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Apocalyptic and the Passions: Overcoming a False Dichotomy in Pauline Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2021

Joseph Longarino Open the ORCID record for Joseph Longarino [Opens in a new window]
Joseph Longarino*
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Heidelberg University, Plankengasse 1–3, D-69117, Heidelberg, Germany. Email: jflongarino@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article deals with how to conceive of sin in Romans 5–8. Currently there are two main views concerning the understanding of sin in these chapters. The apocalyptic school describes sin as a power extrinsic to the person. The moral philosophical interpretation, by contrast, contends that sin is a representation of action or the passions. While these schools are usually opposed to each other, this article proposes that the major concerns of the apocalyptic school – to understand sin as a reality that is universally determinative, that precedes human action and exceeds human strength, and from which only God can deliver humanity – are compatible with the interpretation of sin as action in some passages and as the passions in others. There may therefore be space for further collaboration between two views that are often opposed.

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RomanssinPaulapocalypticpassions

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New Testament Studies , Volume 67 , Issue 4 , October 2021 , pp. 582 - 597
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

1. Introduction

Scholars have long debated how to understand sin in Romans, particularly in Romans 5–8.Footnote 1 The letter includes a wide variety of statements about sin, ranging from relatively straightforward claims about sin as human wrongdoing (3.20; 4.8; 5.12–14, 16; 14.23) to more elaborate descriptions of sin as entering into the world and reigning in it (5.12, 21), indwelling human flesh and compelling humans to do evil (7.7–23). So just how are we supposed to conceive of sin, particularly in the latter sort of texts?

In an attempt to gain conceptual clarity about the reality of sin in these texts, interpreters have mapped out various possibilities. Gustav Stählin, for example, lays out the options of conceiving of sin as a concrete demon or as poetic imagery for the sinful human condition with its corresponding sinful action.Footnote 2 Beverly Roberts Gaventa advocates for understanding it as an external force or power rather than a metaphor for human sinfulness.Footnote 3 Joseph R. Dodson proposes the possibility of interpreting sin as an enslaving mythological force instead of simply as action.Footnote 4

This array of possibilities raises certain questions. At what points in Paul's texts does one category prove more illuminating than another? Are these categories mutually exclusive in some texts or are there ways of coherently coordinating the different classifications? Does, we might ask, interpreting sin as sinful action personified preclude conceiving of sin as ‘an enslaving mythological force’? What work is the one descriptor doing that the other cannot do, and yet should do if it is to adequately capture what is going on in Paul's texts about sin?

Sensing a need for further conceptual work in this area, some recent studies have queried the usual alternative ways to understand sin. David J. Southall, for example, attempts to move beyond the alternative of sin as concrete action or demonic entity, suggesting that we conceive of sin instead as ‘a redescription of the reality of human enslavement to forces beyond humanity's power’.Footnote 5 Matthew Croasmun has also argued in favour of ‘adopting a framework in which both [of Southall's] extremes can be occupied simultaneously’.Footnote 6 Whether any given endeavour along such lines is successful may of course be questioned.Footnote 7 What such attempts rightly highlight, though, is the need for scholars to be clear about how certain categories are or are not adequate to Paul's texts about sin. Answering this question requires explaining how one conceives of sin at any given point in Romans and how one's concept(s) can account for the diverse statements about sin in the text.

While scholars continue to search for a conceptualisation of sin that might do justice to the full range of sin's characteristics in the relevant texts in Romans, many interpreters have suggested that, at least at certain points in Romans, sin must be a reality that is distinct from the human person and human action. This idea is clearest of all in the apocalyptic interpretation of Paul.Footnote 8 Apocalyptic interpreters often, though not always, speak of sin as a figure that is very much like a demon or closely aligned with demonic forces,Footnote 9 or, if they do not describe sin in this way, they still frequently conceive of sin as a reality that is extrinsic (though not necessarily external) to the human constitution even as it may indwell the person.Footnote 10 It is not always clear how exactly we are to understand sin in these proposals. Nevertheless, they raise the question of whether it is necessary to conceive of sin as distinct from the human person and human action.

This question has been answered in the negative by a parallel development in Pauline studies. Scholars who read Paul against the background of ancient philosophy – what I will call the moral philosophical interpretation of Paul – have cast doubt on whether it is best to understand ἁμαρτία in Romans along the lines proposed by the apocalyptic school.Footnote 11 Stanley K. Stowers, for example, questions the idea that sin should be conceived of as a demon, spiritual power, or external force more generally.Footnote 12 Emma Wasserman has similarly attacked the notion that sin is a hypostasis external to the person.Footnote 13 According to these scholars, Paul's talk of sin should be understood against the background of the moral psychology presupposed by a certain type of ancient philosophical discourse.Footnote 14 Read in light of this background, sin is not a reality extrinsic to the human person but rather a cipher for action and the passions, with the latter being understood as a force intrinsic to human flesh that tends towards sin.Footnote 15

This conceptualisation of sin has the virtue of clarity, yet it remains to be demonstrated how such an account is not a reductive one. Can it do justice to the range of roles sin plays in the relevant texts? I will contend that it can. To this end, I will engage with the profile of sin – that is, the salient characteristics of sin – as sketched by the apocalyptic school, not only because I regard this profile as largely accurate, but also because its justifiably robust depiction of sin poses the most serious challenge to the view that sin is not distinct from the human person and human action. If the moral philosophical view of sin can be shown to accommodate this profile, it will have overcome a major objection to its adequacy. As we will see, there are three fundamental elements in the apocalyptic profile of sin. First, sin is a universally determinative reality. Second, sin is a reality that precedes human action and exceeds the strength of the unaided human agent. Third, and consequently, sin is a reality from which only God can deliver humanity. I will show that this profile does not in fact require sin to be separate from the human constitution and human action. Moreover, several textual signals undermine such a notion. To see how this is so, we will explore how the apocalyptic interpretation of sin emerges from Romans 5–7, where the language about sin is most concentrated in Paul's letters.Footnote 16

