Nous

Furtherrmore, we meet with a whole series of concepts in Paul that specifically describe and further define the "inward man" as "understanding" (nous), "heart" (kardia), "will" (thelëma), "soul" (psyche), "spirit" (pneuma), "conscience" (syneidēsis). Here the concepts nous ("understanding") and heart—again and again employed by Paul and closely connected with each other—occupy far and away the most important place.

In English there is really no equivalent for nous. It can sometimes simply be translated by "understanding, " e. g., when speaking with the nous is placed over against "speaking in tongues" (1 Cor. 14:14ff., 19), i. e., speaking in such a way that man comprehends the sense and purport of it with his "sober" understanding (cf. 2 Cor. 5:13).⁶⁸ Thus it can be said (Phil. 4: 7) that the peace of God transcends all nous, i. e., the divine peace bestows that which man with all his reflection cannot give himself⁶⁹ (or: which surpasses all that the human understanding comprehends or is able to comprehend).⁷⁰ In a similar sense nous can mean level-headedness or intelligent judgment (cf. 2 Thess. 2: 2).

Nous frequently has a more inclusive and pregnant significance, however, which does not correspond with our "understanding, " or does so only partially. This is the case in those passages which especially relate nous with die knowing of God, for example, Romans 12: 2, where the renewing of the nous is spoken of so as to discern what the will of God is. Still more directly involved with the knowledge of God is Paul's pronouncement concerning the gentiles, that the invisible things of God are known from his works through the nous (nooumena; Rom. 1: 20). The nous here is not the seat of a natural or innate knowledge of God, is still less the divine light in man or something of that sort, but denotes the capacity, the susceptibility of man to take in the revelation of God that comes to him from without. This is not to say, however, that the nous knows merely in a receptive way. It is at the same time man in his inner self-determination; speaking religiously, it is both the capacity for being addressed and the responsibility with respect to the revelation that comes to him. The nous is therefore not merely a theoretical capacity, but also the point of departure, the determinative "center" of his acting.⁷¹ Paul speaks to that effect, e. g., in Romans 14: 5: "every man must be fully convinced in his own nous" (judgment, self-determination). Romans 7: 23 is also typical of this meaning: "but I see in my members another law which is at war with the law of my nous. " Thus there is mention here of a law (to be understood in a more general sense as commanding power, constraint)⁷² to which the nous as starting point for moral action has been subjected. The nous here represents that which man knows and wills with respect to the good according to his deepest self-determination (cf. the context).⁷³ Because not only the individual decisions are thought of here, but the continuous moral posture of man, nous can mean more generally: disposition, mind (cf., e. g., 1 Cor, 1: 10; Col. 2: 18ff., et al. ).

This important place in human responsibility which is ascribed to the nous is also reflected in the ideas compounded with nous or derived from it, as, e. g., "thought" (noēma; 2 Cor. 3: 14; 4: 4; 2 Cor. 10: 5; 11: 3), in which the "moment of thought" is very closely connected with the "moment of disposition" that reveals itself in the willing and acting. Likewise the word "conversion, " occurring only very seldom in Paul⁷⁴(metanoia, metanoein), denotes a reversal of the nous, i. e., a radical turning about of man in all his thinking, willing, and acting (cf. 2 Tim. 2: 25; 2 Cor. 12: 21), the secret of which lies in turning to God with contrition (2 Cor. 7: 9ff. ), and which manifests itself in turning away from sin. Other ideas of the same kind, in which the "thinking" of man is very closely linked with his moral self-determination and his whole religious-moral attitude to life, could also be pointed out.⁷⁵

For our purpose it is sufficient to ascertain that from the viewpoint of a theological anthropology the concept nous has great significance in Paul, in that nous on the one hand denotes the organ, the possibility, in which man. is addressed as a thinking and responsible being by the revelation of God, and on the other hand constitutes as well the description of that by which he is most deeply determined in his thinking and acting.

Heart

The significance of the concept "heart" (kardia) is most closely connected with this. Just as in the whole of the New Testament,⁷⁶ so in Paul as well, heart is the concept that preeminently denotes the human ego in its thinking, affections, aspirations, decisions, both in man's relationship to God and to the world surrounding him. Theologically speaking, therefore, "heart" denotes man in his religious-moral quality. To what degree "understanding" and "heart" from this point of view belong together may appear from those passages where they are found in a parallel meaning (as Phil. 4:7; 2 Cor. 3: 14ff. ). Conversion, the reversal of the nous, is a matter of the heart (Rom. 2: 5). Although an exactly delimited usage is not present, one can perhaps say that the heart is still more inclusive than the nous, in that the nous speaks of the human ego from the viewpoint of thinking — though this, as we have seen, is not in the least conceived of only as an intellectual faculty—whereas the affections, aspirations, passions, desires dwell in the heart and spring forth from it.⁷⁷

It is of particular importance for our subject that the heart, just as the understanding, is expressly connected with God; again not as though the heart were that in man which is most akin to God—in his "heart, " too, man does not transcend his humanness in any respect whatever—but in the sense that God declares himself through his revelation in or to the human heart as the center of human existence. Thus it is said of the gentiles in Romans 2:14ff. that, though they do not have the law, they nevertheless give evidence of the work of the law as written in their hearts. This certainly does not mean that even without the revelation of God's law, of his own accord, by virtue of an inward illumination residing in the heart, man bears knowledge of God's will, so that the heart is yet again to be viewed as the higher or divine in man; rather, just as was apparent with respect to the nous, the heart is here spoken of as the place where God declares himself to man, by virtue of his revelation in all his works.⁷⁸ Conversely, it is said of Israel that a covering lies on its heart until it turn to the Lord (2 Cor. 3:15ff. ). That covering on the heart takes away the true knowledge of God, just as the shining of God's revelation in Christ in the heart again makes possible the true knowledge of the glory of God (2 Cor. 4: 6). And as God by his revelation declares himself to the heart of man as the real center of his being, so this heart is the subject of the answer that man gives to this revelation, whether it be positive or negative; which thereupon is searched, proved, made manifest by God (Rom. 8: 27; I Thess. 2: 4; 1 Cor. 4: 5). With the heart one believes (Rom. 10: 10), one lusts (Rom. 1: 24), one obeys (Rom. 6: 17), one does the will of God (Eph. 6: 6), etc. The personal pronoun could stand in all these expressions, for what man is is determined by the quality of his heart. But in all this frequent use of the word heart, in the most decisive pronouncements that can be given concerning man, it is brought out that man is led and governed ultimately from one point, that he therein exhibits his real manhood, both in his susceptibility to the revelation of God and in his responsibility for his thinking, willing, and acting.

Soul and spirit

Of much less importance for what occupies us is the use of the concept soul (psychē) in Paul. Psyche in Paul is neither, after the Greek-Hellenistic fashion, the immortal in man as distinct from the soma, nor does it denote the spiritual as distinct from the material. Psyche stands in general for the natural life of man (cf. Rom. 11: 3; 16: 4; 1 Thess. 2: 8—to give his "soul, " that is, his life for someone—et al. ). This is most clearly evident in the well-known pronouncements in 1 Corinthians 15: 44ff., where Paul places the first man Adam as "living soul" over against Christ as "life-giving Spirit" and speaks of the "psychical body" (sōma psychikon) sown in weakness and perishableness as distinguished from the spiritual body that is to be raised. Psyche and psychical here plainly mean the natural and earthly life, which has no subsistence in itself but is subject to death and destruction; it is here used all but synonymously with "flesh and blood" in verse 50, that which has been taken from the earth (v. 47). In conformity with this Paul speaks as well of the "psychical man, " who cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2: 14), and whom he places over against the spiritual, pneumatic man.⁷⁹ In 1 Corinthians 3: 1 he equates psychical with sarkic, carnal. It is evident, therefore, that psychical in this context denotes the limited-human that in itself is incapable of grasping or understanding the divine wisdom, of which Paul has said in the preceding chapter that it is the object of God's special announcement. Psychic and sarkic thus approximate each other very closely here, in that they both denote man in his limitedness and humanity over against the divine possibilities and realities. Otherwise psychical and psyche is not in itself a disqualification. Other than sarx it does not have the special pregnant significance of the natural man in his having turned-away-from-God, in his sin. Even when it is not set over against the pneuma given by God it describes man in his natural life, especially according to his inner existence, as may appear in particular from the combinations "of one soul"⁸⁰ ( = of one mind; Phil. 2: 2), "of like soul"⁸¹ ( = of one spirit; Phil. 2: 20), "well of soul"⁸² ( = cheerful; Phil. 2: 19, et al. ).⁸³

Paul speaks of pneuma in much the same sense as of psyche, at least so long as he intends the human spirit and not the Spirit of God given to believers (as is usually the case when he speaks of pneuma). Just as psyche, pneuma denotes man in his natural existence, approached from within. The clearest evidence for this is surely the parallel use of pneuma in 2 Corinthians 2: 13 (I had no rest for my pneuma) and of sarx in 2 Corinthians 7: 5 (our sarx had no rest). Both times it is a matter simply of man in his natural condition, which can be denoted by spirit as well as by flesh. Here again there is no trace of the spirit as a supersensual divine principle inherent in man. Accordingly when Paul says elsewhere: the grace of Christ be with "your spirit" (Gal. 6: 18; Phil. 4: 23; Phlm. 25), this means the same thing as "with you" (Rom. 16: 20; Eph. 6: 24, et al. ). In the same sense as "one of soul, " etc., the apostle speaks of "in one spirit" (Phil. 1: 27), "fellowship of the spirit" (Phil. 2: 1, et al. ). Nothing else is denoted by all this than man in his natural, inner existence. Accordingly when it is said in 1 Thessalonians 5: 23: "may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord . . . , " in all probability one is not to think here of a trichotomistic representation, in which three parts are to be exactly distinguished from each other in man, and in which the pneuma denotes a separate, higher area of life, distinct from the psyche. Rather, we have to do here with a (perhaps traditional) plerophoric mode of expression in which the inner life of man is denoted in two different ways, but to which no particular psychological or anthropological significance can be ascribed.⁸⁴Paul speaks of the inner man in more ways than one. He uses the word "soul" as well as "spirit" for this without it always being possible to distinguish between them in a technical sense.⁸⁵

As regards further the two different "directions" mentioned above (p. 114) in which the corruption of sin works itself out in human existence, we meet with the first representation especially in the description of the moral degeneration of the life of the gentiles in Romans 1 and Ephesians 4. As we have already seen, this delineation in Romans 1: 18ff. serves to demonstrate from this radical corruption the already clearly visible manifestation of the divine wrath.

The specific nature of this corruption is that it quenches all better knowledge and volition in man, and so makes him commit sin with delight. For because these men, in spite of what they have received in their nous of the revelation of God and thus know of God, nevertheless do not glorify God and give thanks, they are abandoned to worth-lessness in their reasonings and their foolish heart becomes darkened (1: 20, 21). In this worthlessness of the inner man, this abandonment of the nous as the possibility for knowing God, and in this darkening of the heart, the wrath of God is being revealed. God gives him up to the evil lusts of his heart (v. 24), to a "reprehensible nous" (eis adokimon noun), to do that which is not fitting (v. 28). For not only is the inward man given up to darkness and ignorance in his relationship to God, but he is also perverted and inclined to all unrestraint and reprehensible activity in his moral self-determination. In this way the corruption bursts through to the outside of his physical existence (v. 24). The corruption of the heart and of the nous is carried on in the outward man, in a life that is shameful and censurable before God and men.

We find a description similar to that of Romans 1 in Ephesians 4:17ff., where believers are urged not to walk as the gentiles walk, "in the vanity of their nous, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who being past feeling have given themselves up to licentiousness. " In all this they are alien to the life of God, the true life intended by God, directed to him, reaching its fulfillment in him. The cause is once again mentioned as ignorance (dia agnoian), the lack of true knowledge, and the entrance in its place of the opposite, again connected with the worthlessness of the nous; and the hardening of their heart, which is the most central description of the human ego. The heart has now been hardened, has become unfeeling and insensitive on account of its having been turned away from God. And all this reveals itself in the walk of the gentiles. As in Romans 1 it is said again and again that God has given them up to all kinds of evil practices, so it is said of them here that they have abandoned themselves to these practices. That which is a judgment of God is at the same time an act of man.

These extensive delineations show that the corruption of sin resides in the human heart and understanding, just that from which, for the manifestation of his life, man ought to receive leadership and direction toward the good. These delineations of the darkened understanding and the depraved heart, as we have seen, apply especially to the gentiles in their deep moral decadence, and in general to the notorious sinners and enemies of the truth of God (cf. Col. 2:18; 1 Tim. 6: 5; 2 Tim. 3: 8; Tit. 1: 15). This does not alter the fact that the apostle not only holds up this radical depravity in the gentiles and ungodly as a deterrent example, but by portraying it thus he wants to make those who have not yet fallen into it to feel the gravity of sin on account of the wrath of God even in their own life (Rom. 2: Iff. ); as well, he wishes to make clear to believers from what a corruption they all have been delivered (cf. Eph. 2: 1-3; Tit. 3: 3). Hence, too, the renewing of the nous is a matter that is necessary not only for some, but for all, who will dedicate their bodies (i. e., themselves; see above) to God as a sacrifice well-pleasing to him (Rom. 12: 2; Eph. 4: 23); just as it is not only the doing but the willing of that which can serve to the salvation of man that is worked by God in believers for the sake of his good pleasure (Phil. 2: 15).

On the other hand, it is necessary to guard against placing on a uniform level all that is said in the Pauline teaching on sin concerning the corruption of the inward man. Not everything that is said in this delineation of the radical depravity in the gentile world can apply simply as a verdict with respect to the total corruption of men taken individually. There is a difference even among the gentiles themselves. Not only does the apostle know men among the gentiles who are not guilty of these shameful sins, who rather in the civic sense have a right to the commendation and protection of the authorities because of their good works (Rom. 13: 3ff. ), and whose judgment and approbation the church, too, is to value (cf. Col. 4: 5; 1 Tim. 3: 7; 2 Cor. 8: 21); but he also speaks explicitly of gentiles who give evidence (in their actions) that what the law requires has been written by God in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness to their good and evil deeds (Rom. 2: 15). This is not, as appears from the whole context of Romans 1: 18-3: 20, to say that these gentiles have no need of justification by faith and of the Spirit of Christ for their salvation; rather, in the imperfection of their works of the law they, too, with all others fall under the judgment of God on sin (Rom. 3: 20, 23). Nonetheless, it may not elude us that in their deeds they are not only credited with a certain fulfillment of the law, but that they also have received in their hearts a notion from God of the requirement of the law and have put this into practice. And what applies to the gentiles also applies to Israel. To be sure, the whole of Paul's preaching is bent toward taking away from Israel their righteousness before God and uncovering their sin to them (Rom. 2: 1ff. ). But even so this does not alter the fact that he not only ascribes to Israel the knowledge of the will of God by virtue of the privilege of the law given to them (Rom. 3: 2; 9: 4), but also declares that they evince a zeal for God, a passionate desire to please him by their works of the law (Rom. 10: 2). When the apostle adds to this: "but not in accordance with the right insight" (all' ou kat' epignōsin), he once again brings the nous into the picture. This time, however, not in the same sense as when he speaks of the darkening of the nous and of the abandonment to a pernicious nous that occurs among the gentiles. If this darkening of the nous leads the gentiles to all kinds of shameful sins, in Israel the want of the right insight works itself out in an entirely different way: in the attempt to make themselves acceptable to God by conduct as unimpeachable as possible (Rom. 10: 3; cf. Phil. 3: 6, 9). Accordingly when it is said elsewhere of the Israelites that they have become hardened in their nous (ta noēmata autōn epōrōthē; 2 Cor. 3: 14), and that a covering has come to lie on their heart (v. 15), it is indeed, just as with the gentiles, a matter of a hardening and darkening of the heart and the nous (cf. also Rom. 11:7, 8), but nevertheless in an entirely different sense: it is not the desire for the reprehensible in a moral sense or the total lack of knowledge of the will of God that is here the consequence of the hardening and the inner corruption, but rather the attempt to be able with the exertion of all one's moral powers to be righteous before God. It is of importance for insight into the Pauline doctrine of sin to keep sharply in view this differentiated character of the corruption of the inner man outside Christ, and not to fall into a conception of the anthropological implications of this doctrine of sin that places everything on one level.

Particularly characteristic of these anthropological aspects of Paul's delineation of man in sin, however, is furthermore the "reverse direction" in which the corruption of sin works itself out, in other words, the direct connection that is placed between sin and the body. The bondage of sin to which man is subjected, his condition of death because of the divine wrath, is not only determined by the depravity of the inner man and its effect on "the body"; rather, one must say that the reverse is no less characteristic of Paul's anthropological conceptions: that sin, as it were, lays hold of the body "from without" and thus subjects the entire man to itself as a slave.

