Salvation by Spirit-Possession in Paul’s Letter to the Romans (2): Detailed Textual Argument
[This essay is a more detailed account of the textual basis for a brief summary given in Salvation by Spirit Possession in Paul’s Letter to the Romans (1): Brief summary of a Theory
My intent in this paper is to give a plausible account of the origins of early Christian belief that they had been “saved” by an act of God, somehow connected with Jesus’s death. “Account of origins” here has to consist in a humanly understandable account of reasons or motivations why large numbers of people first began to believe this.
To put this more concretely, we must be able to construct a plausible narrative about some hypothetical individual, let us call her “Olivia,” living in Paul’s milieu. This narrative must give us a plausible account of Olivia at a stage before she held these beliefs, and then give us a plausible account of what might have motivated her to make a transition from not-believing to believing the particular account of sin and salvation which we find in Romans.[1]
I’m going to propose in this paper that the idea of salvation by spirit-possession presented in Romans 8:1-13 is particularly promising in this regard. This is because of the concretely experiential character of spirit-possession. That is, we can suppose that our hypothetical person Olivia had personally had rather dramatic and transformative concrete experiences, which Olivia after the manner of the time interpreted in terms of spirit-possession. Thus Olivia’s belief that God had acted to save her would not have been a stand-alone belief about an event happening in an unseen supernatural world beyond anything humanly perceivable. Olivia’s belief that God and God’s spirit had saved her would have been an interpretation of a concrete human experience, which in Olivia’s mind itself constituted the salvation-event. (I do not intend here an “individualist” vs. communal emphasis. Rather, I assume here the existence of a large number of individuals like our hypothetical Olivia who had very similar experiences, fostered in a community setting, and which served to found a new community of those who shared such experiences. I just insist here that only individual human beings have experiences, so a focus on human experiences must be able to translate into a focus on some hypothetical individual(s) having those experiences.)
My conception of the historian’s task in this context is to give a humanly understandable account of this experience itself. Certainly supernatural beliefs interpreting this experience would have been important in giving meaning and significance to this experience. But in principle, we should be able to give an account of the experience itself that would be understandable to any modern reader who does not share these beliefs. To paraphrase a well-known essay-title by philosopher Thomas Nagel,[2] there is something it must have been like to have the kind of experiences which Paul and his addressees would have interpreted as salvific spirit-experiences. And we should be able to have some understanding of what this must have been like, even if we ourselves have not had these experiences and would not interpret them in terms of spirit-possession even if we had them.[3]
This task of historical reconstruction would not be complete without adding some at least plausible and humanly understandable account of why the experiences in question might have been common and widespread in Paul’s milieu. This I offer at the end of this paper, in the form of some hypotheses about their possible setting a synagogue community in the Hellenistic Jewish diaspora.
In this connection, a few other introductory remarks are necessary.
First, in the Romans passages I am concerned with here, Paul speaks in a way that assumes that he and his addressees in this letter have already had the kind of salvific spirit-experiences described above. I take this as a basis for treating these passages not only as evidence for Paul’s own beliefs and teachings as a particular individual, but as historical evidence for the fairly widespread occurrences of the particular kinds of salvific spirit-experiences he is referring to here. This is all the more significant given the fact that in this letter Paul is addressing a community with whom he has as yet had no first-hand acquaintance. This is why what he says in these portions of Romans can serve as historical evidence for the widespread occurrence of such salvific spirit-experiences, as at least one phenomenon that can account for the historical origins of Christianity. (I should emphasize “one phenomenon” here. I think recent research has shown that the origins of Christianity are complex, and involved a number of diverse factors, so my proposals here concern only one phenomenon that I think should figure in the mix.)
Secondly, I will often be referring to “Paul and his addressees this letter” on the assumption that the salvific spirit-experiences he is speaking of in Romans 8 are experiences he has shared with the people he is addressing in this letter. For convenience’s sake, I will often use “we” and “us” as a shorthand way of referring to what I assume is a fairly numerous community of people living in Paul’s time. But in this connection it must be noted that, if my historical reconstructions here are roughly accurate, it is probably true that “we” and “us” in this context includes very few modern churchgoers. In this respect, in this particular case, my attempt at an historical reconstruction of Christian origins may have to part company with the desire to connect Paul’s message to the lives of modern Christians. Contemporary “charismatic” Christians in the Pentecostal and holiness traditions are possible partial exceptions here. I will return to this issue below in connection with the views of one Pentecostal New Testament scholar, Gordon Fee.
Romans 7:7-25.
My central purpose in the paper is to try to reconstruct the kind of human experience Paul is speaking of when he says in Romans 8:2 “the spirit has freed you from sin.” This requires reconstructing two correlated elements: (1) We have to be able to understand what “sin” means in this context, in a way that makes it plausible that some experience of spirit-possession might save a person from this state of sin; (2) We have to construct a picture of a certain kind of spirit-possession that might plausibly be said to have freed us from “sin,” understood in just this way.
Comments below on Romans 8:1-13 will address issue (2) here. But I begin with comments on the immediately preceding passage, Romans 7:7-25, because I think it helps with issue (1) above, helping us to understand how Paul pictures the state of “sin” from which the spirit has freed us.
The pertinent parts of 7:14-25 read as follows, with specially significant phrases italicized.
… I am of the flesh [sarkinos] sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want… it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh (en tē sarki mou). I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.
For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self [kata ton esō anthrōpon], but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind (tō nomō tou noos mou), making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death (sōma tou thanatou)? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then with my mind [tō..noi] I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin. (Unless otherwise indicated, translations in this paper are from the NRSV).
First, I think this passage in Chapter 7 needs to be read in the context of the preceding Chapter 6 and the following Chapter 8, both of which quite clearly (e.g. in 6:7 and 8:2) refer to the fact that “we” (Paul and his addressees in this letter) have already been “freed from sin,” freed that is from the state of sin described in this passage. This counts against reading the use of first person present verbs in the above passage as an indication that this is a description of Paul’s own present struggles with sin.
Note also that although Paul cries out in 7:24 “who will deliver me…?” this is immediately followed in 8:2 by his statement that “the spirit has saved you (se) from sin.” This counts also then against reading 7:14-25 as an account of Paul’s own unique personal struggles. Rather, I treat “I” here as Paul’s way of using his own prior state to dramatize and make more concrete a prior “fleshly” state of sin that his addresses would have recognized as a state that they themselves shared with him previous to having been freed from this sinful state.
