ideal. Many averred that uncontrolled negative emotions were harmful193 and that philosophy was instrumental in conquering useless emotions.194 Subduing the passions brought calmness of soul, without the “mental excitement” that stirred anger, wrong desire, and so forth.195 Paul’s approach to suffering is different here (Rom. 8:17–18, 35–39), but it is possible that he could have accepted a contrast between tranquility and anxiety about death if some of his first audience understood him this way (cf. 1 Cor. 15:58; 2 Cor. 4:13–14; 5:6–8; Phil. 1:20–21; 1 Thess. 4:13).
Stoics in particular emphasized tranquility and lack of internal disturbance;196 the ideal wise person was tranquil.197 For Seneca, the reward for disciplining the mind for endurance was tranquility of the soul;198 this was the opposite of such disturbing passions as anger.199 Truth liberates from error and fear and hence provides tranquility in the soul.200 The mind should be as tranquil and restful as the highest heavens.201 Another Roman Stoic, Musonius Rufus, emphasizes that the correct use of reason can lead to serenity and freedom.202 One achieves serenity by gaining the object of the only desire one can be certain to gain by seeking it exclusively—namely, virtue203—or by wishing for no more than what actually happens.204
Diaspora Jews also spoke of “peace,” or tranquility in the soul, even during difficult times.205 More relevant, Philo could contrast peace (εἰρήνη) for the mind with war within a passion-stirred soul.206 Likewise, the wise person’s thinking liberates one from wars and internal turmoil, providing calm and peace (εἰρήνη).207
Fear (discussed above) was not only a concern of philosophers. In Romans 8:15 Paul contrasts the reception of the Spirit of adoption as God’s children with the former spirit of slavery in fear; certainly, the depiction of inner chaos in 7:15–25 resembles fear much more than peace.208 In another Pauline letter, divine peace guarding the mind (Phil. 4:7) contrasts with anxiety (4:6).209
Possible Exegetical Basis for the Peaceful Mind
While such tranquility may be partly in view here, Paul may also have exegetical reasons for his view and wording, if he has access to an exegetical tradition here that bypasses the Septuagint.210 Paul would know that in Isaiah 26:3 the mind of faith has peace.211 Paul elsewhere draws on Isaiah to address the new mind (1 Cor. 2:16), and his meditation on Isaiah seems to form a significant substratum for his language elsewhere in his letters, especially Romans.212 Paul’s “life” (Rom. 8:6) could draw on various sources, but one possible source appears in the same context in Isaiah, which Paul would understand as announcing the coming resurrection (Isa. 25:8–9; 26:19), just as “life” in his own literary context involves resurrection (Rom. 8:11).213
The Hebrew term usually translated “mind” in Isaiah 26:3 is yēṣer;214 aside from its development in Jewish usage noted in my previous chapter,215 the term often meant something like “intent” or “plan.”216 The term elsewhere appears relevant to the mind or to the “intent” and “inclination” of one’s thoughts;217 as such, it could apply to something one sets one’s thought on, something like Paul’s “mind-frame” in Romans 8:5–7.
The term often translated “steadfast” (e.g., NRSV, NASB, NIV), describing the mind, probably occurs in relation to trust (trusting in the Lord appears in the verse’s following line).218 The cognate verb for “trust” here appears elsewhere in Isaiah for putting one’s trust in the Lord or others,219 including in the following verse (Isa. 26:4). The term appears parallel to faith in Psalm 78:22, where Israel in the wilderness did not believe in God or trust his salvation.220
The sense is something like, “You will guard/keep/watch over in full peace (prosperity, well-being) the one whose thoughts depend on you, because that person trusts in you.” Thus, a mind established by faith, trusting God, secures peace.
The context in Isaiah also supports this reading. The “righteous” nation keeps fidelity, that is, is “faithful” (Isa. 26:2); one should trust the Lord, for he is trustworthy (26:4), and God the righteous one will be with the “righteous” ones (26:7), who wait for him (26:8). God will establish “peace” for them (26:12).221 In Isaiah 26:3 the mind that leans on God, trusting in him (thus, the mind of faith), is the mind that will have “peace.”222 Why would Paul not simply quote a text so fertile for discussing faith (as he quotes both texts linking faith and righteousness in Rom. 1:17; 4:3; Gal. 3:6, 11)? If he reasons from midrashic exegesis here, he may nevertheless see little value in quoting directly a version of the text that his hearers could not recognize.223
Community Tranquility
Given the context about the mind, Paul might intend “peace” to include internal tranquility.224 Nevertheless, his usage elsewhere suggests that it involves more than this; often Pauline “peace” involves nonhostility, reconciliation, or unity (with God or humans).225 Indeed, the normal semantic range of the term involves peace with others or wholeness, more than internal tranquility,226 and Paul’s audience would probably envision the relational dimension, especially given the context of this letter and its likely setting of Jewish-Gentile conflict. Peace should be with all (Rom. 12:18), but Paul emphasizes peace with others especially when he addresses differences in the community (14:17, 19; 15:13).
Most important in this context, in contrast to the mind-frame of the Spirit that involves peace, the mind-frame of the flesh involves enmity with God (Rom. 8:7). Indeed, given this context, Paul could even deliberately emphasize objective peace with God over the subjective tranquility sought by philosophers. Given Paul’s language of internal warring in 7:23, however, Paul may well mean both senses, and certainly they are not incompatible.
Contemporary analogies suggest that at least many urban hearers would have found Paul’s claim of peace with God to be intelligible. For Stoics, any wrong act was impiety against the gods,227 and those ruled by folly were enemies of the gods,228 always in disharmony against them.229 Paul’s ideal types or spheres involve the two kinds of humanity with their contrasting statuses before God. Paul’s reference to the fleshly mind’s inability to submit to God’s law (Rom. 8:7) alludes to the mind’s failure in 7:23, 25; only the Spirit can inscribe the law in the heart (8:2–4).
Conclusion
Believers should embrace not only the reality of their own new identity in union with Christ but also the reality that Christ and God’s own Spirit live inside them. These are greater resources for achieving moral and civic good than the sorts of cognitive resources to which most other thinkers appealed. Still, dependence on divine peace was intelligible to Paul’s contemporaries, though not pervasive.
For Paul, the “frame of mind involving the flesh” is the disposition or habitual way of thinking dominated by worldly, purely human concerns. Self-focused on one’s personal bodily existence, this mental lifestyle is incapable of fulfilling the righteous purpose of God’s law. Even its best efforts yield only the sort of self-consumed struggle depicted in Romans 7:15–24 (especially in 7:22–23, where even the law-informed mind is helpless to defeat bodily passions).
By contrast, the “frame of mind involving the Spirit” is a righteous mental lifestyle in which God’s presence by the Spirit makes the decisive difference. This frame of mind involves life and peace, possibly evoking the context of Isaiah 26:3 (though the allusion remains uncertain). “Peace” may partly involve tranquility, an emphasis in some ancient discussions of thinking (also contrasted by some ancient thinkers with fear of death and the restless mind of divided allegiances such as appears in Rom. 7:15–25). Paul’s emphasis in the context of Romans itself probably especially also seeks peace in relationships in the wrongly divided Christian community.