All sorts of expressions and pronouncements in Paul's epistles give evidence of this "direct" connection: sin-body. Thus, for example, in Romans 6: 6 there is mention of the "sin-body" that must be done away with, so that "we" no longer serve sin. Here the body, in its being ruled by sin, is the impediment to the ego in ceasing to serve sin. Similarly, believers are warned no longer to permit sin to reign in their bodies that they should obey the lusts of that body (Rom. 6: 12). Here again the direction is not from within toward the outside, but the reverse: sin wishes to take possession of the body, stirs up sinful desires in it, and thus bring the "I" under its dominion. Earlier we pointed to the expression: the (evil) practices of the body, which believers are to put to death by the Spirit (Rom. 8:13), and to the words: put to death your members on the earth (Col. 3: 5), by which the same thing is intended. Here the body stands as the subject and bearer of sin in a certain relationship of independence over against the ego.

This connection between sin and body finds expression in its most pregnant form in the well-known pericope of Romans 7: 14-27, where a distinction is made not merely between the influence of sin on the ego, the nous, the inward man, on the one hand, and on the body, the members, on the other, but where all the emphasis falls precisely on the discord between the two. The idea then is this, that through having in its power the body, the members, the flesh, sin makes the ego, the inward man, the nous powerless to do the good willed by him (the ego, etc.; Rom. 7: 22-25). This opposition is so absolute that the apostle twice (vv. 17, 20) declares that it is no longer "he himself" but sin dwelling in him (i. e., in the flesh, his body, his members) that does the evil. However, this power of sin in his members is so great that he knows himself to be a prisoner by the law (power) of sin in his members, indeed calls himself carnal, sold under sin, a wretched man, who cries out asking who will deliver him from this body of death (vv. 14, 23, 24). In this whole representation the connection between sin and body is altogether in the foreground, and that as opposed to the will of the ego and of the nous. Sin, as it were, moves into the outward man, seats itself in him as in a fortress raised about the ego (the inward man, the nous), makes him thus its prisoner and prevents him from breaking out.

It is not surprising that some have seen in this representation a variant of the Greek idea that the body is the seat of sin and thus, as the lower, sensual principle, the prison of the higher, spiritual part of man, his soul. Yet on further reflection this conception cannot stand even momentarily. For, first of all, the body is not only a creation of God and thus not destined for sin, but for the Lord (1 Cor. 12: 18, 24; 15: 35ff.; 6: 13, 15), but also in Paul's preaching the body is wholly included in the redeeming work of Christ. It shares in the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15: 35ff. ), and even in its temporal-earthly existence is considered from the viewpoint of the keeping and renewing power of God (1 Cor. 12: 9; 2 Cor. 4: 7ff.; 12: 7). Of an ethical antithesis, founded in the physical-sensual nature, between body and nous, outward and inward man, there can therefore be no question. But in the second place — so we have seen above — the body represents not merely a certain constituent part of man, but rather man himself in his concrete corporeal mode of existence. It is not only the body, but it is the man himself, who with his flesh (body) serves sin (Rom. 7: 25), who himself is carnal, even though after the inner man he wants to do the good and he serves the law of God with his nous (Rom. 7:14, 22, 25). Consequently, we have to do in this representation in Romans 7 and elsewhere with something else, namely, with a particular anthropological construction of the ethical discord to which even the man who wants to do the good is subjected. Paul denotes that as the discord between the inward man and his body (flesh, members), whereby it is not said that the inward in itself represents the good and the outward by definition the evil in him, but that man has to wage war with himself, and in that struggle, without the power of the Holy Spirit, encounters an insurmountable resistance in himself. That Paul denotes the latter especially with "the body" does not involve any depreciation of the material with respect to the spiritual, but rests on the idea that man must come to selfrealization in his physical existence, and in that existence is found accordingly the clear model of the bondage of sin. At the same time, we may be permitted to say that the importance of these pronouncements does not lie in the manner in which certain anthropological ideas are handled here, but rather in the thought expressed in them: although man is disposed and inclined to do the good, even then because he is flesh, because of his inclusion in the whole of the human solidarity in sin, he is nevertheless frustrated in a decisive manner in doing what is good.

Indeed, one can perhaps say that in this representation of the decisive impediment in the doing of the good that is situated in the body (the members, the flesh), the specific character of the Pauline doctrine of sin is reflected, as we have been able to observe it already in the first sections of our investigation. Paul regards sin not merely or in the first place from the individual and personal, but from the collective and supra-individual point of view. It is the fact of having been taken up into solidarity in sin, the fact that man is flesh, the fact of having been brought under the power of sin that surrounds him on every side and, as it were, occupies him, that governs the Pauline conception of sin. It is for this reason that such great emphasis can fall on the connection between sin and body (in the sense of concrete mode of existence subjected to sin). This conception of sin also makes itself felt in a decisive way in the representation of the inner discord of the ego in Romans 7 and finds its exactly corresponding counterpart in the structure of the Pauline doctrine of redemption.

SECTION 20. ROMANS 7 IN THE PAULINE "ANTHROPOLOGY"

Finally, as regards the much discussed difference of opinion — which to the present day has not been brought to a solution that is in some degree generally accepted — as to whether the discord delineated in Romans 7: 14ff. is to be understood as pertaining to the remaining struggle against sin in the Christian life or whether Paul here intends to represent the impotence of the ego outside Christ and the power of his Spirit, we have elsewhere⁸⁶ chosen with conviction for the latter view on the ground of a detailed analysis of the context and the text of Romans 7 and wish to maintain that with undiminished force. It would be pointless, and would fall outside the context of the subject presently treated, to let all the arguments pro and con pass in review once again.⁸⁷ In part we must return to the purport of Romans 7: 14-25 when in the following sections we shall have to treat further the inadequacy of the law and its powerlessness on account of the flesh — the real theme of Romans 7: 7-25. What must yet occupy us here is the question as to how the discord thus understood between the inward man and the body, the nous and the flesh, is to be understood within the whole framework of the Pauline anthropology. In particular the objection must come up for discussion as to whether what is here said of the "inward man, " the nous, the "I-myself" — if one chooses to understand this of man before or outside Christ — does not come into conflict with that which elsewhere is Paul's judgment of the total corruption of man outside Christ.

It should first of all be established that the discord pictured in Romans 7 consists not merely in a certain temptation of the ego (the will to the good, the inward man), but in the absolute impotence of the I to break through the barrier of sin and the flesh in any degree at all. Undoubtedly it is said of the new man as well that he continues to be engaged in conflict with the flesh. Thus, for example, in Galatians 5: 17 where it is said: "the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. " And similarly it is said to believers in Romans 6:12 that sin may not (continue to) reign in their mortal bodies, etc. All this points to enduring battle, struggle, resistance of the flesh against the Spirit. But the absolute distinction between these and similar pronouncements and the portrayal of Romans 7 is that the former are spoken within the possibility and certainty of victory (cf. Rom. 6:14: "for sin shall not have dominion over you; for you are not under law, but under grace"; Gal. 5: 24: "but they that are of Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts"), while in Romans 7 everything is directed toward throwing light on man's situation of death, his having been sold under sin, his having been taken captive by the superior power of sin. The despairing "who will deliver me from this body of death?" is, to be sure, followed by the interjection of faith: "Thanks be to God! through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (vv. 24, 25). But this does not mean that the description of having been sold and made captive under sin and having been given over to the body of sin was not intended so absolutely as it is expressed. The power of Jesus Christ, the delivering might. of the Spirit of life in Christ, which is spoken of in verse 25 and in Romans 8: 2ff., are not in some way to be "accommodated" or otherwise discounted in the (description of the) death situation of Romans 7: 14-25; rather, they put an end in principle to the absolute sovereignty of sin over the ego described in Romans 7. The elements placed over against each other in Romans 7 are consequently not (as in Gal. 5) the Spirit and the flesh, or (as in Rom. 6) grace and the law, but the human ego, the "I-myself" (v. 25!) and the flesh, the law of God and the law of sin. In the struggle between those parties the victory is to the flesh and sin, and the ego finds itself, despite all that it would will and desire, in absolute bondage and the situation of death. Other powers must enter the field, another than the "I-myself" must join the battle, if deliverance is to come. So far it is from any suggestion that since there is mention here of a dis-cord, this were able to furnish the proof that the struggle between the old and the new man is described here in the manner of Galatians 5:17.

For this reason those scholars are certainly right who point out that what is said "in favor" of the ego in the description of Romans 7 (vv. 15-17, 18b-22, 25) does not relativize the representation of having been sold and of bondage under sin, nor is it intended to apply a reduction to it, but precisely to place the superior power of sin in that much sharper a light.⁸⁸ The connecting links in the chain of the argument of Romans 7 corroborate this, as is easy to demonstrate in a detailed analysis.⁸⁹ In spite of everything in the I, the inward man, etc., that may offer resistance to this power of evil it avails nothing. It can only make defeat the deeper, and the situation of death the more hopeless. However one therefore supposes himself constrained to judge of the resistance of the ego in the natural man, it can in no respect whatever have the significance of a less serious assessment of the human situation of death. The purport is precisely that as long as these weapons must be fought with, every chance of deliverance or victory is utterly lacking. This and no other is the effect of Paul's anthropological pronouncements of Romans 7.

The question arises finally as to whether what Paul says in Romans 7:14-25 "in favor" of the " I, " the inward man, the nous, admits of being reconciled with the general picture with which we meet elsewhere in his epistles concerning the corruption of sin in man outside Christ. It is a question here in particular of those pronouncements in which the apostle says: "for I do not that which I will, but what I hate, that I d o . . . so now it is not I that do it, but sin which dwells in m e ..., for I delight in the law of God after the inward man.... So then I of myself with my nous, indeed, serve the law of God; but with my flesh the law of sin. " It is held that this is not to be reconciled with a pronouncement like that in Romans 12: 2, where it is said so clearly that the nous must be renewed in order to discern what the good will of God is; and with Philippians 2: 13, where not only the doing, but also the willing of the good is ascribed to God.

In our judgment too little account is taken in this way of what we have already observed above concerning the differentiated and shaded picture that the apostle gives of the bondage of sin and its corrupting operation in man. Romans 7 does not fall outside that, but brings it out in still fuller relief. The idea of and zeal for the good have not been quenched in the same way in all men, Jew and gentile, under the law and without the law. It is in harmony neither with the teaching of Jesus nor with that of Paul to deny zeal for the law or desire for the good to every man outside Christ, or to consider such impossible in him. It is likewise not in harmony with the reality to which Paul, without fear of being wrongly understood, appeals with a certain degree of self-evidentness (Rom. 2:I4ff. ). This takes away nothing from the necessity of total renewal. The nous and the will, even when they have not been depraved and darkened in the manner of the heathen life given up to debauchery, have need of total renewal, in that they have no alternative but to look for their point of departure and strength no longer in their own moral impulse, in the law, or in the light of nature, but in Christ and the government of his Spirit. This is nowhere more evident than in Romans 7, where it is just the utter bankruptcy of the strength of the will, of the better I, of the nous in its moral selfdetermination that is spoken of. The whole contrast here lies between the I-myself of verse 25 and the "through Jesus Christ our Lord" of verse 24. But thereby every knowledge, zeal, effort, recognition of the excellence of the demand of the law above the will of the flesh need not yet be denied in man outside Christ.⁹⁰

Involved here also, of course, is the style Paul employs in Romans 7, in this case the correct characterization of the ego that is speaking here.⁹¹ Some suppose that in Romans 7: 14ft Paul is no longer speaking simply of the "ordinary" non-Christian, but of the one who stands "on the highest plane attainable by pre-Christian man, "⁹² that is to say, of the man who gives himself to the law with all his strength, to whom one cannot simply apply what is said of the heathen in Romans 1, Ephesians 2 and 4, or Titus 3. In a similar sense others are of the opinion that Romans 7:7ft refers to the "inward state" of the Jew under the law, who does not content himself with the half-heartednesses that Paul scourges in Romans 2.⁹³ Still others hold the view that Paul here does give the general picture of a man under the law, before and without Christ, but viewed with the eyes of a Christian.⁹⁴ Finally, the opinion has also been defended that Paul here speaks of a kind of transitional period in which the man finds himself who, although already confessing Christ, still struggles to hold fast to the law;⁹⁵ but this conception has found very little acceptance.

It is certainly no easy matter, if even possible, to typify this ego of Romans 7: 7-25 with a single word. It is unquestionably not to be taken in a biographical sense as a description of Paul's personal experience before or at his conversion. Romans 7 and 8 are too much concerned with redemptive-historical contrasts and categories and not with individual experiences for that to be the case. At the same time, it is not simply a rhetorical-generalizing statement: so is it in general with man under the law, seen now with the eyes of faith. Although it is surely more than personal, in that the redemptive-historical contrast is the real starting point of the drama sketched out in Romans 7, yet the personal setting is not to he characterized as merely rhetorical. It is especially the moral man shackled by the law with whom Paul can so easily identify because he was once so himself. That man is here described in his struggle and defeat, with the law as ally and sin and the flesh as adversaries, in his high aspirations and his complete failure. One must undoubtedly say that particularly in the recognition of total bankruptcy, as in verses 14ff. and 24, the natural man speaks the language of misery, as that can only be plumbed in its depth and understood out of the knowledge of redemption. For that reason at a given moment the spark, as it were, leaps over from "the other side": "Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord!" But this is not to say that this whole delineation therefore has no point of contact in man's own experience outside Christ, or could not mean for him, too, a disclosure of his actual situation. Paul draws so living and gripping a picture because he wishes to set before the eyes not only of the man in Christ, but also of the man under the law, the absolute necessity of another moral power than that of the I-myself, the nous, the inward man. And by relating the whole struggle to the ego, he lets it be felt on the one hand, as in solidarity with these wrestlers with and under the law, that he himself, once also under the law, is no stranger to this striving; on the other hand, how much for him the light has arisen on the prospectlessness of it. And, moreover, we may not forget that the picture can be so graphic and existential for the very reason that the struggle against the flesh never loses its actuality (Gal. 5: 17), and that therefore the question as to how one is to be unvanquished in that struggle never becomes an obsolete (because resolved) theological problem, but remains a matter of faith, which falls continually under the threat of becoming a matter of the "I-myself. "

Surveying all this, one cannot say that the portrayal of the corruption of sin in Romans 7 falls outside the general framework of the Pauline doctrine of man in sin. Rather, it forms in a certain sense its culminating point, in that it indicates that the corruption of sin in all its radicalness is not only to be sought in the blind heathen given up to all manner of perversity, but also in the man who lives under the strength of the law, who looks for his ideal and his moral strength in the law, and nevertheless must be brought to the recognition of having been sold under sin and of the "wretched man that I am, who will deliver me?"

C. SIN AND THE LAW

SECTION 21. THE ANTITHESIS WITH JUDAISM

It has already become clear in the above that the Pauline doctrine of the essence and universality of sin and of its outworking in human existence bears a very radical character and utterly excludes every possibility of redemption and renewal of life outside the salvation wrought by Christ. It still remains to us in this chapter, however, to treat what may perhaps be called the most drastic and most characteristic aspect of the whole of this doctrine of sin: the manner in which the law functions in this hopeless situation of sin and sin's corruption.

We touch here on one of the most striking and distinctive parts of Paul's preaching, one that has played a great role in the history of church and theology and which continues to be the object of all manner of inquiry in the exegetical literature.⁹⁶ In general it can be said that what Paul was seeking to do was to show that in the situation of death into which man has come by sin, the law can offer relief and help in no respect whatever, indeed that it — and here his view of the law receives its most critical and pregnant intensification — makes the man who would be saved by the law sink down still more deeply into the morass of sin and sin's corruption. It is this strong, negatively directed judgment of the significance of the law in the Pauline doctrine of sin and redemption that constantly attracts renewed attention, has given rise to all kinds of divergent views, and, particularly from the Jewish side, has not infrequently evoked radical, critical questions.⁹⁷

It is in his confrontation with Judaism that Paul comes to this absolutely negative estimate of the law as means of salvation, and without some insight into the theological-soteriological conceptions of the old synagogue, the position he occupies toward the law is incapable of being understood. Although — as is more and more apparent — it is no simple matter to give a summary exposition of Judaism, itself in a spiritual and religious respect so richly variegated, on the subject of its conception of sin and redemption,⁹⁸ yet one will have to say that the deepest difference between Paul and the Judaism that he combatted did not lie so much in divergent notions concerning the origin and universality of sin. Although here too all kinds of differently shaded conceptions are to be noted,⁹⁹ it can be said in general¹⁰⁰ that for the old synagogue universal sinfulness as a fact of experience was an incontrovertible matter. It concluded this from the universality of death. There is no death without sin. Therefore all who die must be sinners. To be sure, the reason for which every man must die is frequently sought in the disobedience and punishment of the first man, a punishment that has passed on to all men.¹⁰¹ Yet there are other voices as well, which seek the origin of death, not in Adam's sin, but in personal, individual transgressions.¹⁰² A doctrine of original sin in the sense of the hereditary transmission of a moral corruption caused by Adam is on the other hand not demonstrable (no more indeed than it is in Paul).