Significant, finally, is the fact that, as noted above, when the text comes to describe the saved state in 8:1-13 in general terms, it repeatedly describes this (8:4-9, 12, 13) in terms of a contrast between “our” prior state of being “in flesh” [en sarki] and our present state of being “in the spirit”, [en pneumati]. So we should note that sarx (flesh) and sarkinos (fleshly) are terms used in 7:5, 14, 18, 25 to describe a sinful state, which 8:1-13 contrasts with the saved state brought about by the spirit.
I take these observations as an indication that 7:14-25 means to offer a general account of the “sinful” state that the text pictures as having characterized, not only Paul’s own prior existence, but the prior existence of all of his addressees in this letter.
The specific meaning of “sin.”
This brings us to the question about what this passage suggests about the nature of the “sinful” state from which “we” have been saved. What exactly does “sin” mean when the text pictures “sin” as a past condition, as in the statements that “we” have “been freed from sin” (6:7), and that “the spirit has freed you from sin” (8:2)?
The first part of the passage from Chapter 7 quoted above might seem to suggest that sin should be understood here in the usual sense it has today, as a reference to sinful behavior. That is, these first lines seem to focus on “my” inability to control my behavior, to translate my good desires into good behavior; I persist in acting badly even when my desires are good.
But in this case this would be a problem of weakness of will, “my” lack of self-control and self-discipline, an inability to force my behavior to conform to my good desires. This is a problem that could be resolved by developing more will power and applied self-discipline. It would not need an act of divine salvation coming from outside.
And we are also faced with the question about the actual event of salvation pictured in 8:2 by saying that “the spirit has freed you from sin.” If we take “sin” here to refer to “sins” (sinful actions), this would seem to imply that divine intervention has operated directly on “my” behavior, directly making my behavior conform to rightness rules, in this way preventing “me” from “committing sins” Against this, we have Paul in the whole of chapter 6 urging his addressees to resist reverting to “sinful” behavior, which assumes that their having been “freed from sin” has not freed them from the possibility of committing sins.
I suggest that the final verses in the above passage (7:19-20) offer a solution to this problem. Here the text says:
For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self [kata ton esō anthrōpon], but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind (tō nomō tou noos mou), making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. So then with my mind (tō..noi) I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.
Whereas the earlier verses in this passage refer to a conflict between “my” internal desires and my external behavior, these last verses subtly shift, to focus on an internal conflict, between (1) one psychological factor represented by “me”—otherwise referred to as my “inner self” (esō anthrōpos) or my “mind” (nous)—and (2) another force simply called “sin” dwelling in me.
What I think is specially significant in this context is that, despite the fact that part of these lines represent “sin” as only one internal force battling against a better part of “me” that “delights in the law,” and in fact is “a slave to the law of God,” in the final line this state as a whole is described as “slavery to sin,” from which only divine intervention can save me.
In other words, on this reading, it is this state of internal conflict itself, the very fact of having to struggle against un-right/sinful internal impulses, that counts in this passage as a state of sin.[4] from which only divine intervention can save a person. This would also then dovetail with an understanding of “salvation by the spirit” I will explain below, in which the spirit operates as a powerful enough positive internal force to so counteract sinful impulses as to free “us” from forces of sin that we previously had to continually struggle against.
But here I want to call special attention to the “perfectionist” implications of Paul’s views when read in this way. That is, what the text describes here as a state of internal struggle between right and wrong is something almost everyone experiences, and most of us consider part of human normalcy. But precisely because it is so normal, most people would resist calling this a state of sin. Usually, we call something a case of blameworthy “sin” if it falls below some “normal” level of commitment to the right and good. As long as a person is extending all her conscious efforts to win out in any internal struggle between right and wrong, most people would resist regarding the struggle itself as an indication of blameworthy “sin.” The fact that Paul calls this a state of sin implies that he is regarding this state from a particular “perfectionist” perspective. And this is an internally-focused perfectionism, focused on internal motivations, rather than one focused on exact adherence to rules for external conduct of any kind.
If this interpretation is correct, it provides one good answer to the question as to what might have motivated considerable numbers of people in Paul’s milieu to buy into the doctrine of the universal sinfulness of mankind. This is not because they had a particularly pessimistic view of mankind, in which people cannot help but “commit sins,” that is, engage in behavior obviously “sinful” by normal standards (as one might suppose from reading only Romans 1/18-2/24). Assuming that Paul’s addressees in this letter shared the views he expresses in 7:14-25, this suggests that they all looked at this matter from the perspective of a perfectionist standard of rightness, in which the very feeling of having to struggle against un-right impulses, generally felt as part of human normalcy, counts as a state of sin in the eyes of God. I will return to this issue below.
This interpretation in not really new. Beginning sections of Martin Luther’s Preface to his Commentary on Romans propose very similar ideas, and elaborate on them in a particularly clear way.
The works of the law are every thing that a person does or can do of his own free will and by his own powers to obey the law. But because in doing such works the heart abhors the law and yet is forced to obey it, the works are a total loss and are completely useless…How can such a work please God, if it proceeds from an averse and unwilling heart?[5]
In other words, in this view, strong self-control is not enough to bring a person out of a state of “sin.” Luther counts as a state of sin any state of mind in which strong efforts to resist sin coexist with any contrary impulses which a person has to struggle against.
God judges what is in the depths of the heart. Therefore his law also makes demands on the depths of the heart and doesn’t let the heart rest content in works, but rather punishes as hypocrisy and lies all works done apart from the depths of the heart. (Gott richtet nach des Herzens Grund. Darum fordert auch sein Gesetz des Herzens Grund, und läßt sich mit Werken nicht begnügen. Sondern straft vielmehr die Werke, die ohne Herzens Grund getan als Heuchelei und Lügen.)[6]
I will return to Luther’s views below, in connection with his descriptions of how the effects of the spirit on “the depths of the heart” enables a person to fulfill the demands of a law which reaches into the hearts of people.
But first I need to make a few more comments on some aspects of the vocabulary of 7:7-25, as necessary preparation for some interpretations of parts of 8:1-13 that I will propose below.
Excursus: Special usages of “death”:”life,” “flesh,” “body,” and “[bodily] “members.”
This excursus deals with:
(1) the use of “death” as a metaphor for an un-just-ified/sinful state, and the corresponding use of “life” as a metaphor for the opposite state free from sin, just-ified in God’s eyes;
and
(2) vocabulary and imagery connected to “flesh” (sarx), “body” (sōma),“(bodily) members” (melē), pictured imagistically as where it is in a person’s being that “sin” is located.