Before proceeding, though, a brief conceptual and terminological clarification is in order. It is important to distinguish between my use of ‘extrinsic’, ‘separate’ or ‘distinct’, on the one hand, and ‘external’, on the other. A force can be extrinsic to a person and yet still indwell the person, as the demons in the Gospels when they possess someone. The passions, by contrast, are intrinsic to a person in that they are an inherent characteristic of a person's flesh. Something that is extrinsic may therefore be said to be ‘distinct from’ or ‘separate from’ a person's constitution, whereas an intrinsic reality is not. I will speak of Christ as ‘distinct from’ or ‘extrinsic to’ a person not in order to highlight Christ's distance from a person whom he indwells or to downplay the extent to which Christ may shape the person more profoundly than a reality (e.g. the passions) that is intrinsic to the person, but rather to underscore that Christ has a reality that is independent of the human constitution in a way that sin, as the passions, does not. Furthermore, by describing sin as ‘intrinsic’ to the flesh, I do not mean to imply that human beings are not affected by the whole network of relationships they are embedded in, where sin is affecting every person from within, issuing in sinful action, and thus creating an environment where humans are confronted and shaped by the sin of others on all sides. My point is simply to describe how Paul is talking about sin in the relevant passages. There are, to be sure, broader implications of Paul's talk about sin that go beyond this more minimalistic task of exegetical description, but those implications will not be traced in this article.Footnote 17

2. Evaluating the Apocalyptic Profile of Sin and the Requisite Conception of Sin

2.1 Rom 5.12–21

As Paul narrates history in Rom 5.12–21, humanity cannot avoid sinning but rather is doomed to sin as a result of Adam's transgression. Paul affirms not only that all people sin (5.12), but also that all people become (καθίστημι) sinners through Adam's disobedience (5.19).Footnote 18 The reign of sin is underscored by the fact that all of humanity dies (cf. 5.21). Humanity simply cannot extricate itself from sin and the consequence of death brought about by Adam (5.15, 17).Footnote 19 The possibility of a counter-movement against sin and death – namely righteousness and life – is opened up only by God's intervention in Jesus Christ (5.16–19, 21).

Apocalyptic interpreters are therefore right to emphasise the universally constraining role that sin plays in these verses. Martinus C. de Boer (The Defeat of Death: Apocalyptic Eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 (JSNTSup 22; Sheffield: JSOT, 1988) 161) speaks of Rom 5.12–21 as showing that all people sin because, since Adam, they are under the power of sin. Douglas A. Campbell (Deliverance, 91) claims, ‘According to Paul, humanity has been trapped within an enslaved ontology since the first transgression in the garden of Eden opened the door to the infiltration and oppression of human flesh by the powers of Sin and Death. The descendants of Adam sin repeatedly and horrifically, as 7:13–25 makes quite clear, but they also do so somewhat helplessly.’ Susan Grove Eastman (Paul and the Person, 111) speaks of humanity as being captive to and complicit in sin as a result of the universal consequences of Adam's sin.Footnote 20 Such interpreters are justified in following Ernst Käsemann, who claims that, after Adam, humanity ‘cannot choose freely but can only grasp what is already there’, namely the possibility of sin and death.Footnote 21 Human sinning is simply a manifestation of the Adamic world in which humanity lives.Footnote 22 It would therefore be misleading to focus merely on discrete human transgressions to understand sin in human history.Footnote 23 We must, rather, attend to the broader history in which humanity is embedded, because there is something about this history that makes it impossible for humans not to sin.Footnote 24

In an attempt to explain what it is about this history that makes sin inevitable, apocalyptic interpreters suggest that, in Rom 5.12–21, ἁμαρτία denotes more than human sinning; rather, ἁμαρτία is a cosmic force that is prior to and determines human sinning.Footnote 25 To support this reading, interpreters usually point to those verses where ἁμαρτία is personified as an independent actor on the human stage, specifically 5.12, where sin is said to ‘enter the world’ through Adam, and 5.21, where sin is said to ‘reign in death’.Footnote 26

However, nothing in these verses actually requires ἁμαρτία to refer to more than human action. In fact, several textual indicators suggest we should read ἁμαρτία as a reference to human sin.

Paul repeatedly situates ἁμαρτία in a context that implies he is thinking of sin as sinful action. After he claims that ἁμαρτία entered the world through Adam (5.12), Paul continually highlights Adam's act of sinning. This suggests that when he claims in 5.12 that sin entered the world, Paul has in mind Adam's concrete act of actual sinning. In verse 14, we are told that Adam's παράβασις was a kind of sinning (cf. ἁμαρτήσαντας). Paul then three times says that Adam committed a παράπτωμα (5.15, 17, 18), and he calls Adam the one who sinned (δι᾽ ἑνὸς ἁμαρτήσαντος, 5.16). In saying that ἁμαρτία entered the world through Adam, Paul is at least claiming that sin first occurred through Adam. As his statements in 5.16 and 5.19 show, though, Paul may have in mind the more expansive idea that Adam introduced sin by bringing about a whole history of sinning.Footnote 27 Whether Paul has in view Adam's sin or humanity's sin at large, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that he is focusing on sin as the actual problem of sinning.Footnote 28 Indeed, in verse 13, it only makes sense to think of sin as action, since there Paul claims that ἁμαρτία was not ‘reckoned’ before the law, which would make no sense if sin were understood as a cosmic entity independent of sinful action. These observations from earlier in the passage also apply when he says that sin ‘increased’ and ‘reigned in death’ (5.20–1). Immediately preceding his statement that sin reigned, Paul asserts that sin increased (ἐπλεόνασεν ἡ ἁμαρτία), and just prior to this, he claims that transgression increased (πλεονάσῃ τὸ παράπτωμα, 5.20).Footnote 29 The shift from τὸ παράπτωμα to ἡ ἁμαρτία does not seem to signal a shift in meaning. Rather, Paul uses both τὸ παράπτωμα and ἡ ἁμαρτία to refer to the general sinful action of humanity, and this would seem to explain the reference to ἁμαρτία in 5.21.

It is therefore difficult to claim that this passage supports the view that ἁμαρτία denotes more than sinful human action in these verses. Interpreters thus outpace the text when they claim that in 5.12–21 ἁμαρτία names a force that compels humanity to sin.