1. See BDAG. For something like disposition, see 2 Macc. 7:21; 13:9. For “the direction of the will” as well as thinking, see Schreiner, Romans, 411; similarly Sanday and Headlam, Romans, 195; for a settled way of thinking or attitude, see Dunn, Romans, 1:425 (citing other Pauline texts). Cf. Aquinas, lecture 1 on Rom. 8:5: “the right sense in spiritual matters,” and thinking well about God (Levy, Krey, and Ryan, Romans, 181). The term is a favorite of Philo’s.
2. For attitude, cf., e.g., Philo Mos. 1.266; for disposition, cf. also Jos. Ant. 1.232; 2.232.
3. Philo Creation 17; Mos. 1.259; thoughtfulness in Embassy 62. Cf. Jos. Ant. 12.195 (where the context suggests wisdom, shrewdness, or a sort of business competence).
4. Philo Good Person 130. Cf. the outlook in Jos. Ant. 2.40.
5. Philo Drunkenness 198.
6. Philo Dreams 2.79; Good Person 62, 111, 119; Flacc. 64; Embassy 215 (cf. Jos. Ant. 4.245).
7. Philo Good Person 24 (cf. subdued, Jos. Ant. 3.58; 5.186).
8. Philo Cher. 64; Flight 207; Names 176; Abr. 223; Spec. Laws 1.293; Virt. 165, 172; Rewards 74, 119; Hypoth. 11.16; cf. 2 Macc. 13:9.
9. Discouraged from hardship (Philo Jos. 144) or by those who weaken their courage (Mos. 1.325; cf. Hypoth. 6.1; Jos. Ant. 14.355).
10. Philo Jos. 4; Mos. 1.51, 149; Virt. 71, 216; Good Person 121.
11. Philo Mos. 1.40.
12. Philo Sober 20; Abr. 26.
13. Philo Mos. 1.309; Virt. 3; cf. also 2 Macc. 7:21.
14. Masculine associations appear positively in Philo Dreams 2.9; Jos. 79; Spec. Laws 4.45 (thus not led by the crowd to evil); feminine aspects appear negatively in Posterity 165; Giants 4; also Jos. War 2.373.
15. Philo Drunkenness 128.
16. Philo Dreams 1.140.
17. It can be subject to pleasure (Philo Heir 269); not favoring pleasure (in contrast to soft women, Dreams 2.9); or masculine and thus avoiding passion (Jos. 79).
18. Philo Dreams 1.39.
19. For a sense resembling “mind,” cf., e.g., Jos. Ant. 2.40 (perhaps 2.229).
20. See pp. 128–30.
21. Talbert, Romans, 204–5. Cf. also the citation of Aug. Spir. Lett. 19, in Talbert, Romans, 209: “Law was given that grace might be sought, grace was given that the law might be fulfilled.” Cf. Jesus’s contrast between thinking about divine matters and merely human ones in Mark 8:33.
22. Clem. Alex. Instr. 6.36 (in Bray, Romans, 207) applies the fleshly mind to those still being converted; Origen Comm. Rom. on 8:5 (CER 3:298; Bray, Romans, 207), to Jews under the law (an opinion that would be relevant for most modern perspectives on Rom. 7:7–25).
23. E.g., Max. Tyre Or. 33.3. See above, p. 20.
24. E.g., Mus. Ruf. frg. 41, p. 136.22, 24–26.
25. Sen. Y. Dial. 4.12.4–5.
26. Iambl. Soul 8.39, §385 (on Plotinus and most Platonists).
27. They regarded even mind and soul as material entities; see Arius Did. 2.7.5b7, p. 20.28–30. Contrast Philo and possibly Middle Platonism in Robertson, “Mind.”
28. Philo Unchangeable 110–11 (in 111, φιλοσώματος καὶ φιλοπαθὴς νοῦς). Philo also condemns the body-loving mind in Abr. 103; and the passion-loving mind in Agr. 83; Migr. 62.
29. Philo Alleg. Interp. 1.32–33. For the contrast between Philo’s heavenly, rational man of Gen. 1 and the earthly man of Gen. 2–3, see my brief discussion below, pp. 192–93.
30. Philo Heir 57 (σαρκὸς ἡδονῇ).
31. See pp. 80, 86–88.
32. See, e.g., Davies, Paul, 26. Cf. fuller discussion in Moreno García, Sabiduría del Espíritu.
33. See, e.g., Davies, Paul, 18; Flusser, Judaism, 64–65; Frey, “Antithese.”
34. Frey, “Antithese”; Flusser, Judaism, 64–65; cf. Pryke, “Spirit and Flesh,” 358.
35. E.g., 1QHa 7.25; 12.30; 15.40; 1QS 11.9, 12; T. Jud. 19:4; T. Zeb. 9:7. Cf. Wilcox, “Dualism,” 94–95. In Paul, see, e.g., Dunn, Romans, 1:370; Dunn, Theology, 67–73.
36. Johannine theology also emphasizes God’s presence with believers through the Spirit, recognized by faith (see esp. John 14:16–26; 16:13–15; comment in Keener, Gift, 27–30; for exegetical details, see Keener, John, 932–79, 1035–43, esp. 972–78, 1041–42).
37. Quoting Wright, Faithfulness, 1:507, regarding Rom. 8:3.
38. Some argue for a particular command here, such as not coveting (Rom. 7:7; Ziesler, “Requirement”) or the law of love (13:8–10; Gal. 5:14; Sandt, “Research”); others argue instead for the principles of the law as a whole (Dunn, Romans, 1:423).
39. Cf. Chrys. Hom. Rom. 13 on Rom. 8:1 (in Bray, Romans, 200). The issue here probably goes beyond being merely forensic; see Schreiner, Romans, 404–5. Against a merely forensic approach (despite Paul’s other forensic language), Paul goes on to specify those who walk by the Spirit (Rom. 8:4), involving the law of the Spirit of life (8:2), and to speak of the mind of the Spirit that, in contrast to the mind of the flesh, can submit to God’s law (8:5–7, esp. 8:7).