I begin with comments on verse 7:5, in which Paul is explaining why “law” by itself cannot bring people out of their normal state of sin to a state of being just-ified in the eyes of God. I will emphasize with italics particular words and phrases especially relevant to my later arguments:
While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
Here Paul imagines “sinful passions” as located “in our (bodily) members (melesin).” This verse uses “death” as a metaphor for a sinful state affecting everyone still living normal-human “fleshly” existence.
The next verses 7:9-11 are the clearest case in which “death” and “life” are used as metaphors for a sinful vs. a just-ified existence.
I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came,sin revived and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me…. It was sin, working death in me…
Romans 5:17-18 is another passage showing a clear association between “life” and “rightness” or “just-ification.”
The free gift of rightness will exercise dominion in life… one man’s rightness leads to just-ification of life (dikaiōsin zōēs),
For the sake of further discussions below, I also want to note here that, if Paul is using his own case to dramatize a state prior to salvation common also to his addressees in this letter, this implies that he is here addressing people who also like himself previously lived a life “under the (Jewish) law.” This is supported by statements in 7:4 and 7:6 where Paul notes that “we” have “died to law” and been “discharged from the law,” implying that “we” were previously living under the law.
To continue then with passages illustrating the use of “flesh,” “body” and “[bodily] members” as the site where “sin” is located (italics added):
I am fleshly, sold under slavery to sin… I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.
For I delight in the law of God according to my inner self (esō anthrōpos). But I see another law in my bodily members (melesin)warring against the law of my mind (nous), holding me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. Miserable man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death?… So in my mind (nous) I serve the law of God, but in my flesh the law of sin.
“The law of sin” that dwells in my melē “[bodily] members” refers to something like the regime of sin, again imagined to be located in mybodily “members.”
In this same passage, sarx “flesh” and sarkinos “fleshly” refer to the normal, inescapably sinful state of mankind prior to salvation, described in detail in the entire passage 7:14-25 treated here.
Finally, I want to argue against a theory-oriented literal interpretation of some of the imagery here which pictures sin as located in flesh/body/members. We should not convert this imagery into a set of doctrines, part of an allegedly Pauline “anthropology,” a consistently held theory about the makeup of the being of human beings. Rather, this imagery is a rhetorical device, Paul’s way of giving concrete clothing to what a more intellectually oriented person might conceive of more abstractly as a particular existential possibility inherent in human being as a whole—the possibility of existing in a sinful state, which is after all in Paul’s mind the normal state of human beings.
As I will explain below, Paul himself does not use this kind of imagery in a perfectly consistent way. Sometimes he wants to picture “salvation from sin” in an idealized way, as a decisive, once-and-for-all experience, and then he can speak in a clearly metaphorical rather than literal way, of the “sin-body” (sōma tēs hamartias) being “destroyed” (6:6) and of wishing to be “delivered from” “this death-body” (sōma tou thanatou) (7:24). But other passages assume a somewhat contrasting view recognizing sin as a continuing possibility even for a supposedly “saved” person.
Romans 8:1-13 and salvation by spirit-possession.
Now I pass on to the extended passage 8:1-13, the main textual source for my proposals here concerning salvation/just-ification by the spirit. This passage is where the text first introduces the spirit as a major focus of attention. Here we also see an emphatic and often repeated contrast between a previous existence “in the flesh”—a fleshly/“sinful” existence described in 7:14-25—and a present saved/just-ified existence “in the spirit.”
And it is here that we have three passages, 8:2, 8:3-4, and 8:10, which most clearly and unambiguously speak of salvation by the spirit.
8:2 says that “… the spirit has freed you from… sin.”
8:2-4 says that, as a result of an act of God, we now “walk not in the flesh but in the spirit,” and that this has enabled us to live up to the just demands of God’s law. Thus it is the enduring effects of divinely given transformative spirit-experiences that have brought us to a state of rightness in God’s eyes, of which we were previously not capable.
8:10 says that “the spirit is life because of rightness,” using “life” as a metaphor for a truly “right” existence. and attributing this rightness to the spirit.
Suppose we assume, first, that mentions of the spirit here have reference to extraordinary concrete experiences which Paul and his addressees would have regarded as spirit-possession. On this reading, these must have been spirit-experiences of a particular kind, different for example from the kinds of time-limited experiences manifest as glossolalia and miracle working as described in 1Cor 12 and 14. Rather, the people involved must have been able to concretely perceive themselves as living a new kind of existence fundamentally different from their previous existence. They would feel a contrast between a previous “fleshly” existence” which was by nature “sinful,” and a new existence in the spirit freed from being held captive by sin. They would feel this as transition from a previous fleshly state in which they felt incapable of living up to the just demands of God’s law, to a new state which they could concretely feel as having been empowered by the spirit to live up to these demands. They would perceive this change as a fundamental internal transformation brought about by spirit-experiences, which for the first time enabled them to live up to an ideal of true rightness which they previously but fruitlessly strove to achieve by their own “fleshly” attempts to live up to an ideal of rightness represented by God’s law.
If this is an accurate description of the implications of 8:2-4 and 8:10, this contributes to the task described at the beginning of this paper: providing an historical account of the origins of unique early Christian ideas of salvation. It begins providing an account of at least one kind of humanly understandable kind of experience which might plausibly have been regarded as itself an experience of being “freed from sin.”
This concretely experienced salvation by transformative spirit-possession can be helpfully contrasted with other accounts which involve beliefs pertaining to a supernatural realm beyond anything concretely perceivable by human beings. The traditional Protestant “forensic” account of just-ification drawn mainly from Romans 3:20-4:23 is one clear example requiring as it does belief with no evident experiential basis. In this account, the sacrificial death of Jesus moved God as judge to pronounce a sentence of acquittal for people he previously regarded as sinful. This involves (1) a belief that Jesus’s crucifixion, a publicly observable event, had a hidden meaning as a sacrificial death pertaining to an unobservable supernatural dimension of reality, and (2) a belief in another unseen event happening in the mind of God, a change from regarding all people as sinful, to regarding some people as free-of sin.[7]
If indeed quite a number of people in Paul’s time came to adopt these beliefs, something must have motivated them to do so. But what these motivations might have been remains, for me at least, a mystery. It seems unconnected to any particular human experiences we can understand. And the alleged unseen event constituting God’s decision to acquit people of their sins, is such that in itself it produces no perceivable change in the people affected.