Particularly important for the Jewish doctrine of universal human sinfulness is the notion of the good and evil predisposition (yēser) in man. These are regarded as pertaining to human nature and therefore as created by God. Now, it is the moral vocation of every man by the strength of the inclination to good and with the help of the law to overcome the inclination to evil.¹⁰³ In the Manual of Discipline of the Qumran community one meets this doctrine in the idea of the two spirits, that of the light and that of the darkness, both created by God, between both of which man sees himself placed and compelled to choose (1QS III, 13ff. ). Elsewhere there is mention of the evil germ or root, which must be overcome by the law.¹⁰⁴

In all this a great deal is of course to be observed that differs from what we find in Paul. Nowhere does the apostle teach, for example, an innate evil predisposition created by God; on the other hand, the corporate idea of the all-in-one — as we have been able to point out above (Section 16) —is much clearer in him and much more important for the structure of his whole theology than is demonstrable in Judaism.

Yet, so far as the doctrine of sin is concerned, the real antithesis between Paul and the Judaism he controverts does not lie in the evaluation of these differences, but in the diametrically opposed judgment as to the strength and function of the law in this universal sin situation.

For Judaism the great counterpoise to the threat and power of sin is in the law given to Israel. The law is the unique means to acquire for oneself merit, reward, righteousness before God, and the instrument given by God to subjugate the evil impulse and to lead the good to victory. It can rightly be said, therefore, that for the Jews the law was the pre-eminent means of salvation, indeed the real "substance of life."¹⁰⁵

Undoubtedly all kinds of differences are to be noted in the Jewish sources in their estimation of the gravity and strength of sin. The predominant tendency is the doctrine, not infrequently presented in a highly quantitative sense, of the meritoriousness of the works of the law, which eventually enable man to obtain eternal life. In the multiplicity of the commandments is the means for gaining much merit. Every fulfillment of the law, in the sense of an act in conformity with a concrete prescription of the law, contributes to the treasure of merit, just as, conversely, every concrete transgression brings the sufficiency of merit into jeopardy.¹⁰⁶ But next to this business-like and quantitative conception of sin much deeper tones are to be heard, in which expression is given to uncertainty and despair springing from a much more adequate consciousness of the power of sin.¹⁰⁷ Not infrequently the moral power of man and the preponderance of the evil inclination or impulse are spoken of very pessimistically. This occurs particularly in the pseudepigraphic and apocalyptic literature, as well as in some of the Qumran writings.¹⁰⁸ The conviction that man needs the divine mercy and help if he is not to fall prey to the power of sin finds expression in some pronouncements, for example, in the collection of songs of the Qumran community, in a manner that is frequently very moving.¹⁰⁹

But all this does not alter one matter, namely, that Judaism knew no other way of salvation than that of the law, and that it saw even the mercy and the forgiving love of God as lying precisely in the fact that they enable the sinner once more to build for his eternal future on the ground of the law. The idea that man should have to renounce the law for the source of his moral strength and for his righteousness before God contradicts at its very core the Jewish doctrine concerning the object of the law and the inner connection between law and sin. Just this is the privilege of Israel above the gentiles, that in the law it has received the means of life. It possesses the Torah as "a protective and saving resource against the power of the evil impulse."¹¹⁰ It is the law that is able to give man life, and the works of the law that by their greater number must drown out the accusation of sin. And even where in Judaism the greatest receptivity appears for the help of God, and a Spirit of God is spoken of who must purify and help man to make his way perfect, no other and better way of salvation is intended than that of the righteousness and perfection to be pursued in the way of the law.¹¹¹

It is this redemptive significance that Judaism ascribed to the law against which the antithesis in Paul's doctrine of sin is directed, and he develops a doctrine of the law that is among the most distinctive aspects of his preaching.

If we attempt to analyze further this absolute rejection of the law as means of salvation, then it should be premised at once that in Paul this does not originate from a depreciation of the works of the law as such, nor from a certain discomfort about acting, nor from the (modern) contrast between the works of the law as something "external" and the disposition as the "true" obedience, any more than it does from criticism of the content of the law.¹¹² It has already become apparent from the foregoing that the apostle does not speak here out of any resentment against an undertaking in which he had once been unsuccessful.¹¹³ Paul himself, as it were, expressly cuts off misapprehensions of this sort when in Romans 7: 7 he poses the question: What then is the law? and replies in verse 12 that "the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good, " and when in the same context he says explicitly that "the commandment is [intended] unto life" (v. 10) and that "the law is spiritual" (i. e., divine; cf. 1 Tim. 1: 8). Similarly, he says in Galatians 3: 21 that the law is not in conflict with the promise, and that if the law had the power to make men alive, righteousness would be of the law. As norm for the will of God and guide to life, the law is therefore unassailable and perfectly trustworthy. If one were to fulfill its requirements he would in fact live (Rom. 10: 5; Gal. 3: 12; cf. Rom. 2: 7, 10). For this reason he does not deny the special privilege of the Jews, that they are the people to whom belongs the giving of the law (Rom. 9: 4), that on that ground they "know the will and are able to discern the things that really matter" (Rom. 2: 18), and in the law possess "the embodiment of knowledge and the truth" (Rom. 2: 20). The situation of man under the law therefore, comfortless as it is, is not so on account of the law's giving to him, as an inferior revelation, only a limited or even a false knowledge of God.¹¹⁴ The preaching of the gospel does not set over against the law a new concept of God, or a new view of the obligation in which man stands toward God. The apostle on this account continues to point even the believer, who no longer expects righteousness and life from the works of the law, to the judgment as the place where retribution takes place according to what has been done in the body, whether good or bad (2 Cor. 5: 10; cf. 1 Cor. 1: 8; 3: 12-15; 4: 4ff.; 1 Thess. 3: 13; 5: 23). So far is it from his mind that he should have to detract anything from the divine nature of the law itself or on the standpoint of faith set himself above it.

The true ground of Paul's absolute rejection of the law as means of salvation is accordingly an entirely different one. It is situated in the fact that in the light that has arisen in the death and resurrection of Christ, not merely has a better way of salvation come to view, placing the old in the shadow and making it superfluous, but the absolute inadequacy of the law as means of salvation has also fully emerged. For this reason Paul's antithesis with Judaism consists not only in the positive proclamation of the righteousness by faith without the works of the law, but also in the evidence, argued per negationem, of the insufficiency of the law to insure sinful man righteousness before God and life. It is this last point of view which lends to Paul's doctrine of sin its most characteristic features and structure and with which therefore we must occupy ourselves in a thorough fashion before going on to a discussion of the righteousness that is by faith.

SECTION 22. NO RIGHTEOUSNESS BY THE LAW. "BOAST" AND "SKANDALON"

The evidence of the insufficiency of the law as means of salvation is, in the main, adduced in two different ways. In so doing Paul follows the twofold redemptive function that Judaism (as we have already seen) ascribes to the law: as a means to be justified by the works of the law and as a weapon against the power of sin.

With regard to the first, his opposition is directed above all to Jewish boasting in the law and trusting in the possession of the law. This occurs particularly in the great indictment of Judaism in Romans 2: 1-3: 20. The possession of the law is of no avail, nor is circumcision. For not the hearers, but the doers of the law will be justified; and it is not the circumcision that takes place outwardly, in the body, that makes one a true Jew, but that which is hidden, which takes place in the heart, according to the Spirit and not according to the letter (Rom. 2: 12-29). And because it is just this that is wrong with the Jews, they have no reason to exalt themselves above the gentiles and to glory in the law. For, even though they do not fall into all kinds of perverse sins dishonoring to God and man, in which the wrath of God is already manifestly revealing itself (Rom. 1:18-32), it is not as though they had nothing to do with these sins, but they share in them in a great many ways, as they themselves will be compelled to admit (Rom. 2: Iff., 17ff. ). For this reason they deceive themselves in a fatal way. They misjudge the continuance of God's longsuffering toward them, which is intended to lead them, not to security of mind, but to conversion. Instead of acquiring a treasure of merit, as in their delusion they suppose, they are accumulating for themselves the wrath of God for the future on account of their recalcitrance and impenitent heart (Rom. 2: 1-12).

It is evident already from this detailed and telling accusation that Paul starts from a completely different conception of sin and of the law from that of Judaism. Although the Judaic conception acknowledged universal sinfulness, and that of the Jews as well, and though it could thus concur with Paul in his indictment in a great many respects, yet for the Jews the ground for trusting in the law had not herewith been taken away. Rather, they were led by it to a quantitative conception of the law and of sin.¹¹⁵ The judgment of God according to works was conceived as a weighing out of sins and works, the outcome of which is, to be sure, hidden on earth and a matter of uncertainty, but in the event of a final preponderance of good works will nevertheless turn out favorably. And over against those who, in Judaism, too, made a problem of the keeping of the whole law and all the commandments, the possibility of righteousness and life through the law was maintained in all sorts of ways even for the sinful man because no other avenue had been given than that of the law.¹¹⁶

Over against this we see in Paul a radicalization of the law both quantitatively and with respect to its content. When Paul in Romans 2: 21ff. holds up to the Jews all kinds of individual sins, this is for him (otherwise than for the Jews) a decisive proof of the impossibility of being justified by the law. For the law requires, as he shows explicitly elsewhere, that it be fulfilled in its entirety (holos ho nomos; Gal. 5: 3), and the Scripture pronounces its curse upon everyone who does not continue in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them (Gal. 3: 10; cf. Deut. 27: 26).¹¹⁷Every quantitative reduction of the law is therefore pure willfulness and in conflict with the law itself; and every sin, however much man is inclined in his delusion to forgive it in himself or merely to subtract it from the works of the law that remain to him, makes him guilty of the law as a whole.

This quantitative radicalization of the law is accompanied by, or rather coincides with, a qualitative one. While the Jews ascribed to circumcision, to the ritual and ceremonial institutions and prescriptions in the law in general, a special significance for being a Jew and belonging to the chosen people of God, Paul locates the criterion for the true fulfillment of the law and righteousness in conversion to God, in the circumcision of the heart according to the Spirit, as opposed to conformity to the letter of the law (Rom. 2: 4, 29). In all this Paul clearly stands in the tradition of prophetic criticism, as it is to be found in the Old Testament and especially in Jesus, of externalized, ritualisticlegalistic religiosity. To be sure, we do not find in Paul the express and detailed indication of the content of the law and of the true nature of the obedience it demands that we do, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount, and direct appeal to Jesus is missing, at least in Paul's epistles; but even so one can certainly say¹¹⁸ that Paul's conception of the law is in complete agreement with that of Jesus. Paul, too, reduces the whole content o£ the law to love (Rom. 13: 8-10; Gal. 5: 14), just as in 1 Corinthians 13 he speaks in exalted terms of love as the way that is much more excellent than the highest gifts, and even calls it greater than faith and hope (I Cor. 12: 31; 13: 13). In all this his qualitative idea of the law and its demand and, in conformity with this, also of sin is evident. He speaks of it chiefly in the singular, and not infrequently in personifications (Rom. 7). For this reason it can be ascertained without question that Paul was an apostle and disciple of Jesus in this sense, too, that his rejection of the law as means of salvation is¹¹⁹ grounded in the same radical view of sin as that which occupies such a central place in Jesus' preaching and exposition of the law.

However important all this may be, the principal thing has not yet been said. Just as it can be said of Paul's whole doctrine of the world and man in sin that it is only to be perceived in the light of his insight into the all-important redemptive event in Christ, so too, and indeed in a special sense, the function the law occupies in Paul's proclamation must be seen in the light that for him has dawned in Christ on the law and its works. What makes Paul's pronouncements on the law so deeply moving and powerful, what causes him to attribute this peculiar, not infrequently paradoxical significance to the law, is not to be accounted for from polemical zeal against Judaism, nor from reading the Old Testament, nor even from the words of Jesus transmitted to him, but it is the light that has burst on him concerning Christ's death and resurrection, the absolutely new situation that has begun with them and which has regard to the relationship in which every man stands to God in the most existential sense of the word. Only then does the nature of man outside Christ become apparent, does his "own righteousness" on the ground of the works of the law emerge at once in all its wretchedness and self-conceit into the light of day, then too does the insufficiency of the law as means of salvation first become fully manifest.

It is not a matter here, as has been said by some interpreters, of the postulate of a dogmatic tenet, namely, that with the advent of the Messiah the law is no longer in force.¹²⁰ For without regard to the question as to whether such a rabbinistic theologoumenon in fact found general acceptance in Jewish theology, one might then expect that for his pronouncement that Christ is the end of the law (Rom. 10: 4), Paul would surely have appealed in opposition to Judaism in one way or another to such a dogma and to its Old Testament foundation. The actual state of affairs, however, is an entirely different one. When in the light of Christ's death and resurrection Paul came to the conviction that the law cannot be the means of life and the ground of man's righteousness before God, this is not a dogmatical-theoretical premise or conclusion, but it rests on the redeeming significance of Christ's death and resurrection themselves, or, as Paul himself expresses it, on

the revelation of the righteousness of God in them, by faith and without the works of the law. Nowhere does this ground for Paul's radical rejection of the law as the means of salvation and of what man supposes himself able to acquire of righteousness and life in that way find clearer expression than in his personal statement in Philippians 3:4ff.:

If any other man thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I yet more: circumcised the eighth day . . . , as to the righteousness which is in the law blameless.

But what things were gain to me, these have I counted loss for Christ's sake. Yes, truly, I count all things to be loss because of the surpassing worth of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things,¹²¹ and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God upon the basis of faith . . ..

This pronouncement is of importance because it gives us an insight into the way in which the apostle himself learned to know the absolute nullity of the works of the law as the basis for man's righteousness before God. It has often been represented as though already before his conversion he had reached a deadlock with his efforts to find his rightousness before God in the works of the law, and that therefore at his conversion a heavy burden had fallen from his shoulders. The abovecited pronouncement points in an entirely different direction, however. He himself, too, had formerly attached the highest value to his lawworks, he knew himself to be "blameless" in respect of the righteousness that is to be obtained in the performance of the law (v. 6). Indeed, he speaks of his past to the same effect in Galatians l:13ff. The law and the works of the law before his conversion stood not for his spiritual bankruptcy, but for his "gain. " He found it extremely difficult, as one so far advanced in the righteousness of the law, to relinquish all this at once and renounce it. Only "for Christ's sake, " "because of the knowledge of Christ" his Lord, which surpassed all earlier attainments, he learned to count it as loss and suffered it all to be taken away. He expresses the same thing negatively when he says in Galatians 2: It is clearly evident here that Paul's repudiation of the law and its works as means of salvation in the Jewish sense of the word is neither a theoretical dogma, nor rests on subjective experience, but is grounded on that which God has revealed and bestowed of righteousness and life in the death and resurrection of Christ.

At the same time, however, it is therein that the deepest motives of Paul's rejection of righteousness by the law become evident and the correct light breaks in on the real situation of man and the world outside Christ. Not only the transgressions of the law themselves, whether as flagrant sins or in a more refined form, make man guilty before God and prevent him from being righteous before God on the ground of the works of the law. The very attempt to maintain oneself before God and to gain life on the ground of one's "own" works and merit makes such a seeking of righteousness a vain and reprehensible undertaking before God. We touch here the most profound and real aspect of the antithesis. It does not bear only or primarily an ethical character. It is in the full sense of the word religious in kind. For in the relationship of man to the law what is most profoundly involved is his relationship to God. And where the latter is misjudged in its real character, there the relation of man to law is also denatured, whether because he breaks out into sin or because he attempts to gain confidence through the law over against God. Thus what seemed to be "gain" is basically nothing other than "loss" and "refuse. " That is the knowledge that in the cross and resurrection of Christ has broken in as a light on Paul's own life and on the life of every man outside Christ.

Therefore the apostle views the question as to whether and how man is justified before God not only in the light of the law, as an ethical question, but in the broader light of the whole of God's revelation. When he describes the ungodliness of the gentiles in Romans l:18ff., he states his reason for that by referring to God's self-revelation in his works, to which they pay no heed and by which they are not moved to the acknowledgment and glorification of God. And when he wishes to show why Israel, although it has not fallen into the flagrant sin of heathenism, yet cannot obtain righteousness and life from the works of the law, he points not only to Israel's transgression of the law (Rom. 2:12ff. ), but, when he searches for the deepest cause, to Israel's misjudgment of the gracious character of its election as the people of God, through its having laid hold of the law to lean on it over against God and by fancied merits to place God under obligation to it (Rom. 9: 11; 9: 30-10: 3; 10: 16-21). The paradoxical phenomenon presents itself here that not merely in its transgression of the law, but also in its zeal for the law, Israel has not been able to obtain righteousness before God and life. Paul is able to indict the Jews on the one hand on account of their transgression of the law (Rom. 2), but on the other hand does not want to withhold from them the recognition of their zeal for the law (Rom. 10: 2): "For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. "

This must not be taken, however, as though the law stood in the way of their gaining the favor of God. It is rather so that the manner in which Israel made of the law a means of salvation and relied on it for its righteousness before God prevented Israel from attaining the real object of the law and thus made it reprehensible before God. Paul gives expression of this as follows: "But Israel, although following after the law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. Why not? Because it did not start from faith, but from supposed works" (Rom. 9: 31ff. ).