Nevertheless, even if Paul does not here identify the force that compels humanity to sin, understanding sin as action in this passage does not require us to reduce sin to a story of isolated human acts that are unaffected by what has gone before. We can and must affirm that all humans sin but that, because of the history that precedes them, they do so under some form of compulsion. This compulsion is clearest from the facts that no human being avoids sinning and that therefore all human beings are bound to death. In this respect, sin inevitably determines human destiny.Footnote 30 This state of affairs may be why, along with death, sin can be said to ‘reign’ (5.21): its dominion remains unimpeded in every human life. It is therefore right to emphasise that sin's dominion must be broken by a force from beyond the normal course of human history, namely by God's intervention in Jesus Christ (5.15–21).Footnote 31

2.2 Romans 6–7

The apocalyptic view of sin has more in its favour in Romans 6 and 7. In these chapters, unlike in Romans 5, it eventually becomes impossible to speak of sin as merely human action, since by the end it is obvious that ἁμαρτία designates a force that precedes and determines human action.Footnote 32 This conclusion becomes unavoidable in Romans 7. Here, when the speaker is presented with a prohibition, ἁμαρτία works in him to make him violate it (7.7–8).Footnote 33 The speaker agrees with the good of the law (7.16) and wants to do good (7.19), but ἁμαρτία, which dwells in him, intervenes to make him do the evil he hates (7.15, 17–20). Ἁμαρτία cannot designate the evil action itself, since ἁμαρτία enters into the process before the human agent commits the sinful act. Ἁμαρτία takes over and leads to the evil action, but ἁμαρτία and the evil action remain distinct.

Sin is thus a force that effectively enslaves a person, displacing his or her will with its own. This is why Paul portrays sin at length as a slave master. In Rom 7.14, sin is one to whom the speaker has been sold. In Romans 6, Paul speaks of sin as a reality to which Christians were enslaved before they were set free in Christ (6.6–7, 17–18, 20, 22). Paul further warns that, even once they are liberated, ἁμαρτία seeks to regain its former position as master by reigning in their bodies (6.12–14, 16); yet yielding to the control of this slave master is unwise, since ἁμαρτία repays its slaves only with death (6.23).Footnote 34

How exactly are we to understand this enslaving force that is prior to and shapes human action? Some interpreters, especially those who read Paul against the background of ancient philosophy, argue that ἁμαρτία is a cipher for the passions, understood as an impulse inherent to the flesh that, here at least, compels the person to sin.Footnote 35 The apocalyptic school, by contrast, has argued that interpreters should view sin as extrinsic to the human constitution, even though sin can indwell the person. The question is whether the arguments of the latter demonstrate that sin must be extrinsic to the human person and whether there are textual indicators that suggest otherwise.

To establish that sin is distinct from the person, apocalyptic interpreters note that Paul contrasts ἁμαρτία and Jesus as subjects who shape human agency. Since Jesus is an agent distinct from the human person, the reasoning goes, ἁμαρτία appears to be so as well. In agreement with Käsemann, Eastman highlights the parallel between sin in Rom 7.17, 20 and Jesus in Gal 2.20.Footnote 36 In Romans 7, Paul twice says, ‘It is no longer I who do it but sin dwelling in me’ (7.17, 20). In a very close parallel in Gal 2.20, Paul claims, ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.’ The parallel between Christ and sin leads Käsemann to characterise not only Christ but also ἁμαρτία as a subject distinct from the human agent.Footnote 37

Yet this argument does not actually show that ἁμαρτία must exist extrinsically to the human constitution. Ἁμαρτία could still act analogously to Christ even if it is a reality intrinsic to human flesh (e.g. the passions). A reality intrinsic to the human constitution could no less than Christ precede the actions of a human agent, shaping the agent's actions in favour of a certain (sinful) outcome. In particular, the bent of the passions towards sin could lead an agent to sin, as Paul himself suggests when he says that the sinful passions were at work in our members to make us bear fruit for death (Rom 7.5).

Käsemann offers a further argument, though, to contend that ἁμαρτία should be seen as distinct from the human person. He notes that Paul distinguishes between ἁμαρτία and the ἐγώ in Rom 7.17, 20 (‘It is no longer ἐγώ who do it but ἁμαρτία living in me’), which could suggest that ἁμαρτία exists independently of the ἐγώ.

It is true that ἁμαρτία and the ἐγώ function grammatically as two distinct subjects in these verses. However, this observation does not demonstrate that Paul is distinguishing between them as realities that exist, respectively, extrinsically and intrinsically to the person. Paul's language also leaves open the possibility that he is using these terms to focus on different aspects of the person. Paul aligns ἁμαρτία with the flesh, members or body (7.17–18, 20, 23; cf. 6.12; 8.3) – which is where the passions dwell according to him (7.5) – and these come into conflict with the ἐγώ, which is closely associated with the νοῦς and ἔσω ἄνθρωπος in the desire for the good (7.23, 25). It is possible, then, to offer a different account of why Paul speaks of ἁμαρτία as distinct from the ἐγώ. He speaks in this way not necessarily because ἁμαρτία is extrinsic to the human constitution but rather because ἁμαρτία inheres in the flesh, while the ἐγώ, at least for Paul's purposes in Romans 7, is most of the time more closely aligned with the mind, which delights in the good.Footnote 38

In addition to the lack of a decisive reason to think that ἁμαρτία denotes a force extrinsic to the person in Romans 7, there are actually good grounds to conclude that in Rom 7.5–13, Paul pushes his readers to identify ἁμαρτία with what he calls τὰ παθήματα τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν, or ‘the sinful passions’ (7.5).Footnote 39 In 7.5, Paul speaks of the sinful passions as (1) being activated in the bodily members by the law and then (2) making the agent bear fruit for death. Then, in 7.7–13, ἁμαρτία takes on precisely these two roles: ἁμαρτία, which (1) dwells in the members, is activated by the law, and then (2) makes the person sin, and subsequently brings the agent to death. This pattern suggests that in verses 7 to 13 Paul uses ἁμαρτία as a shorthand for what he calls the sinful passions in 7.5.Footnote 40

Furthermore, much of Paul's language about sin is consistent with ancient moral philosophical discourse insofar as the latter often uses metaphors of domination, enslavement and even death to speak about the passions gaining the upper hand in the struggle with the mind or inner person.Footnote 41 Paul's personification of sin would thus be compatible with conceiving of sin as a force intrinsic to human flesh.Footnote 42 Yet, once again, this conclusion in no way undermines the fact that sin is a force that operates before the human agent acts and that inexorably drives the person towards evil. Sin thus remains a reality from which human beings cannot deliver themselves.