Now on to some more details:
I begin here with the introduction of the spirit in 8:2, repeating for context the immediately preceding passage from the end of Chapter 7.
I delight in the law of God according to my inner self (esō anthrōpos). But I see another law in my bodily members, warring against the law of my mind, holding me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. Miserable man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death?… So in my mind I serve the law of God, but in my flesh the law of sin.
But now there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus
The law of the spirit in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death.
One thing to note here is the play on the word “law” (nomos), beginning in 7:19, where “the law of sin that is in my members” refers to something like the regime of sin. So “the law of the spirit of life” in 8:2 has a similar meaning, reflecting the fact that Paul and his addressees have now passed from a “fleshly” existence under the regime of sin, to a new existence truly “alive” under the regime of “the spirit of life.”
Understood this way, 8:2 clearly says that “your” lives are now lived under a new “law.” Having previously lived a life under the law of sin, “we” are now living a new kind of life under the law of the spirit which frees “us” from sin.
Recall also here the points made above about the metaphorical meanings of “death” and “life.” “The law of sin and death” here clearly uses “death” as a metaphor for an un-just-ified state of sin. Correspondingly, “the law of thespirit of life” associates “life” with a saved/just-ified existence, having been freed from our previous “sinful” state.
For present purposes, this last point is most important: the fact that it is the spirit that frees us from sin. The next two verses reinforce this point. They read
What the law was not capable of, in that it was weakened by the flesh, God [did] sen[ding] his own son in the likeness of sin-flesh, and for sin’s sake condemned sin in the flesh [of Jesus], so that the just demands of law are fulfilled in us who walk, not according to flesh, but according to spirit. (My translation.)
These two verses make a complex set of points. Most important for my purposes is the way that 8:4 builds on and complements what is said in 8:2. 8:2 pictures the negative effect of spirit-possession in freeing “us” from a previous state of sin. 8:4 describes the same result in a positive way: The spirit that now informs our transformed lives has now enabled us to fully live up to the just demands of law, which I take to be the equivalent of full just-ification. That is, the spirit that has come upon “us” has saved us by resolving what has been the key religious problem Paul has been dealing with since early in his letter: What is it that is able to just-ify us, and has actually just-ified us, rendered us truly right in the eyes of God? This connection of spirit with just-ification is made more explicit shortly after this passage, when 8:10 says “the spirit is life because of rightness,” that is, the spirit brings a new kind of life because of the rightness that it brings.
“Fulfilling the just demands of law” in 8:4 clearly has a superlatively positive meaning. So “law” here cannot refer to the body of Jewish laws (circumcision, kosher laws, etc.) that are the objects of Paul’s polemicizing early in Romans and in Galatians. I suggest that it refers to some ideal and perfectionist standards of rightness derived from study of Jewish scripture as a whole, commonly referred to in Paul’s time as torah or nomos, “law.” (Note that, following a string of quotations from Psalms and Isaiah, Paul refers to these as “what the law says”.)[8]
One other issue that needs clarification here is the meaning of “flesh.” 8:3 first says that law by itself was incapable of just-ifying us, because it was “weakened by the flesh.” That is, “our” previous problem did not lie in this idealized “law” itself—living up to the demands of this law is in fact what has just-ified us. The problem lies rather in the fact that it was addressed to us still existing in our “fleshly” state. This fleshly state is what is described in detail in the previous passage 7:14-25, which also explains why this fleshly state is an inescapably “sinful” state, too “weak” to live up to what I argued above is Paul’s perfectionist ideal of true rightness.
This is the basis for the meaning Paul gives to Jesus’s crucifixion in 8:3: In Paul’s picture here, in this event Jesus served as a symbol of “sin-flesh” (sarx hamartias) and his death on the cross served as a symbol of God’s condemnation of sin-flesh in the flesh of Jesus.
Finally, 8:3-4 does not picture God’s condemnation of sin-flesh as a mere abstract passing-sentence on sin-flesh. The text says that God condemned sin “so that the just demands of law might be fulfilled in us who no longer live according to the flesh but live according to the spirit.” That is, Paul here pictures God’s condemnation as actually bringing about the demise of our previous “fleshly/sinful” existence, the negative side of a transformation whose positive side can be described as now “walking according to the spirit.”
Gordon Fee.
Because of their relevance to broader issues in this paper, I want to bring in here some comments on 8:2-4 by Gordon Fee, a self-identified Pentecostal Christian and author of a very comprehensive and well-received study of spirit in all of Paul’s letters.[9] Fee’s comments on these verses are especially valuable, not only because as a Pentecostal Christian he is especially sensitive to the concrete-experiential resonances of spirit-talk in Paul, but also because he is an extremely detail-oriented exegete, careful to give full weight to Paul’s wording even when he recognizes that this wording stands in potential conflict with his wider view of Paul’s overall thought.
Two issues are especially relevant here:
First, Fee recognizes that spirit-talk in Paul has reference to unusual concrete, transformative experiences. Thus we must recognize the concrete meaning that this gives to the idea that the spirit has freed “you” from sin: (1) “spirit” here refers to some extraordinary concrete and transformative experiences, affecting our behavior so that “we” now “walk in the spirit.” And (2), this transformation has itself brought about an actually experienced fundamental change in the way we lead our lives, a change that can be aptly described by saying that it has freed us from the “sinful’ state that previously characterized our existence. Fee understands all this to require some more specific account of what kind of experienced change this must have been, if it can be described both as due to extraordinary spirit-experiences, and also as freeing “us” from sin.
But, secondly, Fee recognizes that, when the text says that the spirit (i.e. transformative spirit-experiences) has freed us from sin, this is giving an account of salvation-from-sin very different from the forensic account drawn from 3:20-4:23, which says it is Jesus’s sacrificial death (not the spirit) that has saved us from sin.
Fee sees this as the source of a potential inconsistency in Paul’s thought. Fee’s own commitment to an absolute primacy given to his idea that “Christ Jesus [not the spirit] has set us free from sin and death,” causes him to try to resolve this alleged consistency-problem by finding various ways of relating these two accounts that subordinates salvation by the spirit to salvation by Jesus’s death.
Here are some relevant excerpts from Fee’s treatment of 8:2-4:
… …. Christ Jesus set us free from sin and death… but… God’s current, ongoing remedy for sin and death is the indwelling, life-giving Spirit.[10]
This suggests that the spirit is an actual, concretely effective force helping to free us from sin in “our” current life, implicitly contrasted with the salvific work of Christ as a past event.
