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  • From: Loren Rosson <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: The theme of Rom 5 - 8
  • Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2001 04:18:31 -0700 (PDT)


Moon,

You mentioned that you have not read Alan Segal's
"Paul the Convert". I strongly recommend it to you.
Considering your general approach to Romans and
Galatians, this book is rather essential reading. It
may help to examine, briefly, what Segal says about
Rom 7.

Segal begins by reminding us that, "In the thicket of
Pauline scholarship, Rom 7 is no doubt the center of
the darkest, thorniest, and most disputed territory"
(p 224), and I suppose our own discussions stand as
testimony to this. He offers five general options for
interpreting the "I" of Rom 7 (see pp 226-227):

1. Paul refers to the prelapsarian period (Adam/Eve in
Eden). Segal objects that "a personal reading of Rom 7
would logically rule out this meaning. Moreover,
Paul's language is clearly inappropriate for a
description of Paradise". As this happens to be my
view, I will return to it below.

2. Paul refers to the time before he reached the age
of 13 (the age of legal majority). Segal rightly
dismisses this as artificial, since "Paul's minority
in Torah learning, like every other child's would have
made him subject to Torah before he became responsible
for keeping Torah".

3. Paul refers to a time before he became a Pharisee
(just what did it mean to be a Pharisee in the
Diaspora, anyway?), when he did not keep the law.
Segal sees much to recommend in the idea but
ultimately "finds no evidence supporting it in Paul's
writing".

4. Paul refers to his career as a Pharisee. Segal --
like any sane advocate of the "new perspective" --
rightly dismisses this as incredible, as we've known
since Stendahl that Paul had a "robust conscience" and
lived blamelessly under the Torah as a practicing
Pharisee (Philip 3).

5. Paul refers to his experience with the Torah AFTER
his conversion. This was the route of Augustine and
Luther (the chief villains from our "new
perspective"), and so it's all the more amazing that
this is the route taken by Segal (as well as Dunn and
Nanos). "In Rom 7:9 Paul could be reflecting on his
personal experience after giving up serious allegiance
to the ceremonial Torah. He still sees reason to
return to various customs afterward as a courtesy to
those whose sensibilities might be offended by his
private beliefs. But the moment he RETURNS to Torah is
a crucial one in which sin, especially the sin of
pride, can affect his actions... When Paul quotes the
tenth commandment, 'thou shalt not covet'...Paul is
speaking of the covetousness of depending on fleshy
marks for religious justification...Paul is saying
that he enjoys doing the ceremonial Torah, but it is a
trap for him... This is not a theoretical discussion
of why humanity is unable to keep the law. It is the
self-description of a man relating his personal
experience: his attempt to find a compromise between
the two sociological groupings in Christianity and
discovery that he could not." (pp 229, 243-244)

Mark Nanos agrees that Paul speaks personally in Rom
7: "Paul's struggle with sin in Rom 7 was with the
temptation Paul knew to covet the status of
circumcision and the gift of the Torah, thereby
excluding the uncircumcised from equality, a struggle
he was able to overcome only through faith in
Christ..." ("Mystery of Romans", pp 360-361). But
Nanos -- rightly, in my view -- rejects Segal's
assumption that Paul ever chose to give up the Jewish
ceremonial Torah as a way of escaping this supposed
"trap". But of course, I disagree with both Nanos and
Segal that this particular trap is even the subject of
Rom 7.

Indeed, option (1) above -- dismissed out of hand by
Segal -- is the most natural reading! As I've been at
great pains to argue in past threads, there are too
many explicit allusions to the Genesis story in Rom
7:7-13, and too much exaggerated anguish in Rom
7:14-25, to take the chapter seriously from a personal
point of view. The "I" of Rom 7 seems clearly
rhetorical, referring to either "Adam" (in vv 7-13) or
a pagan-persona "Medea" (in vv 14-25). To restrict the
language of "coveting" in this chapter to mean
"coveting Jewish status" is as restrictive (if not
quite as artificial) as option (2), above.

In any case, Moon, please read Alan Segal's "Paul the
Convert" before you are a month older.

Loren Rosson III
Nashua NH
rossoiii AT yahoo.com

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