This consideration may help to allay the suspicion that understanding sin as the passions minimises the problem of sin in Paul. Apocalyptic interpreters regularly give voice to this fear. Gaventa dismisses as inadequate the idea that sin is merely ‘misdirection’ or a ‘flaw in human nature’.Footnote 43 Similarly, Käsemann contends that Romans 7 depicts something far graver than an ethical struggle, which, he claims, does not inevitably end in failure, or at least never accepts failure as the only possible outcome.Footnote 44 It is true that the ancient moral discourse invoked by the moral philosophical interpretation was generally more optimistic about human nature than Paul, since moral philosophers usually saw the solution as consisting in right instruction and example,Footnote 45 whereas Paul sees the moral instruction of the law as merely exacerbating the problem (7.5–13).Footnote 46 However, Paul's understanding of the gravity of the problem is in no way diminished if we conceive of sin as the passions in Romans 7, just as conceiving of sin as a demon – or any kind of force extrinsic to the person – does not automatically make the problem more dire. In both cases, human beings may be said to be dominated by a destructive power from which they cannot deliver themselves. Thus, even if the problem is one that inheres in the human being, the solution is to be found in a source distinct from the person, namely God's act in Jesus and the Spirit.

In other words, Paul does indeed radicalise the problem of sin in comparison with several other ancient discourses, whether that of moral philosophers or Jewish apocalypticists (cf. e.g. 2 Baruch). As Paul sees things, the resources available within the human person (e.g. the mind in Romans 7) or outside the human person (e.g. the Torah) simply do not offer a solution to the problem of sin. It is precisely the human constitution, particularly the flesh in Romans 7 – affected as it is by the Adamic history in which it is embedded – where the problem lies and which renders the agent effectively powerless to do anything but sin, especially when confronted with the moral instruction of the Torah. This problem may be exacerbated by external forces like Satan (cf. Rom 16.20), but the issue Paul is describing in Romans 5–7 does not become less serious if we understand ἁμαρτία as action in some passages and as the passions in others. God must intervene to provide power from beyond the human person, indeed from beyond even the good Torah, and this is exactly what he does in Jesus Christ and the Spirit when he condemns sin in the flesh (cf. 8.3), and when he sends Christ and the Spirit to indwell the person (cf. 8.9–10). Yet this point does not require ἁμαρτία in these chapters to denote more than human action or the passions.

3. Conclusion

As I have indicated here, the texts on which a properly robust profile of sin is built do not require the conclusion that ἁμαρτία denotes a force that is extrinsic to the human agent. Indeed, there are several textual indicators that incline us to read ἁμαρτία as representing action in some passages and the passions in others. Yet even if we accept this basic suggestion about sin, sin remains (1) a universally determinative reality, (2) a force that acts prior to the human agent and exceeds the strength of the latter in such a way that (3) only God can deliver the person from the problem of sin. Given that this profile of sin can be maintained even with the view of sin as action and the passions, many of the major objections to the view can be overcome. Perhaps this realisation may open the way for a more fruitful conversation between views that have often been unnecessarily opposed.Footnote 47

References

1 In the seven letters commonly agreed to be by Paul, ἁμαρτία and its cognates occur eighty-four times; sixty of these occurrences are in Romans. The noun ἁμαρτία appears fifty-eight times in the seven epistles; forty-eight of these references are in Romans and forty-one are in Romans 5–8.

2 G. Stählin, ‘ἁμαρτία’, TDNT i.296.

3 Gaventa, B. R., Our Mother Saint Paul (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2007) 120–1Google Scholar.

4 Dodson, J. R., The ‘Powers’ of Personification: Rhetorical Purpose in the Book of Wisdom and the Letter to the Romans (BZNW 161; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008) 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Southall, D. J., Rediscovering Righteousness in Romans (WUNT ii/240; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Croasmun, M., The Emergence of Sin: The Cosmic Tyrant in Romans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017) 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 As will become clear, Southall's formulation is unnecessarily vague because we can more precisely identify what Paul signifies with ἁμαρτία. Croasmun's proposal may be queried regarding not its vagueness but rather its overdetermination of the meaning of the texts. Croasmun employs emergence theory to explain how individual sinning can lead to Paul's statements about sin as a mythological force. He interprets Rom 1.24, 26 as indicating that humans individually become enslaved to passions as they sin; such enslavement marks the emergence of sin as a mythological power (Emergence of Sin, 108). Individual thralldom to the passions becomes a collective enslavement to a debased mind, as is purportedly claimed in 1.28 (110), and to the collective body of sin, as is supposedly shown in 6.6 (111, 118). By becoming a force that is greater than any individual or collective sin, sin emerges as a mythological power that reigns (5.21), constraining humanity throughout history (105). Sin as a mythological power thus supervenes on the individual and social levels of sin. I regard this suggestion as a valid extension of Paul's claims. However, Croasmun's exegesis outpaces the texts. He does not establish that ἁμαρτία designates more than action in Rom 5.12–21 or more than the passions in much of chapters 6–8. Croasmun asserts but does not argue that ἁμαρτία in 5.21 signifies a force prior to human action (105). His other texts furnish an insufficient basis for arguing that the dominion of sin exceeds enthrallment to the passions. For example, in order to argue that enslavement to sin features as a social reality that determines human existence in Romans 5–8, Croasmun interprets the body of sin in 6.6 as a collective entity analogous to the body of Christ (118). However, the body of sin is never developed at length as an analogy to the body of Christ. Romans 6.6 contains the sole occurrence of the phrase ‘the body of sin’. It is therefore more secure to interpret this expression in light of the connection between sin and the body in 7.7–25, which suggests that in 6.6 Paul is talking about the former enslavement to sin that dwells in the body. My point is not to deny that individual enthrallment to sin entails social consequences. It is simply to question whether Croasmun's argument demonstrates, or even requires, ἁμαρτία to be more than the passions in much of Romans 6–8.