40. See Paul’s usage in the context of Gal. 5:16 (and cf. Acts 21:21; 1 John 2:3–6), though he usually employs the phrase for behavior more generally. The language of “walking” evokes the Semitic idiom for behavior (e.g., 2 Kings 21:21; 22:2; 2 Chron. 6:27; 34:2; Ps. 143:8; Prov. 2:20; 10:9; 1QS 4.11–12; 1QHa 7.31; 12.22, 25; 1 En. 82:4; 4 Ezra 7:122; Tob. 1:3; 4:5) and might evoke the idea of walking according to God’s law, as in, e.g., Exod. 18:20; Lev. 26:3; Deut. 5:33; 8:6; 13:5; 26:17; 28:9; 30:16; 1 Kings 2:3; 3:14; Ps. 119:1; Isa. 2:3; Jub. 21:2; 25:10; 1 En. 91:19; 94:1; 1QS 2.2; 3.9, 18; 4.6; 5.10; 9.8–9, 19; 1QSb 3.24; CD 2.15–16; 7.4–7; 4Q524 frgs. 6–13.1; 4Q390 frg. 1.3; 11QT 54.17; 59.16; Bar. 1:18; 2:10; 4:13; Wis. 6:4 (though it may not yet usually be legal; cf. Green, “Halakhah”); and in later halakah (cf., e.g., Hultgren, Romans, 248, 300, and his sources). Writing in Greek, the LXX translators and Josephus tend to avoid the idiom, although Gentiles could use walking for meditation (O’Sullivan, “Walking”; O’Sullivan, “Mind”) or perambulatory lectures (Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 108.3; Eunapius Lives 481; esp. Aristotle’s school, cf. Lucian Dem. 54); cf. perhaps Arius Did. 2.7.5c, p. 28.8; 2.7.5g, p. 32.5; 2.7.11e, p. 68.14.
41. Cf., e.g., Hunter, Gospel according to Paul, 18; Schlatter (Romans, 180) emphasizes the bodily aspect.
42. Cf. Neh. 2:12; 7:5; Wis. 9:11. A philosopher could speak of being led by God by being of one mind with him (consenting to his will; Epict. Diatr. 2.16.42), but Paul describes the Spirit in more active terms than Stoic resignation.
43. For the concern for vindicating God’s justice, see, e.g., Rom. 3:3–8; 9:6, 14, 19. Later rabbis similarly expected the righteous members of various groups to vindicate God’s justice when he judges unrepentant members of such groups, such as Gentiles (Lev. Rab. 2:9; Pesiq. Rab. 35:3; cf. Matt. 12:38–42) or the poor and the rich (Abot R. Nat. 6 A; 12, §30 B; b. Yoma 35b; 3 En. 4:3).
44. E.g., Flusser, Judaism, 62–65.
45. On this sense of φρόνημα, see BDAG. I generally translate it differently below to avoid an awkward double genitive construction in English. In any case, it suggests not every individual thought but a settled way of thinking, a pervasive conviction or direction of thought.
46. Popular philosophy affected popular discourse; we should not presuppose that all Roman Christians were highly educated, despite the sophisticated level of Paul’s argumentation (cf. Rom. 15:14). Paul was well educated, but his language coincides at points with popular philosophy that required no particular training in a philosophic school.
47. Most scholars, in fact, recognize that Paul’s audience in Rome was predominantly Gentile (cf. Rom. 1:5–6, 13–16; 11:13); see, e.g., Nanos, Mystery, 77–84; Dunn, Romans, 1:xlv, liii; Tobin, Rhetoric, 37; Matera, Romans, 7; Jewett, Romans, 70. Moreover, Hellenistic anthropology deeply impacted Jewish sources, not only those widely acknowledged as hellenized (e.g., Let. Aris. 236; Jos. Ag. Ap. 2.203) but even sources normally reflecting a more traditional Semitic perspective (1 En. 102:5; Sipre Deut. 306.28.2; see discussion below, pp. 274–75). For some dualistic language in Paul, see also, e.g., Vogel, “Reflexions”; Pelser, “Antropologie.”
48. Mus. Ruf. 16, p. 106.3–6, 12–16.
49. Lutz, Musonius, here 28 (citing Mus. Ruf. frg. 36).
50. Arius Did. 2.7.5b5, p. 18.15–17.
51. Lutz, Musonius, 28.
52. Sen. Y. Nat. Q. 3.pref.11–15; Epict. Diatr. 2.19.32; cf. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 96.1–2; 123.3; Dial. 1.3.1; Mus. Ruf. 17, p. 108.37–38; Epict. Diatr. 2.5.4; 2.14.7–8; for a later Platonist, Porph. Marc. 30.470–76. For Stoic unconcern with matters not under one’s control, see, e.g., Sen. Y. Dial. 7.8.3; Epict. Diatr. 1.12.23; 1.29.22–29; 4.1.133; Lucian Phil. Sale 21; but they did recognize some externals as good (Arius Did. 2.7.5e, p. 30.5–6).
53. Diog. Laert. 7.1.110.
54. This cognate of φρόνημα should not be confused with it, but their semantic ranges overlap significantly (see BDAG).
55. E.g., Mus. Ruf. 4, p. 44.11–12; 4, p. 48.1; 6, p. 52.21; 9, p. 74.26; 17, p. 108.9–10; Arius Did. 2.7.5b1, p. 12.13–22; 2.7.5b2, p. 14.1–4; 2.7.5b5, p. 18.21–35; Men. Rhet. 1.3, 361.14–15; 2.5, 397.22–23; cf. Arius Did. 2.7.5a, pp. 10–11.7–9; 2.7.5b, pp. 10–11.16–21. For rulers and governors, Dio Chrys. Or. 3.7, 58; Men. Rhet. 2.1–2, 373.7–8; 2.3, 380.1–3; 2.3, 385.28–386.6; 2.10, 415.24–26; for cities, Dio Chrys. Or. 32.37; perhaps even in Josephus’s retelling of biblical narratives (Feldman, “Jehu”).
56. E.g., Arius Did. 2.7.5f, p. 30.22, 33.
57. The virtue was praiseworthy in cities (Men. Rhet. 1.3, 364.10–16) and rulers (Men. Rhet. 2.1–2, 376.13–23; 2.3, 385.28–386.6; 2.10, 415.26–416.1). See also Aubenque, “Prudence.”
58. Arius Did. 2.7.5b1, p. 12.13–16, 22–25; 2.7.5b2, p. 14.4–5, 12–14; 2.7.5b5, p. 18.21–26; 2.7.11e, p. 68.12–16; 2.7.11i, p. 78.12–14.
59. Mus. Ruf. 16, p. 106.16. For focusing thoughts on the nature of the universe, hence accepting necessity, see also Mus. Ruf. frg. 42, p. 138.9–11.
60. Mus. Ruf. 3, p. 42.3. I discuss this perspective further below, p. 136.
61. T. Reub. 4:8. Evil enters through the mind (e.g., T. Iss. 4:4).
62. T. Ash. 1:7–9.
63. Wis. 6:15; 8:17.
64. Let. Aris. 236 (cf. 212).
65. Let. Aris. 322. Later Gentile intellectuals also spoke of philosophy, literature, arts, and so forth as better concerns for the soul than interest in Aphrodite’s ways (Men. Rhet. 2.3, 385.24–28).
66. Philo Unchangeable 46.
67. Let. Aris. 244; cf. Jos. Ant. 18.18; T. Iss. 4:3. Jewish sources can also tend to emphasize God’s sovereignty over the mind (Let. Aris. 227, 237–38, 243).
