Excursus: The “Flesh” (sarx) in Romans
ROMANS 7
LIFE IN CHRIST AND THE SPIRIT (5:12–8:39), cont.
Freed from Law (7:1–6)
Paul has been addressing believers being freed from enslavement to sin (6:12–23), and now addresses their liberation from the law (7:1–6).1 Though Paul by no means equates sin and the law (7:7), he views the latter as an instrument that magnified the responsibility for, hence power of, the former.
He begins by comparing the believer to a widowed wife. He grants that the law rules a person so long as one lives (7:1), but is building on the case that believers have died (6:2–11).2 The husband’s death “frees”3 the wife from the “law” of her husband (7:2–3). Some Jewish traditions portray the Torah as God’s daughter, Israel’s bride;4 Paul may shift such an image slightly here to accommodate believers’ union with Christ (cf. 2 Cor 11:2). It is not believers’ husband that has died, but believers themselves have died (Rom 6:2–11), hence are no longer married to the law. They died with Christ, and as his body (cf. Rom 12:4–5) are his bride. Although spelled out explicitly only in Eph 5:28–31, Paul probably already inferred the identity of bride and body from Gen 2:24, where husband and wife constitute one flesh. Thus he elsewhere uses the language of Gen 2:24 for the believer’s spiritual marriage to Christ (1 Cor 6:16–17). Paul’s analogy does not neglect the issue of how a dead wife can marry; believers, dead with Christ to Adamic existence, are united with the risen Christ. Instead of producing physical offspring, this union results in fruit (karpophoreō) for God (7:4), as opposed to bearing fruit for death (7:5; cf. the karpos, “fruit” or “outcome,” of life and death in 6:21–22).
Paul argues that believers are no longer “in the flesh,” ruled by death-bearing passions working in their bodily members (7:5). This is because they have died and now belong to a different “body,” the risen body of Christ (7:4). (Paul is building on the notion of solidarity with Christ in 5:12–21 and 6:3–11.)5 Believers freed from law are still servants, but servants of God (cf. 6:22) who “serve” (douleuō) in “newness” (7:6). This “newness” clearly evokes believers’ newness of life with Christ in 6:4; it contrasts with “oldness” (7:6) that evokes the old life in the old Adam in 6:6. The “new” way conflicts with the values of the present age (12:2).
The new life in 7:6 is empowered by the Spirit rather than the “letter,” a contrast Paul will develop further in 8:2–4 (where believers fulfill righteousness by God’s Spirit empowering them rather than by external regulations). Paul uses “letter” for the mere written details of the law (Jewish teachers could focus even on details of spelling) as opposed to its heart (2:27, 29).6 Another context where he raises the contrast (2 Cor 3:6–7) suggests that Paul denigrates the old covenant only by way of comparison with the new covenant, in which the promised (eschatological) Spirit would write the laws in the hearts of God’s people (blending Jer 31:31–34 with Ezek 36:26–27; cf. Rom 8:2).7 In 7:5–6 Paul lays out the contrast that he will develop between life under the law and death in the flesh (7:7–25; as in 7:5), and life in the Spirit (8:1–17; as in 7:6).
Excursus: Paul and the Law in Romans
In 5:12–21 and 8:2–9, Paul contrasts life in Adam and in the flesh with life in Christ and in the Spirit. In these and other passages, Paul employs antithetical sets, sometimes mixing elements of one set randomly with other elements of the set in his antitheses.