Zeal for the law can altogether alienate man from God, and has precisely the effect of making him a sinner. This occurs when faith is no longer the point of departure for the fulfilling of the law, but man addresses himself to what he takes for the work of the law. For the law then becomes detached from God, in the sense that man no longer trusts in God for his righteousness but in his works. And man in this way no longer arrives at the law, that is to say, no longer at the righteousness and at the life to which the law points him.¹²² The apostle is therefore able to demonstrate the impossibility of acquiring righteousness and life in the way of works at one time to those who praise the law with their mouth but in reality grossly transgress it (Rom. 2: 17ff. ), at another to those who with all their zeal and irreproachableness likewise do not find what they are seeking (Rom. 9; Phil. 3). In both cases man with the law in hand is faced with his bankruptcy. And surely the second is less evident and easy to accept. But it is not on that account any less real, indeed it is in a certain sense still more drastic because it strikes man in his moral earnestness and exertion; because it not only confronts him with his deficiency, but also casts his "gain" into the balance and compels him not only to acknowledge his sin, but also to renounce his very virtues before God.

This brings us finally to a pair of concepts that occupy an important place in Paul's preaching and enable us to understand still better the depth of the antithesis with Judaism.

The first is the qualification "boast" and "boasting,"¹²³ which he frequently uses in describing the confidence of the Jewish nation in their special privileges as the people of God (Rom. 2: 17), particularly in their possessing and knowing the law in that capacity (Rom. 2: 18, 23),¹²⁴ and in the possibility inherent in that fact of gaining righteousness for themselves before God (Rom. 3: 27), a boast the apostle also describes as finding rest in and relying on the law (Rom. 2: 17). Although we need not think of this "boasting" as a defiant and haughty glorying in their own works, but above all of their priding themselves on the possession of the law as the people of God, it follows from all that has been said above concerning Paul's judgment of the works of the law that he utterly rejects such a boast. In fact the frequent use of the concept "boast" in Paul's epistles is, even when he speaks of it in a positive sense, a great protest against the Jewish boasting in the law and the possibility of merit sought in it, and he aims at imparting thereby a contrary content to the idea of "boast. "

The cause for this rejection of boasting in the law is here again not that he would not acknowledge the Jewish prerogative. In the midst of his polemic against the boasting of the Jews he explicitly recognizes those privileges (Rom. 3: Iff. ). The cause is rather that what is most deeply at stake in the concept "boasting" is the question as to what it is in which man places his trust.¹²⁵ It is here that the real contrast lies. For boasting in the law and resting in it mean in practical terms boasting in the works of the law (Eph. 2: 9), i. e., trusting in the work of man, that is to say, trusting in the flesh (Phil. 3: 3), establishing "their own righteousness" (Rom. 10: 3). Boasting in the law is thus so fatal because it passes by the real character of Israel's privilege, no longer relies on the grace of God himself and on the electing character of his covenant but on man's own activity, so as to fix all hope and trust in it. And with that the deepest cause for which every striving to gain righteousness and life in the way of the works of the law must fail has again been laid bare: in this manner man becomes confident ancl strong against God, the flesh boasts in itself instead of boasting in God (cf. 1 Cor. 1: 29ff). Boasting is therefore not a phenomenon restricted to the Jews. It is equally characteristic of the Greeks, who glory in their wisdom (1 Cor. 1: 19-31). It is the natural impulse of every man, against which even the Christian must continue to be warned (Gal. 6: 4; Rom. 11: 17ft).

To what degree, finally, the apostle has received from Christ, and the righteousness given in him, the correct insight for this essentially so haughty and pernicious striving of man emerges clearly in this frequent and pregnant use of "boast. " When Paul has given in Romans 3: 21-26 the great programmatic summary of his gospel, the first conclusion he draws from it is: "Where then is the boasting? It is excluded. By what manner of law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith" (v. 27).

That there is no place for boasting becomes quite clear only from the gospel, in which "the law of works" has given way to "the law of faith, " that is, in which another order governs. From that other order, as it is evident already in Abraham's life and as it already for him excluded every boast (Rom. 4: 2), the unfoundedness, indeed the mortal peril of every human boast as trusting in the flesh is manifest: "that no flesh should boast before God" (1 Cor. 1:29), and that but one possibility and one ground of boasting should remain: boasting in the Lord (1 Cor. 1: 31; 2 Cor. 10: 17), and in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal. 6: 14).

Closely related to the above and highly typical for what occupies us here is finally the repeated mention of offense (skandalon) and stumbling (proskomma) as the cause for the vain striving of man to be able to stand before God on the ground of his own righteousness. When the apostle asks himself in Romans 9:3Iff. why the Jews, despite all their zeal, have not obtained the righteousness of God, he answers (in addition to what has already been cited above, p. 139): "They have stumbled at the stone of stumbling; even as it is written: Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense: and he that believes in him shall not be put to shame" (vv. 32ff. ).

If one asks wherein this offense or stumbling consists, then, as appears from the whole context, it can mean nothing other than that Israel has not been willing to be deprived of its own righteousness and that it has stumbled at the fact that Zion is only built when it trusts solely in God and not in the work of man.¹²⁶ Not to have seen and understood that, to have stumbled at that, is the cause for the bankruptcy of the righteousness that is by the works of the law: it is for this reason that Israel has not obtained it, that God has given them a spirit of stupor, that their table has become a snare and a trap and a stumbling block and a retribution to them (Rom. l l : 7ff). Here too the apostle shows the deepest cause for the inadequacy of the works of the law: it consists in the offense taken by human pride at the absoluteness of divine grace, at the exclusion of all human pretension and merit.

The same idea is to be found in two other highly important skandalon pronouncements:

. . . Christ the crucified, to the Jews a skandalon (1 Cor. 1: 23). . . . if I still preach circumcision..., then the skandalon of the cross has been done away (Gal. 5:11).

Both pronouncements set the cross of Christ as the skandalon over against the Jewish doctrine of salvation by works. The real and deepest cause for the Jewish rejection of Christ the crucified lies in the fact that the cross deprives man of his own righteousness.¹²⁷ The skandalon of the cross therefore ought to be maintained, and one may not meet halfway the man who is offended at it by permitting him after all to provide in part for his righteousness (circumcision in Gal. 5:1 1).

On the basis of all this it may be determined that for Paul the striving of man to obtain his righteousness before God in the way of the works of the law is doomed to failure not only because man cannot come up to the fulfillment of the law as God requires it of him, but because it is already fundamentally sinful to wish to insure oneself righteousness and life; indeed, this is the human sin par excellence. This insight, which one may surely call the foundation of Paul's whole view of man outside Christ, can be characterized as a radically deepened concept of sin. It rests ultimately, however, not on an analysis of man, but on the revelation of God's work in Christ's cross and resurrection; in the light of that work the seeking of righteousness on the basis of the works of the law first fully manifests its essentially proud and carnal character: as an idle boast and taking offense at the sovereignty of God's grace.

SECTION 23. THE LAW IMPOTENT BECAUSE OF THE FLESH. THE BONDAGE OF THE LAW

To this first great point of view, from which he elucidates the insufficiency of the law as means of salvation, Paul, however, adds a second: not only can the law not give man the righteousness that makes him acceptable before God (Gal. 3: 21); it is also incapable of breaking the power of sin and conquering "the flesh, " so that sin might no longer reign in the "mortal body" (Rom. 6:12). That is the second great viewpoint from which the argument is conducted in the Epistle to the Romans against confidence in the law and life under the law. Paul arrives at that in 6: 15, where he tells the church that in the struggle against the power of sin it may live not under the regime of the law, but under that of grace. In 7:1 he returns to this viewpoint, and after having first, positively, pointed to the death of Christ as the end of this regime of the law (the old dispensation of the letter; 7: 6), he once again, negatively — but now from this new viewpoint! — establishes the bankruptcy of the one who in the conflict against sin chooses to seek his strength in the law (and not in the Spirit; 7: 6; 8: 2).

If this general purport of Romans 7 in the whole course of the argument of Romans 6-8 were kept more clearly in view there could, in our conviction, scarcely exist any fundamental difference of opinion concerning the question as to whether Paul here draws the picture of the man in Christ or outside Christ. It has indeed been said that already in Romans 1: 18-4: 25 accounts have been "settled" with the law and that therefore it is not to be supposed that the inadequacy of the law would be raised afresh in Romans 7. But this objection is based on an insufficiently exact analysis of die course of the argument in the Epistle to the Romans, and passes over the two different viewpoints from which the antithesis with Judaism must come up for discussion. What is undoubtedly set forth at length in Romans 1: 18-4: 25 is that man cannot be justified by the works of the law. Accordingly it is not that with which Romans 7 is once again concerned. What is under discussion in chapters 6, 7, and 8: 1-13 is that the one justified by faith is no longer to live in sin (6: iff. ). What this means for the struggle against sin ("let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, " etc.; 6: 12) is indicated in Romans 7:1 ff. Its import is no other than that in that struggle believers are no longer to live under the vigor of the law, but of the Spirit (Rom. 7: 6). It is this redemptivehistorical contrast of the old and new (7: 6) which governs everything and in the light of which one is to answer the anthropological questions (see above). If, on the other hand, one turns the matter about and takes his point of departure in the anthropological description of what is then conceived as the struggle between the old and the new man, it is no longer to be comprehended how one could still maintain the real, redemptive-historical theme of these chapters (the antithesis between law and Spirit) in an intelligible manner.

The remarkable thing about the evidence of the insufficiency of the law furnished here consists in that Paul now represents the law as a power that provokes and, as it were, calls forth sin (in the sinner). The law does not restrain sin, but causes it to awaken; it does not reduce sin, but rather makes it to increase (cf. Rom. 5: 20). Already in the introduction of Romans 7 this is said indirectly when there is mention of "the sinful passions, which were [aroused] by the law. " The meaning is that the sinful passions properly assert themselves only when they encounter the resistances of the law.

This idea is developed and elucidated in the sequel (Rom. 7: 7-13) in a very telling and, one may surely say, dramatic fashion:

What shall we say then? Is the law sin? By no means! Indeed, I should not have known sin, except through the law. For I should not have known desire, if the law had not said: Thou shalt not cover.

Sin, however, taking its starting point in the commandment, called forth all kinds of desire in me: for apart from the law sin is dead. I was once alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin began to live, but I died . . . for sin, taking its starting point in the commandment, deceived me . . ..

It is not the law itself, therefore, which is sin. But sin avails itself of the law as its starting point,¹²⁸ that is to say, sin — here thought of as a personified power — gets its opportunity through the law. For the law forbids sin. Consequently, when the law comes on man with its prohibition, sin springs into action and awakens in man the desire for what is forbidden by the commandment. In that sense it can be said that the desires are "by the law" (v. 5). Thus it can also be understood that sin is "dead" apart from the law, that is, sin asserts itself in man only when the law comes to him with its prohibitions. Then sin begins "to live" (v. 9), it stirs from its slumbering, its resistance awakens to the power that is bent on bridling it. What is written in 1 Corinthians 15: 56 applies here as well: "the strength of sin is the law. " Without the law sin would not have been able to make men rebellious and lawless. For this reason it can also be said that sin, starting from the law, deceives man. By holding up the commandment to man as the end of his liberty and by promising him life in the transgression of the commandment, sin draws man under its enchantment. It promises him just that which the law appears to take away, and leads him thus into death.

Sin, however, taking its starting point in the commandment, called forth all kinds of desire in me: for apart from the law sin is dead. I was once alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin began to live, but I d i e d . . . for sin, taking its starting point in the commandment, deceived m e . . ..

The depiction is strongly reminiscent of the story of the fall of the first man, without one being able to say, however, that the I=Adam.¹²⁹ Yet the imperfects and the aorists are not to be fixed in the life of a specific individual. The I has a much more general significance.¹³⁰ With obvious allusions to the first fall into sin it says how sin takes possession of man not in spite of, but just by means of the law and that therefore victory over the dominion of sin can be gained, not by the strength of the "thou shalt" of the law, but only under the operation of grace, i. e., of the Spirit (Rom. 6: 12-7: 6).

It is frequently contended, however, that with the above, the negative-preparatory significance of the law in its innermost core has not yet been laid bare. For this is said to consist, in Paul's train of thought, not only in the law's awakening transgression in the sinner and thus bringing him under the judgment of the law, but no less in the "pious" misuse of the man who takes hold of the law in order to be able to establish his own righteousness before God.

Thus Bultmann, for example, writes that the redemptive-historical significance of the law consists in that it leads man into sin, not, however, only because it stimulates his desire for transgression, but also because it offers him the utmost possibility to live as a sinner, by converting his resistance to the law into striving after a righteousness of his own by means of the fulfillment of the commandment.¹³¹ For this conception Bultmann does not appeal to any pronouncement of Paul on the law, but to what in his judgment is the essence of the Pauline conception of sin: the high-handed striving of man to stand in his own strength and to seek salvation in his own creaturely existence.¹³²

Schlier writes to the same effect on Galatians 3: 12 ("and the law is not of faith, but rests upon the principle: he who does these things shall live by them") that for Paul the curse apparently cleaves to the "doing" itself, insofar as this is directed to the works of the law. Thus not merely because the law is not fulfilled qualitatively, but even because the law by its character as commandment provokes man to the performance of deeds, it brings curse along with it. To be sure, the latter is not so evident as the former. Nevertheless, it is no less real. For the desire of man for "himself, " the passion "to gain control of oneself and to be one's own master, " is awakened and satisfied by the law in sinful man.¹³³ However, this conception, which one also finds in various elaborations in the dogmatic literature of the present day,¹³⁴ is untenable as an exegesis of the negative effect of the law described in Romans 7. It is no doubt true that Paul again and again denounces the pursuit by man of a righteousness of his own as the great impediment to the understanding of the gospel, as the root of Israel's unbelief. But it is another matter whether he alludes to it (i. e., to this striving after self-justification) when he says that sin takes its starting point in the commandment and in this way, that is to say, by means of this commandment, deceives man and puts him to death. It is our conviction that the purport of these words (and of the whole of Rom. 7) is under such an interpretation very drastically bent and shifted. When Paul here speaks of the sin that is provoked and stimulated by the law, what he means by that is the transgression of the requirement of the law and not the "sin against grace" that manifests itself in the attempt at selfjustification. The whole terminology of Romans 7 and 8 admits of no doubt whatever in this respect. This is so when there is mention in 7: 5 of "the sinful passions which are aroused by law. " One cannot explain these "sinful passions" as the "wrestlings" or "laborings"¹³⁵ of man to establish his own righteousness, without employing what is surely a very artificial and arbitrary interpretation. Sinful passions (and not sinful "laborings") are here unquestionably to be understood in a moral sense. And the same applies to the sin of "coveting" evoked by the law, of which verse 7 speaks. Here again it is very decidedly not a matter of "passion for our own self-glory before the face of God,"¹³⁶ but of sinful desire in the sense of verse 5 (cf. "all" covetousness in v. 8). To recognize this one need only read the continuation of Romans 7 as well, where sin as it is evoked by the commandment is understood as plainly as possible in its moral operation and strength ruling in "the members, " and certainly not as the sin of self-righteousness (cf. 8: 2ff. ). The whole of the sin-producing effect of the law, as that is specifically described in Romans 7, speaks of the evil, sinful desire and act of the transgression of the commandment (cf. Rom. 7: 5, 6, 8 with Gal. 5: 16ff., 24), not of the passion to establish a righteousness of one's own before God. Althaus accordingly is correct when he writes that in following this explanation one must give a new interpretation to all the essential ideas of Romans 7 "in clear contradiction" to the context and Pauline usage elsewhere.¹³⁷ For this reason "the deceit" of sin, too, of which there is mention in 7:11, does not consist in the fact that sin urges man to cleanse, to justify himself, and to think that he is too good for the grace of God, but, altogether in harmony with Genesis 3: 13 (to which the expression "deceive" evidently alludes; cf. 2 Cor. 11: 3), In the false delusion that for him liberty, happiness, etc., lie in the transgression of the commandment. But it is another matter whether he alludes to it (i. e., to this striving after self-justification) when he says that sin takes its starting point in the commandment and in this way, that is to say, by means of this commandment, deceives man and puts him to death. It is our conviction that the purport of these words (and of the whole of Rom. 7) is under such an interpretation very drastically bent and shifted. When Paul here speaks of the sin that is provoked and stimulated by the law, what he means by that is the transgression of the requirement of the law and not the "sin against grace" that manifests itself in the attempt at selfjustification. The whole terminology of Romans 7 and 8 admits of no doubt whatever in this respect. This is so when there is mention in 7: 5 of "the sinful passions which are aroused by law. " One cannot explain these "sinful passions" as the "wrestlings" or "laborings"135 of man to establish his own righteousness, without employing what is surely a very artificial and arbitrary interpretation. Sinful passions (and not sinful "laborings") are here unquestionably to be understood in a moral sense. And the same applies to the sin of "coveting" evoked by the law, of which verse 7 speaks. Here again it is very decidedly not a matter of "passion for our own self-glory before the face of God,"130 but of sinful desire in the sense of verse 5 (cf. "all" covetousness in v. 8). To recognize this one need only read the continuation of Romans 7 as well, where sin as it is evoked by the commandment is understood as plainly as possible in its moral operation and strength ruling in "the members, " and certainly not as the sin of self-righteousness (cf. 8: 2ff. ). The whole of the sin-producing effect of the law, as that is specifically described in Romans 7, speaks of the evil, sinful desire and act of the transgression of the commandment (cf. Rom. 7: 5, 6, 8 with Gal. 5: 16ff., 24), not of the passion to establish a righteousness of one's own before God. Althaus accordingly is correct when he writes that in following this explanation one must give a new interpretation to all the essential ideas of Romans 7 "in clear contradiction" to the context and Pauline usage elsewhere.137 For this reason "the deceit" of sin, too, of which there is mention in 7:11, does not consist in the fact that sin urges man to cleanse, to justify himself, and to think that he is too good for the grace of God, but, altogether in harmony with Genesis 3: 13 (to which the expression "deceive" evidently alludes; cf. 2 Cor. 11: 3), In the false delusion that for him liberty, happiness, etc., lie in the transgression of the commandment.