8 I do not intend to evaluate the suitability of the label ‘apocalyptic’ here. For critical assessments of the application of the term in Pauline studies, see Matlock, R. B., Unveiling the Apocalyptic Paul: Paul's Interpreters and the Rhetoric of Criticism (JSNTSup 127; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996)Google Scholar; Davies, J. P., Paul among the Apocalypses? An Evaluation of the ‘Apocalyptic Paul’ in the Context of Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic Literature (LNTS 562; London: Bloomsbury, 2016)Google Scholar; Wasserman, E., Apocalypse as Holy War: Divine Politics and Polemics in the Letters of Paul (AYBRL; New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2018)Google Scholar. I use the term only to designate a school of interpretation within Pauline studies. Leading apocalyptic interpreters include Douglas A. Campbell, Martinus C. de Boer, Susan Grove Eastman and Beverly Roberts Gaventa. The apocalyptic school is indebted to the seminal influence of J. Louis Martyn, though Ernst Käsemann is an important forerunner whose arguments continue to shape the views of apocalyptic interpreters.

9 Sin is explicitly aligned with Satan and the demonic, at least analogically, in Käsemann, E., Commentary on Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980) 204Google Scholar; Gaventa, B. R., ‘The Cosmic Power of Sin in Paul's Letter to the Romans: Toward a Widescreen Edition’, Int 58 (2004) 229–40, at 231, 237, 239Google Scholar; Gaventa, Our Mother Saint Paul, 118–23; de Boer, M. C., ‘Paul's Mythologizing Program in Romans 5–8’, Apocalyptic Paul: Cosmos and Anthropos in Romans 5–8 (ed. Gaventa, B. R.; Waco, TX: Baylor, 2013) 1–20, at 13Google Scholar.

10 Sin's relation to the demonic is obscure in Käsemann, E., ‘On Paul's Anthropology’, Perspectives on Paul (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971) 22, 28–31Google Scholar, who speaks of people being determined by realities (i.e. Christ or sin, or evil powers generally) from beyond themselves. Eastman, S. G., Paul and the Person: Reframing Paul's Anthropology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017) 8Google Scholar does not invoke the demonic analogy but writes of selves being ‘socially and cosmically constructed in relationship to external realities [i.e. Christ or sin] that operate internally as well’. Campbell, D. A., The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009)Google Scholar does not offer a straightforward statement on this matter, but he speaks of Sin as a cosmic power that takes up residence in the flesh and manipulates people, causing them to sin. Campbell has recently signalled to me in personal correspondence that he has abandoned the view that sin is separate from the person. In his Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God's Love (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020) 114, Campbell appears to identify Sin with the passions, writing, ‘Some hostile force occupies human nature and both deceives and enslaves it – the human passions or lusts.’

11 Key figures in the moral philosophical interpretation include Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Stanley K. Stowers and Emma Wasserman, all of whom are antipathetic to the apocalyptic school. A reading of Paul in light of ancient philosophy that is arguably more amenable to the apocalyptic interpretation may be found in Martin, D. B., The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995)Google Scholar. L. B. Dingeldein, ‘Gaining Virtue, Gaining Christ: Moral Development in the Letters of Paul’ (PhD diss., Brown University, 2014) has also recently advanced the moral philosophical interpretation without attacking the apocalyptic school.

12 Stowers, S. K., A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1994) 280Google Scholar.

13 Wasserman, E., The Death of the Soul in Romans 7: Sin, Death, and the Law in Light of Hellenistic Moral Psychology (WUNT ii/256; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 146–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In her most recent book, Apocalypse as Holy War, Wasserman broadens her critique, contending that apocalyptic interpreters overplay and misconstrue the dualism in apocalyptic texts and Paul.

14 Stowers, Rereading, 279 and Wasserman, Death of the Soul, 91, 95 argue specifically for a Platonic background. Engberg-Pedersen, T., ‘A Stoic Concept of the Person in Paul? From Galatians 5:17 to Romans 7:14–25’, Christian Body, Christian Self: Concepts of Early Christian Personhood (ed. Rothschild, C. K. and Thompson, T. W.; WUNT 284; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011) 85–112Google Scholar and Holtz, G., ‘Paul, the Law and Judaism: Stoification of the Jewish Approach to the Law in Paul's Letter to the Romans’, ZNW 109 (2018) 193–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar favour a Stoic construal. For a sympathetic yet incisive critique of Engberg-Pedersen's Stoic reading of Paul, see Dingeldein, ‘Gaining Virtue’, 263–72, who cogently argues that Paul's understanding of moral progress aligns more with Middle Platonism.

15 While focused on 1 Corinthians instead of Romans, Martin, The Corinthian Body, 217 similarly argues that Paul understands ‘desire’ as a disease of the human constitution; yet such a disease is viewed as an invading reality that must be cast out rather than controlled, a belief that makes desire more akin to the demonic in the apocalyptic interpretation. Yet Dingeldein, ‘Gaining Virtue’, 211 points out that, in Paul's view, such eradication may be possible only for those most advanced in virtue; most Christ followers must simply try to control desire. In discussions of Greek literature more broadly, scholars have debated whether ἁμαρτία signifies the flaw or error, or simply failure, of the protagonist, though it has fallen out of favour to view the word as having negative moral connotations. This feature or failure determines a baleful fate beyond the protagonist's control. See Hyde, I., ‘The Tragic Flaw: Is It a Tragic Error?’, MLR 58 (1963) 321–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dawe, R. D., ‘Some Reflections on Ate and Hamartia’, HSCP 72 (1968) 89–123Google Scholar; Bremer, J. M., Hamartia: Tragic Error in the ‘Poetics’ of Aristotle and in Greek Tragedy (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1969)Google Scholar; L. Golden, ‘Hamartia, Ate, and Oedipus’, CW 72 (1978) 3–12; Brody, J., ‘Fate, Philology, Freud’, Philosophy and Literature 38 (2014) 1–29, at 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See n. 1. The language of sin features briefly in Romans 8 but is largely displaced by the language of the flesh. Since the main characteristics of the apocalyptic interpretation emerge from Romans 5–7, I confine my analysis to these chapters. For a treatment of the language of sin in Romans 8, see J. Longarino, ‘Paul and the Assumed Flesh of Christ’, T&T Clark Handbook of Christology (ed. D. O. Sumner and C. Tilling; London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming). The language about sin in 1 Cor 15.56 and Gal 3.22, where sin may appear to be an independent agent, is so brief that it must be related to Paul's fuller treatments of sin elsewhere.