Adam’s transgression → death (5:15)
Jesus’s grace → grace and gift (5:15)
(Adam’s transgression) → judgment, condemnation (5:16)
(Many transgressions) → free gift, justification/acquittal (5:16)
Adam’s transgression → death’s reign (5:17)
Jesus → (grace, gift of righteousness) → those in Christ reign (5:17)
Adam’s transgression → condemnation (5:18)
Jesus’s righteous act (i.e., obedient death) → justification/acquittal, life (5:18)
Adam’s disobedience → “the many” became sinners (5:19)
Jesus’s (act of) obedience → many are brought to be righteous (5:19)
Law increased the transgression (5:20)
Yet grace increased all the more (5:20)
Sin reigned in death (5:21)
Grace reigned through righteousness to eternal life (5:21)
Do not present your members for sin (6:13)
Present your members for righteousness (6:13)
Law (6:14–15)
Grace (6:14–15)
Sin → death (6:16)
Obedience → righteousness (6:16)
Slaves of sin (6:17)
Obedient to the teaching (6:17)
Slaves of sin, free from righteousness (6:18, 20)
Slaves of righteousness, free from sin (6:18, 20)
Presented members as slaves to uncleanness and lawlessness → lawlessness (6:19)
Present members as slaves to righteousness for consecration to God (6:19)
Death (6:22–23)
Consecration to God → eternal life (6:22–23)
Dead to former spouse, the law (7:3–4)
Married to Christ (7:4)
Fruit for God (7:4); released from/dead to law (7:6)
Oldness of the letter (7:6; cf. old humanity, 6:6)
Newness of the Spirit (7:6; cf. newness of life, 6:4)
Law of sin and death (8:2)
Law of the Spirit (8:2)
Law could not deliver from sin (8:3)
God delivered from sin (8:3)
Flesh (8:3–9)
Spirit (8:3–9)
Fleshly perspective is death (8:6)
Spirit-perspective is life and peace (8:6)
Body is dead on account of sin (8:10)
Spirit is life on account of righteousness (8:10)
Those who live according to the flesh must die (8:13)
Those who kill the works of the body will live (8:13)
Spirit of slavery (8:15)
Spirit of adoption (8:15)
Thus Paul contrasts sin and righteousness, death and life, condemnation and acquittal, and slavery and freedom (though this pair can be inverted).
Yet he also occasionally mentions law in this contrast, and places it on the sin/death side of the ledger. It is no surprise that the shocked interlocutor objects, “Is the law sin?” (7:7). But the written law is good; it was simply a partial solution for humanity in Adam, however, until its fuller substance could be inscribed on transformed hearts (8:2). God gave the righteous law’s stipulations to identify and restrain sin, but on their own they would not change the heart. The law was not sin, but merely a catalyst that amplified sinfulness (4:15; 5:13, 20; 6:14; 7:5, 7); sin exploited it. Without Christ, the law could only inform, but the Spirit would transform.
For Paul, the law is good (7:12, 14); the problem is not the law but flesh, which law was designed to control, not transform (8:3).8 Nevertheless, the regulations of the law pointed God’s people to his righteousness. When approached the right way, as God’s message and witness rather than a standard to achieve, the law supported the truth of the gospel (3:31; 10:6–8). Thus the law must be approached by faith rather than works (i.e., trust in God instead of flesh, 3:27; 9:31–32). Its content must be inscribed on the heart by the Spirit rather than depending on efforts of the flesh (8:2–4). Paul teaches not only moral truths, but even the way of the gospel itself, from the law. This “faith” approach to the law differs, however, from attempts to achieve righteousness by works (10:3, 5–8). The status of the law appears problematic so often in Romans precisely because it is the abuse of the law that is most at issue. Had that abuse actually represented God’s intention, it would have left new Gentile converts at a severe disadvantage vis-à-vis Jewish people raised with the law.
Paul sometimes uses deliberatively provocative statements about the law (even more so in Galatians than in Romans) for his rhetorical purpose. We should not use such statements to sum up Paul’s whole theology of the law (or even assume that, from his occasional letters, we have his entire theology of the law). Still less should we discard all insights that we might arrive at inductively through studying the Pentateuch, based on Paul’s approach in specific polemical or pedagogical contexts. Nevertheless, Paul’s point is critical: merely knowing and, as best as possible, following the letter of biblical precepts does not make one righteous. Rather, the heart of Scripture teaches about the God who graciously makes righteous by his own saving acts. Jew and Gentile must thus come to God on the same terms, through God’s saving acts, which now are available to both in Christ. The law is not meant as a vehicle for self-improvement; it is meant as God’s revelation that points us to his way of righteousness (3:21).