It is the absolutely negative effect of the law understood in this sense that now further determines Paul's speaking about the law and the condition of man under the law. For not only does the law provoke sin, but when sin has once gained control of man the law is no longer able to deliver him from that control. For "the law is impotent on account of the flesh" (Rom. 8: 3), and does not make the condition of the man who has been sold under sin any better, but rather still worse. Paul gives expression to this in a variety of ways and with a great many figures, especially once again in Romans 7, in verses 14-25. In so doing he lays all the emphasis on the fact that, since through sin by means of the law man has been put to death and brought into slavery, he himself no longer¹³⁸ has command over his actions, but finds himself under the law of sin. We have dealt with the anthropological implications of Romans 7: 14 above (cf. Section 20). But all that is depicted here has no other purpose than to say that man cannot live from the strength of the law, but has died and still dies. The law "is no match for sin"; it becomes, not on account of its essence, or through its character as commandment, but because its demand is frustrated by the unwilling and impotent flesh (Rom. 8: 3, 7), a means of bringing those whom sin has vanquished into the clutches of sin. The insufficiency of the law as means to life and with that the antithesis between "religion of law" and "religion of faith" is incapable of being more sharply and more dramatically expressed than is done in Romans 7: 7-25. In the struggle for redemption of life the law does not stand on the side of life, but on that of death. In place of being a champion for good the law has become a paladin of evil.

The consequence of this monstrous alliance of sin and the law is that all kinds of qualifications that describe the corruption and curse of sin now also apply to the law. As sin means death for man, so also the law (2 Cor. 3: 6). The law that should have been unto life has become unto death (Rom. 7: 10, 13). And as sin has made man a slave, so now the law as well. The figures Paul borrows from prison life are highly characteristic here. The law is at one time the prison, then again the warden, the jailer himself. Thus it is said in Romans 7: 6: "but now we are discharged from the l a w . . . , which held us captive" (en

hōkateichometha). This idea of the law as warden and of man as subject or slave of the law stands out in more ways than one especially in the Epistle to the Galatians. Because the law acquires this significance for man on account of his sin, however, the law and sin are alternately spoken of as warden and as slave-owner. Cf. Galatians 3: 22 and 23:

. . . the Scripture has imprisoned all dungs under [the power of] sin [as jailer] (synekleisen hypo hamartian).

. . . but before faith came we were held under custody by the law, kept under restraint... (hypo nomon ephrouroumetha synkleiomenoi).

It is not simply a matter of forensic categories; the imprisonment in which man is fettered has reference to the whole of his existence. One need only read the stirring passages of Romans 7: 7ff. and 7: 13ff. to understand this. Only when viewed from the standpoint of Christ —this is the great presupposition — does the law rightly disclose who man is apart from the revelation of God's righteousness without the law, and apart from the government of the Spirit that has been given in Christ.

In Galatians 3: 24 Paul speaks entirely to the same effect of the law as the pedagogue, under¹³⁹ which we found ourselves "before faith had come. " With this figure, too, it is above everything else a matter of the lack of freedom. This is clearly evident from the continuation of the metaphor in Galatians 4:Iff., where those who stand under the pedagogue are further described as heirs who are still minors and who differ in nothing from slaves, even though they are heirs of all. For they remain under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father. To be "under the pedagogue" is thus not to be understood as "being still at school, " receiving instruction, but as being unfree, finding oneself in the position of a slave,¹⁴⁰ having been placed under an alien power. The pedagogue is the guardian who holds those who are underage in a position of subjection, in which they "in nothing differ from slaves. " The change that enters in when the time appointed by the father ("the fulness of the time"; v. 4) has come accordingly consists in the fact that liberty dawns for those who were under the pedagogue (the law), so that they are no longer slaves, but sons (Gal. 4: 4).

This whole negative significance — described in all kinds of metaphors — which the law has for man and which makes him live in a condition of slavery, Paul expresses in the set phrase "to be under the law" (hypo nomon einai; Rom. 6:14, 15; 1 Cor. 9: 20; Gal. 4: 5, 21; 5:18).

Although this expression is used with nuances, it denotes in the passages that are characteristic for the present connection not merely that God has subjected man to the norm of the law, but rather that he lives, groans, has been put in chains as a prisoner, a slave, one who is underage, under the hostile, enslaving power of the law; a bondage from which only the regime of divine grace can deliver him (Rom. 7: 14; 8: 2; Gal. 4: 5).

In this context one ought also to point out the remarkable expression Paul uses in Galatians 4: 3 and 9 as a synonym for this bondage under the law and which recurs in Colossians 2: 8 and 20, namely, subjection to "the first principles of the world" (ta stoicheia tou kosmou): "So we also, when we were minor children, were slaves under the first principles of the world" (v. 3); and verse 9: "how can you now turn back again to the weak and beggarly principles, to which you desire to be in bondage all over again?"; cf. Colossians 2: 20: "if you died with Christ to the first principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you submit to all manner of commandments?"

This expression has often been translated by "world spirits, " and what is intended then are spirit powers, having their abode on the stars, who by means of all sorts of commandments, etc., are said to have brought men under their jurisdiction. Others, in a more Jewish sense, think of angels as defenders of the law, who wish even after Christ to continue their rule. But all these conceptions — however ingenious — are to be firmly rejected.¹⁴¹ In connection with "world" Paul does not think here of the cosmos as the universe in which the star-elements are found, but, as is abundantly evident from Colossians 2: 20, of the sin-dominated world of men, in which believers are no longer to "live" (which can scarcely be said of the cosmos as universe); cf. also Colossians 2: 8 where (the stoicheia of the) world is another expression for (the tradition of) men. Accordingly, with the stoicheia one must not think of star-elements or something of that sort, but of the meaning the word also has elsewhere in the New Testament: first principles, the ABC's, primitive teaching (cf. Heb. 5: 12). Paul gathers up under them in a somewhat denigrating manner ("weak, beggarly" principles) the legalistic prescriptions to which heathen religion subjects its adherents and which he sees returning in the form of all kinds of ceremonial, ascetic, and other regulations of Judaistic and syncretistic heresy in the churches of Galatia and Colosse. These primitive principles of the world, too, brought men under their jurisdiction, could give them no deliverance, but rather carried them ever more deeply into spiritual bondage. For this reason Paul equates them in their effect with the rule and slavery in which the man finds himself who wishes to be justified by the works of the law.

SECTION 24. THE LAW AS DISCIPLINARIAN UNTO CHRIST

All this naturally gives rise to the question, a question Paul himself asks emphatically in Galatians 3: 19: Why then the law? If the law cannot bring salvation, cannot giant man merit and righteousness, is unable to restrain the power of sin, what significance must still be ascribed to the law and, in connection with this, what purpose does it have in the great context of the ways of God with man and the world in sin? The answer to this question is very closely associated with what has been said in the preceding chapter. It is precisely in the negative operation of the law that its purpose lies: to bar to man the way to salvation and thus — and here the reverse side of Paul's gospel sbows itself in this preaching of the law — to vindicate in a negative fashion the indispensabilily of the way of faith.

The reasoning that is followed in Galatians 3: 14-25 is highly characteristic and illuminating for this train of thought. Paul here places the promise given to Abraham and the law given by God to Israel at a much later time over against each other. The object of the argument is to make it clear that salvation for Abraham and his seed lay in this promise and not in the law. To that end the unconditional character of the divine promise, not dependent on human achievements, is first elucidated.¹⁴²In consequence the fulfillment of the promise by God cannot be contingent on the fulfillment of the law (which was added later) by man. The law, which came with its demands 430 years afterward, can no more nullify or place in the balance the promise once given to Abraham. The question remains: For what purpose the law? The answer is given in verse 19: " . . . it was added for the sake of the transgressions" (tōn parabaseōn charin prosetethē).

One must not form too narrow an idea of the effect of these words. Interpreters have often chosen to understand the pronouncement in this way: that the law has been given by God in order to bring man noetically to the knowledge of his transgressions. Although this element of the knowledge of and insight into sin is, of course, not lacking, the real meaning has not thereby been laid bare. "For the sake of the transgressions" is intended to say not only: in order to make them known, but also and indeed in the first instance: in order to bring out, to "pro duce" the transgressions. In addition to the context of Galatians 3, that this is the sense of the words is evident from the pronouncements of Romans, which are still more explicit. We have already referred to Romans 5: 20, where it is said in so many words that the law came in to cause the trespass to increase (nomos de pareieslthen hina pleonasē to paraptōma). Here, too, as in Galatians 3:19, the concern is with the secondary character of the law, not, however, as in Galatians 3, with the addition of the law to the promise, but with the additional effect of the law in the sin situation that was inaugurated by Adam. This effect of the law was to increase sin. And it served for that purpose. It had to bring sin, which already existed but was not yet committed under the law (cf. 5: 13), to its utmost development in order to accentuate the more clearly the grace of Christ in its all-transcending significance (v. 21). In this train of thought, therefore, the law is necessary for placing sin and thereby grace over against each other, as it were, in their full measure and most extreme tension. For this reason "to cause the trespass to increase" is not only the consequence,¹⁴³ but positively also the purpose for the entrance of the law; and the law not only makes sin to become "evident,"¹⁴⁴ but it produces sin and so increases it. These pronouncements thus expressly posit as the object of the law what, as we saw in the preceding section, is designated and described

in Romans 7: 5, 7ff. as its effect: the bringing forth of sin as sin, unlawfulness, transgression of the law, the stimulating of desire through its very prohibition, the awakening, reviving of evil, when it feels itself impeded by the law. We shall therefore have to take the well-known pronouncements of Romans 3: 20 and 7: 7 on the knowledge of sin through the law not only in a noetic, but in an experiential, existential sense (cf. 2 Cor. 5: 21).145 ' in Romans 7: 5, 7ff. as its effect: the bringing forth of sin as sin, unlawfulness, transgression of the law, the stimulating of desire through its very prohibition, the awakening, reviving of evil, when it feels itself impeded by the law. We shall therefore have to take the well-known pronouncements of Romans 3: 20 and 7: 7 on the knowledge of sin through the law not only in a noetic, but in an experiential, existential sense (cf. 2 Cor. 5: 21).¹⁴⁵

All this, added to what has already been said in the preceding section on the negative effect of the law, can enable us to know clearly the purpose of the law within the framework of the Pauline doctrine of sin: it is twofold, negative as well as positive. The negative aspect lies in that it does not open the way of salvation to man in his sin and self conceit, but rather bars it; does not restrain sin, but increases it; does not liberate and quicken the sinner, but puts him to death and casts him into prison. For Paul no picture is too somber and too radical to throw light on this negative effect of the law and the divine purpose behind it in all its ruinous strength. This is the awful sharpness of the antithesis between Paul's doctrine of the law and that of the synagogue,

But in this utter negation of the law as means of salvation lies at the same time the positive aspect, as the reverse side of the gospel. This positive side is found already in the fact that the law in its damning and killing force does not fall out of the control of the God and Father of Jesus Christ whom Paul preaches. Nowhere in Paul's epistles does the law bear the character of an independent power of fate operating apart from God or contrary to God's design, which together with other corrupting powers must, as it were, be subdued by Christ.¹⁴⁶ For it is just in this enslaving, killing operation that the law is subservient to God's saving purposes; indeed, it is wielded by God himself. On the one hand it is only in this way that the awful threat that the law contains within itself for man outside Christ correctly comes to light: God himself is engaged with man in the law. By the law he imprisons him in the dungeon of sin and of guilt. The law is so deadly only for this reason, because it is the rod in God's hand.¹⁴⁷ At the same time, however, one is able to understand in this way how the law in this its killing power is nevertheless of positive significance in the divine plan of salvation.

This double point of view — that it is God who makes use of the law and that with it he works toward the revelation of his righteousness in Christ — finds expression in a number of pronouncements, in which time and again the positive significance is set forth as the object of the negative:

God has shut up all under disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all (Rom. 11: 32).

The Scripture [i. e., God] shut up all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe (Gal. 3: 22).

. . . we were kept in ward under the law, shut up unto the faith which should be revealed (v. 23).

. . . the law is become our disciplinarian unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith (v, 24).

This enslaving, killing operation of the law thus has a positive meaning in the divine economy of salvation because God in this way makes room for the promise, for faith, for Christ. In that sense the law is the disciplinarian unto Christ. In Paul's train of thought that does not mean that the law on account of its sacrifices, priests, prescriptions for purification, etc., gave a "sketch of Christ" and that he was to be known and expected from it because in it he was "symbolized as in a shadow. "¹⁴⁸ The function of the law intended here is not that in a positive sense it gradually leads those who find themselves "under it" to Christ, but rather that in a negative sense, on account of its enslaving and killing operation, it prepares them for the redemption that has appeared in Christ as liberation from that bondage. Along with this one will have to think, not in the first place of the subjective experience of those who are under the law, but of the objective significance of the law, as one comes to know it on the basis of the salvation given in Christ.¹⁴⁹ Yet in the redemptive plan of God it nevertheless has this negative preparatory significance.¹⁵⁰

Schlatter expresses this in striking words: "Until he [Christ] came there was placed over us a watchman in the form of the law, which held us confined in imprisonment. What makes the law similar to a prison is not that it forbids us to do evil and warns us of sin. From evil Christ separates us fully and completely. Under the law we were guarded because it shut us off from God like a wall. It did not allow us access to his love. The gates of the sanctuary remained closed; we had to wait. It was yet night within us and around us. From God we heard only the one thing—his commandment and its threat; there was not yet the sunlight of his knowledge, which is eternal life. But this wall is not meant to be our eternal prison. These bars are pushed back when faith is revealed. It was a revelation for the world. We cannot imagine it until it comes, nor find it ourselves until it is given us. It shines on us like a ray from above. The scales fall away, the eye finds Christ, catches his glory, looks at God's face in him, and then the soul rests in him as its firm foundation. Not until Christ does the revelation of faith arise; but the imprisonment with which the l?w surrounded us is the silent preparation for it."¹⁵¹

SECTION 25. PAUL , JUDAISM , AND THE OLD TESTAMENT

Finally, one can ask whether, by attributing such an exclusively negativepreparatory significance to the law in the doctrine of sin and indicating that as being not only the actual effect, but also the effect of the law intended by God, Paul does not far remove himself from the positive purpose that in fact is ascribed to the law within the framework of the making of the covenant and giving of the law in the Old Testament. When, for example, in Galatians 4: 24ff. he terms the covenant that derives its character from Mt. Sinai a covenant that brings forth children of slavery, as Hagar, is he then giving an adequate interpretation of this covenant? And when in Galatians 3: 12 and in Romans 10: 5 he places the Mosaic word "he [the man] that does [these things] shall live by them" (cf. Deut. 9: 4; 30: 12ff.; Lev. 18: 5), over against (the righteousness by) faith, does he not overlook the well-known fact that in the context in which it was spoken this word of Moses does not have an indirect, negative, but rather a real, positive significance?¹⁵² In a word, can the redemptive-historical significance Paul ascribes to the law be thought to be in harmony with the foundation on which the law was given in the Old Testament (Exod. 20: 2), and on which its demand is intended to function, as appears from the whole Old Testament revelation of God?

We are faced here with an exceedingly complex problem, which cannot be given an exhaustive treatment in all its facets. We wish to summarize in a few points what is, in our view, the basic point.

(1) It should be maintained first that for Paul the advent of Christ does not mean the great redemptive-historical incision in the sense that it was only with Christ that the possibility of faith had come, and that prior to it righteousness by the law was the only way ol salvation assigned to Israel. Although he sometimes can express himself in this manner (cf. Gal. 3: 25: "but now that faith is come... "), it is not open to contradiction or misunderstanding that the way of faith for Paul constituted the essence of the Old Testament economy of redemption as well. Not only is the whole of his preaching of the gospel determined and confirmed by the fact that it is witnessed to by the law and the prophets (Rom. 3: 21; 16: 26, et al. ), but he also points out in all detail how even Abraham "our father" was justified not by works, but by faith (Rom. 4), and over against the rule of law of Moses (see above) he establishes the rule of faith with an appeal to other Old Testament pronouncements, among which are even those of Moses himself (Rom. 10: 6ff.; Gal. 3: 11). And when in Galatians 4 he reproaches the church that it permits itself once more to be brought "under the law, " he asks why it will not listen to "the law" (Gal. 4:21), and for the rule of faith against the law he appeals to the very law itself (cf. Rom. 3: 31). For Paul too, therefore, the heart and content of the Scriptures is not the righteousness that is by the law, but that which is by faith; and that on the authority of the law itself.