68. E.g., Pindar Ol. 11.19–20; 13.12; Quint. Decl. 268.6; perhaps Max. Tyre Or. 8.7.
69. E.g., Arius Did. 2.7.11m, p. 86.24–28. For acquired vices, see Iambl. Pyth. Life 31.205.
70. Pace Watson, Gentiles, 51–54, 88, 92, 95, 97, we need not envision an especially sectarian context for Paul’s contrasts (cf. Segal, Convert, 65–66, suggesting conversion as a sociological background for the contrasts), though such an explanation has also been suggested for Qumran (cf. Duhaime, “Dualisme”). Greek dialectic had argued antithetically, using dialectic, since at least Protagoras in the fifth century BCE (Diog. Laert. 9.8.51). For the use of dialectic and antithetical contrasts in rhetoric, see, e.g., Hermog. Inv. 4.2.173–76; Method 15.431–32; Rhet. Alex. 26, 1435b.25–39; Dion. Hal. Lysias 14; Anderson, Glossary, 21–22; Rowe, “Style,” 142.
71. Modern Western thinkers, for whom language often should quantify matters precisely, may struggle with such language until they recognize that it was a familiar rhetorical approach.
72. Although I find Engberg-Pedersen’s insights very helpful with regard to Stoicism here, critics are correct to note that some of these insights would apply to many other settings as well (cf. Wright, Faithfulness, 1394–95).
73. See Arius Did. 2.7.11g, p. 72.5–24; cf. 2.7.5b8, p. 22.5–14; 2.7.5b10, p. 24.5–17; 2.7.5b12, p. 24.28–30; 2.7.5c, p. 28.3–16. Thus, the good person is as good as Jupiter (Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 73.12–16).
74. Arius Did. 2.7.5b8, p. 22.5 (trans. Pomeroy, 23).
75. Arius Did. 2.7.5b5, p. 18.17–20; 2.7.5b7, p. 20.25–26. Most ancient philosophic schools agreed that virtue was a settled disposition rather than partial (Engberg-Pedersen, “Vices,” 611–13; Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 52; cf. Max. Tyre Or. 8.7).
76. Diog. Laert. 7.1.125 (reporting the Stoic view).
77. Arius Did. 2.7.11L, p. 85.34–37; p. 87.1–4, 13–20; 2.7.11o, p. 96.22–29; 2.7.11p, p. 96.30–34.
78. For one nuanced portrait, see Engberg-Pedersen, “Vices,” 612–13 (on three types of person). For Stoic depictions of the ideal sage as hyperbolic, see also Liu, “Nature,” 248.
79. E.g., Arius Did. 2.7.5b8, p. 22.11–14.
80. Arius Did. 2.7.5b10, p. 24.5–6 (just as an ideal flute- or lyre-player plays the flute or lyre well, by definition, 24.6–9); 2.7.11i, p. 78.12; 2.7.11k, p. 84.15–16. By contrast, “the worthless person does everything he does badly” (2.7.5b10, p. 24.15–17 [trans. Pomeroy, 25]; 2.7.11i, p. 78.15–16; 2.7.11k, p. 80.26–31; p. 82.5–18; p. 84.15, 17).
81. Arius Did. 2.7.11m, p. 94.19–35; p. 96.2–14; 2.7.11s, p. 98.34–36; p. 100.1–3. Likewise, a wise person cannot get drunk (2.7.11m, p. 88.34–39).
82. Arius Did. 2.7.11g, p. 70.1–3.
83. Arius Did. 2.7.11g, p. 70.31–33.
84. E.g., Epict. Diatr. 1.15.6–8. For continuing memories of the former life, see Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 72–73.
85. See, e.g., Cic. Fin. 4.24.67; Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 87.5; 94.50; Epict. Diatr. 1.4.1; 2.17.39–40; Encheir. 12–13; 51.2; Lucian Hermot. 63; Marc. Aur. 1.17.4; Diog. Laert. 7.1.25; Arius Did. 2.7.7b, p. 44.26; Plut. Progr. Virt. (protesting the Stoic approach); cf. Motto, “Progress”; Deming, “Indifferent Things,” 390; Malherbe, Moral Exhortation, 43; Meeks, Moral World, 50; Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 71. For non-Stoics on progress, see, e.g., Philod. Death 17.37–38; 18.10–11; they emphasized progress toward virtue even more than did Stoics (Stowers, “Resemble,” 91).
86. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 87.4–5. So rare was the ideal sage that Seneca thought one appeared only every half millennium (Ep. Lucil. 42.1; Meeks, Moral World, 50; cf. Brouwer, Sage, 106, 110). Galen (Grief 71) questions whether a full passionless (ἀπαθής) wise man exists, recognizing that some extremities could disturb him (72a).
87. Sen. Y. Dial. 7.11.1 (trans. Basore, LCL, 2:125).
88. “It is of virtue, not of myself, that I am speaking, and my quarrel is against all vices, especially against my own” (Sen. Y. Dial. 7.18.1; trans. Basore, LCL, 2:145). In a different culture, cf. similarly the ideals of Confucius (Anal. 91 [14.13]), who humbly acknowledges that he has not yet attained particular virtues (Anal. 71 [14.30]; 178 [7.16]).
89. Mus. Ruf. 6, p. 54.35–37; p. 56.1–7.
90. Erskine, Stoa, 74, citing esp. Plut. Stoic Cont. 1048e (SVF 3.668); secondarily Sext. Emp. (SVF 3.657), Plut. Comm. Conc. 1076bc.
91. Klauck, Context, 376; Erskine, Stoa, 74; Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 61–62.
92. See Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 70–72.
93. Cf. Meeks, Moral World, 45, citing Plut. Progr. Virt, Mor. 76B.
94. Lucian Hermot. 76–77. Some Greco-Roman thinkers also argued for degrees of virtue and vice, against the Stoic ideal types (Cic. Fin. 4.24.66–68); later Platonists averred that the philosopher could be virtuous and wise by nature yet still need guidance in that direction (Plot. Enn. 1.3.3).
95. Cic. Fin. 4.24.67.
96. For the usefulness of paradox in ancient rhetoric, see Anderson, Glossary, 88. For the paradoxical tension between sinless expectation and actual sinning outside Paul, cf. 1 John 1:8–10; 2:1; 3:6, 9.
97. Conzelmann, Theology, 14, suggesting this dualism as an influence on early Jewish and Christian dualism (many have suggested influence on the Dead Sea Scrolls; see Fritsch, Community, 73). Against this, Gordon (Civilizations, 190) suggests dualism even in Canaanite thought, though adducing mostly divine warrior imagery. Some dualism may even appear in Thracian cults (Bianchi, Essays, 151–56). For clear Zoroastrian dualism, see Yamauchi, Persia, 438–40.
98. Aeschines Tim. 31; Max. Tyre Or. 8.7.
99. Max. Tyre Or. 33.2. Suggestions of dualism in Plato could be developed further by his later auditors (Nock, “Gnosticism,” 266–67, citing Pol. 269E).
100. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 52, citing Arist. N.E. 1.13.17, 1102b26–28; 6.13.2, 1144b16; 7.8.4, 1151a11–20.