The Law and Sin (7:7–13)
Paul’s larger argument about one way of salvation for Jew and Gentile (1:16) requires him to give central place to the law in his argument, which divided Jew and Gentile (2:12–14, 17, 26–27; 3:27–31; 4:16; 9:30–32). Paul thus often addresses the law (2:12–27; 3:19–21, 27–31; 4:13–16; 5:13, 20; 6:14–15; 9:31–10:5; 13:8–10), but nowhere in as much detail as here.
Paul’s analogous treatment of freedom from sin (6:12–23) and the law (7:1–6) raises the obvious objection: is Paul identifying the law with sin (7:7)? Paul emphatically rejects that equation, emphasizing the goodness of the law (7:12, 14). The problem is not the law, but the flesh’s inability to fulfill it (7:5, 14, 18, 25; 8:3–8). The law’s role is to identify sin, and in 7:7 Paul offers as a key example the one commandment in the decalogue that specifies motives: “you shall not covet.”9 (Philosophers and moralists emphasized controlling passions and avoiding pleasure,10 and some Diaspora Jewish intellectuals applied this commandment accordingly.)11 Those raised with the law might obey most of its precepts from upbringing and habit, as part of their culture, but only those in whose hearts the law was written would always desire to keep the commandments. (The objects of coveting specified in Exod 20:17 are also objects of commandments against theft and adultery.) Once the law identified sin, the person committing the sin was violating God’s will more knowingly, rendering sin the more heinous and the sinner the more culpable (7:7–8).
God designed the law to grant life to those who obeyed it (7:10; 10:5),12 but because sinful humans would disobey it, it produced death (7:9–10; cf. 7:5). While Paul earlier mentioned that Adam brought death into the world (5:12–21), it was under the law—a divine standard of moral truth—that sin became most evident, exposing humanity’s complicity with it (5:13, 20; cf. 2:12; 3:20; 4:15). The law thus became a further agent of death, validating that those who sinned merited this sentence (cf. 1:32). (Some associate receiving the law with the tradition of bar mitzvah, at adolescence; but Paul probably refers to a moral consciousness that begins much earlier, before an understanding of the law’s moral demands.)13
Scholars debate whether Paul is the primary speaker in these verses, or whether he is “impersonating” someone else (a common rhetorical device; I discuss the question of persona again at 7:14–25). Certainly his background in the law now informs his description, though he interprets it from a Christian perspective. Nevertheless, he is not writing an autobiography, but highlighting an experience meant to communicate a truth to his audience; if he depicts life under the law, he depicts an experience more widely shared. Because he describes life under the law in 7:7–13, what he depicts is not intended as his current experience; because his verbs are past tense in these verses, most commentators agree on this point (somewhat more controversial are 7:14–25, treated below).
If Paul is writing in another persona, who is the persona? Two proposals are most common, and both have some merit. Many see Adamic humanity here. Whether there is any deliberate echo of the fall here,14 the emphasis on Adam bringing death in the recent pericope 5:12–21 presumably does inform this passage. Others, given the prominence of the law, highlight Israel as the background of the speaker here, and whatever else the speaker represents, it involves human experience under the law (i.e., Israel’s experience, far more than Adam’s, 5:13).15 Israel sought to establish their own righteousness by the law rather than relying on God to put them right with him (9:30–32; 10:3). The verbal echoes are not compelling for either approach, but the context may be suggestive. Most importantly, whatever the particulars, we may concur that Paul depicts life under the law without God’s gift of righteousness.
The Flesh and Sin (7:14–25)
Whereas most commentators recognize that 7:8–13, which uses past tense verbs, does not refer to Paul’s present state, they are somewhat more divided in their assessment of 7:14–25.16 Nevertheless, most do recognize that Paul speaks in a voice other than his own present person here;17 the contrasts with the larger context are simply too great to fit the Christian life as he describes it, even had Paul thought himself an unusually weak Christian.