(2) We may certainly not overlook the fact that when he appeals to the law in this manner, he nevertheless means the law in the larger sense, and not the law "consisting in commandments and ordinances" (Eph. 2: 15). Yet this does not alter the fact that the people of Israel, even under the dispensation of the law, had received a better and deeper principle by which to live than that of "the righteousness which is of the law, " and that the "hardening of their thoughts" lay exactly in their failure to appreciate this, so that in the reading of the Old Testament there was a veil before them, which prevented them from seeing the glory of God as that has now been revealed in the gospel (2 Cor. 3: 14ff.; 4: 3ft. ). Thus what remained to them was the law without Christ, and for this reason their zeal lor God, which Paul does not deny to them, was nonetheless a zeal "without insight" (Rom. 10: 2), because in pursuing the law of righteousness they did not start from faith, but from fancied works (Rom. 9: 32). In that sense, therefore, for Paul the failure of Israel lay in this: that by failing to appreciate the true nature of God's election (Rom. 9-11), they have not been able to see the law in the proper light, but have viewed it as a means for setting up their own righteousness (Rom. 10: 3).

(3) Now, it is from this law, as it functioned in the synagogue's doctrine of redemption opposed by him, that Paul again and again proceeds, the law as he saw it before him in the life of the Jews, the law as he himself had also lived from it (Phil. 3: 6), that is, the law before Christ and the law without Christ. That he is able to see the function of the law in another way as well, in the light of grace and of faith, as the rule for the new life, is apparent from the manner in which presently he will again connect the life that is from the Spirit with the law (Rom. 8: 4, et al. ).¹⁵³But in the antithesis with Judaism this function of the law does not arise, but the ultimate consequence is drawn from what takes place when the sequence of salvation and law is reversed, and the law itself is made a means of salvation. One can say, therefore, that in combatting the Jewish doctrine of the law Paul starts from the Jewish standpoint and from thence makes plain what happens to the law and to man and what from God's side must happen when righteousness and life are anticipated from the law and not from the promise, from human volition and endeavor and not from the power of the Spirit. Then the law that was given unto life becomes unto death, then Christ, in order to be able to give the law its rightful place in the life of his own (Rom. 8: 3; Gal. 5: 14; Rom. 13: 8-10; 1 Cor. 7: 19), must first become the end of the law unto righteousness to everyone who believes (Rom. 10: 4; Eph. 2: 15), and those who are to belong to God and live for him must first die to the law in Christ and through his body (on the cross) (Rom. 7: 4, 6; Gal. 2: 18). Here a distinction must clearly be made, therefore, between law and law, between the law as it functions before and outside Christ and the law whose requirement is fulfilled in those who walk after the Spirit. In the antithesis with Judaism Paul clearly has to do with this "first" law, and he regards the whole Old Testament legal dispensation from this point of view. Hence, for example, his pronouncement that "the law is not of faith" but it is doing that advances (Gal. 3: 12); that the promise is obtained "not by means of the law, " but of the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4: 13); indeed, that if those who live from the law were able to become heirs, faith is made void and the promise deprived of its power (Rom. 4: 14). In all these pronouncements Paul thus detaches the law from faith, he speaks of the law not as the rule of the new life or of the relationship of election entered into by God with Israel, but of the law as it functioned in the hardening that has come upon Israel (2 Cor. 3: 14; Rom. 11: 7ff. ).

(4) It has indeed been remarked against this interpretation that if in his conflict with Judaism Paul had started from the law as it functioned in Judaism, he would in essence have taken his point of departure in a false position. And is it then, for example, able to be reconciled with the fact that Paul in Romans 10: 5 lets Moses himself appear as the chief witness for this conception ("the man who does [these things] shall live by them")? Would Paul, in other words, have cjted Leviticus 18: 5 in support of a false prophecy?¹⁵⁴ Thinking further in this direction, one can ask whether Paul, when he posits the negative effect of the law as the intention of the law and of the Lawgiver (Gal. 3: 19; Rom. 5: 20; see the preceding section), does not then base this intention on a wrong use of the law. In these questions we are faced with the heart of the matter. Two things are surely to be distinguished here.

(5) In the first place, the identification by Paul of the concept of law with that of the Jewish-synagogical nomism does not mean that Paul attributed this conception to Moses. Paul sometimes seems to appeal to Moses for this conception, for example, when he says, in Romans 10: 5, that Moses defines the righteousness of the law thus: "the man who does [these things] shall live thereby" (cf. Gal. 3:12). But this is no more than appearance. For this cannot mean that Moses himself was the promoter of this righteousness by the law. Without regard to the places where Paul appeals for the opposite principle (the righteousness by faith) to "the law" (of Moses) — for which see above — such a view is contradicted by the verse that follows Romans 10: 5, in which the righteousness that is by faith is defined with a pronouncement likewise derived from Moses. Now, some have wished to resolve this in such a way that Moses himself, as it were, is said to have posited two possibilities, of which the first (righteousness by the law) was intended by him as a way impossible for the sinner.¹⁵⁵ But not only is such certainly not the intention of Moses in Leviticus 18: 5 — who after all sets "this do and thou shalt live" as the rule of the covenant — but it also does not appear from the context that Paul wishes here to attribute this conception to Moses (namely, that the law cannot be fulfilled by sinful man). What Paul means to say is this, that he who strives after the righteousness that is by the law is then bound to the word of Moses, that is, to do what the law demands. Likewise the wrong use of the law, to be zealous for the law without understanding, finds in the law itself the standard to which, if it is to have a chance of success, it must measure up. In that sense it can be said that Moses (or the law itself) "defines" the righteousness that is of the law. This is not an appeal to Moses in support of "a false position, " but a binding of this position to its own point of departure: he who seeks righteousness in the law faces, as appears from the law itself, the requirement of doing (cf. Gal. 3: 10, 12).¹⁵⁶

(6) If one reaches no other conclusion than this, that when Paul speaks of "the law" and "the righteousness which is by the law" he is reasoning from the Jewish-synagogical nomism and not from the intention of Moses himself, it is another matter — and this in the second place — when, starting from this presupposition, Paul now designates the way of the works of the law as a way of death. For with regard to the latter Paul finds many points of contact in the Old Testament itself. For in the Old Testament the law is indeed not, as with the later Jews, placed under the viewpoint of the righteousness to he established by man himself (Rom. 10: 3), but under that of the divine covenant of grace. But this does not alter the fact that in the Old Testament not only was the promulgation of the law already encircled with a threat and curse, but also that, particularly in the prophetic books, the unbridgeable chasm between the demand of God and the actual conduct of Israel is pointed out with increasing sharpness; and over against that the New Covenant is then proclaimed in which the Spirit will come in place of the law of the tables of stone to write the law of God in the hearts of men (Jer. 31: 31; cf. Ezek. 11: 19ff; Isa. 59: 21). That the law thus has a condemning and killing significance, indeed that no other life is possible out of this death than through God's own lifegiving work, is not for the first time put in this way by Paul, on the ground of the misuse of the law by later Judaism, but is the shadow that in the Old Testament accompanies the law from the very beginning, increasingly takes away the light of the Old Covenant, and only disappears in the announcement of the New Covenant.¹⁵⁷

For this reason the objection that Paul based his negative preaching of the law on a one-sided, nomistic conception of the law and thereby became the victim of distorted perspective is to be rejected emphatically even on the ground of the Old Testament. Paul does indeed see the promulgation of the law from the outset under the viewpoint of the shadows that accompany the law (cf. Gal. 3: 10). He does not deny, however, that the law has been given unto life, nor that it was attended with the splendor of the divine glory, a proof of Israel's election as the holy people of God (2 Cor. 3: 7). But for Israel this glory was too strong. It could not come up to the holiness of the people of God and, in the hardening of its understanding, has no longer been able to discover that in order thus to have intercourse with God it must live from his grace and not by its own works (2 Cor. 3: 12ff.; cf. 1 Cor. 10: 1ff. ). For this reason the administration of the law that took place under the radiance of the divine glory became an administration of death and condemnation. In all this Paul does not place himself outside the Old Testament, but he harks back again and again precisely to the Old Testament, and he stands entirely in the tradition of Old Testament historiography and prophecy. When later Judaism constantly appealed to the privilege that Israel as the people of God had received in the law, Paul does not contradict this, but rather confirms it in a variety of ways (Rom. 3: 1ff.; 9: 4). But his opposition is directed against the fact that this grace-privilege had come to function as a ground for carnal boasting and as a means for Israel to acquire righteousness before God for itself. It is against this that he marshals Israel's own history and prophecy in many different ways, so that he can declare that the law, instead of making alive, has become death for Israel, and thus in the whole of the economy of God with his people it has had to fulfdl the function of the increase of sin and disciplinarian unto Christ. Only a superficial interpretation of the Pauline doctrine of the law and of the Old Testament can see an antithesis between these two. In taking into consideration the real and deepest motifs both of Paul's pronouncements on the law and of the Old Testament revelation of God, one will not be permitted to ascertain a contradiction here, but rather profound harmony; one will as well be able to understand that Paul knows himself to be altogether consistent with the law and the prophets when, in his antithesis with Judaism, he now comes to his great positive formulation of the gospel: that of the revelation of the righteousness of God by faith without the works of the law (Rom. 1: 17; 3: 21).

1. For what follows cf. the careful analysis of this idea by Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 254ff.; further also Sasse, TDNT, III, pp. 892ff., and W. Gutbrod, Die Paulinische Anthropologie, 1934, pp. I40ff.

2. In accordance with the Jewish linguistic usage. Cf. Strack-Billerbeck, II, p. 191; cf. also Luke 12: 30.

3. See Grundmann, TDNT, I, pp. 308ff., s. v. hamartano.

4. Pantas hyph' hamartian einai; Gal. 3: 22 even has the neuter ta panta hypo hamartian.

5. For this cf. such monographs as those of C. H. Lindijer, Het begrip sarx bij Paulus, 1952, and the older and more recent studies discussed there (as those of De Witt Burton, Schauf, Käsemann, Davies, et al. ); of Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 232ff.; Gutbrod, Die Paulinische Anthopologie, pp. 40ff„ 92ff., 145(1; J. A. T. Robinson, The Body, 1952, pp. 18ft.; E. Schweizer, TDNT, VII, pp. 125ff„ s. v. sarx.

6. See below on "body, " pp. 115ff.

7. Gutbrod, Die Paulinische Anthopologie, p. 99.

8. Cf., e. g., Lindijer, who makes a comparative study of the Greek, Jewish, and Pauline use of "flesh, " and comes to the conclusion that the use in Paul is not to be explained from Jewish and Greek usage even if it is much closer to the Jewish than to the Greek (Het begrip sarx bij Paulus, pp. 196ff. ). The distinction between the Jewish and the Pauline use is precisely in the partial identification of sin and "flesh" in Paul (ibid., pp. 216, 217). For comparison with the idea of "flesh" in the Qumran literature see the essay of K. G. Kuhn in ZTK, 1952, pp. 200-220: "[Peirasmoshamartia-sarx] im Neuen Testament und die damit zusammenhängenden Vorstellungen"; H. Huppenbauer, " 'Fleisch' in den Texten von Qumran, " TZ, 1957, pp. 298ff.; J. P. Hyatt, "The View of Man in the Qumran 'Hodayot, ' " NTS, 1955/56, pp. 276ft

9. For the (very differentiated) conceptions on the consequences of Adam's sin for all his posterity in Judaism see now, in addition to Strack-Billerbeck, III, p. 277, the extensive analyses of E. Brandenburger, Adarn und Christus. Exegetischreligiansgeschichtliche Untersuchung zu Römer 5, 12: 21 (1 Kor. IS), 1962. In the rabbis one finds in general the thought that on account of the sin of Adam death has come on all men. So far as the universality of sin is concerned, one meets frequently with the insight among them that God has also created the evil inclination in men (the yeser ha-ra'), but that man can win the victory over it by keeping the law. The conception of the all-in-one, so characteristic for Paul, is not, however, to be derived from the rabbinic literature. Brandenburger is of the opinion that the basic ideas in it of the paralleling of Adam and Christ in 1 Cor. 15 and Rom. 5 become transparent against the background of "[Christian-]gnostic Adam-anthropos speculations" (Adam und Christus, p. 157). Notwithstanding the recognized material differences in principle (also acknowledged by Brandenburger), the whole problem of the historical relationship between Paul and the gnosis coming to expression in these later writings surfaces again.

10. For what follows see in greater detail my Rom., pp. Ill ff.

11. Cf. above, Section 10.

12. Of the later publications see, e. g., Bultmann, "Adam and Christ in Romans 5, " in The Old and New Man, p. 62: Brandenburger, Adam und Christus, p. 175; E. Jüngel, "Das Gesetz zwischen Adam und Christus, " ZTK, 1963, pp. 42-74.

13. Brandenburger recognizes that too. He says that Paul in v. 12d "brings a reservation to bear, a correction to the fatalism of the underlying schema [in the preceding]" and he adds to this that "because of this material divergence, the idea of an analogy (Adam-Christ) must immediately break down already in its implication. " With this exegesis, understandably so!

14. It is no wonder that Bultmann, who wishes to understand v. 12b of per

sonal sins, calls vv. 13 and 14 "completely unintelligible" (Theology, I, p. 252). On his standpoint it remains inexplicable how Paul is able to say: "sin is not imputed when there is no law, " while he says at the same time that death has reigned over all ("Adam und Christus, " p. 154). Of the imputation of Adam's sin and the sinning of all with or in the one he takes no account, and then vv. 13 and 14 do remain entirely obscure. Others nevertheless have wanted to reconcile vv. 13 and 14 with the "personal" conception of sin in v. 12b. Thus, e. g., Brandenburger, who in a long-drawn-out and complicated argument (Adam und Christas, pp. 180-205) has thought to be able to explain the sense of vv. 13 and 14 approximately as follows: Paul is answering here to a possible objection from the Jewish side that his judgment pronounced in v. 12 (that all have sinned and thus deserve death) nevertheless could not simply apply to those who lived between Adam and Moses and therefore before the giving of the law. Paul is said then to contend in vv. I3 and 14 that this is indeed the case and that his pronouncement in v. 12b is in force for these people, too (cf. pp. 201ff. ). But the course of the argument in vv. 13 and 14 gives no occasion to think that Paul by way of a parenthesis here refutes a Jewish objection. Moreover, his refutation of such an objection would hardly be convincing, inasmuch as this refutation would then consist only of affirmations of his own opinion, not of argumentation for its correctness; see also Jüngel, ZTK, 1963, pp. 53ff., whose interpretation of v. 13, however, is no more satisfying.

15. Thus, e. g.. H. Bavinck, Geref. Dogmatiek, III, 4th ed., 1929, pp. 60ff. He is of the opinion that in v. 12b the implicit thought is not that all have sinned in Adam, but that here men's own personal sins are spoken of, which they commit as children of Adam. The sense of vv. 13 and 14 is also to be understood in this way, that although in the period between Adam and Moses men have not sinned as Adam because of want of the law, they nevertheless have died and thus were sinners, "not because each one personally transgressed a positive commandment as Adam and so each one for himself and by himself became a sinner, but because by the transgression of Adam sin had come into the world and reigned over all" (ibid. ). But this exegesis is untenable; for in vv. 13 and 14 Paul intends to say that so long as one takes into consideration only the personal sins of those who lived before the law, their death as punishment on sin does not have a sufficient explanation. And this is not clarified by the fact that in that period already they sinned as children of Adam. Clarification comes only when one pays heed to their share in the one sin of Adam.

16. Cf. Greijdanus, Rom., I, pp. 278ff. He writes that eph' hö pontes hēmarton in v. 12 does not serve to confirm the thought that all men are sinners. What is at issue in Rom. 5: 12 is not original sin as inherited inner depravity, but the imputation of Adam's sin in the death of man (cf. 1 Cor. 15: 21).

17. Katestathesan; for the meaning "hold for, be reckoned as, " see, e. g., Deuteronomy 25: 6 (LXX), and Liddell-Scott, Greek- English Lexicon, 1953, p. 855: "to reckon as. "

18. Cf. Greijdanus, Rom., I, pp. 289ff. In v. 19 Paul does not speak of sin as inner impurity and depravity, but of "the position in which one is placed, of a quality which was received, and not in the first place of an inner property which was introduced. " Cf. also E. E. Ellis, Paul's Use of the Old Testament, 2nd ed., 1960, p. 60.