101. Eurip. frg. 954 (trans. Collard and Cropp, LCL, 8:549).
102. Thus, the author of a wisdom psalm praises the wholly righteous (Ps. 119:1–3) and then pleads to be among them (119:5). For the righteous and the wicked, see, e.g., Ps. 1:5; Prov. 10:3, 6–7, 11, 16, 20, 24–25, 28, 30, 32; 4Q511 frg. 63, col. 3.4. For the wise and the foolish, see, e.g., Prov. 10:1, 14; 13:20; 14:1, 3, 24; 4Q301 frg. 2a.1; 4Q548 frg. 1ii 2.12. Ancient Egyptian wisdom tradition had a similar contrast, albeit on somewhat different social grounds (Morris, Judgment, 13). For dualism in wisdom and apocalyptic sources, see, e.g., Gammie, “Dualism.”
103. Sir. 33:14 (NRSV); see also 33:15.
104. T. Ash. 1:3–5 (OTP 1:816–17); for the contrasting impulses, see discussion in chap. 3.
105. E.g., Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 8.3; 27.4; Dio Chrys. Or. 1.68–81; Diogenes Ep. 30, to Hicetas; Max. Tyre Or. 14.1–2; Deut. 30:15; Ps. 1:1; m. Ab. 2:9; T. Ash. 1:3, 5; Matt. 7:13–14; Did. 1.1–6.2; Barn. 18.1–21.9; Keener, Matthew, 250; other sources in Aune, Dictionary of Rhetoric, 478.
106. Talbert, Romans, 203.
107. E.g., 1QM 1.1, 11; 13.16; 1Q34bis frg. 3, col. 1.5; 4Q473 frg. 1. Dunn, Romans, 1:425, also compares 1QS 3.13–23 (noting parallels to Paul’s contrasts in 1QS 3.18, 20–21; 4.6–18), noting that even there “the covenanters themselves belong to both groups (1QS 4.23–25 . . .).” Cf. both moral (Flusser, Judaism, 25–28; Driver, Scrolls, 550–62) and eschatological (see Jeremias, “Significance”) dualism in the Scrolls; eschatology and God’s sovereignty limit the Scrolls’ cosmic dualism (1QS 4.17–20); also cf. the contrast between the two spirits in 1QS 4.2–14 (Duhaime, “Voies”).
108. See, e.g., 1QS 3.7; 4.21; 4Q255 frg. 2.1; cf. Chevallier, Ancien Testament, 56–57; Keener, Spirit, 8–10; Keener, Acts, 1:532–34; Coppens, “Don,” 211–12, 222.
109. See esp. 1QS 3.19. A portion of both wisdom and truth inhabited everyone, albeit in different measures (1QS 4.24). In context it might be debated whether this was to stop after joining the community, but it seems more likely that the Manual of Discipline expects it to cease after the eschaton.
110. E.g., 1QS 11.10–17; 1QHa 5.33–34; 12.30–38; 4Q264 frg. 1.1; cf. 1QHa 11.21–26.
111. For their “perfection” or completeness by some standard, see, e.g., 1QS 4.22; 8.25; 10.22; 1QM 14.7; 4Q403 frg. 1, col. 1.22; 4Q404 frg. 2.3; 4Q405 frg. 3, col. 2.13; frg. 13.6; 4Q491 frgs. 8–10, col. 1.5; 1QHa 8.35; 9.38; but contrast 1QHa 12.30–31; 17.13; 22.33.
112. E.g., Abot R. Nat. 35, §77 B; Sipre Deut. 48.1.3.
113. Moore, Judaism, 1:467–68; Flusser, Judaism, 62.
114. Dunn, Romans, 1:425; Dunn, Theology, 478, favors ideal types yet argues against dividing humanity in a binary way, which is essentially what ideal types do. Still, no one fully met the types in practice, which may be close to Dunn’s point.
115. Cf. Chrys. Hom. Gen. 22.10 (trans. Bray, Romans, 211): “You are not in the flesh not because you are not clad in flesh but because in spite of being clad in flesh you rise above the thinking of the flesh.” This does not mean that one cannot marginalize the Spirit to a dangerous extent; apostasy remains possible (Lambrecht, “Exhortation”; cf. Rom. 8:13).
116. For the related experience of Christ and of the Spirit, see, e.g., Keck, Romans, 200; Toit, “In Christ.” That Jesus can at times assume for Paul the divine role played by deity in philosophers seems clear even in the context of Rom. 8, e.g., with the “Spirit of Christ” (8:9; see Turner, “Spirit of Christ,” esp. 436; Fee, “Christology and Pneumatology,” esp. 331; Hamilton, Spirit and Eschatology, 28–29) and possibly the sending of the Son (8:3; see discussions in Adinolfi, “L’invio”; Wanamaker, “Agent”; Byrne, “Pre-existence”; elsewhere, cf. Howell, “Interchange”).
117. Whether or not all of Paul’s Roman audience would have understood him on their first hearing of 8:6, they would quickly hear 8:27, and both Phoebe and Paul’s former colleagues in Rome could probably explain his usage to them (cf. esp. Rom. 16:1–5, 7). Like literary criticism’s ideal reader (with Johnson, Romans, 19–20), ancient readers and auditors often heard a passage in light of the entire work, which they would read or hear multiple times (Quint. Inst. 10.1.20–21; Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 108.24–25; Hermog. Method 13.428; Philost. Hrk. 11.5).
118. E.g., Joel 2:28–29; esp. Ezek. 36:27 with Jer. 31:33. Cf. 1QS 4.21 with Ezek. 36:25–27.
119. Ancient hearers could understand a divine intuition or voice that could supplement the more ordinary divine gift of wisdom; see Apul. De deo Socr. 162–66. Cf. Neh. 7:5.
120. Paul distinguishes the human spirit, apparently an affective element of the human personality, from the rational element in 1 Cor. 14:14–15 (in the context of 14:13–16, Paul refers to prayer in tongues with one’s spirit and interpretation through the understanding, both inspired, in light of 12:7–11, by the same Spirit); cf. Marc. Aur. 12.3; Ridderbos, Paul: Outline, 121.
121. Cf. Edwards, “Light,” 139 (delivered in 1733 and influenced by Locke’s psychology): “The Spirit of God . . . may indeed act upon the mind of a natural man, but he acts in the mind of a saint as an indwelling vital principle. . . . [H]e unites himself with the mind of a saint, takes him for his temple, actuates and influences him as a new supernatural principle of life and action . . . exerting his own nature in the exercise of their faculties.” This was not revealing new doctrine, Edwards warns (in opposition to certain movements of his day, probably including contemporary elements of the Quakers); instead, the Spirit provided a sense of God’s holiness, moved the saint’s reason toward truth, and generated understanding and faith. Cf. here also McClymond and McDermott, Theology of Edwards, 416–17, 420–21; for Edwards, the affections holistically include intellect and will, as well as emotions (312–13). Cf. Calvin, Commentary on Galatians 2:20, in Bray, Galatians, Ephesians, 80–81; esp. Rudolf Gwalther, Sermons on Galatians, on Gal. 3:5 (ibid., 94).