Fee elaborates on this suggestion in a few other passages. In one place, for example, he emphasizes the fact that the spirit’s work in delivering “us” from the tyranny of sin is something concretely experienced in our lives (again implicitly contrasted with “the atoning work of Christ” which has happened in supernatural world beyond anything actually experienced.)
… deliverance from the tyranny of sin, effected through the atoning work of Christ, as an experienced ongoing reality, is the work of the indwelling, life-giving spirit[11]
In commenting on 8:3-4, Fee asserts what is the primary thesis of this paper, that “the ongoing work of the spirit” is to provide “righteousness” itself.
Christ has opened the way for the Spirit to “fulfill” the very purpose for which Torah existed but which it was unable to provide: righteousness…. primarily through the work of
Christ, but in the last instance through the ongoing work of the spirit.[12]
And in his introduction to this part of Paul’s letter Fee makes even more clear the idea that the righteousness brought about by spirit-transformation (which is in fact “God’s own righteousness”) manifests itself effectively and practically in right conduct.
… believers… have received righteousness in its first sense in this letter, as a gift from God that puts them into the right relationship with him… the ultimate aim of that relationship is to effect righteousness in its second sense, as conduct that is keeping with God’s character—his own righteousness, if you will—which is effected in the life of the believer by the Holy Spirit.[13]
So Fee’s remarks in the above quotations emphasize the actual and practical impact of transformative spirit-experiences on the lives of those affected.
At this point I want to elaborate further on these ideas, drawing first on more comments from Luther’s Preface to his Romans commentary.
Because [the law] is spiritual, no one can satisfy it unless everything you do springs from the depths of the heart (nun es aber geistlich ist, tut ihm niemand genug, es gehe denn von Herzens Grund, alles was du tust).
But no one can give such a heart except the Spirit of God, who makes the person be like the law, so that he actually conceives a heartfelt longing for the law, and henceforward does everything, not through fear or coercion, but from a free heart (Aber ein solches Herz gibt niemand, außer Gottes Geist, der macht den Menschen dem Gesetz gleich, daß er Lust zum Gesetz gewinnt von Herzen, und hinfort nicht aus Furcht oder Zwang, sondern aus freiem Herzen alles tut). Such a law is spiritual since it can only be loved and fulfilled by such a heart and such a spirit. If the Spirit is not in the heart, then there remain sin, aversion and enmity against the law[14]
The above quotes from Fee and Luther are very relevant to a central issue addressed of this paper, announced earlier as the problem of how to describe in more experiential terms “what it must have been like” to have those particular kinds of spirit-experiences which could have plausibly been regarded as “freeing you from sin,” and enabling “us” to “fulfill the just demands of the law.” Here I want to expand on the interpretations of Paul by Fee and Luther, by offering some further proposals of my own.
My main proposal builds (1) on the idea that spirit experiences in general are experiences of being carried away by psychological forces beyond a person’s conscious control, and (2) on the idea that in 8/2-4 Paul is talking about being carried away by forces that would specifically free a person from sin and bring a kind of true “rightness” (dikaiosynē) not possible without this. I will describe this as the experience of being carried away by an “enthusiastic passion for rightness.”
These are the kinds of experiences which could plausibly be thought of as freeing “us” from the state of inner conflict which 7:14-25 describes as the state of “sin,” which is an inescapable aspect of “fleshly” (un-spirited) existence. A powerfully felt “enthusiastic passion for rightness” coming upon a person might be felt as powerful enough to give rise to the experience of an idealized state in which all contrary “sinful” and un-right impulses would seem to practically pass out of existence.
“Enthusiasm” here means to evoke associations with the Greek enthusiasmos, as a description of intense emotional experiences in which people felt carried away beyond conscious control, and which they attributed to some supernatural being (they thought of this as being en-theos, i.e. inspired by a divine being.)
But let me go further here and become even more specific by speaking of a specific kind of contrast. On the one hand, there are what we can describe as consciously controlled efforts to live up to some standards of rightness. Here “I” am in full control. Any rightness I achieve is due to my efforts, and so something I can boast about. This is what Paul is referring to earlier in Romans (3:27-28, 4:2) when he speaks of “works of law” which a person can boast about, and when he speaks of the way that the law cannot bring rightness because it is “weakened by the flesh.”
But in the ancient world, “spirit-possession” referred to a different kind of experience, where strong emotions come upon me and “I” lose control. Experientially speaking, I feel driven from within by some psychological forces outside my control. We only have to imagine that in the present case these would not be just any kind of wild emotions. They will lead to an ideal state of divine rightness (dikaiosynē) only if the emotions concerned consist in a passion for rightness.
Let us suppose, then, that these kinds of experiences are what Paul is referring to when he speaks of the spirit “freeing you from sin,” and allowing us to “fulfill the just demands of God’s law.”
If this experience then shapes one’s ideal of what “true rightness” consists in, it will appear that all attempts to achieve rightness by consciously controlled efforts will seem lacking. They will seem lacking because the mere exercise of will-power, forcing oneself to try to do the right thing, is too “weak” as Paul says, to bring about a completely wholehearted dedication to rightness. This is what Paul describes as a “fleshly” state, defined over against a “spirited” state. And if this wholehearted passionate devotion to rightness becomes one’s standard of true rightness, it is easy to see why any state short of this would qualify as a state of un-right “sin.”
This of course might appear to us an entirely different kind of experience than the kind we today associate with spirit-possession. But here we should also keep in mind that in early sections of his First Letter to the Corinthians, for example, Paul associates “spirit” with a broad range of experiences and phenomena going beyond more extraordinary and miraculous phenomena like glossolalia and miraculous healings. When for example in 1Cor. 2:4, he describes his preaching as a “demonstration of the power of the spirit” he probably has in mind impassioned speech, akin to what he calls “prophecy” (prophēteia) in 1:Cor 12:10 . In 1Cor. 12:8-9 he attributes “wisdom-speech” (logos sophias)” and “gnosis-speech)(logos gnōseōs)” to the spirit.
Note that, if this is correct, this aspect of early Pauline Christianity was what Nietzsche would term a “Dionysian” movement, as contrasted with what he thought of as the “Apollonian” Christianity of his own time. This calls to mind also an essay[15] by Jewish scholar Leo Baeck, in which he describes the contrast between Judaism and Christianity as a contrast between “classical religion” and “romantic religion”—thus assimilating Christianity to the highly emotional “romanticism” of his own time in Germany.