Rom 7:7–25
Believers in the context
Law, sin, and death (7:7–13)
Freed from law (7:4, 6; 8:2), sin (6:18, 20, 22) and death (5:21; 6:23; 8:2)
I am fleshy (7:14)
You are not in the (sphere of) flesh, if Christ lives in you (8:9); no longer in the flesh (7:5)
18
Believers have been freed from enslavement to sin (6:18, 20, 22); they are “redeemed” (3:24)
do
Power to live righteously (8:4), not conferred by external law (8:3); contrast 2:17–24
Sin dwells in (and rules) me (7:17, 20)
The Spirit dwells in believers (8:9, 11)
Nothing good dwells in me (i.e., in me as flesh; 7:18)
The Spirit dwells in believers (8:9, 11)
The law of sin dominates his bodily members (7:23)
Believers are freed from the law of sin (8:2)
Sin wins the war and captures “me” as a prisoner (7:23)
(Believers should win the spiritual war, cf. 2 Cor 10:3–5)
I want freedom from this “body of death” (body destined for death; 7:24)
Believers who do not live for their own bodily desires (8:10–13) are freed from the way of death (8:2), in contrast to those who follow the flesh (8:6, 13)
A slave to the law of sin in his flesh, vs. his mind (7:25)
Believers are freed from the law of sin (8:2; cf. 6:18, 20, 22); the mental perspective either belongs to the Spirit or the flesh (8:5–9)
The present tense verbs, then, would simply serve to accentuate rhetorical vividness, something like the use of the historical present in narrative.19 Essentially Paul already outlined this contrast before depicting it: the past life “in the [sphere of] the flesh,” when the law stirred the body for death (7:5), differs from current freedom from the law in living by the Spirit (7:6). Ideally, Paul’s depiction cannot refer to a believer, least of all to one who embraces Paul’s theology of new life in Christ. That is not to claim that no believer would ever share any elements of the description, but any believer who did so would be thinking in a manner incompatible with Paul’s teaching on the law. For Paul, anyone struggling to be made righteous by following God’s standard, rather than relying on God’s transforming gift of righteousness, might experience the sort of tension between knowing right and being right described here.20 Paul’s description here, however, is hyperbolic (as in 2:17–24): complete inability to do right and involuntarily compulsion to do wrong (7:15–20) sounds like possession rather than mere moral frustration!
The sort of struggle depicted in 7:14–25 would resonate with many people in antiquity. Some philosophers depicted the struggle between reason and the body’s passions,21 an image relevant here (especially 7:22–23). Judaism spoke of an evil impulse (yetzer),22 and later teachers argued that learning Torah would strengthen one’s good impulse to defeat the evil impulse. 23 Some Diaspora Jews also argued that the law enabled one to rule one’s passions.24 Here, by contrast, evil so dominates the person that the law known to the mind cannot stave off sin’s exploitation of the law in the flesh. Some of Paul’s language fits the portrayal of pathetic enslavement to passion in Greek sources (most often compared with wicked Medea’s or Phaedra’s submission to passion rather than reason).25 Paul’s application of the language in this context, however, shockingly applies to a pious Jew trying to observe God’s law.
The mind and inner person recognizes what is right, knowing God’s law (7:16, 22–23).26 But whereas many ancient thinkers (especially Stoics) felt that proper knowledge would produce transformation,27 Paul denies that knowledge apart from God’s Spirit can produce righteousness (cf. 8:2–4). Righteousness must be God’s gift alone (4:11; 5:17; 10:3), and humans cannot boast in their own righteousness before God (3:27; 4:2).
The inability to submit to God’s law in this passage is summarized as characteristic of the mental framework dominated by the flesh in 8:5. While the mind and inner person of 7:22–23 knows what is good, it is dominated by issues raised by the bodily members (7:23), hence is the mindset of the flesh (8:5). Like one enslaved by sin in 6:16–20, the mind here is defeated in battle (contrast 6:13; 13:12) and made a prisoner of war.28 Prisoners of war were normally enslaved if they were not ransomed. The anguished persona in this text cries out, “Wretched person that I am!”29 needing deliverance from the “body of death” (a body under the sentence of and destined for death, 7:24; 8:10).30
The answer, no less exclamatory, comes in 7:25. Paul often says, “Thanks be to God!” when commenting on freedom from sin or death (6:17; 1 Cor 15:57; cf. 2 Cor 2:14; 8:16; 9:15),31 and sometimes when concluding a section, as here (1 Cor 15:57; 2 Cor 9:15), but the addition of “through Jesus Christ our Lord” sounds like an implied answer to the lament of 7:24. Before treating this victory, however (in 8:1–17), Paul summarizes the state of affairs: the mind may serve God’s law, but the flesh submits to the law as exploited by sin (7:7–9). His mention of the mind serving God’s law probably points to its unfulfilled desire to do right (7:16, 22–23), hence still refers to the perspective dominated by the flesh (8:5–7); alternatively but less likely, it might refer to the perspective of the Spirit that contrasts with the fleshly perspective (8:5–7).