122. Paul cites “the mind of the Lord” from Isa. 40:13 LXX, but the context of Paul’s own argument (1 Cor. 2:11–12) suggests that he is aware of the Hebrew reading in Isaiah, namely, “the Spirit of the Lord.”
123. See discussion on pp. 196, 201–6.
124. Val. Max. 7.2.ext.1a.
125. Eurip. frg. 1018. Collard and Cropp (LCL, 8:577n1) suggest another possible interpretation but note that we (and probably many ancient interpreters) lack the saying’s context.
126. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 124.23; Porph. Marc. 11.191–93; 26.409–10; cf. Mus. Ruf. 17, p. 108.8–22.
127. Ael. Arist. Def. Or. 409–10, §139D. Deliberation was the most divine part of human matters (Rhet. Alex. pref. 1420b.20–21).
128. See Mus. Ruf. frg. 38, p. 136.4–5 (Lutz’s translation captures the sense, although Musonius here says simply τῷ θεῷ); Epict. Diatr. 2.16.42 (ὁμογνωμονῶ); 2.19.26–27 (where it corresponds to seeking to become divine). On thinking like Zeus, cf. Dio Chrys. Or. 4.42–43. One should follow the wisdom of the gods and be “of one mind” (ὁμογνώμονας) with them (Libanius Thesis 1.3).
129. Epict. Diatr. 2.19.26–27.
130. Epict. Diatr. 2.8.2.
131. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 41.4–5 (trans. Gummere, LCL, 1:274–75): Souls that disregard this world’s troubles or pleasures are divine, stirred from heaven (caelestio potentia agitat). Cf. the divine law stamped on the soul in Porph. Marc. 26.419–20.
132. Sen. Y. Nat. Q. 1.pref.14.
133. Dio Chrys. Or. 4.43. For Zeus as “the supreme Mind,” see Max. Tyre Or. 4.8.
134. Isoc. Demon. 32 (trans. Norlin, LCL, 1:23, 25), though also advising contemplating mortality in the right ways.
135. Epict. Diatr. 2.16.42; 2.19.26–27.
136. Sen. Y. Nat. Q. 1.pref.17 (trans. Corcoran, LCL, 1:13).
137. Porph. Marc. 19.314–16 (trans. O’Brien Wicker, 63). Line 314 reads ἔνθεον φρόνημα, probably suggesting inspiration. In 19.318–19 he urges that the mind (νοῦς) be a temple (νεώς—Attic for ναός) for God, possibly playing on words; cf. 11.191–93, 196–98.
138. Porph. Marc. 26.409–10.
139. Porph. Marc. 16.265–67 (trans. O’Brien Wicker, 59). On Platonists desiring to be like God, see Nock, Christianity, 55.
140. Porph. Marc. 13.233–34 (in turn, the soul should obey the mind, and the body the soul; 13.234–35).
141. E.g., Philo Alleg. Interp. 2.10, 23; Unchangeable 46–48.
142. Philo Dreams 1.140.
143. Lat.: sacer intra nos spiritus sedet.
144. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 41.1–2 (trans. Gummere, 1:273). Some others also recognized the need for God to help virtue prevail in mortals’ souls (Max. Tyre Or. 38.6). In Porph. Marc. 12.207 God is “responsible for all the good that we do,” whereas (12.208) we are responsible for our evils.
145. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 73.16.
146. In light of 2 Cor. 3:3, 6 (cf. Rom. 7:6), a midrashic combination of Ezek. 36:26–27 and Jer. 31:31–34 informs Paul’s understanding (cf., e.g., Bruce, Apostle, 199; Dunn, Romans, 1:417). The LXX of Jer. 31:33 (ET) has the law in the διάνοια (mind, understanding) and καρδία (also including cognitive elements) as well as “knowing” (both γινώσκω and οἴδα) God in 31:34 (ET; 38:33–34 LXX).
147. Philo Abr. 80; cf. Isaacs, Spirit, 50; Dillon, “Transcendence in Philo”; Hagner, “Vision,” 89–90.
148. Cf. 1 Cor. 2:16; 12:8. For a case for this idea in Letter of Aristeas, see Scott, “Revelation.” Cf. perhaps Ign. Trall. 4.1: “φρονῶ ἐν θεῷ.”
149. See again discussion on pp. 201–6.
150. See the discussion in Keener, Acts, 1:532–37; for the biblical background, see, e.g., Keener, “Spirit,” 485–87.
151. See fuller discussion in Keener, Acts, 2:1810.
152. Apul. De deo Socr. 157.
153. Plut. Uned. R. 3, Mor. 780CD. This reference could easily be figurative.
154. Porph. Marc. 21.333–36; cf. 19.321–22; 21.331–32, 336–39 (ἐνοικέω); cf. demons in the souls as the cause of wickedness in 11.201–2.
155. Epict. Diatr. 1.14.13–14 (trans. Oldfather, LCL, 1:104–5); cf. Diatr. 2.8.14; Marc. Aur. 2.13, 17; 3.5–6; 3.12; 3.16.2; 5.10.2. These passages probably also involve the mind’s divinity.
156. Epict. Diatr. 2.8.10–11 (trans. Oldfather, LCL, 1:260–61). One could beseech Mithras to “dwell” in one’s ψυχή (PGM 4.709–10), an entreaty that might have erotic overtones (so Betz, Magical Papyri, 52) or might even reflect Christian influence.
157. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 73.16 (after arguing that good people are divine, 73.12–16). In a different vein Ovid (Fast. 6.5–6) claims that a god is in mortals, leaving them seeds (semina) of inspiration; cf. divinizing intimacy and union in Iambl. Pyth. Life 33.240.
158. Wis. 7:27; see also 1:4, 8:9, 16; 10:16.
159. L.A.B. 28:6 (OTP 2:341; Latin in Kisch, p. 195).
160. T. Sim. 4:4.
161. T. Zeb. 8:2.
162. T. Dan 5:1 (OTP 1:809; Greek in Charles, Testaments, 136: κατοικήσει ἐν ὑμῖν).
163. T. Jos. 10:2 (OTP 1:821; Charles, Testaments, 196: κατοικήσει ἐν ὑμῖν).
164. Cf. Sellin, “Hintergründe.” See, e.g., Philo Cher. 98, 100; Dreams 1.149; Mos. 1.277. Philo speaks elsewhere of the body as the soul’s dwelling place.
165. Davies, Paul, 341, cites Yalqut on Gen. 49 for the righteous doing everything in the Holy Spirit; this language appears rare in rabbinic sources, but in the Dead Sea Scrolls God’s Spirit purifies a person (1QS 3.6–9; 3.25–4.5; 4.21; 1QHa 8.30; cf. 4Q444 frgs. 1–4i + 5.3–4). The idea that God enables one to perform good appears more widely; see, e.g., Jub. 1:19; Let. Aris. 243, 252, 274, 276, 278, 282, 287, 290.