17 For such attempts, see Croasmun, Emergence of Sin and Eastman, Paul and the Person. For my assessment of Croasmun, see n. 7.

18 A. Oepke, ‘καθίστημι, ἀκαταστασία, ἀκατάστατος’, TDNT iii.445, notes that the verb is not merely forensic, as if there were only a legal fiction involved, but rather presupposes an actual state.

19 The famous ἐφ᾽ ᾧ in 5.12 remains disputed. See the translation possibilities in Fitzmyer, J. A., Romans (AB 33; London: Doubleday, 1993) 413–17Google Scholar. A common translation today, ‘because’, suggests that Paul assigns the cause of death to the sin of every individual human, and not just to Adam. Even if this translation is accepted, though, individual human sinning is still traced back to Adam's sin (5.19), which makes him ultimately responsible for all subsequent sin and death.

20 This interpretation is at odds with Stowers's claim that Paul is not offering a universal history of sin in Rom 5.12–21 (Rereading, 254). Stowers proposes that Paul's concern is to show how the actions of one (Adam or Christ) can affect the many. Stowers's proposal fits awkwardly with his broader interpretation. According to Stowers, the gentiles become enslaved to the passions because of their post-Adamic idolatry. Yet Paul's introduction of Adam in Romans 5 muddles this picture. By appealing to Adam as the sufficient cause of all subsequent sin, Paul gives the impression that the problem of enthrallment to sin is rooted in primordial history rather than in gentile idolatry per se. If Paul did not intend to give this impression, he could simply have reiterated his claims from 1.18–32 in 5.12–21 and expanded his account from there, but he does not. It seems simpler to propose that, even if Paul is especially concerned with addressing the plight of the gentiles, as Stowers argues, he nevertheless sets their problem within the broader predicament in which all of humanity has found itself since Adam. Wasserman, Death of the Soul, 96 briefly acknowledges that the problem of domination by the passions seems to be rooted in 5.12, though this admission does not affect her broader reading, where she follows Stowers. Stowers's reading in this respect also comes up against 6.2–6 and 7.4–6, where Paul, as a Jew, associates himself with his gentile audience as having been enslaved to sin. Stowers, Rereading, 292 appeals to 1 Cor 9.21 to claim that at such points Paul is merely identifying with the religious experience of gentile Christians, becoming a gentile to the gentiles. However, this suggestion does not attenuate the significance of the fact that Paul applies this problem to himself as Jew. First Corinthians 9.21 indicates that Paul is willing to live in the present as gentiles do in order to evangelise them. Such a practice does not require him to narrate aspects of their previous lives as his own, especially if he does not mean what he says. None of this is to deny that Paul sometimes speaks of the gentile world as mired in immorality in a way that he does not typically predicate of Jews (1 Thess 4.5; cf. Rom 9.30–1; Gal 2.15, though the latter may be ironic), but it is to point out that, at least in Romans 5–8, he does not exclude Jews from the problem of enslavement to sin (cf. 3.9). Indeed, according to 5.20, the presence of the law, evidently even among Jews, does not solve the problem of sin but rather exacerbates it. It must also be stressed that Paul's description of himself as being enslaved to sin is not necessarily how he would have viewed himself in his pre-Christian life (cf. Phil 3.4–6). Romans 7.5 would be a retrospective evaluation. Furthermore, my argument does not necessarily entail that Romans 5–8 is addressed to Jews, even if at points the text may speak about them.

21 Käsemann, Romans, 147. De Boer, Defeat of Death, 161 approvingly quotes Käsemann's assertion that ‘each in his own way confirms the fact that he finds himself in a world marked by sin and death and that he is subject to the burdening curse’ (Romans, 149).

22 Käsemann, ‘On Paul's Anthropology’, 24: ‘Just as each person is both himself and his world, so he is also himself and Adam on the path which he follows.’ Eastman, Paul and the Person, 11, quotes Käsemann's statement that ‘every person after Adam is entangled in the fate of the protoplast’ (Romans, 197). Already in his dissertation, Käsemann spoke of a person as ‘the concrete manifestation of the world which concretely determines his activity and suffering’ (Käsemann, E., Leib und Leib Christi: Eine Untersuchung zur paulinischen Begrifflichkeit (BHT 9; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1933) 111–12Google Scholar).

23 T. Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 207 in particular interprets humanity being under sin to mean simply that they risk sinning. Gaventa, Our Mother Saint Paul, 121 criticises Engberg-Pedersen for ‘reducing sin to misdeed’.

24 This point is powerfully expressed in Eastman's discussion of human embeddedness in Romans 5 and 7 in Paul and the Person, 85–105, 109–25.

25 Cf. Gaventa, ‘Cosmic Power of Sin’, 231: ‘Sin [is] an upper-case Power that enslaves humankind’; Campbell, Deliverance, 63 writes of humanity as a ‘kingdom of enslaved subjects’ under Sin and Death since Adam; De Boer, ‘Paul's Mythologizing Program’, 14: ‘Behind human sinning and human dying, Paul discerns cosmological powers at work which he calls Sin and Death’ (emphasis original). For the debate over how to conceive of the force that makes human sinning inevitable, see Moo, D. J., The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996) 322–9Google Scholar; Croasmun, Emergence of Sin, 133–8. Croasmun refers to Smith, D. L., With Willful Intent: A Theology of Sin (Wheaton: BridgePoint, 1994) 360–7Google Scholar, who describes various interpretations of the way subsequent humanity was affected by Adam's sin: realism, federalism, example, social transmission and biological transmission. The apocalyptic view adds the explanation that Sin as a cosmic power inexorably causes human to sin.