Excursus: The “Flesh” (sarx) in Romans
Neoplatonic and gnostic dualism absorbed by later Christianity denied that the body was good,32 and many scholars today, reacting against this conception, argue that Paul’s use of sarx bears little relation to sōma, “body.” Some translations (such as the NIV) even poorly translate sarx simply as “sinful nature” (which for some Christian traditions also evokes a dualism of two natures struggling within the believer).
Paul certainly believes that the body can be used for good (12:1)—but also for evil (6:13). The body as such is not evil, but if the body’s desires rather than God’s Spirit dominates one’s existence, one readily comes into the power of sin.33 Paul speaks of the “passions” (1:24; 6:12; 13:14) and “desiring” what is not one’s own (7:7–8; 13:9). Impure hearts lead to defiling bodies sexually (1:24); the old life in Adam involves the “body of sin” (6:6); one should avoid obeying the desires of the mortal body (6:12); the existence of moral defeat is characterized by the “body of death” (7:24; cf. 8:10–13).
Paul connects the term “flesh” with the body. Ultimately this is not an anthropological dualism between two parts within a person (in 7:23, the mind remains subject to the flesh), but humanity as sarx contrasted with God’s Spirit (8:4–9; Gen 6:3).34 The OT employed the equivalent Hebrew term basar for humans (or other animals) in their limited creatureliness, including their mortality.35 By Paul’s day, some Jews employed the term for human weakness in its susceptibility to sin.36 Basar and its Greek translation sarx were not inherently evil, but as “human weakness” were susceptible to sin. Flesh was not meant to lead human life, but to be the arena in which life should be lived in obedience to God. Paul could use “flesh” also for the outward existence (Rom 1:3; 2:28; 4:1; 9:3, 5, 8; 11:14), again what is merely human (though not intrinsically evil) rather than empowered by God (he sometimes contrasts flesh with the Spirit or the promise).
Despite these observations, flesh had an inescapable bodily dimension.37 Contrary to the views of a large proportion of NT scholars, mostly following secondary sources, Diaspora Jews by Paul’s day commonly did distinguish soul and body, often expecting immortality for the former even when affirming resurrection for the latter.38 In 7:5, sinful passions working in the body’s members characterize being “in the flesh.” In 8:13 one is either destined for death in the flesh or resurrection by putting to death the body’s deeds. Flesh is also linked with the body in 6:19; it contrasts with the mind in 7:25; the law working in one’s bodily members (7:23) is the law of the flesh (7:25).
The conflict between the law of sin in the members and the law in the mind in 7:25 was not the basis for the verdict of “no condemnation” in 8:1, as if God would overlook physical sin provided one’s mind harbored good motives. Far from it: 8:1–13 contrasts those who serve the flesh with those who serve God by the Spirit! Paul’s goal is a way of thinking dominated not by the flesh (hence by one’s physical desires, which have a legitimate place, but not in ruling life), but a way of thinking dominated by the Spirit (8:5–9). This new way of thinking involves a renewed mind (12:2). This renewed mind teaches believers how to present their bodies in the service of the larger body—the body of Christ (12:1, 4–5). Such a mind is no longer self-centered, but Christ-centered; no longer seeking full autonomy, it now submits gladly to the greater good of God’s purposes. “Flesh” is the localized self in contrast both to dependence on God (through the Spirit) and the corporate interests of Christ’s body. Life ruled by the flesh is, at root, human selfishness and self-centeredness (or sometimes centered in one’s group), rather than genuinely altruistically sharing God’s interests. Paul’s goal is not to annihilate self, as in some religions, but to connect it to the service of a greater purpose (cf. 12:1–8; Matt 6:33). Paul was no gnostic, but neither was he a hedonistic Western individualist who keeps religion in its subjective place.