166. With, e.g., Fee, Presence; Schreiber, “Erfahrungen”; Stegman, “Holy”; Jervis, “Spirit.”
167. Dunn, “Gospel,” 148–51; Dunn, Romans, 1:429–30; Matera, Romans, 208–9.
168. Despite the parallel with what may be the future resurrection in Rom. 6:5, the aorist subjunctive in 6:4 probably invites present behavior; possibly contrary to traditional understandings of tense forms here, compare the present subjunctive of ἐπιμένωμεν with the aorist subjunctive for πλεονάσῃ in 6:1 and perhaps the aorist indicative with the future indicative in 6:2.
169. Likewise, only some hearers would genuinely recognize the inspired message of the gospel as truly God’s message (1 Thess. 2:13; cf. Mark 4:15–20).
170. See Keener, “Reassessment”; Keener, Miracles, 83–208, and sources cited there.
171. Note, for example, that both tongues and interpretation of tongues—both praying with one’s spirit and praying with one’s understanding (1 Cor. 14:13–15)—are gifts inspired by God’s Spirit (12:10–11). God’s Spirit deals not only with the human spirit but also with the mind, often through wisdom and the like (1 Cor. 2:16). For various aspects of the Spirit’s wisdom, cf. also Moreno García, “Sabiduría del bautizado”; Moreno García, “Sabiduría del Espíritu.”
172. Cf. perhaps also the “divine life” in Eph. 4:18, depending on the sense of the genitive construction there.
173. See, e.g., discussion in Keener, Gift, 74–82 (esp. 74–77).
174. In most of this section I am adapting Keener, “Perspectives,” 222–25.
175. The term ἔχθρα here recalls ἐχθρός in 5:10.
176. See pp. 218–19.
177. Cf. Philo Alleg. Interp. 3.117, where war in the soul subjects the mind and disturbs its peace; or 3.130, where eradicating passions brings internal peace; passion brings war to the soul, but God can give peace to the mind (3.187; cf. Creation 81; Good Person 17; Spec. Laws 4.95; Dreams 2.250; Conf. 43; Abr. 26). Wickedness prevents tranquility in the soul (Alleg. Interp. 3.160; Conf. 46); it disorders the soul (e.g., Studies 176; Mos. 2.164).
178. Sen. Y. Dial. 4.12.6; 4.13.2; 5.6.1; 9 passim; Ep. Lucil. 75.18; Mus. Ruf. frg. 38, p. 136.1–3; Epict. Diatr. 1.4.1; Arius Did. 2.7.5b1, p. 12.31–33; 2.7.5k, p. 34.1–4; 2.7.11s, p. 100.7.
179. Lucret. Nat. 5.1198–1206; Cic. Fin. 1.14.47; Lucian Alex. 47; Diog. Laert. 10.131; 10.144.17. Epicurus’s chief goal was peace of mind (in the sense of lack of disturbance; Diog. Laert. 10.85; cf. 10.144.17).
180. Iambl. Pyth. Life 2.10; cf. Cic. Amic. 22.84; Hossenfelder, “Ataraxia.”
181. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 51, citing Arist. N.E. 2.5.
182. See Bett, “Emotions,” 212, who notes that Skeptics sought the opposite, recognizing that such absolute truth did not exist.
183. Dio Chrys. Or. 13.13.
184. On the importance of peace of mind (ἀταραξία) in philosophy, see Hossenfelder, “Ataraxia.”
185. Cic. Fin. 1.18.60; Lucian Alex. 47; for lack of disturbance in the mind, see Lucret. Nat. 5.1203; Diog. Laert. 10.144.17. Epicureans advised temperance as a means for achieving this objective (Cic. Fin. 1.14.47).
186. E.g., Cic. Leg. 1.23.60; Diogenes Ep. 28; Max. Tyre Or. 11.11; 36.2; Iambl. Pyth. Life 32.228. Cf. Val. Max. 9.13.pref.; 9.13.3; Plut. Poetry 14, Mor. 37A; Sir. 40:2, 5; Heb. 2:14–15; Mart. Pol. passim.
187. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 80.6; 82 passim; 98.10; Nat. Q. 1.pref.4; 2.58.3; 6.32.12; Dial. 9.11.4–5; Mus. Ruf. 1, p. 34.31–33; 3, pp. 40.35–42.1; 3, p. 42.3; 4, p. 48.5–6; 17, p. 110.1, 12–13; Epict. Diatr. 1.17.25; 2.1.13; 2.18.30; Marc. Aur. 9.3; 12.35; cf. 8.58. But even philosophers could admit to struggling with this fear (Mus. Ruf. 6, pp. 54.35–56.7, esp. 56.2).
188. Perhaps especially Epicureans; see, e.g., Lucret. Nat. passim (esp. 1.102–26; 3.1–30, 87–93; cf. O’Keefe, “Lucretius”; Warren, “Lucretius”); Cic. Fin. 1.18.60; 4.5.11; Nat. d. 1.20.56; Diog. Laert. 10.125.
189. E.g., Cic. Fin. 2.30.96–98; cf. tested bravery in Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 66.50. For failure in this regard exposing a false philosopher, see Lucian Peregr. 42–44.
190. Mus. Ruf. 8, p. 66.10; cf. Iambl. Pyth. Life 32.224–25. On philosophers against fear, see, further, Val. Max. 3.3.ext.1; Sen. Y. Ben. 4.27.1; Ep. Lucil. 13; 98.6; Dio Chrys. Or. 1.13; 3.34; Crates Ep. 7; Arius Did. 2.7.5a, p. 10.11; 2.7.5b, p. 12.6; 2.7.5b1, p. 12.27–29; 2.7.5c, p. 28.14–15; Philost. Vit. Apoll. 1.23.
191. E.g., Sen. Y. Nat. Q. 6.32.4; Epict. Diatr. 2.19; Iambl. Pyth. Life 2.10; 32.220; Philost. Vit. Apoll. 1.23; cf. further Stowers, “Resemble,” 93; Keener, Acts, 4:3627–29. Other factors, like friendship, could bring the soul tranquility (Cic. Amic. 22.84).
192. Mus. Ruf. 6, pp. 54.35–56.7 (esp. 56.2); Aul. Gel. 19.1.4–21; Diog. Laert. 2.71 (on Aristippus).
193. E.g., Cic. Off. 1.38.136; Diog. Laert. 7.1.110; Iambl. Pyth. Life 32.225. To restrain passions was part of virtue (Cic. Off. 2.5.18).
194. E.g., Val. Max. 3.3.ext.1.
195. Cic. Off. 1.29.102; 1.38.136.
196. Arius Did. 2.7.5k, pp. 34–45.1–3; at length, Sen. Y. Dial. 9. A virtuous soul was in harmony with itself, lacking contradictory impulses (Arius Did. 2.7.5b1, p. 12.31–33).
197. Arius Did. 2.7.11s, p. 100.7–10.
198. Sen. Y. Dial. 4.12.6. This may be distinguished from simple relaxation, useful as that was (as in Sen. E. Controv. 1.pref.15). Seneca the Younger also valued the ability to avoid distraction (Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 56).