But it is important in the present context that the highly emotional experiences at issue here are experienced in a very specific way as passion for rightness. Thus if we try again to understand what it might have felt like to experience being saved or just-ified (made-just, made-right) by the spirit, it is important that this be experienced specifically as passion for rightness. Something like this is important for being able to differentiate this salvific kind of spirit-experience and spirit-transformation from other kinds of spirit-experiences such as glossolalia and miraculous healing which have in themselves no specifically moral content.
Finally, I want to comment here on what Fee regards as a consistency problem, presented (1) by the fact that Romans 3/20-4/23 appears to say that we are saved/just-ified by Christ’s sacrificial death (moving God to impute rightness to believers), and (2) by the apparently different account of salvation/just-ification by the spirit given in 8/2-4 and 8/10. Fee resolves this problem in terms of two phases, represented for example in his statement that
Christ Jesus set us free from sin and death… but… God’s current, ongoing remedy for sin and death is the indwelling, life-giving Spirit.[16]
But I want first to observe here that Paul himself simply presents what Fee rightly recognizes as two different accounts of salvation/just-ification, without apparently feeling any need of the kind Fee feels, to bring these two accounts into relation to each other.
But this also raises the broader question about consistency in Paul’s thought in general. I conceive of this, not as the question about whether Paul’s thought is consistent or inconsistent, but a question about two different models of consistency.
First, there is doctrinal, “theological” consistency. This assumes the objective existence of a hidden supernatural dimension of reality. Religious doctrines are to be taken as attempts to accurately map this dimension. As in the case of all maps, each element of this supernatural-doctrinal map must be consistent with every other element. Taken together, all these elements must constitute a consistent system of doctrines, constituting a description of objective truths about this unseen supernatural dimension of reality. Later Christian “theology” aimed to create just such an internally consistent set of truths claiming to be an objectively true map of this supernatural dimension.
But was Paul a “theologian” on this model? I want to propose a different possibility: Paul is primarily a preacher. He has in his mind a disparate collection of ideas and images about God, Jesus, humankind, and their relation to each other. While he shows some concern with doctrinal consistency as described above, his primary concern is with the rhetorical power any one of set of ideas or images might have in some particular rhetorical context.
“Consistency” in this context might be called a “pragmatic” consistency. What is important is that, in his actual speech and sermons, all these ideas and images be used by Paul in such a way that when each is understood in a particular context their pragmatic impact would foster a single coherent worldview and way of being in the world.
I suggest that doctrinal consistency as described earlier is only one model of consistency. And if we approach Paul not assuming this model, but posing alternative consistency-models as a question to be asked, evidence suggests that a pragmatic model of consistency is more appropriate in the Paul’s case.
In support of this, consider just one other example: Paul’s varying ideas about the meaning of Jesus’s crucifixion. The crucifixion was a publicly observable event, which however in Paul’s thinking had hidden meanings not perceived by the general public. He does believe in a hidden supernatural dimension of reality, and in this hidden dimension Jesus’s crucifixion (and resurrection) was a saving event. But in Romans 1-8 Paul presents a number of different interpretations of exactly how Jesus’s death saves us:
- Jesus’s crucifixion was a sacrificial death moving God to acquit sinful people of their sins. (Romans 3:24-25, 5:6-10)
- Jesus’s death on the cross was a death to sin (6:2,10) and death to law (implied in 7:4); “our” salvation has consisted in participating in this death by dying to an old way of being under law and under sin (as described in 7:7-25). Note that the idea that Jesus’s crucifixion was a dying to sin, is very different from the idea that Jesus died as punishment for our sins.
- Jesus’s death was a symbolic representation of God’s condemnation of our own previous fleshly/sinful way of being; this was an effective condemnation bringing about in us the actual demise of this old fleshly/sinful way of being and bringing into being a spirited way of being able to live up to the demands of God’s law. (8:3-4)
We should bring in here also Paul’s statement in 4/25 that Jesus “was handed over for our sins, and was raised for our just-ification (ēgerthē dia tēn dikaiōsin hēmōn).” This is yet another account of just-ification, appearing to say that it is not Jesus’s death but his resurrection that just-ifies us. (This may be connected to just-ification by spirit-transformation, in that, as I argue below, Romans 8/11 probably connects God’s act of raising Jesus from the dead to his bringing us to a new just-ified life by sending his spirit.)
.
Romans 8:11 and 13, and 6:1-7:6
Romans 8:2-4 and 8:10, commented on above, are the Romans passages that most unambiguously speak of salvation by the spirit. I would like (1) to add here some remarks on two further verses 8:11 and 13, which I think should most likely be interpreted along these same lines, although this is not as certain. I also want (2) to comment on how an extended passage 6:1-7:6 might fit into this interpretation.
8:10, 11, 13.
First, let me make a brief case for interpreting 8:10, 11, and 13 as elaborations on the theme of just-ification by the spirit begun in earlier verses 8:2-4. I want first to put these verses in context by repeating some of what is said in earlier verses in chapter 8 (putting in underlined italics phrases especially relevant).
The law of the spirit of life has freed you from the law of sin and death (8:2)
What the law was incapable of… God [did]… so that the just demands of law might be fulfilled in us who… walk according to the spirit (8:3-4)
If Christ is in you, the body is deadthrough sin, but the spirit is life through rightness. (8:10)
If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Jesus from the dead willbring to life your mortal bodies through his spirit that dwells in you…. (8:11)
If you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by spirit you put to death body-works, you will live. (8:13)
The reading of 8:11 and 13 that I propose relies on comments made earlier (1) about metaphorical meanings of “death” as a reference to a fleshly/sinful state, and of life as reference to a saved/just-ified state, and (2) about imagery in which “body” is pictured as the site of “sin.”
The connection of “life” with just-ification brought about by the spirit is made pretty explicit in the second part of 8:10: “The spirit is life through rightness.” The first part of this verse, “the body is dead through sin,” probably evokes the idea of the body as the site of “sin,” so “body is dead” here has a meaning similar to what is described in 6:6 which speaks of “the destruction of the sin-body” (sōma tēs hamartias). The rightness brought by the indwelling spirit (which is, experientially speaking, the same as the indwelling “Christ”) is accompanied by the demise (“death”) of the old “fleshly/sinful” self. (“Death” here is not a metaphor for sinful existence itself, but a metaphor for the demise of sinful existence, as it is in chapter 6).