1. Paul employs katargeō (to abolish or render ineffective) in both sections (6:6; 7:2, 6; cf. 2 Cor 3:7–14), as well as cognates of eleutheros (6:18, 20, 22; 7:3).
2. Many comment that later rabbis viewed death as annulling the law’s jurisdiction.
3. Language used both for widowhood (cf. 1 Cor 7:39) and divorce (cf. 1 Cor 7:15; m. Git. 9:3; CPJ 2:10–12, §144) in ancient Jewish sources, though Paul is interested only in the former analogy here. Those who try to prohibit divorce from this passage misappropriate Paul’s general language; the law (the point in question here) explicitly did accept divorce (Deut 24:1–4). That Greek-speaking husbands typically ruled their wives in antiquity (see Keener 2000d: 687–91) also allows for the idea of the law’s domination here, since it might be taken for granted; nevertheless, analogies were limited in what should be pressed from them.
4. E.g., Sipre Deut. 345.2.2; Pesiq. Rab Kah. 12:11; 26:9.
5. That the link between these “bodies” is more than coincidental is suggested by the collocation of both in close contexts in Rom 12:1, 4–5; 1 Cor 11:24; 12:12–27; Col 1:22–24; 2:11, 19, 23; 3:5, 15. The movement is from Adam’s seed, dependent on him for their identity, to Christ’s body, dependent on him.
6. Ancient legal interpreters also differentiated what we would call the mere letter of the law from its intent (Hermogenes Issues 40.6–19; 80.10–13; 82.4–5; 83.20; cf. Cohen 1966: 39–62).
7. For this argument in 2 Cor 3:3–6, see e.g., Keener 2005b: 167–68. In some ancient comparisons, both objects of comparison were positive (see sources in Keener 2003b: 916–17).
8. Sanders 1983b argues that Paul treats the law’s purpose differently in different arguments, but remains consistent in his thesis that all are saved only through Christ.
9. Despite the first object of the prohibition in Exod 20:17 and the most prominent temptation for an adolescent (cf. Rom 7:9), the designation of “covet” is not exclusively sexual. The evil impulse sometimes had sexual connotations (b. Sanh. 45a; b. Qidd. 30b), but not always.
10. E.g., Xenophon Mem. 1.2.23–24; 4.5.3; Seneca Ep. Lucil. 59.1; Musonius Rufus 1, p. 32.22; Epictetus Disc. 2.1.10; Dio Chrysostom Or. 1.13; 3.34; 8.20; Arius Didymus Epit. 2.7.10, pp. 56–57.6–30; 2.7.10b, pp. 58–59.17–18; pp. 60–61.1–2; 2.7.10e, pp. 62–63.20–23. In Jewish sources, e.g., Ps 106:14; Sir 18:30–32; T. Ash. 3:2; 6:5; T. Jud. 13:2; Apoc. Mos. 19:3; Philo Creation 157–59.
11. See Tobin 2004: 231–32 (citing esp. 4 Macc 2:4–6; Philo Decalogue 142–53, 173–74; Spec. Laws 4.79–131); Stowers 2003: 532.
12. See e.g., Deut 4:40; 8:1; Bar 3:9; 4:1–2; Ps. Sol. 14:2; L.A.B. 23:10; 2 Bar. 38:2; m. ’Abot 2:7; 6:7.
13. Bar Mitzvah is first attested in the medieval period, although (on the analogy of coming-of-age ceremonies in surrounding cultures, at which one assumed full legal accountability, Gaius Inst. 3.208) something like it had probably long existed. It was from this passage that Augustine inferred what became an age of accountability (Reasoner 2005: 71; in Judaism, cf. Gen. Rab. 26:1–2; 63:10). But some knowledge of law (e.g., hyperbolically, m. ’Abot 5:21) and moral consciousness (Musonius Rufus 4, p. 46.35–36) were held to begin much earlier.