26 Cf. Gaventa, ‘Cosmic Power of Sin’, 232, 235; De Boer, ‘Paul's Mythologizing Program’, 13: ‘Paul personifies and thereby “mythologizes” the notions of sin and death’; Eastman, Paul and the Person, 110: ‘sin appears as an agent acting in human history’. Supporting this line of interpretation, R. Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), writes, ‘The language of “personification” does not do justice to the apocalyptic worldview within which Paul is operating.’

27 M. Wolter, Der Brief an die Römer (2 vols.; EKKNT 6; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Patmos, 2014) i.343, writes, ‘Auf jeden Fall hat Paulus schon hier nicht mehr nur den “einen Menschen” Adam im Blick, sondern bereits die gesamte Menschheit seit Adam.’

28 Wolter, Der Brief an die Römer, i.360, writes that in these verses sin is occasionally ‘eine Macht’ and at other points a ‘konkrete Sündetat’. Yet Wolter describes sin as ‘ein[e] überindividuell[e] Macht, die die Herrschaft über alle Nachkommen Adams ergriff und die Unausweichlichkeit des Sündigens als ein Verhängnis über sie brachte, den niemand entkommen kann’ (i.343). It is thus unclear whether for Wolter conceiving of sin as ‘eine Macht’ requires understanding sin as more than action, as long as sin is understood as an inevitable reality that humans cannot escape because of Adam. Wilckens, U., Der Brief an die Römer (3 vols.; EKKNT 6; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1978–82Google Scholar) i.315, speaks of sin in this more qualified way, writing, ‘So ist die Rede von “der Sünde” Interpretament des überindividuellen, universalen Charakters alles Sündigens’ (emphasis original).

29 Wolter, Der Brief an die Römer, i.360 notes that in 5.20, ‘ἁμαρτία ist generisch gebraucht und steht metonymisch für die Gesamtheit aller sündigen Handlungen. [Das Wort] bezeichnet … wie in V. 13b die konkrete Sündetat.’

30 See the summary of the problem of sin in Campbell, Deliverance, 72.

31 Gaventa, ‘Cosmic Power of Sin’, 237: ‘Any lingering notion that the anti-God powers, including Sin, are to be defeated by human strength fails on these words [Rom 16.20].’ Campbell, Deliverance, 63 similarly writes of humanity's need for divine rescue from the problem unleashed by Adam.

32 Kaye, B. N., The Thought Structure of Romans with Special Reference to Chapter 6 (Austin, TX: Schola, 1979)Google Scholar overlooks this point. Kaye contends that, when ἁμαρτία is spoken of as an agent, Paul is personifying sinful action or its consequent guilt (56). Yet this claim cannot accommodate passages such as Rom 7.8, 17, 20, where ἁμαρτία intervenes prior to human action. Kaye is followed by H. Räisänen, Paul and the Law (WUNT 29; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 19872) 99 n. 29. Kaye is often invoked by scholars who claim that ἁμαρτία represents the passions, but their view is substantially different from his in that they incorporate the notion that ἁμαρτία refers to a force that precedes human action. See Stowers, Rereading, 351 n. 11; Wasserman, Death of the Soul, 54; Miller, C. D., The Practice of the Body of Christ: Human Agency in Pauline Theology after MacIntyre (PTMS; Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2014) 99 n. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 I use the masculine pronoun because Paul uses masculine adjectives (σάρκινος, πεπραμένος) for the speaker (7.14).

34 Ὀψώνια can denote a soldier's wages or a slave's allowance. See LSJ s.v. ὀψώνιον; BDAG s.v. ὀψώνιον. Since at one time Christians were both sin's soldiers (6.19) and its slaves (6.16–18, 20, 22), both meanings could be operative. Goodrich, J. K., ‘From Slaves of Sin to Slaves of God: Reconsidering the Origin of Paul's Slavery Metaphor in Romans 6’, BBR 23 (2013) 509–30, at 528Google Scholar, writes, ‘As the context of Rom 6:16–7:6 indicates, the metaphorical field implied by ὀψώνια in 6:23 is domestic slavery, not military service.’ Yet the context holds together the two metaphors.

35 Of course, there was not one generic discourse about the passions in antiquity. See n. 14. Wasserman, Death of the Soul, 81–9, argues that sin in the bulk of Romans 6–8 is a representation of τὰ παθήματα τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν in 7.5. See her more recent treatment in Apocalypse as Holy War, 173–202. In explaining ancient moral discourse, Stowers (S. K. Stowers, ‘Paul's Four Discourses about Sin’, Celebrating Paul: Festschrift in Honor of Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, O.P., and Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J. (ed. P. Spitaler; CBQMS 48; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2011), 100–27, at 123) writes, ‘In Paul's time, the words for passions could either mean just the emotions or the whole non-rational or non-mental part (appetites and emotions) of the person. The emotions unlike the appetites could be directed by the mind, but were prone to run out of control and work against the mind. The appetites are intimately connected with the bodily parts with which they are associated.’ The appetites here appear to come closest to what Paul calls the παθήματα and ἐπιθυμίαι in Rom 6.12; 7.5, 7–25.

36 Käsemann, ‘On Paul's Anthropology’, 28; Eastman, Paul and the Person, 8. Similarly, Tannehill, R. C., Dying and Rising with Christ: A Study in Pauline Theology (BZNW 32; Berlin: A. Töpelmann, 1967) 59Google Scholar.

37 Käsemann, ‘On Paul's Anthropology’, 28 claims that ‘man is a being who cannot be determined solely in the light of his own self’ and ‘his existence stems from outside himself’.