Then in 8:11, the statement that “God will bring to life your mortal bodies through the spirit that dwells in you” refers to the way that the God-given spirit brings the people involved to a state of salvation/just-ification. This is a way that spirit-ed people participate in Jesus’s resurrection, in which God brought to life the dead body of Jesus. (See again comments on 4:25 made above, “Jesus… was raised for our just-ification,” which pictures Jesus’s resurrection not only a symbol metaphorically representing our just-ification, but actually a cause of our just-ification.)
In 8:13, “if you live according to the flesh you will die,” the phrase “you will die” clearly uses “die” as a metaphor for a sinful/un-just-ified state, which 7:14-25 has described as unavoidable for one who lives “according to the flesh.”
Following this reference to the flesh in the first half of 8:13, when the latter half of this verses speaks of “putting to death body-works,” “body” here probably has a meaning similar to “flesh.” It is a reference to attempts to make oneself right in God’s eyes by fleshly attempts at law-keeping. Living by the spirit involves ridding oneself of these attempts, metaphorically “putting them to death” (probably in imitation of God’s condemnation of sin-flesh in 8:3, symbolized in Jesus’s death by crucifixion). Ridding yourself of such fleshly attempts at just-ification by works of law is a condition for truly “living” that is, achieving a true, ideal state of rightness in the eyes of God.
I admit however that there is some ambiguity in 8:11 and 8:13. I read “God will bring to life your mortal bodies” and “you will live” as metaphors for a God’s act of justifying us through the spirit. But most other commentators read the phrases here more literally as a reference to the eschatological resurrection of “our” dead bodies in a future kingdom of God. The main support for this their more literal reading is the future tense of the verbs involved, “God will give life..” and “you will live.” The eschatological reading reads this as an indication of a literal raising of the dead in a future kingdom of God. My metaphorical reading has to take the future tense of these verbs in a “consequential sense”: “if the spirit of God dwells in you, the consequence will be that God will by the spirit bring you to life,” that is, bring you to a state of true rightness in his eyes.[17] (I would also point out that “…by the spirit bring you to life” counts against the eschatological reading, since there is no indication that Paul thinks that the spirit will raise our dead bodies in the future kingdom of God.)
Romans 6:1-7:6.
I want to close these exegetical discussions of Romans 7-8, with some more brief remarks on the immediately preceding passage, Romans 6:1 through 7:6. This extended passage makes repeated reference to a salvific change which it assumes has taken place in the lives of Paul and his addressees. Its description of the state prior to this change includes the idea that this was a state both “under the dominion of sin” and “under law” (“sin will no longer have dominion over you because you are not under law but under grace” 6:14). This suggests an intrinsic connection between being “held captive by the law” (7:6) and being “enslaved to sin” (6:17), a connection which the text will explain more clearly in the immediately succeeding passage 7:7-13.
The emphasis in this passage is primarily negative, emphasizing the fact that we have been freed from this previous state under sin-and-law. This salvific change is thus metaphorically described as a “death” to this previous way of being under sin/law, represented also as a participation in Jesus’s death, said to have been a “death to sin” (6:10) and a “death to law (implied in 7:4).
Occasionally the positive side of this salvific change is also mentioned, in this passage usually pictured as a participation in Jesus’s resurrection (6:4-5, 8,10, 13, 7:6), but also, in 7:6, living a “new life in the spirit”
Let me here just pose two different ways of reading this passage 6:1-7:6.
(1) On one reading, Paul is speaking here of beliefs about God, shared by him and his addressees, which they believe in “by faith.” Whereas they previously regarded themselves as bound by Jewish law, they believe that God has discharged them from law. This was somehow connected to their baptism, which they believe was a participation in Jesus’s crucifixion, which they believe had a hidden supernatural meaning as a “death to law.” They also believe by faith that the crucifixion had a hidden supernatural meaning as a “death to sin,” so that their belief that they participated in Jesus’s death also entailed the belief that they are now “free from sin.”
The belief that God had “discharged them from law” would have an obvious concrete practical impact on their lives, because it would mean that they no longer feel bound by Jewish law as they did before.
But what about their belief that some event had happened that “freed them from sin”? Suppose that they envisioned this event as something they believed to have happened only in the mind of God. They believed that God had decided to regard them as free from sin. The only actual change this would bring about in their concrete lives would then be brought about (1) by allowing this belief about how God now regards them, to inform their own conscious image of themselves, as now “sinless” beings, and (2) by exerting all their efforts to live up to this image by resisting temptations to sin.[18] They could now regard themselves as freed from Jewish law by God, but otherwise, practically speaking, God has left them completely on their own to free themselves from sinful impulses and actual sinning.
But another way of this passage 6:1-7:6 is to read it in an anticipatory way, anticipating what is said in the following chapters 7 and 8. Read this way, it refers to an actually experienced concrete transformation in “our” lives, in which impulses to un-right “sinful” behavior have been counteracted by a very strong enthusiastic passion for rightness. This has brought about a very tangible change in the way “we” relate to rightness (from previous forced but reluctant duty, to present enthusiastic passion); and this was brought about by forces we felt as beyond our conscious control. This was something concretely felt as freeing us from a previously felt “sinful” state. On this reading, supernatural explanations of this experience in terms of “God” freeing us from sin by participation in Jesus’s death-to-sin-and-law are not stand-alone beliefs, but are interpretations of these concrete experiences.
(Under almost any interpretation, 6/1-7/6 raises the problem of, on the one hand, seeming to assert that “you” have been once-and-for-all and decisively “freed from sin,” but on the other hand, exhorting “you” all to resist temptations to engage in sinful behavior. My suggestion here is that individual dramatic experiences feeling carried away by a powerful passion for rightness gave Paul and his addressees an idealized image of a state completely free of un-right impulses. But returning to everyday life after this, one would still have to struggle to remain true to the change brought about by these time-limited experiences.)
A communal Sitz im Leben conducive to transformative spirit-experiences.
This concludes my exegetical comments and proposals. But essential to these proposals is the assumption that particular kinds of experiences were widespread in Paul’s milieu. These involved unusual and highly emotional experiences, feeling being carried away beyond conscious control. But, in order to account for the clear assumption implied in Romans 8:1-13 that these were also experiences that brought people to a state of true rightness in God’s eyes, I proposed the hypothesis that these experiences can also be described in terms of an “enthusiastic passion for rightness,” which also brought about an enduring transformation in the lives of those affected. I’ve argued that the texts quoted here from Romans itself constitute evidence that such experiences were common and widespread enough that Paul could take for granted that his addressees in Rome have all had these kinds of experiences.