19. G. C. Berkouwer also justly writes ( Sin, p. 510) that in this pericope "Paul was not concerned about the manner in which the sin of one man is 'transferred' to another, or the manner in which the pollution of one ^feneration 'becomes' that of another. " Berkouwer, however, in 5: 19 evidently attaches much value to the translation that many have become sinners (not "were regarded as" sinners), and he opposes an exclusively forensic conception of v. 19, according to which the many here are not judged according to what they "really" are. Now the debate over this "really" is misleading because in the forensic conception, too, it is naturally not a matter of a fiction or of a pretension, but of the reality of a share in Adam's sin by virtue of the principle of the all-in-one. That in Rom. 5:12ff. and in v. 19 Paul speaks of that and not also of the individual, personal, "actual" sins of the many seems to me difficult to refute with the argument that "when we utilize this term forensic in our explanation of Romans 5:19 we are suggesting a parallel to the doctrine of justification which can very easily lead us to confusions" ( ibid., p. 499), for the whole Adam-Christ pericope in Rom. 5: 12-21 is full of parallels between the many being condemned in Adam and the doctrine of justification. The preceding v. (18) says in so many words that as through the one act of sin all men have come under condemnation, so through one act of righteousness all men have come to justification of life. It can hardly be said "more forensically" than with these concepts katakrima and dikaiosis. This accordingly is the great objection to no longer choosing to understand v. 19 forensically. That this forensic factor does not mean an abstraction of being brought under the reign of sin and death is certainly correct, and I do not deny it. It applies to forensic righteousness, too, that it is a dikaiõsis zoes (v. 18). But this does not mean that in v. 19 the individual acts of sin must already be taken into consideration, in order to escape the danger of "ari 'as if " instead of an "actuality" ( ibid., p. 498). It is only in v. 20 that account is taken of this personal sinfulness.

20. See below, Section 23.

21. Especially following the influential work of H. Lüdemann, Die Anthropologie des Paulus und ihre Stellung innerhalb seiner Heilslehre, 1872: cf. above, pp. 1 7 ff

22. So especially R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen, 3rd ed., 1927, pp. 333ff.; cf. above, pp. 27ff.

23. So, e. g., H. J. Holtzmann, Lehrbuch der neutestarmentlichen Theologie, 2nd ed., II, 1911, p. 13.

24. Cf. above, p. 95, n. 9.

25. For what follows, in addition to Bultmann's elaborate analysis of the anthropological ideas in Paul in his Theology of the New Testament, I, pp. 187ff. (esp. that of sarx, pp. 232ff. ), see his summarizing views on the New Testament "understanding of Being" (Seinsverständnis) in close connection with the Pauline concept of sarx, in his fundamental essay "New Testament and Mythology, " 1941, in Kerygma and Myth, ET 1953, pp. 1-44; particularly pp. 17ff. On the hermeneutical

"prior understanding" (Vorverständnis) see "The Problem of Hermeneutics, " in Essays Philosophical and Theological, pp. 234tf. For the whole question see my Bultmann, ET 1960.

26. So, e. g., in 2 Cor. 1: 17, where "according to the flesh" denotes levity, that which is dependent on human happenstance or arbitrariness; also in 2 Cor. 10: 2ff., where "according to the flesh" typifies the demeanor of someone who in false self-confidence asserts himself in a presumptuous way. Yet further Paul employs the expression "flesh" when he is rejecting confidence in circumcision, Jewish descent, blamelessness in the fulfillment of the law after the Jewish manner, etc. (Phil. 3: 4ff.; cf. Col. 2: 18, 23; Gal. 3: 3). Acting "according to the flesh, " trusting "in the flesh, " etc., is to have confidence in that which is in and from man and which lies within the reach of man. Thus the "wise after the flesh" can also be spoken of, that is to say, those who in seeking after wisdom find their standard in their own human thoughts (1 Cor. 1: 26; 3: 1ff. ).

27. Conversely, "living according to the Spirit" would consist in moving in another dimension, that of the Holy Spirit, which would have to do, not with man in his visibleness, not with the open, but with the hidden, not with man as flesh, but with his heart. Thus Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 234f. For this further qualification of "flesh" he appeals incorrectly to Rom. 2: 28ff. For "flesh" does not here stand over against Spirit as the "earthly-natural, " but as the bodily over against the heart. The parallel contrast of "open-hidden" does not therefore give a characterization of what is in general "flesh" over against "Spirit, " but of the corporeal (having been circumcised) as opposed to (having been circumcised in) the heart. For this reason, too, that which is hidden, not visible (heart), is not to be identified, as over against the flesh, as the sphere of God's Spirit. The invisible, the heart, the hidden, also pertains to the flesh (Col. 2: 18; Eph. 2: 2, 3); while conversely the visible and tangible belong to the reach of God's Spirit (2 Cor. 4: 11). Bultmann's (very penetrating) analysis of the idea of sarx in Paul seems to me to be dominated by a dualistic conception of man, which in the final analysis is not ethical, but natural (the contrast between nature and spirit) and for which in the whole of his theology he wrongly appeals to Paul.

28. Gutbrod, Die Paulinische Anthropologie, p. 150.

29. Cf. below, pp. I15ff.

30. Cf. above, Section 11, and below, Section 78.

31. Bultmann, Theology, I, p. 232. That the law is "good" is also understood by him from this anthropological presupposition (ibid., pp. 259ff., 212).

32. W. Gutbrod, Die Paulinische Anthropologie, p. 26.

33. Cf. Grundmann, TDNT, I, p. 309, s. v. hamartanŏ.

34. Cf. Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 71f,; and in connection with Rom. 2 above all the commentaries of Dodd, Lagrange, Althaus.

35. For this cf. M. Pohlenz, "Paulus und die Stoa, " ZNW, 1949, pp. 75ff.; and also G. C. Berkouwer, General Revelation, ET 1955, p. 179.

36. Gutbrod justly writes: "If [nomos] without article implied here a gen

eralization of the concept of law, the train of thought would be broken" (TDNT, IV, p. 1070).

37. The plural (ta tou nomou) points to this.

38. Anomia, parabasis, apeitheia, adikia. That the qualification paraptŏma, often used by Paul as well, should represent a milder conception ("false step"), appears incapable of being maintained in the light of further comparison of the linguistic usage (cf. Michaelis, TDNT, VI, pp. 171ff. ),

39. So Bultmann, Theology, I, p. 288.

40. See also Stählin, TDNT, V, p. 425, s. v. orge: "As in the OT, so in the NT orgē is both God's displeasure at evil, His passionate resistance to every will which is set against Him, and also His judicial attack thereon. "

41. So Stählin, TDNT, V, p. 424.

42. Cf. Fichtner, TDNT, V, pp. 395ff., s. v. orgē..

43. G. H. C. Macgregor in his essay "The Wrath of God in the New Testa

ment, " NTS, 1961, pp. l0lff., in some measure goes in this direction. He writes that we see a clear tendency in Paul "to depersonalize the wrath of God" (p. 104), and that "it would be fair to say that Paul does not think of God as being angry in quite the same immediate and personal sense as he thinks of him as actively loving. " And he is of the opinion that "wrath" in Paul is the anthropological expression of the divine retribution, "not so much the personal attitude of God to man, but rather the inevitable process of cause and effect in a moral universe"... and "working (may we say?) relatively independently of God's immediate volition" (p. 105). But it must be regarded as questionable whether one may ascribe such ideas to Paul when he sometimes speaks of "the wrath" in an absolute sense. One may undoubtedly say that according to Paul, too, God does not will damnation for men in the same manner as salvation (1 Tim. 2: 4; 4: 10; Rom. 11: 32); likewise that Paul does not attribute all the evil in the world in a direct sense to God (cf. 2 Cor. 12: 7; 1 Cor. 5: 5), but where he speaks in so many words of the wrath (of God) it is difficult to assume such a distance from "God's immediate volition. "

44. Cf. the survey of Macgregor, NTS, 1961, pp. l03ff.

45. Ibid., p. 104.

46. Cf. Oepke, TDNT, III, p. 583, s. v. apokalyptō; Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 274f.; Nygren, Romans, pp. 99f.; Stählin, TDNT, V, pp. 431ff., s. v. orgē.

47. G. Bornkamm contends thus, in "The Revelation of God's Wrath, " Early Christian Experience, ET 1969. He concludes (p. 64): "The revelation of this saving "righteousness' of God is an eschatological event that is accomplished in the 'Now' of salvation history. To this same hour is bound the revelation of his wrath from heaven.... " The nature of the operation of wrath, as Paul describes it, is not, however, bound to the time of salvation that has commenced with Christ. Nor is it only to be understood from the contrast with the revelation of the righteousness of God. For it is revealed "from heaven" in an unmistakable manner. See the text.

48. Cf. Schlatter, Gottes Gerechtigkeit, p. 48. The interpretation of Traub, TDNT, V, pp. 53If., s. v. ouranos, that these words may be said to be a denotation of the redemptive character of this revelation is without foundation and seems biased.

49. Lietzmann thinks incorrectly that in 1: 18ff. the situation is portrayed as it existed before the advent of the gospel, so that the appeal to this operation of the wrath of God (as that is continued in Rom. 2) bears a hypothetical character ("so would God go on to judge if the gospel had not come") ( Rom., pp. 31, 40). Against this see especially Käthe Oltmanns, "Das Verhältnis von Rom 1, 18-3, 20 zu Rom 3, 21ff, " Theo!. Blätter, 1929, cols. ll0ff. Just as little can one construe the connection between Rom. 1: 17 and 1: 18 in such a way that "precisely because ( gar; v. 18) God has to be wrathful against the whole world,... he gives righteousness [ ek pisteos eis pistin]" (so Stählin, TDNT, V, 426; cf. p. 431, s. v. orge). The revelation of God's wrath (1: 18) is not the motive for the giving of the righteousness by faith, but the proof that there is deliverance only in the way of this bestowed righteousness; see also my Rom., pp. 40ff.

50. So Lietzmann, Cor., p. 122.

51. Cited by Büchsei in TDNT, III, p. 938, s. v. krino.

52. Skeue orgēs; cf. Jer. 50: 25 (LXX 27: 25), where it is used in the sense of instruments with which or by which God demonstrates his wrath. Here, in Rom. 9: 22, the genitive does not have an instrumental, but a qualifying or objective significance.

53. The passive participle does not say who the logical subject is. Greijdanus, Rom., II, p. 443, sees in that, in our view rightly, an indication that the sinner himself was active in this preparation, as was clearly evident with Pharaoh mentioned previously. This is not to deny that the logical subject, as in the parallel ha proetoimasen in v. 23, is above all God; cf. Stählin, TDNT, V, p. 442: "they were prepared thereto by God " But then surely in their sinful rebellion against him; for this whole pericope cf. also below, Section 57.

54. This appears, too, from the connection of Rom. 9: 22 and 23: for kai here means "and that indeed" or "and that also. "

55. Cf., e. g., Oepke, TDNT, I, pp. 396f„ s. v. apollymi, apōleia.

56. This depends on whether one takes toutou with somatos or with thanatou.

57. When Paul says in Rom. 8: 10: "If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness, " by this deadness of the body he does not mean the same thing as in 7: 24 (thus, e. g., Greijdanus), but the subjection of the physical existence of believers to death; "through sin" does not say that they must as yet pay for their sin with death, but that, as appears from the judgment executed (in Christ) on sin, so far as their bodies are concerned, they are obliged to go the way of Christ (cf. v. 11).

58. So Greijdanus, Rom., I, p. 333.

59. Thus rightly Greijdanus on 7: 24 (ibid., I, p. 351).

60. Cf. Gutbrod, Die Paulinische Anthropologie, p. 130.

61. The literature on this Pauline "anthropology" is very extensive. Summarizing treatments are to be found (in addition to the older writing of H. Lüdemann,

Die Anthropologie des Paulus und ihre Stellung innerhalb seiner Heilslehre, 1872, which starts from a certain metaphysical dualism; cf. above, p. 100) especially in the very valuable book of W. Gutbrod, Die Paulinische Anthropologie; in the detailed analyses of Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 191-269; W. G. Kümmel, Man in the New Testament, ET 1963, pp. 38-71; see also C. H. Dodd, P. J. Bratsiotis, R. Bultmann, H. Clavier, Man in God's Design, 1952. Monographs on specific ideas, e. g., of W. Schauf, Sarx, Der Begriff "Fleisch" beim Apostel Paulus, etc., 1924; C. H. Lindijer, Het begrip sarx bij Paulus; J. A. T. Robinson, The Body; N. A. Waaning, Onderzoek naar het gebruik van [pneuma] bij Paulus, 1939; see also the relevant treatises in TDNT and the literature cited there.

62. Ho exō anthrōpos; ho esō anthrōpos.

63. See below, pp. 124ff,

64. Behm, e. g., justly writes (TDNT, II, p. 699, s. v. esō) that what Paul terms the inward man is essentially nothing new as against the Old Testament "heart" and that which Jesus means when says: "from within, out of the heart of man proceed... " (Mark 7: 21), and in Luke 11: 39: "your inward part is full of extortion and wickedness. "

65. Cf. Bultmann, Theology, I, p. 194; for this changing of the significance of body from the visible and tangible "exterior" of man to "the man himself, " see Bultmann's penetrating analysis of 1 Cor. 6: 13-20 ( loc. cit. ).

66. For "flesh" see also above, pp. 93ff.

67. See also below. Section 78, pp. 548f.

68. The contrast in these verses of "my spirit" and "my understanding" is dilScult. Some choose to understand by "my spirit" not the human spirit, but the divine pneuma bestowed upon man (so, e. g., Bultmann, Theology, I, p. 207; Wendland, Cor., p. 84); others are of the opinion that the contrast "my spirit" and "my understanding" contradicts this (e. g., Grosheide, 1 Cor., p. 363). In our opinion,

in view of the whole context in which the concern is with ta pneumatika, one will certainly have to think of that which transcends the human spirit; cf. v. 2 as well and the synonymous use of to pneumati and en glosse (vv. 15, 18). It is difficult to say what is intended by "my spirit" if this is said simply of the human spirit. Besides, we have to do here with a very striking linguistic usage.

69. Cf., e. g., Behm, TDNT, IV, p. 959, s. v. nous.

70. Thus, e. g., in different variations Bultmann, Theology, I, p. 211.

71. Cf. Greijdanus on Rom. 1: 28: "[Nous] is here disposition, way of thinking with regard to ethical questions, as appears from what follows" (Rom., I, p. 121; see also Gutbrod, Die Paulinische Anthropologie, p. 52).

72. Cf., e. g., Bultmann, Theology, I, p. 259; Greijdanus, Rom., I, p. 847.

73. For Rom. 7:14ff„ see below, Section 20.

74. On this see Behm, TDNT, IV, pp. 10041., s. v. metanoeō..

75. For that see, e. g., the explanations of Gutbrod, Die Paulinische Anthropologie, pp. 54, 55; Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 211ff.

76. Cf. Behm, TDNT, III, pp. 61 Iff., s. v. kardia.

77. For the proof passages, see Behm, loc. cit.; Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 222f.

78. Cf. above, p. 118.

79. A contrast that is to be understood, according to Bultmann, neither from the Greek usage nor from that of the Old Testament, but only from the gnostic anthropology ( Theology, I, p. 168); however, see J. Dupont, Gnosis. La connaissance religieuse dans les épitres de Saint Paul, 1949, pp. 178ff,

80. Sympsychos.

81. Isopsychos.

82. Eupsychein.

83. Cf. the expression ek psyches (Eph. 6: 6; Col. 3: 22: "from the heart"), by way of denoting that which man does with full inner assent.

84. Cf. Gutbrod, Die Paulinische Anthropologie, pp. 90ff.; Kümmel, Man in the New Testament, pp. 44f.; Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 205f.; M. Dibelius, Th., p. 32; differently, A. Oepke, Der Brief an die Thessalonicher, 3rd ed., 1949, p. 143, who by "spirit" understands the "highest, God-related life-principle" and by "soul" the "natural life, " and explains this formulation "from the coming together of oriental and Greek influences. " Nowhere else in Paul, however, do we meet with such a tripartite view of man. J. A. C. van Leeuwen, Paulus' zendbrieven aan... Thessalonica, 1926, understands "spirit" as the new principle of life by which the regenerated man is ruled in his soul and body (p. 395). Can one speak of this, however, as though it were a separate constituent part of man next to soul and body? For the interpretation we have followed also see H. Bavinck, Geref. Dogmatiek, 4th ed., II, 1928, p. 517.

85. Bultmann, in his profound analyses of the anthropological ideas in Paul, is of the opinion that "spirit" as distinguished from "psyche" appears to denote the self "as conscious or aware" and so approaches the modern idea of self-consciousness; and he appeals for that to such passages as Rom. 8: 16; 1 Cor. 2: 11 (Theology, I, p. 207). However, man as psychical being is also spoken of as knowing and understanding (1 Cor. 2: 14; cf. Gutbrod, Die Paulinische Anthropologie, p. 79).