14. To retain continuity with Adam, some compare “deceived” in 7:11 to Eve’s deception (2 Cor 11:3; Gen 3:13; Josephus Ant. 1.48), although the term appears in many other settings. Deception is at best a faint echo (and the “commandment” applies better to the “Israel” interpretation), but Paul has already linked “death” to Adam (5:12, 14, 17).
15. Cf. Paul’s shift from plural to singular in 3:5, 7 (as in 7:5–6; 7:7–25). Zion speaks in the first-person singular in Lam 1:11–22. Cf. Moo 1986.
16. Reacting against Pelagians, the later Augustine came to depict Rom 7 as the Christian life (with most Latin fathers); most church fathers, however, especially in the east, viewed it as non-Christian (see Bray 1998: 189–99; Reasoner 2005: 67–84). The medieval Western church, Luther, and Calvin followed the dominant Western tradition; Erasmus, Wesley and Pietists followed the tradition of the Greek fathers.
17. For a hypothetical or rhetorical “I,” see e.g., 1 Cor 10:29–30; 13:1–3, 11–12; Seneca Dial. 7.11.1; 8.5.1; cf. “we” in Rom 6:1; “I” in 1 Cor 8:13; Gal 2:18–21. Various scholars (e.g., Stowers 1994: 264–68; idem 2003: 537; Tobin 2004: 10, 226–27) compare the rhetorical technique of prosopopoiia (or, more technically, ēthopopoiia; Hermogenes Progymn. 9, On Ethopoeia, 20–22), writing a speech as if someone else, an approach at least as old as Origen, though tentatively (Reasoner 2005: 69).
18. Cf. God “selling” Israel into captivity for their sins (e.g., Judg 2:14; 3:8; 4:2; 10:7; Isa 50:1), and “delivering” them afterward (e.g., Judg 2:16, 18; 3:9).
19. E.g., Mark 1:12, 21, 37, 40, 41, though not consistently; Cicero Quinct. 4.14; 5.20; more consistently, Caesar Bell. civ. passim. For using present tense for vivid depiction, see Rowe 1997: 143–44. Speeches-in-character sought to vary tense (from present to past to future in Hermogenes Progymn. 9, On Ethopoeia, 21–22, though this differs from here).
20. For both assurance of righteousness and consciousness of sin appearing together in some early Jewish texts, see e.g., Talbert 2002: 199–200 (though before Paul’s conversion the former seems to have predominated for him, Phil 3:4–6).
21. E.g., 4 Macc 1:1, 9, 29; 2:18–22; 3:2–5; 13:1–2 (cf. further Krieger 2002: 87–88); Seneca Ep. Lucil. 66.32; Arius Didymus Epit. 2.7.10a, p. 56.24–30; Maximus of Tyre Or. 33.3; cf. Sallust Bell. Cat. 51.3; the continuing struggle in Seneca Ep. Lucil. 20.6; Maximus of Tyre Or. 38.6; the Aristotelian theory in Engberg-Pedersen 2000: 52; idem 2003: 612; Platonic theory in Stowers 2003: 529, 537–38.
22. 1QS 5.5; CD 2.15–16; 4Q417 f1.ii.12; Jub. 35:9; 4 Ezra 7:92; m. ’Abot 2:11; Sipre Deut. 32.3.1; 45.1.3; cf. Gen 6:5; Sir 37:3. The evil yetzer was not strictly associated with the body (Urbach 1979: 1:472), though it affected the body (’Abot R. Nat. 16A; Pesiq. Rab Kah. Sup. 3:2).
23. E.g., Sipre Deut. 45.1.2; ’Abot R. Nat. 16A; b. Qidd. 30b, bar.; Tg. Qoh. on 10:4; for the law vs. sin, cf. also m. ’Abot 4:2; m. Qidd. 1:10. God’s help was needed (e.g., 4Q436 f1a+bi:10; Sipre Num. 40.1.3).
24. 4 Macc 2:21–23. One destroys the evil impulse by good works in T. Ash. 3:2.
25. See e.g., Euripides Med. 1077–80; Seneca Med. 926–30, 988–90; see more extensively Renehan 1973: 24–26; Gill 1998: 121, 137; Stowers 1994: 260–63; Tobin 2004: 232–34. Given the denigration in some ancient sources of the feminine as irrational (cf. Gemünden 1997), the analogy would be all the more shocking.