To this hypothesis about the specific character of these experiences, I also want to add, finally, a hypothesis about a concrete religious context which might have been conducive to the fostering of these kinds of experiences. The context I propose is synagogue gatherings in the Jewish diaspora.[19] Because my treatment must be brief, I want to just summarize some relevant conclusions from detailed evidence gathered by Dieter Georgi from both Jewish and pagan sources concerning phenomena connected with diaspora synagogues in Paul’s time.[20]
I refer here to one particular section (p. 84-117) of this extensive study in which Georgi cites evidence showing the following.
(1) The study and interpretation of Jewish scriptures, often collectively called “law” (torah) was the main purpose of synagogue gatherings
(2) “Interpretation” of these scriptures was regarded as itself a spirit-inspired activity
(3) Spirit-possession was a common phenomenon in and around these synagogue gatherings.
I propose this as the kind of religious environment conducive to the kinds of transformative spirit-experiences which I argued above are evidenced in Romans 6-8.
“Rightness,” and the demand for rightness, is a main characteristic of the God of Jewish tradition represented in Jewish scriptures. Intense inspirational (“spirit-ed”) reflection on the God represented there could plausibly have given rise to a highly exalted ideal of “God’s rightness” and the demands that God’s “law” makes on devotees of this God.
This provides an account of a plausible origin of what (with Luther) I proposed above as the “perfectionist” sense of what scriptural “law” requires, responsible for Paul’s sense of universal “sinfulness” from which only divine intervention could save us. This could well be what Paul is referring to as “the glory of God,” and what he means by saying (Romans 3:23) that “all have sinned in that all fall short of the glory of God.”
This sense of falling short of a highly idealized sense of what God demands (determining Paul’s idea of universal sinfulness) would be one negative result of inspired meditation on the picture of God represented in Jewish scriptures. But this could also have had a positive result, feeling very emotionally inspired, moved and carried away by an enthusiasm for the ideal of rightness represented by this God and his law, experiences easily interpreted as brought about by God’s holy spirit.
[1] This focus on what might have motivated individuals to adopt certain beliefs marks a key difference between the approach that I take here, and the approach taken by Burton Mack. I share and greatly appreciate Mack’s attempts to give a genuinely historical account of the origins of early Christian beliefs, for which he draws on an acquaintance with an impressively broad range of evidence. One way I would describe the difference between our approaches has to do with community-formation. I am looking for common experiences and values that might have brought early Christian communities together—might have motivated individuals to join a particular community, and sustained their identification with this community. Mack seems to take for granted the existence of certain kinds of communities (marked by the inclusion of Jews and Gentiles, for example), and pictures the creation of narratives and myths as clever “social formations,” intended to be instrumentally useful in furthering the social interests of these communities. See Burton Mack. The Christian Myth: Origins, Logic, and Legacy. New York: Continuum Press. 2003. p. 83-99.
[2] T. Nagel. “What is it like to be a bat?” in Mortal Questions (Canto Classics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992. p. 165-180.
[3] My focus on “experience” in this paper can be seen in part as furthering the program of a group of scholars who have published their work to date in two volumes entitled Experientia. (See Frances Flannery, et al., editors. Experientia. Volume 1. Inquiry into Religious Experience in Early Judaism and Early Christianity. Vol. 1, Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta GA. 2008; C. Shantz et al. editors, Experientia Vol. 2. Linking Text and Experience. Atlanta GA: Society of Biblical Literature 2012.) One of the main differences in my orientation stems from my indebtedness to the work of Wilhelm Dilthey, especially his special understandings of the German terms Verstehen and Erlebnis, elaborating on what it means for one human being to try to “understand” the “experience” of other human beings. See Wilhelm Dilthey. The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences. Edited by Rudolf A. Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi, vol. 3. Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, 2002. Esp. 213-240
[4] Troels Engberg-Pedersen agrees on this point (in Paul and the Stoics, Louisville Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press. 245-247), giving a more extended argument for an interpretation in which being free from sin would mean that “There would no longer be anything ‘bad lying next to the good in me’”, ibid. p. 247.
[5] From Preface to the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans, by Martin Luther, 1483-1546. Translated by Bro. Andrew Thornton, OSB. https://ccel.org/l/luther/Romans/pref_Romans.html, accessed 4/11/22. Excerpts from the German text are from Https:::bible-researcher.com:luther04, accessed 4:12:22).
[6] Ibid.
[7] Douglas Moo presents a very detailed argument for this traditional Protestant interpretation of Romans 3/20-4/23, in his The Letter to the Romans. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2018, p. 214-222, and 237-312. On p. 222-236 he defends this interpretation against advocates of a New Perspective on Paul p. 222-236.
[8] See comments ad loc. by Douglas Moo (ibid. p. 213), citing other Pauline passages having similar implications.
[9] G. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul. Ada MI: Baker Academic, 2011.
[10] Ibid. p. 524
[11] Ibid. p. 528, emphasis added.
[12] Ibid. p. 530
[13] Ibid. p. 505
[14] Sourced from internet referenced in note 7 above.
[15] “Romantic Religion” published in L. Baeck Judaism and Christianity. New York: Meridian Books. 1958, p. 189-292.
[16] Fee, ibid. p. 524
[17] Compare Douglas Moo’s comment on Romans 3:30, “[God] will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith,” where he speaks of interpreting “will justify” as a “logical” future. Moo, ibid. p. 275.
[18] If I understand him rightly, this is Troels Engberg-Pedersen’s view of what “salvation” actually amounts to in Romans, according to his explanation in ibid. p. 250-51.
[19] This context in diaspora synagogues provides also a basis for another objection to some aspects of the approach to Paul advocated by many advocates of a “New Perspective,” insofar as they assume that Paul must be interpreted in the context of the specifically Palestinian Judaism (the exclusive topic treated in the work of E. P. Sanders). I argue instead that, if Paul’s letters do not fit well in the context of Palestinian Judaism, there are plenty of other reasons to place his thought in the context of the probably more syncretistic and diverse Judaisms of the much more numerous Jews living outside Palestine in the Jewish diaspora in Paul’s time.
[20] In D. Georgi, Opponents of Paul in Second Corinthians. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. 1986. p. 83-228.