199. Sen. Y. Dial. 4.13.2. For such disturbances of the soul, cf., e.g., Dio Chrys. Or. 13.13.
200. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 75.18. For overcoming fear, see also Epict. Diatr. 2.16.11; 2.17.29.
201. Sen. Y. Dial. 5.6.1. On the relation of the mind to the heavens, see discussion above. Contrary to a literal reading of the myths, the gods had peace and tranquility, without strife (Proclus Poet. 6.1, K87.16–17, 21–22; Libanius Invect. 7.2).
202. Mus. Ruf. frg. 38, p. 136.1–3.
203. Epict. Diatr. 1.4.1, 3.
204. Epict. Encheir. 8.
205. Let. Aris. 273. In T. Sim. 3:5 the mind is eased when one flees to God and the spirit of envy is driven out. For unmixed peace (cf. James 3:17), see Philo Flight 174.
206. Philo Alleg. Interp. 3.187.
207. Philo Dreams 2.229 (cf. also the mind at rest in 2.228).
208. Also compare the fear of death in some philosophers cited above with Rom. 7:24 and 8:6. The sort of anxiety depicted in Rom. 7 readily feeds on itself, rendering fear compulsive. Paul would not, however, endorse someone making their experience of fear or anxiety as itself an object of anxiety about their condition; his preceding discussion in this letter makes clear that the object and grounding of one’s trust is in the objective reality of justification in Christ, not one’s subjective emotional state. Cf. in Paul’s own letters, e.g., 2 Cor. 7:5; 11:28–29; 1 Thess. 3:5.
209. The peace is undoubtedly partly corporate also in Philippians (see 2:2; 4:2–3; cf. 4:9), but the individual mind must also be partly in view (4:8).
210. Although the LXX has εἰρήνη here, the sense of the LXX is completely different, so any influence must be through the MT (or a Greek version other than what became the majority of readings that we generalize as the LXX text).
211. In the larger context this “peace” also is relational (Isa. 26:12; 27:5), as usually in Paul.
212. On Paul’s use of Isaiah, see, e.g., Wagner, Heralds; Hays, Conversion, 25, 46–49; Oss, “Note”; Haacker, Theology, 100. This usage also accords with the prominence of Isaiah among some other “eschatological” interpreters of his era (cf. Fritsch, Community, 45).
213. Paul might even infer the “Spirit” from Isa. 26:9, but there it is the spirit of the person praying (my spirit), paralleled with his soul. More likely, he simply attributes resurrection, and presumably the life of faith, to the Spirit; for the Spirit and resurrection in early Judaism, see Philip, Pneumatology, 137–38.
214. Isaiah’s text might include a wordplay; two words later the text says, “you will keep” (tiṣōr).
215. See pp. 85–90.
216. Usually, in Isaiah the term and its cognates involve pottery or whatever is formed (with God forming, Isa. 29:16; 43:1, 7, 10, 21; 44:2, 21, 24; 45:7, 9, 18; 64:8; humans forming carved images, 44:9–10, 12), but it can also mean what the mind forms (plans, imagination; cf. 22:11; in Isa. 37:26, it could mean what God planned or what he formed).
217. Cf. Gen. 6:5 (cf. LXX); 8:21; Deut. 31:21; 1 Chron. 28:9; 29:18. It is just possible that Rom. 8:26–27 echoes God searching hearts in 1 Chron. 28:9; an echo there of ἀντιλαμβάνομαι from Isa. 26:3, however, is unlikely, since it is not used the same way and the term is common in the LXX. Paul may echo 1 Chron. 29:18 in Phil. 4:7.
218. The same verb for “lean” and the cognate verb for “trust” appear together in Isa. 36:6, which warns against leaning on or trusting in Egypt; the only other place where these verbs appear together is 2 Kings 18:21 (= Isa. 36:6). In Isa. 48:2 people lean (depend) falsely on the Lord, but the dependence is genuine in 26:3.
219. For the term or cognates, see Isa. 12:2; 30:12; 31:1 (misplaced trust in Egypt and their horses, which horses in 31:3 are “flesh and not spirit”); 32:17 (vs. misplaced trust and dwelling securely in 32:9–11); 36:4–9 (the Rabshakeh’s challenge: don’t trust in Egypt); 36:15 and 37:10 (further challenge: don’t trust the Lord); 42:17 (warning not to trust idols); 50:10 (trust the Lord); 59:4 (misplaced trust in confusion). It also communicates security (Isa. 14:30) or false security (Isa. 32:9–11; 47:8, 10). Although the root appears 155 times in the MT, only eight are in the Pentateuch, where they address “security” or (Deut. 28:52) misplaced trust.
220. In the Psalms the term often expresses trust, e.g., Pss. 55:23; 56:3–4, 11. One might also compare Mic. 7:5, where one must not trust one’s neighbor or be confident in a friend, in contrast with 7:7: “I will look for the LORD and wait for God of my salvation.”
221. Resurrection appears to be promised in Isa. 26:19.
222. The Hebrew repeats “peace” twice (as recognized in the NRSV); this is undoubtedly an idiom (cf. KJV, ASV, NASB, NIV: “perfect peace”). The same construction appears in Isa. 57:19 (where God brings peace to the lowly [57:15; to fallen Israel, 57:16–18] far and near and heals; but no peace for the wicked, 57:21); false prophets say, “Peace, peace,” when there is none (Jer. 6:14; 8:11); and warriors bless David with “Peace, peace to you” (1 Chron. 12:18).
223. By contrast, in Rom. 1:17 his audience may at least recognize the quotation without the pronoun, which differs in the standard Greek and Hebrew versions.
224. Such a connection need not exclude moral connotations; in T. Sim. 3:5 the mind is eased when God expels the spirit of envy. Similarly, in Iambl. Letter 9 (Stob. Anth. 2.33.15), ὁμόνοια (9.1) applies to “cities and homes” (9.3; trans. Dillon and Polleichtner, 29) and also to unity with oneself (9.4–5); for one “in two minds toward himself . . . is in conflict with himself” and “at war with himself” (9.7, 10; trans. Dillon and Polleichtner, 29).
225. E.g., with humans, Rom. 3:17; 12:18; 14:19; 1 Cor. 7:15; 14:33; 16:11; 2 Cor. 13:11; with God, Rom. 5:1. Even in the sparsely worded Rom. 15:33, some of the earliest interpreters found the relational emphasis (Theodoret Interp. Rom. [PG 82.217]; Pelagius Comm. Rom. [PCR 150]; cf. Ambrosiaster Comm. [CSEL 81:477]; all in Bray, Romans, 367–68). One could argue for the meaning of tranquility in Phil. 4:7, though cf. the issue of unity in Phil. 4:2–3.
226. Even most of the “tranquility” terms used by various writers above involve “quietness” or “lack of disturbance.”
227. Arius Did. 2.7.11k, p. 84.4–6.
228. Arius Did. 2.7.11k, p. 84.23–24, 29, 33. Zeno reportedly taught that all bad persons were naturally at enmity with other persons (Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 74–75).
229. Arius Did. 2.7.11k, p. 84.27–28.