26. The more positive portrayal of the inner person in 2 Cor 4:16 (cf. also Eph 3:16) depicts Paul’s state as a believer (in contrast to here); on the background of “inner person,” see the views in Aune 2001: 220–22; Markschies 1994; Betz 2000.
27. Cf. Epictetus Disc. 1.28.6; 2.17.21–22; Tobin 2004: 235; but note Arius Didymus Epit. 2.7.10a, pp. 56–57.24–33; Musonius Rufus 6, p. 52.15–17. Stoics also affirmed the value of law (Arius Didymus Epit. 2.7.11d, p. 68.1–7; 2.7.11i, p. 76.30–37).
28. If 6:16–20 involves self-enslavement, as many commentators think, the experience under the law here might be more brutal. Others also employed the image of waging war with the passions (Xenophon Mem. 1.2.24; Dio Chrysostom Or. 8.20; Ps.-Diogenes Ep. 5, 12; cf. m. ’Abot 4:1; Schechter 1961: 272–73) and passions taking one as an enslaved prisoner (Maximus of Tyre Or. 36.4), including of war (Dio Chrysostom Or. 32.90; Iamblichus Pyth. Life 17.78).
29. Characteristic of tragic laments (e.g., Aeschylus Ag. 1260; cf. Ovid Metam. 9.474; Apuleius Metam. 3.25); some applied “wretched” to the bodily state (Epictetus Disc. 1.3.5–6; 1.9.12).
30. Some envisioned the soul as a prisoner within the body, hence death as a release from suffering or limitation (Cicero Tusc. 1.31.75; Epictetus Disc. 1.9.16; Maximus of Tyre Or. 7.5; Heraclitus Ep. 5, who describes the body as “dead”; cf. Philo Alleg. Interp. 1.108); cf. “this dead body” in Epictetus Disc. 2.19.27 (cf. Marcus Aurelius Med. 10.33.3). Some answered the question, “Who will release me?” with suicide (Diogenes Laertius 6.18, 21).
31. The phrase is not, however, uniquely Paul’s (Epictetus Disc. 4.4.7; Ps.-Crates Ep. 33; Ps.-Diogenes Ep. 34).
32. Cf. Philostratus Vit.Apoll. 7.26; Iamblichus Pyth. 31.205; Plotinus Enn. 1.8; 2.4; 3.6.6–7; Porphyry Marc. 10.176; 13.227–29; 14.242–50; 25.394–95; 33.506–9; Manichaeans in Augustine Contin. 10.24. Earlier, see concerns regarding bodily appetites, in Plato Phaedo 66CD; Seneca Dial. 7.8.2; idem Ep. Lucil. 8.5; Epictetus Disc. 1.3.3; Dio Chrysostom Or. 4.115; Plutarch Isis 78, Mor. 382F; Maximus of Tyre Or. 7.7; 11.10.
33. John Chrysostom contends that the problem for Paul is the unregenerate mind’s abuse of the body (Hom. Cor. 17.1; cf. Hom. Rom. 11).
34. Cf. 1QS 4.21; Flusser 1988: 64–65. For material vs. immaterial, cf. Isa 31:3; 1 En. 106:17.
35. Often, e.g., Gen 6:3, 12–13, 17; 7:21; elsewhere, e.g., Sir 28:5; Jub. 5:2; T. Job 27:2/3.
36. Often in the Dead Sea Scrolls, e.g., 1QS 4.20–21; 9.9; 11.9, 12; Flusser 1988: 62–63; also T. Jud. 19:4; T. Zeb. 9:7; Philo Giants 29–31 (though Philo often uses sōma). For the Hellenistic idea, see e.g., Epictetus Disc. 2.23.30; Marcus Aurelius Med. 2.2.
37. See e.g., 1 Cor 6:16; Col 1:22; 2:11. See further discussion in Keener 2008a: 215–19.
38. Many references are listed in Keener 2003b: 553–54, but see more fully Gundry 1976. Even some later rabbis distinguished the heavenly soul and earthly body (Sipre Deut. 306.28.2).