38 Even though he underscores the unity of the person, Käsemann, ‘On Paul's Anthropology’, 16 acknowledges that Romans 7 posits a division in the agent. Martyn, J. L., Galatians (AB 33A; New York: Doubleday, 1997) 538CrossRefGoogle Scholar follows P. W. Meyer, ‘The Worm at the Core of the Apple’, The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul and John in Honor of J. Louis Martyn (ed. R. T. Fortna and B. R. Gaventa; Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1990) 62–84, at 76 in claiming that the issue in Romans 7 is not a divided self but rather a complete self enslaved to sin. While it is true that the whole person ends up being powerless against sin, there is a significant difference between the mind, which – at least in Romans 7 – genuinely delights in the good, and the flesh, which consistently inclines towards evil. The solution is not to convert the mind, which here is not portrayed as problematic per se, but rather to empower the person against the force in the flesh.

39 Fitzmyer, Romans, 459 writes, ‘Lit., “the passions of sins,” i.e., the propensity to sin following upon strong sensory impressions, which come from sin itself; so Paul now phrases what he described in 6:12 as “the cravings” of the mortal body. Pathēmata normally means “sufferings” (as in 8:18), but now it is used in the pejorative sense of “emotions, passions,” as in Gal 5:24 (cf. Plutarch, Moralia 1128E).’ Jewett's analysis is puzzling, as he insists, despite the context, that the passions are associated with the mind as much as the body, and thus refuses to speak of them as passions in a classical sense and instead parses them as ‘yearnings for honor’ (Romans, 436), a sign that the bent of his commentary may unduly colour the exegesis here.

40 van Kooten, G. H., Paul's Anthropology in Context: The Image of God, Assimilation to God, and Tripartite Man in Ancient Judaism, Ancient Philosophy and Early Christianity (WUNT 232; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 380–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar writes, ‘The entire passage, Rom 7.7–13, is a footnote to the short remark in Rom 7.5 that the sinful passions, which characterized the pre-Christian life “in the flesh” were aroused – during that existence – by the law.’

41 Wasserman, Death of the Soul, 23, 60–76, 123. See Plato, Resp. 4.430e–431b, 442c–d; 8.554c–e; 9.571a–d, 573b, 574c–575a, 577d–e; Philo, Abr. 223, 237, 242–3, 256; Leg. 1.105–8; 2.77–81, 90–2; 3.74; Det. 48, 74–5; Fug. 113–14; Post. 73; Deus 111–13; Congr. 86; QG 1.51; Plutarch, Virt. vit. 101a; Am. prol. 498d; Galen, The Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul's Passions (from Galen: On the Passions and Errors of the Soul (ed. P. W. Harkins; Columbus: Ohio State University, 1963) 48). This background appears to correspond more fully with Paul's language than what we find at Qumran. At Qumran too we encounter political and military metaphors for the battle between God or good spirits, on the one hand, and evil spirits or the evil inclination, on the other. There is the language of ruling (תשלט, משלה) in 1QHa v 32–3; viii 18 (numbering in E. M. Schuller and C. A. Newsom, eds., The Hodayot (Thanksgiving Scroll): A Study Edition of 1QHa (EJL 36; Atlanta: SBL, 2012)); and 11Q5 xix 15–16. Combat imagery is found in 1QS iv 23 (יריבו); 4Q444 1 2, 4 (ולהלחם, ריב); 4Q511 48 + 49 4 (מלחמות). I have not found a reference to sin or the evil within ‘killing’ a person, though sinful actions may be designated as ‘paths of death’ (4Q184 1 9–10; cf. Prov 7.27) or a cause of death (11Q5 xix 9–10). I have also not come across an instance of a person being ‘enslaved’ by sin, although people may be said to be sold to Sheol because of their sin (11Q5 xix 10).

42 I do not mean to claim that Paul would therefore adopt every aspect of, say, a Platonic anthropology. My claim is simply that in the ancient world, writers could employ metaphors similar to Paul's to speak about a force intrinsic to the flesh that came into conflict with the good. This caveat may address Croasmun's objection that, if we follow Wasserman, the passions would have to be transposed into a different cosmic imaginary than that of the Platonic discourse in which they are grounded (Emergence of Sin, 20 n. 79). Croasmun is right insofar as Paul and the Platonists do not share the same view of the cosmos or humanity, and thus due caution must be taken in appealing to a specific aspect of their anthropologies.

43 Gaventa claims that sin is neither ‘misdirection’ (Our Mother Saint Paul, 121) nor ‘a disposition or flaw in human nature’ (‘Cosmic Power of Sin’, 231), which may be an attempt to summarise Stowers's view of the passions.

44 Käsemann, Romans, 201–3 abstracts from what he calls the Greek tradition and Qumran in order to artificially construct the category of an ‘ethical conflict’. For Käsemann, ‘ethical conflict’ is an insufficient description for the reality of being ‘sold under sin’. Yet this is because of Käsemann's very narrow understanding of the ‘ethical conflict’. A more flexible notion might make it a suitable descriptor.

45 Wasserman, Death of the Soul, 32, 135. See, for example, Plutarch, Virt. prof. 76b–c; Rect. rat. aud. 46d. Citing Epictetus, Diatr. 2.17.24; 2.18.8; Seneca, Ep. 82.4–7, Holtz, ‘Paul, the Law and Judaism’, 202 writes that the Stoic solution involved an inward turn to make a right use of impressions. Becker, E.-M., ‘Das introspektive Ich des Paulus nach Phil 1–3: Ein Entwurf’, NTS 75 (2019) 310–1, at 314Google Scholar, claims that, by contrast, Paul does not view the solution in ‘introspektive Selbstanalyse’, which ‘er … wie das denkende Ich selbst einer Kritik unterzieht (Röm 7.24f.)’.

46 It should be noted, though, that moral philosophers did occasionally speak of people who were so corrupt that even good instruction drove them to commit evil. See Wasserman, Death of the Soul, 105, 109. As Holtz, ‘Paul, the Law and Judaism’, 203 n. 87 notes, ‘According to Seneca the conflict between the “true” self and the “actual” self remains unresolvable once the passions have fully erupted’ (citing Seneca, Med. 1078–9; Ira 1.8.3).

47 I would like to thank the participants in the Duke New Testament seminar, the Pauline seminar of the British New Testament Society, and the Theology and Apocalyptic discussion group for their valuable comments on drafts of this article.