86. Rom., pp. 153-171.

87. The question remains in discussion, even if in the exegetical literature the scale is more and more being turned in favor of the conception mentioned above; cf. the judgment of W. K. Grossouw: " . . . among modern exegetes an occasional one still takes up an exceptional position and understands Rom. 7: 7 (14)-25 of the Christian existence" ("De verscheurde mens van Romeinen zeven, " in Vriendengave Bernardus Kardinaal Alfrinh aangeboden, 1964, p. 69). See also O. Kuss, Der Römerbrief, 2nd ed., 1963; S. Lyonnet, "L'histoire du salut selon le chapitre VII de l'Épitre aux Romains, " in Biblica, 1962, pp. 117-151. The other view is still defended, with some variations, by J. M. E. Cruvellier, L'exegese de Romains 7, etc., 1961 (dissertation, Free University). A. F. N. Lekkerkerker, De brief van Paulus aan de Romeinen, I, 1962, attempts (in my view vainly) to break through the dilemma (p. 314). A mediating conception is defended by A. J. Bandstra, The Law and the Elements of the World, 1964, p. 142 (dissertation, Free University): " . . . Paul is describing his own experience and that of his fellow Jewish Christians at the point at which the message of grace in Christ 'had hit its mark' in them, or, if you will, their conversion experience. "

88. Cf., e. g., Kümmel, Man in the New Testament, pp. 54-61.

89. Cf. my Rom., pp. 155ff.

90. One should think here, too, of the manner in which in the Qumran literature the struggle of mart against sin under the law is spoken of; see below, p. 133, and the literature cited there,

91. See also the article by Grossouw, referred to in n. 87.

92. So, e. g., Gutbrod, Die Paulinische Anthropologie, p. 53.

93. Thus E. Stauffer, New Testament Theology, ET 1955, p. 93. Of this "Jew under the law" he writes further: "He is a 'zealot' in the sense of Gal. l. l3f. and Rom. 10. 2f. He means to take God's will revealed in the law utterly seriously. But that involves him in a conflict of which the contented and the compromisers have no inkling, " etc. Stauffer speaks hereby of the redemptive-historical significance of Rom. 7 and calls this chapter "a chapter about the Jewish man who fights under the banner of the Torah, and therefore fights to the bitter end, because he is fighting in a lost position" (ibid., p. 275). Although according to Stauffer the autobiographical interpretation of Rom. 7 (as, e. g., that is given by Deissmann, St. Paul, pp. 93ff. ) suffers shipwreck on Phil. 3: 6 (where there is not the slightest indication of such a pre-Christian despairing of Paul, but rather the reverse), yet he thinks that "the characteristics of homo sub lege in Rom. 7 must logically include the pre-Christian Paul" (loc. cit. ).

94. So, e. g., Althaus, Rom., p. 67: "Therefore it does not depend on how far the actual situation of the person without Christ under the law becomes clear to him. But Paul also does not rule out the possibility that it can become clear to him. " For this conception see also Kümmel, Man in the New Testament, p. 60; Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 264ff.; and also (somewhat less explicitly) Lindijer, Het begrip sarx bij Paulus, p. 159.

95. For this see, e. g., in Lindijer, Het begrip sarx, p. 157, n, 3. Differently still Bandstra, who judges that Paul is here describing his experience of conversion (see above, the note on p. 126).

96. The relevant literature, which consists in the views summarized in the New Testament "theologies" as well as in a large number o£ monographs on this subject, is difficult to survey. In addition to the older works listed under nomos in TDNT, IV, pp. 1022ff,, see, e. g., the very extensive bibliography in A. J. Bandstra, The Law and the Elements of the World, pp. 193-207.

97. See, e. g., the highly critical chapter "Paul's Teaching About the Law, " in the book by H. J . Schoeps, Paul. The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History, pp. 168-218.

98. On the doctrine of sin in Judaism in general see, e. g., Bousset-Gressmann, Die Religion des Judentums, 3rd ed., 1926, pp. 399ff.; G. F. Moore, Judaism, I, 1927, pp. 445ff.; Strack-Billerbeck, III, pp. 155ff.; further also E. Sjöberg, Gott und die Sünder im palästinischen Judentum, 1938; Stählin/Grundmann, TDNT, I, pp. 289ff„ s. v. hamartano. More especially, for the more radical streams including the Qumran community, e. g., H. Braun, "Spätjüdisch-häretischer und frühchristlicher Radikalismus, " in Beitr. z. hist. Theol., 1957, pp. 10ff., 41ff.; the same author, "Rom. 7, 7-25 und das Selbstverständnis des Qumran-Frommen, " in ZTK, 1959, pp. 1-18; J. P. Hyatt,, "The View of Man in the Qumran 'Hodayot, ' " in NTS, 1955, pp. 276ff. For the whole see also Schoeps, Paul, pp. 168ff

99. On this see, e. g., the analyses of E. Brandenburger, Adam und Christus, pp. 15-67.

100. For the following see also Strack-Billerbeck, III, pp. 155ff.

101. Cf. Strack-Billerbeck, III, p. 227; Brandenburger, Adam und Christus, pp. 45ff.; see also the pronouncements quoted in Schoeps, Paul, p. 189.

102. Brandenburger, Adam und Christus, pp. 62ff.

103. On this teaching see in detail Strack-Billerbeck, IV, 1, pp. 466-483; Brandenburger, Adam und Christus, pp. 33ff.; see also the literature referred to in Hyatt, NTS, 1955, p. 280, n. 2.

104. For this notion of IV Ezra at length see Brandenburger, Adam und Christus, p. 33.

105. So W. Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums, 3rd ed., 1926, p. 119; Strack-Billerbeck, III, pp. 126S.

106. See further below, Section 29. Also Strack-Billerbeck, IV, 2, pp. 4ff.; Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums, pp. 392ff.; Hauck, TDNT, V, pp. 561f., s. v. opheilo.

107. See, e. g., Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums, pp. 388ff.; Gutbrod, TDNT, IV, p. 1058, s. v. nomos; Schoeps, Paul, pp. 184ff.

108. See the literature cited above, p. 131, n. 98.

109. Cf., e. g., Hyatt, toc. cit.; also P. Benoit, "Qumrân et le Nouveau Testament, " in NTS, 1961, pp. 292ff.

110. Schoeps, Paul, p. 196.

111. Cf. for this at greater length Benoit, NTS, 1961, p. 294.

112. Cf. against these various conceptions cropping up in the history of the investigation the detailed expositions of Schlatter, Der Glaube im N. T., 4th ed., 1927, pp. 324-331; see also Bultmann, Faith and Understanding, I, pp. 226ff.; Gutbrod, TDNT, IV, pp. 1076ff.; A. A. van Ruler, De vervulling van de wet, 1947, pp. 367ff.

113. So rightly Nygren, Commentary on Romans, p. 13.

114. Cf. Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 262f.

115. On this see, e. g., Strack-Billerbeck, III, pp. 160ft; IV, 2, pp. 4ff.; Bertram, TDNT, II, pp. 645ft, s. v. ergon; Gutbrod, TDNT, IV, p. 1058, s. v. nomos.

116. See Schoeps on "this question of the 'fulfillability' of the Torah" in Judaism (Paul, pp. 177ft).

117. In Deut. 27: 26 the words pas and pasin are lacking. There can be no basis in this, however, for playing off Deut. 27: 26 against Gal. 3:10, as Schoeps does to some extent ( Paul, p. 176). Deut. 27: 26 is undoubtedly intended positively, and the negative conclusion of Gal. 3: 10 is not drawn there. But this does not entitle one to relativize the sense of Deut. 27: 26 with respect to the pas and pasin of Gal. 3:10.

118. Cf., e. g., Bultmann, Faith and Understanding, I, p. 227; see also his essay "Jesus and Paul, " in Existence and Faith.

119. See further Section 28.

120. Cf. Schoeps, Paul, p. 171: "The abolition of the law is a Messianological doctrine in Pauline theology"; however, see already A. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, pp. 188-189.

121. Ezemiothen; really: "I suffered loss"; "ich liess mich an dem allen schädigen" (Dibelius, An die Philipper, 3rd ed., 1937, p. 88); "I have experienced this comprehensive devaluation" (Stumpff, TDNT, II, p. 890, s. v. zëmia).

122. Eis nomon ouk ephthasen. These words are taken differently. Some wish to understand by them that they have not arrived at the real content of the law, namely, Christ; cf., e. g., Greijdanus, Rom., II, p. 444: "It [the law]... also exhibited the Lord Christ in silhouette and thus summoned to believe in Him for salvation"; and Michel, Rom., p. 219: " , . . the actual meaning of the law lies outside of itself in Christ. " In our view the law is in this way too little understood in its own original significance. One comes to the righteousness at which the law aims only when one approaches this out of faith and not out of one's own works of the law. It is a question therefore not only of that which lies outside the law or was shadow-like, being concealed in it, but of the law's own content and purport as law of God to man. What it foreshadows and demands is a matter of faith, not of meritorious works. Together with Rom. 7: 10, 12 this passage comprises one of the most positive pronouncements of Paul on the significance of the law.

123. Kauchema, kauchesis, of which the former denotes the ground or possibility, the latter the act of boasting, although a rigid distinction is not to be maintained (cf. Bultmann, TDNT, III, pp. 645ff., s. v. kauchaomai. For the whole question see Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 242ff. ).

124. On the law as "Israel's glory and honor and jewel" see at length Strack-Billerbeck, III, pp. 115ff.; cf. pp. 97ff, 126ff.

125. Bultmann correctly writes that for Paul (as for the Old -Testament and for Philo) "the element of trust contained in [kauchasthaï] is primary" ( TDNT, loc. cit. ); cf. the synonymous use of kauchasthai and pepoithenai in Phil. 3: 3ff.; 2 Cor. 10: 7, 8, and cf. 2 Cor. 1: 12 with 3: 4.

126. The quotation in Rom. 9: 33 is a combination of two texts from Isaiah, 28: 16 and 8: 14, of which the first speaks of the work of God as the foundation of Israel's salvation and the second of the offense that lay in that for self-willed Israel.

127. Undoubtedly there was also the more general "offense" for the Jews, that they could not conceive of the Messiah as a crucified one. For "they demand signs" (1 Cor. 1: 22), demonstrations of divine glory. For these two motifs and their relationship to each other see also G. Stählin, Skandalon, 1930, pp. 205ff.

128. Aphormen labousa (vv. 8, 11); cf. Bertram, TDNT, V, p. 473.

129. Against this cf. above, pp. 99f.

130. Cf. above on the significance of the ego in 7:14ff. (p. 129).

131. Theology, I, p. 267.

132. Theology, I, p. 264. This view is entirely in harmony with Bultmann's existentialistic-anthropological view of sin and redemption (pointed out above, pp. 101ff. ). For Bultmann the essence of sin does not lie in the transgression of the demand of the law, but in the attempt with the help of the law to seek life in that which is "available, " "over which man disposes, " etc.

133. Schlier, Gal., pp. 91,92.

134. E. g., in A. A. van Ruler, De vervulling van de wet, pp. 401ff. (with an appeal to H. F. Kohlbrügge); K. Barth, "Gospel and Law, " ET 1959, in God, Grace, and Gospel; G. C. Berkouwer, Sin, pp. 173ff.

135. Thus, e. g., van Ruler attempts via the translation "laborings" to understand pathemata of the efforts of the legalistic man (De vervulling, pp. 381ff. ). But irrespective of the fact that pathemata in itself can hardly mean such a laboring or wrestling, it is impossible to take the combination pathemata tön hamartion (literally, the passions proceeding from the sins) in this sense; see the commentaries.

136. Berkouwer, Sin, p. 177, with a quotation from Barth: "Eigenen Ruhmes vor Gott. "

137. Paulus und Luther über den Menschen, 1938, p. 39,

138. The ouketi in vv. 17 and 20 does not therefore speak of the situation as that has commenced with Christ, but as it is with having been sold under sin.

139. Here, too, hypo (paidagogon), just as hypo hamartian and hypo nomon.

140. Cf, the enlightening explanation of the pedagogue, with much classical material, in A. Oepke, Der Brief des Paulus an die Galater, 1937, pp. 66ff.: "Furthermore the paidagogos is not to be mistaken for the pedagogue in the modern sense.... He is the house-slave, the one who superintends the boys everywhere from about the sixth year to the onset of manhood. " He then points as well to the unpopularity of these figures in antiquity, in addition to the lasting appreciation sometimes accorded to them. His exposition of the paidagogos seems to me more successful than that of Bertram, TDNT, V, pp. 620ff., in which the significance of the law as deprivation of liberty finds altogether too little expression.

141. Here see the detailed account in my Col., pp. 172-176. Further, A. W. Cramer, Stoicheia tou kosmou, Interpretatie van een nieuwtestamentische term, 1961; and especially the full and detailed investigation of A. J. Bandstra, The Law and. the Elements of the World.

142. See also my The Epistle of Paul to the Churches of Galatia (NICNT), 1953, pp. 129ff,

143. So (alas) the translation o£ the Dutch Bible Society of Rom. 5: 20: " . .. zodat de overtreding toenam, " as opposed to most of the commentaries (as, e. g., those of Lietzmann, Kühl, Zahn, Greijdanus, Althaus, Dodd, Kuss, Schlatter, Nygren, Gaugler). Calvin upholds the final conception, but in the sense of an increase of the knowledge of sin, not of the sin itself. He does cite the opposite view of Augustine, however.

144. So the translation of the Dutch Bible Society of Gal. 3: 19: " . . . om de overtreding te doen blijken"; cf. also the commentaries of Calvin, and De Witt Burton. Here too, however, most scholars advocate the above-mentioned interpretation, in our view the only acceptable one (e. g., Greijdanus, Schlier, Oepke, Dibelius, Schlatter, Zahn, et al. ). [The English versions have "because of the transgressions, " which is quite as inadequate as that of the DBS—tr, note. ]

145. See also the commentaries, e. g., of Zahn, Althaus, Nygren, Gaugier, Schlatter, on Rom. 3: 20; 7: 7, as also Bultmann, Theology, I, p. 266. Otherwise Greijdanus, who, though at Rom. 3: 20 he refers to 7: 5, in 7: 7 considers only a "theoretical knowing, intellectual insight... without the additional thought of knowing by experience" to be spoken of. Paul would otherwise be saying that no evil lusts were at work in him other than as reaction against the commandment, which according to Greijdanus cannot be correct (Rom., I, pp. 326, 327). But this argument passes over what Paul himself says in v. 8: "for apart from the law sin is dead. " Greijdanus comments (rightly): "[Nekra] does not deny that there was sin but says that it did not stir, did not reveal itself, " etc. (ibid., I, p. 329). It is in this sense, in our view, that one will have to understand v. 7, however.

146. The idea has all the same been very much propagated, in a variety of nuances.

147. Cf. the striking passage on this subject in van Ruler, De vervulling, p. 387.

148. So Greijdanus, Gal,, p. 246. Others seek the positive significance of the law as disciplinarian in the fact that it should for a time "regulate Israel's external mode of life, protect it from losing its way by straying, on paths it chose by itself, into unbridled heathendom and from becoming unfit to receive future, higher instruction and thus unfit for its essential calling" (thus Zahn, Gal., p. 186). However true all this may be in itself, it is not under discussion in this context. What is at issue, likewise in connection with the representation of the pedagogue, is the contrast between slavery and freedom (cf. Gal. 4:1ff. ).

149. Cf. Bultmann, Theology, I, pp. 266f,

150. This is—also in this negative sense—contested by others, e. g., Schlier, Gal., pp. 125ff„ who takes the words eis Christon in Gal. 3: 24 to denote only the terminus ad quem. He holds that justification by faith, "which appears through the hina-clause as the meaning and goal of the operation of the law, is in no sense effected or prepared by the law' ( ibid., p. 126), But however much it is true that one must not here start exclusively from the subjective life under the law—which by no means always produces despair and consciousness of impotence, but frequently legalism and self-sufficiency—this does not alter the fact that in the final clauses repeated time and again (see above), just as in the eis Christon, there is surely more in view than a period of time. It lay in God's intention not only after the time of bondage-under-the-law to make the liberty in Christ to dawn, but also over against this killing and enslaving operation of the law to make grace to appear the more gloriously in its indispensableness and its richness. In this sense one may

certainly speak with Schlatter of the law as "the silent preparation for the revelation of faith"; see also G. de Beus, Paulus Apostel der vrijheid, 1952, pp. 124ff

151. Gal. (Erläuterungen), p. 94.

152. Cf. the criticism of H. J. Schoeps, according to whom Paul had not at all rightly understood the law as "the saving principle of the old covenant, " but fell victim to "a characteristic distortion of vision" (Paul, p. 213).

153. See below, Section 46.

154. Cf. A. J . Bandstra, The Law and the Elements of the World, p. 101.

155. So Greijdanus, Rom., II, pp. 453ff.

156. Bandstra himself in the interpretation of Rom, 10: 5 goes altogether his own way in understanding by "the man who does [these things]" Christ and by taking the pronouncement of Rom. 10: 4 in that sense as well, according to which Christ is the end of the law (The Law, p. 104). Yet in this way not only would Paul have ascribed an idea to Moses that lies entirely outside the sphere of thought of Lev. 18, but he would also have given expression to this (surely very startling) explanation of Lev. 18: 5 in such an enshrouded fashion that hardly anyone up to the present time has been able to understand his meaning. Moreover, in this way what remains of the antithesis between righteousness by the law and righteousness by faith (which Paul evidently wishes to express here), if the first clause (v. 5) were intended in a positive sense, namely, of the righteousness of Christ; to say nothing then of the inapplicability of this interpretation to Gal. 3: 12 (where the qualification anthropos is wanting)?

157. In more recent Old Testament studies on this subject this point is clearly elucidated. Cf., e. g., W. Zimmerli, "Das Gesetz im Alten Testament, " TLZ, 1960, cols. 481ff.; G. Von Rad, Theology of the Old Testament, II, ET 1965, pp. 388ff. On this see also H. Berkhof, "Gesetz und Evangelium, " in Festschrift für Heinrich Vogel, 1962, pp. 127ff.

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